***note – i hate most things technical. it’s not my forte and i’m going to be honest, it’s not in the forefront of my mind when i’m shooting. SO, I’m attempting to do this next couple of posts on technical basics for you. But it’s a sheer labor of [...]]]>

Basic Settings and Helps — Part 1

***note – i hate most things technical. it’s not my forte and i’m going to be honest, it’s not in the forefront of my mind when i’m shooting. SO, I’m attempting to do this next couple of posts on technical basics for you. But it’s a sheer labor of love. If I don’t know something I’ll link you to it or ask Nichole Van, who is a master of all things technical. Bear with me.

SO you’re shooting digital?? I’m assuming you are.

You need to know a few basic things.

PIXELS- stands for “picture element”. A pixel is the smallest single element of a digital image. A digital picture is made of millions of pixels – a megapixel is 1 million pixels.

A sensor is the heart of the camera. It’s the place where the image passes through the lens and is digitally recorded in your camera.

The bigger the sensor size, the better the quality of photos you can take in low light.

You can read more about sensors here

Here are a few questions that I get asked about a lot…

WHITE BALANCE

What is it?? White Balance is how your camera sees true white.

“Definition of “white balance”

White balance is a camera setting that adjusts for lighting in order to make white objects appear white in photos. This is more difficult than it might seem due to the fact that light cast from different sources is different in color (technically called temperature). That is to say, light is rarely truly white in nature. The light from an incandescent or halogen bulb, for example, is red/orange in color, while that from the sun is relatively blue. A proper white balance setting in a camera will prevent, for example, a white bed sheet in a photo from appearing orange in color when it is being illuminated by a candle.”
Definition above found here.

Light has color. Ever think about it? The room you’re in looks totally different with the glow of candle versus when a bright fluorescent bulb is turned on. Think about the difference you see when you walk into a K-Mart versus when you enter a candlelight dinner.

Fluorescent is a COOL (blueish or greenish) light

Candle light casts a WARM (orange, red, yellow) light.

It’s tricky to get a proper white, no matter how experienced you are as a photographer.

ISO or Film Speed

Back in the day when film was really grains of light sensitive silver crystals on a gelatin surface, the lower the ISO (which stands for International Standards Organization) was, the smaller and finer the grains of silver were that moved to form the image portrayed through the lens onto the film. The lower the ISO, the finer the quality of the final image, however, the tradeoff was that you needed lots more light available to help these grains of silver find their way.

If it was a dark situation, you’d use a high ISO or fast film speed. The faster the film speed is, the larger the crystals that are. These larger grains can result in a loss of detail (especially when you’re enlarging an image) but they capture light more quickly. (They also lend a delicious texture to your photos if you ask me).

Remember it like this — Film speed is more a function of the SIZE of the light sensitive crystals. Larger grains of these light sensitive crystals can grab more light more quickly than smaller ones can. The smaller ones, however give you a finer picture with more details and subtlety

Good standard –
·    ISO 100 – good for outdoor photography in bright sunlight
·    ISO 200 – good for outdoor photography or brightly lit indoor photography
·    ISO 400 – good for indoor photography
·    ISO 1000 or 1600 – good for indoor photography where you want to avoid using a flash

In a digital situation, we’re trading light sensitive crystals with digital pixels, but the tradeoff is still pretty much the same. Instead of “grain” you get digital “noise”.

examples - i shot these on the Canon 5D Mark II which handles high noise beautifully – if I’d been shooting on the XT you’d see a HUGE difference…

low ISO w/ low noise

high ISO w/ more noise

Read more about ISO here

Assignment

Ready for your assignment?

I want you to explore different settings on your camera and take at least three photo (helpful if it’s the SAME stationary thing) in each one of the following different areas –

ISO

White Balance

I’m changing things around a bit – the forum and all are still active, but please feel free to post links to your blog posts involving this assignment in the comments section of this post so we can all easily see and find them.

This light can be beautiful and subdued and moody – like on a stormy, wintery day. Or it could [...]]]>

Have you ever been driving along and noticed how breathtakingly beautiful the light is outside? And you know it’s not going to last very long or be like that later in the day or the next day.

This light can be beautiful and subdued and moody – like on a stormy, wintery day. Or it could be glowing and flaring like a peeking sunrise or dying sunset.

It can even be just a lamp shining at your face, silhouetting a subject beautifully.

Do what it takes to shoot it.

Shoot it through the car window (while someone else drives, naturally), grimy and all.

Drop off the kids at school and call someone you know and go SHOOT.

Embrace that light – live by the spontaneity of the moment and be inspired by the light.

Tell yourself – “Seize the Light — CARPE LUX”

challenge – the very, VERY next day that you notice outstanding light grab your camera and take advantage of it. Go on a spontaneous shoot and make the light an important part of it.

Thanks so much to Jefra and Liz for giving me this chance to chat with you! I’ve loved looking in on all the fabulous things that you’re talking about with Develop on Fridays!

I’ve decided to chat about finding beautiful natural light in photos. For many years, I [...]]]>

By Guest Contributor Nichole Van

Thanks so much to Jefra and Liz for giving me this chance to chat with you! I’ve loved looking in on all the fabulous things that you’re talking about with Develop on Fridays!

I’ve decided to chat about finding beautiful natural light in photos. For many years, I shot exclusively with natural light . . . no flashes or lights or reflectors . . . just me, my camera and the light my situation gave me. Obviously, through this, I’ve learned through trial and error what works and what doesn’t when shooting portraits with natural light. So here are a few tips about using natural light effectively in your photographs.

To begin with, when using natural light, you need to constantly be aware of the strength and angle of your light source. This is, for me, the most difficult part of using natural light in portraits. You really need to study the light and truly “see” how it’s affecting your image. It’s really the same as using studio lights . . . except that you can’t control where the light comes from or how strong it is. But you still use the light source as you would use studio lights.

So for example, when you’re shooting outside, the sun shines from above for most of the day, even on cloudy days. If you just put someone outside and take a photo with the light source coming from overhead, no matter how diffused, you will get what I call racoon eyes . . . . the light will shine down your subject’s face, emphasizing the shadows underneath the eyes. You can see this on my son’s face in the shot below.  This was shot on an overcast day. I attached this image SOOC just so you can see how bad the shadows are right out of the camera. Also note the brighter spots on his upper forehead and cheeks. You can clearly see how the light is skimming his face from top to bottom.It’s not a flattering photo of him and there are no catchlights in his eyes, making them dark and dead.

So in my lovely drawing below, you DON’T want your light source to come from overhead (A) or from below (D).  You will get funky shadows on the person’s face if that happens. You want your light source to ideally be at about a 45 degree angle to the face (B), but any light source between B and C below will give good results. So in the photo I posted above of my kids, you can see that the light is good on my daughter’s face. That’s because she has her head turned toward the sky and the light is hitting her face at a 45 degree angle. Notice that the light is even on her skin . . . there aren’t any funky shadows or hot spots.

So how do you get the light right when shooting outdoors?

Well, the simple answer is to make sure that you have something over your subject’s head to force the light to come in from the side. A tree, a doorway, a reflector, a porch . . . any number of things can fix the problem. So here is another shot of my son taken in a doorway. Notice how the light comes in from the front, not overhead, and how that opens up the shadows on his face. The light is smooth and even on his face and there are beautiful catchlights in his eyes.

So when taking portraits with natural light, look carefully at the face before taking a portrait, and then move around the person or move them into a situation where the light comes from the side or front.

Sometimes, however, it just isn’t possible to move somewhere where there is something overhead. In that case, assuming that it’s an overcast day, I put the person’s back to the sun (wherever it may be in the sky) and place myself above them (easy to do with a child) and have them look up at me. This puts the light at 45 degrees to their face and they shouldn’t squint as long as the sun is at their back. It results in a photo like the one below.

Assignment: Find the light . . . . .beautiful, gorgeous light! Go on a light safari and look for places that have beautiful natural light. Please post your images and tell us what you did to find that amazing light!

ETA — Please feel free to link to your posts regarding this lesson w/in the comments section so we can see what you’ve done!! thanks.

visualize it…. you won’t want to miss it!

Come back Friday and hear what her challenge and lesson will be.

I want to divulge a few hints who it is to you….

Three things about this person –

My fav chocolate combo is mint and chocolate, forget peanutbutter or hazelnut or caramel or whatever, I’m mint all the way.

I got my first [...]]]>

Next Friday we’ll be having a guest posting our Develop on Fridays post.

I want to divulge a few hints who it is to you….

Three things about this person –

My fav chocolate combo is mint and chocolate, forget peanutbutter or hazelnut or caramel or whatever, I’m mint all the way.

I got my first camera for Christmas when I was 9. It was a Kodak Disk 4000 camera that took disk film. Here’s a photo of it:

. . . . man, that brings back the memories, haha.

Besides photography, my other passion is cooking, particularly desserts. I would love to be a pastry chef.

any guesses??

Here’s why…

…a photograph is a 3 second piece of communicative artwork — You have just a few seconds to capture the attention of a viewer and speak to them. While a busy photograph can be pulled off, by keeping a picture simple you eliminate all the confusion and static that [...]]]>

SIMPLE – keep your pictures simple.

Here’s why…

…a photograph is a 3 second piece of communicative artwork — You have just a few seconds to capture the attention of a viewer and speak to them. While a busy photograph can be pulled off, by keeping a picture simple you eliminate all the confusion and static that a viewer would otherwise have to sort through. So you You basically have three seconds to grab the viewer’s attention, hold it, and say what you want to say.

The one of the easiest ways to do this is by keeping your image simple

ways to keep it simple -

A. COMPOSITION Design and composition are long tried and true ways that the human brain visually reads a situation. This is a whole other post in itself, but here are some links that talk more about this for now…

Wiki

Hippasus.com

photoinf.com

goshen.edu

B .  COLOR.     Sometimes a photograph reads faster in black and white. Sometimes in color. I love a BW photo as much as anyone and same for a gorgeous color. But when you’re messing around, pay attention to what happens to the photo when you turn it BW versus a color conversion.

This one works better in color in my opinion but you can decide for yourselves -

it’s nice in BW too, but it just reads faster in color.

EXAMPLE 2

a. this one’s better in BW to me

b. the color version – so much color baggage and caca

last example –

you tell me – bw or color (looking for the one that reads the fastest)…

C. MOVE IN OR MOVE OUT.    Sometimes a picture is more powerful when you’ve come in really tight and sometimes, the expanse of negative space around your subject can add more power to the image.

move in -

or move out –

D.WATCH THE CRAP.  Sorry but ‘crap’ is the only word that comes to mind to effectively describe the visual clutter that ends up in the background and sometimes foreground of our shots. Edit it out through your composition of your shot. Do this well enough and you won’t have much editing to do in Photoshop after the fact.

example

shot 1….clutter in the background (not bad  – mostly bokeh’d out, but the picture could be better and more succinct)

picture b … less clutter through composition…

ASSIGNMENT:  Take a photo. Then find a way to make it simpler. Post both photos. Go ahead and do this lots of times and post lots of examples.

go for it!

PS – a hint about our guest poster for March 12…

she lived in Italy for a year and a half.

WELCOME

welcome to the new home of Develop on Fridays!

We’re excited to be continuing this project and are excited to see more from all of you.

GUEST CONTRIBUTORs

AS of right now our new format will be a post and challenge every other week.

The first week will be a challenge/post from me, we’ll skip the second week [...]]]>

Hi everyone!!

WELCOME

welcome to the new home of Develop on Fridays!

We’re excited to be continuing this project and are excited to see more from all of you.

GUEST CONTRIBUTORs

AS of right now our new format will be a post and challenge every other week.

The first week will be a challenge/post from me, we’ll skip the second week to give you guys more time to work on the assignments (if you want) and Liz and me a little more time to feed and clothe our kids.  The third week will be a challenge/post from a guest contributor.

We have some phenomenal photographers lined up for you guys and I can’t wait to learn and develop with what they have to share.

I’m really excited about this and really can’t wait to bring this to you all.

you can follow all our updates on twitter.

See you next week with our next challenge!

What is your voice? Everybody has one. Do you know what yours is?

Your “voice” is how you uniquely express the way you see things. It is uniquely you expressed through your work

It’s what you have to offer the world. It’s how you [...]]]>