The Photography Tip of the Week #079

Posted by Philip in Photo Technique, Podcast

Tilt those glasses

079 Photography Tip of the Week (audio)

Studio style portrait photography is a lot of fun and can produce outstandingly sharp portraits that far exceed images made with “found light.”  This is why portrait photographers are sought after for those special events in people’s lives.  The added light of a studio style session (I say style since these can be done outside an actual studio) is what makes it easy to create the sharp photos with that special look.  The bright highlight of a shoot-through umbrella reflected in the eyes of your subject gives the photo depth and life.  But just as easily as that light makes the image, it can also take it away if your subjects wear glasses.

It’s common to look straight at the camera and with the light source designed to light your subject’s face and eyes, you will often get that highlight on the glasses just like you would get the highlight in their eyes.  There is a trick that most people do to get rid of this problem and that’s to take the glasses off.  But with a lot of individuals that rely on glasses and don’t or can’t wear contacts, the portrait just doesn’t look right unless they are wearing their glasses.

Many established studios have several glasses frames that you can choose from to “simulate” the wearing of glasses.  This will produce a technically good image, but not having the lenses in the glasses just seems to be a bit off to me.  So what can you do to reduce that glare?  The simple way is to have your subject tilt their head down or up slightly to have the reflection pointed another direction.

In this zoomed image you can see where the flash gives that nasty highlight that obscures the eye.  There is enough information there to clean it up in post processing to tone down or even remove the highlight, but that will take time.

In this image the glasses are tilted down very slightly, not even enough to notice that they are tilted, but the effect is to completely remove the glare on the glasses that would otherwise obscure the eyes.  Keep in mind it doesn’t take much, just a slight tilt and the glare is gone.

Read More

Essence of Photography

Posted by Philip in Photo Philosophy

There are a lot of concepts of the essence of photography and plenty of debate as to if photography is an art or a craft.  I can easily argue from both sides, and I feel it has relatively equal amounts of art and craft.  We had several people over the other night and they saw the photos I had recently entered into a local contest with the various ribbons I had won including the “Best in Show.”  Upon seeing that ribbon there was one comment, “I could never do what you do.”  That struck me as funny, especially since I don’t see where what I do is technically very difficult.  But then I remembered a way I used to describe the essence of photography to people.  A poem is to a novel what a photograph is to video.  It’s that ability to pick the moment that captures the essence of the story in a poetic fashion that makes photography that unique blend of art and craft.

To give an example, here’s a lightning bolt.  This was the third attempt that day to make this shot.  The craft was in knowing the settings required for the lighting conditions and knowing where to have the camera pointed.  The art is in the composition and ensuring the exposure gave enough depth to make the shot really interesting.  So instead of “Poetry in motion” think of your photography as the “poetry of motion” or picking that one frame out of the video that really sets the mood.

In this image there was no “picking” the frame, but it is a very poetic image.  I didn’t do anything in Photoshop to make this image, it’s all in camera.  The softness was picked up through the material I shot through and the look was very natural since I caught her off guard.  It is spontaneous and what I feel to be the essence of photography.

Read More

Disc or Not Disc

Posted by Philip in Photo Philosophy

As a photographer I’ve chosen to build into my portrait session the rights to print and and distribute the photos I make for my customers as they see fit with a few exceptions.  These exceptions are that they must attribute me as the photographer, they cannot sell or license the photos for commercial purposes, and they they shouldn’t print the photos over an 8×10 in size.  I’m quite comfortable with my decision to do this and I’ve found it to be very helpful to my business.  But the other day I ran across post by another photographer which I’ve paraphrased as so obscure the source, but I’ll still put it in quotes.  Actually the whiny tone is very much evident in their post and I’ve done my best to keep it in there.

“People want to know why I don’t offer CDs as part of my session fee:

1. When I have given a disc in the past people take them to be printed to places I don’t recommend.  These places produce bad photos and they make my work look bad.

2.  I only allow them to print up to an 8×10, but they print bigger anyway.  The larger prints is the way all photographers support their families.

3. People give the digital photos to their friends and their friends print them as well, this ins’t right.

4. I spend a lot of time on these photos and print sales is how all photographers make their money.  I have reasonable print prices and I don’t know why people want to print photos any other place.”

I feel that the role of the photographer has changed drastically in the past few years.  Everyone has a camera with them pretty much everyday, all day.  So getting the family together for a picture is easy.  It may not be great, but it captures the moment.  So what can we do as photographers to stand out?  We have to be more customer service oriented and for portrait photography this is how I stand out.

1. I offer an enjoyable hassle free photo session.  The client knows the cost up front and there are no hidden costs beyond that.  That doesn’t matter if I work at an hourly rate or for a fixed session price.

2. You get a disc with all photos from the session sized for up to an 8×10 print and set to the standard sRGB color profile that most printers use.

3. You get a directory on the disk that is what I consider to be the best photos of the session.  I spend a little more time with those photos and may apply some effects to them like conversion to black and white or sepia tone.  If you don’t agree, well you have the other photos in the other directory.

4.  I print a few photos at an 8×10 size, so you don’t have to have to go some place to have them printed, just to get a photo to hold and hang.

5. You have the rights to print and post the photos.  I give the customer a signed form that releases those specific rights.  I do tell them some of the best places to get them printed if they choose to have more printed.  They also understand that the photos have been sharpened and adjusted for a maximum 8×10 print.

6. I also make them aware that if they wish to print a larger photo (which is becoming increasingly rare) that I will rework the original image and send it to a lab that will maintain the color calibration I’ve set.

7. And finally I have a directory of the best photos sized and screen sharpened for Facebook or other similar online photo sharing service.  This is the best way to get new customers and remind your current customers what you do.

I protect my work through the following things: I do give my photos a look they can’t easily achieve without an understanding of photography beyond a casual photographer.  I entertain them during their session.  I teach them some ways to make better photos on their own.  I don’t have to spend a lot of time “selling” prints so I just get paid to go and have some fun and make new friends without having to push that large expensive print to justify all of my time.  All in all I spend about half the time I used to in the film days.  I make about the same amount.  I spend more time behind the camera and less time trying to sell.  I have extremely happy customers that love my work and tell their friends.  I get spontaneous positive reviews on various sites and they don’t try to stretch the boundaries I’ve set, because they get what they want.  They can print that one photo they want to hang on the wall, print the 3-4 smaller photos for their scrapbook, share the session with their friends around the world through an online service.

I know some will say that this is what destroys the industry and others will say that it’s s very astute observation.  Where do you fall on that scale?

Read More

The Photography Tip of the Week #078

Posted by Philip in Photo Processing, Podcast

Ho Hum to Hmmm

078 Photography Tip of the Week (audio)

Is every photo a masterpiece?  Can any photo become a great work of art?  Is beauty in the eye of the beholder and if so what do they behold?  I see similar questions to these on various photography forums from time to time.  They are basically asking if they should keep every photo and if they do, what should they do to make them worth keeping.  So for this tip I’m going to give you a basic process to bring out the best in any photo.  This isn’t going to make every photo a masterpiece, but you may find a few treasures you didn’t think you had.

Before I begin I must warn you that this will require some post processing techniques that I feel photographers should have, but many probably don’t.  It’ll also require the use of some software that’s more than what you get with the camera, but programs like Lightroom, Aperture, Photoshop Elements and even free image manipulation software can handle these steps. Here they are: Crop, Correct, Concentrate.

I recently entered some photos in a local contest and one of the categories was insects.  I generally don’t do a lot of macro photography and I don’t have a gallery of insect photos.  But I did remember that I did photograph a butterfly recently.  When I looked at the photos they were all “Ho Hum.”  So how do you make a Ho Hum photo into one that makes you go Hmmm.

Step 1, Crop.  This is pretty straightforward and I’ve had tips on how to crop before.  Simply get rid of the background cruft and make your subject large.  That’s one of the beauties of having lot’s of megapixels, you can often crop more than 50% of the photo away and still have plenty of information to make a great image.

Step 2, Correct.  You want to do a color correction based on your subject.  This color correction can include extra saturation and contrast to make your subject pop. Don’t worry too much about the surrounding information, we’ll handle that in a moment.

Step 3, Concentrate.  Finally you want to concentrate the viewer’s focus on the subject by making the surrounding information less colorful, visible or sharp. This is an artistic decision, but I’ve found that you don’t have to be extreme.  Even subtle changes can make the subject stand out.

So these are my 3 steps to convolve a ho hum photo into a more interesting photo that makes you go hmmm.

Read More

Play when you can’t get what you want

Posted by Philip in General

A couple weeks ago we had an amazing moon lit night.  I thought it’d be a great time to out the camera and do some nice moon images.  But for some reason it just wasn’t working.  There was a bit of haze in the atmosphere or maybe it was me fumbling around with the wrong settings.  So to insure that pulling out the camera wasn’t a wast of time I decided to play around with some long exposure images.  But to take it a step further, I also zoomed the lens during the shot.  SO I ended up with some pretty whacky stuff.  I don’t know that you could call it anything more than just art.

Read More