Learn how to make subtle adjustments to an image to make the  blacks really pop!

Have questions or comments about black and white photography? Join the conversation below! 🙂

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In this video snapshot Josh walks us through his process of adjusting the white balance of some digital images that he shot at a recent wedding. He covers the importance of shooting at a consistent temperature to make proofing easier and faster.

Check out the video below to see his process!

Have questions or comments about white balance? Join the conversation below! 🙂

The post White Balance – Video: Snapshot appeared first on Shoot Fly Shoot.

Check out the video below to hear his thoughts and learn his work-around:

While I was shooting some images of my wife, Layla, for her new t-shirt design, I decided to turn her around and try a couple of shots facing the sun to give you a good visual of the difference the right angle can make. In the first shot, she is facing the sun and in the second shot, she is standing in the exact same spot, but turned around with the sun behind her. The harsh light from the sun puts hard shadows on her face while she is facing it. Simply turning her around made all the difference in the world, and this is a great example of soft light versus hard light.

Have questions or comments about harsh lighting? Join the conversation below! 🙂

The post Harsh Lighting – Video: Snapshot appeared first on Shoot Fly Shoot.

Photoshop and Lightroom can do some crazy cool things and both programs can get really deep. That said, I have found that using some simple actions and filters can really speed up the process without having to be an expert. Below is an image that was shot by one of our Photography 101 students.

(Photo Credit: Peggy Holland)

I love the composition of this shot, but I wanted to see if I could make the image pop a little more by using some filters in Photoshop CS5. The image below is the same shot after editing.

(Photo Credit: Peggy Holland)

Below is another example of an image that I amped up with some warmth and color. I shot this home with my wife, Layla, and you can read more about it HERE. The top image is straight out of the camera. I had my white balance set to Automatic, but it didn’t really capture how warm the room looked that day with the sun coming through the windows. The bottom image is after I did some editing to try and recapture the true feel of the room that day.

I try not to go overboard with the editing, but I do like to go in and add a little life. We teach our process in our Photoshop class, which you can find by clicking HERE.

Do you use a photo editing program to enhance your images?

The post Enhancing Your Photos appeared first on Shoot Fly Shoot.

1. Learn to shoot in manual mode.

I recently came across a study conducted by Sony that showed that nearly 2/3 of DSLR owners never take their cameras out of automatic mode. A lot of those consumers think that if you buy a more expensive camera, it will automatically take better pictures. Unfortunately this is not the case. If you put your DSLR camera into automatic mode you are officially the owner of a very heavy (and expensive) point-and-shoot. The great thing about a DSLR camera is that it gives you control. I shoot a lot of interiors and I love the fact that I can make the image as bright and beautiful as I want. Shooting in manual is not as complicated as you may think either, we’ve had over 1,000 members learn to shoot in manual mode over the last year. I still get excited every time I see someone post their first manual shot in our Facebook group. Here are some shots from some of our first-time manual shooters:

(Photo credit clockwise: Matt Knowlton, Susan Rodgers, Kristin Flanary, Jennifer Martinez)

Learning to shoot in manual mode is a game changer and once you know it, you will always know it. Camera companies will continue to make cameras better and better, with more megapixels and cooler features, but the basics of shooting in manual will never change. Learning how to use ISO, aperture, and shutter speed together is the first step in taking better photographs. Once you learn how to shoot in manual, you’re on your way!

2. Understanding light 

Light is everything when it comes to photography, and it can definitely make or break a shot. One of my a-ha moments was about hard light vs. soft light. Soft light is light that has been diffused or spread out in some way. Light can be diffused a number of different ways, anything from the clouds in the sky diffusing the sun, to the shade of a tree that is blocking the direct sunlight. A lot of lighting setups also come with diffusers that are often called soft boxes. Notice in the top image below how the shade from a tree has created soft light that is spread out very evenly across me, as opposed to the bottom image where the sun is hitting me directly and casting hard shadows.

I would encourage you to start noticing light all around you. Notice how it hits things, and the different hues of light at different times of day. Finding the right light can be one of the biggest challenges of getting the shots you want, but understanding a little bit about light will go a long way to taking better photographs.

3. Lenses

Just like learning to shoot in manual, using great lenses can be a real game changer. I will never forget hanging out with a group of photographers when I was just getting into photography and someone asked me what I was shooting with. I felt a little insecure because everyone there was shooting with Canon 5D’s and I replied that I only had a Canon 30D. He said, “The body doesn’t really matter- it’s all about the lenses, man!”. Turns out, lenses have more to do with the look and feel of your shot than the body of your camera does. Different lenses get different looks and are designed for different types of photography. Lenses also determine the Depth of Field of your shot through aperture, which is awesome for getting the cool blurry background called Bokeh. There are two main type of lenses- prime lenses and zoom lenses. Prime lenses are also called fixed lenses because they are fixed at one focal length only, and don’t have the ability to zoom in and out through different focal lengths like zoom lenses do. The rule of thumb with lenses is that you get what you pay for. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t get a good lens at a good price, it just means that the more expensive lenses are usually built better, and have glass lenses instead of plastic.

4. Post-processing

I don’t know one professional photographer that doesn’t do some kind of enhancement to their photographs through post processing. Josh, who is the other half of Shoot Fly Shoot, owns a film lab that scans film for professional film photographers, and even they run their scans through Lightroom to do some post processing enhancements. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve downloaded my images only to find out that they don’t look as good when I get them on the computer as I remember them looking on the back of my camera. This day and age there are a lot of options available to photographers to help enhance their images.

Everything from Photoshop to Lightroom, I bet your favorite photographer is using one if not both of these programs to enhance their images.

5. Practice, practice, practice

Believe it or not, this may be the most important step of all. One of my favorite photography quotes says “Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst”. You can read every book and take every class on photography in the world (and understanding the basic principals of photography is important) but nothing will speed up your journey like shooting A LOT! I would also encourage you to go out and shoot with friends and other photographers, too. It won’t take as long as you think to knock out those first 10,000 shots! 🙂

Here’s an infographic for quick reference:

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They’re basically just magnifying glasses that screw in onto the filter ring that’s on the front of your lens, and they’re really inexpensive and easy to use.  Here’s a couple of shots that I used the +4 filter on:

It really allows you to get a lot closer than a normal lens would. The only thing you need to make sure of is that you get the correct size filter for the particular lens you’d like to use. For instance, the 24-70 2.8 L Canon lens has a 77mm filter ring, so I would need a 77mm close-up filter. Most lenses have the size of the lens displayed somewhere around the opening of the lens, like this:

Another thing you should look out for is what magnification you need/want. I bought the whole set which has the +1,+2,+4,+10 filters. I have found the +4 is all I need. Oh and one more thing- when you’re shooting macro shots, the closer you get, the more shallow your depth of field is. So if you try to shoot at f2.8, your depth of field will probably be way too shallow. I suggest starting at f4 and experimenting from there.

If you decide to get into macro photography on a serious level, you may want a 1:1 macro lens like the Canon 100 2.8 macro. This lens can get 1:1. Meaning, it zooms so close, a grain of rice will fill the frame of your photograph!

If you’ve ever wanted to shoot really close-up shots but haven’t wanted to spend the money on an expensive close-up lens, these filters may be just what you’re looking for. Happy shooting!

P.S. We would love to see some of the images you take over at our Facebook group! 🙂

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They come in so many rad colors and they have a lot of different book covers to choose from. I recently made a book for my wife of our son.

The website has super easy templates to use if you aren’t so photoshop savvy.  If you are, you can totally make this book as custom as you want. A 50 page 8.5 x 8.5  linen book with a custom book cover is about 70$, that is about $1.25 per page.  

There is something very special about having a print or book in hand of your work. In the digital world we live in, most of our amazing work stays in digital format and hardly ever gets printed. I want to encourage you to make prints and books of your family so you can actually have something to pass down to your children other than a hard drive full of digital images.

I know my wife and I will cherish this book of our little guy for years to come! 🙂

*This is not a sponsored post and we have no affiliation with Artifact Uprising- we just really dig what they do! 🙂

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We launched two more classes this past month, so we wanted to publish a post about each of them here today.

The first new class is called Photoshop Touch Up, and it’s all about re-touching photos of people in Photoshop. We worked as re-touchers for several years before we started our own photography businesses, and we’ve included all of our techniques in the Touch Up class. You can see some examples of the techniques we’ll cover by moving your cursor on and off of the photos below. Everything from how to soften skin, remove blemishes, and add vignette effects…

…to how to reduce redness in eyes without making them look too white…

…to how to tame down fly away hairs, add sparkle to eyes, and whiten teeth…

…to body reshaping:

Our favorite kind of exercise- ha!

If you’re interested in checking out the class, just click on Photoshop Touch Up in the Classes tab in our menu bar.

The cost is $25 and the class is an hour and 40 minutes long. And just like all of our other Photography and Photoshop classes, our Photoshop Touch Up class video is hosted on Vimeo, so once you purchase it, you can watch it at your own pace, as many times as you’d like.

We also launched Photography 102 last month. It’s about all things that “changed the game” for us, and helped take our photography to a new level. Here’s a short overview video that shows all the different topics we cover in the class:

We also explain how to handle pesky, blown-out windows, and how to use a flash to take naturally lit-looking photos of not-so-naturally-lit places and people…

In the portrait photography section, we go on location and Josh breaks down every step of his thought process so that viewers can cut right to the chase when it comes to photographing people…

We’ll also share all of our post processing tips and tricks. Shooting in Raw, and learning how to adjust our Raw files made all the difference in the world, so we packaged up our experience in simple terms that are easy to understand and apply.

We also created 40 different Adobe Camera Raw presets that are included with the class so that if you don’t feel like moving controls to enhance your photos, you can just click one button and the preset will do it for you! Here are a few of the presets that come with the class…

To purchase the class, just click on Photography 102 in the drop down menu under our Classes tab in our menu bar, and if you have any questions- please feel free to let us know, and we’ll be glad to answer them a.s.a.p!

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She had been wanting a new camera bag, so I Googled  “cool camera bags for women“.  Unfortunately, nothing that cool really came up, and I was sort of surprised at how many camera bags are geared toward men. Most of the bags I came across were black, which is cool with me, but I knew my wife wanted something a little more feminine, and that looked more like a purse.

I went to ETSY.com, where you can find all sorts of handmade goodness, and after some searching, I stumbled upon a chevron-patterned bag that looked just like what I thought my wife would want.

But wouldn’t you know it, that particular bag was sold out. (Of course it was – it’s killer!)

I really, really wanted to get her that bag though, so I took a chance and contacted the seller (Darby Mack) who was AWESOME! She wrote me back and said that she would make my wife a bag in time for Christmas.  I was blown away because I had written her on December 18th, (#procrastinator) and sure enough, the bag showed up on my doorstep on December 23rd.

My wife was super happy with the bag. It’s perfect for a DSLR and a few lenses. It also has a few pockets on the inside and outside for all your extra stuff.

Anyway- I just wanted to pass that link along in case anyone else out there was looking for a bag like I was.

Happy New Year!

*This is not a sponsored post and we have no affiliation with Darby Mack’s camera bags- we just dig ’em!

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Let’s start with focal length. Focal length refers to how much you can see through the lens. It’s important to note that the two most common lenses are zoom lenses and prime lenses. A zoom lens has the ability to zoom in or out through a range of different focal lengths. For example, my 17-40mm lens can shoot at both 17mm and 40mm and all points in-between. Whereas a prime (or fixed) lens has only one focal length and cannot zoom. If you want a closer or wider shot with a fixed lens, you have to physically move forward or backward. Let’s take a look at some of the different ranges:

As you can see, 18mm (and lower) have the widest focal lengths and are considered wide angle lenses. Wide angle lenses are great for landscapes and interiors because you can fit a lot into your shot. A 200mm lens would be considered a telephoto lens, and they’re great for zooming into shots that may be further away. To give you an idea of how a shot looks at different focal lengths, I took three shots, standing in the exact same place, with three different focal lengths.

Remember, I stayed standing in the same place when I snapped all three shots. I never backed up, or moved forward. Look how close the 50mm lens is compared to the 10mm lens. Pretty cool, huh?

Now it’s easy to see why 50mm lenses are so popular for shooting portraits. It’s a great lens for capturing closer shots with that beautiful blurry background. And speaking of beautiful blurry backgrounds, that brings us to the second part of choosing the right lens which is ‘Depth of Field’.

Depth of field refers to how much of the image is in focus, and this is accomplished through aperture. Different lenses come with different maximum aperture openings. You can read more about how it actually works here, but for now, the important thing to remember is simply this: The smaller aperture number (f/1.4) equals a more shallow depth of field which makes the blurry background.

So choosing the right lens depends greatly on how you want to final image to look. If your going for an up-close look with a blurry back ground, prime/fixed lenses with wide apertures (f/2.8 or lower) will do the trick, but if you’re shooting a bedroom or bathroom, you’re going to want a wide angle lens that will take in as much as possible without distorting. I shoot most of my interior shots with a 17-40mm lens, how about you?

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