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Landscape photography with a drone: disadvantages and limitations part 2

27 Oct

In the previous article I wrote about the basic disadvantages and limitation of the drone: it depends on batteries, has limited range, flight altitude and speed, all of which put it at a disadvantage compared to shooting from a manned aircraft. Granted, the drone is a very different tool to a manned aircraft, but I compare the two to emphasize that the photographer should be aware of the advantages and limitations of each option when planning a shoot.

This time, I would like to discuss another disadvantage of the drone: it’s VERY easy to lose.

To a drone user, crashes are a part of life. Drones keep getting better and safer, they are fit with sensors to avoid collisions, programmed to fly back to the home point when connection has been lost with the remote, but they are still not completely safe from tumbling down from the sky, and they still get lost quite often. Iceland’s Glacier Lagoon and Greenland’s Disko Bay must be a few meters shallower with all the Phantoms and Mavics that have been drowned there over the last decade. A colleague of mine’s clients lost 2-3 Mavics in one photo workshop in Disko Bay! Wow, just wow.

But why is that? How come drones just keep falling from the sky or become lost, never to be found again? If you disregard animal attack and hostile interception (both very rare events), there could only be two main reasons: human error and technical malfunction. Sometimes it can be both factors working together.

Human error

Earlier in this series I referred to drones as being ‘idiot proof.’ That was probably overstating it. Drones are by no means idiot proof, or even not-so-idiot proof. A better term would be ‘idiot resistant,’ as a drone can only correct its user’s mistakes so much – it is, after all, just a machine.

One of my workshop clients once lost a drone when we were shooting next to a lake. The problem was that the lake was a natural wind-tunnel, and a temporary stillness encouraged us to take the drones up. Upon feeling the wind getting stronger I brought my drone down and alerted my client to do the same. He chose to keep on flying, and once the wind grew even fiercer, he quickly lost orientation. A few minutes later the drone crashed down, while still keeping in contact with the remote.

DJI’s remotes have a distance indicator, showing how far the drone is from the home point, and we could see that the drone wasn’t too far away. My client started walking in the direction that kept reducing the distance, but eventually understood that the drone was resting on a mountain on the other side of the lake. It’s probably still there.

There is a lesson to be learned here. First of all, once you feel the winds getting dangerously strong, there’s no shame in bringing a drone back down. Secondly, if you lose orientation, don’t let the drone just drift with the wind. Instead, try your best to fly it back toward the home point. A lower flight altitude usually means gentler winds, so in case the drone isn’t progressing home, try flying lower.

The winds above this beautiful lake in the Argentinean high-altitude desert were blowing so strongly, the drone was being swept farther and farther even though I was flying it at full speed back home. It’s important to keep cool when something like this happens. The best thing you can do is bring it down and fly a few meters above ground – the winds will be much calmer and you’ll be able to get the drone back.
DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/240 sec, f/9, ISO 100. Puna de Argentina

Another very common avoidable mistake is stretching the battery for too long. A drone’s remote will start protesting when battery level is below some (adjustable) figure. The default for DJI drones is 30%, but this depends on the drone’s distance to the home point. When the battery drops further, the drone will usually alert the user that it will automatically go home in a few seconds. This too can be overridden by the user, in case he or she wants to keep controlling the drone and shoot some more.

Lastly, when the drone is at 10% battery or less, it will automatically and autonomically start landing. But even this can be avoided if the user actively uses the joysticks to keep the drone airborne.

An experienced drone user can sense when they need to bring the drone back. In perfect conditions, without wind, when flying low and close to the operator, there is no real reason to bring the drone back home at 30%, 20% or even 15% battery. If you can bring the drone back in a matter of seconds, by all means, keep flying until you reach 10% and then land it. But when conditions get harder, that’s when experience is critical and you have to keep a close eye on the battery status.

Depending on distance, altitude and (mainly) wind conditions, the amount of battery power needed to bring the drone back may increase significantly. Yours truly has almost lost a drone when wind picked up significantly during an afternoon shoot in a pumice-stone field in the high altitude desert of Argentina. I struggled to fly the drone, which was facing harsh head-winds, and by the time I managed to land, I was on 1% battery (!).

It’s easy to be caught up shooting this beautiful Pumice-stone field, but the place is huge and the photographer must account for the drone’s distance and sudden increases in wind forces, or they’re risking the battery emptying before being able to bring the drone back to the launch point.
DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/25 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100. Puna de Argentina

I will conclude the discussion of human error-related crashes with a story from my recent Greenland photo workshop. My group was slowly sailing in an iceberg-packed part of Disko Bay. Since we were going to stay in that area for a while, I took out my drone and started shooting aerials of the icebergs.

When the battery was about to run out, I decided it was time to bring the drone back home. But then I realized that the captain had moved the boat several hundred meters, so the home point indicator was useless.

The remote started screaming when battery level reached 10%, and when it hit 5% I knew I had to do something

Moreover, the fact that the boat was sailing between thousands of iceberg – and it was a white boat – made finding it close to impossible. I had no indication of where the boat was or how to get to it. Using the larger icebergs as reference points was also futile, as the distances are huge and I couldn’t judge their location relative to the boat when looking at the remote’s screen.

I was getting nervous. Minutes passed and battery power was continuing to dwindle. For the life of me, I simply could not find the boat. The remote started screaming when battery level reached 10%, and when it hit 5% I knew I had to do something, or lose the drone.

This iceberg, and many next to it, were constantly collapsing, which filled this part of the bay with icebergs. That was great for foreground, but less beneficial in other ways.
DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/25 sec, f/6.3, ISO 100. Disko Bay, Greenland

I started to drop the drone’s altitude, desperately looking for any possible landing site. At this point I was about 80% sure I would lose the drone. But then, I saw a large, relatively flat iceberg. I decided to land on the iceberg, without knowing if I was going to be able to retrieve the drone from it, even if the landing went well. After landing, the situation was looking grim. I was in a huge bay, with literally thousands of icebergs, one of which had my tiny drone on it. There was no way in hell I would find the drone without help.

What do you know – my drone was peacefully resting on the iceberg

But then our captain’s assistant, who had been though a similar situation, suggested that I use the “find my drone” feature on the DJI app. I had never used this feature, since I always knew how to get to the home point. But in this case, the home point was no longer where the boat was. I used the feature to see the drone’s last GPS location, asked the captain to sail there, and what do you know – my drone was peacefully resting on the iceberg. Luckily, the iceberg was big enough for me to hop onto it from the boat, get the drone and return safely. It was quite a surreal experience.

In retrospect, I could’ve done things differently and avoided the iceberg landing. I subsequently learned that it’s possible to change the home point on the fly in the DJI app, so the return to home feature directs the drone to the current location of the remote. Live and learn! At least I have a good story, and by sheer luck, no harm was done and my drone lived to fly another day.

Technical malfunction

Drones, as mentioned, are machines. And as machines, they can sometimes fail or operate in unexpected ways. The difference between a drone malfunction and a DSLR malfunction, however, is that when the former happens, the drone might not be seen or heard from ever again.

There can be different reasons for a drone malfunctioning. In the past, DJI drones crashes numbered in the thousands due to people flying them when batteries were too cold. This has happened to me too, in Iceland – an event on which I’ll elaborate at a later stage. Due to public outcry, DJI has had to include a better temperature warning system in its newer products.

Greenland’s famous Disko Bay is particularly notorious for drowning drones aplenty. This is mainly due to the large amount of iron in the bedrock, leading the drone’s navigational systems to go haywire. Personally, I’ve never lost a drone in Greenland, but I’ve had my fair share of GPS malfunctions. When GPS fails, the drone starts drifting away with the slightest breeze, which, in extreme cases, can lead to a crash into the water.

It’s hard to resist the allure of flying a drone between the ice giants of Disko Bay. Be be wary of GPS malfunctions – they can cost you your drone.
DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/30 sec, f/8, ISO 100. Disko Bay, Greenland

Again, the important thing is keeping cool, regaining orientation and preventing the drone from being swept too far away. The GPS system usually comes back up in a short while.

Drones are constantly getting better and more fail-proof. They don’t crash nearly as much as the used to, which is a very good thing. If the worst happens and you do crash a drone just remember: you’re not the first and definitely not the last.

Erez Marom is a professional nature photographer, photography guide and traveler based in Israel. You can follow Erez’s work on Instagram and Facebook, and subscribe to his mailing list for updates.

If you’d like to experience and shoot some of the world’s most fascinating landscapes with Erez as your guide, take a look at his unique photography workshops in The Lofoten Islands, Greenland, Namibia, the Argentinean Puna, the Faroe Islands and Ethiopia.

Erez offers video tutorials discussing his images and explaining how he achieved them.

Selected Articles by Erez Marom:

Parallelism in Landscape Photography
Winds of Change: Shooting changing landscapes
Behind the Shot: Dark Matter
On the Importance of Naming Images
On Causality in Landscape Photography
Shooting K?lauea Volcano, Part 1: How to melt a drone
The Art of the Unforeground
Whatever it Doesn’t Take
Almost human: photographing critically endangered mountain gorillas

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Landscape photography with a drone: disadvantages and limitations part 1

20 Oct

So far, I’ve offered nothing but praise for the drone. It’s a remarkably cheap and widely available tool. You can fly it anywhere, get infinite perspectives and unique compositions. It can easily hover in place to shoot long exposures or wait for the right time to shoot. It will venture where no human will, be it through toxic gases or scorching lava. And it is so much fun.

But the drone has its disadvantages and limitations, and that is the subject for today. Discussing these limitations is important in order to understand where and when one should choose to use a drone and when not to. It’s an important aspect to planning a shoot in a new location or circumstance, and it will help you understand that a drone isn’t a magical tool, as amazing as it is. Let’s review some of these limitations, starting with the easier ones to discuss.

Dependence on batteries

All of today’s drones fly using state of the art Lithium Polymer (LiPo) and lithium polymer high voltage (LiHV) batteries. These batteries are compact, and they last a surprisingly long time, but even the longest-flying drones cannot fly for more than about half an hour. This number is further shortened if the drone is flown “aggressively” (made to perform maneuvers, accelerate, decelerate and change direction often), when flying in sports mode and also if there is strong wind pushing against it.

Half an hour is a whole lot in some situations, but it’s not enough in others. I have had to land a drone in the middle of a shoot in harsh winds, even though the light was amazing, simply because the battery had run out. When the actual shooting location is relatively far away from the launch location, just getting to it and back can eat up half of the battery, leaving a measly ten minutes of shooting time before having to head back and change batteries, even if the sky had just opened up and the conditions became optimal.

Afternoon light on the magnificent cliffs of Suðuroy. I flew the drone in the harsh winds typical to the Faroes, and as a result, the battery drained so fast I only had 10 or 15 minutes to shoot.
DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/80 sec, F5.6, ISO 200. Suðuroy, the Faroe Islands

Dependence is not only on the amount of power one battery can give, it’s also on the number of batteries one has or can carry. In situations where the user cannot charge the batteries (for example, camping trips), there’s simply nothing left to do once the battery capacity has been used. Each battery has significant weight – Phantom batteries are 450 grams each, and even the tiny Mavic batteries weigh almost 300 grams each. When you have to carry those batteries, the drone, plus your regular camera equipment (and camping gear if you’re camping), each item matters, and those 3-4 batteries alone will make your backpack more than a kilogram heavier.

I carried three Phantom batteries for 8 km on solidified lava to shoot these surface flows in Kilauea Volcano. The batteries alone weighed almost 1.5 kilograms, not to mention the drone itself, my DSLR gear, tripod and 2 liters of water. While worth it, the backpack was very heavy and the hike wasn’t much fun. Even so, I would in retrospect bring two more batteries, to be able to use them more sparingly on a rare shoot such as this one.
DJI Phantom 4 Pro, 1/15 sec, F6.3, ISO 400. Taken outside of Volcanoes NP, Island of Hawaii.

Limited range

Drones not only have limited flight time, they also have limited range. The range is not only limited by battery power, but by two other factors: connectivity between the drone and the remote, and legal aspects.

When shooting the 2014 Holuhraun volcanic eruption from a helicopter, I spent more than an hour shooting a mind-blowing sunset over the lava, and stayed well into darkness. A drone wouldn’t have been able to remain airborne for long enough to get these conditions (not to mention get there!).
Canon 5D Mark II, Tamron 24-70mm F2.8 VC, 1/200 sec, f/4, ISO 1600. The Central Highlands of Iceland

In modern camera drones, radio connection between the drone and its remote is usually excellent when flight distance isn’t too long (I would give a numeric example but it really depends on many factors). But fly further away and the connection might break. If you use drones, I’m sure you know the horror one feels once the screen turns black and white and the app announces that connection had been lost. Even though the drone will attempt to return home and regain connection 99.9% of the times, there’s always the chance that it has just crashed. If, like yours truly, you have crashed a drone in the past, you will forever dread this feeling.

Connection may be compromised not only when flying too far, but when the drone is positioned so it loses direct line of sight to the remote, which can be a bit risky as the drone is left to navigate its way until regaining connection. Harsh weather such as heavy snow or rain my also break the connection, but this is usually intermittent.

Say what you may about manned aircraft, their range is far longer than that of any drone, and lost connection is not an issue.

My drone lost connection for a few moments when this iceberg’s peaks came between it and the moving boat. There was little to worry about, however, as I knew connection would be regained in a matter of seconds. DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/30 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200. Disko Bay, Greenland.

In any case, today’s modern drones have been known to miraculously find their way home even after having lost connection. Equipped with GPS and with an array of sensors to avoid hitting obstacles, I’ve heard stories of drones reappearing after having been deemed lost, even after long minutes of disconnection. I’ll discuss this further in a future article.

Legal requirements in most countries dictate that the drone remain in line-of-sight. What that means could be debatable, but a stricter interpretation might be that the drone needs to be clearly visible to the operator. This means further limitation of the range.

Limited flight altitude

Another limitation to the drone is its inability to fly higher than a certain altitude limit. Again, this limit can be the result of different factors, technical and legal. Technically, drone manufacturers limit the maximum altitude a drone can fly in. In DJI drones this limit is 500 meters above the home point. Higher altitude flights may only be possible after hacking the drone’s firmware, which is sometimes possible but seriously discouraged.

A much stricter altitude limit is dictated by drone laws in most countries. 100, 120 and 150 meters are the common numbers here, with the vast majority of countries not allowing flight above 120m. My home country of Israel officially limits drones to 50 meters (hmmm…). Even though an altitude limit makes a lot of sense, there’s no doubt that it greatly impacts compositional possibilities. Light planes, for example, are usually allowed to climb up to 2-3 kilometers before intruding the airspace of commercial jets.

The gigantic dunes of the Namib Desert can rise 300 meters high – no chance of shooting them with a drone, even if droning were allowed in the accessible parts of Sossusvlei, which it isn’t. I took this image from a helicopter at a height of more than a kilometer in the air.
Canon 5D Mark III, Tamron 24-70 f/2.8 VC, 1/1250 sec, F10, ISO 800. Sossusvlei, Namibia

Limited flight speed

Finally, drones are limited in their flight speed, which is usually not an issue, but can sometimes be a hindrance to getting the shot. Aerial photography often covers vast distances, and when light breaks faraway, you want to get there fast. A DJI Mavic can fly at 72 km/h (about 45 mph), and even that is on sports mode which quickly drains battery and can sometimes mess with the gimbal.

After DJI lowered its top speed due to stability problems, the faster, much more expensive Inspire 2 now tops at 94 km/h (58mph). Compare that with the 240 km/h of a Robinson 44 helicopter or with over 300 km/h of a Cessna, and the disadvantage is clear.

When seeing this light breaking between the mountains at a distance (and after picking my jaw up from the floor), I asked the pilot to “step on it” to get there as quickly as possible and avoid missing the shot. He asked me to close the window, easily pulled the throttle, taking us to 300 km/h and covering the distance to this composition in less than a minute, before slowing back down to allow me to open the window and shoot for several minutes. A drone would have undoubtedly missed the shot.
Canon 5D Mark III, Tamron 24-70mm F2.8 VC, 1/2000 sec, f/4, ISO 800.
The Lofoten Islands, Arctic Norway

To sum up, a drone is dependent on relatively heavy, power-limited batteries and the ability to carry and charge them. It has limited range, limited speed and limited flight altitude compared to manned aircraft, all of which limit the photographer’s ability to get to a location, spend enough time shooting it and getting good composition and light. While these problems don’t make the drone any less amazing, they have to be considered when planning an aerial shoot and when selecting the right tool to perform it.

In the next article I will continue the discussion of the drone’s disadvantages.

Erez offers video tutorials discussing his images and explaining how he achieved them.

Selected articles by Erez Marom:

Parallelism in Landscape Photography
Winds of Change: Shooting changing landscapes
Behind the Shot: Dark Matter
On the Importance of Naming Images
On Causality in Landscape Photography
Shooting K?lauea Volcano, Part 1: How to melt a drone
The Art of the Unforeground
Whatever it Doesn’t Take
Almost human: photographing critically endangered mountain gorillas

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Landscape photography with a drone: the advantages – part 3

06 Oct

In the previous articles in this series, I elaborated about the advantages of the drone, specifically that the drone offers more compositional opportunities, is cheap to run, portable, available anywhere and able to hover in place.

In this article I’d like to conclude the discussion of the drone’s advantages by mentioning its ability to hover in place and its most fun facet: its fearlessness in the face of danger.

Ability to hover

The ability to effortlessly hover in place is unique to the drone. True, good helicopter pilots can hover efficiently, but neither with the same GPS-controlled accuracy as the drone, nor with its ability to go near the subject. In terms of stability, a drone can only be compared to a tripod in the sky, which in turn means that it allows three things: relatively long exposures, parking abilities and immaculate precision.

Long exposures can be useful when the photographer wants to convey a sense of motion in an image. For example, an exposure of half a second or more can smear moving water, creating pleasing lines and a clear feel in an image. Under sufficiently still weather, a modern drone can shoot sharp images at half a second, a second or even more. Multiple attempts can result in a sharp shot even when shooting a several second long exposure – an unprecedented achievement for any aerial shooing (that doesn’t use a heavy, expensive gyro-stabilizer).

A long exposure of Fossa waterfall, Faroe Islands. If I had an ND filter handy, I could’ve extended the exposure even more.
DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/2 sec, F11, ISO 100.

I’ll explain and demonstrate what I mean by ‘parking abilities’ with an image I took earlier this year. I was shooting the total solar eclipse over lake Cuesta Del Viento, in the San Juan province of Argentina. Totality lasted for a mere 2 minutes (which seemed more like 45 seconds), during which I tried to shoot a wide-angle focus-stack, a telephoto closeup of the corona, and an aerial of the eclipse reflecting in the lake above the badlands. Naturally, I had set up my wide angle and telephoto compositions beforehand, but the point here is that the drone allowed me to set up my aerial composition as well.


A wide angle focus-stack of the eclipse above the badlands	A telephoto closeup of the corona

I composed the shot about 5 or 10 minutes before the totality, and left the drone hovering in place. Once I was done with the two DSLR shots, I took the remote to find the aerial composition exactly how I had left it. This saved me precious time and allowed me to take all three shots in a very narrow time frame. The drone reflection shot, more than anything, is a true once-in-a-lifetime shot.

The drone aerial I took after the two DSLR shots.
DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/10 sec, F2.8, ISO 100. Lago Cuesta Del Viento, San Juan Province, Argentina

Finally, the controls of a modern drone allow for unprecedented precision. The drone can move very delicately (some drones offer a ‘tripod mode’ for extra delicate movement) and enables the photographer to create and capture a balanced image. This is especially important when shooting in close distances to certain subjects.

The window of showing the boat in the middle of the arch was very small. Delicate movements of the drone allowed me to get the shot with ease.
DJI Phantom 4 Pro, 1/40 sec, F5.6, ISO 200. Disko Bay, Greenland

Fearlessness in the face of danger

A major advantage of the drone is the fact that you can endanger it with little consequence. As a nature photographer who lives and breathes extreme environments, I can’t stress enough how overwhelming it is.

A drone doesn’t care about breathing toxic gases. A drone doesn’t care about being uncomfortable, hot, cold, breathless or tired. A drone is a robot, a slave to your will and it will go wherever you tell it to go. It will scream if the battery is about to run out, it will quietly protest if you try to fly in windy weather, its sensors will avoid contact with close-by objects, it won’t let you fly near airports (thank goodness). But other than that, it will obey the commands of its master, however stupid or dangerous… which gives the photographer a perfect opportunity to be as daring as he wishes.

This shot is hazy because it’s taken from within a caldera filled with toxic gasses.
DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/25 sec, F6.3, ISO 100. Kawah Ijen, East Java, Indonesia

Please note that I’m only legitimizing risking the drone, not people’s health. I will cover drone etiquette in a future article, but for now, let me stress that I’m talking about flying both legally and (even more importantly) morally, where there are no chances of people or the environment being harmed by the drone. Luckily, as a nature photographer, it’s easy to stay on the right side of legality and morality, simply because I do most of my shooting alone in the wild, without people or buildings around me. The worst thing that can happen to me is losing the drone (that has happened, of course, a tale which will be told in the future).

No person, and no manned aircraft for that matter, would dream of flying meters above an active volcano. Only uninformed people would go near an ice-arch, which can collapse at any moment with tragic consequences. But a drone can, and will do so happily. This fact opens a myriad of options which simply aren’t there without a drone. Let’s see some examples and explore the dangerous side of landscape photography.

Lava flows in the shape of a double-headed dragon. During this shoot I flew my drone so close to the lava that the camera was molten (!). Needless to say, I wouldn’t get this close myself.
DJI Phantom 4 Pro, 1/8 sec, F6.3, ISO 400. Taken outside of Volcanoes NP, Island of Hawaii.

I wrote extensively about my Hawaii volcano photography in a previous article, but I’ll mention here that it was an amazing shoot during which I flew my drone very close to the lava, closer than I’d ever venture myself. The red-hot lava was so hot that it melted my drone camera, the perfect example of the drone going where no man would, and coming back in one piece (if damaged).

The shoot was more than worth losing the drone, both financially (the images and videos sold for many times what I paid to fix the drone) and in the images I got from it. It was a once-in-a-lifetime event, and I risked the drone knowing very well I could lose it at any moment. Actually, it was the very fact that I melted the drone camera, rather than the unique images I got, that made this series go viral, and got me a front-page National Geographic website feature and interview.

The point where the lava burst out of the mountain side was extremely hot.
DJI Phantom 4 Pro, 1/100 sec, f/6.3, ISO 400. Taken outside of Volcanoes NP, Island of Hawaii.

From lava to ice. It is well known that large icebergs can be extremely dangerous. They can not only collapse catastrophically, but they can flip over, and both these scenarios involve dislocation of a huge amount of ice and water, creating high waves and endangering everyone sailing within a substantial radius. But again, a drone doesn’t care. It will fly under close-to-collapsing arches, hover meters away from gigantic icebergs and go where no man would dare.

To get the composition I wanted with the faraway iceberg and lenticular clouds framed inside the hole in the closer iceberg, I had to get very close to the ice. Needless to say, this would have been impossible in any other way, as I wouldn’t step on this iceberg, and no manned aircraft would fly this close to it.
DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/30 sec, f/8, ISO 200, vertical stitch. Uummannaq, Greenland

There are even more advantages to using a drone. The more you use it, the easier it is to use and the more freedom it gives you. Other points I won’t elaborate on are:

The drone, unlike a manned aircraft, doesn’t pose any obstacle to shooting. Manned aircraft have rotors (in helicopters), wings or beams blocking your view. The windows in light planes can also limit your range of motion.
Your carbon footprint is significantly lower with a drone compared to manned aircraft.
It’s a good conversation starter.
It’s so much fun to fly.

In the next article in the series, I’ll discuss the other side of things: the disadvantages and limitations of the drone.

Erez offers video tutorials discussing his images and explaining how he achieved them.

Selected Articles by Erez Marom:

Parallelism in Landscape Photography
Winds of Change: Shooting changing landscapes
Behind the Shot: Dark Matter
On the Importance of Naming Images
On Causality in Landscape Photography
Shooting K?lauea Volcano, Part 1: How to melt a drone
The Art of the Unforeground
Whatever it Doesn’t Take
Almost human: photographing critically endangered mountain gorillas

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Landscape photography with a drone: the advantages – part 2

29 Sep

In the previous article in this series, I elaborated on the compositional advantages of the drone compared to land-based shooting. I claimed that the drone offers infinitely more compositional opportunities, which results from the fact that the photographer isn’t bound to the ground. This allows better perspectives and separation of the compositional elements.

In this article I’d like to talk about two more advantages of shooting with a drone, which particularly relate to the comparison with manned-aircraft based shooting: the drone’s availability and its ability to take off and land anywhere.

The Springs of Ojos Del Campo, Argentina. The only way of seeing this scene from the air is using a drone. DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/400 sec, F8, ISO 100. Puna De Argentina

Availability and Running Costs

I would be remiss if I neglected to state that in tandem with its ability to fly, the drone’s availability is the very thing that made the drone change the world of photography forever.

Today’s drones are amazing machines. An idiot-proof, tiny, light, foldable quad-copter can easily fit in your photo bag with several spare batteries and the remote control, while leaving room for a your entire DSLR and lens arsenal. Each of these batteries can last for up to half an hour (!) of flight. Under favorable conditions, you can send the drones 5 kilometers or more away and 500 meters high while maintaining connection (in theory, that is, as it’s illegal in most countries to fly higher than 120m and out of sight).

An aerial perspective exposes the beautiful contour and layers of the shore of the Dead Sea.
DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/20 sec, F4, ISO 200. Ein Gedi, Israel

You can bring a drone with you to any shoot, fly it in any terrain and in harsher weather that you think. You can fly it while sitting comfortably inside a heated car, with the spare batteries charging quickly as you fly. It’s portable enough to hike or even climb with. For the experienced drone user, it can take less than 3 minutes to set up and be airborne, when time is of the essence.

This light on the top of a huge iceberg was disappearing and reappearing with the horizon clouds obscuring the sun to the north west. With the drone, I had the choice of when exactly to fly to optimize my photography and get the best light.
DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/30 sec, F7.1, ISO 100. Kangia Fjord, Greenland

Needless to say, a manned aircraft is not always available. Some natural landscapes one wishes to shoot are far in the back country with no airport or heliport nearby. With a drone, you are free from these worries. An hour of flight in a Cessna can cost hundreds of dollars, and yours truly has once been given a quote of $ 4200 per hour (Or $ 70 per minute. Yes, that’s right) for a helicopter flight. Flying a drone is virtually free.

This river of lava burst out of the mountain side before my eyes. After picking up my jaw from the floor, I grabbed my drone and sent it right to the source of the flow.
DJI Phantom 4 Pro, 1/100 sec, F6.3, ISO 400. Kilauea Volcano, Island of Hawaii

Ability to take off and land anywhere

This ability is a particular aspect of the drone’s unmatched availability. Due to the drone’s minuscule size, it is not only possible to fit it in a camera bag, take it out and have it airborne within minutes. It is actually possible to do so without the need for a helipad – or any kind of takeoff/landing surface whatsoever – after a bit of training, takeoff and landing can be done from the pilot’s hand. This often neglected fact can make a world of difference when the area a photographer is based in is something like a small boat, a place with uneven ground (for example a lava-field or snowy earth) or a roofed area such as a cave.

A typical Targa speed boat in Greenland. There’s no really comfortable place to take off or land, but there’s plenty of space to do so from the pilot’s (or someone else’s) hand.

Taking off from a boat isn’t easy, especially when the open area is crowded or too small. Boats often are loaded with antennas, which makes takeoff from the roof problematic. But the photographer can launch the drone from his hand while standing in the front or back of the boat, thus giving the drone the necessary space for a safe takeoff.

Hand-landing on a boat is a bit more challenging, to say the least. The pilot needs to direct the drone slowly and carefully toward the boat’s open space, then catch the drone in midair by hand. This can be difficult in a number of ways. Firstly, boats tend to sway side to side, and the drone is ideally fixed in its aerial position, thus its course relative to the boat is chaotic. Secondly, the drone’s sensors tend to block it from getting too close the pilot’s hand. Luckily, the sensors can be disabled.

This boat had a much more comfortable open space to take off and land, but it was challenging nevertheless.

Personally, I’ve had more than my share of less-than-pleasant experiences when hand-landing a drone on boats. While the DJI Phantom series has handle-like landing gear which makes it very easy to catch the drone, the Mavic series does not, and a lot can go wrong when trying to maneuver and catch the drone while standing on a swaying boat. The propellers can cut and bruise your fingers or cut through your clothes, and a wrong movement or failure to catch the drone can result in it hitting the boat or worse – taking a nosedive into the water.

A gigantic arched iceberg dwarfs our boat in Disko Bay, Greenland.
DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/30 sec, F8, ISO 100

There’s not much that can be done about this other than practice taking off and landing the drone from your hand. Remember that while a drone can be lost at any moment, images last forever.

For a bit more about flying from a boat, check out my friend Ian’s video about our trip to Greenland earlier this year. Ian suffered a brutal attack by his drone, but survived to tell the tale! Yours truly had plenty of drone fails as well, and the shenanigans meter was on the high side throughout the trip.

In the next article I will conclude the discussion of the drone’s advantages with perhaps the most exciting of its traits: the ability to remain totally fearless in the face of danger!

Erez offers video tutorials discussing his images and explaining how he achieved them.

Selected Articles by Erez Marom:

Parallelism in Landscape Photography
Winds of Change: Shooting changing landscapes
Behind the Shot: Dark Matter
On the Importance of Naming Images
On Causality in Landscape Photography
Shooting K?lauea Volcano, Part 1: How to melt a drone
The Art of the Unforeground
Whatever it Doesn’t Take
Almost human: photographing critically endangered mountain gorillas

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Landscape photography with a drone: the advantages – part 1

22 Sep

In the first article of this series I explained what drones are, how they are built and controlled by the user. The next question to naturally arise is “Why does one need a drone?” What is a drone good for, and why should you get one?

The answer to this question is long and complicated, but could be summed up by saying that a drone gives the photographer opportunities for shots not achievable in any other way. That’s quite the statement, but I stand firmly behind it, and I intend to explain this position in depth in this article and in the ones to follow.

The first order of business would be to compare the drone to the ubiquitous tool of the photographer: the DSLR, or any hand-held camera for that matter. Indeed, I have written extensively about the advantages of aerial photography in a previous series, but that was in the context of hand-held shooting from an aircraft, and in any case, these advantages need to be presented here if this series is to be self-contained. I’ll rephrase them shortly in a way that better relates to droning.

What the drone offers compared to ground-based shooting is as follows: you have a miniature friggin’ helicopter in your hands, and it allows you to shoot aerials, get the shots from any angle, get there quickly and safely, all without any real danger to your body (caveats to that coming in the future).

Need to separate compositional elements that overlap from the ground? No problemo – take the drone higher and viola – objects are separated. Want to shoot flowing lava without burning your ears off? The drone feels no pain. Can’t walk on water? Can’t breathe toxic fumes? Can’t fly? Too lazy to hike? Send the drone. You get the idea, let’s explore some examples.

Infinite Perspectives

Landscape photography is all about composition – the base layer to any image. Good light and colors are nice, but without an underlying arrangement of objects that’s appealing to the eye, you have nothing. An aerial perspective and the choice over the height, angle and distance from which an image is taken allow for an unprecedented degree of control over composition.

The towers of this ice-castle fit perfectly in the dents in the cloud-cover. I took the drone up to a height which would show this concordance, yet allow separation of the elements.
DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/30 sec, F8, ISO 100. Disko Bay, Greenland

Natural elements often look totally different from the ground level and from the air, but it’s also true that different aerial angles also result in completely distinct compositions. The two images below are the same exact iceberg. Both were taken from the air during one shoot. Would you have guessed? This goes to show the extent of diversity offered by shooting from the air.

More examples: Mount Zinn is a beautiful mesa erosion-mountain in Israel. Taking the drone around it during morning twilight and sunrise resulted in several distinct compositions.

Hidden parts of the photographed natural elements can be discovered and conveyed to the viewer in a visually pleasing way when shooting them from the air. It’s sometimes unbelievable how many phenomenal features are hidden in plain sight, simply because we lack the aerial perspective.

This amazing whirlpool was hiding about 10-20 meters from where I was standing. There was no way I could’ve detected or shot it without the drone.
DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/80 sec, F4, ISO 100. Haukland Beach, the Lofoten Islands, Arctic Norway

Top-down shooting, albeit sometimes over-done, can also be a good creative tool for imagery. It doesn’t always work, though – bear that in mind when trying it.

Amazing natural colors and patterns in the Argentinean high-altitude desert. Shooting this top-down gave the image a painting-like appearance.
DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/240 sec, F9, ISO 100. Puna De Argentina

Lava surface-flows in Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii. A top-down perspective resulted in a deliberate lack of depth, which in turn allowed me to concentrate the viewer on the shape of the flows.
DJI Phantom 4 Pro, 1/25 sec, F6.3, ISO 400. Taken outside of Volcanoes NP, Island of Hawaii.

Separation

A specific aspect of composition is the separation between the different compositional elements. Separation serves to make the composition more appealing. Not having subjects obscured by others is satisfying for the eye, and helps the image have a cleaner, more ordered feel.

A gigantic iceberg floating in Disko Bay, Greenland. The position of the iceberg meant is was impossible to get separation of its two parts when still showing the light passing through the arch and hitting the back segment from the water level. Another clear advantage is the fact that the submerged part of the iceberg is beautifully showing, in addition to debris from a recent collapse in the arch.
DJI Mavic II Pro, vertical stitch, 1/40 sec, F6.3, ISO 100

Separation is especially important where the photographer struggles to convey the grandeur of a location. When shooting Cono Arita (see below) from the ground, it’s impossible to convey the cone’s true shape or its place in the salt flat, not to mention separate it from other elements.

Cono Arita is a sandstone hill in the middle of the Arizaro salt flat in the Argentinean Puna (high-altitude desert). When morning light strikes, the beautiful shadow is cast upon the plain. Taking the drone up allowed me to show this, while creating separation between the cone, its shadow and the surrounding hills and mountains.
DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/60 sec, F8, ISO 100. Salar De Arizaro, Argentina

Just as a ground-based photographer tries to separate his or her foreground and background, the aerial photographer has the same exact considerations – only many more options, as the height constraint is relaxed. See, for example, the near-far composition below.

The drone allowed me to separate the five volcanoes visible in this image: in the bottom of the frame is Ijen crater. To its left, the lush, green Gurung Ranti. Then farther away, from left to right: Pendil, Raung and Suket. There was even room for the shadow (bottom-left to mid-right) cast by Gurung Merapi, just behind the camera.
DJI Mavic II Pro, F8, 1/25 sec, ISO 100. Kawah Ijen, Indonesia

Separation doesn’t always mean the subjects aren’t touching – it can mean a subtler expansion of the distances between the subjects, to create a more pleasant arrangement.

I used the aerial perspective to expand the distances between these interlacing hills and their shadows at sundown.
DJI Mavic II Pro, 1/60 sec, F10, ISO 100. Desierto Del Labirinto, Puna De Argentina

In the next article, I will continue discussing the advantages of the drone, specifically its availability.

Erez offers video tutorials discussing his images and explaining how he achieved them.

Selected Articles by Erez Marom:

Parallelism in Landscape Photography
Winds of Change: Shooting changing landscapes
Behind the Shot: Dark Matter
On the Importance of Naming Images
On Causality in Landscape Photography
Shooting K?lauea Volcano, Part 1: How to melt a drone
The Art of the Unforeground
Whatever it Doesn’t Take
Almost human: photographing critically endangered mountain gorillas

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Landscape photography with a drone – part 1: What is a drone?

15 Sep

Ever since I started shooting landscapes, I’ve been fascinated with aerials. There’s little doubt that aerial photography offers a very different perspective on a landscape, not to mention the excitement one experiences when witnessing nature from a bird’s eye viewpoint.

I have written extensively about the good and the bad, as well as the reasons for shooting aerials in the first article of my series about aerial photography. But drone photography is VERY different to being up there in an aircraft and shooting with a hand-held camera.

Drones have utterly changed the world of landscape photography, and are the best thing to happen to it in the last two decades

There are substantial advantages and disadvantages when comparing the two, and one could even claim they are two different disciplines altogether. After all, apart from the fact that in both the photographer is shooting from the air, there is much more difference than similarity. This provides justification for an additional series that deals with drone photography.

In this series, I will try to elaborate about shooting (natural) landscapes using a drone. I will claim that drones have utterly changed the world of landscape photography, and are the best thing to happen to it in the last two decades. I will show examples from my shoots around the world and discuss how the drone enabled me to get images otherwise impossible.

I’ll try my best to survey the different options available today, and try to cover the legal and moral aspects, as well as etiquette. Finally, I will tell about some interesting personal experiences I’ve had while droning.

It’s important to say that I’m a nature still-photographer, so I will concentrate on that most of the time. That said, there is no reason why the series shouldn’t be relevant for other styles and fields of photography such as urban landscapes or even wildlife photography.

So, what is a drone anyway?

“Drone” is the common name for a remotely-operated or autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). There are many different drone sizes and designs – some are fixed-wing and some rotor-based. Fixed-wing drones are often used for scientific or military purposes. Since they require short runways to take off, and since they lack the maneuverability of rotor-based craft (specifically the ability to hover in one place and to move very slowly), they aren’t commonly used for photography purposes, and so I will not be discussing them here.

The Mavic Air – a quad-copter drone manufactured by the Chinese company DJI

The drones we are interested in – camera drones – are rotor-based. The vast majority of those are quad-copters (i.e. mini-helicopters with 4 propellers), but not all. There are hexa-copters (6-prop) and octo-copters (8-prop) out there as well. They are sometimes known as VTOL drones, for “Vertical Take-Off and Landing”. As we will see, the VTOL property offers a critical advantage for nature photography, or any field-based photography for that matter.

Design

Drones are typically made from composite materials to reduce weight and to absorb vibrations, which in turn reduces noise and motion blur in images. They have several motors and propellers, most commonly one propeller on top of each motor (but some drones have dual propellers for each motor). On a quad-copter, two of the propellers rotate clockwise and the other two counter-clockwise.

The motors are controlled by the drone’s flight controller, which uses, among other things, gyro stabilization technology and accelerometers to maintain control of the drone in real time, and to keep it flying smoothly and steadily. All this is powered by a battery, which is usually inserted to a cavity in the body of the drone.

Controlling a drone with the remote’s 2 joysticks

The drone carries a camera, usually on the front or bottom of the drone’s body. The vast majority of modern drones have an integrated (native) cameras, whereas in the past more drones were designed to carry a separate camera system, be it a small camera like a GoPro or a large DSLR (or even larger systems). A native camera, naturally, allows for much more user control in real time.

The camera, native or otherwise, is mostly mounted on a 3-axis stabilizing gimbal, which disconnects it from any vibration or sudden movements coming from the drone’s main body and allows the camera to move independently from it.

The small camera mounted on a 3-axis gimbal in the first generation of the DJI Mavic

Control

Virtually all camera drones have a ground controller unit (commonly known as a remote controller), which allows the user to control the movement of the aircraft and of the gimbal, and enables live first-person-view (FPV), i.e. video streaming from the drone’s camera and shown on a screen, either integrated into the controller or of a mobile device (such as a smart phone or a tablet), typically connected to the controller via wire.

The video stream doesn’t only show the drone camera’s view, but it also includes important flight information such as a map, flight altitude, speed, distance from the control unit, battery status and more. Using the information sent from the drone, the controller can also warn the user in case of strong winds or nearby obstacles.

The video feed received on a smart phone through cable connection to the remote. Note how height (relative to point of origin), distance from origin and velocity are displayed at he bottom, and photographic parameters at the top.

Everything here serves the purpose of being able to control the drone as delicately and as accurately as possible, and to not rely on seeing the aircraft from the operator’s ground position. As we will see in future articles, FPV is a large part of what gives a drone its overwhelming advantages compared to other kinds of photography.

A Short Survey: Types of Camera Drones

Camera drones are plentiful, with the Chinese company DJI dominating the market without a doubt. It is, however, possible to divide the drone world into several tiers, which differ in the technology featured in the drone, specifically it’s camera and sensor, gimbal, battery, controls, weight and size, among others. Let’s shortly survey the different tiers, and see what differentiates them.

Fun and Toy Drones

DJI Tello (about $ 100)
Parrot Mambo (about $ 50).

These drones have a simple built-in camera with very low resolution. There is no stabilizer (gimbal). The devices are very sensitive in the wind and usually have no GPS function, making it very difficult to get good flight precision and decent pictures. They are, however, very affordable and fun to use.

Entry-level Drones

DJI Spark (discontinued, to be replaced soon)
Parrot Anafi (about $ 650)

The tiny DJI Spark can fit in the palm of your hand.

These drones feature better control and stability than toy drones, but don’t expect any miracles in terms of image quality and stabilization. The mechanical two-axis gimbal requires shorter exposure times to prevent camera shake. Range and duration of flight are below average.

Semi-professional Drones

DJI Mavic Air (about $ 750, $ 930 for a combo including extra batteries, props, carrying case and more)
DJI Mavic Pro (about $ 930 for a combo)
DJI Mavic 2 Zoom ($ 1240, $ 1590 for a combo)
DJI Mavic 2 Pro ($ 1500, $ 1800 for a combo)

Drones in this category feature an electric three-axis gimbal, at least 12 megapixel photo resolution, long exposure abilities (and the stability to make them practical) and 4K videos. The Mavic Air may be limited in range, as WiFi in city centers may be more susceptible to interference than the “Pro” Series transmission technologies.

The DJI Phantom series is much larger than the Mavic Air, and packs a better camera.

The equally affordable Mavic Pro has a long flight time, but only a 1/2.3-inch sensor, while the top model Mavic 2 Pro with a 1-inch sensor expects. Not only does it deliver a higher resolution (20 megapixels instead of 12), it also exhibits significantly improved noise performance in the low light range.

Rather an exotic animal in the line-up is the Mavic 2 Zoom. Also equipped with only a 1/2.3-inch sensor, it has a 2x optical zoom, which enables it to get different perspectives for a given framing (perspective depends on subject distance), and even a very cool aerial mode called Dolly Zoom. With the exception of Spark, all these models are compact and easy to transport. The Mavic 2 Pro offers the maximum picture quality among these and is very portable, making it the current go-to drone for many photographers, your truly included.

Professional Drones

DJI Inspire 2 Pro (theoretically starting from $ 2800 but with a better sensor and exchangeable lenses it’s more like $ 6400 and upward)
DJI Matrice (from $ 6340 with a gimbal, not including a camera)
FreeFly Alta 8 (from $ 18500)

Drones in this category have different camera options with interchangeable optics. From the integrated gimbal with Super 35-millimeter sensor (Zenmuse X7 to Inspire 2) to the digital film camera (Arri Alexa Mini to FreeFly Alta), almost everything is possible here for money. The take-off weights of these devices start at approx. 4 kilograms, which considerably increases the administrative effort. The design allows the camera to move independently under the drone at a 360 degree angle. These drones are often controlled by at least two-person teams and are suitable for professional film productions.

What’s Next?

Now we know, more or less, how a camera drone is built and how its parts are connected. We know that today’s camera drones are mostly quad-copters, with native stabilized cameras mounted on a gimbal. But what can these aircraft do? Why choose a drone over a helicopter or a plane? How has the drone changed the world of landscape photography? I will cover all this next.

If you’d like to experience and shoot some of the most fascinating landscapes on earth with Erez as your guide, take a look at his unique photography workshops in The Lofoten Islands, Greenland, Namibia, the Argentinean Puna, the Faroe Islands and Ethiopia.

Erez offers video tutorials discussing his images and explaining how he achieved them.

Selected Articles by Erez Marom:

Parallelism in Landscape Photography
Winds of Change: Shooting changing landscapes
Behind the Shot: Dark Matter
On the Importance of Naming Images
On Causality in Landscape Photography
Shooting K?lauea Volcano, Part 1: How to melt a drone
The Art of the Unforeground
Whatever it Doesn’t Take
Almost human: photographing critically endangered mountain gorillas

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Makeup Essentials for Photographers Part 2 – Application

18 Jul

The post Makeup Essentials for Photographers Part 2 – Application appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Mark C Hughes.

A little makeup will help your images pop

In part 1, we explored the tools you need to be able to help your subjects. Once you have all those essentials for applying makeup, the next step is the hard one – application. Again, this overview is intended for photographers and not makeup artists. The approach should be about helping your portrait subjects look a little better in your images of them. However, it should not replace using an actual makeup artist if you have one available.

Makeup artists can do amazing work that takes a lot of time, effort and skill to become good at. You can’t become a makeup artist by simply reading one article. We are going to help you tweak what is already there rather than give tips on how to be a junior makeup artist.

Many models come to sessions with their own makeup

Virtual Makeup

Beyond makeup, there are lots of techniques for improving someone’s appearance in post-processing including adding virtual makeup. Virtual makeup programs and plug-ins have come a long way, but, as always, it is much easier to get the images correct in-camera and not rely on post-processing to fix everything.

Also, while it can be done, post-processing images can take a fair bit of time, so getting it right in-camera means very little post-processing. Little post-processing can end up saving you a tremendous amount of time, particularly if you are handling lots of images and tight timelines.

Virtual makeup can be virtually indistinguishable from regular makeup and is way better than excessive smoothing or reverse clarity.

Before applying makeup

In general, when you are applying makeup to an individual, there are a few factors to consider before applying makeup to them. First, you need to be aware if they are comfortable with makeup and with you applying it to their faces. Most women and few men are comfortable with makeup, however, there are both men and women who are not. Before you do anything to anyone, you need to ask for their consent. Also, ask how comfortable they are with letting you do anything regarding the application of makeup.

When you apply makeup to someone, you end up getting up close and personal (much like a haircut) and there are lots of people and cultures that frown on you entering their personal space. Your subjects need to feel beautiful or handsome but more importantly, they must feel comfortable.

Rule of thumb

The rule of thumb for photographers who are applying makeup to subjects is that you are looking for a very light touch of makeup (i.e. very little).

With women, just improve a little of what is already there (they may already have most of it down and may be way more skilled at it than you are).

For men, you are looking to remove the sheen and give them a light tan to look healthier. For all your subjects, think smoothing and getting rid of shine.

Making subjects relaxed is important

Approach for women

Lots of women wear makeup everyday. Many will show up for a portrait session with the makeup that they normally use and are comfortable with. That’s really great. For these women, you will need to carefully consider or assess what you want to achieve before applying or correcting your subject’s makeup. Ideally, your subject’s makeup is just fine with no need for any changes or only some minor touch-ups. Only add or repair what’s needed for these subjects. Do not make their makeup worse.

Alternatively, some women don’t wear any makeup. So for them, you will need to let them know you will only be doing a little to help them look better in front of the camera. You are really trying to make them look their best – you will not be trying to fix them or to try to make them look like a supermodel. Everyone has great features, and everybody wants to feel attractive. Great photography will bring out their inner beauty. You are just trying to enhance what they have, not to make them look like something they are not. Some women will joke and ask you to take 10 years off. The best thing to do is to reassure them that you will make them look good.

Makeup for men is just a really light touch.

Approach for men

Most men don’t wear makeup. This means that you need to make them relax having makeup on. Depending upon how and who the person is, will affect your approach. The best approach you can take is to tell them you are just cleaning some stuff up and making them look great. It will be really important for most men to tell them that you will be putting very little makeup on them.

As with most subjects, you tend to be dealing with normal people. Here is a before makeup shot of a typical subject. Ensure your subject’s face is clean and moisturized before adding makeup.

Preparation

If your subject arrives with no makeup, you may need to apply some very basic makeup. Ideally, their faces are at least clean before you start. If your subject’s face is not clean, recommend a splash of soap and water as well as cleaning with a clean applicator using an alcohol-free toner.

Beyond making people feel comfortable, you also need to be wary of any allergies. Before you start applying any makeup to anyone, make sure you know if they are allergic to any products. This ensures you don’t start applying some makeup only to have them feeling really bad and break out in hives.

Fair complexion individuals will benefit from a little bit of makeup by providing some definition.

Your first step is to use blotting paper to blot up any obvious oil spots. Simply press the blotting paper to the oily area, lift, and repeat as necessary, using a clean section of blotting paper each time. Never rub, just blot.

Concealing

This is a critical stage of applying makeup. Done well, concealing transforms small skin irregularities and get things right straight out of the camera. This saves retouching later in post-processing. Using your smallest brush (the lip or concealer brush), dab concealer onto blemishes, dark circles under the eyes, and in any other areas that need a bit of correction. Dab on a bit of concealer with your brush, wait a minute or so, then use a clean finger to lightly dab the concealer to begin blending.

Concealing involves targeting small imperfections to help people look more like themselves

As a photographer, you will be familiar with color theory. Now you need to think about it for makeup. Applying concealer normally requires you to think about color theory and shading. For example, apply green to red blotches; yellow to purple-blue under-eye circles on olive or tan skin, and light purple or pink to under-eye circles on fair skin.

Try to always use a flesh-toned concealer that is the same as, or slightly lighter than, your subject’s skin to allow the ability to even out the corrections.

Correcting or balancing foundation on women

With excess oil removed and any blemishes concealed, now you will need to look closely at your female subject’s foundation. Some women use too much foundation or don’t blend foundation enough along the jawline. If either applies to your subject, moisten a wedge sponge and use it to even out the foundation using light and gentle strokes. Pay particular attention to jawlines and hairlines. Ensure any makeup lines are smoothly blended out to make them invisible.

Alternatively, some women don’t apply enough foundation. If you find this to be the case with your subject, use your largest brush (the face brush) and brush on lightly-tinted setting powder. Powder will not provide deep coverage, but it will supplement a thin application of foundation.

Blush and contour for women

If you’ve never applied makeup to another person, this is the stage where you will initially feel particularly awkward using a brush and makeup. Even people with lots of practice on themselves can feel awkward doing it on someone else. You may want to practice in advance by brushing makeup onto white sheets of paper, particularly textured paper like those used for watercolors.

A good application of foundation, blush and contour will make the subject’s face even

When you are ready to apply blush and contour to your subject, ask her to smile. Use a medium-sized brush to apply blush from the apex of her cheeks in a very slight curve down and then back up again, almost to her ears. Apply the blush in light strokes, brushing additional makeup in thin layers until you’ve achieved a look that is only slightly more dramatic than natural.

If you are feeling adventurous and confident, use your blush or powder brush with your bronzer to lightly contour the sunken area of her cheeks from about mid-cheek back to the hair line. A little contouring can go a long way. When you begin feeling more confident applying contour, consider applying it down the middle of a woman’s nose, at her temples, and on the tip of her chin. This application will make your subject’s face look a bit thinner.

Blending for women

For good makeup application, continued blending is key. Begin with a large face brush and lightly sweep in circles to begin to blend in the edges of the blush and contour you’ve applied. Finish blending by using the face brush to lightly brush on some flesh-colored translucent powder.

Highlight and manage shine

Setting powder can be used now to add some highlights to your subject’s face and to tone down any shiny areas. To add highlights, use a clean blush or face brush (be sure you’ve cleaned it of blush and contour). Dip the tip of the brush in some rice powder and gently touch the rice powder onto the areas you wish to highlight. Then use your face brush to blend.

Adding highlights to either side of the bridge of your subject’s nose, near the inside corners of her eyes, will brighten her eyes.

If your subject has some shiny areas (this may be all you need to correct for some clients), apply some rice powder on the shine using your face brush. Go easy on the application as you can overcorrect and end up with pale looking skin.

makeup application for photographers - 6

Smooth lips are never noticed, but rough ones always are. This is an easy thing to fix before taking a photo.

Lips

The last main step is to ensure your subject’s lips are smooth and moist looking. If your subject brought lipstick, use that. If not, or if her lips need a bit of moisture or shine, use a bit of lip gloss or balm. Apply the gloss or balm with a clean concealer or lip brush. Don’t use fingers or let your subject use her fingers as more lip gloss will end up on fingers than on lips.

A little bit of makeup can really bring out the individuals inner beauty

makeup application for photographers - 5

Final results coupled with good lighting can make for images people are proud to show others

Final assessment

Once complete, and at each intermediate stage, step back and assess what you have applied or corrected. Make sure it works. You can always layer on a bit more makeup where needed, but it’s much more difficult to remove too much makeup.

Applying makeup to men

Many men won’t refuse a bit of corrective makeup even if they feel awkward about it. Remember to limit makeup application for men to concealing and managing shine. You want them to look healthy, not made up.

makeup application for photographers - 4

For men just smoothing and a light touch are all that is necessary

Blot and conceal

As before with women, use blotting paper before applying any concealer. Men often produce more and heavier oil on their faces than women. If this oil is not blotted, the concealer will come off as you attempt to apply it. The same principles for applying concealer to women applies to men. You may only need to be a bit more diligent in blending concealer over shaved facial hair. It may be trickier too with men who want that scruffy 5 o’clock shadow look or have a day’s growth of beard.

Managing shine

Rice powder works wonderfully to matte shine on a man’s face, especially on high foreheads and bald spots. Even if you are not able to completely matte shine in those areas, rice powder will bring the shine down enough that you will have texture to work with in those areas of the photograph when retouching.

As with women, apply rice powder to men lightly with a large face brush, blend well, and check to be sure you have not created pasty-white areas. If your client’s skin tone is dark and you are trying to matte significant shine, blend a little tinted translucent powder with the rice powder before applying.

Lips

Some men have dry or flaky lips, often from spending a lot of time outside. Ask if you can apply a small amount of clear lip balm. Rub the balm in well because you don’t want shiny traces on a man’s lips.

Before finishing up, take a close look at your client. Remove smudges, makeup flakes, or lint with a cotton swab. Use your face brush or a damp disposable sponge to blend any makeup that needs just a tiny bit more blending. And use a damp disposable sponge to remove stains or lint from clothing.

makeup application for photographers - 3

The judicial use of makeup can help people feel more confident for other types of posing.

Cleaning up

Finally, always clean your brushes and cosmetics after every use. You want to have sanitary makeup and brushes. Use a conditioning brush spray or isopropyl alcohol on your brushes. Use cosmetic sanitizer or isopropyl alcohol on your cosmetics so that you can use them for others. Throw away any disposable items you used. And always wash your hands with soap and running water or with sanitizer as soon as you are finished.

In the end, the desired result is for images people are proud of. To do that a little bit of makeup knowledge helps a photographer simplify his or her processes to get the best results

Practice, Practice, Practice

Applying makeup to another person does not come naturally. There is a reason why makeup artists are paid handsomely for their work. But with a few tools, a small bag of cosmetics, and practice, you will be able to address the worst of makeup or skin flaws before you capture your client’s portrait.

The post Makeup Essentials for Photographers Part 2 – Application appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Mark C Hughes.

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How to Make Well Exposed Photos Every Time – Part Three – Post-Processing for Exposure Optimization

26 Apr

The post How to Make Well Exposed Photos Every Time – Part Three – Post-Processing for Exposure Optimization appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kevin Landwer-Johan.

Digital photography allows us an incredible scope to work on our computers to enhance and manipulate images. Optimizing your exposures during post-processing can make a dull, flat-looking photograph into a much more vibrant and interesting one.

How to Make Well Exposed Photos Every TimeMarket Guy

My approach to post-processing most of the time is to make my photos look as they did when I captured them or with some variation to the background tone. Because our eyes see more dynamic range than our cameras, this means I am working to balance my exposure and the way the light looks in the photo.

RAW or Jpg?

If your photos are saved only as jpg’s, your camera will have made certain tweaks to them already. It may have added some sharpening, color balance, contrast tweaks and possibly manipulated them in other ways. Jpg images as designed to look good straight out of your camera and may require little or no post-processing.

If you do decide to work on your jpg files, you will face limitations because of the file quality. As your camera saves jpg files, it compresses them and discards some of the information from the photos. Jpgs are technically lower quality which means they do not stand up to as much post-processing as RAW files do.

RAW files contain all the information your camera captured when you pressed the shutter release. They do not look great when you first see them because the camera has not altered them at all during the capturing and saving process.

To make a RAW file look good you must make some adjustments manually or use a preset or Action to make them for you. The technical quality of a RAW file is superior because there is no data lost from what your camera recorded. You have a greater capacity to be able to manipulate these files without losing quality.

How to Make Well Exposed Photos Every Time Temple and Big Sky

Choose your best photos

From each series of photographs you make I hope that you will have a number of exposure options to choose from when you sit down at your computer. Picking the best images to work on is the first part of post-processing.

Naturally, you’ll be wanting to pay most attention to the main subject in your photo. Is it exposed the way you want it to be? Can you see that there’s sufficient detail in those areas of your composition?

In some cases, such as when you’ve made a silhouette or are using low-key lighting and high contrast, you may have little or no detail in your subject. This is okay if that’s what you want.

However, if exposing for detail was your intention, and there’s not enough in your photo, look at the pictures where you used different exposure settings.

Your background exposure is also important. Does it enhance and support your main subject? Is it too bright or too dark? Again, look to see if there is detail. When there’s no detail, because of overexposure or underexposure, it will be more difficult to manipulate these areas.

How to Make Well Exposed Photos Every Time Attractive Young Photographer

Make use of the histogram

Your histogram gives you information about the tonal values in your images. It shows you where the most detail is and if you have lost detail in the bright or dark parts of your compositions.

If your histogram is bunched up to the left or the right of the chart, with the graphic touching the top, this means there will be no detail recorded in those areas.

If you can see a histogram bunched to the right and hitting the top, you will have lost detail in the highlights. If it’s bunched to the left and hitting the top, you have lost detail in the dark areas.

If your main subject is within this range and you wanted it to contain detail, you will need to choose a photo with a different exposure setting to work on.

How to Make Well Exposed Photos Every Time Hill Tribe Girl

Using presets or manual manipulation

Lightroom and Photoshop come with presets and Actions. These can be used to help balance your exposure. You can also download many more or make and save your own. These tools can enhance and speed up your post-processing workflow.

I often chose one of a variety of presets as I begin to post process a photograph. Rarely do I apply a preset without then tweaking it further. Every exposure you make is different, so to get your photos looking their best some manual manipulation is usually best.

Working your highlights and shadows

Having been careful to expose your main subject well, you may already be happy with its tone value. However, some parts of your composition may still need tweaking to get them looking the way you want.

How to Make Well Exposed Photos Every Time Happy Hat Wearer

Your intention is the most important. How do you want your photograph to look?

Here are two examples of different manipulations made to the same RAW file.

Example one: Dark background

I wanted to make the background darker so the roses would stand out. Using a preset I made in Lightroom, I then made further manual adjustments. I controlled the Blacks, Dehaze, Contrast, and Shadows sliders.

When making this kind of adjustment to manipulate the background of your image, pay attention to your main subject also. These sliders make universal changes to your photos so affect your main subject as well.

With a light-toned main subject and a predominantly dark background, the changes I made did not have much effect on the roses.

How to Make Well Exposed Photos Every Time Lightroom Dark

I then opened the photo, with the Lightroom adjustments, in Photoshop. At this stage, I darkened the lightest part of the photo to lower the overall tone range.

There are many techniques you can darken or lighten specific areas of a photo. I prefer to use the Dodge and Burn tools set to a low exposure to do this. I also used the Patch tool to remove a few of the brighter areas in the background.

As a result, the background is darker, and the highlights on the rose are not so bright.

How to Make Well Exposed Photos Every Time

Example Two: Light Background

To render a lighter, softer look, I took the Dehaze slider towards the left, and the Shadows towards the right. I added a little more Black and some Contrast, otherwise the image looked too flat.

Next, using Photoshop, I tweaked the highlights a little so they were not so bright.

How to Make Well Exposed Photos Every Time Roses

In both of these examples, my main objective was to enhance the roses because they are my main subject.

The background tone is also important. Between the two examples, there is the most difference in the tone of the background. This has a large impact on the overall feel of the photo.

Conclusion

As with all post-processing, there are a variety of methods you can use to gain similar results. Here I have demonstrated a few techniques I am comfortable using.

Concentrating primarily on the tone of your main subject in relation to the background is a good place to start when post-processing. Once you have made adjustments you are satisfied with, you can then move on and make other changes to your photos if you wish.

Aim to expose your main subject the way you want at the time of making your photos. Doing so allows you more flexibility to make changes in post-production and not lose quality. If you are stuck working with a main subject that’s either underexposed or overexposed, you will be limited in how much you can achieve.

Experimentation is the best way to discover how you like to work with photo manipulation software. There is no right or wrong way to work with your photos so long as you achieve the result you want.

Makeup Essentials for Photographers Part I – The Tools

25 Apr

The post Makeup Essentials for Photographers Part I – The Tools appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Mark C Hughes.

Makeup! Before I took photographs (and as a guy), I rarely used or had to use makeup, so I had very limited personal experience with it. That being said, I have taken portrait photographs of beautiful women that have been professionally made up, and I can honestly say it really makes a difference through the lens of a camera.

The best makeup is always barely noticeable – you only focus on the subject. It is truly a skill to do makeup well. Getting a good makeup artist to help with your portraits will always make the images better. However, in many cases, a makeup artist is not available, so the next best thing is to do it yourself to help deal with specific issues and get better results.

Made up Model

Best results

For the best portrait shooting results, you want subjects that are well rested and healthy. You also want interesting locations, great lighting, and skill behind the camera.

Although the last three are things you have control over, you generally have limited control over your subjects.

Other than suggesting your subjects be well hydrated and rested, there is little you can do to change your given subjects. Makeup can help improve the overall appearance of your subject by balancing skin tones, correcting most skin imperfections and even change the perceived shape of a subject’s face.

Well-applied makeup will also boost the effects of good lighting and minimize retouching.

Same model different makeup

Nothing new

Fashion and glamour photographers have long known the benefits of makeup and often employ a makeup artist on their sets. Most portrait photographers don’t have the budget or benefit of a makeup artist on location particularly if you are only doing one or two portraits.

Usually, the portrait photographer is working with the makeup that the subject shows up with (or lack thereof).

Any corrections are often done in post-production to deal with shine, blotchy skin, and uneven skin tones.

However, with a few makeup items supplied and a bit of practice, any photographer can develop enough skill to apply basic makeup and improve a portrait straight out of the camera (SOOC).

All subjects benefit from a little makeup (female, male and other), as long as they are human.

Even males benefit from a little makeup

Basic requirements

Let’s consider the basics of a useful makeup kit, simple application techniques, and hygiene requirements. Makeup artists will spend lots of money on equipping their kits, but you only need a few items to apply simple makeup before a portrait session.

There are, however, two important things you need to consider before putting together your own makeup kit.

Makeup will make many women feel special

First, poor quality products generate poor results. You don’t need to purchase the very best products but getting cosmetics from a reputable makeup store, a cosmetics counter at a department store or a pharmacy with a larger cosmetics section will produce better results. You can purchase online, but it is best if you know what you are getting.

As a male photographer purchasing cosmetics, be prepared for comments from some stores about getting stuff for your wife or girlfriend mostly because men buying makeup is less common.

Men will often be unaccustomed with makeup

Secondly, people are becoming more considerate of products that have fewer animal byproducts and are free of animal testing. Most people do not want weird stuff on their faces, and you will want to be respectful of people’s wishes.

Brushes and applicators

Ideally, you should have three brushes – a face brush, blush or powder brush, and a concealer brush. Brushes need to be soft durable and able to be easily cleaned. Generally, it is a good practice to purchase good quality synthetic brushes. Always ensure that the larger brushes are very soft and pliable.

Brushes and Applicators

The face brush is the largest and fluffiest of all the makeup brushes. They are often about 2 inches wide with bristles curves into a rounded shape. The blush or powder brush is a medium-sized soft brush that is about 1 inch wide with curved edges. The third brush is a concealer or lip brush which is small, about 0.25 to 0.5 inches wide with tapered ends.

In addition to brushes, wedge-shaped disposable sponges are handy for all sorts of things. Cotton swabs are indispensable but buy a brand name because inexpensive bands tend to cause more of a mess than they clean up. Disposable hand towels (thicker than paper towels) are useful for cleaning up. Finally, blotting film or facial blotting paper is the last disposable item you need for a brush/applicator.

The cosmetics

Although there is a lot of makeup out there, this kit is not intended to replace a makeup artist, it is just to help you, so you can get away with a surprisingly small collection of cosmetics to pull it together. There may be additional things but start with the basics.

Cosmetics

Translucent loose-setting powder will have a very light skin tone color in the jar but applies neutrally on almost all skin tones. These powders are often mineral based.

Concealer is an inexpensive staple for any makeup kit. You can get smaller collections, but often you can get a wheel or concealer palette that has multiple colors to adjust for skin tones.

Blush or bronzer is used to give the cheeks a little color and make you look a little suntanned as well.

Rice powder is a very fine, light, loose white or very pale powder use for absorbing excess oils and highlighting features. It should almost be invisible and is not expensive.

Lip gloss can be super simple and does not need to be a bold color. Just a simple stick of clear lip gloss or slightly tinted balms will do the job.

Great results straight out of the camera

Cleaning and sanitizing products

For non-makeup people, the importance of cleaning up hands, brushes, and cosmetics cannot be understated. You really need to keep everything clean, particularly if you intend to use the makeup for more than one person (but even then you need to clean up your brushes).

Key staples are hand sanitizer, a brush cleaner (baby shampoo will do), and a cosmetic sanitizer. Use unscented hand sanitizer to keep your hands clean before and after every makeup application.

The brush cleaner is essential to keep the brushes functional. Finally, the cosmetic sanitizer gets applied to the cosmetics after use. Isopropyl alcohol in a spray bottle works but tends to discolor the makeup with repeated use. It is best to get a proper sanitizing mister made especially for cosmetic products.

Makeup as an art

Applying makeup takes skill. To become skilled, you need to practice. Before you start applying makeup to a paying subject, you need to practice on someone who doesn’t mind you practicing on them. There is a reason why makeup artists are paid well for their work. It is hard, and they make it look easy.

Couples will enjoy it too

Conclusion of Part I

With all this equipment you are ready to help your clients look better for their portraits. In part 2, we cover the techniques and basic skills to apply makeup to your clients. The intent is not to make you a makeup artist, but to help smooth features and improve the look of your portraits straight out of the camera. That way, you don’t have to spend a lot of time post-processing your images.

It doesn’t replace a true makeup artist’s work

The post Makeup Essentials for Photographers Part I – The Tools appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Mark C Hughes.

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How to Prepare Images For Publication – Part Two

21 Apr

The post How to Prepare Images For Publication – Part Two appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Herb Paynter.

In part one of this series, I presented the reasons why images printed in magazines and publications can appear lackluster, dark, and dull rather than detailed and vibrant as when printed on an inkjet printer. In this follow-up article, I address the unique requirements and limitations of printing presses and some ways to produce rich and detailed images in print.

Fine Tuning the Process for Print

Paper surfaces

The depth and detail that a press can reproduce in the darkest (shadow) portions of an image are limited by several print-related factors, with the paper grade (quality) being the biggest factor. Printing papers come in various grades, textures, and shades of white.

White is a relative term, and newspapers are a prime example. Newsprint isn’t actually pure white and the ink printed on it never appears black.

Printing inks

Newspaper inks are nearly in a liquid state as opposed to other forms of print. The tack level (stickiness) of these inks must remain very low since the newsprint paper composition is quite soft. Full-bodied inks printed at high speed would tear the paper apart. Instead of appearing as black ink on white paper, newspapers appear more like charcoal colored ink on light gray paper. This factor alone dismisses the visual contrast in pictures. Newsprint absorbs ink like a paper towel, which is why pictures in the newspaper lack contrast, punch and depth.

Magazine paper surfaces

Publication (magazine) presses fair much better. However, they still have limitations. Paper grades for publications are still lower quality than those of brochures and coffee table books because of the economy of the project. Most publication stocks are made from recycled papers in which many of the whitening agents and glossy coatings used in higher grade papers are absent. This results in less reflective surfaces and varying shades of off-white colors. While the recycled paper is good news for the environment, it’s bad news for print quality.

The challenge

High-speed presses must also reduce the tack level of their inks to keep these papers flowing through the presses. When the tack level goes down, so does the opacity of the inks, and when the tack level of translucent inks is reduced, the contrast in the images (and image detail) is also reduced. You can see where this is headed…

The creative solution

Thus the challenge is to maintain as much apparent contrast in each image as possible under less than ideal circumstances. Here is where the creative magic of contrast “compensation” enters the picture. Prior to the era of digital editing, this creative level of tonal manipulation was simply out of reach. While adjusting the overall contrast (white, middle, and black points) of printed images has always been possible, serious contour shaping was not. But within current digital image editing software, the entire internal range of tones can be tuned and cajoled with great precision. Success simply takes a clear understanding of the limitations and a good knowledge of the tools in the digital tool chest.

The Sun backlit the subjects in this photo causing the darker areas to hide significant detail. If sent to press without compensating adjustments, the printed results would have looked even darker and important detail would have been lost.

Pictured here are the settings that produced the civil war reenactment photo above. Information contained in the middle tones and shadow tones was recovered by powerful tonal adjustments available in each of the four software applications. Very similar settings produced very similar results. The panels (from left to right) include Adobe Camera Raw, Adobe Lightroom, On1 Photo RAW, and Alien Skin X4.5. Camera Raw and Lightroom produced identical results from identical settings for obvious reasons, while the development engineers from On1 and Alien Skin used unique routines and algorithms in their software to affect very similar results.

The secret to success in adjusting the internal contrast of an image is in developing a distinct visual difference between the whites and highlights and the shadows and black tones. This is best addressed within the six major tonal sliders provided by most RAW editing software (Lightroom, Camera Raw, On1 Photo RAW and Alien Skin’s Xposure X4.5) best address this.

Don’t let the term RAW scare you away. These editors can open and process just about all image file types (RAW, JPEG, TIFF, etc.). Each of these packages provides very similar tonal area adjustments (Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, and Blacks) though each maintains a slightly different range for each. Additional controls to fine tune the tonal values include the Tone Curve adjustments of Highlights, Lights, Darks, and Shadows.

The beauty of all these controls is the fact that they are nonlinear, meaning they can be adjusted in any order and at any time during (and during follow-up) editing sessions. Using these editing packages, truly non-non-destructive image editing can be made to RAW, TIFF and JPEG image files.

Backlighting and a black cat provided a serious challenge in this image. These adjustments were needed even if the picture was not going to press.

Three aspects of tonal controls

Familiarize yourself with these three general aspects of tonal controls to prepare your photos specifically for the printing press.

One

Since camera image sensors capture very little shadow detail, digital images require significant internal contrast adjustments to the lower portion of the tonal scale.

Shadow tones of each image are the most challenging areas to print cleanly on press. Therefore, you must create a sharp distinction between the darkest darks (Black slider) and the three-quarter tones (Shadow slider).

Use the Exposure slider in conjunction with the Blacks slider to bring out all the detail in the darkest portion of the image. Reference the histogram to gauge the actual pixels that will print darkest.

Two

Lighten the middle tones and accent the difference between the quarter tones and the highlights.

Use the Curves tool to affect the middle tones while adjusting the Shadows slider and Highlight Slider to define the middle tones further.

Three

Reference the histogram again to monitor the lightest tones (White slider). White is a misnomer in the labeling of this slider as its influence is on the extreme highlight tones. Draw a distinction between the light tones and absolute white by using the Highlights slider and the White slider.

The Exposure slider and the Contrast slider play an important part in this tonal ballet. Choreograph these controls to achieve the best balance of internal tones and check your progress by occasionally tapping the “P” key to preview the composite effects of all your adjustments against the original image.

Seemingly lost detail in the darker areas was completely recovered by some severe adjustments to individual tonal areas throughout the tonal range. The image was recovered with only the use of the sliders shown. No further editing (dodging, burning, etc.) was required.

This article is hardly an exhaustive explanation of how to prepare images for publication inasmuch as it does not address the critical issues of color, sharpening, resolution, etc. But it will get you started on the most critical issues of tone sculpturing images for reproduction. In every example shown, ONLY global adjustments to the seven sliders was required to bring full life back into lackluster photos. The most critical aspect of post-production involves an image’s internal tonality.

Shape each image’s internal contrast specifically for the press and paper being printed. If you don’t, the printed image will probably hide shadow detail, lose their “snap” in the highlights, and produce muddy middle tones. Slight but deliberate accenting of the tone curve will produce significantly better images in print.

Working on images in these RAW Interpreter software applications provides amazing latitude in recovering both shadow and highlight detail. This example shows how On1 Photo RAW found significant detail in what appeared to be blown out highlights of a JPEG image.

Chasing light

At the core of the issue is light.

Everything about photography concerns light, and that includes viewing photos in print.

The reason images appear more vibrant and colorful on a monitor is because the background “white” is projected light, not paper. Images printed on paper will ALWAYS appear less vibrant. Paper is only as white as the light reflecting from it. The darker the paper and the dimmer the reflecting light, the less bright the picture appears. Images in print will never look as good as images on your monitor simply because reflected light cannot compete with projected light.

Conclusion

Preparing images to print correctly is a serious challenge, but one that delivers an amazing result. If you want to test your image editing skills, it doesn’t get more challenging than this. The reward for all your print-editing efforts will last a whole lot longer than a post on the Internet and will be seen by thousands (if not millions) more than a print hanging in a gallery. People collect well-produced publications and display them for others to see.

Virtually all images deserve thoughtful preparation before presentation. The camera can’t evaluate tonality balance by human standards. Learning the reproduction habits and limitations of different devices and understanding how to best compensate for each will pay serious visual dividends.

Of course, the final challenge in preparing images for publication is converting the color mode from RGB to CMYK. Check with your publication about this matter before you arbitrarily choose CMYK from the Image/Mode menu. There are a number of workflows that publications use to produce their final files for the printer. I suggest you leave the color conversion decision up to the magazine’s production staff. The conversion process is a complex issue that deserves much more attention than I’m addressing in this series.

Please feel free to comment and question what you’ve just read. Life is a collaborative effort, and we’re all learning.

The post How to Prepare Images For Publication – Part Two appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Herb Paynter.

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Virtual Makeup

Before applying makeup

Rule of thumb

Approach for women

Approach for men

Preparation

Concealing

Correcting or balancing foundation on women

Blush and contour for women

Blending for women

Highlight and manage shine

Lips

Final assessment

Applying makeup to men

Blot and conceal

Managing shine

Lips

Cleaning up

Practice, Practice, Practice

RAW or Jpg?

Choose your best photos

Make use of the histogram

Using presets or manual manipulation

Working your highlights and shadows

Example one: Dark background

Example Two: Light Background

Conclusion

You may also like

Best results

Nothing new

Basic requirements

Brushes and applicators

The cosmetics

Cleaning and sanitizing products

Makeup as an art

Conclusion of Part I

Fine Tuning the Process for Print

Paper surfaces

Printing inks

Magazine paper surfaces

The challenge

The creative solution

Three aspects of tonal controls

One

Two

Three

Chasing light

Conclusion