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Category Archives: Photography Techniques
Hummers at High Speed
Humming birds can be a difficult subject to photograph. The rate of speed they move makes it almost impossible to photograph while in flight. Your best photo opportunities present themselves while these fast flyers are feeding or they land to take that rare break.
Over the years, I have anticipated their seasonal arrival, and with camera in hand, I begin taking advantage of some great photo opportunities. The first time I attempted to photograph hummingbirds, I was not pleased with the results. My images were not in focus, and often times came out grainy and overexposed. Learning from these photos, a different approach was used in an attempt to improve the image quality.
After reviewing my errors, it was determined that first off, I was in a rush; I did not take the time needed to properly dial my camera into the environment I was shooting in. Secondly, I used the wrong lens for the situation. A super zoom lens was used and I did not need to employ such a lens for the situation. Based on these mistakes, I wanted redemption, and would not be denied.
On an early Saturday morning, I set up my camera near the hummingbird feeder and proceeded to patiently wait for these fast flyers to start their morning feeding frenzy. Surprisingly I waited almost an hour for some action and when the birds started to feed, they noticed my presence. Every time I would move to focus on the subjects, they would immediately fly away. To capture the images I literally had to be in position and motionless to snap the images. Over the coarse of the morning, the hummingbirds became more comfortable with my presence and even began to land on some of the existing vegetation’s we had planted in years prior to clean themselves. Although I was able to capture some nice images with their long tongues out, my position had some obstructions in place that took away from those photos. My advice when trying to photograph hummingbirds is simple. Patience and time, Allow them to become comfortable with your presence. Doing so will benefit you greatly.
The shots: Canon camera and Tamron lens combination. 270mm focal length with an aperture of f-8. ISO setting at 400 with a shutter speed of 1/500 to 1/800 of a second.
Michael Sargent is a top wildlife outdoor photographer in the eastern United States. See more:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/M.SargentPhotography
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/msargentphoto
Blog: http://msargentphotography.wordpress.com
Tips on Fashion Photography
My most recent work has been focused on Fashion and Food. Fashion photography is relatively new to me, but several colleagues of mine use models regularly to support their portfolio work. After recently winning the local Frederick, MD Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk and reading his “Light It, Shoot It, Retouch It” book I was inspired to work on my portrait lighting. Because I love to mix things up and challenge myself by taking the lovely studio lighting out of the equation, I chose to see what I could do with the sun’s harsh light. It sounds strange, but I learn better this way. Take images in all types of lighting scenarios and play with exposure and aperture. You may want to try this approach to understand how best to find the light you want in your images.
I also didn’t have a model with experience or the patience for me to go through multiple lighting adjustments. Go figure. The image of my daughter with makeup was setup in window sunlight. No other light source was used on my model. I applied all the makeup (I am no makeup artist either, so had to have some fun with this one) and no digital manipulation of color was used. The photo was taken with a Nikon D90 in RAW. The settings included:
Exposure 0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture f/8.0
Focal Length 105 mm
ISO Speed 200
The image was imported into Lightroom 3.6. I cropped the image in tight and added more exposure (+4) because I wanted the blown out white effect. From there, I softened the harsh light with an adjustment brush , reduced tint, and also added some minor saturation to the eye color and dramatically reduced temperature (original RAW had more skin warmth/yellow), then I did a lot of spot removal because some of the makeup didn’t blend into her skin well. Finally, I reduced the sharpness of her cheeks/nose a touch because I didn’t want to see pores or tiny hairs. Done. Give this a try with various models and makeup. YouTube has a plethora of videos on makeup application to give you some ideas. This process gave me great ideas for more fashion makeup shots using ambient as well as studio lighting.
As an amateur photographer of three years, Joelle Herman loves it all and typically spends a week to a month on a subject. She also finds that being a part of a local camera club (Frederick Camera Clique) helps in networking, learning and exploring your passion.
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jneo/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/joelleherman
Google+: Joelle Herman Photography
Halloween Photo Tips
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robbie1/1174623/
Halloween brings the opportunity for many things: candy, chaos, getting the bejezzus scared out of ya…just to name some of the favorites. It also brings some chances for some great photos. Whether you’re taking photos of people in crazy costumes, or creating a reminder of your girlfriend’s “sexy nurse” outfit to put in the folder of goodies you’ve hidden on your hard drive, Halloween brings some interesting (and sometimes aggravating) challenges when it comes to photography. Here are 3 quick tips (more reminders really) to make sure you’re getting some good photos tonight.
Lighting
Lighting is always an issue with photography, but it’s even more important than usual on Halloween. You might be amazed at just how completely NON-scary that creepy zombie looks bathed in the artificially suped-up light of a picture taken with a flash or just how funny the colours end up looking i that photo of the kid covered in glow-sticks. Stick to natural light whenever possible, or at least keep the extra light to a minimum to avoid a serious case of “damn, that looked so much better in the dark”.
White Balance
For the love of all that is unholy and ghoulish, set your white balance properly. It’s hard enough to deal with white balance after the fact on a normal day. On a day when the entire point is to have your senses assaulted with strange costume outfits and colours in a dark environment there is no way to deal with white balance after the fact with any degree of accuracy.
Avoid a Sugar High
Depending on the sort of photos you’re taking, you may need to drop your shutter speed down quite a lot to get a decent photo without destroying the creepy/hilarious/whatever effect. That means you may need to hold the camera more steady than usual, and that could be tough if you’re hopped up on sugar too early. If you plan on getting low shutter speed photos that aren’t blurry as all hell, I’d avoid the candy if I were you. Or, if you’re smart, use a tripod and pig out.
Happy Halloween…and please, if you get some great shots tonight, don’t hesitate to drop some links to them in the comments here. I’d love to see ‘em.
Back to Basics: Flash or no Flash
Photo Source: http://flickr.com/photos/billselak/987323495/
Admittedly, I hate using the flash unless it’s absolutely necessary, so I may be biased when I say that I think people use the flash FAR too much. Often to the detriment of the photo they are trying to take. There are exceptions of course, but it’s very VERY rare that you actually need to use your flash under normal circumstances if you’re setting up your shot properly using a combination of the ISO setting, aperture setting, and shutter speed. To me the flash is a last ditch effort to save a photo that cannot be taken any other way, and should be avoided whenever possible.
I have worked as a professional photographer off and on (I will admit, I’ve been “off” for more of less 2 years now), and I am always amazed at just how fast many people will jump to their flash before even attempting to properly setup the shot without it.
Maybe I’m too much of a “light purest”, or whatever you want to call it, but I just don’t like destroying the natural light of the photo if it can in any way be avoided, and I would highly suggest that people only use their flash as a last resort, or as a means to get a specific lighting effect, and not as a be all and end all way of “getting the lighting right” or some other excuse to be lazy with the setup of the shot.
For the sake of natural light everywhere, I implore you, use your flash sparingly, and only when it’s absolutely needed to get the shot you want. You’ll thank me later when you don’t end up with a bunch of photos that are flooded in artificial light and almost certainly ruining at least some of the magic of the original moment. Or maybe you won’t, and you think I’m an idiot for suggesting it, who knows. By all means chew me out in the comments…you might even convince me.
Back to Basics: Shooting in “RAW”
While DSLR cameras are getting more and more affordable, it seems that less and less people are taking the time to actually learn how to use their shiny new toy to it’s full potential. Just buying a nice camera will not improve your photos that much. Which is why, over the course of the next little while at least, I’m going to be writing some short and sweet tips on how to improve your photos with very little effort, simply by taking full advantage of your camera’s capabilities. I’ll be calling (and tagging) these articles “Back to Basics” for future reference.
Shooting in Camera RAW
The "Camera RAW" editing window.
Your camera should have several quality settings, whether they’re called “good, better, best” or “small, medium, large” or whatever, and are usually in some form of compressed image, like a JPEG. Find the setting to change it, and crank it all the way to the maximum, which SHOULD be “RAW”. (NOTE: Some cameras have multiple RAW options, always use the one that leaves you with the least amount of availible photos, and thus the largest file size per photo, for the best results)
This is basically telling the camera to save all the information regarding what it is doing when you take a photo and saving it all, rather than guessing at how you want to deal with it and doing the compression into a JPEG for you…losing potientially valuable information in the process. This extra information is what makes the RAW format so useful, as I will demonstrate with an old photo from a poorly lit New Year’s Eve party.
When you open up a photo in RAW format(I would suggest using Adobe Bridge, but that’s just a personal preference), you have a lot of options to modify and potentially enhance the quality of an image that you wouldn’t have with the usual JPEG formats.
Notice how dark the photo is? Typical party lighting is a serious pain to deal with accurately (especially without blinding everyone with the flash, which I wouldn’t suggest if you want to be invited back). With camera RAW though, we get all sorts of tools to help this photo crawl out of the dark and into much better condition (among other things, like white balance correction and more complex things that will come later). Simply play with the “Exposure”, “Brightness”, and in this case “Vibrance” a little, and you’ll see just how drastically a few simple sliders can improve the quality of the photo far beyond what you could do to a JPEG…without also drastically reducing the general quality of the photo at least. A few tweaks and a click on the “SAVE” button later, and we end up with something more like the photo below.
The enhanced photo. Aprox 5 seconds of work.
The brightness is fixed, the colours stand out more, and there was absolutely no more work put into the taking of the photo. The biggest advantage of shooting in the “RAW” format is the flexibly. You don’t have to get every shot perfect, and can get great results much more easily. The goal of course is to improve enough that you don’t often need to do much (or any) tweaking to most of your photos, but a safety net never hurt anyone. You don’t have to use it every time, but if you aren’t shooting in “RAW”, you won’t have the option when you really need it.
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How To Shoot A Panorama With A DSLR
Article by travel photographer Itai Danan, editor of Neocamera.
With great controls comes great responsibilities. Unlike Point & Shoot users who often have the benefit of a Panorama Assist mode, DSLR users have to control everything themselves. This is more work, but allows for greater flexibility while shooting images for a panorama.
The basic principle of capturing a panorama is to ensure utmost consistency between images. This means that focal-length, focus, aperture, ISO, shutter-speed, exposure, white-balance and image parameters all have to match exactly. Other than focal-length, these settings usually have both automatic and manual modes. The key is to lock each setting before shooting. Let’s go over each one: Continue reading »