Photography Tip #97 – Digital developing in Lightroom

Posted by Philip in Featured, Photo Processing, Podcast

You don’t want to spend a lot of time working on developing your photos. This is how I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to quickly develop a photo and make it ready to show the client.

Photography Tip #96 – Clutter in your scene

Posted by Philip in Photo Technique, Podcast

Photography Tip #96

Clutter is distracting. It may seem like common sense, but you need to remove the clutter from your scene. Anything that pulls the focus from your intended subject needs to be removed. Yes you can do this in post processing, but taking a few moments to clear up the scene beforehand will save you a lot of post processing time.

Sharing photos on Facebook is good for you

Posted by Philip in General, Photo Philosophy

I just ran across an interesting article: http://blog.exposedplanet.com/why-sharing-photos-on-facebook-is-bad-for-you/ I almost didn’t want to post an actual link because it’s very short sighted and legal fear mongering.

There’s nothing overly surprising or devastating here.  Nothing in this article has me the least bit concerned or worried and I will continue to post select photos to Facebook.  As photographers we have known since the beginning of online photo sharing that if you put something online, people/companies can download and use the image you have made available. It doesn’t matter if it’s legal or not, it can be done and there’s nothing you can do to stop it from happening other than to not post your photos. No amount of watermarking or javascript will keep away a screen grab and content aware fill for the determined downloader.

What the Facebook lawyers have done is legally cover their collective butts.  Could they turn around and sell your images? Sure. Will they? Most likely not, but it is possible. Will they use the photos in promotional videos and online advertising? It’s possible. Will they give you credit or compensation? No, it’ll take too much time and effort. That’s why they paid their lawyers for the extensive terms of service.  Facebook is the number one photo sharing service online.  But it’s not the number one highest quality photo sharing service.

So, as a responsible photographer with a modicum of common sense we need to do the following:

1. Know that anything you post online will be available for anyone to download and use.
2. Only post images that you are comfortable with this happening.
3. Make sure your meta data contains your contact information, so responsible companies can (and many do) contact you to license your photography.
4. If you do share images that you want to sell, license or otherwise profit from, post a reasonable sized image on a site you control or one designed for marketing and selling your photography.

Facebook is a marketing tool for photographers.  Every time I post my portrait or model works, I get more awareness in my local community and more customers. . I get at least one new customer for every post.  If Facebook want’s to use any of those images for promoting their site, that’s fine.  I’m sure one of my friends will tell me about it and I’ll use that to my advantage.  If what I put on Facebook is worth stealing, then you need to look at the photos I don’t post, they’re worth a fortune.

Site changes coming

Posted by Philip in General

I’ve been having some issues with various things on the site, so I’m taking the time to reorder, reconstruct and redo the site.  So things might be kind of funky for a bit.

I’m no expert

Posted by Philip in General

I know it’s been a while since I posted anything. Life is full of complications and I’ve had quite a few hit me all at once with a couple more on the way. But I read something today that made me think about people that pose as something that they are not. I don’t think I fall into that category anymore.

• I don’t tell people that I’m an expert.
• I don’t tell them I’m a guru.
• I don’t even tell them that I’m better than anyone else (at least I don’t think I do.)
• I don’t even say that I’m the best there is at any one thing.  There are definitely people out there better than me at any one thing, I just have an interesting set of things I do.

But what I do say is that I study what I do and have a genuine enthusiasm for my work, be it photography, website development or social media.  I say that I’m dedicated to fixing problems and producing the best work possible.  I’m rather humbled when people give me a compliment.  You see anyone can say they are an expert, or say they wrote a book or say they do a radio show or even have an expertly designed website.  Nothing that anyone tells you can be taken as truth until you see their results.

I just wanted to say that you should take a look at the results or what other people say about someone or even you and take that to heart.

Unscheduled hiatus

Posted by Philip in General, Podcast

Unfortunately I have to take a break from the regular podcast for a few weeks. It is not my custom to drop things, so rest assured that I’ll take the time to recharge and come back soon with more tips and instructional videos.

Photography Tip of the Week #095

Posted by Philip in Featured, Photo Technique, Podcast

Expose for highlights, develop for shadows
095 Photography Tip of the Week (audio)

A lot of people seem to get this backwards. They think you need to expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights. This is backwards because you want to keep as much information in your image as possible and your camera sensor is better at capturing light than it can capture dark. Yeah, I know that is a silly statement, but it is a good way to look at the issue. Your camera sensor can not “see” the dark. It only sees light. So you need to set your exposure for the brightest information you care about in your image.

If you look at your camera histogram you should see the bulk of your information to the right. If it’s too far right you will “clip” the information and not be able to bring things down to make them nominal again. Here is an example of an image that is exposed for the highlights. You can easily adjust it so you still don’t lose any data.

But what does it mean to develop for the shadows? It’s really easy if you properly exposed your image for the highlights. If you have enough information in your highlights you should have some pretty bright shadows. Most image manipulation programs have the ability to control the shadows and highlights separately. It’s a pretty simple to adjust the overall exposure and then change the shadows so they have the required contrast to the highlights.

To visually see the overall values of your image you can pretend it’s a black and white image and squint, or you can simply convert it to grayscale and apply a mosaic pattern to it with a really large block size. There’s not problem in having a dark area and a light area. You should avoid having a lot of solid white or black squares tho. I know there are exceptions to this rule so don’t rake me over the coals for it, but a well exposed image will not have very many blacks and whites in it.