Photography Tip #80 Challenge follow-up

Posted by Philip in Follow-up

I got a lot of reasonable guesses through comments posted and e-mails, but none of them were exactly correct.  In order to creat the effect you will need a card to put in front of your lens.  I use some photo paper printed with the color(s) I want. In the center of the card you put a small hole.  You can vary the size of the hole depending on how much of the color you want to filer through.

But in order to make this work, you have to lock your focus either by half pressing the shutter or snapping a photo of your scene first and then switching to manual mode.

Then it’s a simple matter of placing the card in front of the lens and making your image through the small hole you’ve created.  Vary the size of the hole or the colors to get different looks.  All you need is a colored card and a way to make that hole and you can start making some interesting effect without the use of Photoshop.  And depending on the thickness of the card, you can create a different sort of vignette.

Hold really really still

Posted by Philip in Gallery, Photo Technique

Back in the ancient days of photography you had to hold really still for a basic exposure which was really long.  Then along came flash powder and then flash bulbs and eventually the wonderfully fast flash units.  But along comes a new technology and we are back to standing still… sort of.  HDR processing is still in its infancy and I expect that in a few years cameras will have an HDR mode that captures multiple exposures of the same instant. But until that day, the exposures are taken one after the other which has the issue of ghosting any movement when the images are combined.  So any movement has to be calculated out of the final image.  There are several ways to do this, but all require losing some of that extra exposure information you went through the trouble to get in the first place.  So if you want to HDR a person, they have to hold really still for a couple of seconds.

At a recent photography event I had the pleasure to work with Emily Darnell a professional model from West Virginia very briefly.  She can hold a pose extremely well, well enough where doing a HDR image of her was rather easy.  In fact I think I shook the camera more than she moved since I was using a monopod instead of a tripod.

Emily Darnell a professional model can hold really still for an HDR image.

The Photography Tip of the Week #080

Posted by Philip in Photo Technique, Podcast

Photoblock Challenge

080 Photography Tip of the Week (audio)

As is the custom here every 10th photography tip will be a photo block challenge.  This one will be a bit different, because I’m not going to give you a photographic task.  I’m going to challenge you by asking what did I do to make the following couple of images.  In each case the effect is done “in camera,” no Photoshop work or digital effects.  It’s also extremely simple and doesn’t really require any special equipment, and can be done with any type of camera.  I really would like to know your theories as to how this effect was achieved.  I will give you the answer later this week in a followup podcast/blog post.  And just so you know, I stripped the metadata from the posted images, so that won’t give you any clues.

Orbis Ring Flash Contest

Posted by Philip in Gallery

I had a chance to use an Orbis Ring flash at a recent meetup.  Not much to say about it other than it really does the job.  Wish I had one to practice more with it and to help in removing those blemishes on peoples faces without having to resort to Photoshop.  Here are my entries into the contest.

Just being a bit different

Posted by Philip in Gallery, Photo Technique

Photography is all about customer service.  If the customer doesn’t get what they want, you haven’t done your job.  It doesn’t matter if you get paid as a photographer or you just take/make some photos on the side.  With a recent session I noticed that all the photos they had hanging in their house were sepia tone.  So I didn’t even bother with making black and whites.  But I did do something I thought would be an eye catching change (this is a pun.)  Not only did I give them their sepia tone images, but on several I brought the natural eye color through so you see the blue eyes of their children.  I don’t know if it’s something they will truly like, but they have the option.  Not only is it a bit different, it’s giving them more than what they asked for.