Category: Photography

The Cheap Camera Challenge – It’s Not All About the Camera

In my own classes, workshops and tours I tell my students that it is not the camera that makes good photos it’s the photographer. This video series by DigitalRev TV takes that statement to the next level with their Pro Photographer, Cheap Camera Challenge.

In this instalment street photographer Gary Tyson is given a cheap camera in a wristwatch. See how he uses it to make some pretty decent photos, interacts with people and uses it to his advantage rather than it being a disadvantage.

What can you learn from that video? What is the lesson there?

Sure maybe the photos are high resolution and won’t stand up to anything other than being on the internet. But take those same techniques and apply them using whatever camera you do have.

Are you up to taking the cheap camera challenge? I might give it a go myself!

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The post The Cheap Camera Challenge – It’s Not All About the Camera by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School

May 31, 2015
The Future of Photography Websites – Understanding and Adapting to Trends Continued
In an earlier article (The Future of Photography Websites – Understanding and Adapting to Trends) on this topic, you can read about a couple of major trends in the web-design industry (as they relate to photo websites). Here’s a quick review:
- The huge number of new websites being built and ways to rise above the noise including: Choosing a photography niche (specializing); Differentiating yourself as a photographer; Using quality platforms and website templates; Simplifying and prioritizing elements on your site; Understanding and focusing on your target audience.
- New website performance standards and their effect on browsing habits: Why and how to make your website faster; Editing down your content and creating a smooth browsing experience; Having clear website navigation.
Now we’re going to continue exploring many other important aspects you should take into consideration when building your photography website (whether it’s an online portfolio, a stock website, or centred around a photo blog). All combined, these notes should give you a more clear picture of how to build your photography website and steer towards a more successful photo business.

3. Mobile devices are omnipresent and powerful

This is fairly obvious to see in the world around us, but what implications does it have on photography websites?

a. The old adage: stop using flash on your site

No need for me to dwell on this, but it’s hard to write an article on photography websites without mentioning Flash, and with good reason. I hope you’re in the position to skip this paragraph, but if you’re still using Flash, continue reading and consider making some changes soon.

Besides the well-known SEO limitations, Flash websites are slower, not compatible with Apple devices, harder to update, and can be almost entirely replaced today using modern HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript components (and surely surpassed in many aspects).

b. Make your website mobile-friendly (responsive)

Many photographers are reporting that almost half of their website traffic comes from mobile users (smartphones and tablets), and we can expect this number to rise further.

So you can no longer afford not to have a mobile-friendly website. Google confirmed this by announcing they will now penalize non mobile-friendly sites. While this is just one of the many factors Google uses to rank websites, it’s a strong signal to take note of this issue.

This is especially important for photography websites where users interact with the site more (using slideshows, doing searches, buying images etc.) Slideshows and static images (along with the entire layout, of course) should automatically resize and adapt to any screen size.

To emphasize the importance of a mobile-friendly browsing experience, Google provides a free testing tool for your site and rewards responsive websites in mobile search results:

c. Once again, make your website fast

You can read about website performance in the first article, however, it’s worth mentioning here again. The load times of a website are even more important to mobile users (with mobile networks being somewhat slower and less reliable than home broadband connections).

4. Content-consumption rates are increasing (a lot)

Not only are more users coming online (and using more devices than ever before), but they’re also consuming a lot more content. This should come as no surprise, and it’s worth considering for its web-design implications. Since users want more content, here are some ways to help them out:

a. Make your site easily shareable

That means leveraging social media buttons on your website (even when you don’t have your own profiles on those specific social media sites), making it easy for people to recommend your images and pages.

Don’t neglect tweaking your site to display pretty permalinks: a page URL like this www.johndoe.com/?p=789 is much uglier than something like www.johndoe.com/gallery/great-description-here/. Besides the SEO implications, pretty permalinks are also important for people sharing your content: if a URL is more inviting, it will naturally get more shares and visits.

b. Keep the content fresh

While everybody knows that blogs should frequently be updated, you need to refresh the rest of your website once in a while too.
- Make sure your contact information is up to date.
- Have some featured galleries on the homepage? Change or rotate them from time to time.
- Have a slideshow? Rearrange some of its images, or add new ones. Returning visitors will notice that.
- Recently worked on a project or received an award? Make sure it’s there on your site.
- Consider keeping a Recently Updated gallery or section on your site’s homepage, depending on your layout.
- Schedule and do such a site review regularly.
You’re not making a good impression if your site is becoming stale after months of inactivity, and let’s not even talk about Google (who values fresh content as much as users do).

c. Consider offering an email newsletter

Email marketing is becoming huge these days. While everybody hates inbox clutter, getting unique and valuable content via email is always good. This is especially important if you have a photography blog. Sure, people can come to your site to check for new content (or subscribe to an RSS feed), but sending them content directly via email can be very effective.

The people who subscribe to your mailing list are already targeted; they’re interested in your content to start with,
and want to see more of it. You can look into tools like MailChimp (free for up to 2000 subscribers) and follow their best practices for creating, and managing your mailing list.

5. People are searching more, not just exploring

Remember we mentioned impatience. With things happening so fast online, people expect to be able to search for content if they can’t find what they’re looking for in a few clicks. It comes down (again) to how you organize your site structure (and having clear site navigation), but it’s also about providing metadata and search options where appropriate:

a. Don’t ignore text content

Okay, you have a photography site, so it’s supposed to be image-heavy and visually impressive. The homepage is sometimes a good place to do that, but throughout the site, you need to also have quality text content to provide context.

We’re not even attacking this point from an SEO perspective. It’s important to your users that you describe every piece of content you have:
- What are these images about? (IPTC captions and keywords displayed on the page).
- What is this entire gallery about? (Gallery descriptions).
- What is this page about? (On-page intro paragraphs, SEO titles and meta descriptions to help users when seeing search results).
- What is this blog post about? (Text inside blog posts too, not just one image per post).
- What is this entire site about? (Titles and descriptions once again, text on the About page, text on other pages describing your work/services).
b. Allow (and track) image searches on your site

Once again, this comes down to properly captioning and keywording your images, along with having an easy-to-find search functionality. This entire process is time-consuming, for sure, but you’ll reap the benefits in the long run. How you add all this searchable image IPTC metadata is also important and shouldn’t be taken lightly. Nobody will do a search on your site for “DSC0023”, so you need to provide real value to users that need to search, by describing your images for:
- Abstract meanings.
- Scientific names where appropriate.
- Actual persons/locations/objects depicted in them< ./li>
- More creative captions describing your process, experience, gear, etc.
You can obviously write unlimited keywords for your images (sometimes overdoing it with all the possible synonyms), but it’s usually recommended to go for 10-20 keywords per image depending on the type of photography you do.

Once images are on your site and people are searching for them, be sure to also track those searches in Google Analytics to learn more about popular search queries (informing you about content demands). There are exceptions to this: simple portfolio websites (with just a small selection of best-of images) don’t really need a search functionality. For larger stock archives or anybody selling prints/licenses though, it’s a must.

If you have a popular blog on your site, a blog search option also comes in handy. Just make sure it doesn’t get into a fight for attention with the image search box – they need to be clearly separated. Choose whichever is most important to make prominent (like having an image search box in the header throughout the site, and a discreet blog search option in the blog sidebar only).

6. Search engines are looking at user satisfaction as a huge ranking factor

There’s obviously a huge buzz around SEO and how to rank higher for certain keywords. Google is always one step ahead, continually changing their algorithms to prevent any dishonest or spammy tactics. How do they do that? They constantly figure out how people make browsing choices, and turn those into ranking factors.

When writing SEO titles and meta descriptions, think about how they would look in search results, how to best encourage users to give you their clicks. Don’t just stuff them with keywords for Google’s sake.

For every main page on your website, ask yourself:
- What do people come to this page for?
- Can users quickly find the information they’re after?
- What would you want to see on this page if you came here for the first time?
- Where should visitors go to after viewing this page?
- What elements on the page are probably not useful to people?
This change in mindset is the one thing that can set you apart and differentiate your photo website. Sure, there are many SEO-specific actions you need to take care of, but you should always go above and beyond in providing value to people. Do that, and it will be impossible not to rank well in search engines.

7. Social media websites come and go

You probably can no longer build a successful business without some sort of social media presence. But you would be taking too many risks to only setup camp there, without building your own website. Social media companies can always get sold or shut down (acquisitions, natural life cycles, new competitors etc.), so you don’t really own your profiles there.

Whereas a website is an asset you can control, that you have copyright over. You’re interested in buying instead of just renting online real-estate. Social media sites are excellent marketing hubs, and they’ll always be there to drive business forward in one shape or another. But building your strong personal website should be the core of your focus.

With this in mind, it’s obviously important to leverage all the social media tools you have (by placing profile links and sharing buttons on your site). Use them as much as you want, just don’t rely solely on them, it’s more important to build your own online presence.

8. Web platforms and tools are maturing, and eCommerce is exploding

A lot of photographers these days are looking for hybrid solutions instead of having multiple separate sites. They want a place where they can blog, and showcase and sell their photos if they want. So it makes sense that some platforms are starting to offer that, and the days of having separate portfolio and blog sites are coming to an end.

Current established companies (like PhotoShelter or SmugMug) are getting strong competition from WordPress plugins like NextGen Gallery (with its Pro version) or WooCommerce (with its new Photography extension).

If you want to start selling prints/products, now is a good time. Since online sales keep growing, it’s natural to see many photographers shift (at least partially) from services to products, basically trying to build a passive income from their photography business. They do that through books, prints, courses, workshops, etc.

9. Design aesthetics are changing

Change is the only constant. I won’t recommend you use any particular flat design elements, any colors or layouts because those are just like fashion trends. They come and go.

What is here to stay is simplicity. I can’t imagine a time when having a cluttered header area (with 10-12 menu items, six social media links, a search box and a subscribe box, all crowded together) will be in fashion. A clean website is not about using big fonts or a lot of white. It’s about prioritizing your business goals and the elements on your site.

Applying this mindset to the number of galleries you feature on your homepage or the products and services you offer is important. When visitors have fewer and more clear choices to make, they have a better browsing experience and are more likely to trust your website and keep coming back for more.

Conclusion

Along with part one of this article, this was an overview of the important web-design trends you should be aware of as a photographer.

Constant improvement is the only way to be successful with an online photography business. You know this to be true for your photo technique and composition skills (since you’re reading this on dPS, after all). The mindset can be applied to your online presence as well; it’s a continuous effort to get better and adapt to the industry.

Success does not depend on cool slideshows and flat designs. Sure, you have to make your photography website beautiful, and, therefore comply with the latest web design fashion trends sometimes, but not at the expense of helpfulness and clarity.

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The post The Future of Photography Websites – Understanding and Adapting to Trends Continued by Alex Vita appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School
May 31, 2015
New Graduated and Radial Filter Features in Lightroom 6

Every time a new version of Lightroom comes out the first thing I look for are features that make the Develop module better, or easier to use. The ones I like best in Lightroom 6/CC are the improvements to the Graduated and Radial Filters. Let’s take a look at them.

Addition of mask overlay

In earlier versions of Lightroom you couldn’t tell with any precision which parts of the image were affected by the Graduated and Radial filters.

In Lightroom 6 you can toggle the mask overlay with the O keyboard shortcut, or by ticking the Show Selected Mask Overlay box in the Toolbar. Previously this was only available in the Adjustment Brush, it has now been added to both the Graduated and Radial Filters.

This screenshot below shows how it works. I wanted to make the background darker without affecting the dandelion head. The best tool to use for this is the Radial filter, but you need to be able to place it precisely. The mask overlay makes this easy.

As you can see, the effect of feathering meant that I needed to create a much bigger Radial filter than you might at first think.

Note: The Radial Filter was introduced in Lightroom 5 and is not available in earlier versions.

Mask overlay enabled.

Mask overlay disabled.

With the Radial filter in place, it is easy to make the required local adjustment. I moved the Exposure slider left to make the background darker.

This also works when you tick the Invert Mask box to apply the effect inside the Radial filter. In this situation the effect of feathering means you need to make the filter smaller than the area you want to cover. With the mask overlay enabled it is easy to place it precisely.

Then I increased Clarity and Exposure to bring out the texture of the dandelion head and make it brighter.

The other benefit of adding the mask overlay to the Radial filter is that it enables you to see the effect of the Feather setting. This was very difficult to judge before.

Feather: 50

Feather: 0

Feather: 100

Note: You can use the Shift+O shortcut to change the colour of the mask overlay.

Addition of Adjustment brush

A problem with the Graduated and Radial filters in earlier versions of Lightroom is that the shape of the mask is fixed. In Lightroom 6/CC Adobe has added the ability to combine the Adjustment brush, with both the Graduated and Radial filters.

Here’s an example of how it works. In this photo I wanted to make the top half of the wall darker without affecting the mailbox. In previous versions of Lightroom the only option was to use the Adjustment brush to paint in the irregular area. Now you can use the Graduated Filter instead.

This screenshot shows the area affected by the Graduated Filter (I changed the overlay colour to green as it’s easier to see on this image).

To apply an Adjustment brush, got to the Graduated filter panel and click the Brush option at top right. In this example I also chose the Erase option as I wanted to remove some of the mask overlay.

This the amended mask overlay, revealing the mailbox.

This is the result.

Your turn

These improvements are my favourite as they will make it much easier to process my photos in the Develop module. But what about you? Have you upgraded to Lightroom 6/CC yet? If you have, what are your favourite new features? Please let us know in the comments.

The Mastering Lightroom Collection

My Mastering Lightroom ebooks will help you get the most out of Lightroom. They cover every aspect of the software from the Library module through to creating beautiful images in the Develop module. Click the link to learn more or buy.

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The post New Graduated and Radial Filter Features in Lightroom 6 by Andrew S. Gibson appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School

May 30, 2015
12 Tips for Travellers to Bring Home Better Photos

There’s nothing better than browsing through old holiday photos during a long cold winter. Capturing the joy of our friends and family as they explore new cities and lands is priceless – travel photography is just as about the subjects as it is about the surroundings. Here are top 12 tips for travellers to help you make the most from Continue Reading

The post 12 Tips for Travellers to Bring Home Better Photos appeared first on Photodoto.

Photodoto

May 30, 2015
Weekly Photography Challenge – Still Life

In this set of images I rounded up some imaginative images of objects, non-living things. Things don’t always have to appear as they really are in photos. Light, the right lens selection and angle of view can create an image of an everyday, seemingly ordinary object, and make it look interesting.

By ~lzee~by~the~Sea~is~not~really~all~here~

So your goal this week is to find some inanimate objects to photograph – in an interesting way. Use your imagination and creativity. How can you bring this ordinary thing to life? What camera settings or techniques can you use? What is the best lighting? You can use natural light, or flash, it’s up to you.

Weekly Photography Challenge – Still Life

By Julie Falk

By Pascal Bovet

By Dhilung Kirat

By Dave Gray

By Harry (Howard) Potts

By MelisaTG

By Chimpr

Look around your house, see what you can find just sitting around that might make a good subject. Don’t be afraid to place it where you want, or even take it outside on location. Use a reflector to add light, or add off-camera flash for more dynamic lighting. The possibilities are unlimited and your subject has all the patience in the world – so experiment and have fun with it.

Share your images below:

Simply upload your shot into the comment field (look for the little camera icon in the Disqus comments section) and they’ll get embedded for us all to see or if you’d prefer upload them to your favourite photo sharing site and leave the link to them. Show me your best images in this week’s challenge. Sometimes it takes a while for an image to appear so be patient and try not to post the same image twice.

By Zoltán Vörös

By Lorenzoclick

By Jeff Slinker

By SomeDriftwood

By Ben Seidelman

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The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Still Life by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School

May 30, 2015
26 Imaginative Images of Inanimate Objects

When you’re just learning photography non-living or inanimate objects make great subjects because they have infinite patience and don’t move. You can take your time getting your shot just right, checking the lighting, and composing the perfect image.

These images of objects, table top products, still lives, are great examples of what you can do with such subjects. See if you don’t get some ideas for your own photography.

Farewell, dear friend! by Victoria Ivanova on 500px

Outsider by Gert Lavsen on 500px

Love… by Tiziano Giumelli on 500px

pedal organ by Mills Brock on 500px

The shining by Thomas Hufer on 500px

The Weight of Time by Michael Lanzetta on 500px

Aquamarine by Randall Epp on 500px

Table Top by Ameya Godbole on 500px

Say cheese! by Oliver Jordan on 500px

play of light by Andrea Schuh on 500px

Be good to me okey? by Andreas Hartanta on 500px

Cølørful Symphøny by Silver Paul on 500px

Intimidation by Peter Baumgarten on 500px

*** by Igor Alekseev on 500px

Van Surf by Alvaro Perez on 500px

Natural Light by Paolo Oliviéri on 500px

Film & The Rail Road by Phoomin Karagate on 500px

Injured Teddy Bear by Teemu Tretjakov on 500px

Still life. by Mostapha Merab Samii on 500px

See, does not see by Milan ?ar?anský on 500px

Pirate Smiley by Sanjin Jukic on 500px

Sunset Bottle by Andrew Crocker on 500px

Everything is in the books by Guillermo Carballa on 500px

Remembrance. by Mostapha Merab Samii on 500px

Old parchment by Miguel Angel Oliva on 500px

With my child scooter! by Adithetos ????????? on 500px

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The post 26 Imaginative Images of Inanimate Objects by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School

May 29, 2015
Thoughts on Google Photos

Google launched Google Photos today.

For months now people have been talking about how Google was going to decouple photos from Google+ and create a standalone photo product and today at I/O they finally unveiled their latest effort to the world.

Last August when rumors about this new service started circulating I wrote a blog post titled 10 things Google should consider in launching a standalone photo sharing service. Here I outlined ways that Google could come up with a very competitive product in the photo sharing space. Google could have given the world something really amazing today and instead we just got something lackluster.

The new offering is fine, but in a lot of ways it is a big disappointment to me.

The biggest part of today’s announcement was that Google was going to give every user unlimited photo storage.

That sounded pretty good until I understood the catch. The catch is that the unlimited photo storage offer only applies to photos 16 megapixel or smaller.

Although it may be tempting to write this off as a “Pro” problem as most modern DSLRs today shoot over 16 megapixel, there are also a lot of new non-pro consumer cameras that shoot over 16 megapixel today too. Heck, there’s even a mobile phone out now (admittedly an outlier) shooting at 41 megapixel. So what this means is that almost every DSLR out today, along with many smaller consumer cameras, will require your Google Photos images to be downsized.

It’s not just Canon and Nikon DSLRs that produce images over 16 megapixel today, but many models of popular mirrorless and consumer cameras by Panasonic Lumix, Sony, Olympus, etc. Here is a list of currently manufactured digital cameras 15 megapixels and above which shows some models and brands this might include.

While I do understand that storing photos is not cheap, I do not understand why Yahoo’s Flickr is able/willing to give every user a full terabyte of full high res original photo storage, and Google, a company almost 10x the size of Yahoo by market cap cannot or will not. Flickr raised the bar when they offered every user a free terabyte of high res photo storage and Google’s response is to offer us unlimited downsized and compressed photos? Come on Google, you can do better than that!

The other problem is that the camera manufacturers (for better or worse) are in a war of who can raise megapixels the most. Earlier this year Canon came out with a mindblowing 50.6 megapixel 5DS. 16 megapixels is going to feel smaller and smaller as new and better camera, and even mobile phone technology is released.

If this was the year 2003 and Canon had just released the 6.3 10D, this might make sense to me — but in 2015? No way.

While you can purchase Google Drive storage for your photos over 16 megapixel at Google, 1TB of high res storage at Google would cost you $ 120/year — the same thing that Flickr will give you for free.

In my case I have one of the old grandfathered Flickr Pro accounts where for $ 24.95/year I get even more than 1 terabyte of high res storage on Flickr, I actually get unlimited (I’m currently using about 940 GB of my unlimited storage on Flickr, which is a lot).

The other main thing missing from this new offering by Google is social. While Google has had a tough time with social and I get why they are wary of it, I was hoping that there would be a social element to their new photo service. Instead, every photo you upload to Google Photos is private only for you and you then share out your photos to other platforms. One of the most exciting things about Flickr is that there are a lot of social components to the site. While photos are uploaded as private to Flickr by default (like Google), you have the option of making these photos public and sharing them with other users on the site.

While you can use Google and Flickr both as private shoeboxes for all of your photos, I like that Flickr gives you the option to turn your photos public and share them with the world. 99.99% of the photos that I upload to the web are meant to be shared publicly and so I was disappointed that Google didn’t deliver us anything here today. Google does still have Google+, or course, where you can share your photos too and be social, but that’s an entirely different site that you leave Google Photos to go use. Flickr does a much better job at combining both private and social.

Google did showcase some other features with photos today. They released a sort of timeline camera roll view and some image recognition technology. What I saw today was very similar to what I saw two weeks ago when Yahoo rolled out Flickr 4.0. I’m not saying Google copied Flickr here, but it is odd how Flickr shipped these almost identical features two weeks before Google did. Whatever the case, I’m not terribly excited by camera rolls from Google or Flickr, although I do see where they would be helpful and nice features for the broader mass market audience.

I prefer to organize my photos myself rather than have an algorithm try to do it for me. I carefully keyword each of my photos in Lightroom and when I upload them to Flickr I’m able to create smart albums (like smart playlists in iTunes) where I can organize my photos into albums by keywords. That’s something that I still can’t do at Google Photos today, at least not in the automated way that I do it with SuprSetr.

I am glad that Google is still investing time and development into photos. For a while there when they first launched Google+ it really felt like they were going to do something spectacular with photos, today, unfortunately, not as much. To me, today’s offering feels more like a step back from Google+ to Picasa circa 2004.

Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

May 29, 2015
Learn How to Setup Studio Lighting in 15 Minutes
Do you find studio lighting daunting? Understandable. When I got my first set of lights I played with it for half an hour. Intimidated and confused, I shoved it back in the box where it stayed for six months.

Don’t worry though, mastering exposure with studio strobes is easy; in fact it’s probably one of the easiest of the photographic skill sets. By following this tutorial, you can go from no experience with studio lighting, to getting a correct exposure on your first frame, without the aid of expensive and unnecessary light meters. This isn’t a crash course in complicated theories and physics; our goal is to get you using strobes and creating photographs as quickly as possible. You can return to the theories at your convenience. I am a firm believer in the idea that it’s easier to learn the why, when you’ve already figured out the how.

Getting Ready

Before we start, you’ll need to do a few things in preparation:
1. Setup your studio strobe on its stand, set it to full power and make sure it works.
2. You should know how to connect your strobe to the camera and make it fire by way of remote trigger, pc sync cable, slaved to your on-camera flash, or by way of an in-camera system. Refer to your manuals if you need help.
3. Have your strobe’s instruction manual at hand.
4. Settings: Set your camera to manual mode, your shutter speed to 1/125th of a second, and your ISO to 100. (If you have an older model, or a film camera, then default to 1/60th of a second.)
5. Have a calculator at hand will make things easier.
6. Finally, I recommend that you start to think in full stops, which I’ll cover in the next section.
Thinking in Full Stops

Most of our modern cameras are capable of setting the aperture in increments of 1/3 or 1/2 of a stop. This is extremely useful for fine tuning the exposure in most situations; however, for the purpose of this exercise, it is much easier to ignore them for now and concentrate on the full stop values as indicated in the chart below.

Finding Your Guide Number

The next step is to flip through your strobe’s manual and find where it lists the Guide Number (also check whether the guide number is listed in feet or meters; this is vital). This magic number is a rather complicated thing and steeped in the brain-wracking Inverse Square Law. As promised, you don’t yet need to know why it works; you only need to know how to use it at this point.

There are two main ways to use the guide number, that will be useful to you. You can choose your aperture based on the desired outcome of your photo and calculate where to put your strobe, or you can place your strobe for a desired lighting effect and calculate the correct aperture.

Calculating Aperture

Some lighting effects require strobes to be in certain positions, and distances from your subject and other strobes. In other circumstances, your strobe might be in a fixed position and it cannot be moved.

In these events, to calculate the aperture for a correct exposure all you have to do is measure the distance between the light source and your subject in feet or meters (whichever your guide number is listed as). Now divide your guide number by that distance. For example a guide number of 66 with a distance of 6 feet between your subject and the light source would result in: 66 divided by 6 for a result of 11. Your answer is your aperture for a correct exposure: f/11.

Most guide numbers never divide so evenly into full stops. For example, if you get a result along the lines of f/9.2, just round it off to the nearest full-stop for the moment and we’ll learn how to fine-tune the exposure shortly.

Calculating Strobe Distance

Conversely, if you know what aperture you want to use, for a creative effect perhaps, simply divide the guide number by your desired aperture. My tendency for studio portraits is f/8, so if you divide our previous example of 66 by 8 (66/8) you get 8.25. To get a correct exposure for this setup, you would just place your light source 8.25 feet away from your subject. It really is that easy.

One caveat: if you have a high powered strobe in a small place, you’re not going to be able to set your camera to something ridiculous like f/64. If your power output is too high, just turn your strobe down to half power and divide the guide number by two.

Fine Tuning Exposure without Changing Your Settings

As you learned, there are instances where you want your aperture to remain constant. You also don’t want to mess with the power settings on your strobe so much that they completely change your guide number and negate your ability to calculate your exposure with ease. Yet subjects move, or you might want to over or underexpose your image for creative effect. The way to do this is simple.

To underexpose or reduce the amount of light falling on your subject, you would move your strobe further away. If your light source is really close to the subject and you move it back about a foot, you will lose 1-2 stops of light (smaller f/number). If your source is farther away from the subject and you move it back one foot, you will lose less light. This is caused by the Inverse Square Law which states: In physics, an inverse-square law is any physical law stating that a specified physical quantity or intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of that physical quantity. (and link to the wiki definition). Just know that closer in you lose more light as you back it away, than if the light is situated farther from the subject to begin.

This is also why I asked you to consider thinking in full stops rather than fractional increments. Moving a strobe or a model one or two feet is much easier to judge on the fly than the four inches (10cm) a third of a stop increment would require.

Notes on Modifiers

The most common modifiers in studio photography will affect the output of the strobe in terms of exposure. You may need to increase or decrease your aperture, or the distance of your light source, depending on which modifier you choose.

Soft boxes and white or translucent umbrellas, which all produce a softer, more diffused light, will decrease the amount of light falling on your subject. To combat this, choose a larger aperture (smaller f/number) or move your light source closer to your subject.

Beauty dishes, silver umbrellas and reflectors, which all produce a harder, more defined light, will increase the amount of light falling on your subject requiring you to choose a smaller aperture (larger f/number) or to move your light source further from your subject.

If you choose to alter your aperture in these situations, feel free to revert to your 1/3 stop increments. A modifier will rarely alter the output of a strobe by a full stop.

You will quickly learn how your modifiers affect the output of your strobes and within a few sessions you should find yourself automatically compensating for them without thinking about it.

Putting it into Practice

I set up a quick portrait session to help demonstrate how to employ these techniques. Gemma graciously volunteered for the task.

The only preparation was the setup of a paper background and fitting the strobe with a beauty dish. After she arrived, I asked Gemma to stand two feet from the background and I placed the light source straight in front of her and as high possible with the beauty dish pointed downward at her face.

All that was required to start shooting was the correct aperture. The Bowens GM400 I used has a guide number of 76. I measured how far away the light source was; which was 7.5 feet. Dividing 76 by 7.5 gives a result 10.133. Because I was using a silver beauty dish, we know that I need to stop down the aperture to get a precise exposure so I set the camera to f/11 and took a test shot. As you can see from the histogram, these simple calculations gave me the correct exposure and it took less than a minute to get there.

In this image you can see that from the first frame to the last, the exposure remained constant leaving me free to concentrate on other aspects of the images.

Finally, here you can see the end result.

I hope you’re still with me, and that I’ve convinced you that studio strobes are nothing to be afraid of. With a little practice, the techniques outlined in this article will quickly become second nature, allowing you to concentrate less on the technicalities of exposure, and more on aesthetic variables such as composition and establishing rapport with a client or model. As with most things, the key is practice. Snag a friend, a pet or even a bowl of fruit and run through the whole process again and again, until calculating the correct exposure becomes reflex, and you’ll find yourself spending more time and energy on the creative processes rather than the technical ones.

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The post Learn How to Setup Studio Lighting in 15 Minutes by John McIntire appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School
May 29, 2015
Understanding Light for Better Portrait Photography
A solid understanding of light can make you stand out from an average photographer. In fact, in portrait photography, light is even more important than the subject and location. This is because without the proper use of light, you can ruin the shot, even with the best looking subject, at the most awesome location in the world!

In this article, I’m going to break down the understanding of Light for you into six simple terms. Once you understand and apply these concepts, you will immediately notice the improvement of quality in your portrait photographs.

The six principles of light are: intensity, dynamic range, direction, diffusion, White Balance and reflection.

1) Intensity of Light

Intensity is the brightness level of light and it brightens up your subject. For both natural light and studio light, you can modify the light source to change the intensity. I’ll cover the basics of light modifiers later, but the most important fact about intensity is that the distance between the light source and your subject has a massive impact on the intensity of light.

This is also known as the Inverse Square Law.

It is an equation that dictates the intensity of light produce at a given distance. It states that the intensity of light changes in inverse proportion (one over that number) to the square of the distance from the source. Meaning:
- At one foot it is 1 over the square of one or 1/1 or 100%
- At two feet it is 1 over the square of 2 (2×2) or ¼ or 25%.
In plain English, that means if you double the distance from one to two feet, the light intensity will decrease by 75%. On the other hand, if you bring the light source closer from two feet to one foot the intensity of light is going to increase by four times.

With the knowledge of inverse square law, you will be able to determine the placement of your subject for better portrait photography.

2) Dynamic Range

Dynamic range and stops have a very close relationship. Dynamic range is the difference between the lightest and darkest tones of an image, and a stop is the measurement of this range. Since a stop measures light in representation of numbers, what’s the relationship between the two?

The difference of one stop of light means the light is twice (or half) as intense. Human eyes can detect roughly 10-14 stops of light, while a DSLR camera can only detect around 8-10. With that said, your camera sees a lot less than your eyes. Dynamic range issues occur when this range goes beyond what the camera can record in details. These areas come out as pure white or pure black in the photograph.

Generally, most people tend to avoid pure white and black in portrait photography unless it is for artistic reasons. Otherwise, it may look like as if you exposed the picture incorrectly.

3) Direction of Light

The position of your light source is very important because it determines how light hits your subject. It has a great affect on the quality of your photograph and a few small inches of light misplacement could bring your shot down to a snapshot.

A common question people always ask is, “Why do I need to worry about the direction of light when the subject is properly exposed?” Everyone has different opinions, but my point of view is that this is how you create mood, define shadows, and shows depth to your subject.

The biggest thing to avoid in portraits is flat images (which is created by lighting your subject directly from your camera angle). Reach into your wallet now and grab your driver’s license. That is an example of a flat image. The picture is either too bright or too dark; there is no shadow on your face (or a very harsh one) because the flash was pointed straight at you; and the worst thing is you probably look 10 years older! Without saying any further, I am almost certain that it is one of the worst pictures of yourself.

So what are some ways to light your subjects? Below are two of the most common ways:

Split Lighting – This direction of light divides the face equally in half so one side is in shadow while the other is toward the light. You can simply place the light source 90 degree to the left or right of your subject. If you are using natural light, just ask your subject to turn to such an angle. It creates a very deep dramatic shadow that casts strong moods for your subject. It is great for artistic type portrait shots.

By James Willamor

Loop Lighting – Perhaps the most common lighting method for portraits. Simply place the light source about 45 degrees to your subject. The shadow it casts is going to show nice depth; this method is great for single portraits. Make sure you place the light just slightly above eye level to make the best of this lighting style.

By Dragos Jianu

There is no right or wrong direction of light in portrait photography. They are more personal preference, mixed with different style and purpose. The main thing is that you make your subject look good in front of the camera.

4) Diffusion of Light

Diffusion relates to hardness and softness of light. It also determines the intensity of the shadow. As a general rule, the bigger the light source and the closer it is to the subject, the softer the light.

When photographers talk about hard light, it means there is a rapid falloff between bright and dark areas in the photograph creating harsh, sharp-edged shadows. As such, the photograph doesn’t look as appealing to the viewer.
An example of hard light would be taking picture under a bright sunny day or when you overexpose studio light photographing your subject. Generally, hard light is not something you should be looking for in portrait photography unless for artistic reasons.

As you might have guessed, opposite hard light, there is soft light. This kind of light has mild falloff between bright and dark areas in a photograph. The light is evenly spread and it looks like it wraps around the subject.
An example of soft light would be taking pictures under an overcast day or using studio light with modifiers. The portrait looks more pleasing to the viewer and the photograph does not show much contrast.

5) White balance

White balance is the color temperature of your camera’s setting. Matching the right color temperature in the environment you are shooting is very important. This is how you remove an unrealistic colorcast, so that your photograph represents true color that you see in real life.

Depending on your camera model, you should have a different white balance presets to choose from: Tungsten, Fluorescent, Daylight, Flash, Indoor, Cloudy, Shade, Custom (PRE), and Kelvin (K).

As the photographer you need to make sure white appears white and not yellow/orange on the hot end, and blue/green on the cold end on the Kelvin scale.

If you shoot RAW, you can modify the white balance during post-processing of your images. This can also be changed easily in Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. By the way, this is one of the reasons why it is important to shoot RAW instead of JPEG.

6) Reflection of light

Light has one very distinct behaviour; it travels in straight lines. Which means no matter whether you are using natural light or studio light, it is only going to travel in one direction until it reaches a surface.

Once the light reaches a surface it reflects off at the same angle it hits. The amount of light being reflected is going to be determined by the color and texture of the surface.

So why is reflection of light important for portrait photography?

Once you understand light behaviour you can then modify it to control how much light you want for your subject. For example, if you want soft light and you have no other equipment, you can bounce light off a wall. As mentioned before the larger the light source the softer the light, you can now control both the direction and intensity of light for your portrait photographs by doing so.

Another common way to modify light is using a softbox such as a brolly box (umbrella softbox). This is a type of softbox where the external flash is placed inside of it. When the flash fires, light bounces all around inside the box until it exits out the white diffuser on the front. If you have an assistant to hold the brolly box you now have a portable light source producing soft light everywhere you go. This is a must-have for portrait photography.

I hope by breaking down the understanding of light into six categories they are going to be able to level up your skills as a portrait photographer. Be sure to practice as much as you can, but most importantly, enjoy this process and have fun in photography.

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The post Understanding Light for Better Portrait Photography by Gary Lun appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School
May 29, 2015
4 Ways to Make Your Photos Stand Out with the Clarity Slider
You want your photos to be as sharp as possible. Of course, there is no substitute for good technique in the capture phase, but you would like to add something in the post-processing to make the pictures clearer and sharper. You may already be adding sharpening, but how to add that extra crispness to make your pictures pop? The answer is clarity. This article will show you how to add that to your photos.

What Exactly Is Clarity?

What is clarity? Clarity is a local contrast increase that focuses on the mi-tones of the image. If differs from sharpness, because whereas increasing sharpness increases the contrast between dark and light tones, clarity increases the contrast within the middle tones of the image. The effect is similar to sharpening, but it brings out textures a bit more. In addition, digital noise isn’t as much of a problem as it is with sharpening increases.

Adding Clarity in Lightroom (or ACR)

How do you add clarity to your photos? The best-known, and simplest way, to add clarity is to use the Clarity slider in Lightroom (there is an equivalent in Adobe Camera Raw – or ACR). To do that, just find the Clarity slider in the Basic panel of the Develop module. Increase the clarity by moving the slider to the right a bit. That’s all there is too it.

The Clarity slider makes a global adjustment to your image (meaning it affects the entire image). If you want to add clarity only to specific portions of your image (referred to as local adjustments), you can do so by using the Adjustment Brush (or Radial or Graduated filters). When you select that brush, you will see clarity among the sliders that you can use. Increase the clarity to the desired amount and brush the effect where you want it, on your image.

I find it best to apply a slight, to moderate amount, when making Lightroom adjustments. Think of it as a baseline. Other areas of the image that you want to draw out can be targeted later. You may find it easier, and more precise, to make local adjustments using Photoshop, so that will be the next topic.

High Pass Filter in Photoshop

Within Photoshop, there is no Clarity slider. If you want to add clarity to your photos within Photoshop, there is still a way to do it. It is called the High Pass filter.

Why should you use this filter, and not the Clarity slider in Lightroom (assuming you have both)? Mostly because, with the High Pass filter you can take advantage of all the masking and blending tools available within Photoshop. The primary reason is the ability to mask the changes, which is a much more precise and powerful way to create localized adjustments, than using Lightroom’s adjustment brush. Use the High Pass filter for targeted adjustments to specific areas that you want to draw out in your picture.

It takes a few steps to use this tool, so follow this process:
1. Make a copy of the background layer (Ctrl+J) of your picture.
2. Set the blend mode of the new layer to Overlay. The picture will look terrible for now, but don’t worry about it.
3. Select the High Pass Filter by going to Filters – Other – High Pass.
4. Set the radius, which is the equivalent of setting the strength of the effect.
Note that this process will create a global adjustment to your image. To turn it into a local adjustment, create a layer mask to apply the effect only where you want it. To do that, with the new layer selected go to Layer – Layer Mask – Hide All. That will create a black layer mask. A black layer mask hides the effect everywhere. Now use a white brush to paint (on the mask) in the effect where you want it. Use the Opacity slider to control the degree to which the effect is applied by your brush (you can also adjust the layer opacity).

Local Contrast Adjustments in Photoshop

Another way to add a degree of clarity to your photos is to increase the local contrast, with the best way being a Curves Adjustment Layer. You’ll be surprised at how much clearer and more detailed things look after you increase local contrast in this way. This is another tool for making targeted adjustments.

They key here is to select an area and then increase the contrast just within that area. Here’s how:
1. Select the area you want to affect. Use the Quick Selection tool to select those pixels.
2. Create a Curves Adjustment Layer (Layer – New Adjustment Layer – Curves) with those pixels selected. When you do so, Photoshop will create a new adjustment layer, but it will mask off all the pixels except those you previously selected. Therefore, the changes you make will only apply to your selection.
3. Increase the contrast of your selected area. You can either drag in the endpoints of the curve, or you can push down the line on the left (dark) side and pull up the line on the right (bright) side of the histogram. (You can also use Levels to increase the contrast, if you are uncomfortable with Curves).
4. Clean up with your brush tool. If there are harsh transitions, use a soft brush to feather out the change (paint ON the mask only, not on the layer). You can increase or lessen the effect using the brush tool as well.
Be sure you select targeted areas and use this method to draw out the contrast. It will add clarity and texture to that portion of the picture you want only, not the entire image.

Clarity by Topaz

There is another tool you can use to add clarity to your photos. It is a plug-in by Topaz that is named, appropriately enough, Clarity. It costs $ 50 and acts as a plug-in to Photoshop or Lightroom.

Clarity by Topaz divides contrast into different components ranging from Micro contrast, to High contrast, and provides a slider for each. That allows you to reach different parts of the picture and affect contrast in different ways.

The best part of Clarity is the Micro contrast, although this often requires offsetting adjustments to other areas of contrast. That is the greatness of this plug-in: you are not confined to a simple contrast adjustment that pushes all bright areas toward white, and all dark areas toward black. It allows you to add some clarity and texture to your pictures without blowing out your highlights or losing your shadow detail. You can also effect saturation, brightness, and other controls from within Clarity.

The best way to use Clarity is by creating a duplicate layer of your image in Photoshop (Ctrl+J) and then opening the plugin. That way, after you have made your changes in Clarity and you have gone back to Photoshop, you can mask in or out the effect to whatever degree, and in whatever areas of your image, you wish.

Application

The best part about these tools is that you can combine them to get exactly the effect you want. For example, you might make a minor global adjustment to Clarity in Lightroom, then take it into Photoshop and make a series of Curves Adjustment Layers to bring out certain areas. You might also do the same with Topaz’s Clarity and mask off the effect. When you are done, you can use the High Pass filter to highlight key areas of your photo in Photoshop. Of course, you’ll need to be careful not to overdo the effect, which can happen quickly, especially if you use multiple tools listed here. But judicious use of these tools, in conjunction with your normal input and output sharpening, can really make your photos pop.

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The post 4 Ways to Make Your Photos Stand Out with the Clarity Slider by Jim Hamel appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School
May 28, 2015