Category: Uncategorized

Last night a good online friend of mine – Jonathan Fields shot me a link to a video interview he’d show with sought after commercial photographer Nick Onken.

In this video Nick tells his story of how he became a photographer after starting out as a graphic designer. In the conversation Jonathan and Nick explore how:

• A willingness to be bold and not wait for permission opened doors
• The decision to dive into photography full-time happened as an organic extension of his design work
• A devotion to learning and honing his craft took his work and career to a new level
• Art and money can go together to create work that is well-compensated but is also true art
• Becoming a professional photographer opened doors to travel and profoundly changed Onken’s world-view
• Tapping his gift and his work to give back is an important part of Onken’s life, and
• So much more

This video is part of Jonathan’s GoodLife Project – subscribe to get more videos like this one.

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

How Commercial Photographer Nick Onken Changed Carreers and Become a Pro Photographer

Digital Photography School

Your challenge this week is to take and share a ‘Panning’ shot.

While we’ve done this theme before I thought it’d be a good followup to this week’s Panning Image Collection to which a number of readers said they needed more practice of the technique. Practice makes perfect so another panning assignment can’t hurt!

Before you grab your camera and head out to take some Panning shots – refresh your memory on how to take these kinds of shots with our tutorials on the topic:

• Mastering Panning
• The Art of Panning

Remember – you can apply this to many forms of photography. Photograph any kind of moving vehicle (bike, car, plane, train), photographing kids (the moving variety – running, on the swing etc), photographing animals (pets or wildlife) or anything else that might be moving around in your vicinity.

I can’t wait to see your experiments with panning!

Once you’ve taken and selected the ‘panning’ image that you’d like to share – upload it to your favourite photo sharing site or blog and either share a link to it or – embed them in the comments using the our new tool to do so.

If you tag your photos on Flickr, Instagram, Twitter or other sites with Tagging tag them as #DPSPANNING to help others find them. Linking back to this page might also help others know what you’re doing so that they can share in the fun.

Also – don’t forget to check out some of the great shots posted in last weeks challenge – In the City challenge where there were some great shots submitted.

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

Panning: Weekly Photography Challenge

Digital Photography School

A Guest Post by Tom Di Maggio from Tom Di Maggio Photography.

My use of composite pictures has been drastically increasing in the last few months. It started with locations that got cancelled due to unavailability, then bad weather made it impossible to shoot at certain location and as of lately people came to me asking specifically for composite photographs. And to be honest I really enjoy doing them, it gives my imagination a lot more freedom, and there is certain flexibility that I really enjoy.

As with the preparation of any shoot, the most difficult part is finding the right setting. In this case the right background. I try to shoot them myself whenever I can but I tend to rely on stock photography as well. Basically I usually split a composite into three main parts: the subject or model, the background and the post processing.

The Subject

The base for a good composite is obviously a correctly exposed subject. I adapt that light to the theme or mood that I want to convey in the final picture. It is really important that you have your final image in mind at all stages of the creation of a composite. It will dictate the lighting scheme you will have to use and at which angle you will need to photograph your model.

Which lighting setup to use usually varies from one to four lights? It really depends on the expected result. No matter which setup you choose lighting position and exposure are key factors here, they need to be spot on or you will spend a great amount of time in Photoshop trying to correct this. At this stage I try not to build too much contrast, so I like the light to be on the soft side.

I can only stress the fact that even though I will be using Photoshop to a certain extent, I will always want to work with a correctly exposed subject. Exposition and position are crucial in every kind of photography. Something you can solve in a few seconds during the shoot might take hours to correct in Photoshop. I don’t have any preference as to the background from which I will extract the subject from. As long as there is enough contrast between the subject and the background it won’t be a problem.

The Background

Even when I shoot on location I really put a lot of effort into the choice of the background. The background is what gives the picture a context; it is an integral part of the story the picture is supposed to tell. You can photograph a very beautiful model in front of a dumpster; it will have a lot less impact as if you photograph the same model on a beach or in a nice hotel room. It’s the same when working with composites. If I have the chance to photograph the background for my composite myself I have a lot more flexibility in terms of angles.

A bought background gives you very little leeway as to perspective in Photoshop. When I photograph the background myself I usually have the idea for the subject shoot already in mind. Should I find myself in a situation where I see a nice background and I have my camera with me, I shoot it three times: ground height, belly height and chest height. I resort to stock photography when a shoot is booked and I don’t have the possibility to photograph the background myself.

As I mentioned earlier in the article angles is one of the key elements here. There’s no point in choosing a background that was shot at a dramatically different angle that your subject. It will look fake. I give my backgrounds a light HDR touch but I actually don’t use any HDR technique. I apply tonal adjustments and basically the same treatment as for the subject. It will nicely blend the subject and the background together.

The Post Processing

Like most of us out there I didn’t invent the wheel when it comes to post processing. All of my techniques are a mixture of things I picked up in books, on the web, trainings and so on.

To start with I shoot everything in RAW; the techniques I will explain below will suppose that you do the same. To be honest, and this cannot be said enough, with the pricing on memory cards nowadays there is absolutely no reason not to shoot in RAW. The advantages of doing so are just to enormous to ignore.

I usually start in Lightroom by taking out as much contrast from the picture as I can. The way I work I will build up the needed contrast during the post processing in Photoshop. Why do I remove contrast only to add some back later? It’s all about control.

I basically use a combination of two techniques that include Blur, High Pass filters and the Apply Image function. This allows me to add contrast and sharpen my images to the pixel and thus I can use it to create a clean smooth skin or a grungy style image with one workflow only. (see the portrait of Bora) I spend as much time here as I need to until the image is 100% the way I want it to.

Any imperfection here will be amplified once I put the Color Efex Pro layer on top of it. I created a few Color Efex Pro recipes that I use as a starting point on my images. I will then tweak them slightly to fit the image. I will intentionally push this process way over the top in order to give me more flexibility on the final image. Once I am happy with the result I save it as a layer on top of my image and then adjust the opacity of that layer accordingly.

At this stage I proceed with the extraction of the subject from the background. Personally I think that there is no perfect solution for this. I use whatever tool fits the need. It ranges from the refine edge tool to the smudge tool and even a normal brush.When I am done with the extract I drag the subject onto the prepared background and tweak both again so that the color tones and temperature match each other.

Feel free to get in touch if you have any further questions regarding the subject. Below the two Layers after my Color Efex treatment. You can see that the effect is way to strong here, but a slight adjustment on the opacity solves this. And it’s always easier than to go back into Color Fx and redo the effect until it fits.

See more of Tom Di Maggio’s work at Tom Di Maggio Photography, InFocus Photography and on his Flickr Account.

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

A Guide to Create Eye Catching Composite Images

Digital Photography School

Nowadays Instagram is too popular not to be recognized by millions of people from all over the world. iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users go mad over supplemental apps for this service. And they are right! Because an idea of taking photos, editing and sharing them via social networks is so incredible and alluring that you can’t stay aside. Several Continue Reading
Photodoto

I stumbled upon Nico’s work quite recently and, as a street photographer myself, I was quite taken by the poetry in his imagery. He is not an ‘in your face’ street photographer, each one of his images is subtle and tells a story. Some of his photographs will make you think, others will bring a smile to your face. One thing is for sure, all of them will inspire a reaction. Nico was born in Italy and is currently living in the Netherlands. I had the pleasure to ask him a few questions for the readers of dPS. With no further ado, let me introduce you to the work of Nico Chiapperini. If you enjoy this interview, I invite you to visit his website.

1. When and how did you discover your love for photography?

When I was ten years old I brought my father’s camera with me on a school trip. I took some pictures of fake dinosaurs in a Jurassic Park for children. It was my first time and I shot two rolls of film, I was so proud and happy. The next day, my dad told me I could have bought nice postcards instead of wasting film and money. He did not have bad intentions, he tried later to encourage me, but I was a sensitive child and I never touched a camera again until I received my degree in Aerospace Engineering. For that occasion I received a digital compact camera as a present from friends. I started taking pictures again and bringing my camera with me everywhere, this time without the worry of limited budget due to the cost of film. I don’t want to start a discussion between analog and digital photography, for me they are just different technologies with the same purpose. I must admit that, in my case, the latter gave me the freedom to experiment a lot and learn quickly.

2. What is it in street photography that inspires you?

For me Street Photography is a stage where people are unaware that they are actors playing comedies or drama. l am fascinated to discover their accidental connections and their relationships with the places where they are standing or moving. There are endless configurations and possibilities. Intriguing, strong and ambiguous situations are more common in the streets and public places, so that is why Street Photography inspires me. In the daily flow so many special moments are waiting to be preserved from oblivion and when I notice and grab them, I feel great joy and satisfaction.

3. How often do you do street photography and how do you proceed?

Unfortunately (or luckily, nowadays it is really hard to say) photography is not my main job, so telling you how often I do street photography is quite hard. I would say whenever and wherever I can: During holidays, on the weekends, when I go shopping, even when I go to the office.

Sometimes I just see a picture while I am walking and I do not even have a second to check the settings on my camera. I shoot as quickly as possible, taking care of framing the image in the way I feel it. I suppose it is something I do by instinct, even though after a long time I can see some reasons or intentions when I look again at the picture I took.

Sometimes I see a stage under a beautiful light and one or more interesting subjects, so I wait for a while, until all pieces of the puzzle are in the right position and then I shoot. But very often it does not work and I do not like shooting the same corner over and over again, just hoping to get a nice picture by chance. Of course I would be a fool not to admit that luck plays a part in taking good pictures, but I believe that being lucky is more than hoping things happen by chance: it is exposing yourself to the right place and the right moment because you foresee something good and you are ready for it.

4. Do you ever interact with your street subjects?

I never do that in Street Photography. As the great Italian photographer Ferdinando Scianna used to say “I like doing bullfighting with Chance”. I strongly believe that reality often goes beyond imagination, so I am just an observer, I do not feel the need to set anything or interact with anyone to obtain magic moments.

5. What gear to you use and what is your workflow?

I use a compact camera because I can have it with me at all times, it makes me feel very light and invisible, especially for Street Photography. If I go out to take pictures after I planned it far in advance, I bring with me a full-frame reflex with a 40 mm manual focus fixed lens mounted and a 24-105mm zoom in the bag (which I seldom use seldom it makes me lazy and uncomfortable). I prefer to shoot during the golden hours, but if the weather is not nice, the light can be amazing and I can shoot all day.

I try to save and backup the raw files as soon as possible but I do not work on them, unless I am sure I got some great pictures and I really cannot wait. I prefer to leave the pictures alone for long periods of time, weeks or months. I do that because my expectations are too high right after shooting and I am too tired to judge with the correct mindset: it is so important and difficult to decide which pictures should be kept, which ones should be deleted or simply forgotten for a while.

My editing is limited to basic corrections on white point, exposure and contrast for color pictures, while I spent more time on black and white conversion, trying to obtain in both cases a gentle and natural look. When I am happy with the results, I start printing because I think this is the only way for me and photography to touch each other: I love photography so much and I think that certain kinds of love are complete only with a physical contact.

6. What other genres of photography do you particularly enjoy shooting?

I like stories about people, so I enjoy reportage and portraits, but I also like many other genres such as landscape photography. Anyway, it depends also on my mood and how much I am bored by a genre at a particular time, not because I do not like it anymore, but just because I overdid it.

7. What is your favorite location for street photography and why?

Big cities because I can take pictures without worrying about being invisible, since people are used to crazy photographers dancing in front of them. Some of my favorite locations are parties, public events or carnivals. They make great opportunities to take surreal shots.

8. If you could hop on the plane tomorrow and go anywhere in the world, just you and your camera, where would you go and why?

I think somewhere in Asia. I have never been to China or Japan for example, neither to India. But most probably I would fly to Tibet, because I imagine that time goes slower there and things happen with a gentle rhythm and fullness. Today we run too much, I see photography as my slow motion button.

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

Focus On Nico Chiapperini ~ The Quest For The Magic Moment

Digital Photography School

In this guest post guest photographer Anette Mossbacher talks us through how she processed one of her Meerkat images.

Open image in Camera RAW

Adjust camera lens to your camera brand and lens, in Lens corrections.

Tick enable Lens Profile Corrections

Go to the “Targeted Adjustment Tool”

Click on it and hold it clicked, a drop down menu will open. Go down to Saturation till it is highlighted than let go. You can see to the right, where the Saturation tool brought you. Click into the sky, hold it clicked and move the tool to the right or left till the color of the sky is what you like.

This tool you can use for anything in your image, Highlights, shadows, saturation overall…etc. You just need to click on it, hold it, go down in the menu which tool you want to use and off you go adjusting.

When done I go to the front page/basic of Camera Raw, adjust Clarity and Vibrance.

When done with all adjustments click open image. That will bring you to Photoshop.

Image is now open in Photoshop CS5.

Open a Background Layer under “Layer”, can be found on top of the Photoshop.

I also can open a duplicate layer with the shortcut “CMD +J”

Open up a Layer mask, this you can find at the bottom of the Layers palette. It is the rectangle icon with a white circle in it. Just click on it, that opens the Layer mask.

The blending mode of the Layer I set to “multiply”, this can be found beside Opacity on top of the Layers palette.

Switch Foreground and Background colors, BLACK needs to be on top! The little arrows need to be clicked for that.

We are than “black onto white”.

Grab gradient tool form the tools palette, start to draw a line from the bottom up to the top with the gradient tool.

In this Meerkat image I can go straight up to the top. If there is a little angle or more in your image than you need to use the gradient tool as well in that angle.

I can stop with the gradient tool at 5% > 100% of the image. Experiment with this gradient tool that you get a feeling for it. Just stop somewhere in the image, that you can explore the results and see what it does.When I draw with the gradient tool in the image you can see the Meerkat is a bit dark.

I grab a SOFT brush tool, from the tools palette or just hit the key “B” and clean up my Meerkat. The brush tool should be a soft edge. I clean the body of my Meerkat very carefully, as well the bushes. This you can see in the Layers mask, that the Meerkat is black painted / cleaned up !

I wanted to add a bit more saturation to the grass and to the Meerkat.

I click on the Saturation tool to saturate the bushes . That’s the 2nd highlighted layer in the image above.

I grab the Pipette and click into a green leave which guide my Saturation tool to yellow. I add more Saturation till I am happy with the bushes and the Meerkat. Play around with Hue, Saturation and Lightness, that you get a feeling what that does to your image.

At the end I flatten the whole stack of layers under Layers and save my image in any format I need.

Anette Mossbacher is a photographer who specialises in Wildlife, Landscape and Travel Photography. She lives in Switzerland but spends a great deal of time traveling. See more of Anette’s work on her website and connect with her on Google+ here.

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

Post Processing Meerkat Photo with Anette Mossbacher

Digital Photography School

Need a WordPress photography theme for a client?

Are you engaged and looking to create your own WordPress wedding website?

Then you’re in the right place.  In this article you will see 10 of the very best wedding themes for photographers and couples.

Wedding Photography Themes

Are you ready?  Here goes!

Photocrati

It may not be obvious that the best WordPress theme for photographers makes a fantastic wedding website, but that is how versatile it it.

• All-in-one photography website template
• Galleries management system for easy event photo sharing
• Dozens of styles, customize everything.

The Wedding

 The Wedding features an elegant and classy look to give your wedding site an outstanding look. Setup your wedding site now using The Wedding theme.

• Gallery Post Type
• Slideshow Post Type
• RSVP Post Type
• Events Post Type
• Count Down and Count Up Timer

Marriage

The design is a minimal one with nice simple colors and custom web fonts to match the wedding event.

• Ajax & JQuery
• Slider
• Google web fonts
• Photo Album page
• Live twitter feed script
• Live flickr feed script

Announcement

dslrBlog

So, here’s a light source you don’t see every day. Dunno know who makes it, or even if it is store-bought (as opposed to DIY). But it’s pretty freakin’ cool.

The navel gazing in the Flickr group over what these giant light sticks might be has devolved into a discussion of blow-up lawn ornaments, natch. But Strobist reader Jonathan Camere of Lima, Peru (and a bit of a car photographer himself,) chimed in with a link to the video.

Lotsa cool stuff in here. The camera (PhaseOne back on a Contax body) is physically joined, offset, to the car to get perfect pans over time exposures. Thus the need for continuous lighting.

Anyone knows anything about those mods, hit us in the comments.

Oh, and let them be cheap please.

-30-

Strobist

Think your new DSLR shoots a lot of frames per second? You have not seen anything yet!

In this video Ramesh Raskar from MIT reports on a camera that they’ve built that shoots at a Trillion Frames per second.

While not something we’re going to see in our DSLRs or camera phones any time soon this concept has big implications in Science and could be used some day to build cameras that can look around corners or see into objects that it is photographing.

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

A Camera that Shoots at a Trillion Frames Per Second

Digital Photography School

This month we’ve been posting the best selling DSLRs, best selling DSLR Lenses, best selling compact camera systems, popular point and shoot cameras and most popular camera bags among our readers. Today we finish up this series with a look at the most popular Digital Camera Accessories – based on what our readers have bought in the last 3 months on Amazon*.

Accessories covers a wide range of things ranging from lens caps, to speed light flashes to cleaning products. Here’s our top 13!

1. Fotodiox Dedicated Lens Hood, for Canon EOS EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens (replaces Canon ES-62)

2. Neewer 110CM 43″ 5-in-1 Collapsible Multi-Disc Light Reflector

3. Giottos AA1900 Rocket Air Blaster Large – Black

4. Canon Speedlite 430EX II Flash for Canon Digital SLR Cameras

5. Fotodiox 6″x8″ Softbox

6. NEEWER® IR Wireless Remote Control RC-6 shutter release for Canon DSLRS

7. Quick Neck Shoulder Strap for Canon Nikon Sony Cameras

8. Black Rapid RS-7 Camera Strap (Black)

9. RS-W1 Camera Strap

10. LensPEN Lens Cleaning System

11. Universal Translucent Dome Flash Diffuser

12. Visible Dust Ultra-Thin Microfiber Cleaning Cloth for Digital Camera Optics.

13. 5 Lens Cap Leash – Lens Cap Holder/Safety Cord.

*Note: these lists were compiled from reports supplied to us from Amazon.com where we are affiliates. One of the ways dPS is able to cover its costs and be a sustainable business is that we earn a small commission when readers make a purchase from Amazon after clicking on our links (including those above). While no personal details are passed on we do get an overall report from Amazon about what was bought and are able to create this list.

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

13 Popular Digital Camera Accessories Among dPS Readers

Digital Photography School