Wait For The Light.

I know how easy it is to be in a rush to capture that perfect image. Sometimes you get excited by a subject and you just have to capture it. But, before you snap that shutter make sure you are getting the best light on your subject that you can.

If you are in harsh sunlight and you can move to open shade give that a try to minimize the contrast and harsh shadows. If it's mid day and you can be at the same location in the evening or early morning maybe wait to take the shot for that better light.

Sometimes though, you have a subject that's moving and you have no choice but to get what you get or don't get it at all. Such as the hot air balloon I spotted this morning on my way to work. It was moving pretty quickly across the sky and I love photos of hot air balloons. I had to take the shot.

It's nice and sharp but it's a bit blah. But, I did get a nice shot of it.

Then I noticed the sun starting to peek over the clouds to the east and I decided to wait just a few more minutes. Here is the result of that little bit of patience.

Much better. The sun warmed up the scene a bit, gave the balloon a nice glow and gave it more dimension due to the directional lighting.

Just goes to show you that just a few minutes can make a huge difference and if you just look around for the light and watch for the changing conditions, you can make some really nice art.

Chris.

Outdoor Flash Photos

I've been meaning to take my lighting set up outside. Today was that day. I needed to experiment.

I started just with the Canon 430 just in my hand off to camera left and up a little. I think I was around 1/8 power here maybe 1/16th. I snapped a couple of the kids to see what I would get. I was after a nice blue sky so I adjusted my exposure so I would be about 1 stop under exposed. The flash took care of the kids.

I liked the look but thought it may be a little harsh with the bare flash. I grabbed my light stand and umbrella and tried some more. This one is the one I liked the best.

I'm not sure which look I like the best. I like the harsh pop of the bare flash with the darker sky but I also like the softer look of the umbrella shot. What do you think?

Oh, of course being the Dad that I am I had to play a joke on them too. I had them hold the umbrella up asking them to make sure it did not touch the ground as it was bad for the umbrella. As they were laughing and looking up at the umbrella I took this shot...

They didn't find it too funny. Me on the other hand, well I had to put my camera down. Any photos taken after this would have had some pretty bad camera shake, I was laughing so hard!

Chris.

Should You Purchase That Gear Or Travel To That Place?

I've been thinking about gear and travel lately and exactly what I need/want.

There is a pile of gear that I want.....really want. Like the new Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II. Oh man, would I like that. But it's expensive. The last price I saw here in Edmonton was $2600.00CA. That would pay for my family's return flight to California! Add to that the price of the Canon 24-105mm f/4L IS at $1500.00CA and that pays for our hotel rooms. And the Canon 1D Mark IV at $5100.00CA, well that purchase alone would pay for the whole trip.

What is more important a couple of lenses that will still be available when my kids are older, or that family vacation while the kids still want to do those kinds of things? Sorry gear heads, I must go with the family vacation. The gear I have is more than enough. A Canon 50D, the Nifty Fifty and a Tamron 18-270mm are perfect for any photography I plan to do for the near future. My kids will only be kids for a short time.

It's funny, I've been thinking about this the last few days and today I read a post from the Digital Photography School about this very thing. It's entitled Buy Less Gear: Travel and Experience More. Funny how karma works isn't it. Photography isn't about gear it's about vision. Sure the gear is part of it but seeing the light and visualizing the photograph you want to make is much more important that the gear. Knowing your existing gear inside and out and knowing the basic techniques of photography will go a lot farther by far than any new camera body and lenses will ever take you.

Sorry Canon, I won't be getting those 2 lenses or the 1D Mark IV just yet but one day I just may. Of course if you would like to donate them too me I would do my best to use them to their full potential. :)

Chris.

To HDR Or Not To HDR? That Is The Question.

I've been noticing a huge increase in the number of HDR images showing up lately. Some are very surreal and some are much more natural looking. I've been thinking about trying it and have been convinced that I need to by my Flickr friend The Bruce. Bruce has been dabbling in the HDR world lately and I've really liked the images he has produced. So I thought I'd give it a go. Why not.

So, I downloaded a trial of Photomatix and started to experiment. I used a single photo and outputted a normal exposure, -2 and +2 to simulate the bracketing. Hard to bracket when the wind is blowing so hard.

I took this photo of my kids on Canada Day and I like it but it's missing so much of the contrast that was there for my eyes to see. I'd like you to see more of what I saw.

The first one I completed was this one but the white flags went to gray. I love all the detail in the clouds, leaves, and the kids clothing but the flags really turned me off.

I opened it up in Lightroom and used the adjustment brush to increase the exposure on the white areas being very careful to use the auto mask feature and not bleed into the surrounding areas too much.

This one I really like. Look at the detail in their clothes. All that was lost in the original even though I used my flash. The range just was not there.

I think you can expect to see more HDR work in my Flickr stream from now on. I really like how this turned out.

Chris.

Made A Rookie Mistake....But CS5 Saved It!

Sunday night we had some awesome storm clouds rolling over the city. Behind one was a great rainbow and I just had to capture it. I grabbed my camera and headed up to the second floor to take a shot from a higher vantage point. I took it from the bathroom which had the best view but I made a rookie mistake. I didn't turn of the lights in the bathroom!

Look at the photo below and you will see the lights on the left side about 1/3 of the way from the top.

I was disappointed to say the least. But then I remembered that CS5 has content aware fill! So, I downloaded the demo and set to it.

Below is the resulting photo which I tweaked a bit more. I cooled the light a bit and adjusted the curves a bit for a bit more of a dramatic look.

I am quite happy with the resulting photo. This was just a quick and dirty fix too. Nothing fancy or difficult. I may just have to save all my pennies and purchase CS5.

Chris.

Black Fridge Panel + Photography = Cool.

When we bought our new house last summer, the previous owners left some items behind. One of the items was a couple of fridge panels, black on one side, white on the other and very shiny. I have been having a blast with the one I took to work and put on my table. It's right beside a great big window. I get great light there.

I guess I just want to thank them for leaving their garbage behind. One man's trash is another man's photo gear!

Here are some samples.

Chris.

160.365 Vent Cap LR3 Test

Wednesday June 9 2010.

A friend of mine just go a copy of Lightroom 3 and was kind enough to let me import some photos to test it out. Let's just call it amazing. I've only tested it on a few photos but wow! I'm going to buy it for sure.

This is a vent cap for a 25000 liter fuel tank. I put it on my reflective fridge panel. Nice and clean but not too unexpected until you read this part.

This is shot at ISO 6400 on my 50D! f/16 for 1/40 sec. I've done nothing except import it in. The new process settings in LR3 are amazing. It removed the noise without me even touching the settings. I was able to bring back some of the detail on the side that was smoothed out a bit too much as well.

Wow.

And this one is at ISO 12800! LR3 Rocks. And this is just for noise reduction!

Chris.

Understand The Risks.

Photographing kids can be risky. Yes, you read that right. Risky. Personal and equipment harm is a real possibility.

Take these photos from my son playing some tee ball out at the lake this past weekend for example.....

Great hit, I'm safe 50 feet away aren't I?

Just before it took my hat off. I guess I wasn't safe even at 50 feet away!

He hit the tee. The ball went straight up but the tee, well it came after me with a vengeance.

It quickly crossed the 15 or so feet to me tumbling end over end.

Just after this it decided to smash into me. Hitting right on the end of my lens. Good thing I never take the lens hood off!

See, personal and equipment harm could happen just like that! But then, I knew the risks going into the shoot. :)

Chris.

Does The Eye You Shoot With Affect Your Creativity?

I've been thinking about this question lately. It's known that the left side of your brain is more logical. Science and math type of thinking. The left side of your brain also controls the right side of you body, including the right eye. The right side of the brain is more creative. It likes music, art and 3D shapes. It controls the left side of your body, including your left eye.

Does it matter which eye you look through the viewfinder to compose your photo? Would you get a more artistic composure using you left eye or a more technically correct photo using your right eye?

I'm a left eye shooter. I like to think that I'm tapping directly into my creative mind while I'm composing my photos. It may explain why I failed to notice the branch creeping into the photo in my last post! While I'm thinking about my shot and setting it up, I'm using both eyes so I hope my left brain is helping me with my technical issues but once I put that camera to my eye, it's all right brained baby.

I'd like to show some examples of my left eye vs right eye shots but I never shoot with my right eye so I don't have any! I will try to take some shots with my right eye though to compare. In the mean time, here are some of my favorite "left eye" photos.

Chris.

Watch Your Edges!

One thing I've learned from the NYIP Professional Photography course is to watch your background. Watch for things that may be growing out of the heads of your subjects or running through them.
Another is to watch for things creeping in around the edges of the frame.

With this photo, I was so into the snow on the leaf that I failed to notice the branch cutting across the bottom right corner. I've tried cropping it but cannot find a crop to my liking. A slightly different angle would have solved this before it became a problem.

This square crop was the best I could do. I'm not a big fan of square crops. It tends to put the subject dead center on me. But I think in this case I was able to salvage the photo.

Chris.

Renting Lenses.

I've been captured by the lens rental bug. This weekend I'm renting two lenses. A Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro and the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 L.

The 100mm will be to complete the macro assignment in my NYIP photography course and just to play with. I've never used a macro lens before. I'm looking forward to it.

The 24-70mm is for the decision to save for this lens. It is one of two lenses I'm thinking of purchasing down the road. The 70-200. f/2.8 IS L is the other that I will rent when the new version becomes available. These are the two high end lenses I'm considering for business purposes.

I'm renting the lenses from Vistek here in Edmonton for a great price. The 100mm will cost me $20.00CAD for the weekend and the 24-70mm will set me back $36.00CAD for the weekend. Compared to a purchase price of $720.00 CAD for the 100mm and $1550.00 for the 24-70mm renting is a great idea if you are unsure of your needs. Even if you need it but only occasionally, the price is great. The 100mm I'll only need for this assignment but the 24-70mm is a future purchase consideration.

Watch here for my thoughts on these lenses and of course some sample images after I return them next week.

Chris.

Google Maps, Geotagging and Flickr Sets.

I recently watched a video podcast episode from The Digital Photography Connection about using Google Maps to geotag your photos. You can embed the google map link into the exif data of your photo and there you have it, instant geotag.

I thought, wow, what a great idea that is but I'm taking it a little further. I'm going to create some private maps and link from that map to the set of photos from that location on Flickr.

For example, here is a link to a location I shoot at all summer. Fork Lake, Alberta. The link brings up the google map I've created with a pin on it. Click on the pin and it opens up the data for that pin. In that data I've put a link to the set of photos for that location on Flickr. You can do multiple links to different sets so if you return there often you can see the changes throughout the sets.

In the future, I'll try to include the location for each photo in the exif and it will link back to the associated pin on the associated map. Round and round it goes.

For now, I'm using private maps but I may create public maps that will drive some people to my Flickr stream.

 

Chris.

Digital Photography Tips - Post Processing Warning!

I just have to say be careful how much you post process your images. I'm not talking about enhancing things after the fact here. I'm talking about simple sharpening. I recently did a shoot, the post before this, and was very excited about the photos. They looked so good on the camera. When I uploaded them into Lightroom though, I was met with this.....

Look at the terrible artifacting around his mouth and chin and nose, well everywhere really! I was very disappointed. I thought it must have been something I had done during the shoot.

Turns out, I had the radius and detail sliders too high in lightoom. It was causing all sorts of issues. Once I backed them off and the clarity slider a little, it looked much better. I also turned the masking up to just catch the edges of everything.

Gotta stop playing with the settings all the time. :)

Chris.

Digital Photography Tip # - ISO

It's been a while since I posted a tip. I thought ISO might be a good one this time around with spring here and more and more outdoor activities get started. I'm still planning on lighting tips but I need to learn more on that first.

ISO can be thought of these days as the another variable in your exposure settings. In today's modern DSLRs it has become a very useful setting. ISO is the sensitivity of the sensor to light just as ISO or ASA in film is the sensitivity to light. The more sensitive the sensor is set the faster the shutter speed can be which will affect what aperture you can use as well.

Of course you usually want the lowest possible ISO setting to keep your noise levels down to a minimum but there are times where you just need to raise the ISO in order to keep either the shutter speed you want or a desired aperture.

Be careful though when you choose to raise the ISO. Higher ISO settings are very finicky with proper exposure. If your exposure is not quite right and you have to raise it in post, the noise will really pop out. What I've taken to doing is to slightly over expose the shot and bring it down a bit in post. That hides some of the noise. Of course there is no better plan than to get it right in camera.

Here is a link to my post on the above trick. This trick works great if you don't have a lot of highlight areas that would get blown out by over exposing but if you are not worried about the highlights and it's the only way to get the shot, give it a try.

Here are some examples of higher ISO photos. I'm talking over ISO 1600 here as most cameras and editing software now can handle ISO 1600 well.

A Breakthrough For High ISO Noise!!

I know that many people are having trouble with noise levels at higher ISO's. I don't like to use flash if I don't have to. What do we do???

Like many 50D owners, I've been less than impressed with the high ISO performance of my new camera. I was beginning to think either I was expecting too much or Canon was full of it.

Slowly I've been getting better at working this camera to it's abilities, which by the way are more than my abilities as a photographer LOL. I've gotten better and better results as the months have passed. But today, well today I had a major breakthrough. I was reading some of the threads on groups I'm in here on Flickr and there was a fantastic suggestion on how to handle noise on any make or model camera. I wish I could find that thread to give props to the person who pointed it out. I'll keep looking for it. Here's what the breakthrough is.

Shift your exposure to the right and bring it back down in post. That's it. I tried at ISO 3200, 6400 and 12800. I overexposed 1 and 2 stops then brought them down that amount in post. The noise disappeared. Well enough of it to make even my ISO 12,800 usuable. Look at these shots at full size and see what I mean.

I love my 50D again!!

ISO 6400, normal exposure. Noise not too bad here.

Now the same shot but over exposed 2 stops then pulled back down in post.

Here is ISO 12,800 normal exposure. Pretty much useless. My cell phone looks better.

Now ISO 12,800 over exposed 2 stops then brought down in post. This I could use. Still has some noise but ISO 12,800!! Wow.

I'm pretty sure this will work for any make and model. Let me know if it works for you.

Chris.

Theme - Depth Of Field

In our photo a day group we have decided to do themes each week to challenge ourselves and learn. This week the theme is Depth Of Field.

I love this theme. I'm a big fan of shallow DOF. I run my camera in aperture priority 99 percent of the time. I'm going to post some of my photos from this theme here over the next few days.

This is the photo I used for Day 6 of my 365 project. I set the bells in the back of the frame for a nice bokeh effect. Using my 50mm lens wide open at f/1.8 gives me a very shallow DOF and the bells are just barely recognizalbe.

50mm, ISO 400, f/1.8 for 1/60 sec.

In this photo of my daughter, who cracked her wrist and has to have a bath in the kitchen sink so we can keep her cast dry, I have used the same technique as the above photo. I love to run a lens wide open and throw as much of the photo out of focus as I can.

50mm, ISO 400, f/1.8 for 1/160 sec.

Of course you don't have to put the focus point on the front of the photo. In this photo, I've moved the focus point to my daughter's head which put her arm at the bottom of the frame out of focus.

50mm. ISO 400, f/1.8 for 1/80 sec.

Digital Photography Tip #007 - Natural Light

I'm going to venture into the often confusing and frustrating topic of lighting. First the easy one. Natural light.

What is natural light? Natural light is the light that occurs naturally in the scene. Daylight, or in some cases, Moonlight. Any light produced by a man made source is not natural light. We will get to them later.

Ok, how do we handle this lighting? This gets frustrating at times. There is a school of thought that bright sunny days are great for pictures. Not so. Bright sunny days lead to way more contrast than your camera can handle. This holds true for digital or film. What happens is you either expose for the highlights and the shadows go very dark with no detail or you expose for the shadows and the sky and highlights are blown completely out. Also the shadows are very harsh. How do we handle that? I'll get to that a little later on.

What kind of lighting then if not bright sunny days? Overcast! Or at least a day with some clouds. The clouds will diffuse the sun and produce a softer more even light with softer shadows. Have a look at the following examples.

Front lighting.


Here it was bright sun behind me. You hear all the time you should put the sun behind your back to light your subject. Well he is lit alright. So bright he is squinting hard and look at the harsh shadows on his face from his glasses and on his neck from his chin. Not a very flattering picture.

Diffused sunlight.


In this photo, I waited for a cloud to cover the sun. Notice the almost complete lack of shadows. Only a slight shadow just under the cat tail at the stem. The light was very even. The contrast was less and the colors were more natural. Quite a difference from the harsh lighting in the previous photo.

Open shade.


This one was taken on a very bright day but in the open shade of a tree. Open shade is a great place to beat the brightness of the day. It can be behind a building or under a tree or some such place that has nice shade. Be careful with trees that you don't get sunlight popping through the leaves and leaving bright patches on your subjects. That makes for some odd looking effects.

Back lighting.


In this picture of my Mom and my daughter we see an example of back lighting. The light is coming from behind them not behind me. Notice how it produces a bit of a halo effect around them which really pulls them from the background.


Here is another example of back lighting that is on the extreme side. The sun is literally right behind the subject. I used the cat tail to block the sunrise which produces a great halo effect on the cat tail.

Back lighting is one of my favorite effects.

Side lighting.


Side lighting is a great way to show texture in your subject. Notice the vain in the leaf how the shadows fall and show the texture of the leaf and on the grains of sand.

The best thing I can suggest is practice and experiment and have fun with it. If you like the photo then it is a good photo. Dark shadows or not.

Chris.

Digital Photography Tip #006 - Leading Lines

Another way to enhance your subject is by the use of leading lines in your photo. A road, a railing, a beach, a branch. Anything like that that draws the viewers eye into the photo and around the photo works well.

Have a look at the examples below.




The shore line here leads your eye to Jacob and then beyond to the back of the photo then back to Jacob again.



Here the lines of the slide draw your eye up to Jacob no matter where you look. also notice the framing effect of the trees on either side of the slide.

Chris.

Digital Photography Tip #005 - Framing

One way to help your subject to stand out is to frame it. I don't mean with a frame around the print either. I mean to use a doorway, trees, branches etc to frame the subject with. Have a look at the example below.



Here I've used leaves on a tree between myself and my son to frame him. This draws your attention to him. Also notice that I've used the Rule Of Thirds here and placed him slightly to the left of the frame. But this is about framing.

The frame need not surround the subject. Two sides will work as in this example.



Here I've used the uprights on a deck railing to frame him in.

Chris.

Digital Photography Tip #004 - Rule Of Thirds

What's that you ask. Well basically this rule tells you not to put your subject in the center of the photo. Move them off to the side or up or down.

Divide your view finder into a tic-tac-toe board. 3 rows and 3 columns (2 horizontal lines and 2 vertical lines intersecting). Try to place your subject on one of the intersecting lines of the board. This will give your photos a more interesting composition. See the example below.



You can also put the subject more to the top or bottom like this example.



Of course rules are meant to be broken and this one is no exception.




Sometimes a centered subject just works. Think of this as more of a guide than a rule. Use it and it will improve your photos immediately but know when it's ok not to use it as well.

Chris.