Art of Photography

How to See Bokeh

noreply@blogger.com (Art of Photography) — Thu, 9 Dec 2010 21:38:00 +0700

In Existing Images

Look for points of light in the background. Perfect subjects for this are distant points of light at night or sometimes light shining through leaves or specular reflections in daylight.

If they all blend together nicely, that's nice bokeh. If they are perfect little circles, then that's neutral bokeh. If they are all swimmy and look little little rolled up condoms or donuts, then that's bad bokeh.

If they all are regular polygons that tells you the shape of the lens diaphragm. Yes, you can actually tell how many blades the lens's diaphragm had!

If they are perfectly round in the middle of the image and oval or lentil shaped at the sides that tells you the image was probably shot at full aperture.

If they are all flattened ellipsoids (vertical ovals about twice as tall as they are wide) then that tells you that the image was shot with an anamorphic lens. You'll see this in cinemascope motion pictures, not in still photographs.

In Your Lens

Find a point of light in the distance. You can do this easily at night by finding a distant point streetlight, or you can do it indoors by taking the reflector off of a Mag-Light flashlight and just setting it up on the other side of the room.

Now look at the ground glass as you focus. If you see perfect round disks your lens has neutral bokeh, if you see soft-edged shapes you have good bokeh, and if you see doughnuts you have bad bokeh.

If you see something other than neutral bokeh you'll see the quality of the bokeh change as you focus both in front of and in back of the point of light. Of course you can't usually focus beyond a distant point of light, unless you have a view camera or a lens that allows focusing beyond infinity.

What is Bokeh??

noreply@blogger.com (Art of Photography) — Wed, 8 Dec 2010 22:07:00 +0700

Bokeh describes the rendition of out-of-focus points of light.

Bokeh is different from sharpness. Sharpness is what happens at the point of best focus. Bokeh is what happens away from the point of best focus.

Bokeh describes the appearance, or "feel," of out-of-focus areas. Bokeh is not how far something is out-of-focus, bokeh is the character of whatever blur is there.

Unfortunately good bokeh doesn't happen automatically in lens design. Perfect lenses render out-of-focus points of light as circles with sharp edges. Ideal bokeh would render each of these points as blurs, not hard-edged circles. Mathematicians would say the intensity distribution of the blur circles are rectangular in perfect lenses, and good bokeh would prefer a Gaussian distribution. This is one area in which physics doesn't mirror what we want artistically.

Differing amounts of spherical aberration alter how lenses render out-of-focus points of light, and thus their bokeh. The word "bokeh" comes from the Japanese word "boke" (pronounced bo-keh) which literally means fuzziness or dizziness.

A technically perfect lens has no spherical aberration. Therefore a perfect lens focuses all points of light as cones of light behind the lens. The image is in focus if the film is exactly where the cone reaches its finest point. The better the lens, the tinier this point gets.

If the film is not exactly where that cone of light reaches its smallest point, then that point of the image is not in focus. Then that point is rendered on film as a disk of light, instead instead of as a point. This disc is also called the "blur circle," or "circle of confusion" by people calculating depth-of-field charts. In a lens with no spherical aberration this blur circle is an evenly illuminated disc. Out of focus points all look like perfect discs with sharp edges. (OK, at smaller apertures where the image is in pretty good focus you may see additional "Airy" rings around the circle, but that's a diffraction pattern we're not discussing here.) This isn't optimal for bokeh, since as you can imagine the sharp edge of these discs can start to give definition to things intended to be out-of-focus.

There are no perfect lenses, so one usually does not see these perfect discs.

Real lenses have some degree of spherical aberration. This means that in practice, even though all the light coming through the lens from a point on the subject may meet at a nice, tiny point on the film, that the light distribution within the cone itself may be uneven. Yes, we are getting abstract here, which is why some denser photographers refuse to try understand bokeh.

Rule of Thirds ( composition )

noreply@blogger.com (Art of Photography) — Fri, 3 Dec 2010 14:03:00 +0700

The rule of thirds is one of the most basic composition guidelines in photography. The rule of thirds makes use of a natural tendency of the human eye to be more strongly drawn towards certain parts of an image.

What is the Rule of Thirds?
The rule of thirds is an imaginary tic-tac-toe board is drawn across an image to break it into nine equal squares. The four points where these lines intersect are strongest focal points. The lines themselves are the second strongest focal points.

How Do I Use It?

To use the rule of thirds you need to imagine the grid on all of your images as you compose them in the viewfinder. If you have an autofocus camera You can use the autofocus points as references to help you imaging the grid. If you use an LCD screen to compose your images you can make a rule of thirds grid out of a clear sheet of window cling material. Another option is to draw the grid on your viewfinder (not lens) although this may not be easily removed and should be avoided if at all possible. With a little practice you will be able to effectively imagine the grid placement as you shoot.

Does it Matter Which Point I Use?
Which point or line you place your subject on does matter. While any of the points/lines will add emphasis to your subject, some are stronger than others.

When an object is alone in an image, the strongest position is the left hand line. An exception to this is for cultures where information is read right to left, in those cases the right hand line will be strongest.

When a subject is not alone there is a hierarchy of image strength. The subject in the foreground will naturally have more strength than the subject in the background. However, the rule of thirds placement can emphasize or reduce this strength. The bottom right point is the strongest for multiple subjects and the upper left point is the weakest. This theory is often used in movies to convey the emotional dominance of one character over another. Placing a background subject on the right and the foreground subject on the left will confuse the eye and lead to confusion in the viewer about which subject is dominant. This technique is very useful for emotionally-charged images.

Composition

noreply@blogger.com (Art of Photography) — Fri, 3 Dec 2010 13:58:00 +0700

Composition simply means how your image is put together. The greatest subject in the world will not automatically make a great image. You have to know how (and where) to put that image on film.

Photography the Basics

noreply@blogger.com (Art of Photography) — Fri, 3 Dec 2010 09:34:00 +0700

Photography comes from the Greek words meaning "light writing" and first became known back in 1839 by Sir John Herschel. For many years prior to this, people had discovered ways of causing certain chemicals to change color when exposed to light but they did not discover ways of getting the images to remain permanent until later on.

Now photography is a big part of our culture, something that everyone recognizes. Most everyone has family photos lying around their house, many people take these photos on a regular basis, preserving precious memories for years to come. Even if you don't have your own camera, you have seen photos in magazines, used on billboards and advertisements and more.

What is Photography?

Photography is defined as "The art or process of producing images by the action of light on surfaces sensitized by chemical processes." (www.ncpublicschools.org/curriculum/ArtsEd/vglossar.htm)

The average person never has to deal with this technical definition because they take their photographs to a lab to be processed. They simply take pictures with their camera and then drop them off somewhere to be developed. They get their prints back on nice glossy paper that they can then keep to see the images at any time they wish.

There are also instant develop photographs, commonly known as the Polaroid, in which the paper itself contains the chemicals needed and when the paper sits for a few seconds exposed to light the photo will develop. Many people enjoy these because you could view your photo almost instantly but over the years, the quality has improved with other films and many people migrated to other types of cameras.

The common types of film are 35mm and 110. These film rolls come in different speeds that are meant for different lighting and situations and are loaded into your camera, used until the end of the roll and then sent for developing.

What Are the Different Types of Photography?

Photography is more than just a fabric of the average family's memories, it has become an art form taking on many different types. Some types of photography are artistic photography, photojournalism, documentary photography, portrait photography, event photography, family photography, nature photography, advertising photography, underwater photography, satellite photography and more. Each of these types has many different directions in which they can go.

Photography is a common hobby or pastime for many people. It is a career for many other people. There are so many different venues of it. One of the most recent revelations in photography is the digital camera and digital photo. In an age of computers and computer technology, digital photos have become increasingly popular. People no longer have to deal with film and developing because digital photos can be downloaded onto a computer and viewed instantly.

Digital photos can be shared on the web and through email. They can also be saved on CDs. Many digital cameras come with LCD screens so the photos can be viewed from the camera itself. You see what the picture looks like instantly instead of waiting for developing. Digital cameras are advancing every day and new technology is released on each one. Lower quality ones can be picked up at a local retail store for about $15 now. These often do not contain flash and the quality is not as great. Other digital cameras can range anywhere from $20 to $1,000. The most high-tech camera for normal individual use is about $200. This may seem like a lot but when compared to the price of film and developing, you can save a lot by going this route. You can also send as many copies of your photos as you wish through email and the web so copies are unlimited. You can even print copies of your digital photographs from your computer.

Photography has come a long way since its early days but its popularity has not waned. It will likely be with us for thousands of years to come.

What is a Camera?

noreply@blogger.com (Art of Photography) — Fri, 3 Dec 2010 09:01:00 +0700

Camera is a tool. No different than a wood carver's chisels. The chisels do not make finely crafted artwork, the wood carver does. It is the same way with your camera. The camera does not make the photograph, you do. Never allow yourself to feel like the camera is in control. The camera is your tool and you must use it as a tool.

Broken down to its essential elements, the camera is a box that controls the amount of light that reaches a piece of light sensitive film or other surface inside. The original cameras did not even have a glass lens. The first cameras used a tiny hole in the front of the box to allow in light and to focus the image onto the viewing surface. This is the same principle as when children punch a pinhole into a piece of paper in order to watch a solar eclipse projected through the pinhole and onto the ground.

Today's cameras use glass lenses to focus and capture light much more quickly and to allow us to magnify images. Film is much more sensitive and finely detailed than the first film surfaces and now we also have digital sensors that sometimes take the place of film. Today's cameras also have shutters that control the light from reaching the film or sensor with the touch of a button and have powerful flashes to help illuminate scenes. The camera has come a long way from its humble beginnings, but it is still just a box that controls the amount of light that reaches a piece of film.

Photography Quotations

noreply@blogger.com (Art of Photography) — Thu, 2 Dec 2010 21:44:00 +0700

Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.
Ansel Adams

Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.
Ansel Adams

Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment.
Ansel Adams

It is my intention to present - through the medium of photography - intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators.
Ansel Adams

I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do - that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse.
Diane Arbus

Music is the doorway that has led me to drawing, photography, and writing.
Layne Staley

Photography helps people to see.
Berenice Abbott

Computer photography won't be photography as we know it. I think photography will always be chemical.
Annie Leibovitz

Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death.
Berenice Abbott

Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.
Berenice Abbott

"I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term -- meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching -- there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster." - Ansel Adams

"A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know." - Diane Arbus

"If I were just curious, it would be very hard to say to someone, I want to come to your house and have you talk to me and tell me the story of your life. I mean people are going to say, You're crazy. Plus they're going to keep mighty guarded. But the camera is a kind of license. A lot of people, they want to be paid that much attention and that's a reasonable kind of attention to be paid." - Diane Arbus

"The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking." - Brooks Atkinson

"It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter, because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the ordinary." - David Bailey

"The photographic image... is a message without a code." - Roland Barthes

Definition of Photography

noreply@blogger.com (Art of Photography) — Thu, 2 Dec 2010 21:42:00 +0700

The art or process of producing images of objects on photosensitive surfaces.
The art, practice, or occupation of taking and printing photographs.
A body of photographs.