Fish Eagle in Action by Brendon Cremer
Fish Eagle in Action by Brendon Cremer
Saturday, 1st November 2014
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Did You Appreciate the Choice of Print Sizes?
Did You Appreciate the Choice of Print Sizes?
Ctein's Bird Impression sale is in its last hour (it ends at noon Wisconsin time). I'm curious as to how you felt about the print being offered in two sizes at different price points...whether you bought one or just considered it. Did you like the option or did it discourage you? (Another option is to present two different sizes for the same price. What would you think of that?)
Mike
Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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Accepted Model Release Mobile Apps for Stock Photography
Accepted Model Release Mobile Apps for Stock Photography
If you are a stock photography shooter, or if you are currently building your collection with the intention of getting into stock photography – model releases and property releases are a critical part of your workflow. Model release mobile apps make it much easier to obtain and manage your releases – but to make sure [...]
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Halloween Shoot: Project 52 Members
Halloween Shoot: Project 52 Members
 | The assignment was to illustrate a double truck (2 page […] Categories: |
6 Ways to Make the Most of Night Time Photography
6 Ways to Make the Most of Night Time Photography
Night time photography is surprisingly similar to daytime photography in the sense that it’s all about finding the right light. Obviously, things are considerably more challenging at night, and while it may appear your opportunities are severely limited once the sun dips below the horizon, you should think in terms of having a different set of opportunities rather than having fewer of them. Night scenes possess a unique aesthetic — the night can transform a familiar location into something strange, mysterious, and captivating; the night can even be freeing in some respects, as you can now see the world (and the skies above it) without the distraction of sunlight.
Night time photography may very well push the limits of both you and your camera, but it is a worthwhile challenge with the potential to pay big creative dividends if you stick with it. If you’ve been looking to get started with night time photography, the tips below should be of some interest to you.
1. Plan Ahead
Spur of the moment adventures are great but it’s not always the best approach, especially when you’re new to something. Your night photography endeavors will benefit from having a plan. It is good to know not only where you want to shoot, but also how to navigate the area. Getting lost at night isn’t going to be any fun and could even end up causing you more trouble than you bargained for. You will also want to check the weather; admittedly, depending on where you live this could be totally useless, but it’s good to have some idea of what Mother Nature may have in store. Make sure you bring along items like your cellphone, a small flash light, and maybe some insect repellent — anything that will make your outing safer, more comfortable, and more efficient.
2. Timing
You don’t necessarily have to wait until it’s pitch black outside to get some great night shots. Dusk provides an excellent opportunity for low light photography with the added advantage of capturing the amazing colors that linger in the sky shortly after sunset.
3. Leave the Flash Behind
Night photography is all about long exposures. Using a flash to approximate the look of daytime defeats the purpose of night time photography. You might find a very specific use for flash if you do night time portraiture, otherwise your flash won’t be of any use to you with nothing to bounce it off and most subjects being too big or too far away for flash to be effective. Instead of relying on flash, take maximum control of aperture and shutter speed. Larger apertures and longer shutter speeds capture more light and are essential to low light/night time photography.
4. Leave the Tripod Behind
For some photographers, a tripod is nothing but a hassle. Considering the fact you’re trying to move around under less than ideal illumination, you probably won’t want to deal with a tripod. This is especially true if you’re in an urban/city environment where there are nearly as many people on the move at night as during the day. When you need to stabilize your camera, look for sturdy objects in your environment — whatever that might be — to rest your camera on.
5. Bring a Tripod
Ok, tripods aren’t always trouble, and there are photographers who don’t mind lugging one around. A tripod is much easier to manage when you don’t have to navigate a crowd and it’s a necessity if you plan to do something like light trails or astrophotography. A cable release and a sturdy tripod will make it easy for you to keep the shutter open for as long as you need.
6. Experiment
Night time photography is just a blanket term that covers a number of things you can do and locations you can work in. Landscapes, light trails, astrophotography, motion blur, silhouettes — why not try your hand at each of these? Experiment with exposure, try various angles, and don’t be afraid of a little noise (or film grain if you prefer analog). In time you’ll discover that the challenges associated with night photography pale in comparison to the results you produce.
As a final thought, consider the advice put forth by night time photography specialist Kevin Adams: “Night photography is unique in that the photos look nothing like what we see with our eyes—a result of long shutter speeds, high ISOs, big apertures, and subjects that are often on the move. A good night photographer understands all this and knows what the image will look like before shooting.”
The post 6 Ways to Make the Most of Night Time Photography appeared first on Light Stalking.
Congratulations To Mike Leland PFRE Photographer Of The Month For October
Congratulations To Mike Leland PFRE Photographer Of The Month For October Mike Leland of Tucson, AZ has won the October, PFRE Photographer of The Month award. Mike is the first to win this award three times. Old timers in this contest will remember Mike from back in Sept and Oct 2011 when he won this contest when he was working in Cairns, AU. Here are the […]
How I Made That Bird Picture (and Print)
How I Made That Bird Picture (and Print)
By Ctein
[Ctein's "Bird Impression" Print Sale ends tomorrow at noon Central time. —Mike]
Before I dive into this particular monologue, I want to remind you that the purpose of illustrations are to illustrate a point. They don't prove anything. Most especially, not when they're JPEGs plugged into some website and viewed in a browser. How much connection they have to reality is something one should question.
Furthermore, the point of this exercise is to produce a lovely finished print. What looks best in a big print is not always the same as what looks best in a small JPEG on the screen. Even a well-calibrated screen.
If you see something here that seems at odds with my words, ignore what you see. What you see is false. My words are true. If any of the illustrations here mislead you into imagining that some earlier version of the photograph is better than the final one, that is an erroneous conclusion and you are encouraged to stifle it.
Pictures do lie. Frequently.
Are we all on the same (web) page? Excellent! On with the show.
This was a tricky photograph to make. It wasn't going to work unless it was tolerably sharp corner to corner. Not being the sort to travel around with a view camera with swings and tilts I needed to stay reasonably parallel to the window glass. Unfortunately, I also needed to find a point of view that didn't include a distracting background. Those requirements were mutually incompatible. When I faced the bird impression head-on, there were visually intrusive elements in the background scene. When I completely eliminated the distracting elements, I was way too far off axis. Further making my life difficult, I could not stop down very far. If I did, the background became too sharp, and that pulled the eye away from the subject. I ended up working at ƒ/2.2., slightly off-axis. Not far enough, unfortunately, to be able to move the bright and dark bar in the background out of the frame. All I could do was hope that I could keep it from being so distracting as to ruin the photograph. I also had to hope that even though the edges of the frame weren't going to be as sharp as the center, they wouldn't be so unsharp as to distract the viewer.
I lucked out. The geometries could have been entirely incompatible. Once I got the photograph imported into DDB's computer, I could see that I'd solved these technical problems well enough. Unadjusted, the photo didn't have a lot going for it. Figure 1 is what the photograph looks like imported with my default settings in Adobe Camera RAW. All the elements are there, but it's not much of a photograph. I made some tweaks. I upped the Clarity slider in ACR to bring out a bit more separation between the dust and the tones in the background...but not very much, because it also increased the contrast in the background features. Another rock and a hard place. Then I did some judicious dodging and burning-in to even out the illumination and and bring the focus of attention more onto the body of the bird. You can see that in figure 2. There's also a careful amount of smart sharpening on the entire image, to separate the finest details of the feathers, with a stronger degree of smart sharpening along the edges to counter some of the out-of-focus issues. It doesn't eliminate them, but it prevents the eye from being drawn to them.
Okay, now I needed to bring up the contrast between the powdery impression and the background. I applied a fairly heavy dose of wide-radius unsharp masking filtration to a duplicate image layer. Then I added a mask to that layer, inverted it to black, and painted it white where I wanted to bring out the imprint. You can see the results in figure 3 and the mask I painted in figure 4.
And that was pretty much it!
All I did to get from here to the final version was make a minor curves adjustment that flattened out the midtones. That suppressed the background and kept it from being too distracting (figure 5).
This looked great on DDB's monitor. I had serious concerns, though, that when I got it homed in it wouldn't print well. Digital prints tend to suppress subtle tonal differences. One normally compensates for this when creating a file that will print well. It's good to have a little more local contrast than looks good on the monitor, and an extra bit of white-radius unsharp masking does the trick nicely in most cases. This photograph was such a delicate balancing act, though, between accentuating the dusty impression and suppressing the background. Who knew how much (or how) I'd have to tweak it to get what looked good on the screen to look good in the print? I wouldn't find out for a week.
And then, lo, a miracle occurred. The file printed perfectly. No tweaks, I left it just the way I created an DDB's computer. The very first print was a final print.
That was the last thing in the world I expected.
To make the same photograph look good in a smaller 11x14 print, I made one additional adjustment. I gave it an extra dose of the smart-sharpen function in Photoshop. Why? Because at that size, the finest detail in the photograph was pushing into spatial frequencies where the printer starts to lose contrast. Giving those ultra-fine details a bit of a kick compensated for that. It's only necessary for the small print. The 17x22 print comes out just fine without that extra dose of sharpening. In fact, it makes it look worse, as I can start to see unnaturally-enhanced qualities at the edges of the feathery imprints, just a little bit.
What about bigger? Well, one person has bought a print in 20x26" size, and it holds up very nicely.
Me, I like it at the original 17x22 size. You? Maybe not. So, two different sizes for sale this time. I hope one of them pleases.
Ctein
[Here's the link again. As I said up top, this sale ends tomorrow at noon. —Ed.]
Mike
Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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Siblings at Play by David Swindler
Siblings at Play by David Swindler
Siblings at Play by David Swindler
Friday, 31st October 2014
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Photographers You Should Know: Aaron Jones
Photographers You Should Know: Aaron Jones
| The first time I saw Aaron Jones work was in a Communic […] Categories: |
More Crack for Photographers
More Crack for Photographers
...Like we needed more things to want.
The 27-inch iMac with a 5k Retina display. Yikes.
Just sayin'.
Mike
Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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BWJones: "I've seen one in person and they are amazing...think about this: the desktop wallpaper is equivalent to a 25MP camera sensor...most of the digital cameras being produced could not even render a full size wallpaper on an iMac 5k display."
Brian Thomas and Seeing the Dead
Brian Thomas and Seeing the Dead
One of the last and best photo essays from the Pile of Prints website—"Seeing the Dead," a photo essay about how people see the dead differently in Mexico and America.
(This is a surreptitious warning to the clueless that Halloween is tomorrow, and you need to be prepared for when the doorbell rings.)
Mike
(Thanks to Brian)
Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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A General Counsel Talks About Photographer’s Rights (And What To Do If You Get Arrested)
A General Counsel Talks About Photographer’s Rights (And What To Do If You Get Arrested)
Hopefully, none of you will ever actually be in a situation where this would be useful, but Mickey Osterreicher, General Counsel for The National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), sat down to make a quick, but helpful, informational video regarding the legal rights of photojournalists. In the video, which is a 3 minute long gem of [...]
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Dune Scapes by Erez Marom
Dune Scapes by Erez Marom
Dune Scapes by Erez Marom
Thursday, 30th October 2014
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