sorry I had to skip last weeks edition, I just had no time to search for the links – well, today there is new inspiration for you Enjoy it!

Aufzehengehen (german: ‘ToWalkOnToes’)
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Analoges Mädchen (German: ‘Analog Girl’)
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paupi

today I (Kate) wanna translate another blog post for you Frank got an idea from a comment one of you wrote under an article and thought he’d start a blog post series. More today!In the future I’ll post from time to time “outspoken” posts. Maybe some of my editor colleagues will do that, too, we’ll see What’s an “outspoken” post? Well, it’s short posts regarding only one topic. They shall share advice, tricks or ideas in a few words, save you from trouble or just amuse.

Why that? Well, there are many things, mistakes, problems, everyone will have to deal with sooner or later. And to make it easier for you to find a shortcut or way around, we want to let you profit from our experience and make you reconsider some stuff. That’s why I started this series.

Please keep in mind I am in the planning phase of this project, so it might be that I change something about the concept with time. But: The main thought will stay the same: Much knowledge in few words.

Stay tuned to learn more and find out what it’s all gonna be about!

Cheers,

Frank

Again and again. Every fuckin´ week. Four really great Portfolios – look at it. Visit the facebook-pages. Like it. Now!

Peter Boehmer Fotojournalist
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Sabine Fischer
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Astrid Fleischmann
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I am lovin photography | Stefan Neumann
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blablabla. Does anyone read this? Hello? Every fuckin week – i considering about cool sentences but nobody want to read this. *Hmpf. I feel like Marvin. Hmmmmm. That´s it. You must read my irrelevant shit. Nothing important. Nothing about the peace in the world. Or about the FDP (German Party). Altough they are not important. Now I take my towel.

Ben Kruse
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Rock´a´Bambi
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Katrin Stein
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yours paupi

this is a German post by Tina, that I (Kate) will only translate for you Enjoy this photographic tutorial showing you how to use backlighting and little equipment for a flower macro.

“I bought some fresh buttercups at the local market and had to capture then in pixels. So I put them in a vase as soon as I got home and chose a slightly opened blossom to arrange it away from the others.

I put the flow in a simple glass – it doesn’t matter what that looks like as it won’t be visible in the images. Then I positioned the glass in front on the sideboard in our living room with the window behind it. This way the window can be used as backlight and will create a white background if you overexpose the photo.

I worked with little equipment. The 60mm Makro was attached to the camera which stood on a Gorillapod tripod. That’t it. Ah, and of course a spraying bottle with water for the water drops on the flow which make the photo look more interesting

And this it what it looked like:

Camera settings:

• focal length: 60mm
• ISO 100
• aperture: f/7,1
• shutter speed: 1,3 Sek.

Play around with the position of the light and if you like with aperture and shutter speed. When photographing a flower at home there is no time limit Use the opportunity to play around

After photographing it, I loaded the image in Lightroom 3 and edited it a little bit.

This is the out-of-cam original:

At first, I adjusted the lens correction to fit the used lens. To make the blossom glow a bit more orange I made the image slightly darker using “exposure” and intensified the orange tones. The final adjustments were clarity and sharpness.

And this it what the result looked like:

In my case there was a bit of the wall visible in the photo. I couldn’t choose another position for the flower, but due to the overexposure nearly all of the wall was white, only two stripes were left to correct. I had to correct this in Photoshop.

I opened the pre-processed photo out of Lightroom using right mouse button – edit in – Adobe Photoshop CS5. Using the stamp tool (S) I used some of the white areas as a source for the darker stripes.

As the stripes are hard to see, I used the magic wand tool as a little helper. I chose the dark color with a bit of tolerance as a guide line where to correct.

If you didn’t choose the perfect position for the flower you can choose to crop the image. I decided on a square crop for my photos. I hope you like the result:

If you would rather get a black background, you can use a black cardboard for the photo. Just position it behind the blossom.

If you want to save the time for the photoshop retouch, you can attach a white cardboard behind the flower at the wall. This would save you the trouble getting rid of the black stripes.

I got some more photos from the flower macro shooting, which you can find at my blog.”

Weekly links. Nearly forgot those… Fuckin’ Holidays  Anyway: I found lovely portfolios for you. Have fun.

if photography
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Natalie Cox
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Janzgrossetkino
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Life? Don’t talk to me about life!

paupi

surely some of you have to print photo albums sometimes, no matter if for your business or yourself. Today I want to introduce you a piece of software that makes this a lot easier.

A while ago I stumpled over Album Pro by pure coincidence, because of a facebook group the developer and I are both members of. I had a look at the software and liked the idea.

The goal of the software is to shorten the amount of time, one needs to create an album, using an Indesign script that makes Indesign and Bridge work together more efficiently.

It’s really easy: You create templates (or if printing on square formats use the templates delivered with the software), choose the photos to be on a (double) page in Bride, let AlbumPro look through the templates which templates fit the number of photos and choose one. Place the photos and your done

But let’s start at the beginning. I started by creating a document preset for my photo albums ( I print them myself on Tecco paper, so no standard size). So, when I want to start a new book, I double click my document preset.

In Indesign I can see the library with my page presets on the right (I created the first three, the 4th one is from AlbumPro). By clicking a library you can see the included page presets.

In addition, AlbumPro ads a drop down menu to the menu bar, where you can save new templates, make grids from frames, merge frames, flip pages, swap frames/images and so on…

Well, let’s choose a page and open Bridge

Here you choose the images you want to place on a page. I chose three photos from an {In Love} session with my sister (damn, I think those are the unretouched ones)

Well, I chose three photos, now I choose “Template Selector” from the drop down menu and wait till AlbumPro found matching templates.

As I have more than one library, the software asks me what kind of album I am creating (you can save that for the rest of the session).

You can see there is one perfect template (three landscapes) and one that would be okay. I chose the perfect one and am now back in Indesign. The photos are like “glued” to my cursor and I can fill the frames with them by clicking.

In the above screenshot you can see a problem that can be caused when creating all templates in one go. As I created the templates with emty frames, I didn’t see that they were in the wrong direct. Well, the solution: Right mouse click > transformate > turn in the right direction > Strg + Alt + E > save as new template

And this is what it should look like:

Do this page for page and soon you’ll be done

A normal person would be done now. I need to export the pages to jpegs and cut them in two halfs using a droplet as I need single and no double pages.

Nevermind: Done!

My resumée: The tool saves you a lot of time and once you created your templates and presets, everything goes easier than I would ever have expected. And one more plus: The support is perfect!

Cheers,

Kate

Once again i will show you the weekly links. Yeah. Everyone has to be good at something – and if it’s only the locating beautiful portfolio and blog. These you will surely enjoy. I just know it!

Fräulein Zuckerwatte
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Rossi Photography
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Henning Heide

Have fun. Don´t forget your towel.

like in good old time, it’s me posting the weekly links today So today, I provide you some inspirational links found by me and Paupi. Enjoy!

Martin Neuhof

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Nadia Meli | Bonn Engagement

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Meza Films | Wedding Videos

via Le Magnifique

Daisy Gilardini

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That’s it for the week!

Cheers,

Kate

it’s been a while since I last posted a review, so today I want to show you the book “From Snapshot to Great Shot” by Suzy Clement. It’s a good read and I enjoyed it very much!

Weddings – From Snapshots to Great Shots

Author: Suzy Clement

pages: 228

buy it on Amazon: Weddings: From Snapshots to Great Shots

I can totally recommend the book to every beginner in wedding photography and everyone who can’t get to the next level. Enjoy the video review:

I hope it helped!

Love, Kate