Copyright Scott Bourne 2011 - All Rights Reserved

I posted this image a few days ago and one of my readers wrote a 3,200 word expose on how I was a horrible photographer because his high school photography teacher (Yep I am being schooled by a 17-year-old) told him that under NO circumstance should you ever fail to expose for detail in the highlights.

Sorry junior – but your high school photography teacher is wrong – if that is indeed what he said. Sometimes it’s just absolutely, positively okay to let the highlights go. I happen to think this photo is a perfect example of that.

The idea of the shot was simple. This was a model posing as a vampire set against a typical Louisiana living room wall, vis a vis “True Blood.” We had two Spiderlite TD5 Light Heads to light the scene from the right and left. Each was used without light modifier as a “bare bulb.” We had one addition Spiderlite TD5 Light Head in a softbox as the main overhead.

Since the model was supposed to be a super-natural being and oh yeah – dead – I thought that in addition to the great make-up job designed to make a pretty girl look dead and menacing, overexposing would help tell the story even better. So that’s what I did. This is about one and one-half stops too hot. There’s detail where you need it, but everywhere else the highlights go waaaaaaay past 255 and I am totally fine with that.

I am not saying you should do this all the time. I am saying that when you can articulate with specificity, a good reason to let the highlights go – no worries.

Do understand the rules. Do understand why and how you want to break them. But don’t be constrained by them. I understand that not everyone will like my interpretation of this shot. But that’s okay. I liked it. The model liked it. The makeup artist liked it. That’s good enough for me even if the high school photography teacher doesn’t like it.

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This post sponsored by X-Rite Color and the ColorChecker Passport

In recent years photojournalism has been all the rage. Just capture the day or moment as it happens. Honestly that is wonderful style of photography that many people enjoy. The problem is, everyone’s doing it. With so many new photographers in the market today, it’s imperial that we set ourselves apart from the crowd. With that being said lets ask ourselves honestly. How many times have our wedding clients not wanted any formal photographs? How many times have our portrait clients asked; “What should I do”? In these situations we cannot simply rely on photojournalism. We must be able to instruct our clients how to stand, how to hold their shoulders back, we as professional photographers need to tell our clients how to look their best. It’s time for us to take control and make the magic happen.

Know your client: Most people don’t think of this when they think of posing. This is the first step in creating a pose. We need to understand our client’s personality; we need to capture who they are. Establishing a relationship with our clients will not only help us understand what it is they want, it will help build trust. Trust is crucial when it comes to photographing clients. I can’t tell you how many times I have wanted to do something funky, and then get a strange look from the client. Then I just say “Trust The Photographer”. Because I have already established a relationship with the client, they are more willing to “Trust Me”.

Here are some ideas for posing engagement sessions

When you’re posing a couple for an engagement session, remember they’re in love. They want cool artistic images, but they also want some nice romantic images that show their love for one another.

In this image I had my clients lie on the ground and wrap up tight. Of course they didn’t mind! Let you clients have fun with the pose. Remember just because we are posing people, it doesn’t mean they have stiff and boring. Always be willing to go above and beyond the norm.

From this pose we can change our angle and have the couple move around slightly to easily create a few more images. Which is always great, because changing the pose just a little can completely change the image. Tell your clients how good they look. This is going to automatically make them look at you, and then almost always they will look back at each other and smile.

Now just have your clients sit up for the final image in this series. (He actually grabbed his fiancé and rolled her over top of him. That’s why they are laughing, and she is on the other side of him.) Let you clients have fun, and embrace what they do. Posing is about interacting and having fun more than just telling someone what to do.

Two quick poses you can do every time. Look at me, look at each other! This gives them a photo that Mom is sure to love. Plus they have a shot that looks candid, the photo looks natural and doesn’t look posed, but it reality it was. Something important to remember in posing: No matter how posed the shot is, we always want it to look comfortable and natural.

Don’t be afraid to add some background to you shot. Give your clients some space and take in the scenery. Clients are going to want some artistic photos as well.

Notice the pose in this image. They are not facing me. I have there bodies turned toward each other with them looking at me. This will always help slim your clients.

Get two images from one pose. I almost always have my clients pose where the girl is leaning into they guy. Whether it be sitting or standing. It’s a nice relaxing pose that looks very comfortable. And you can always get two images from this one pose. Simply zoom out and give the image a new look and a new feel.

Now when I think; “what do my clients want to look like in an image”? Usually I think they want to look cool. So you always have to set up a cool looking pose. This doesn’t have to be a pose where they are close together. Just brake them a part and make them look cool!

Travis Hill is photographer from Baltimore Maryland. See more of his work at his studio site, his posing blog and on Facebook.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Engagement Portrait Posing Tips

Christine Lee Smith is the owner and principal photographer of Christine Lee Smith Photography in Long Beach, California. Christine not only has a passion for her clients but also for the photographer community, as the Long Beach PUG Leader and an upcoming presenter at PartnerCon 2010. Click here to learn more about Christine and her PartnerCon shooting workshop.

Photography is one of those weird arts, like music, that requires both creative talent and the ability to understand some math (ugh!). Don’t be discouraged just yet, because if this dyslexic can figure out how to shoot in manual, I know you can do it, too.

We ought to learn to shoot in manual and control the camera’s settings, because we can discern things like the difference between backlit scenes, a run away toddler, and a race car but the camera (or Program Mode) cannot.

Since our goal is a creatively composed photograph with appropriate exposure, there are three primary settings we must master. We’ll cover additional settings at another time. What follows is a quick start guide to demystify the complex settings of shooting in manual.

Let’s think of exposure like this triangle.

The big three are: shutter, aperture and ISO.

Good exposure is generally defined as maintaining details in both the highlight and shadow areas of the photograph. It’s achieved by learning to manipulate each element based on your subject and surroundings (which we’ll look at next time).

Let’s take a brief look at each element.

Shutter – controls “how long” light is allowed in your sensor. Shutter speed is determined based on two things: 1) how much movement you want to be visible in the photograph, and 2) how much available light is present.

Aperture – controls “how much” light is allowed in to reach your camera’s sensor. It is determined by, again 1) how much available light you have, and 2) how much of your photograph you want in focus and sharp.

ISO – controls how sensitive your sensor is to all this light coming in. You can loosely relate it to your eyes when putting on, or taking off, sunglasses.

Next time we’ll look more in-depth at how these elements and how they give you amazing control over your exposure!

I hope you can join us at PartnerCon this November, where we’ll practice shooting in manual together on Thursday from 9am-11am with a couple of live models in New Orleans! I will also be available for scheduling private one-on-one learning sessions. You can contact me at christine@clsphotography.com for rates and details.

A week from today I’ll be giving away a Canon 5D MK II with my friends at ScanCafe.

I have ANOTHER Canon 5D MK II w/24-105 L lens and ColorMunki & ColorChecker Passport that I’m giving away with my friends at X-Rite.

Be sure to get in on both these contests, and as always…there are more to come.

Good luck.

The company first introduced a twin screen compact camera with the ST550 late in 2009. I have to admit the idea got to me!

Now we see a similar camera – the Samsung 2View TL210 (also known as the PL150 in some parts of the world): twin LCD, 12.4 megapixel capture, 5x optical zoom (tho’ not a Schneider optic this time) and all for a little over half the XT550’s price.

Samsung 2View TL210/PL150 Features

The maximum image size is 4000×3000 pixels, or 34×25cm as a print. Movies? You can shoot MPEG4 video at sizes up to 1280×720 pixels and view them via an HDMI output.

Although the PL150’s price is bargain basement it doesn’t look it: a piano finish gloss black casing gives it an ultra smart look and of course, as a compact, it’s light and easily pocketable.

The basic exposure programs are auto, smart auto and Program AE; selectable on the camera, are two scene modes — night and beauty shot (to hide facial blemishes) — while ten more are selectable via the finder.

The twin screens have been given some extra functionality: in use the camera can recognise two faces in shot; with the self timer in play, a countdown appears on screen; for kids’ shots the PL150 delightfully runs a shot cartoon on the front screen. And don’t forget you can shoot a movie with the front screen active. Make great Web clips.

The camera can automatically trigger the camera to take a photo when a smile is lurking! And of course there is face detection and face recognition (up to 10 people).

ISO Settings

At ISO 80 the definition is acceptable, as are the noise levels.

At ISO 800 definition is already poor, while the noise level is rising. Not a useable setting.

At ISO 1600 noise is very high, definition poor. Not good!

At ISO 3200 the picture quality is unacceptable: high noise and poor definition.

Distortion

Not bad. No problems at the zoom’s wide end but there was a little pincushion distortion at the tele end of the zoom.

Startup

The camera was ready to shot two second after startup; follow on shots came in as fast as I could press the button.

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I get the feeling this camera was made down to a low price. The ISO tests tell it all!

Quality: Low resolution and high noise make this a good buy only if you are really stretched financially.

Why you would buy it: attractive budget price; twin screen feature; simple to use.

Why you wouldn’t: below average picture quality.

Vale for money if you are not too demanding on picture quality. An ideal child’s first camera.

Specifications

Image Sensor: 12.4 million effective pixels.
Metering: Multi zones, centre-weighted, spot.
Sensor Size: 7.79mm CCD.
Lens: f3.3-5.9/4.9-24.5mm (27-135mm as 35 SLR equivalent).
Shutter Speed: 8 to 1/2000 second.
Memory: micro SD/microSDHC cards plus 30MB internal memory.
Image Sizes (pixels): 4000×3000, 3984×2656, 3840×2160, 3264×2448, 2560×1920, 2048×1536, 1920×1080, 1024×768.
Movies: 1280×720, 640×480, 320×240 at 15/30/60 fps.
Rear LCD Screen: 7.6cm LCD (230,000 pixels).
Front LCD screen: 3.8cm. (61,000 pixels).
File Formats: JPEG, MPEG4, WAV.
ISO Sensitivity: Auto, 80 to 3200.
Interface: USB 2.0, HDMI, AV.
Power: Rechargeable lithium ion battery, DC input.
Dimensions: 99.2×59x19.9 WHDmm.
Weight: 136.6 g (without battery and card).
Price: Get a price on the Samsung PL150/TL210 DualView at Amazon.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Samsung 2View TL210/PL150 [REVIEW]

Location based check-in type services are this year’s overhyped topic – with good reason. While you may not understand why someone wants to be the mayor of their barber shop, you do need to recognize the behavior that social location services such as Gowalla, Foursquare, Yelp! and Facebook Places represents for the local business.

Shoppers these days are using the Internet to find everything locally and increasingly using mobile devices, services and apps to effectively bypass even the web to find a merchant. What that means is that local small businesses need to find ways to tap into the behavior and not necessarily try to ride the hype wave to Foursquare fame.

Below are five ways the local small businesses can capture their own personalized version of social location behavior and tap what may be the ultimate online to offline combo to produce sales.

Create virtual rewards programs – Rewards programs such as those offered by most coffee shop via punch cards or large retailers like Eddy Bauer have been around for years, but smart offerings by folks like PlacePop are making the punch card concept an easy virtual or online play. Merchants can offer their own version of a check in and capture rich data on their most loyal customers.

Ride the group buying craze – If you’re not familiar with group coupon buying services like Groupon, then you’re probably not reading this blog. Facebook app maker WildFire offers small businesses the ability to create their own group buying offers and take advantage of the viral and social nature of this play to create local Facebook engagement.

Google Places coupons – When local shoppers do turn to a search engine for local shopping they often uncover your Google Places Page (or at least you should be working to make sure they do) Google has a handy coupon tool that automatically creates mobile versions of your coupons and offer. Here’s more information on Google Places Mobile Coupons

Advertise on mobile coupon networks – You can also place your ads on Mobile coupon networks and get distribution of your coupons across many local sites.

Make your own game – The game playing aspect of many of social location biggies is an aspect that should not be overlooked when trying to develop your own strategy. The web app SCVNGR is a tool that allows you to create your own game and have it related to verified checkins for a specific QR code. This would be pretty cool for a merchant association to use to create their scavenger hunt check in game.

And, of course, make sure your business is listed with the major players – Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places

Copyright Scott Bourne 2005 - All Rights Reserved

While I’ve spent a great deal of time over the last two years studying and shooting video on the hybrid DSLRs, I have to admit there’s one big advantage still photography has over video – at least for me personally. That is the ability to isolate the most powerful moments.

When you watch a video, you see many moments (anywhere from 24-30 typically) per second. It’s hard to isolate in your brain one precise moment and study it.

When you view a photograph – it’s as if time stood still for that moment. You get to really, really look deeply into that precise moment in time and study its inherent power. You get the chance to revel in it. You get the chance to marvel at it. You get the chance to catalog it in your brain forever. You get to celebrate it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen plenty of moving, emotional, powerful video. But there’s just something special about still photography’s ability to capture that “defining” moment as Henri Cartier-Bresson said.

Most of you know that I love photographing birds. One of the advantages of photographing birds with still cameras is that you get to see them in a particularly intimate moment. The final flap of a wing before landing – the  capture of a fish from the lake – the feeding of a chick…all these moments “fly” by in real life at a pace that is so fleeting, you rarely see it or notice it.

Thanks to the power of photography to capture and isolate the most powerful moment, I’ve seen and studied things I never before knew existed. And one of the real advantages of that is I get to relive those moments over and over through the images I made. In the case of the photo above, we see why you don’t want to mess with a peregrine falcon – especially if you’re a pigeon!

I’ve written here before of our obligation to make sure our images are the best we can make them. These moments – these powerful moments that we capture – they are history for future generations. They are the present for us here and now, but later, after everyone who is currently reading this post is gone, the images will live on.

Make sure you remember this the next time you photograph a child or a bride or a bird or a car or a house or a sunset, etc. Remember that the capture of that powerful moment has more power than you may know.

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This post sponsored by X-Rite Color and the ColorChecker Passport

Image by Andrew®

Our last community workshop gave one of our readers some great tips on how to approach photographing a model so I’ve decided to post another reader question. This one is a question I get quite a bit – how do I photograph the birth of a baby?

Here’s the latest question from one of our readers – Drew.

“My wife and I are expecting the birth of our new baby daughter in two weeks time and I’m wondering if you might have any advice on how to photograph the birth?

It’s such a special time for us as family that we want to capture it somehow but I’m a little nervous about how to do it tastefully, meaningfully and without my camera dominating the event.”

I know not everyone will have experience in this one and that there are probably different opinions on whether people would take a camera into this situation – but if you’ve got some advice or tips we’d love to hear them.

What advice do you have for Drew?

PS: As a dad of two and an avid photographer I’ve found myself asking the same question. I know some families choose to make a birth a camera free event and can respect that – while others take an ‘access all areas’ approach. In our situation we did take and use the camera but were certainly not using it during the seconds babies arrived.

One piece of advice that I did share a while back here on dPS that came from a friend who took a lot of photos through the birth of his kids was – sometimes images in black and white can be good for this type of situation where color images can be be quite overpowering and graphic. My friend took a lot of photos during the birth of his babies but they were so vivid in color that it was very confronting. He experimented with converting some to black and white and found that the images were still very powerful but not quite as confronting.

The other piece of advice I’d give is to talk about it before labor starts! You probably want both of you on the same page before you start pointing cameras on a day like that!

Looking forward to hearing your tips on photographing the birth of a baby!

Post from: Digital Photography School – Photography Tips.

How Would You Photograph a Birth Scene?

Copyright Scott Bourne 2002 - All Rights Reserved

It’s a frequent question at Photofocus. It goes something like this: “When I crop an image to look the way I want, it often doesn’t fit in a standard frame. What should I do?”

My answer is simple – ignore the standard frame sizes.

Shooting in standard aspect ratios like 4×5 (which will in turn when enlarged, fit 8×10″ frames) is limiting. If you as the photographic storyteller thinks the image looks better in a 4.234×7.233 aspect ratio then so be it. Who are the frame companies to tell you how to size your photo?

Excuse me but the photograph is what matters – not the frame. Who goes out and shoots a wonderful waterfall shot with the FRAME in mind? The frame is subservient to the photograph. The frame’s job is to simply support the photo – not the other way around.

Yes, there are some beautiful frames out there. And yes there are some framers who are nothing short of artists themselves. But the role of the frame is to support the photograph, so in every way, the frame is less important than the image.

The practical problem here is that custom frames cost more than standard frames. For this reason, many photographers find themselves hamstrung and stuck in traditional aspect ratios. But there is a workaround.

Step up in size. If your image would typically fit in a 16×20″ frame, but it’s a bit too long on one side, step up to the next standard size frame and simply purchase a custom mat. You can have a custom mat computer cut at many hobby and frame stores for $20. Then you buy the standard frame. Insert the custom mat and you’ve saved a ton over having a custom frame built.

As for displaying images on the web who cares? Whether it’s 2×3, 4×5, 6×9 or somewhere in between, the aspect ratio shouldn’t define the edges of your photographs – your vision should.

There is one exception to this rule. If you’re giving a print as a gift to someone else and you are NOT including a frame, then stick with standard aspect ratios so that the recipient of the gift doesn’t have to jump through many hoops to get the piece framed.