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.

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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.

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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.

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Is social media a waste of time?

Posted by Philip in Photo Philosophy

Photoshelter asked 4 photographers the following 5 questions.  Instead of commenting on their responses, I thought it would be best to answer them myself.  It’s a great way to think about what and why one does.

1) When did you get started with social media? What prompted you to start factoring social media into your marketing efforts?

I started with a podcast for photography tips.  For me it was a way of creating a discipline and forcing me to think through the photography process.  If I can teach someone else how to become a better photographer, I learn more as well.  I wasn’t looking at it any more than finding a way to help others.  The added benefit is that when people think of photographer, they think of me.

2) What are the elements used in your social media strategy? Which do you feel is the most effective?

The biggest element is the concept of giving something back.  It doesn’t matter which social outlets you use or what groups you target.  As long as your message is relevant to that group.  The purpose of social media is to create awareness, maintain awareness and basically advertise.  You don’t have to post the sale of the month, just create useful relevant content that is worth something to some one.  I get a lot… a lot of positive comments and a couple negative comments.  The positive are a great boost to my energy and the negative allow me to look at myself and find a better way.

3) Do you feel the effort is worthwhile? Does it pay for itself? Can you describe any sales successes directly tied to social media?

Post beautiful portraits on Facebook, friends look at them and say… “Who was the photographer?”  I get calls.  Plain and simple.  It becomes word-of mouth or in this case electrons-on-Internet advertising.

4) Who are you targeting with your social media efforts, and how to you expand your base of followers/fans?

I’m a generalist.  It’s hard to be a generalist in any field without proof of your abilities, understanding, and  experience.  Social media gives you that very easily.  With my background in physics, I feel I have a more unique understanding of light and how to make it do what I want so I can make the image.  As a software developer I understand the representation and requirements for creating the final image.  Social media is very organic, and configurable.  Various categories of work will naturally show up to those who have an interest.  This creates the targets and expansion very easily.

5) Please describe your normal social media routine – from start to finish. How long does the routine typically take?

My weekly 5 minute podcast generally takes about 2 hours on average.  This includes either finding or creating the necessary photography, writing the copy, recording, assembling and posting.  Then there is the notification process.  Some pieces are automatic, but if I finish really late at night, I will either retweet or post to other sources the next morning when people are more apt to see the post.  I don’t often dig up or rehash too much, since I have so much new content (at least for me) to do.

A blog post can take anywhere from 5 minutes to several days of work.  I decided at the beginning of the year I would do the podcast and 2 blog posts each week.  I have a mantra:

1. Content worth sharing
2. Start with the end in mind
3. Write from my uniqueness
4. Don’t brag, boast or stretch the truth
5. It’s all about writing for people!

When you are ready to post, the most important thing is that your social media has to come from a source that you control.  In my case it’s my website.  I do not rely on any single social media outlet.  So if the individual social media outlet’s terms of service changes, there is an outage, or the service disappears completely I haven’t lost a thing.  Once the content is available on my site, it take about 3-5 minutes to push it to the various social media outlets.

-) And the question they didn’t really ask:  Are you going to continue to expand and pursue social media?

Whole heartedly, Yes.  If you are genuine in you desire to help others, good things come back.  Social media is not a one way conversation, and one of the reasons my mother has a hard time understanding why Facebook is different than e-mail.  Social media is a way of putting yourself out for examination.  It keeps you honest and help show who you really are to the world.

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Sitting Still Life

Posted by Philip in Gallery, Photo Processing, Photo Technique

Is it HDR, fancy photography or Photoshop?  The answer is never that simple.  Especially if you look at the subject matter, can you imagine getting a young boy to sit long enough for just just one image?

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