What did I do?
I did something with this image in camera (That means no post processing effect here) and I’d like you to figure out what it is. Next week I’ll have a video post about this… thing. I also stripped all the meta data, so no help there. You have to use your keen eye as a photographer.
The Photography Tip of the Week #081
Simply put the red eye you see is the light reflecting off the blood vessels on someone’s retina in the back of their eye. It may sound gross, but you are making a photo with blood in it. Here’s a photo of the retina of an eye… one of my eyes to be exact. You can see the blood vessels going through the retina. The over all red-orange color is the color you would see if you shined a light directly into someone’s eye.
Why a flash makes red-eye. (Image not to scale)
So now you know where the red comes from, why do you get red-eye in your photos? When your major light source, in this case the flash is in line with the lens of your camera, anyone looking directly at the lens and flash will allow you the opportunity to capture the red of their retina in your image. This greatly depends on the angle between the flash, the eye and the lens. But for the sake of argument, any flash that is on the camera and pointed at your subject has an extremely good chance to create red-eye in your image. There is no exact number to the angle, so creating a math equation is pointless.
- Increase the angle between your lens,the flash and your subject’s eye. In some cases this may be a difficult notion. If you are using a built-in flash either on a DSLR or a point and shoot camera, you may not be able increase this angle easily. You will have to turn off the built-in flash and use an external light source. If you hear photographers saying to get the flash off the camera, this is one reason to do so.
- Point the flash another direction. You can’t always do this but many high-end flash units will allow you to rotate the flash around and point it in a different direction to bounce the flash off a wall or ceiling. Alternately you can put something over the flash to diffuse the light a bit like a paper towel or napkin which can reduce the effect.
- Red-eye reduction mode. This is a feature on many point and shoot cameras. The idea is to blast your subject with lots of annoying flashes so their pupils close and create a natural shield to the final big flash. Hopefully this won’t get you punched for annoying your subjects too much.
- Red eye removal in post production. Almost every image manipulation program has a red-eye removal. All this does is paint the red section black. This most often looks unnatural, but if you are in a bind, it’s quick and easy.
Even though it doesn't look like it, Abigael is not looking directly at the lens.
Hold really really still
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
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.
Just being a bit different
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.
The Photography Tip of the Week #079
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.
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I am a top photographer in the Mocksville, North Carolina Professional Photographers guide on MarketingTool.com.
