Essential knowledge for Photographers

WATER DROP PHOTOGRAPHY

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0000

I've been having a lot of fun shooting water drops in the past couple of days. I've wanted to do this for years and finally got around to it. I haven't been able to capture the classic falling water drop crashing into a drop bouncing upward yet, but nevertheless I'm pleased with what I've taken so far.

The setup is simple. A plastic bag hangs above a tray of water, and a small pin prick stars the water dropping. I love color, so I put a piece of computer paper smeared with various colors of paint behind the tray. A portable flash is aimed at the paint, not the drops. I used a medium telephoto lens with two extension tubes to fill the frame with the splash, and the flash was used on manual exposure mode set to 1/8th power to reduce the flash duration to 1/8000th of a second to freeze the action. You can see the setup below. Notice how close the flash is to the background. That's necessary because the flash power was reduced so much and by placing the Canon 580EX flash unit close to the painted background, I compensated for that reduction in light. I added food coloring to the falling drops for a color variation.

Focus is critical, so I used a plastic straw positioned exactly where the drops were falling to focus the lens. F/32 insured that the entire drop was sharp.

PORTRAITS ON BLACK PLEXIGLAS

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 22:52:00 +0000

Photographers have used black Plexiglas for a long time to shoot everything from products to flowers to portraits. I just took this portrait of my neighbor's daughter, Grayci, using only one studio light -- a White Lightning strobe and small softbox. The dark reflection from the Plexy adds an elegant and intriguing quality to anything you shoot with it.

This was taken with a Canon 5D Mark II and a 24-105mm lens. The aperture was f/18 and I hand-held the shot.

DEPTH OF FIELD AND MACRO PHOTOGRAPHY

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 01:47:00 +0000

Anyone can be sloppy in their macro technique and blur most or all of the subject. I see this all the time in the online courses I teach for Betterphoto.com. Why do we get close to small subjects? It seems to me we want to capture the intricacy and the beauty of them, and the only way we can do that is by making them as sharp as possible.

Selective focus, i.e. shallow depth of field, has it's place for sure, but if you want to do fine macro photography, in my opinion you need a tripod, a small lens aperture, and most or all of the subjects you shoot should be sharp.

CUT AND PASTE IN PHOTOSHOP

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:05:00 +0000

Photographers use Photoshop in many ways. Some merely enhance images with color and contrast. Others use it to convert color into black and white, and some, like myself, love to create surrealism, fine art, and we like to think beyond the obvious. One of the best ways to do that is to cut and paste one image into another. The image (or I should say images) was taken during the last workshop I gave in Venice, Italy. I shot the background to use as a composite, and I chose one of the costumed models I photographed elsewhere to put in front of the sunrise. This could have been done with fill flash, but it wasn't. I made it to look like it was carefully exposed and composed in one shot, but it's two pictures.

The technique is simple:

1. Select the foreground subject, in this case the costumed model. I used the pen tool to be absolutely precise.

2. Convert the path (made by the pen tool) into a selection by clicking the upper right icon in the paths palette. This opens a submenu and now choose: 'make selection'. In the dialog box that opens, type in 1 pixel. You will now have a selection around the subject.

3. Now use this command: Select > modify > expand. Choose one pixel. This pushes the selection outward so you don't grab any of the original background.

4. Now use Select > modify > feather. Choose 1 pixel in the dialog box.

5. Go to Edit > copy.

6. Activate the background photo and choose Edit > paste.

7. Click on the move tool in the tools palette and move the subject in place.

8. If you need to resize the subject, use Edit > transform > scale.

GEOMETRIC LIGHT TRAILS

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 03:27:00 +0000

I am writing a new issue of Petersen's Photographic Magazine, and it will be about all the cool projects you can do at home. I re-visited a technique I did years ago this afternoon for the magazine project, and I had a lot of fun shooting abstract trails of light. To create the image you see here, I hung a small penlight from a horizontal wooden dowl on a wire and, with the camera pointing up at it in a dark room, I opened the shutter for 25 seconds. I used 200 ISO and f/11 for the exposure, and during the length of time the shutter was open, I placed colored gels over the lens. They weren't of optical quality, but in this case it didn't matter.

BLACK HOLE

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:39:00 +0000

Black holes are places in the Universe where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape. Therefore, it obviously can't be photographed. Until now.

Last night I traveled through the space-time continuum (or it might have been to a county fair) to photograph the spinning lights of the illuminated rides, and one of the abstracts I took looked exactly like what I envision a black hole must look like -- if we could see it. This was taken with a one second exposure, hand held, and I zoomed the lens during the exposure and as the ride was spinning. My white balance was daylight and I used 100 ISO. In Photoshop I changed the color a little and added 'stars', which is merely a photo of glitter sprinkled on black velvet. I blended the two images together using the 'lighten' blend mode. I thought this turned out pretty cool.

PHOTOGRAPHING BUTTERFLIES

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:58:00 +0000

In the online courses I teach at Betterphoto.com, I see a lot of butterfly pictures, particularly in the summer. The biggest problem I see in the students' work is that the depth of field that is too shallow. As you move in close to fill the frame with a small subject, depth of field is lost and the only way to get it back is to use a small lens aperture. That reduces the light, of course, forcing the shutter speed to be slow. No one wants a slow shutter speed when shooting fast-moving insects.

To capture an artistic picture of a butterfly in nature is very, very difficult Depth of field is only one issue. A cluttered background is another, and distracting foregrounds are also a problem. The only way to control the foreground, the background, the depth of field, and the lighting is to capture the butterflies and photograph them under controlled circumstances. This is what I did just an hour ago with the buckeye butterfly you see reproduced here. Here is the procedure I used:

1. I captured the insect with a butterfly net as it was searching for flowers in my garden.
2. I put the butterfly in a small Tupperware container in the refrigerator to cool it down (butterflies can't fly if they get too cold).
3. I waited 10 minutes and then took it out and placed it, gently, on a leaf in my kitchen.
4. Butterflies rest with their wings folded, so I placed a lamp, minus the shade, near the butterfly. After 2 or 3 minutes, the butterfly opened its wings to warm the wing muscles, thinking the light bulb was the sun.
5. I used a Canon ring flash set to ETTL. My 50mm macro lens was set to f/32, and the camera's exposure function was set to manual mode. I placed one extension tube between the camera body and the lens to fill the frame with the buckeye butterfly.

In this way, I had total control and made a perfect image. Might I have tried another type of lighting? Sure, but this is what I wanted for this setup. When I had finished, I released the butterfly outside and wished it a nice day.

CONCOURSE D'ELEGANCE PHOTOGRAPHY

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:47:00 +0000

Last weekend I traveled to the Detroit area specifically to photograph some of the most beautiful cars in the world. Most of the automobiles were classics, from horseless carriages (prior to 1915) to the antiques (up to 1927) through the classics (to World War II). The annual event was held on the grounds at the stately Meadowbrook mansion built by the Dodge family. Of course, I had to deal with hundreds of people and less than ideal backgrounds, so the pictures you see here have had new backgrounds pasted behind each car to make the images look much more beautiful than had I not done this. Over the next week, I'll be uploading more of these to my website in the category Americana and then classic cars. It obviously takes time to do the Photoshop work and make it look flawless, as if I had arranged with each owner to park their vehicle in an ideal location.

Each car has its own history. For example, the rare 1932 Bucciali (only 5 made in the world) was built by a French World War I pilot. The flying stork on the side of the automobile was the emblem of his squadron and it was painted on their bi-wing fighter aircraft.

My favorite car in the show was a 1929 Duesenberg. It was a work of art, and it was thrilling to look at it through my camera. The two-tone red and blue made a stunning visual statement, and the elegant and luxurious lines took my breath away. All of these pictures were taken using a tripod, a low ISO, and a small lens aperture for maximum depth of field.

MACRO PHOTOGRAPHY WITH A RING FLASH

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 01:44:00 +0000

I found this guy in my garden yesterday. It's a red velvet ant, and it was too intriguing to pass up the opportunity to get a good photograph. I recently created a new insect category on my website, and I thought this unique subject would be a perfect addition.

I put the velvet ant into a Tupperware container and then put that in the refrigerator. The insect moved very quickly on the ground, and this made macro photography impossible. By cooling it down, the velvet ant virtually went to sleep. I put a leaf on my kitchen counter and after a few minutes in the refrigerator, I put the insect on the leaf. I used a Canon ring flash to light the small set up, and to fill the frame with the colorful subject I used a 50mm macro lens with one extension tube.

Depth of field is extremely important in macro work, so I set the lens to f/32 and used manual exposure mode on the camera. ETTL on the flash automatically calculated a perfect exposure without even bracketing. I hand held the camera because as soon as the velvet ant warmed up a bit it started moving. I could only get a couple of shots before it became too active again, and then I put it back into the refrigerator for another 3 or 4 minutes until it was knocked out. I repeated this process about five times until I was happy with my pictures, and then I put the insect back into the garden, apparently unaffected by the photo session and the chilly temperature.

NIK COLOR EFEX PRO 3.0

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:10:00 +0000

It's fun to revisit previously taken pictures and try something new with them. I conducted a Photoshop workshop in my home this past weekend, and one of the several plug-ins I demonstrated during the two days was Nik Color Efex Pro. I used this portrait of a Javanese bride taken in 2002, and one of the filters (old photo) I experimented with created a unique and beautiful rendition of the color original that makes it look like a print from the turn of the last century.

Nik has many intriguing filters to work with, and there are other plug-in filters in my arsenal (like Topaz Adjust and Simplify, Flood, Snap Art, and Eye Candy) that offer artistic possibilities that go beyond what Photoshop can do by itself. I often discover amazing images within my photo library that were waiting to be discovered simply by opening up the pictures and experimenting with these creative tools.

The chest piece this young lady is wearing is hand-woven live flowers. This is a traditional part of the attire that brides from the island of Java wear. To set this shot up, I paid three women to work for an entire day sewing the flowers for this model.

REVISITING PAST PHOTOGRAPHS

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 23:25:00 +0000

It's fun to go back over past images and come up with new treatments. Perhaps you can apply a technique you've just learned, or you might try a new background on for size. I did that this morning with one of the favorite Venetian costumes I photographed during one of Carnival in Venice workshops I conduct every year. I shot this model in front of the Doge's palace in the long arched corridor, and I cut her out using the pen tool in Photoshop because this is the most precise method of making a selection -- although it's the most time consuming. I put her in front of a picture of San Giorgio Island and the famous gondolas lined up in San Marco Square, but before I pasted her in place I applied Topaz Adjust to make the background a little more interesting. These two components, the background and the model, were sitting in my files for two years just waiting to be combined.

You also have hundreds or thousands of such combinations of pictures waiting to be discovered. Go through your images with this in mind and see what you can come up with.

OIL & WATER

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 13:28:00 +0000

I had some fun yesterday photographing oil and water mixed together. I used a shallow glass bowl with a flat bottom and filled it partially with water. Then I placed it about two feet above a piece of 8 1/2 x 11 compute paper on which I had smeared various colors of paint. I dropped a tiny amount of vegetable oil in the water, and positioned a single flash off-camera pointing to the paint. I triggered the flash with a wireless unit, the Pocket Wizard. With a 50mm macro lens and one extension tube, I took some shots at f/16 but didn't like the results because the paint in the background was too defined due to the extensive depth of field. When I used f/8, I liked the results much better.

I hand held the camera and made sure the back of the camera was as parallel as possible to the surface of the water. When the camera back (i.e. the plane of the sensor) is parallel, you can have complete depth of field of the water's surface at any lens aperture.

For a variation, I pointed the flash up to the water bowl from below and created space-like images that I thought were pretty cool.

I used 100 ISO for these pictures and a daylight white balance.

EXOTIC INSECT PHOTOGRAPHY

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 15:44:00 +0000

You can buy dried and packaged exotic insects from all over the world, like this cicada from Thailand, and then photograph them in natural looking situations. Online insect suppliers have a huge number of species, listed usually by Latin name, and even though you may not know what the insects look like, you can do a search by the scientific nomenclature and see whether or not you'd like to purchase the dead specimen.

The picture you see here isn't biologically correct because cicadas don't rest with their wings outstretched. However, I preferred to shoot it this way simply because its wings are so beautiful.

The technique is to put the packaged insects in Tupperware (with the lid) with a wet paper towel. The moisture relaxes the insect parts, and then with very tiny pins (available online through insect supply companies), you can put the legs and antennae into a natural looking position. In a day the insect dries, and it will then maintain the position established when the pins held the body parts exactly as you wanted. Then it can be placed on a natural background and photographed.

The photo you see here was taken with a Canon ringflash and a 50mm macro lens. I used the camera on manual exposure mode, the flash was set to ETTL, and the lens aperture was f/32. The green background is a 13 x 19 inch print of out of focus foliage.

THE MAGIC OF SMOKE

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 13:36:00 +0000

Inspired by a number of my on-line students at Betterphoto.com, I started experimenting with photographing smoke. I bought some incense and used a single, off-camera flash placed about 90 degrees to the lens axis to shoot the smoke coming from the incense. I hung a piece of black velvet on the wall as a backdrop, and using the LCD monitor on the back of the camera as a gauge, I adjusted the exposure accordingly by tweaking the flash output (using the exposure compensation feature on the flash). I got a number of wonderful abstracts, but then I wanted to add other elements to make the images a lot more interesting.

First, I added color to the smoke by making a duplicate layer in Photoshop (Commmand/Ctrl J) and then I applied the gradient tool. When the gradient tool is selected, in the tool bar you can select various multi-colored patterns that become the gradient. After the color was placed on the duplicate layer, I used the 'overlay' blend mode (found in the submenu within the layers palette) to merge the color with the smoke. Second, I used Photoshop's powerful ability to combine images, and the first two composites can be seen here.

To place the nude inside the spiral of smoke (top photo), I again used the overlay blend mode to make it look like the smoke was twirling around the model's form. Of course, the reflection was made by the Flood plug-in made by flamingpear.com.

I photographed the costumed model on my Carnival in Venice workshop last February. It was an arranged setup and my entire group photographed her in front of a gilded mirror in an elegant, medieval-adorned suite. I separated her from the background using the pen tool so the edges were absolutely precise.

DEPTH OF FIELD

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 15:47:00 +0000

One of my on-line photography students asked why a particular photo had so much depth of field, yet it was taken with a large lens aperture -- f/5. The photo in question was similar to the one you see above. It was taken with a wide angle and the foreground was relatively close to the camera position. Here is the answer to the question.

Depth of field is controlled not just by lens aperture. There are a total of four factors that influence depth of field (dof):

1. Lens aperture (the smaller the aperture, the more dof)

2. Focal length of lens (the wider the angle lens, the more dof)

3. Distance from camera to subject (the further away the camera is to the subject, the more dof)

4. Distance from subject to background (the closer the subject is to the background, the more focused the subject and the and background will be, thus the more dof you'll have)

These 4 factors interact with each other constantly, and often one will override the other. In the example of the New England boat harbor, the fact that a wide angle lens was used eclipsed the influence of the lens aperture. Wide angle lenses offer tremendous depth of field at ANY aperture. However ... and this is where the plot thickens ... if the camera is positioned very close to the foreground subject, like 2 or 3 feet away, that factor will eclipse the influence of the wide angle focal length. Thus, the background will be defined but not tack sharp. In other words, some (but not that much) depth of field will be lost because of the close proximity to the foreground. Enter lens aperture. By closing the aperture down to, say, f/22, you get that depth of field back and the distant background becomes sharp again.

By moving further away from the foreground, the depth of field in the background also comes back, but then the composition changes.

So, all of these factors come into play in each picture you take.

Let's take another example. If you want the background behind a subject to be completely out of focus such that there is no definition at all, as in the picture of the Canadian lynx kitten, and you wanted to use a 50mm lens. That wouldn't be possible. Assuming you were several feet away, even at f/1.4 the background would be blurred but we would be able to see a significant amount of definition in the trees behind the cat. Why? Because the 50mm focal length offers too much depth of field, and that overrides the large aperture. The only way you could override the influence of the focal length would be to shoot the kitten from about 12 inches away -- not a likely scenario in this particular case.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:22:00 +0000

My great Pyrenees, Rexie, turned one year old a couple of days ago, so we celebrated the event with the neighborhood. Rexie wouldn't sit still long enough to wear sunglasses, so I put them on him digitally. I used the magic wand tool to select the blue glasses on the little girl at the far left, and then I deselected the dark plastic lenses so when I pasted them onto Rexie (Edit > paste), we could see his eyes.

With all the kids and the two dogs, it was a challenge to get so many good expressions in one picture. I fired off many frames in quick succession in the hope that one or two of the images would be good.

DISTORTION IN PORTRAITS

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 04:19:00 +0000

Wide angle lenses positioned close to a subject create distortion. When shooting people, some photographers think this isn't the correct approach. However, I use it often, especially when shooting fashion or wild costumes or masks. This picture of my wife was done in our home with a mask I bought in Venice, Italy. I used a 16mm wide angle lens to exaggerate and distort the perspective, and a single photoflood illuminated the setup. I also used a tripod, of course, and in Photoshop I changed the color (the original sofa and dress were wine red).

HDR in ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 18:28:00 +0000

If you haven't used HDR yet, I consider it a must and I encourage you to try it. It is one of the most incredible techniques, and I wanted to share with you an image I did on the recent photo tour to Ireland I conducted. Notice how much detail you can see in the shadows as well as the highlights. This kind of detail is seen with our eyes, but because the digital sensor is not as sophisticated as our eye/brain combination, we need to use this specialized technique to reveal in a photo what we can see at the time of shooting. I have enhanced the colors, obviously, but this image is dynamic largely because of HDR

HDR stands for 'high dynamic range', and this means that photographers can now reveal complete detail in dark shadows and bright highlights in a single picture. This was never possible before. We usually exposed correctly for the highlights and let the shadows go dark. HDR involves taking several images -- in this case I used eight photos -- that are bracketed quite a bit (such as +1 +2 +3 and -1 -2 -3 based on what the meter dictates), and then the software program Photomatix assembles the altogether to produce a perfect exposure. You need a tripod if you want the picture to be tack sharp, and it's also important to use the same lens aperture. You don't want the depth of field varying. Vary the exposure with the shutter speed.

In the Photomatix dialog box, there are quite a few sliders that give you a large number of variables with respect to exposure, contrast, color temperature, etc., and it's just a matter of experimenting until you like what you see.

BLACK AND WHITE TONED

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Sun, 30 May 2010 20:57:00 +0000

I do very little black and white photography, even though I appreciate the medium. When I find a subject that I feel will look good as a b & w image, my first impulse is to add a tone to it. When photographers used the darkroom instead of Photoshop, we toned images using sepia, selenium, and other toners which produced a variety of brownish colors. Today, with Photoshop, we have the entire palette of color to choose from.

Toning is a process where the blacks are replaced with color. This is different from tinting, where the whites are replaced with a color and the blacks stay primarily black. These were terms we used when working with paper and chemistry. In Photoshop, there are many ways to tone (or tint) a photo, and the picture you see here taken at the Clonmanoise cemetery in Ireland was done by simply using the hue/saturation dialog box to reduce the image to black and white by moving the saturation slider to the left. I then chose Image > adjustments > color balance to add the color. Finally, additional contrast made the picture have more visual impact.

To get this kind of dynamic perspective, I used a low point of view and a 24mm wide angle on a full frame sensor camera. I darkened the sky to make it more dramatic using the burn tool, and at the same time I lightened the foreground grass with the dodge tool. These tools are considered by Photoshop pros to offer less control than other methods used for making these kinds of adjustments, but in some situations they work very well with very quick results.

DARK HEDGES

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Mon, 24 May 2010 23:50:00 +0000

I am leading a photo tour in Ireland and Northern Ireland right now, and today I photographed a stunning row of trees that form an eerie tunnel-like structure over a country road north of Belfast. It's locally called Dark Hedges, and I used a 200mm telephoto lens to compress the myriad branches lit by a setting sun. I used f/32 because it was important to show the entire image, from front to back, tack sharp. A tripod was required because it allowed me the ability to shoot with a small lens aperture, and I used the self-timer to trip the shutter. I also locked up the mirror to make sure the camera was as vibration-free as possible. This is certainly one of the most amazing roads I've ever seen, and I included it in the itinerary because I knew my group would love shooting it.

UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL WITH A SNAPPING TURTLE

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Mon, 17 May 2010 17:41:00 +0000

About a 1/2 hour ago I was driving home and saw this snapping turtle on the road near my home. I ran and got my camera and when I jogged back to the spot where I had seen it, the reptile had disappeared. I finally found it in the grass next to the road, and getting down at ground level I put on an extension tube on my 24-105mm lens and set the camera to aperture priority. I definitely did not want the eyes to be sharp but the nose soft, so I raised the ISO to 500 and set the f/stop to f/16. That gave me a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second. This is not as fast as I'd like, but since the turtle wasn't moving and I was bracing my elbows on the ground, I thought I could still get a tack sharp picture.

I wanted to show the turtle with its mouth open, so I used my baseball cap to tap it's head enough until it opened that intimidating mouth. These things can do serious damage to fingers. My working distance was quite close -- about seven or eight inches. I could have used a longer lens with extension tubes, but I would have lost too much depth of field.

EVOLUTION OF A PHOTO

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Sat, 15 May 2010 23:00:00 +0000

The composite I created of the beautiful Gypsy Vanner horse in my last blog has become an all time favorite of mine, but I just couldn't leave it alone. I wanted to embellish the fantasy nature of the image, and the result is the unicorn version you see here. In 40 years of shooting, this is now in my top ten favorite images. All I did was change the background and put the horn on the horse.

What makes a sensational image? In my opinion there are three ingredients:

1. Beautiful lighting
2. A beautiful graphic form
3. A subject that people find intriguing/beautiful/compelling

If an image doesn't have all three, it may be a good shot but it will never be great. I am speaking of fine art photography. Photojournalism that depicts life's dramas and tragedies is an entirely different subject.

Beautiful lighting usually means sunrise, sunset, strong backlighting, powerful sidelighting, and lighting that is soft and diffused.

Beautiful graphic forms mean that your subject has to have a great shape. If the graphics of the subject and background are messy, boring, or just plain uninteresting, then no one will get excited over the image.

Regarding the subject, great subjects make great pictures. In my example of the unicorn, had I used a common farm horse, this picture wouldn't have the magic that it does. Because the horse is so incredible, the picture has something very special and, so far, everyone who has seen this has loved it -- largely because the horse is so beautiful.

A HORSE AND HIS MAIDEN

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Fri, 07 May 2010 15:59:00 +0000

One of the ways I get exciting pictures is to make arrangements with people to photograph them or their possessions at the optimal time of day and/or best location. The photos of the horse show I took in the indoor arena three weeks ago were really impossible to work with and produce professional quality imagery, so I set up a time to shoot the famous Gypsy Vanner horse, Romeo, and his lovely maiden, Jessica in beautiful lighting. The background, though, wasn't to my liking, and besides, I was looking for something truly special. I worked on this last night, and after a marathon session in Photoshop, I am happy with how it turned out.

I placed the horse and rider into the background, and it took me three hours to make this look good. I wanted very badly to make this as perfect as I possibly could. I worked in Photoshop at 600%, virtually pixel by pixel, to cut around the hair of the horse. Cutting around hair in Photoshop such that it looks perfect is virtually impossible – the operative word here is ‘virtually’. I went to bed at 1:30am when I was happy with it… well, 97% happy. All those blond, backlit hairs were a nightmare!

The technique I used was to make a rough selection of the horse and the model with the lasso tool, and then I used Edit > copy and then Edit > paste to place it into the background.

Note the lighting. The low angled sun above the foggy pond would have illuminated the horse with backlighting which is why I chose this background. It’s crucial to match the lighting in the various elements in your composites.

I sized the horse and rider with Edit > transform > scale, and then made a layer mask: Layer > layer mask > reveal all. Then, I used the brush tool to paint away the original background behind the subject. I worked at 300% until I came to the blond hair, and then I enlarged the image to 600%. Even when I made the brush tool small and removed more of the background, there were still dark pixels around the blond hairs that came from the original background. I couldn’t paint away those dark pixels because then most of the hair would be eliminated.

When I studied the composite without magnification, it looked good. However, when I looked at it with 100% magnification, those dark edges looked unnatural and unattractive. The composite would not pass the test – not yet.

I thought about this for a while, and finally decided to try using the dodge tool. Since the horse was on a separate layer from the background, I made the tool very small and tried lightening each individual blond hair. It worked. The hair, where was already very light from the backlighting, didn’t get much lighter, but the dark edges virtually disappeared. I was thrilled.

Finally, after working into the early hours of the morning until I could hardly focus my eyes any more, I was convinced that this couldn’t be improved.

Jim

GYPSY VANNERS

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:57:00 +0000

I discovered a spectacular breed of horses last month through an email my brother sent me -- Gypsy Vanners -- and I was immediately drawn to contact some breeders to photograph them. I am scheduled to take photos next week, but I wanted to post this picture now. I photographed the young lady and the famous Gypsy Vanner horse, Romeo, indoors as they were preparing for a performance at a horse show in Shelbyville, Tennessee. I was frustrated by the dim lighting and unappealing shadows I had to deal with in the holding area, but it was all I had to work with. I added the background -- a shot from the Great Smokies -- to try and salvage the image. It is impossible to cut around hair in Photoshop and make it perfectly believable, but I did the best I could. I like the image, although it is not perfect.

Next week I'll be posting some images from the horse shoot that will take place outdoors in ideal lighting. I bought a lens specifically for this event -- a 300mm f/2.8 IS. I thought my 500mm f/4 would be too long, and I wanted the out of focus background that is characteristic of a large aperture like the f/2.8. Stay tuned -- we'll see what I can capture next week.

NESTING EGRETS

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Zuckerman) — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:43:00 +0000

This is a great time of year to photograph nesting birds, and nowhere is it easier and more exciting than the alligator farm in St. Augustine, Florida. The large mature trees attract hundreds of egrets, herons, and woodstorks, and the alligators (which are also great to photograph) keep rodents away from the nests. You can get frame-filling pictures with a 200mm in many cases. Longer lenses can reach birds higher up in the trees.

When shooting white birds, it is essential you shoot in RAW mode versus jpegs. It's important to retain the beautiful detail in the white feathers, and this can only be done when shooting in RAW. Jpegs discard information in order to save space because the images are compressed, and first to go are the pixels that define the most subtle detail in the highlights.

Photographers can pay a special fee at the entrance gate to get into the farm early and to stay later for the beautiful early morning and late afternoon light.