Capturing Moments That Last Forever

Photography for Non-Photographers: Part 2

2012-01-23T00:31:00.000-08:00

Understanding Your Camera
By Peter Emmett © 2012

In part 1 of this series we started looking at the basic controls of the camera in order to start your relationship with your camera. This part we look at how the shutter button can make a huge difference in your images and the different type of auto focus system that cameras employ.

Using the Shutter Button - What They Didn’t Tell You

The shutter button is the single most important part of a camera. Now that may sound like a weird statement, but without a mechanism for triggering the camera to take the shot, no photo would be possible. If that’s all it does, then why spend time on it here right at the beginning of the series?
The shutter button not only helps you take the photo, but by learning how to use the shutter button properly, it also provides you with a way to immediately start taking better photos. It may sound a little strange talking about the shutter button like this, but after you learn to simply press the shutter button half way before taking the photo, it’s amazing how much more you can do with you camera.

So what does pressing the shutter button half way do exactly? If you’ve ever been frustrated by your camera always missing the shot of your child diving into a pool or running past the finish line in a race then you’ll have experienced something called shutter lag. Shutter lag is the time delay between pressing the shutter button and the camera recording the shot. The amount of shutter lag you experience will depend on the camera you have. However you can improve or minimize the shutter lag without spending thousands of dollars on the newest camera. How? By learning to press the shutter button half way before taking the shot.

Simply put pressing the shutter button half way before taking a photo, forces the camera to prepare itself for taking the photo and severely decreases shutter lag. When you press the button to take a picture, the camera has to calculate a lot of different things (especially if you’re in Auto mode). Depending on how powerful the camera’s internal computing power is will affect how long the camera takes to make all the necessary adjustments and calculations which causes the delay between pressing the shutter button and taking the photo. This delay is often the reason people think that they need a DSLR or more powerful camera.

By pressing the shutter button half way the camera prepares itself to take a photo by making all the necessary adjustments and calculations so that when you fully press the shutter button all the camera has to do is record the photo without having to think about anything else, which can almost eliminate shutter lag.

To illustrate my point I took these photos of cars driving past my office building at roughly the same speed. They reveal the difference between taking a shot without preparing the camera and preparing the camera by pressing the shutter button half way before taking the shot.

The shots were taken when the car reached the middle of the picture, illustrated by the red square. When fully pressing the shutter button to take the shot, the cars have nearly exited the right side of the photo.

Typical photos for a camera when fully pressing the shutter button

Sony DSC-W170

Canon G12

Canon 5D MKII

However when preparing the camera to take a shot by pressing the shutter button half way and then fully pressing it to take the shot, the cars are still in the middle of the photo.

Instant improvements simply by pressing the button half way to prepare the camera

Sony DSC-W170

Canon G12

Canon 5D MKII

Pressing the shutter button half way takes a little practice, but once you’ve mastered it, it will become second nature for you. Two common reasons for using this technique are (1) to focus on a subject and then recompose the photo and (2) to pre-focus on a spot whilst waiting for the subject to go past. Both of these are covered in more detail later in this series.

Auto focus systems - blazing fast focusing to help you get your shot

Cameras nowadays have an amazing ability to help you accurately focus in an incredibly short time. Although manual focus definitely still does have a place in photography, most of the time you’ll use the camera in auto focus mode. All modern cameras, both DSLR and Compact cameras, have a number of different autofocus modes that can be used to handle two basic different situations – focus on a subject that isn’t moving and focus on a subject that is moving.

Auto focus systems in modern day cameras are great in focusing in difficult situations.

Many people leave their camera in the default auto focus mode, mainly due to lack of understanding what the other modes do. Here’s a brief explanation of different types of modes. Each camera will have different names for different modes and you’ll need to refer to the manual (no that’s not a dirty word) to see how to select the autofocus mode in your camera and the correct name for the different types referenced below:

FlexiZone / One Shot / AF-S / AF.S / S-AF – This is the default mode for many cameras and my personal favorite for most of my photography. Best used for static objects in pictures and uses a defined area or focal point on your picture, normally the center, where the camera will focus on. Often the focal point can be moved around the screen using either a menu option or via a button on the camera. Personally I find it quicker to leave the focal point in the center and focus on the subject, press the shutter button half way to lock the focus and then while keeping the shutter pressed half way move the camera to recompose my photo before fully pressing the shutter button to take the shot.

Once you press the shutter button half way the focus will lock onto the target within the focus area/point until you take the shot or release the shutter button. This is great when focusing on a static subject as it allows you to recompose the shot whilst keeping the shutter button semi depressed without losing focus on the subject.

Face detect – As the name suggests the camera’s autofocus system will look for human faces (or something that looks like a human face ) and lock onto it. It will track the face if it moves around the screen. Once you press the shutter button half way it will lock the focus on the face and will not continue to track the face if they continue to move. This is obviously great for using with people. With groups of people, the camera will try and select as many people as possible that are in focus, however the risk is that it may focus on the wrong person by mistake – but it doesn’t happen often.

Tracking or Predictive auto focus / AI Servo / AF-C / C-AF / AF.C – Tracks the subject that you focus on as they move towards or away from the camera until you take the shot.

Predictive auto focus can be useful when shooting fast moving subjects

This could be a person, similar to the face detect mode, or it could be a moving object such as a car. The important thing to remember in this mode is that you have to focus on the subject first by pressing the shutter button before the camera can start tracking. Note the tracking is defined by the selected focus point in the viewfinder.

AI Focus / AF-A – On the Canon DSLRs this mode automatically switches between One Shot and AI Servo mode depending on if the camera senses movement.

Manual focus – I use manual focus in one of two scenarios (1) Macro photography along with a tripod because small movements can quickly throw the subject out of focus or can focus on the wrong part of the subject and (2) Low light photography when the camera finds it hard to automatically focus.

Manual focus is useful when shooting macro images

Changing the Auto Focus Method

Each camera is slightly different, but generally uses a menu to select the focus method

On the Canon 5D MKII the focus method is accessed via the AF button and then selecting one of the three options

The Canon G12 uses the menu button to go to the picture tab and then you scroll through the various options

The Sony DSC-W170 also use the menu button to access the focus method, in this case it only has face detect with a few variations to prioritize children’s or adult’s faces.

Pre-Focus

One technique that’s useful when taking pictures of fast moving objects is called “pre-focus”. Pre-focus is where you focus on a spot where the subject you are shooting is going to pass so that you are ready to take the shot when the subject appears. Many sports photographers use this at sports events with fast moving subjects, e.g. car or bike racing, etc.

Figure 1: I focused manually on the place where the boarder was passing and then asked him to pass through the same spot

Figure 2: For this shot I had to have the model stand in the shot first and then take adjust the focus using a tripod. After getting the focus right and putting the camera into manual focus mode the model was able to run and leap over the spot where had previously stood.

Coming up...
Next week we are going to look at:

Understanding ISO - knowing the point between the good, the bad and the ugly when choosing a the speed of the film/sensor
White Balance - Dealing with Colorcasts and knowing how to work the colorcast to your advatage.

Please feel free to leave comments or questions below or email them to me.

Photography for Non-Photographers: Part 1

2011-10-31T06:35:00.000-07:00

Understanding Your Camera
By Peter Emmett © 2012

Introduction
It seems that wherever I go nowadays I’m surrounded by cameras, whether it’s at work, shopping or traveling overseas. Amazingly people seem to be equipped with not just one, but multiple devices to take pictures, from phones to iPads to compact cameras to full digital single lens reflex (DSLR) cameras. As I’ve watched these people over the years, I have come to realize that many people seem to struggle with two things (1) they don’t really understand how their camera works so they leave it on automatic mode hoping for the best and (2) they’re not aware of some of the fundamentals of photography that make the difference between a bad or average photo and a good one.

I have previously written a short series of articles called “Using a compact camera creatively...A free online photography course” which focused on helping people create better photos using a handful of tips. The basic premise of that series was to help people move from being “point & shoot” users creating typical average photos to “point, think & shoot” and eventually “think, point, think & shoot” in order to create great & interesting photos.

The problem with ‘point & shoot’ without the ‘think’ is that it produces very average photos, which typically leave the viewer look for a good excuse to get busy doing something else. Armed with some basics, a novice photographer can easily start thinking on the fly to produce shots which engage people rather than turn them off.

This more extensive series aims to take this thinking to the next level and help you begin a life long journey of capturing moments that will last forever and enable you to express yourselves creatively through the photos you take. Most of the material from the previous series is included in this series with additional detail, however this series aims to help the user to “understand, think, point, think & shoot”

Getting to know your camera is the starting point of your journey towards
taking better photographs and moving away from taking snap shots

Digital cameras nowadays, no matter what you have, are extremely sophisticated and designed to allow you to take great shots. In fact, most cameras are so sophisticated that people read the first pages of the manual called “getting started” and get so overwhelmed that they end up putting their cameras in “auto” mode and leaving it there. This series aims to get you out of “auto” mode and enable you to become creative by answering your questions and allaying your fears about the technology you hold in your hands.

About this series...

Although this series is not supposed to be camera specific, I am limited to the cameras that I have on hand to demonstrate what I am trying to say. I will try and be as camera agnostic as possible, but you will see my bias towards Canon cameras come through as this is what I use.

Where something is camera type specific I will note it clearly at the beginning. For example when I discuss interchangeable lenses or external flash units I will let you know that this is not applicable to the majority of compact cameras.

This is not supposed to be another manual and it is definitely not supposed to overwhelm you. Throughout the series I will call out easy to remember key points that will make taking photographs a pleasure and showing the photographs an exciting journey. In the end, as you work through this series and put into practice what you learn, I guarantee that you’ll be taking the greatest shots of your life.

Overview of the Camera’s Basic Controls

1. Shutter release
This button actually has two functions (1) prepares the camera to record the picture and (2) records the picture. Everyone knows the second point – taking a photo. Surprisingly far fewer people seem to know it’s other function to prepare to take a photo, which is accessed by pressing the button half way down. (see next section)
2. Mode dial
The exact use of this button is different for each camera, but the basic use is always the same. It allows you to select how photos are captured and may include “scene” modes that are presets for certain types of photos, e.g. snow scene, night time scene, etc.

3. Built in flash
Both a curse and a blessing. The range and usability of these flashes is limited to a few meters and facing the same direction as the camera – which sounds obvious, but the only look that these flashes tend to produce are the “driving license” or “Prison inmate” type of look. When used with a bit of control though, these flashes can be used to enhance a photo – but still in a very limited way.

4. Hot shoe
All DSLR’s and now some compact cameras have the ability to attach an external flash to the camera which gives you a lot more versatility than just using the inbuilt flash. It’s important to buy a flash that is compatible with your camera; otherwise you’ll end up with just a pretty paperweight.

5. Menu button
This brings up the user menu on screen and gives you access to most of the camera’s functionality. Unfortunately most manufacturers have another button called the function button (see below), which has additional or repetitive functions. To improve your control over your camera it’s important to know where to find certain functions – which will be covered in this series.

6. Function button
This brings up the functions screen that allows you to quickly change settings for taking photos, e.g. switch flash on or off, change ISO or White Balance, select picture taking mode, etc. It can easily be confused with the Menu button (see above)

7. Flash button
Usually found on cameras with built in flash units that pop-up when taking pictures. This is needed when you want to override the camera and force the flash to pop up to use while taking a photo. On compact cameras the flash button gives you quick access to switch between flash on, flash off and flash auto mode.

8. LCD monitor
This is the nerve center between you and the digital camera where all operations are controlled and photos viewed before and after taking them

9. View finder
In DSLRs the viewfinder shows the photo you will take as seen through the lens and what will be included in the photo. With compact cameras this may not exist and if it does normally shows a view from one side or on top of the camera rather than exactly what the lens sees.

10. Memory card slot
Nearly all-digital cameras have removable memory cards that are used to record your photos on. You must buy memory cards compatible with your camera, e.g. Compact Flash, SD, SDHC, Sony Stick, etc.

11. Lens
This is the eye of the camera and is where light passes through and is focused onto the film or camera sensor. You will often hear that a camera is only as good as the lens that it has, which is generally true, but a great camera with a great lens in the hands of an average photographer will still only produce average photos, therefore my suggestion is to work on getting the most out of the camera you’ve got before you think about upgrading anything.

Buttons I don’t use

Each camera has some buttons which seem to waste space on a camera. Fortunately camera manufacturers do seem to learn from their mistakes and more often than not these buttons don’t make it onto the next versions of their cameras.

Depth of field preview button (DSLR only) - it’s supposed to allow you to see if everything is in focus. When film was used it made sense, but not with digital when you can preview the images on screen
Slideshow - allows you to have a slideshow on your camera, which is pretty pointless
Print - I always edit my images before printing and have never used this feature
Jump - found on my Canon EOS 30D to jump through multiple pictures at one time.

Coming up...

Next week we are going to look at:

Using the Shutter Button - What they didn’t tell you and why it will make such a immediate impact to your photographs
Autofocus systems - blazing fast focusing to help you get your shot - you just need to know how to use it

Please feel free to leave comments or questions below or email them to me.

A Practical Guide to Working with Guide Numbers

2010-11-20T19:16:00.000-08:00

Recently I've had a number of inquiries about the articles I wrote about Guide Numbers (in feet and in meters).

The embarrassing thing was that each time I had to re-read my own articles and work through the whole thing just to remind myself how it works. More embarrassingly was that I couldn't figure it out straight away and had to take quite a bit of time to work it all out again.

So after listening to my readers (and getting frustrated with myself) I decided that I would write this article to make it easier how to use guide numbers - and the truth be told so that I don't have to work so hard next time I am asked how it works!

I think that looking at the calculations by themselves is what makes it confusing. It's better to put yourself into the situation and ask yourself what would you be doing in a real situation? So let me try to explain using this approach.

Situation 1
A person has asked you to do a portrait of them sitting on a chair. You have a camera (Canon 5D MKII) and a flash (Canon 580EX II) with a remote trigger and a light stand (but you forgot to bring your umbrella and soft box!).

The person doesn't have much time, who does nowadays? so you need to quickly set things up and fire away. You already know a few things.

1) You would like to have enough depth of focus to have the whole head in focus, so will use your 24-105mm lens at somewhere between 50-90mm depending on how much of their body they want to include. To get the right depth of focus you will use roughly F/7.1.

2) The other thing you know is that, as you do not have an umbrella or soft box, to get softer lighting you will use a fairly wide flash zoom, maybe 24mm or 28mm (you may also like to try a 35mm flash zoom).

3) Because it's indoors and relatively close you know that you'll probably use a 1/8 or 1/16th power. What you need to know now is how far your lights need to be away from the subject.

So now you know that:
a) You're using F/7.1 on your lens.
b) You will try first with a 24mm zoom on your flash head
c) You will use between 1/8th and 1/16th power

So now you do some calculations based on the calculation (D=GN/F : Distance (Flash to Subject in feet) equals the Guide Number divided by the F-Stop)

You look up the guide number (G/N) for 24mm flash coverage (zoom) and 1/8 power which you find is 32.5. To follow the formula you need to divide this G/N by your lens aperture 7.1 which gives you 4.5 feet. If you were to use 1/16th power the GN is 23 and for the same 7.1 lens aperture would give you the distance of 3.2 feet.

Situation 2
You have a small room where you want to photograph a bunch of items you want to sell on e-Bay. The room is small so you are limited to where you can place your lights. After placing the light in the room on the side of the table you measure the distance from the flash head to the place where you will position the items and find that the distance is 2.6 feet. Now you can calculate what settings you need for your flash and/or the F-stop setting for your camera.

For this you will use the calculations:
a) F*D=G/N : F-Stop by Distance (Flash to Subject in feet) equals the Guide Number.
b) F=GN/D : F-Stop equals the Guide Number divided by Distance (Flash to Subject in feet).

You're going to be using around an 80mm lens and you would like a fair depth of focus for the whole product. As your camera is quite close to the items being photographed you will choose an aperture of F/11 for good clarity.

So now you know that:
a) You're using F/11 on your lens
b) Your distance from flash to subject is 2.6 feet

So to get the guide number you multiply the F-Stop (11) with the Distance (2.6) which gives you a guide number of 28.6. Now you look up on the table in the white numbers for the closest number to 28.6. The closest you can find with be the flash coverage of 70mm with the flash output at 1/32 power (G/N=28.9).

Alternately you could think about moving the lights closer to 2 feet which would give you a G/N of 22 (2 * 11) which would give you some options of 35mm @ 1/32 or 24mm @ 1/16.

Say you weren't concerned about the F-Stop number so much but you knew that you wanted to have fairly hard shadows so wanted to have a narrow flash coverage say 105mm and you decided you would use 1/8th power. Now you would have to calculate what F-Stop you would need to set on your lens.

So now you know that:
a) Your distance from flash to subject is 2.6 feet
b) Your G/N number is 67.3 (105 mm with 1/8th power)

Your camera F-Stop would therefore be 67.3 divided by 2.6, which would give you an F/Stop of F/25 (or F/22 which is the closest one).

You may then decide that you don't want to use such a high f-stop, but you still want to use 105mm flash zoom. Your only option is to use a lower flash output, maybe 1/32. The G/N number for those settings is now 33.8. So now your F-stop would be 33.8 (G/N) divided by 2.6 (Distance) which would be 13 (or F/11).

Obviously these things are averages and you will need to make minor adjustments to get the exposure right. Remember that these settings are good for finding a good starting point, which you can then adjustment from.

The last table I created helps you to change the guide number based on if you use a light modifier or you change the ISO settings.

If you were to add a shoot through umbrella you will need to multiply the G/N by 0.5 before you use it in the calculations.

In the previous example above the G/N for 105mm flash coverage at 1/8 power with a shoot through umbrella becomes 67.3 multiplied by 0.5 which equals 33.65.

So now your F-stop would be 33.65 (G/N) divided by 2.6 (Distance) which would be 12.9 (or F/11).

Well that wraps up this post. I hope that the examples above help to make more sense of how to use guide numbers.

Please feel free to leave comments or questions below or email them to me.

Tricycles, Food and Street Scenes

2010-10-26T15:37:00.000-07:00

I have decided in the short time I have been here in Shanghai that I will start a few personal projects for myself. I've read that having personal projects can be good for the photographers soul as it keeps your eyes open and helps bring your senses alive (or in my case bring them back to life!).

The personal projects I have decided to take up are:

Tricycles
These seem to be the main form of transportation for everything from live animals to rubbish to people and, from what I've seen so far, are not subject to any weight, height or width restrictions.

Now I know that many of you are thinking that this has all done before, but being unique is not always the point of personal projects. I chose this because having such old (and somewhat dangerous) modes of transport contrasts so sharply with such a modern and clean city as Shanghai. It provides an excellent juxtaposition, reminding me that Shanghai was built by the sweat and tears of such amazing people.

Food
When your rated an XXL or above, as I am, food is always somewhere in the list of New Year's resolutions. Living in China makes including food into a personal project an obvious, almost a compulsory, choice. Food here is a way of life, and there are are very few places I have visited where almost everything, and any part, is used for cooking.

For the most part the dishes here in China are quite simply amazing, and depending on the recipient, the amazing could be either positive or negative. From Pig's ears to chicken heads to terrapin soup to starfish to duck's tongue to cow's intestines, everything is widely available and cooked in a variety of ways.

I have a strange feeling that this may be one of my most photographed personal projects :-)

Street Scenes
Since moving here three months ago I have walked around town more than in the whole 6 years I was in the Philippines. This is mostly due to the colder weather and the infrastructure which supports walking around on the street without risking your life (except for crossing the road here, which is worth a whole story by itself!).

There is so much going on in the streets and on nearly every road ventured you will bump into something or something that gets you reaching for your camera. The reason for this project are similar to the tricycle project, i.e. people and contrasts.

People also seem to like being photographed and are often willing to pose in a position while you press the button. Sometimes you are asked to send them the photograph and I've been happy to do so, whenever practical.

And of course Family - this is more a personal addiction rather than a project. I love taking photos of my family and so far they have not threatened to throw the cameras out of the window – although I think that's it may have been close on a few occasions!

and finally, if I can fit it in, I'd like to do some Strobist photography at the graffiti walls in Moganshan Road. There is something very addictive about Graffiti and Strobist Photography, putting them together seems to be a lethal combination for overkill or excellent images – only time will tell which path I take.

If you know of anywhere in Shanghai (or other places in China) that you think are great places to capture images please let me know, either in the comments below or my emailing me.

For now, stay well, keep shooting and keep dancing as if no one is watching.

Shanghai Day Out - Moganshan Road

2010-10-22T09:46:00.000-07:00

We were looking to spend a relaxing day out together in Shanghai as a family and I had read and heard a lot about Moganshan Road (map) as somewhere to go and see art and especially graffiti . I hadn't expected much as we'd previously walked around the French Concession area in Shanghai looking for art galleries and only found one or two.

As this was a new part of town, we went there by car and got dropped off at one end of the road then slowly walked up the street. My initial impression was not so good, I had flash backs of traipsing around trying to find one or two galleries. The first one or two we saw were disappointing and we thought that lunch would come very early for us.

After the initial 2 galleries we suddenly came across a large open complex of what seemed to have previously been dock yards or old warehouses along the river which were full of different galleries. The address is 50 Moganshan Road, and I thoroughly recommend it as a place to go and visit. I don't know how many there were, but I estimated more than 50 different galleries of different sizes were located in that one complex.

The first gallery on the corner of the complex was called Yu Nancheng (Fish) Studio, and they have some amazing oil paintings of various scenes. The photos do not do the painting justice for their size (around 1.5 – 2 m) or their texture.

The texture of the main characters is layered oil paints to create an amazing 3D effect and they are truly beautiful to look at.

The simplicity of the red and black, with background figures done in black on black, create a very refined and strong image.

Unfortunately they are not cheap, around USD 7,500 to USD 15,000, so I could only afford to look, but are definitely worth the money if you can afford.

We looked in many of the galleries, but were not allowed to take many photos. The galleries go from small art shops to medium size art galleries which sell paintings to exhibition halls which have a range of various styles from weird to interesting.

A lot of the galleries seem to have similar style of paintings. One style that is particularly hip at the moment is the modern pop-art of Chinese faces with very large mouths smiling.

(image from http://archive.liveauctioneers.com)

Inside the complex there are a few cafes to sit and relax, all of which are arty and make you feel like sitting round and contemplate the meaning of life :-) We found a good cafe in the middle of the complex which had a wonderful rustic interior with great food and coffee, which made you feel like curling up by the fire place and reading a good book. I can't remember the name of the cafe, but look for the toilets towards the back of the complex in the middle and you'll find it.

After looking about for a while we headed out of the complex and saw the graffiti walls further down the road. I was not disappointed. There is about 200-300m of a wall completely covered in graffiti of all sorts.

We were lucky to be able to see someone, tag name “dezione”, actually creating a painting Many people stopped to watch him in action and at various times I thought a road accident was going to happen as cars also just stopped in the middle of the road to watch.

In the end I asked my family to pose at different places and vowed to myself to come back, with more equipment and try some really cool shots.

If you love art, you will love Moganshan Road.

What's wrong with this image?

2010-10-22T08:14:00.000-07:00

We recently took a trip to the Shanghai Centre to try and fin a farmers market which seems to be a figment of someone's imagination as we couldn't find the market. However as we walked around the area we found an interesting monument/sculpture just around the corner at Henglong Square, 1274 Nanjing Road West, Shanghai, 200040 (map).

I initially just walked straight passed it, as it seemed to be a work in progress. But then I looked more carefully and was stunned by what I saw.

I decided that:

it was a very clever sculpture that portrayed some deep meaning about man's progress through the industrial age, or
someone had accidentally welded the structure and forgot to take their ladder away and it had got stuck, or
it was a very clever way of securing the ladder to the structure so that no one would run a way with it and the owner didn't have to take it home at night.

In the end I decided to believe that it was number 2, but deep down really wanted it to be number 1. Either way, it brought a smile to my face, and made me smile for a long time.

Hello from Shanghai

2010-09-19T07:48:00.000-07:00

Ask no questions and I'll tell no lies. I'm posting from Shanghai so all is not lost?

Just wanted to share some desktop backgrounds that I created over the weekend. The family went for a walk around town and I finally took my camera with me - gosh it felt good :-)

I spotted this window in one of the shopping malls, and fell in love with the colours of the bottles. I took a few photos but the reflections from the black marble ruined the effect I was looking for.

I tried to edit the black marble to get a better effect, but it didn't really come out like wanted, as it looked too fake.

I then came up with the idea of removing the black all together and making the bottles stand out on a white background. I ended taking one row of the bottles to work with, although no row was perfect as each row seemed to have something wrong with it, e.g. bottle not full, strange reflections, etc.

I took the best bottles from each row for the few bad ones, blew out the white background and removed some of the white reflections. I copied the layer and reversed it to give the reflection using a gradated mask. Then it was just a simple copy and paste to get the multiple rows.

Finally I made a copy with no brand name, which also looks kind of cool.

It makes a great background for a desktop wallpaper. If you'd like to copy send me an email to: emmett.photography@gmail.com and let me know your screen size I'll send you an original copy.

They have a display on the inside of the mall and I'm going to go back with my tripod and see if I can get a better shot that way with minimal reflections.

Have fun and keep tuned - I'm back and having fun in Shanghai!

Last Post Here For A While

2010-08-09T16:22:00.000-07:00

I have recently moved to the wonderful city of Shanghai in China and am looking forward to spending a lot more time capturing another set of moments that will last forever.

Unfortunately I am unable to connect to blogger to update this blog - not that I did it regularly any way :-) So if you are interested in seeing more of my stuff come over to my website http://www.emmett-photography.com/ where you can catch my latest images and where, hopefully, I will also be able to post my stories.

Thanks for stopping by.

A little taste of my new life:

Most common form of cheap goods transportation in town

Cooking in the street

A typical old apartment block with washing hanging out the side

Jin Mao Tower and the Shanghai Financial Center

Wonderful lighting effects on the top of the Shanghai Financial Center

The day I committed Facebook Suicide...

2010-03-05T18:57:00.000-08:00

It is done. After 1 year and of gathering 181 friends I finally committed Facebook suicide and deactivated my account. The air seems to a bit fresher today, the sun a little brighter and I'm looking forward to spending more time with real people in the real world. I may even do some photography again, read a book or just chill...

The Day I Gained My Life Back

2010-01-16T04:33:00.000-08:00

No, this is not some inspirational post about some earth shattering experiences that I had recently - I normally keep those to myself. This is about me getting my life back with my wonderful, beautiful wife and my two amazing daughters.
This brief post is about when I woke up on Boxing day which is what the English call the 26th December - not sure why they call it that but it's probably what most English familes do after being given two sets of crappy woolen cardigans with a snowman printed on the back.

Just for fun on Christmas night we had the children sleep over in our bedroom, "camping" on the floor on their mattresses. I woke up early surrounded by my family laying next to my beautiful wife and the very first thought that popped into my head was..."Shit, I haven't harvested my coffee crop!". I quickly got out of bed, creful not to wake anyone, crept over to the computer, switched it on, anxiously navigated to Facebook's Farmville and breathed a sigh of relief to find out that my coffee crops hadn't died after all. After quickly harvesting my coffee crops I started to plan what crops I would plant next so I could get closer to my goal of building my dream farm.

I should have known there was a problem with my real social life as my youngest child's favorite saying to me was "why do you have to spend so much time on the computer" or when I switched it on she would raise her voice saying "No, not again!". My eldest daughter would beg me to let her harvest the crops and occasionally I would grant her this favour, only when I was too busy playing poker and my crops were on the verge of death. My wife would often lay in bed waiting for me to cuddle up next to her, but by the time I had planted my crops and played a poker tournament she had fallen a sleep - and my first thought was always "not again - how lazy!".

Like many addictions, they creep up on you slowly. They are never in your face, obvious or loud. They are never offensive - to you. They make you feel good. They stroke your ego. They say "don't worry I'll be there when you come back" or "you're the man, come back soon, I miss you already". Over the 6 months I now realize that I had slowly become a social networking game addict, I would post silly little sayings to try and get friends to be "my neighbour". I would send cows or cherry trees as gifts to "friends" hoping they would do the same! In the end I looked forward to Christmas because I got to open my presents - the ones under my Farmville christmas tree!! Something was wrong.

After I harvested my coffee crop and planned my next crop planting session I stood up to go to the bathroom and saw my wonderful family all sleeping there and it hit me "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING! YOU'RE WASTING TIME! YOU'RE DAUGHTERS ARE GOING TO GROW UP AND YOU WILL HAVE MISSED IT!" Sounds very dramatic, but it really hit me hard and I realized that I had to do something about it.

Whilst in the bathroom I decided that if I didn't give up this ridiculous false life I may end up losing the real one around me. So I walked back to the computer and deleted all the games that I had subscribed to, Farmville, Cafe World, Power, Fishville, Roller Coaster, etc. I hestitated slightly before saying goodbye to my 30 cows that had faithfully given me milk, my 2 horses, 10 sheeps, 4 pigs, 2 geese, 2 turtles, 3 reindeer, my 65 trees of various kinds, my pond, bird bath, picnic table, my house, my 2 barns, haystacks, my tractor, harvester, sower and my 20 x 20 plot of land that had be so faithful in producing bumper crop after bumper crop. I said farewell to my 15 neighbours that I had cajouled into living next to me, knowing that they would never come over to visit and fertilize my crops again.

After deleting the games and profiles, I felt free, I had more time to spend with my family. My wife and I regularly cuddle in bed now watching a movie or reading a book. I go ice skating with my kids , play games and draw pictures. Life has returned to normal again. I've started taking photographs and reacquainting myself with my hobby I had started to neglect.

I have not given up my face book account yet. I do have a lot of friends that I do care about who I have been able to keep in touch with - but I am in the process of getting their email addresses so I can go back to normal way of communicating - writing, calling or even better going to visit them in person and having a good laugh together.

I am not against these so called social networking sites - but I would recommend a reality check on how much time you spend on them vs. how much time you spend with real people in your spare or free time. If you have a family, take a reality check and ask them if THEY think you spend too much time online - without being offended when they tell the truth.

Regain your life - it really is so much more interesting and rewarding.

OT: Flooding Caused by Typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana)

2009-09-27T01:39:00.000-07:00

I know this is off topic but it's the first time I've taken my camera out to take photos during a typhoon and I wanted to share the photos with you.

We were caught in a flood yesterday here in Manila. Apparently it was the largest single amount of rain in a 24 hour period recorded. A whopping 455mm fell and many part of manila were flooded.

You can find more news about the flood at Google News

Typhoon Ondoy seems to have caught a lot of people off guard. We were actually supposed to go and see someone in an area worst hit by the floods. Fortunately we called ahead and they told us not to come over.

I had my camera with me (as usual!) so instead of going home I decided to drive around and see what was going on.

1. Two guys get of a jeepney trying to get to work

2. The rain has just begun but the water quickly starts to rise on McKinnley Street near EDSA, Makati.

3. Visibility decreases and cars start to struggle on EDSA, Makati,

4. Water surges down the ramp on the 4th floor of the car park in Park Square One, Makati.

5. Trying to keep water outside of Glorietta Mall, Makati. Where the car is driving is normally a walkway.

6. Outside Glorietta Mall, Makati.

7. Water gushes from the drains outside Park Square One, Makati.

8. Man crossing Pasay Road outside Park Square One, Makati

It stopped raining for a while but it's starting again so the problems are going to continue for a while :-(

It's not the size that matters...Using a compact camera creatively

2009-06-18T05:26:00.000-07:00

Learning to love your on camera flash...

One of the main frustrations I have with compact cameras is the on camera flash as it always seems to over power the object in the image, especially on images with a dark background.

Although compact camera blurb generally talks about how great the camera is when working out the perfect exposure for any particular image, it would seem that cameras struggle when flash is involved.

Most compact cameras allow you to alter the exposure of the image and also the exposure of the flash. However they do not make it easy - in fact some of them make it so hard that you would think that manufactures are trying to discourage people from using these features!

As an example of poor automatic flash control, I recently took this picture of my colleague on automatic mode in a restaurant.

Although I had put the flash into Slow sync mode to capture the ambient background lighting, the two white saucers reflected light to the camera causing the main object, my friend, to become underexposed.

The camera was tricked into believing that the whole image was exposed correctly because of the white objects reflecting the light back to the camera. To fix this the easiest thing to do is to remove the white objects or change the camera angle so that the objects are not in the image anymore.

Although the exposure was greatly improved I still felt that my friend was too bright. so I decided to reduce the flash exposure/output by -1 stop (half the amount of light). I then ended up with this image.

The resulting image is that the main object is more balanced with the background.

Although compact cameras don't make it easy to change the flash settings it isn't impossible and with a bit of practice it can be done quite easily. Each camera has different ways of controlling the flash and how much you can control it.

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W170 below only allows the user to increase or decrease the flash output. I'm not sure how much the flash is increased or decreased, but it's better than nothing. It also takes about 6-7 button presses to get to this menu.

The Canon G10 below on the other hand allows much better control of the flash by allowing you to adjust the power by 1/3 stops to a minimum of -2 stops and a maximum of +2 stops. It takes 3 button presses to change the flash output.

The main point of this article is to take control of your point and shoot camera as much as you can with the aim of taking better shots.

I thought about adding this section into my free online course - Using a compact camera creatively...A free online photography course, but decided that I will add in small "additions" like this separately in order to not make the lessons too long.

I've included the last section here just in case you'd like to give it a go and get some feedback about your images using controlled flash.

Get your hands dirty

1. Take a few photos of a person one with the flash set to normal, one with the flash set to output more light and one with the flash set to output less light. See how the main object is affected
2. Take two shots of the same image with the flash set to automatic, one with the object on a black background and one on a white background. See if the background affects the flash of the main object
3. To see the difference in how light is affected by distance from the main object, take three photos of the same person at night time with the flash set to slow synch. Take the first image with the person 1 meter (3ft) away, the second one 2 meters (6 feet) away and the last one 3 meters (9 ft) away. You can choose to change the angle of the lens or keep it the same.

Send the images to emmett.photography@gmail.com with a subject title "control the flash" and a brief description about each image and let me know if and what difficulties you encountered. Give me a few days to get back to you with my feedback.

It's not the size that matters...Using a compact camera creatively - Part 5

2009-04-18T22:37:00.000-07:00

A free online photography course for people wanting to improve their photos
(or "how to keep you friends and family from falling asleep when showing them your holiday photos!")

The second part of the course covered the various techniques that you can use to create lively, dynamic and most importantly interesting compositions.

In the third part of this course we discussed using light more effectively to enhance photos, fake sunsets and techniques for taking low light photos with no flash or tripod.

In the fourth part of this course we discussed using the limited flash with more thought and creativity to create photos with added depth and interest and to move away from using the flash in automatic mode.

Just a quick recap:

the main aim of this course is to highlight that you don't need a 'BIG' camera to take good photos
the main reason I'm doing this due to the frequency I hear people blame their equipment for the bad photos they took - from experience, though, bad photos are dues to being taken quickly with very little thought and almost no adherence to any excepted standard guidelines for taking good photos.
lastly my goal for everyone who participates in this course is that their families and friends which start to accept their invitations again to look at their holiday photos :-)

It seems that the name “Point and Shoot” reveals the problem behind the mentality of using this kind of camera. The name really should be “Look, Point, Think & Shoot”. This online course aims to help become people who look for and see images and then, before actually taking the picture, think about a few guidelines that they could apply to increase the quality of the image.

I have found that if we take a bit of time and put some thought into taking a shot, it is possible to get some really good shots from these “cheaper” cameras. This is what this free online photography course is all about - learning a few basic guidelines and hints and tips for people who want to take better pictures with their existing camera.

My aim for everyone is to take the tips and learnings over this series of articles and go out and shoot better images which people will proudly hang on their walls - physical or virtual :-)

At the end of each section there is a "go out and get your hands dirty" assignment. As part of this assignment you can email me your images and I'll give you feedback to help you improve. All of this is FREE, no strings attached and I won't sell your email address to anyone - that's a promise.

The topics covered in this free online photography course are:

Guidelines for taking better shots

Focus -Part 1
Composition - partially Part 1 and Part 2
Light - Part 3
Flash - Part 4

Ideas for creating better memories

Perspective - Part 5
Colours - Part 5
Patterns - Part 5
Abstract - Part 5
Tell a story - Part 5
Capture a flavour - Part 5
Does it ask a question? - Part 5
Fun shots - Part 5
Capture Reminders - Part 5

This lesson will focus on trying to get you to think about using the camera to create more interest photos as well as photos that you can tell a story with.

Ideas for creating better memories

One of the reasons family often tremble at the thought of get-togethers to see the holiday photos is because it’s a visual barrage of mediocre images which seem to have been haphazardly taken and put into a randomizer to be spit out in any old order.

For me the true test of success when you review your photos should be related to how many times you mutter that sentences: (1) “Why on earth did I take that?” (2) “What the #%$^$ is that?” and (3)”Huh?”

OK I admit the last one is probably not a sentence, but it’s still a comment often heard when looking at photos.

The ideas below are there to stimulate you into thinking about the photo you are taking and to try and make it more natural to ask a few questions BEFORE you press the shutter button. THINK before you CLICK

Perspective

One of the easiest ways to get people interested in your photos is to change the perspective of the subject in the photo.

The image below is the standard “yawn” image that you often see of a flower or plants. This is usually taken with minimal effort from the photographer who at the most may have to bend slightly to get into position.

Image 1: The ‘yawn” view

The next three images change the angle of view and therefore the perspective of the flower in increasing degrees in relation to the view.

This angled view creates a more interesting image by allowing the view to ‘feel’ the texture of the flower. It’s also a less seen angle that the image above and therefore will be more interesting to view. The photographer probably had to bend down slightly further to take the photo but by much.

Image 2: A better perspective to view texture

The next image was taken in a field in the UK and was particularly interesting, but then I stopped and took some time to look at the detail of the wheat and realized that the blue sky made a good background for the wheat.

This was taken kneeling down and the interest some from the detail in the wheat kernels and the contrast with the blue sky. Added to that, the fact that very few people take the time to get down that low in fields, means that the perspective of the image is engaging to the viewer.

Image 3: Kneeling should become an automatic thought with a camera in your hand.

The final image was taken in my parents garden on a summer’s day and I took a number of ‘yawn’ flower images when I had the idea of taking a photo from the bottom of a flower looking up to the sun – kind of what a worm of lady bug might see.

To ensure that the flower didn’t go too dark because of the sun, I stopped down the exposure and turn of the flash to fill in the flower, giving me the rich blue sky and yellow flower.

I took this picture lying on my back in the garden. It’s not everyone’s idea of fun, but it creates a great perspective which very few people actually get to see (oh yeah, and dirt normally washes off clothes pretty good as well – so no excuses!)

Image 4: Lie down look up – what do you see?

Colours

Photos don’t have to always be saturated with colours. If they were they would start to become offensive to the viewers senses.

That said many photos taken on holiday suffer the opposite problem of being “sensory-less”, with bland colours and very little saturation (probably most of them are taken at midday in the bright sun!).

I always look for colourful things to photograph and also look for overcast skies or covered areas to ensure that the saturated colours really jump out at me.

My daughters have a tendency to dress in very colourful (bright) clothes – which make them easy to spot in crowds. This also makes it easy to create colour sensory overload images when we come across colourful backgrounds!

Image 5: Colour Colour everywhere

One thing about nature is that they, more often than not, have wonderful complimentary colour schemes. The flower below is the same one as the flower above, but this time I focussed on the red and yellow colour schemes and made the image interesting by changing the perspective.

Image 6: Nature’s glory

Lastly I also keep an eye out for colour contrast of colour and grey’s. The contrast makes sure that these always stand out when being viewed.

Image 7: Colour contrast works

Patterns

I also recommend that you keep a look out for patterns around you – they are everywhere and if you put a number of different photos of patterns together they can create a striking impact on viewers.

I saw these oranges in the market and didn’t immediately think about taking a picture as I was busy thinking about what I needed to buy. However, after I had purchased some I then relaxed a it and the pattern jumped out at me.

The strong lines and shaped just keep me staring at it. To create an even more interesting image you could think about changing one of the oranges with an apple or lemon.

Image 8: Patterns can be found everywhere

Abstract

Another technique to use when taking holiday photos is to get in close and take pictures of things which may not be obvious what they are straight away to the viewer. Let them ask the question “What’s that?” (which is definitely different to “Huh”?)

Abstract images taken with compact cameras need to be aesthetically pleasing to work well. Bigger cameras have more control over the depth of focus which can add in another dimension to abstract images, but you will have limited control with compacts.

This image was taken of an old steam engine at a country fare in the UK and it stood out to me for several reasons, (1) the repetitive pattern of the spokes, (2) the colour and (3) the middle of the wheel wasn’t round and create tension with the rest of the image.

Image 9: Pattern, Colour and Tension – good ingredients for interesting images

The next image was a fun one for me due to the name of the pudding “Spotted Dick”. As the name has a double meaning having pots of “Spotted Dick” in an image without any other context will definitely create a lot of interest from viewers.

Just to take the non-UK resident readers out of their misery – Spotted Dick is a very traditional English sponge pudding with raisins inside. You can find out more about this pudding at projectbritain.com

Image 10: Spotted what? Make sure grandma is present when showing these images :-)

This last image was taken in Leiden, The Netherlands. These round plaques were all over the place and I didn’t know what they were for, but the contrast of the round plaque with the straight diagonal lines on the street bricks, I felt, made for an interesting combination.

My brother later explained to me that the plaques in the street are for tourists to allow them to follow the tourist walking routes that Leiden have in abundance.

Image 11: Contrasting shapes create interesting abstract images

Tell a story

Many times when people are travelling they will see an interesting place and take one picture and then quickly move on. Later when looking back at the images they get to this one image and one of two things happen:

They forget what is was that was so interesting, because they didn’t spend that much time there, or
They remember what the place was and tell a whole story about the place with the one image.

I strongly recommend that if you find a place interesting that you take a number (not too many) of images that can help remind you about the place and also help tell the story about the place.

The next set of three images tries to tell a story about a little street in Windsor, England (one of the places that the Queen of England lives). The street is the shortest street in Britain, which I thought was quite interesting – but then that’s just me :-)

The first image is not particularly brilliant, but I tried to capture a number of things, (1) The whole street (the main subject), (2) The name of the street (information about the street) & (3) The sign on the right which reads “The crooked house of Windsor (to get people asking questions).

I also tried to compose using the rule of thirds and leading lines which makes a pretty boring image somewhat less boring – if that is possible!

Image 12:The whole length of Queen Charlotte street

The second image captured the fact that makes the first image more interesting, i.e. that it is the shortest street in Britain. Again it’s not a brilliant picture by itself, but adds to the story as a whole

Image 13: The fact recorded about the street

The last image answers the question from the first photo. It reveals what is the crooked house (a pub) and why is it called the crooked house (because it’s crooked).

I had to stand in the middle of a street to take this photo and as cars were coming and going I didn’t have a lot of time to shoot (please do not do this by yourself and have someone who is very responsible looking out for traffic – I had my wife look out for me). Before walking out into the street I decided I wanted a picture of the whole house to show it is crooked, so by the time I got out into the street I was able to focus and shoot. This means I had done my thinking before doing the “point and shoot” routine.

Image 14: The last picture for the story that answers the questions form the first image.

The three images by themselves are not master pieces, but put them together as a set of three and they become much more interesting.

Capture a flavour

Trying to capture a flavour is similar to capturing a story, but the aim is not to just be factual (the “what”) but rather to try and be able to capture the essence of the place and how it was interesting to you (the “Why”)

In the next series of shots I tried to capture the essence of the Saturday Morning market in the city of Leiden, in the Netherlands. There are a numbers of reasons why my wife and I love this place (1) the location, (2) the variety and (3) the colours. So when we visited last year I wanted to capture these three ingredients.

Wide Shot

My first goal was to capture the location of the market – which is a long some of Leiden’s canals. We got there a bit early so not all the stalls were set up, but the morning light was great.
I took the first image for a few reasons:

to capture the market stalls being set up to show the time of day with nice warm light
to show the market being next to the canals and capture the beautiful reflections of the buildings in the water
to capture some of the surrounding building architecture to reveal some of the historical nature of the town.

Image 15: The wide shot captures part of the flavour of the market

The next set of four images captures the different colours and variety of foods which are being sold in the market.

Image 16: The fruit and vegetable stall

Image 17: The flower stall

Image 18: The cheese stall

Image 19: The fish stall

If we had more time I would have taken some more detailed shots of the stalls and maybe also a few fact shots, e.g. name of streets, name of shops, etc. However we needed to rush off and catch a plane back home to the Philippines. That said I still feel that the "Flavour" of the Market was captured well.

Does it ask a question?

I like people to stay awake when looking at my photos rather than nodding off or coming up with lousy excuses about why they have to leave to go home after spending five minutes of looking at the pictures.

One of the more fun ways to get people interested in your photos is to include the odd photo which makes the viewer turn round and ask a question about it something like "what the ....?". To do this you need to look out for images that will get people asking questions, which are things which are not normally staring at you in the face.

I often find these kind of items are either found by looking up, down, under, around or upside down - basically things that you wouldn't necessarily see in your day-to-day life.

The images themselves still need to be sound photos - do not think that "point and shoot" will work here, or in fact at any time at all. All the guidelines that I have covered in these articles still apply, the only difference being that you probably need to spend more time looking for them.

The first image here stood out for me the first time that I saw it as it was such an unusual image. It is acutally the underneath of a Stingray taken in an aquarium and it was the first time I had ever seen the underneath of one. I had only previously seen them in the wild.

I watched the stingray swim around for a while and was intrigued by it's face and it looks like a very happy person with bucked teeth. After watching it for a while I saw that it was heading towards me so I pressed the camera up against the glass to avoid camera shake and pressed the shutter just as it went by.

Image 20: The underneath of a Stingray

The next image is borderline due to the lack of size comparison. This was taken on a canal trip in Leiden and shows the largest sundial in Europe. The sundial is actually located on the side of a multistory building and is really big - which is what this photo lacks - a size of proportion. With the limited time I had to take this image, I still like it and it still gets people asking "what the....."

Image 21: Europe's largest sundial

The last image here is one of my favourite, because it looks like a professional product shot and often the question changes to "How the.....?". This was taken in a museum with the camera pressed against the glass to avoid camera shake.

Museums and shops often have very good lighting setups, as they are done by professionals - however most of these places are also normally too dark to use without having to steady the camera. If you can look for these opportunities (without breaking any laws) you can take some very professional looking photos.

Image 22: Chinese tea pots - professionally lit, shot with a compact camera

The following shot was taken by a canal of a multi-person water bike, and I liked the contrast between the manual contraption and the modern day car behind it. This would definitely get everyone asking questions!

Image 23: Contrasting transportation vehicles

The following shot was taken outside of Leiden train station and I was overwhelmed by how many bikes I was looking at and to see that they were parked on multistory park levels! I think that anyone outside of Holland would be asking "What the....?"

Image 24: Multistory bike parking

The last image here was taken of my wife's feet, who had just purchased a pair of toe-less socks. Getting in close to her feet and removing any other reference definitely invites the viewer to ask what they are looking at. Had I taken a few steps back the focus on the feet would have been lost.

Image 25: toe-less socks - what next?

Fun shots

Nothing too scientific with this thought. always remember to look for fun opportunities to take some images and please don't take yourself too seriously - life it far too short for that.

I took the first shot whilst waiting for a train at the station. My family were sitting together and it immediately reminded of the say "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil". It took a little bit of convincing of y family to participate but I really like the finished image :-)

Image 26: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil

The next image is of me when we visited my uncle in th UK. His garden was full of these sticky ball things and my youngest daughter put one in my beard for fun, they loved it and put a few more on and my wife quickly took a picture.

Image 27: Me - needing a shave badly :-)

The last image was taken by my mum, who saw my youngest daughter taking a picture of me with a camera nearly as big as her! Not a technically perfect shot but filled with fun.

Image 28: Smile you're on camera

Capture Reminders

A lastly - don't forget that you can use you camera for taking pictures of information you want to remember. The image below is of a sign near my uncles house which had a bed & breakfast place that my wife and I said we would like to stay in the next time we visited. No-one had a pen and paper to take down the details so we took a picture of it instead.

Image 29: a camera is as good as pen and paper sometimes :-)

Get your hands dirty

As this is the last part of this online course I'm not going to give you any specific tasks. I only urge you to go out and practice Thinking, Pointing, and Shooting to capture some of the topics covered above.

Send the images to emmett.photography@gmail.com with a subject title "Creating Better Memories" and a brief description about each image and let me know if and what difficulties you encountered. Give me a few days to get back to you with my feedback.

I have had lots of fun putting this course together and I hope that your friends will have more fun reviewing your next lot of holiday photos. Good Luck :-)

First Video with Canon 5D Mark II

2009-04-13T08:28:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to post the first video I took with my new Canon 5D Mark II. The low light handling and Hi-Def quality are amazing.

You can see the full Hi-Def versions here

It's not the size that matters...Using a compact camera creatively - Part 4: Flash

2009-04-12T20:51:00.000-07:00

A free online photography course for people wanting to improve their photos
(or "how to keep you friends and family from falling asleep when showing them your holiday photos!")

The second part of the course covered the various techniques that you can use to create lively, dynamic and most importantly interesting compositions.

In the third part of this course we discussed using light more effectively to enhance photos, fake sunsets and techniques for taking low light photos with no flash or tripod.

Just a quick recap:

the main aim of this course is to highlight that you don't need a 'BIG' camera to take good photos
the main reason I'm doing this due to the frequency I hear people blame their equipment for the bad photos they took - from experience, though, bad photos are dues to being taken quickly with very little thought and almost no adherence to any excepted standard guidelines for taking good photos.
lastly my goal for everyone who participates in this course is that their families and friends which start to accept their invitations again to look at their holiday photos :-)

Focus -Part 1
Composition - partially Part 1 and Part 2
Light - Part 3
Flash - Part 4

Ideas for creating better memories

Perspective - Part 5
Colours - Part 5
Patterns - Part 5
Abstract - Part 5
Tell a story - Part 5
Capture a flavour - Part 5
Does it ask a question? - Part 5
Fun shots - Part 5
Capture Reminders - Part 5

This lesson will focus on using flash effectively:

Using Fill-in Flash
Cross lighting with compact!

Guidelines for taking better shots

Using Flash Effectively

This section will not cover using external flashes as most point and shoots do not have this capability. Good Sources of external flash information are:

Off camera flash: Strobist - http://strobist.blogspot.com/
On Camera flash: Planet Neil - http://www.planetneil.com/tangents/

If there was one universal truth about compact cameras, it’s that their owners take notoriously bad flash photos. People in photos taken with flash are often too bright, making the subjects in the photo look sickly white and as if they have just suffered a severe electric shot.

Other problems that occur when using flash on compact are that pictures of people look very flat and boring and often people have the typical red eye effect. In fact this happens so often that almost all major photo editing software have a special feature to remove red-eye!

Why are flash photos normally so bad? Is there anything that we can do to avoid some of the normal pitfalls?

I believe that there is something that we can do to improve our photos which use flash and that the above problems and caused by three main reasons:

1. Point & Shoot thinking

Have you ever why photos in the instruction manuals, which come with the camera, have great looking photos which have been taken with the flash? Most of the photos I have been shown with a compact camera using a flash never look like the photos in the manuals! The underlying reason behind this is because the people creating the manuals thought about the picture that they were about to take and did not randomly point the camera in a direction with the flash set to automatic.

The whole idea behind this series of lessons is that most compact camera users use their cameras in “Point and Shoot” mode – i.e. without thinking. As I have stressed throughout the lessons here, pointing and shooting with these cameras is the root cause of nearly every single bad photo.

Using a flash on a compact camera in this mindless “point and shoot” mode, exacerbates the problem of bad photography. Not only is the photographer taking a picture without thinking, but using a flash without thinking only compounds the number of things that can go wrong.

2. Small flash on camera

Technically the three reasons why these problems occur are (1) placement of the flash, (2) small size of the flash, (3) lack of output power of the flash.

The placement of the flash is very close to the lens of the camera, which is the main cause of flat images and contributes to the problem of red-eye. Having the main light source of a photo from a position very close to the lens causes the image to look flat due to a lack of shadows in the picture. Shadows create form and shape, without them images with look flat.

Red-eye is caused by the light bouncing off the back of the eyeball and shining back into the camera. Flashes are normally used when the surrounding light is darker than normal. The darker conditions causes the retina of the eye to get wider which allows more light to bounce back into the lens.

The best way to avoid this for bigger cameras is to move the flash away from the lens so that the angle of the flash doesn’t cause the light to bounce back from the back of the eye to the lens.

With compact cameras moving the flash of camera isn’t possible as the flash is built into the body of the camera. So the other method to reduce red-eye to shine a bright light into the eye causing the retina narrow before taking the picture. This is exactly what cameras do when you use red-eye reduction method – using a torch light also works (but is as equally annoying to the subject).

The small size of the flash means that the light is very hard which causes harsh shadows. This is one of the few things which we can’t change about the flash. There are products out there which can help diffuse the light but these reduce the power of the flash which effects the last issue - being the lack of output power.

3. Lack of balancing flash with ambient

This problem relates to the two item mentioned above. Most compact camera users don’t think about the shot and have the flash set to automatic mode which is far from perfect.

Because the flash is small and lacks power using it as the main source of light will always make the background of the photo dark and as a consequence also makes the subject look too bright.

Using the flash as the main light source also means that the light will be hard and flat which makes for boring (read “bad”) images

Balancing flash with ambient light gives you two advantages (1) it gives you two light sources to work with to create depth and life and (2) it creates a much more balanced and pleasant image to look at.

The one camera accessory that you will need to balance the flash with ambient light is a tripod (but not always).

The main point of these lessons is to take control of your camera and make it work for you rather that letting it control everything. This is the same for the flash. By taking control of the flash and learning how manually make adjustments to the flash, you will greatly improve your images and as a consequence hear less snoring during the holiday photo show and tells J

To start with here are a few guidelines to remember about using the flash:

On camera flash by itself will make pictures look flat and boring – only use it as a single source of light as a last resort
Learn how to adjust the flash output – it’s much easier than you think
Cross lighting with available light creates added depth and interest
Low ambient light with flash can create interesting images – if balanced properly
Fill-in flash can help add more punch to a photo – but it has it’s limitations

Below are a few photos to help illustrate some ideas about what you should be thinking about when taking a photo with a compact camera using a flash.

Using Fill-in Flash

The first two images below were taken of a friend of mine on a mid-afternoon summer’s day in Brighton, England. I wanted to take a “fashion model” like photo but without the flash the image would have been to dark.

The first shot I took reminded me that the power of the flash in compact cameras is limited. As I also use a DSLR with external flashes, I am used to having more power, which is why I went back as far as I did.

Image 1: Fill-in flash on compact cameras have their limitations. You can’t get too far away.

I then decided to move closed to my friend and also have him look into the sun, rather than have the sun in the background. To make sure I captured the deep blue background I dropped the exposure of the image by 1.5 stops (see lesson 3 – faking sunsets) and adjusted the power of my flash output to fill-in correctly.

Image 2: A balanced “fashion style” shot taken with a compact camera using manual adjustments to the output power of the flash to fill-in accordingly.

The next image of my youngest daughter was also taken in Brighton, England, at roughly the same time as the above two images. I used the flash to fill-in the face while under exposing the background to capture the texture of the pebbles.

The sun was actually behind me when taking this photo, but I wanted to capture the colour of the pebbles and also correctly expose my daughters face. By under exposing the image for the pebbles (lit by the sun) and using the flash to expose my daughters face the picture ends up being nicely balanced for both fore and background.

Image 3: Notice the two lights in the reflection of the sunglasses. The one on the left is the flash and the one on the right is the sun.

The next image below was taken on a late afternoon in the middle of the city of Leiden in the Netherlands. The shadows of the surrounding buildings meant that without a flash either the shy would have been blown out or my family would have been too dark.

By adjusting the exposure by -1 stop and using a fill-in flash the over all image become much more balanced and richer in colour.

Image 4: thinking about fill in flash can make a big difference to the end result

The final photograph below is by no means a master piece, but was taken as a memory of a good time, drinking coffee outside in the streets of Leiden watching the world go by as the sun set.

As the white cup is so large in the image the exposure had to be adjusted slightly and the flash turned nearly all the way down. You can just about see the flash light reflected in the cup and handle.

Image 5: Even memory shots can be made better by putting a bit of thought into it

Cross lighting with compact!

Cross lighting is using two or more lights which are set across from each other to give more depth to an image. As the flash on compact can only come from one direction, I include lighting coming from any other direction other than that of the flash as cross lighting.

In this first image I have used the sun as a highlight to the contour of the subject’s face and used the flash as the main light of the subject. To retain the blue sky I stopped down the exposure and then adjusted the flash to properly expose the subject.

Image 6: cross lighting on the contour of the face adds depth to the subject

In the next two images I used the sun as a hair light by putting the sun directly behind the subjects and then lighting their faces with the flash.

In the first image, the sun is too close to the girls head on the right causing a bright light (halo) to appear. I should have moved or asked the subject to move to batter position the sun behind the head.

Image 7: wrongly positioned sun causes a bright spot above the head

In the second image the sun is positioned behind the head of the girl on the left creating a nice rim light and a hair light for the subject on the left.

Image 8: correctly positioned sun

The last image was made to fake a sunset. Again I stopped down the exposure by -2 stops and used the flash to light the subjects. Unfortunately the flash was not bright enough and I had to run to catch the bus to go home :-)

Image 8: manual adjusting the exposure and using the flash to expose the subjects is an easy way to create a fake sunset

One Thing: The main problem with cross lighting is that the flash is generally not strong enough when used directly opposite the sun. I would have tried to move in closer to the subjects to make their faces lighter.

In summary light is the single most important component for making photographs and by taking control of the light you can produce richer and more exciting photographs. By using a flash creatively and mixed with a bit of thought you can easily turn flash horror pictures into works of art.

Get your hands dirty
1. To understand fill-in light take a set of three pictures:

One picture exposed correctly for a bright background and a subject in the shadows with no flash
One picture exposed correctly for the subject with a bright background
One picture exposed correctly for a bright background and the subject lit with a flash.

2. Shoot a subject exposed so that the sun side lights the subject as a highlight and adjust the flash to make it the main light source without over powering the image

3. Shoot a subject wearing a hat with a brim at noon time and use the flash to fill in the shadows on the face

4. Put the camera on a tripod and take a picture indoors at night using the lights of the house to light the room and use the flash to light the subject by adjusting the power appropriately.

Send the images to emmett.photography@gmail.com with a subject title "Flash Light" and a brief description about each image and let me know if and what difficulties you encountered. Give me a few days to get back to you with my feedback.

In the final part of this free online photography course we will be looking at some creative techniques and ideas for making holiday pictures more interesting.

Using a compact camera creatively...A free online photography course - Part 3: Light

2008-08-28T22:32:00.000-07:00

A free online photography course for people wanting to improve their photos
(or "how to keep you friends and family from falling asleep when showing them your holiday photos!")

In the first part of this free online photography course geared towards compact camera users, we covered selective focusing, filling the frame with the subject and getting in closer to isolate or emphasize the main subject. The second part of the course covered the various techniques that you can use to create lively, dynamic and most importantly interesting compositions.

Just a quick recap:

the main aim of this course is to highlight that you don't need a 'BIG' camera to take good photos

the main reason I'm doing this is due to the frequency I hear people blame their equipment for the bad photos they took - from experience, though, bad photos are due to being taken quickly with very little thought and almost no adherence to any accepted standard guidelines for taking good photos.

lastly my goal for everyone who participates in this course is that their families and friends which start to accept their invitations again to look at their holiday photos :-)

One thing about the compact camera is that I find it is too easy to take shots without thinking about the image. This is good in certain circumstances, but I think that the ease of use for these kinds of cameras is a main, if not the root cause, of bad or average images (snap shots).

It seems that the name “Point and Shoot” reveals the problem behind the mentality of using this kind of camera. The name really should be “Look, Point, Think & Shoot”. This online course aims to help become people who look for and see images and then, before actually taking the picture, think about a few guidelines that they could apply to increase the quality of the image.

I have found that if we take a bit of time and put some thought into taking a shot, it is possible to get some really good shots from these “cheaper” cameras. This is what this free online photography course is all about - learning a few basic guidelines and hints and tips for people who want to take better pictures with their existing camera.

My aim for everyone is to take the tips and learnings over this series of articles and go out and shoot better images which people will proudly hang on their walls - physical or virtual :-)

At the end of each section there is a "go out and get your hands dirty" assignment. As part of this assignment you can email me your images and I'll give you feedback to help you improve. All of this is FREE, no strings attached and I won't sell your email address to anyone - that's a promise.

The topics covered in this free online photography course are:

Guidelines for taking better shots

Focus -Part 1
Composition - partially Part 1 and Part 2
Light - Part 3
Flash - Part 4

Ideas for creating better memories

Perspective - Part 5
Colours - Part 5
Patterns - Part 5
Abstract - Part 5
Tell a story - Part 5
Capture a flavour - Part 5
Does it ask a question? - Part 5
Fun shots - Part 5
Capture Reminders - Part 5

This lesson will focus on the use of Ambient Light:

Available Day Lights
Available Indoor Light
Enhancing sunsets

Guidelines for taking better shots

Light

Light is of course vital to photography, without light there would be no photographs – pure and simple. Many books and courses put light as one of the very first things to learn about, and probably rightly so.

So why is light covered in Part 1 of this course? Because, generally speaking, the majority of bad photos I see suffer from bad focusing and composition rather than bad light.

This section will not cover the technical aspects of light and how it affects your photos, you can find some links to these areas at the end. Instead this section will give you some guidelines / hints to enable to you take a variety of interesting photos in situations which you may not have considered.

To start with here are a few generally accepted guidelines about the quality of light:

Sunrise and Sunset will give you warm light for your photos
Noon time with blue skies will give you harsh lighting causing harsh shadows
Noon time with clouds will give you soft lighting giving you saturated colours and nice soft shadows
Indoor lighting is generally too dark to take photos holding the camera with your hands without blurring (NOTE: DSLR users please do not send me hate mail!)
Tungsten light (your normal light bulbs) give off an orange glow – but you can now get light bulbs that give you more neutral light called “daylight”

Ambient (Available) Light - Daylight

Ambient or available light is simply “the light that is around you”. It is the light that is available to use when taking your photo without adding any additional light, i.e. flash.

When you go out with a camera you should think about the available light that surrounds you. However the available light should never deter you from taking photos, but it should make you think how you can get the most of the picture with the light you have been given to play with.

Once you’ve been through the thought process, then you can decide if it’s worth taking a photo or not. If you’re at a special location where you know that you’ll never go to again, you may decide to take photos for memories, even though you know that the light will not make the pictures look brilliant.

But the point it you made a choice and you know the consequences of your actions, and your family and friends won’t have to listen say something like “hmmmm…not sure why that’s so dark/bright/orange/red/green/yellow!”.

One last thing about your camera and light – it tries to think for you, hence the “Point and Shoot” mentality that compact cameras create. This is especially true for anyone using the “Auto” or “P” mode most cameras come with.

Cameras which are set to “Auto” will look at the picture that you are taking and try to change or correct the light (you will find the relevant information in your manuals under the heading “White Balance”). That is, if you are taking a photo indoors with a light bulb of someone, the camera will automatically recognize this and then try and compensate for the abnormal levels of orange by changing the white balance (in this case boosting the levels of blue) to make the photograph more neutral.

Now I am the first to admit that many cameras are pretty clever when it comes to thinking about and interpreting light (white balance) to give a more pleasant picture and I don’t discourage you from using it in most circumstances. However, understanding what you’re camera is doing will help you make the decision to either let the camera look after the light or for you to set the necessary White Balance settings yourself.

White balance links

Now I am the first to admit that many cameras are pretty clever when it comes to thinking about and interpreting light (white balance) to give a more pleasant picture and I don’t discourage you from using it in most circumstances. However, understanding what you’re camera is doing will help you make the decision to either let the camera look after the light or for you to set the necessary White Balance settings yourself.

The following two photographs were taken in Holland about 7:30 in the morning. The first photograph was taken with the Windmill and my family on the first morning we were in Holland. It was the first time they saw a canal and a windmill. The early morning light warmed up the windmill and created form in the clouds.

Image 1: Windmill memories taken in the early morning

One Thing: If I had thought about this photo for a few more seconds I would have zoomed in closer on the family and the windmill.

This next image was taken of the Saturday market in Leiden at around eight in the morning. The light is already less warm but still pleasant and the light on the building creates a beautiful reflection in the still canal water.

Image 2: Reflections in the water from the warm light on the buildings make a very pleasant photo.

One Thing: I tried to wait for the water to become still before taking the shot, but it just wouldn’t.

The next two photos were taken of my brother on the beach in Katwijk aan Zee in Holland. They were taken at two different times during our day out and show the difference in the quality of light. The first photo was taken in the early afternoon and shows a cooler light.

Image 3: Early afternoon light gives a cooler feeling

One Thing: I wish I would have got down lower to get rid of the trash bins, umbrellas etc. out of the shot.

The second photograph was taken just before we went for dinner and has a much warmer feel to it.

Image 4: late afternoon light gives a warmer feeling.

One Thing: The shot of my brother looking left doesn’t have enough room on the left for him to look into and feels claustrophobic. I should have left more space on the left.

I chose the last photograph below, taken with daylight, not because I think it is a great photo, but rather it was taken in a hurry yet had quite a bit of thought put into it.

We were out shopping in Milton Keynes, UK, when we were caught by a heavy rain storm in the car park of the local super market store. When the rain stopped the sun broke through the rain clouds and a beautiful rainbow appeared.

Had I taken the photograph in automatic mode the dark clouds would have fooled my camera and into over exposing the photo and ruin it. Instead I decided to under expose the image by putting the camera on manual mode and reducing the exposure by 1 Stop. This allowed the clouds to keep their form, reveal the beautiful rainbow and also expose the building correctly.

Image 5: Think about the shot before pressing the button.

One Thing: I probably wouldn’t have taken this shot had I thought about it :-)

Ambient Indoor light

One of the most common sources of disappointing photos taken on holidays are those taken indoors with compact cameras. Ruined photos are generally due to three areas

by the camera automatically firing its flash trying to try and light the camera
blurred focus due to shooting at a slow speed
missing interesting subjects

This next photo was taken in an interactive exhibition centre for children in Rotterdam Zoo. When I walked into the room these bottles were the first thing that caught my eye. I’m not actually sure if they were actually doing anything or were just there for the “science” look, but I thought they would look really good as a photo.

Had I taken this photo on automatic mode the flash would have fired and all the colours from the bottles would have been lost. To solve this problem all I did was switch the flash off so it wouldn’t fire. The second problem was ensuring that the photo wouldn’t be blurred. To solve this problem I rested my elbows on a bench to give me the stability I needed. Both of these solutions got me the shot that I wanted.

Image 6: switching the flash off and securing my hands helped get this shot.

One Thing: This shot got me thinking about getting a small portable tripod which could fit into my small bag – I have since purchased a gorillapod :-)

The photo of the Jelly Fish below was in the same area as the bottles above. This display, however, was located in a really dark area of the exhibition and although there were loads of people looking at these beautiful creatures, I didn’t see anyone taking photos of them, which I thought was probably due to the lack of light.

The same solutions applied here as above; switch off the flash and steady the camera. The difference here was the way I steadied the camera. Instead of resting my arms against something I carefully placed the lens of the camera up against the flat glass of the aquarium glass. Then I waited patiently for a Jelly fish to come into view.

Fortunately jelly fish move fairly slowly and I was able to take the low light shot keeping the camera steady and captured the great light on this majestic animal.

Image 7: holding the camera against the glass allowed me to capture the wonderful blue light on the Jelly Fish.

One Thing: I would try to zoom in next time, or wait for the other Jelly Fish to move out of the frame – but I didn’t have all day to wait.

The last two shots taken indoors were taken at the Cultural Museum in Leiden Holland. I really like Chinese tea pots and wanted to capture the detail on the pots which were in a glass case. My initial reaction was to turn off the flash as I had done with the other photos and hold the camera lens against the glass. However the image came out too dark.

Image 8: switching off the flash didn’t work this time

To bring out some of the detail whilst allowing me to hold the camera against the glass, I decided to use the flash but control its output. I switched over to manual mode and reduced the flash by 2 stops, giving just enough light to fill in the darker shadows, keeping the ambient light feel and not ruining the shot.

Image 9: reducing the flash by 2 stops helped lift the light in this image just enough without it looking like it is using flash.

One Thing: given more time with this shot, I would recompose it to have a more balanced feel.

NOTE: Using a flash when taking a photo with windows and mirrors in the background is normally a recipe for a ruined shot as the reflection of the flash creates a nasty glare on the image. However moving the camera lens right up to touching the glass eliminates this problem as the flash will not reflect into the lens.

The photo below was taken whilst walking back home one night in Leiden. My daughters spotted some lights in the ground shining upwards to light up trees in the street. As it was evening and we were all tired, it was tempting to just keep on walking and get home. However the girls were having a bit of fun, and the great thing about the compact camera being readily available meant that I could easily get it out and get it ready to use.

The main aim for this photo was to capture the horror movie effect created by the light shining upwards. Had I taken this picture with a flash it would have ruined the whole effect. One problem I encountered was that it took a bit more time for the camera to focus properly in the dark.

Image 10: creating a horror movie effect using ground street lights

One Thing: Given more time and not being tired I would have asked my daughter to do several different poses.

Sunset (Faking it)

The reason I included ‘faking it’ in the title is because most really nice sunset photos you see are taken with some kind of adjustment to them. You can do this in the camera or, to some extent, in photo editing software, but it’s best to take the best photo possible and then make minor adjustments in your software later. The better the starting image is the better the final results will be.

The reason why you need to make adjustments is due to the way cameras measure the light and make adjustments accordingly. You can read more about exposure at:
TUTORIALS: CAMERA METERING & EXPOSURE
PHOTOGRAPHY: UNDERSTANDING EXPOSURE (PDF File)
Understanding Exposure - A Complex Subject Made Simple for Beginners

Without going too much into the technical reasons about what is going on, this is what the camera will normally try to do:

on photos which are predominantly dark – the camera will try to increase the amount of light getting into the photograph to make picture brighter
on photos which are predominantly very light or white – the camera will try to decrease the amount of light getting into the photograph to make the picture darker

Why is this an issue? Because when you take a photograph which is predominantly dark and you want them to be dark, you don’t want the camera to make them lighter. Conversely, when you take a photo which is predominantly light or white and you want to keep the lightness or white, then you don’t want the camera to make them darker.

Sounds strange? It took me quite a while to get my head around this concept so don’t worry, just make sure you do the “get your hands dirty” exercises at the end of this section. With some practice and experiments you’ll get to understand it.

The problem with sunset shots is that the camera will always try and make the picture lighter which washes the colours out and makes the image look relatively boring.

The photo below was taken on automatic mode and as predicted the camera compensated accordingly by making the picture lighter.

Image 11: automatic mode has made this picture too light and washed out the colour of the sunset.

For sunsets, I normally turn the camera to manual mode and force the camera to take darker pictures by adjusting the exposure by minus one stop (You may need to read your manual for that. Look under ‘exposure’ or ‘adjusting exposure’).

For the image below I decided to make it more dramatic by adjusting the exposure by minus two stops and then filling in with flash. This image was taken a few minutes after the the above image, but the effect is very different.

Image 12: manual adjusting the exposure to take a darker image is an easy way to create a fake sunset

The last photograph is a typical result of reducing the exposure by one or two stops. This photograph was taken before the one in image 11, yet by reducing the exposure it looks like it was taken just before sun down.

Image 13: manual adjusting the exposure to create a wonderful sunset feel

One Thing: This was taken quite quickly. Had I taken more time I would have zoomed in to make the silhouette of the person more prominent and also strightend the horizon.

Light is the single most important component for making photographs and by taking control of the light you can produce richer and more exciting photographs.

Get your hands dirty

To understand the different types of light during the day take five photos one a sunrise (if you can), one at about 1 hour after sunrise, one a lunch time, one at 1 hour before sunset and one just about sunset time.
Shoot three different images indoors without a flash or a tripod – try to find other ways of securing the camera and let me know what you did
To understand white balance find out how to change the white balance on your camera and take two sets of photos – one set taken outdoors with different white balances and one set indoors using your existing lights with difference white balances.
Learn how to adjust the exposure and take two sets of photos – one set of three photos at 1-2 hours before sunset at normal exposure, minus one stop and minus two stops and one set of three photos at around sunset at normal exposure, minus one stop and minus two stops

Send the images to emmett.photography@gmail.com with a subject title "Ambient Light" and a brief description about each image and let me know if and what difficulties you encountered. Give me a few days to get back to you with my feedback.

In Part 4 of this free online photography course we will be looking at techniques for using the flash with your camera

I hope that you have enjoyed the first two parts of the course. Please feel free to leave comments or questions you have about this course below or email them to me.

Using a compact camera creatively...A free online photography course - Part 2: Composition

2008-08-24T21:24:00.000-07:00

A free online photography course for people wanting to improve their photos
(or "how to keep you friends and family from falling asleep when showing them your holiday photos!")

In the first part of this free online photography course geared towards compact camera users, we covered selective focusing, filling the frame with the subject and getting in closer to isolate or emphasize the main subject.

Just a quick recap:

The main aim of this course is to highlight that you don't need a 'BIG' camera to take good photos
The main reason I'm doing this is due to the frequency I hear people blame their equipment for the bad photos they took - from experience, though, bad photos are due to being taken quickly with very little thought and almost no adherence to any accepted standard guidelines for taking good photos.
Lastly my goal for everyone who participates in this course is that their families and friends will start to accept their invitations again to look at their holiday photos :-)

Of course we have all heard of the saying that "guidelines are made to be broke", which of course is true. But before you break them, you should know two things (1) what the guidelines are, and (2) why you are breaking them and "just because I want to" doesn't count!

This free online photography course is about helping you understand and practice the guidelines in this course while giving you one-on-one feedback about your photos.

One thing I’ve noticed about the compact camera is that it’s just too easy to take shots without thinking actually about it. This is good under certain circumstances, think stag night, but I think that the ease of use for these cameras is one of the main, if not the root cause, of bad or average images aka snap shots.

I’ve found that if you take a moment and put some thought into taking a shot, it’s possible to get really good shots. This is what this free online photography course is all about – enabling people to take better pictures with their existing camera by learning a few basic guidelines which you will proudly hang on your walls - physical or virtual :-)

At the end of each section there is a "go out and get your hands dirty" assignment. As part of this assignment you email me your images and I'll review them and give you feedback to help you improve. You can then either re-shoot the assignment if you feel it’s necessary or move on to the next section.

All of this is FREE, no strings attached. I won't sell your email address or photos to anyone - that's a promise.

The topics covered in this free online photography course are:

Guidelines for taking better shots

Focus -Part 1
Composition - partially Part 1 and Part 2
Light - Part 3
Flash - Part 4

Ideas for creating better memories

Perspective - Part 5
Colours - Part 5
Patterns - Part 5
Abstract - Part 5
Tell a story - Part 5
Capture a flavour - Part 5
Does it ask a question? - Part 5
Fun shots - Part 5
Capture Reminders - Part 5

Guidelines for taking better shots

This lesson will focus on other areas of Composition not covered in Part 1:

The rule of thirds
Looking into open space
Angle - Get down low
Angle - Go up high
Angling the image
Leading lines

Composition - Part 2

In Part 1 of composition, you learned some basic guidelines that helped move you away from the dreaded disease I’ve termed 'centeritis'. I covered the topics of filling the frame with the subject and also getting in close to the subject. If fact I can't emphasize enough the importance of these two areas.

Part 2 of Composition explains some basic guidelines that are frequently used to achieve dynamic, balanced and pleasing pictures.

Composition is the basic ingredient to making successful and effective images. Poorly composed photographs are the main cause of putting your family and friends to sleep during post dinner holiday snap reviews. They may not know why the photo looks bad or boring and probably won’t be able to pin point any particular area, but people are intrinsically drawn to well composed images and conversely turn away from badly composed images.

Rule of thirds

The ‘rule of thirds’ guideline is probably the most talked about composition guideline. In my book, it is also the easiest to remember and implement and would instantly improve 90% of photos taken today.

Artists have been using this guideline for a long time before cameras were around, and as photography means ‘painting with light’ it’s an obvious pick for applying it here. The rule of thirds guidelines produces a ratio of 2:1 which gives the composition of the image both order and stability. Although it may sound counter-intuitive the center of the picture is not a satisfying place of the eye to rest.

To understand this guideline all you have to do is take an image and divide both sides up into three equal parts, like this picture of my family standing on the Van Gogh Bridge in Leiden, Holland:

Image 1: Rule of thirds - simply put means placing an important part of the image on one of the four points where the lines intersect

The aim of for the photographer is to position the main subject or focal point on one of the four points where the lines intersect. Your subject doesn’t have to be exactly right on the exact intersection, but as close to the vicinity as possible should be your aim.

One Thing: Given a few more seconds to think about the composition I would have closed in slightly which would have filled the frame and brought the composition of the photo closer to the rule of thirds guideline.

It really is that simple. Using this guideline, along with filling the image and getting in close, will instantly improve the majority of your shots.

For shots of landscapes frequently break the rule of thirds by placing the horizon in the middle of the picture. As a very general (and very good) guideline to follow the horizon should be placed on with the top or bottom grid line.

The most frequently asked question is “how do I know which grid line should I use?” and of course the answer is “it depends”!

To decide which grid line to place the horizon you need to look at the image and decide which part holds the most interest to the viewer. Is it the cloud formations in the sky or the babbling brook or patterned landscape? Whichever you decide is the most interesting part of the photo should get the bigger share of the photograph.

Further reading:

Rule of Thirds – Digital Photography School
Break the Rule of Thirds – Digital Photography School
Rule of Thirds - Photo96.com

Rule of thirds - looking into open space

The ‘rule of thirds’ guideline often means that people sit or stand on either side of the image. Although they may stand facing the camera, which can produce flat and boring images, people can also sit or stand in a specific direction.

The guideline ‘looking into open space’ positions the subject so that they are facing the far side of the photograph. This creates open space for the person in the image to look into creating a pleasing composition. Conversely by having the person looking to the near side can create a feeling of isolation and close space.

The picture below shows my youngest daughter on the train looking out of the window. By placing her on the left and looking towards the right the image creates an aesthetically pleasing image.

Image 2: Having someone look, walk or ride into open space on the photo makes a more pleasing image

One Thing: I should have taken a few more seconds and wait for my daughter to stop scratching her face. I would have also zoomed out slightly to include the whole arm and hand in the photo. This would have brought the composition of the photo closer to the rule of thirds guideline.

You should apply this guideline to other kinds of shots that contain people, animals or objects which are moving. Place the moving subject on the photo using the rule of thirds and make sure that they are moving into the open space across the photo, rather than moving out of the photo.

The rule of thirds guideline is one of the quickest to way to improve your photographs giving them order and stability whilst making them pleasant to look at.

Get your hands dirty

Shoot a half body portrait of a friend - make sure they face to the opposite side of the image.
Shoot a full length portrait of a friend looking into the distance - make sure their eyes are in focus
Shoot someone walking or riding a bicycle using the rule of thirds guideline – make sure they are walking or riding across the image and not off the end of the image
Shoot a landscape picture with the horizon on one of the grid lines – make sure that the more interesting part of the picture has the 2/3 space in the photograph and the least interesting the other 1/3

Send the images to emmett.photography@gmail.com with a subject title "Rule of Thirds" and a brief description about each image and let me know if and what difficulties you encountered. Give me a few days to get back to you with my feedback.

Shooting from a different Angle

Most of the pictures you see at family get-togethers are taken from one vantage point – the eye level of the person taking the picture. One of the problems with pictures taken from eye level is that this is the same view point that everyone else sees which leads to boring or uninteresting images.

Even if you take height difference into account, from say 1.2 meters (4 feet) to 2.2 meters (7.2 feet), you would not see a lot of difference in the photos taken from the same location (except if the shorter person were in a crowd of taller people!).

The reason why composing an image at a radical vertical angle makes for an interesting image is because it uses angles which people do not normally see things and adds a dynamic element to the photograph which will hold the viewers attention for much longer.

Although I may be stating the obvious, there are two ways to shoot vertical angles (1) from a low angle, and (2) from a high angle.

It should be noted that these techniques work best, and create the most dramatic effect, when used with a wide angled lens and close up to the subject.

Get down low

When I say “get down low to take a shot” I do not mean bending the body at the hips to lower the upper body slightly. Getting down low to me means at a very minimum kneeling down and bending somewhat and all the way to lying on the floor with the camera just high enough to see the preview. Just make sure you look before you lie, especially out in the street or if you have a pet animal at home ;-)

As mentioned above this technique will help create a much more visually stimulating image but it will also help to remove clutter from the background.

The image below was taken in a shopping mall in The Hague, Holland. No points for guessing what angle it was taken at! By taking it at eye level the background is very busy with people walking about and my wife’s head is starting to get lost in the background.

Image 3: typical photo taken at eye level – flat, boring and cluttered

After taking the above shot I took a minute to get down low and recompose the shot below. This low angled composition has created a cleaner background, making it more dynamic and getting a more grandiose perspective of the shopping mall building.

Image 4: Taken at a lower angle – cleaner and more dynamic

Although it may not be an award winning image – it definitely makes the picture more interesting to look at than the top one.

One Thing: I should have waited a few more seconds to allow the person on the left to walk out of the frame.

The next image below was taken by me lying down on the floor. We were in a windmill museum in Leiden, Holland, and I wanted to capture my family next to the windmill. As there was limited space around the windmill to maneuver, getting down low was the only way to get the windmill and my family into the same picture. Without getting down low I would have been left with a picture of my family against a brick wall, which could have been taken anywhere.

Image 5: Getting down low allowed me to include both a tall windmill and my family in one shot

One Thing: I would have recomposed the shot to include more of my family and not cut-off my wife’s legs at the knee caps.

When shooting from a low angle remember to shoot with in a mode that will keep most of the image in focus – usually landscape mode will accomplish this. Remember to have fun when shooting low, try experimenting at different angles and different focal length (zooming in and out) and just when you think you can’t go any lower, bend down a bit more – you’ll be surprised how low you can go.

Go up high

Similar guidelines apply to taking shots from above and they do from below. The main reason for this is because you are creating viewpoints which people are not used to. I feel that going down is easier to create a bigger impact on an image compared to going up high – probably because we look down more than we look up at things.

Shooting from high has its limitations - how tall you are or what the tallest object you can climb compared to the subject you are shooting will affect the overall impact the image has.

The two images below of my girls were taken on the train platform in Leiden Station in Holland. Because they were sitting down, they were relatively low compared to me which allowed me to set my lens to a wide angle (zooming out) and bring the camera to almost directly above them.

The images are fun and different as they completely change the perspective and size ratios of body parts that we are accustomed to seeing. If these were taken from a normal angle looking on they would be very boring indeed.

Image 6: This high angled shot makes my daughters head and eyes look very big giving an almost cartoon feel about her.

One Thing: I really like this fun image, but if I could retake it I would try and get both hands and maybe also the feet in the image. The problem was that I wasn’t quite tall enough and my wide angle lens not quite wide enough.

Image 7: a fun pose by daughter is made better by the high angle

One Thing: Another fun shot, unfortunately her fingers were cut off. It would have been hard to ask for more time from my daughter to hold this pose while I recomposed, but maybe I could have asked her to do it again after I had tried to recompose the shot.

Angled Subjects

This technique of angling the subject in the frame is done simply by rotating the camera clockwise or anti-clockwise so that the object is no longer vertical in the frame. It a simple technique to use and the only danger is that you end up with too many of your photos with people at an angle. Therefore my suggestion is to use this technique sparingly.

This techniques works for similar reasons going high or low work, you are creating viewpoints which people do not normally see – the only exception being seamen working on boats in the North Sea during winter!

The shot below of me was actually taken by my youngest daughter. I don’t know if she meant to take it at an angle or moved the camera when pressing the button, but the end result is a more interesting image of me on the beach

Image 8: angled shots create a more dynamic feel

One Thing: I know that I didn’t take this shot, but if I did I would try feel the frame with the subject more or try the picture in landscape layout to get more of the background in.

Leading lines

Leading lines are simply using lines and curves in a picture to lead the viewer into the image, and forcing their eyes to go where you want them to.

Personally, I think that this is one of my weakest techniques, as I never seem to find good leading lines, but when done properly is a very effective technique.

The image below is an example of leading lines, in that when the viewer looks at the image their eyes naturally travel down the street to the end. Unfortunately, when the user gets to the end there is nothing for them to look at - which is what is wrong with the image!

Image 9: The leading lines in the street and buildings lead the viewer eyes to the end of the street - unfortunately in this image there is nothing at the end for the viewer to see!

One Thing: If I would have thought about this image a bit more I would not have the leading lines point to the centre of the image (I did say I was affected by centeritis). Rather I would have put end of the street at either the top or bottom third of the image (see rules of thirds).

The next image was taken in the play park in Rotterdam Zoo, Holland. My daughter kept playing on this slide and kept asking for me to wait for her at the bottom. One problem was that it seemed that 100 other kids also wanted to go on the slide and I had to wait for a long time between her turn.

I wanted to create a fun image which captured the fun she was having as well as the size of the slide. Instead of trying to get the whole slide, which would have looked very boring, I decided to make the slide look big in the photograph as a reminder to us how big it actually was. I used the leading lines of the slide to bring the viewers eye to my daughter as she came out of the slide.

Image 10: The slide creates leading lines which lead the eye to where my daughter is

The main problem I found was that I had to wait for a long time for my daughter to come out of the slide so it was hard to concentrate on waiting for the right moment. My legs also grew tired from kneeling and squatting to get this view point!

One Thing: The result image works well in creating a memory about the slide, but my daughter is too small in the image. If I had a few more tries at this I would wait for her to come slightly closer to the camera so the joy on her face was more obvious.

The composition techniques covered above and in Part 1 of this free online photography course are not a complete extensive list, but rather ones that I have found are very effective in quickly and easily improving the quality of my photographs.

Get your hands dirty

Shoot a normal everyday subject from both eye level and a very low angle and compare the results – the more normal and everyday the object is the more interesting the differences will be.
If possible try photographing a large object or person from a high angle – if you have a ladder, balcony or even second floor window, you can take them from there.
Have fun taking shots of objects in the kitchen using the angled subject technique – you’ll be amazed how interesting a bottle of wine looks at an angle!
Try and take an image with leading lines in it – the aim is to direct the viewer's eyes to the subject that you want them to see.

Send the images to emmett.photography@gmail.com with a subject title "Angles and Lines" and a brief description about each image and let me know if and what difficulties you encountered. Give me a few days to get back to you with my feedback.

In Part 3 of this free online photography course we will be looking at the rest of the techniques covered in “Guidelines for taking better shots”, which include:

Ambient Day Light
Ambient Indoor Light
Faking sunsets

I hope that you have enjoyed the first two parts of the course. Please feel free to leave comments or questions you have about this course below or email them to me

Using a compact camera creatively...A free online photography course - Part 1: Focus & Composition

2008-08-13T17:47:00.000-07:00

A free online photography course for people wanting to improve their photos
(or "how to keep you friends and family from falling asleep when showing them your holiday photos!")

How many of you have thought "if only I had a better camera my pictures would be so much better"? I know I have - frequently . This summer however, I discovered that the the smaller compact or "point and shoot" cameras when used together with some "big" camera thinking and guidelines can produce some excellent, "hang on your wall", shots.

Let me say up front that I am a self confessed Canon 30D DSLR "big" camera user, some people even call me an addict. I had spent a lot of time this year with my camera and so this summer I promised my family that I would not bring my camera with me - for three whole weeks - and would spend my time focusing on the family.

My wife and I agreed that we would buy a compact camera to replace the one that recently broke and in the end we brought a Sony DSC-W170 compact camera in Hong Kong. I was not looking forward to having to use this camera - cause it wasn't big enough!

With the recent studies I have been doing from strobist.com for off-camera flash I was curious to see what I could do with the small on-camera flash, which is typical of the majority of modern compact cameras. This idea then led me to challenge myself to see if i could get some good quality photos with a very limited set of tools - one compact camera - by getting back to some of the basics of photography.

I was amazed with the results of some of the images. Just by putting some of the basic skills and concepts into action when shooting, it was possible to get some great shots.

Don't get me wrong, I took many mediocre and less than average shots. One thing about the compact camera is that I found it was too easy to take shots without thinking about the image. This is good in certain circumstances, but I think that the ease of use for these kind of cameras is a main, if not the root cause, of bad or average images (snap shots).

In the end I found that if I took a bit time and put some thought into taking a shot, I could get some really good shots. With this in mind I decided to put together a few guidelines and hints and tips for people who want to take better pictures with their existing camera. My aim for everyone is to take the tips and learnings over this series of articles and go out and shoot better images which people will proudly hang on their walls - physical or virtual :-)

Of course we have all heard of the saying that "guidelines are made to be broke", which of course is true. But before you break them, you should know two things (1) what the guidelines are, and (2) why you are breaking them - "just because I want to" doesn't count!

This free online photography course is about helping you understand and practice the guidelines and giving you one-on-one feedback about your photos.

At the end of each section there is a "go out and get your hands dirty" assignment. As part of this assignment you can email me your images and I'll give you feedback to help you improve. All of this is FREE, no strings attached and I won't sell your email address to anyone - that's a promise.

The topics covered in this free online photography course are:

Guidelines for taking better shots

Focus -Part 1
Composition - partially Part 1 and Part 2
Light - Part 3
Flash - Part 4

Ideas for creating better memories

Perspective - Part 5
Colours - Part 5
Patterns - Part 5
Abstract - Part 5
Tell a story - Part 5
Capture a flavour - Part 5
Does it ask a question? - Part 5
Fun shots - Part 5
Capture Reminders - Part 5

This lesson covers focusing and part of composition.

Guidelines for taking better shots

Focus

If I had to decide which part of photography was the most important (and I'm glad I don't) it would be focusing on the image. More precisely it would be correctly focusing on the correct part of the image. If a photo is incorrectly focused everything else becomes irrelevant and 99% of the time will end up discarded.

There are things in pictures which are considered 'the correct thing to focus on'. For instance , when taking portraits, it is people's eyes that are most important to focus on. And for portraits of people who are looking to the side, it is focusing on the eye nearest to the camera.

In the photo below I have focused on a bee, but unfortunately the wrong bee is in focus. If the bee in the front of the image was in focus the image would have been much better, as it is though, the out of focus bee is just annoying to the eye.

Image 1: The front bee should be in focus not the back one

One of the 'bad' things about the compact camera is that using the screen on the back of the camera to check for the focus is a bit of a hit and miss affair. The screen on the back is difficult to use in the sun and is too small to see really what is in focus. I used the macro mode on the camera for the above shot and realized that the depth of focus was much shallower than I expected.

One Thing: To be honest I thought that the bee in the front was in focus, because the screen on the camera was so small I didn't notice it. Lesson learned if in doubt take a few images refocusing each time.

The statement I made above about 'correctly focusing on the correct part of the image' can be seen below. The plaque below was dedicated by the local community to my Grandfather - standing on the left in the background. I wanted to capture the plaque but also have my grandfather and wife in the image but not in focus - Why?

People's eyes will always lock onto the part of the photo which is in focus - apparently we can't help it. Therefore in the image below, people will be drawn to the plaque first and then to the people in the background.

Image 2: Correctly focusing on the correct part of the image

This technique if used properly gives you a lot of power about where you want the user to look at in your image. Used properly can make an average image into a great one. To make the shot I used the macro mode to get as close as I could to the image which throws the background out of focus. Using the "speed" mode on cameras would probably achieve a similar effect. I focused on the writing on the plaque first by pressing the shutter button lightly, then, without taking my finger off the button, tilted the camera up to get my Grandad and wife in the shot. Had I taken three more seconds to think about the image I would have asked my daughter to move her arm out of the picture :-)

One Thing: If I had taken a few more moments to think about this image I would have asked my daughter to move from the right (the pink elbow) and asked my grandad and wife to smile :-)

I am the first to admit that the image below may not be the best image in the world, but it tells a story that I wanted to tell. It's not a great story, but a simple one that meant a lot to my family and I. What do you think the story is that I'm trying to tell?

Image 3: Focusing to tell a story

The story is simply that we had a great cup of coffee on a really nice sunny day while sitting on a bridge over a canal. This image is meant as a personal reminder of a great time we had relaxing on that bridge. It's not meant for anyone else - unless the makers of Illy want to pay me for the photo :-)

To make the above shot I did three things (1) focused on the cup, then tilted the camera, (2) stepped down the exposure by one stop and (3) used fill in flash - you can read about these techniques later in the series.

One Thing: I would have cleaned the saucer, put the cup in the middle of the saucer and centered the cup in the image.

Overall focusing with a compact camera can be tricky depending on the available light, for both the camera to focus on and the viewer to see what's in focus. Pressing the button softly to allow the camera to focus before hand as well as keeping the camera steady, either with a tripod or proper holding technique, will help you to get shots which are well focused.

Get your hands dirty

Shoot a portrait of someone - make sure their eyes are in focus
Shoot an image with two images, one in the foreground and one in the background. Ensure that the image in the foreground in is focus.
Shoot a close up of something - get as close as you can whilst ensuring the image is in focus

Send the images to emmett.photography@gmail.com with a subject title "Focus" and a brief description about each image and let me know if and what difficulties you encountered. Give me a few days to get back to you with my feedback.

Composition - Part 1

Whilst focusing rates the most important part of photography in my books, composition is by far the most common reason why images fail to 'wow' people and friends. The biggest culprit of bad composition is what I call 'centeritis'. How this disease infects people is still a mystery, but the affects can be seen everywhere.

Don't get me wrong, I am not perfect either and often have bouts of centeritis and find that the compact camera mentality of taking snap shots makes it too easy to take a shot without thinking about composition. This next section covers some of the common composition guidelines that will help you create more exciting and dynamic photos. After some practice, you should start to hear less excuses from you family and friends why they can't come round to see you holiday photos :-)

Further Reading: One of the greatest online courses, which is free, which covers the subject of composition is Jodies Coston's Free Online Photography Course

Fill the image

One of the easiest way to spot 'centeritis' is that there is a lot of space at the top of the photo. Very often a side affect of this is that people start losing parts of limbs at the bottom of the image, which can look very painful!

The image below was taken of my grandfather, my daughters and me at a plaque that had been dedicated to my grandfather as an appreciation to all the hard work he puts into the community. He's 90 years old and still keeps himself busy 6 days a week doing community work. He also cycles and swims everyday and still plays badminton weekly - not someone to mess with :-)

Although the image below may not be a write-off, it does show early warning signs of not thinking about composition:(1) the sky the top and (2) missing limbs at the bottom.

Image 4: not filling the frame with the subject

The solution for this problem is quite simple, most of the time. By simply moving in closer and filling the frame with as much of the subject as possible, you easily create a more pleasant image and ensure that everyone's limbs are showing, as shown below.

Image 5: filling frame with the subject

One tip about if you have to cut off limbs in a shot - don't cut them off at the joint, but rather above or below the joint. Cutting people's limbs off at the joint looks like a mistake, cutting them above or below the joints look like it was done on purpose. (This last paragraph sounds like something straight out of a horror movie).

One Thing: Things I could have tried to improve the images given some more time are (1) move everything round so that people are not squinting in the image (2) waited till a bit later when he sun was lower in the sky to give it a softer light.

Filling the image with the subject is not that hard to do, but does take some practice, which is what i would like you to do to get your hands dirty.

Get your hands dirty

Shoot a full length portrait of someone or a group of people - make sure they are in focus and they all fit in.
Shoot a close up of something making sure that the whole object is in the image

Send the images to emmett.photography@gmail.com with a subject title "Fill the image" and a brief description about each image and let me know if and what difficulties you encountered. Give me a few days to get back to you with my feedback.

Get in close

The next guideline is one of my favourite. Getting in close does two important things:
(1) Gets rid of busy/messy backgrounds
(2) Focuses on the main subject in the image.

This one guideline would help save many a family member falling asleep during the typical photo show and tell from a recent holiday. My rule of thumb here is "if in doubt get closer". If you struggle doing this, afraid of missing something, get a wide shot after the close up shot, then watch which photo your friends and family spend time looking at.

The image below was taken on a recent trip to visit my brother in the Netherlands. We found this great fancy dress shop in a small side street in the Hague and my eldest daughter instantly headed for these feather boas and got into the middle of them. My instant reaction was to switch on the camera and take a quick shot. Of course the default lens setting when you switch on a compact camera is wide angle and so I ended up with the following shot:

Image 6: Not moving in close on an image can end up with a noisy background

It's a fun image, but the background is very noisy (messy), with the chairs, the red clogs, the shirts, the signposts and the menu board on the left. All the these things are immaterial to the image and stop the viewer from focusing on what I am trying to capture, i.e. my daughter having fun being surrounded in these feather boas.

Fortunately I did take another minute to think about the image and I zoomed in close to capture my daughters face surrounded by the feathers. there is nothing distracting from this image as there is only her face and the feathers - both of which are important to the image.

Image 7: Zooming in close to the main subject helps the viewer to focus on what is important.

One Thing: Things I could have tried to improve the images given some more time are (1) move everything round so that people are not squinting in the image (2) waited till a bit later when he sun was lower in the sky to give it a softer light.

The next three images are more examples of getting in close to the subject - which also helps to fill the frame :-)

This was a photo of my daughter looking out of the window on the train in Holland. She was looking at lots of these that we don't usually see her in Asia, e.g. windmills, canals, cows, flowers, etc. The instinct is to take a wide angled picture to get more of my daughter in the image and with the train. However the bright outside and dark inside would have messed with the exposure of the image. Getting in close to the picture helps focus on the image as well as making the exposure accurate for her face.

Image 8: getting in close helps to get the correct exposure and focus on what is important.

One Thing: After looking at this image I realized that I didn't see the reflection of my daughter in the window, which is another reason to take a few extra seconds to look at the image before pressing the button. Next time I'll look for reflections in windows and move more of the reflection into the image, which would help with the rule of thirds guideline which I will talk about next time.

The next image would taken on the beach and I wanted to get a picture showing my daughter having fun on the beach, but wanted to get something different. I saw my daughter's crocs on the sand I thought that they would add an extra dimension to the image. Most people take their shoes off when walking on the sand in the beach and each time I see people doing this they can't help but smile - probably because it brings back good memories. The image was trying to capture that memory of taking our shoes off to have fun on the beach.

If I had tried to do this image any other way it would not have worked. Getting down low and close helps to add in a fun and dynamic dimension to this image.

Image 9: getting in close can help to trigger good memories :-)

One Thing: In this image I did move the shoes together and purposely left the sand on the shoes, however if I had thought a bit more about the image I would have put the shoes more towards the centre and also possibly moved around to take the pier out of the image in the background.

This last image here is one of my favourite which I'm proud to say was taken by one of my daughters. Coming in this close for flowers is one of the most rewarding techniques to improve photos of these beautiful things. Too often we try and get the whole plant in the photo, which is a guarantee to put your viewers to sleep. Coming in close to flowers allows you to seethe soft texture of the petals and the amazing details of the stamen and center area.

Image 10: coming in close to flowers allows the viewer a glance at something that they don't normally see.

One note of warning. Coming in close to flowers makes imperfections 100 times worse. imperfections come from damaged flowers, dirt, dust, cobwebs and small bugs, which you easily glance over when looking at the flower. However when these are captured on a photo they stand out something terrible.

You can do three things to help improve this (1) choose a flower which is perfect, (2) bring a brush with you and try and clean the flower before taking the picture, (3) spend a lot of time in Photoshop cleaning up the photo afterwards. This last option can take up a lot of time!

One Thing: One little trick you can do with flowers is to spray them with water so that water drops form on the petal. This adds a very pleasant dimension to the image.

Getting in close is not always a very natural thing to do, but just like filling the frame, it creates a really exciting image. This is not obviously something you would do for shots of landscapes, sun sets or group shots, but getting in close should be one of the first thoughts you have when taking an image.

Get your hands dirty

Take an abstract image. this could be of anything in your house (to keep it simple), but you should get close enough so that the object is not easily recognizable but yet in focus.
Take a few shots of an object. Take some shots from a far and some from up close to see which images you prefer.
Shoot a close up of a flower. get in as close as you can to reveal as much of the detail as possible.

Send the images to emmett.photography@gmail.com with a subject title "get in close" and a brief description about each image and let me know if and what difficulties you encountered. Give me a few days to get back to you with my feedback.

In Part 2 of this free online photography course will focus on other areas of Composition:

The rule of thirds
Looking into open space
Angling the image
Angle - Get down low
Angle - Go up high
Leading lines
Using Frames

I hope that you have enjoyed this first part of the course. Please feel free to leave comments or questions you have about this course below or email them to me

What is the real Guide Number of Canon 580EX II and 430 EX?

2008-07-01T17:25:00.000-07:00

I originally posted an article on using Guide Numbers for Canon flashes for both the metric system, but after a few requests I am republishing the article using feet.

These articles used the original Guide Numbers given by Canon in the user manuals. However after a lot more research and time spent looking into this, along with my newly purchased Sekonic Flashmate L-308S, I have come up with a much more realistic set of guide numbers to aid people in getting a much better exposure first time.

Just to re-cap why I did this (apart from being a little bit mad):

After reading the book Light Science & Magic and reading David Hobby's Lighting101 and Lighting102 courses at Strobist.com, I came to realize that I needed to put some effort into being able to get close to the right lighting setup from the start of a shoot, rather than my current method of randomly playing with the settings of the lights and the camera until I magically get a good picture - which of course I can never replicate.

The caveat here is that the Guide Numbers are just that - a guide. They are a place for you to get started not the law. Over time you will be able to get to know what settings you like for any given set of circumstances.

NOTE: The only calculations needed here are multiplication - nothing else I promise - as I can't do much else myself!

For people like myself though who do not have enough time in the day to enjoy getting to be intimate with our cameras the Guide Numbers and the calculating factor table will help us get into or closer to the zone much faster.

I currently own two 580EX II and one 430EX and I wanted to be able to calculate the Guide Number of each of these units (which are in the manuals) and also a combination of the units when used together as one unit. Below are the results from my efforts.

The top 2 tables represent the Guide Number for the combination of the flashes listed in both Meters and Feet. The third table shows you the multiplication factor to change the Guide Number based on if you are increasing or decreasing the available light. In the notes you can see what calculations you need to do if you increase the ISO and / or add on a light modifier (this is not an extensive list please leave a message as you learn what other modifier do and I will update the table).

The tables can be used to calculate both (1) F-Stop you need to set for a given subject to flash distance (2) the subject to flash distance needed for a given F-Stop. The calculations are:

F=GN/D : F-Stop equals the Guide Number divided by Distance (Flash to Subject). In feet

D=GN/F : Distance (Flash to Subject) equals the Guide Number divided by the F-Stop. In feet

The table below shows the "more realistic" Guide Numbers in Meters for the combination of flashes

The table below shows the "more realistic" Guide Numbers in Feet for the combination of flashes

The multiplication factor to change the Guide Number

You can download the Excel Spreadsheets for both Meters and Feet for the above tables.

Now I appreciate that some people may feel either cheated by the original guide numbers (how do they calculate them?) or may feel that taking a whole Stop off the guide number makes the whole image too hot (I don't but some people will). So the 2 tables below the Guide Numbers for the combination of flashes with 2/3 Stop off.

The table below shows the Guide Numbers in Meters with -2/3 Stop for the combination of flashes

The table below shows the Guide Numbers in Feet with -2/3 Stop for the combination of flashes

And for those of you who just can't believe that Canon may have overstated their number just ever so slightly (1 Stop!) here's the original Guide Number tables

The table below shows the Original Guide Numbers in Meters for the combination of flashes

The table below shows the Original Guide Numbers in Feet for the combination of flashes

Well I swear that's the last article on Guide Numbers - except maybe if I get some more flashes :-)

As ever please feel free to leave comments or questions below or email them to me.

Related Articles:

Base Jumping in The Fort, Philippines

2008-06-29T22:35:00.001-07:00

Went to Fort Bonifacio, Philippines, to an Ozone event in order to catch with some of my Power Kiting friends, Bam, Buko & Rodel and found out that a bunch of Americans were going to base jump off the top of the "South of Market" building.

In my mind the only way down a building is on the inside, preferably in an elevator or possibly using the stairs. But these guys prefer the good old fashioned parachute!!!!

I was talking to one of the who mentioned that any building which is taller than 250ft is OK, but I'm convinced that with my excess weight a building around 500ft would be more applicable. Still the lift would be the preferred choice by far.

The photos are not brilliant (I was very nervous and I was standing on the ground!) but they capture what went on.

Three of the four jumpers discussing the jump (I hope), but it looks more like a casual conversation about the price of coffee!

The cameras came out in force - mine being one of them - and some cameras seemed to be nearly as big as their owners!

Cool shades were definitely the fashion accessory of the day :-)

The next set of photos shows the first guy jumping and he starts with a back flip! As if it isn't exciting enough with a plain old jump!

I can;t believe how casual they are about this jumping business. I'd have to change my pants after doing that jump!

The rest of the photos show other jumps

It was a really exciting day and happily everyone landed safely. In the end my theory about my preferred choice of moving vertically in a building remains unchanged :-)

You can see all of my photos from the day on my photo site

Please feel free to leave comments or questions below or email them to me.

Taking Smoke Photos

2008-06-26T18:55:00.000-07:00

After forever and a day I finally decided to try and do shoot smoke images. I've seen them done, seemingly by every man and his dog, but each time I think that they are cool. Not sure what it is about photos of smoke but most people like seeing them, maybe something to do with the patterns they create and the shades that are captured in each photo.

I'm not sure about anyone else, but once I had setup the lights it was a case of shoot at random. After a while I started to recognize when to take a shot, i.e. when the smoke was in the middle(ish) of the frame AND was forming a shape. I realize that this sounds obvious, but it's a bit harder than I initially had thought.

Below is the setup I used for the smoke images. I would separate the background form the smoke even further next time to remove any spill form the lights.

I used 2 x 580EXII with pocket wizards, one either side. These were set at 24mm @1/8. I initially used a Stofen filter to ensure the whole area was covered, but the last set of photos I shot were just bare flash. I stopped down the flash when I removed the Stofen filter and I think that the smoke looks brighter without the Stofen filter.

The photo below shows the kind of incense that I used.

The shots below are the final set of my favourite images.

Plain Smoke - no colour changes were done
Graceful lady blowing smoke ring - no colour changes were done

Coloured Smoke - Altered in Photoshop using a photo filter adjustment layer

Alien - Altered in Photoshop using photo filter adjustment layers

Dragon - Altered in Photoshop using photo filter adjustment layers

Beauty and the Beast - Altered in Photoshop using photo filter adjustment layers
In the end I really enjoyed doing this and seeing the results. However be warned sorting through nearly 300 photos to find good ones take a lot of time!

My friend Vincent LETERRIER recently suggested I use a f/10 aperture rather than the f/5.6 so it seems that I will return again to this topic - hopefully in the next few days :-)

Please feel free to leave comments or questions below or email them to me.

Off Topic: Photoshop Filters

2008-06-19T07:21:00.000-07:00

Just a fun post today.

I use Adobe Photoshop less and less these days as I become more reliant on using Abode Lightroom to handle my RAW files and work flow. Of course I am also trying to get a better picture in camera rather than hoping that I will be able to enhance it later in Photoshop - which I used to do a lot!

However, I recently took some photos of staff from our local church and decided I would use Photoshop to enhance the portraits as well as creating a fun group photo.

This is the original group photo I took:
The next photo is a simple Gaussian blur with the faces of each person masked off. The layer was then changed to overlay and given about a 50% opacity. I also added in a saturation adjustment layer with +10 saturation.
The next photo was a fun photo. I have never had a reason or seen a need to use the Stained Glass filter in Photoshop, but I thought that it would be appropriate to use for a group picture of people who worked for the Church. I had to play around with the settings a lot to get the balance between the size of the glass and the thickness of the black lines. I also used a saturation adjustment layer to enhance the stain glass colours by adjusting the saturation to +100!

The image by itself may not be spectacular but I feel that, shown with the original photo and in the context of the nature of the photo, the filter worked well in this instance.

For the portrait shots I also decided to give the typical soft look using the Gaussian blur filter. The first photo below shows the original shot, which is very clear and crisp, as I was using my Canon 70-200mm F/4 L USM IS lens (which is totally awesome!). This crispness and clarity is normally exactly what I am looking for, but for portraits it reveals every and any blemish in the skin.

This original portrait of Herminia is very nice and reveals a beautiful face and smile with gorgeous eyes. However when I zoomed to 100% I discovered on each of the portraits I had taken the skin was just too crisp and needed a bit of assistance in smoothing it out (which is why models in shoots where make-up).
To enhance the photo I basically focussed on working with the skin. I started by duplicating the layer and applying a typical Gaussian blur filter using a radius of 9 (due to the large size of the image) and then gave it a 45% opacity. I then added a mask layer to this and masked the eyes and mouth to keep them crisp.

Once I had completed the masking I added in a saturation adjustment layer set to +10, and then a levels adjustment layer to make it slightly brighter.

In the end this little project has rekindled my relationship with Photoshop, which had kind of died down since I purchased Lightroom. Recently I have focused on trying to improve my photography by getting the best picture possible out of the camera, and have been enjoying the results of my effort. I realize now though that Photoshop, when used appropriately, is still a very useful tool which can help change a good image into an even better one.

NOTE: 99.99% of the time Photoshop will not be able to help change a bad photo into a better one. User be warned :-)

Please feel free to leave comments or questions below or email them to me.

Strobist PH: First Meet Up - Makati, Philippines

2008-06-18T03:26:00.000-07:00

After about three months since Brian Kitane and I, met online through Strobist.com, we finally had our first Strobist Philippines meet up.

After we first met we unearthed many other Strobists here in the Philippines, who had been lurking in the background, each of whom was excited about there being a bunch of people right here and who had a similar ~~addiction~~ passion.

There was a lot of excitement about the first meet, and we initially started off planning something too complex. Eventually we got down to a basic agenda:

Get to know each other
Everyone have a try at something
Have lots of fun.

I'm glad to say with confidence that all three goals were achieved. I know that I personally learned a lot from watching everyone and it was fun getting to know the people.

The following shots were my favourite which I took:

Group Shot
We'd seen that many of the other meets around the world included a group shot so we decided create our own group shot.
Actually it was my camera, but Marco Malaca was the man who set the shot up
Strobist Information: Lots of flashes - Canon triggered by Pocket Wizard, Nikon triggered remotely

The "David Hobby" concept
These shots was inspired by David Hobby's Flickr avatar. All we were missing was the cool Apple logo on the back on the notebook!

Strobist Information: Bare Nikon SB-800 behind backdrop
Bare Canon 580EX II bouncing off notebook screen covered with white paper
Snooted Nikon SB-800 with 8" Honl Snoot on front of the notebook

Strobist Information: Bare Nikon SB-800 behind backdrop
Bare Canon 580EX II bouncing off notebook screen covered with white paper

The Portrait
These shots were taken as standard head shots for some of the people who attended. Strobist Information: Nikon SB-800 with 1/4" Speed Grid right back
Nikon SB-800 with 1/8" Speed Grid left back
Canon 580EX II through Lastolite EzyBox front

The next shot included an umbrella which caused a lot more grief than we had anticipated to get it lit well.
Strobist Information: Nikon SB-800 with 1/4" Speed Grid right back
Nikon SB-800 with 1/8" Speed Grid left back
Canon 580EX II through Lastolite EzyBox front
Canon 580EX II with Gobo behind pointing at umbrella

Strobist Information: Nikon SB-800 with 1/4" Speed Grid right back
Nikon SB-800 with 1/8" Speed Grid left back
Canon 580EX II through Lastolite EzyBox front

Strobist Information: Nikon SB-800 with 1/4" Speed Grid right back
Nikon SB-800 with 1/8" Speed Grid left back
Canon 580EX II through Lastolite EzyBox front

The Clam Shot
I had just purchased a Lastolite EzyBox and Tri-Grip and wanted to try them out with the simple head shot. These are my mug shots :-)

Strobist Information: Canon 580EX II through Lastolite EzyBox front
Lastolite Tri-Grip Reflector (Gold)

Strobist Information: Canon 580EX II through Lastolite EzyBox front

There are many more shots from the other participants which can be found at Strobist PH. If you're living in the Philippines and would like to become part of the Philippine Strobist group head over to Strobist PH where you'll be able to join and get the latest updates on the activities and meets.

Please feel free to leave comments or questions below or email them to me.

Strobist Lighting 102: Assignment - Balance

2008-06-17T08:19:00.000-07:00

The assignment from the course Lighting 102 was technically supposed to be a shot which balanced ambient and flash lights that makes a difference to someone. I discovered that the church I attend here in Manila, Philippines, was in the process of redesigning their web site and needed photos of their administration staff to put on their website.

So during a talk with one of the Pastors here I offered to take the photos of the administration staff as a group and individual portraits to put on their website (and I'm also planning to produce print outs for each of the staff as a surprise).

This was my first 'portrait session' and I was very nervous, mainly because I was worried about wasting a lot of time getting a correct exposure (and making a fool of myself with the end results being a set of really bad portraits).

In the end I used a relatively simple setup for both shots. The group shot was taken from a balcony looking down on the group with three lights left, center and right of the group.

If I had more time I would have tried raising the lights more and putting them all on Stofen filters or umbrellas. The group were really fun to work with and were willing to try new things to get a fun group photo.

For the portraits I placed the main light center right of the camera with a Lastolite EzyBox soft box with a 580EX II set to @1/16 50mm. For the kicker placed camera left at the back I used a 580EX II set to @1/64 @105mm with a Honl 1/4" Speed Grid. Lastly I used a 430EX set to @1/8 50mm with Stofen filter and flag to stop it affecting the image. If I shot this again I would try to drop the background down a stop and may try and play with the kicker's position and power.

Of all the photos I took, the two groups shots above and the five portraits below are my favorites:

All the shots were taken with a Canon 30D with a 70-200mm f/4 IS USM lens and Pocket Wizards.

Please feel free to leave comments or questions below or email them to me.

Using Guide Numbers with Multiple Strobes

2008-06-09T16:14:00.000-07:00

This is my final article on using Guide Numbers with external flash units. My goal of these articles has been to help new and infrequent users of their flashes / strobes to get close to a good starting point as possible in terms of exposure. From the starting point it should very quick to get to the exact exposure you're trying to achieve.

I've had a number of comments in the Strobist Discussion forums from people who disagree with using guide numbers to calculate exposures. But in the end I feel that guide numbers - used as guides - give a good estimate. Which is why I've tried to show the "proof of the pudding" in this series of articles.

Using Guide Number tables that I wrote about also allows you to enter in Guide Number that you feel are more realistic and use these for initial setups. I'm hoping to get my hands on a few different light meters and try and calculate a more accurate set of guide numbers - if anyone has a set of GN's that they feel are more "accurate" please send me an email with the details for me to test.

So for this last article I wanted to test the theory of combining flash units and light modifiers and using the Guide Numbers I had calculated in my previous article. So here goes...

Single Flash
1 x 580 EX II flash - Camera Right
Bare light
1/250th @f22 - metered for -2 Stops against the sky.
WB set to Tungsten

Dual Flash
2 x 580 EX II flash - Camera Right
Bare light
1/250th @f22 - metered for -2 Stops against the sky.
WB set to Tungsten

Duel Flash (CTO-Full)
2 x 580 EX II flash - Camera Right
Bare light with CTO-Full gel
1/250th @f22 - metered for -2 Stops against the sky.
WB set to Tungsten

Duel Flash (CTO-Full)
2 x 580 EX II flash - Camera Right
Bare light with CTO-Full gel
1/250th @f22 - metered for -2 Stops against the sky.
WB set to Tungsten

Duel Flash - Mixed (CTO-Full)
1 x 580 EX II flash - Camera Right
1 x 430 EX flash - Camera Right
Bare light with CTO-Full gel
1/250th @f22 - metered for -2 Stops against the sky.
WB set to Tungsten

Duel Flash - Mixed (CTO-Full)
I thought it was three flash units but one didn't fire
1 x 580 EX II flash - Camera Right
1 x 430 EX flash - Camera Right
Bare light with CTO-Full gel
1/250th @f22 - metered for -2 Stops against the sky.
WB set to Tungsten

Triple Flash - Mixed (CTO-Full)
2 x 580 EX II flash - Camera Right
1 x 430 EX flash - Camera Right
Bare light with CTO-Full gel
1/250th @f22 - metered for -2 Stops against the sky.
WB set to Tungsten

Triple Flash - Mixed (Stofen)
2 x 580 EX II flash - Camera Right
1 x 430 EX flash - Camera Right
Stofen Filter with CTO-Full gel
1/250th @f22 - metered for -2 Stops against the sky.
WB set to Tungsten

Triple Flash - Mixed (Stofen)
2 x 580 EX II flash - Camera Right
1 x 430 EX flash - Camera Right
Stofen Filter with CTO-Full gel
1/250th @f22 - metered for -2 Stops against the sky.
WB set to Tungsten

I hope you have enjoyed reading these articles and have removed the fear many people have of using guide numbers. In the end the above pictures are not perfect but I feel are good starting points for a photo shoot.

Please feel free to leave comments or questions below or email them to me.

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