Photo Technique | Time and Time Photographer

Nov02 1

Photography Tip #96 – Clutter in your scene

Posted by Philip in Photo Technique, Podcast

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.

Jan09 0

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.

Nov30 3

Quickie light panel

Posted by Philip in General, Photo Technique

Ever wanted to do a quick product shot and just didn’t want to pull out a bunch of equipment? I wanted to photograph a couple holiday ornaments. They’d be great for greeting cards or something similar and I wanted a white background. so I could get the following images without a lot of Photoshop time:

These are quick, I spent almost no time in Photoshop and this was the quick setup I used. Just a paper towel roll wrapped around a soda bottle and a remotely triggered flash behind the paper towels.

Nov28 0

The Photography Tip of the Week #089

Posted by Philip in Photo Technique, Podcast

Modify Flash
089 Photography Tip of the Week (audio)

This is my last tip in my series of the basics of flash. In many respects this should have been the first tip, however I thought it best to be last. If you’ve kept up with my previous tips you know several ways to modify the flash, I’m just going to give you some more. It is rare that the basic flash attached to your camera will continue to give you great results in every lighting condition. Even as advanced as our camera bodies get, the flash doesn’t give you a lot of creative control as is. So you have to modify the light. Here are the common ways of light modification. Keep in mind, unless you add more lights to the scene, modifying existing flash units will reduce the amount of light hitting your subject. So you will have to take that into consideration when modifying your light sources.

Light diffusion – This includes anything you put over the flash to change the look from a simple napkin, to a colored gel or munchie bag, to an umbrella. These all diffuse and/or modify the color of the light.
Light direction – This includes any positioning of the flash with respect to the camera from bouncing the flash off the ceiling or remotely triggering the flash.
Light shaping – This is anything you do to change the size or shape of the light. This can be done by using an umbrella or lightbox to make the light bigger to wrapping something around the flash to keep it from spreading.

I’d like to give you a quick example of light shaping. This first image of our vase shows using an umbrella off the side to create a diffuse light source. This in effect makes the flash bigger and allows the light to wrap around the subject. This is a very nice light and great for portraits or anything you want to light relatively evenly but still show some dimension.

But with a single sheet of paper and gaffers or painters tape we can quickly change our flash into a shaped diffuse light source. In this image you can see the possibilities. The light will be very different depending on the length of paper, color of paper, or even areas you black out on the paper.

You can simply use the flash to the side to make a light source that creates a strong sense of dimension. The amount of light that comes through the paper is far less than what would come through an umbrella, so you will have to compensate for that with flash power or distance.

Or you can put the flash overhead for a very dramatic effect. There are a great many possibilities in just a single sheet of paper and appropriate light placement.

Nov23 0

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?

Nov21 0

The Photography Tip of the Week #088

Posted by Philip in Photo Technique, Podcast

Get a Slave (Flash)
088 Photography Tip of the Week (audio)

This tip is one of the best kept secrets of photography. In fact is such a big a secret I often forget it more than I remember. For under $30 you can get a flash that automatically fires when it sees another flash. A slave flash. It doesn’t have a lot of complicated controls, you just turn it on and go. It works with every camera that fires a flash, even point-and-shoot cameras. I often use it behind my subject as a rim light or above as a hair light. It’s also great for illuminating a back wall or any dark area in your scene that just needs more light.

This first image is a photo of our model using only a ring flash. A ring flash will create a wrapping effect to more evenly light your subject. However, due to the way the light falls off quickly, the background is very dark and some edges of our model blends into the background.

In this second image there is a slave flash behind the model about a meter or so pointed up at about a 45 degree angle. This fills in the background to complete the wrapping effect and make the subject standout. This added separation allows us more flexibility in the photo. It’s a pretty reasonable image as is, but now the subject is more defined we can do a few quick things in Photoshop. In order to do the darkening and blurring of the background in Photoshop took me about 30 seconds. A simple selection was all I needed to separate the subject from the background.
Even if you don’t want to do editing in an image manipulation program like Photoshop, slave flashes are an inexpensive way to add lights throughout your scene.