The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Epic Skies appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.
This week’s weekly photography challenge – EPIC SKIES!
Dramatic cloudy sky by Caz Nowaczyk
Capture some epic skies, either in a close up of dramatic clouds or a dramatic sky in a landscape vista. It could be a stormy sky, the northern lights, a dramatic sunset or sunrise, or the milky way. You get the idea!
Play with post-processing too, if you like.
The choice is yours! I look forward to seeing what you share
Check out some of the articles below that give you tips on this week’s challenge.
Tips for photographing EPIC SKIES
6 Tips for Capturing Dramatic Skies in your Landscape Photography
3 Simple Steps to Make Your Skies Pop in Lightroom
Tips and Tricks for Night Photography of the Starry Sky
7 Tips to Improve Your Skyline Photos
How to Use a 10 Stop Neutral Density Filter to add Drama to the Sky
Beginners Tips for Night Sky and Star Photography
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 favorite photo-sharing site and leave the link to them. Show me your best images in this week’s challenge.
Share in the dPS Facebook Group
You can also share your images in the dPS Facebook group as the challenge is posted there each week as well.
If you tag your photos on Flickr, Instagram, Twitter or other sites – tag them as #DPSEpicSkies 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.
The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Epic Skies appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.
The post Great Fruit and Vegetable Still Life Photography Ideas appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Rick Ohnsman.
Before there was photography, artists used paints and brushes to record their visions onto a canvas. Fruit and vegetable still life images were common subjects for many. Even today, in art schools, a fruit bowl might be an early subject. Learning to reproduce shapes, tones, color, and replicating the way light, shadow, smooth reflective objects, and dull matte objects look in the light – all those things would be part of your training.
We, as photographers, would do well to take a similar approach to our photography. We have it easier in many ways; not needing paints and brushes to create our images on a blank canvas. However, learning about light, composition, and technique are still foundational lessons.
If you are stuck at home, this could be a good opportunity to slow down, work on the kitchen table, relax with a slow-paced style of photography, and learn some new photography skills. A fruit and vegetable still life project could be just the way to spend a quiet day at home.
Putting these kiwi slices on an inverted glass pie plate, and then putting an LED flashlight under the plate, so the light shone through them, was the key to making this photo.
Subject selection
There are several reasons why fruits and vegetables make good still life subjects. They have interesting shapes, textures, colors, and details. As they are food, we can work to make them look especially appetizing, selecting the freshest and best subjects to be our “models.”
People who specialize in food photography will often use the talents of “food stylists” who carefully pick just the right subjects. They then use tricks, much like a fashion makeup stylist would use, to make their “models” as flawless and stunning as possible.
If you have access to choice fruits and vegetables right now, by all means, go seek such subjects. On the other hand, if being restricted to home means you need to use that somewhat sad-looking collection of carrots from the bottom of the refrigerator, just take your photo in a different direction.
If all you have is some sad looking carrots from the bottom of the refrigerator, go with what you have. Note the “wood backgrounds” here are actually printed sheets from a craft store.
Types and styles
In the early-to-mid 1600s, the Netherlands saw the rise of a collection of artists we now refer to as the “Dutch Masters.” A realistic style, emphasis on dramatic directional lighting, and the play of light and shadow are earmarks of the look. A good example of a Dutch Golden Age still-life artist is Willem Kalf. See his image below, “Still Life with Lemon Peel.” Now, as a photographer, how might we emulate that look?
Still Life with a Peeled Lemon – Willem Kalf (Dutch, 1619 – 1693) 1664 Oil on canvas * Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection * Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
A favorite technique of mine for emulating the Dutch Master’s look is light painting. I discuss this at length in my DPS article, “Learn these Two Techniques for Dramatic Light-Painted Photos.”
A distinct advantage of still life photography is that shutter speed is not critical. If you need a multi-second exposure, no problem. Work from a tripod so your camera is rock-steady, lock up the mirror on a DSLR to minimize vibrations, and use a cable release or perhaps the 2-second timer to trip the shutter. Go to full-manual mode. Keep your ISO at the lowest setting to minimize noise. Select an aperture based on how much depth of field you seek, and select a shutter speed for however much time you need for the “painting.”
Grab your flashlight and paint away.
Seeking to emulate the style of the Dutch Master’s paintings, I made this light-painted shot using just the illumination of a small flashlight and a 10-second exposure.
A favorite photographer I follow now on Instagram is Carlo Denino. Often with just a single fruit, vegetable, or other subjects, he produces exquisite light paintings. I encourage you to give his images a look and see if you can then emulate his style. I know from personal experience it’s not nearly as easy as it might look!
Lighting
Light Painting
Light painting is just one way you can go when doing fruit and vegetable still life images. Natural lighting can often be great and will require nothing more than your camera.
Dutch Master’s images were typically painted to look like they were illuminated by a single light source off to the side.
Find a window where you can place your subject and see if you can create the look. If you need a little fill to reduce the shadows, a simple reflector or even a white card can do the trick.
Always keep an eye out for photo subjects. Both of these were done outside when I just happened across the scenes. The shot on the left was done with my LG V30 cellphone. The one on the right, when I happened to have my camera one day on a neighborhood walk.
Non-conventional lights
Explore how other lights that would be considered non-conventional for photography, such as LED-flashlights, can work. Yes, they will not usually be as bright as standard photo lighting, and their color temperatures can vary. But they do have the advantages of being cheap, small and portable, and perhaps something you already have on hand. Use long exposures to compensate for their lower light output, and when you shoot in Raw mode, finding a good white balance will be much easier.
When working close to small subjects, an LED flashlight might be all the light you need, especially when with still-life, your shutter speed can be as long as you want.
Flash
Speedlights can be another option. You will typically not want your light to come from the front of your subject, so your pop-up flash or hot-shoe-mounted Speedlight isn’t the best way to go. If you can, get the flash off the camera and fire it with a remote trigger. Or perhaps use a flash cord to get it away from the camera. If not, try bouncing the light off the ceiling, a wall or a reflector to redirect the light and soften it.
Bright sunlight and a shutter speed of 1/3200 second was the trick to freezing the motion of these shots. Splash photography with fruits and vegetables is a great combination creating a “freshness” look.
Tricks with conventional photo lighting
If you have dedicated photography lighting, that’s great. Give it a try and perhaps use your fruit and vegetable still life subjects to explore some new lighting techniques. Try different ways to modify the light with snoots, reflectors, flags, diffusion, gobos, colored gels, or whatever else you can think of.
Unrestricted by time or pressure to get it right quickly will open you up to experiments you might have never tried. If you fail twenty times but come up with a new and exciting technique just once, you can consider your experimental lighting play a great success.
Lighting direction
With their interesting colors and sometimes translucent nature, fruits and vegetables can lend themselves to some interesting lighting techniques. Rarely will you want to light from the front of the subject as this will produce rather flat and uninteresting light.
Instead, try side lighting to emphasize texture, backlighting to perhaps create some nice rim-lighting, or if you want to get some really creative looks, lighting through your subject.
Fruits and vegetables that can be sliced thin work great for this. For example, I made thin slices of a kiwi, then made a platform from a glass pie plate under which I placed an LED flashlight. The light shining up and through the slices really emphasized the color and detail. Citrus fruits work well for this technique too.
Experiment and see what you can create.
Citrus fruits sliced thin make great subjects for backlighting as the colors and textures are so interesting. We also expect to see them in drinks and scenes like this.
Backgrounds
As with any other photo subject, carefully consider the background when you stage your fruit and vegetable still life image. You will want a background that complements and doesn’t interfere with your subject.
Quite often, the best background will be the simplest. Consider using a completely white or black background if that works for the image you’re trying to create. Lightroom makes it very easy to blow out whites or totally blackout shadows with the adjustment brush aided by other tools like the clipping indicators and Auto and Range Mask. Paint out what you don’t want to keep the focus on your subject.
The fruit here is more the “supporting cast” in this shot of a raspberry lemonade cupcake. However, all the elements of this shot were carefully chosen. The background is a piece of scrapbooking paper from the craft store.
Of course, the other option you always have with photography is blurring, and thus simplifying, your background with a limited depth of field.
If you are a new photographer just trying to get your head around how depth of field works, the slow and deliberate nature of making fruit and vegetable still life images is a great way to experiment and understand the relationships of apertures, focal lengths, and their effects on depth of field.
Spritz things up
A favorite trick of food photographers looking to make their fruit and vegetable still life images look fresh and also add interest is to use a spray bottle to spritz their subjects with water. Sometimes to create larger droplets that hang better and last longer on the subject, they will add a bit of glycerine to the water.
Macro
The structure of living things is often fascinating, and being able to explore fruits and vegetables up close can reveal some really interesting things. Whether you use a dedicated macro lens, extension tubes, bellows, close-up filters, a reversed lens, or a combination of these, macro work is just the thing to divert your attention from your troubles while you focus on the unseen world.
Working inside in a controlled environment with no wind and complete control of the lighting will also help you learn macro techniques.
Get close and explore the detail with a macro shot. Often my LG V30 cellphone rivals even my dedicated DSLR macro lens.
Tell a story
When making fruit and vegetable still life images, it can enhance your photo if you add other objects to help “tell a story” about your scene. Rather than simply take a photo of an apple, slice the apple, add a cutting board and a knife to invite the viewer to consider what might have been going on. Add props that enhance the theme and avoid those that distract. Consider what makes sense in that particular scene and things you would naturally find paired together.
Add other items to your fruit and vegetable still life images to help tell a story.
High and low key
Fruit and vegetable still life photography can sometimes lend itself to high and low key renditions. To briefly define the terms, high-key is a lighting and exposure style that is very bright and contains little or no shadow. Contrast ratios, that being the difference between the lightest and darkest tones, are minimized. High-key photos will often have an “ethereal” look to them.
Two high-key images done very differently. The raspberry shot used a fast 1/1000 second shutter speed, the onion a slow 1/13 second shutter speed.
Low-key images are the opposite and typically quite dark, often with shadows that are totally black. They will often be quite contrasty with few mid-tones. Sometimes a low-key shot will use highlights in certain places to emphasize shape and form. Back and rim-lighting can lend itself well to a low-key look.
Here’s an exercise to try; take a fruit or vegetable, compose your shot, and make a “normal” exposure. Then, without moving the camera or subject, change the lighting and exposure to give it a high-key look. Now change the lighting and exposure again and see if you can get a low key look. This is a fun way to explore lighting techniques and understand the dramatic difference lighting can have on a scene.
Still life that moves
We call it “still” life because, most often, the subject doesn’t move during the exposure and is static. But need it be that way?
Fruits and vegetables can make great subjects for some dynamic images. In my article “Making the Shot: Your Guide to Creating Stunning High-Speed Splash Photos Without Flash,” I show some fun ways to make some really exciting images. You’ll note that almost all of my subjects were fruits and vegetables.
Still-life doesn’t have to be still. The short duration flash of a Speedlight froze the action in these shots.
There’s also this image from my “How to Use Multi-flash to Capture Compelling Action Photos” article. The orange pepper stood out nicely on a dark background and allowed me to make the stroboscopic image as it flew through the air.
Mom may have told you not to play with your food, but here, it’s entirely appropriate and a whole lot of fun.
Mom might have told you not to play with your food, but for photographic purposes, you have my permission to go crazy.
Conclusion
Many of you may be homebound and looking for creative ways to keep up your photography practice. Making fruit and vegetable still life images has some advantages;
It uses subjects you may already have at home.
It lends itself to a variety of different lighting techniques.
Macro photography is a possibility.
You can explore all kinds of new techniques.
If you get some really good shots you may be able to sell them as stock images.
After you’re done, you can eat your subjects!
Get back to your roots. A shot one day when visiting a farmer’s market.
Have fun with your fruit and vegetable still life photography, and post some of your great shots in the comments below.
If you’d like feedback, critique, and have a question about how to do something better, post that too. I try to answer all comments and look forward to hearing from you. Best wishes and be well!
The post Great Fruit and Vegetable Still Life Photography Ideas appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Rick Ohnsman.
Editor’s note: The term ‘computational photography’ gets used a lot these days, but what exactly does it mean? In this article, the first in a three-part series, guest contributor Vasily Zubarev takes us on a journey from present to future, explaining computational photography today, where it’s going and how it will change the very essence of photography.
Series overview:
Part I: What is Computational Photography?
Part II: Computational sensors and optics (coming soon)
Part III: Computational lighting, 3D scene and augmented reality (coming soon)
You can visit Vasily’s website where he also demystifies other complex subjects. If you find this article useful we encourage you to give him a small donation so that he can write about other interesting topics.
Computational Photography: From Selfies to Black Holes
It’s impossible to imagine a smartphone presentation today without dancing around its camera. Google makes Pixel shoot in the dark, Huawei zooms like a telescope, Samsung puts lidars inside, and Apple presents the new world’s roundest corners. Illegal level of innovations happening here.
DSLRs, on the other hand, seem half dead. Sony showers everybody with a new sensor-megapixel rain every year, while manufacturers lazily update the minor version number and keep lying on piles of cash from movie makers. I have a $ 3000 Nikon on my desk, but I take an iPhone on my travels. Why?
It’s impossible to imagine a smartphone presentation today without dancing around its camera.
I went online with this question. There, I saw a lot of debate about “algorithms” and “neural networks”, though no one could explain how exactly they affect a photo. Journalists are loudly reading the number of megapixels from press releases, bloggers are shutting down the Internet with more unboxings, and the camera-nerds are overflowing it with “sensual perception of the sensor color palette”. Ah, Internet. You gave us access to all the information. Love you.
Thus, I spent half of my life to understand the whole thing on my own. I’ll try to explain everything I found in this article, otherwise I’ll forget it in a month.
What is Computational Photography?
Everywhere, including Wikipedia, you get a definition like this: computational photography is a digital image capture and processing techniques that use digital computation instead of optical processes. Everything is fine with it except that it’s bullshit. The fuzziness of the official definitions kinda indicates that we still have no idea what are we doing.
Stanford Professor and pioneer of computational photography Marc Levoy (he was also behind many of the innovations in Google’s Pixel cameras) gives another definition – computational imaging techniques enhance or extend the capabilities of digital photography in which the output is an ordinary photograph, but one that could not have been taken by a traditional camera. I like it more, and in the article, I will follow this definition.
So, the smartphones were to blame for everything.
So, the smartphones were to blame for everything. Smartphones had no choice but to give life to a new kind of photography — computational.
They had little noisy sensors and tiny slow lenses. According to all the laws of physics, they could only bring us pain and suffering. And they did. Until some devs figured out how to use their strengths to overcome the weaknesses: fast electronic shutters, powerful processors, and software.
Most of the significant research in the computational photography field was done in 2005-2015, which counts as yesterday in science. That means, right now, just in front of our eyes and inside our pockets, there’s a new field of knowledge and technology rising that never existed before.
Computational photography isn’t just about the bokeh on selfies. A recent photograph of a black hole would not have been taken without using computational photography methods. To take such picture with a standard telescope, we would have to make it the size of the Earth. However, by combining the data of eight radio telescopes at different locations of our Earth-ball and writing some cool Python scripts, we got the world’s first picture of the event horizon.
It’s still good for selfies though, don’t worry.
Link: Computational Photography: Principles and Practice
Link: Marc Levoy: New Techniques in Computational photography
(I’m going to insert such links in the course of the story. They will lead you to the rare brilliant articles or videos that I found, and allow you to dive deeper into a topic if you suddenly become interested. Because I physically can’t tell you everything in one article.)
The Beginning: Digital Processing
Let’s get back to 2010. Justin Bieber released his first album and the Burj Khalifa had just opened in Dubai, but we couldn’t even capture these two great universe events because our photos were noisy 2-megapixel JPEGs. We got the first irresistible desire to hide the worthlessness of mobile cameras by using “vintage” presets. Instagram comes out.
Math and Instagram
With the release of Instagram, everyone got obsessed with filters. As the man who reverse engineered the X-Pro II, Lo-Fi, and Valencia for, of course, research (hehe) purposes, I still remember that they comprised three components:
Color settings (Hue, Saturation, Lightness, Contrast, Levels, etc.) are simple coefficients, just like in any presets that photographers used since ancient times.
Tone Mapping is a vector of values, each tells us that “red with a hue of 128 should be turned into a hue of 240”. It’s often represented as a single-pixel picture, like this one. This is an example for the X-Pro II filter.
Overlay — translucent picture with dust, grain, vignette, and everything else that can be applied from above to get the (not at all, yeah) banal effect of the old film. Used rarely.
Modern filters have not gone far from these three, but have become a little more complicated from the math perspective. With the advent of hardware shaders and OpenCL on smartphones, they were quickly rewritten under the GPU, and it was considered insanely cool. For 2012, of course. Today any kid can do the same thing on CSS, but he still won’t invite a girl to prom.
However, progress in the area of filters has not stopped there. Guys from Dehan?er, for example, are getting very hands-on with non-linear filters. Instead of poor-human tone-mapping, they use more posh and complex non-linear transformations, which opens up many more opportunities, according to them.
With the release of Instagram, everyone got obsessed with filters.
You can do a lot of things with non-linear transformations, but they are incredibly complex, and we humans are incredibly stupid. As soon as it comes to non-linear transformations, we prefer to go with numerical methods or run neural networks to do our job. The same thing happens here.
Automation and Dreams of a “Masterpiece” Button
When everybody got used to filters, we started to integrate them right into our cameras. It’s hidden in history whoever was the first manufacturer to implement this, but just to understand how long ago it was, think, that in iOS 5.0 released in 2011 we already had a public API for Auto Enhancing Images. Only Steve Jobs knows how long it was in use before it opened to the public.
The automation was doing the same thing that any of us does by opening the photo editor — it fixed the lights and shadows, increased the brightness, took away the red eyes, and fixed the face color. Users didn’t even know that “dramatically improved camera” was just the merit of a couple of new lines of code.
ML Enhance in Pixelmator.
Today, the battles for the Masterpiece button have moved to the machine learning field. Tired of playing with tone-mapping, everyone rushed to the hype train CNN’s and GAN’s and started forcing computers to move the sliders for us. In other words, to use an input image to determine a set of optimal parameters that will bring the given image closer to a particular subjective understanding of “good photography”. Check out how it’s implemented in Pixelmator Pro and other editors who’s luring you with their fancy “ML” features stated on a landing page. It doesn’t always work well, as you can guess. But you can always take the datasets and train your own network to beat these guys, using the links below. Or not.
Link: Image Enhancement Papers
Link: DSLR-Quality Photos on Mobile Devices with Deep Convolutional Networks
Vasily Zubarev is a Berlin-based Python developer and a hobbyist photographer and blogger. To see more of his work, visit his website or follow him on Instagram and Twitter.
Earlier this year, the organizers of The Photography Show and The Video Show 2020 announced the exhibition would be pushed back to September due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, it’s been announced The Photography Show and The Video Show 2020 will be going entirely virtual for 2020, with the organizers citing ‘the continued uncertainty around hosting large events.’
According to the above announcement on The Photography Show website, the virtual photography and video festival will be entirely free and take place on September 20 and 21 this year. ‘While we believe that there’s nothing quite comparable to the benefits of the live show,’ says the organizers in the announcement, ‘we know that this decision is the best solution for our community during these unprecedented times.’
The entire show will be free to ‘attend’ and all pre-booked entry tickets and passes purchased for the 2020 event will be valid for next year’s event. The Photography Show 2021 is set to take place at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham.
Registration for the online event will be ‘available shortly.’ You can keep up to date with the latest news on The Photography Show website.
The post How to Publish a Photography Zine to Promote Your Photography appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Matt Murray.
Until a couple of years ago, I’d never considered publishing a photography book or zine. Years ago, the self-publishing options weren’t very attractive to me: they were either expensive and complicated or offered templated cookie-cutter style books that didn’t appeal.
In recent times, new publishers specialising in short-run zines have sprung into the marketplace, making it much easier for photographers to get their work into print. Inspired by other photographers producing zines, I have just published my own. Here is my guide on how to publish a photography zine to promote your photography.
What’s a zine?
A zine is a self-published booklet of images and text, often produced in limited edition print runs. The word zine (pronounced zeen) is derived from both the word magazine and also the word fanzine – unofficial publications produced by fans of a particular movement in popular culture. Zines were usually put together by hand, then photocopied and stapled.
Copies of my first film photography zine Every Summer. I also had limited edition art print postcards created to celebrate the launch.
These days the term zine is commonly used to refer to any short-run booklet of photography and/or images. There are so many creative choices that you can make when you publish a photography zine. The look and feel of the final product are up to you, and the lines between a zine and a book are often blurred.
For example, my first photography zine Every Summer is perfect bound, meaning the pages are glued together into the spine without a staple. It’s full-color, printed on uncoated paper, and the cover has a smooth laminate finish. It falls somewhere between the extremes of a do-it-yourself stapled zine and a high-end coffee table book.
So now you know what a zine is, your next question might be, why publish a photography zine? I’ve outlined a few reasons below.
Seeing your images in print is magical
One of the most frequently said things about photography in the digital age is that we’ve ended up with tens of thousands of images on devices and hard drives that are hard to access and view. There’s nothing quite like having an image in your hands – whether it’s an instant photo, a print, or your own book or zine.
Close-up of my first photography zine Every Summer. Holding it in my hands for the first time was magical.
Seeing my first photography zine in print was so much more satisfying than seeing images on a computer screen. Creating a zine also ties together the set of images as a collection, with a single narrative throughout. A zine is a perfect way to showcase your images to others.
Use a zine to promote your photography
Publishing a photography zine is a fantastic way to promote your photography. A zine could be used as an alternative to (or in addition to) your digital offerings.
I recently showed my first zine to a professional photographer friend and he said it was a really interesting concept he’d consider for promoting his wedding photography business.
In this digital age, a zine could be a way of standing out from the crowd by providing something tangible people can hold in their hands that promotes your photography.
Creating a zine as a tool for personal growth
Publishing a zine is such a rewarding project. As a photographer, there are many other skills you’ll potentially need to learn or improve to get your zine into production. Design, editing, writing, printing and marketing: these are just some of the skill sets you’ll use.
Once you create your zine, you can send it to your favorite clients, give it away to leads at events and shows, and, of course, send it as a gift to family and friends. You never know who might end up seeing it.
Blurring the lines between a zine and a book, my first self-published work “Every Summer” is perfect bound.
Creating a zine is also addictive – once you create your first, you’ll no doubt be thinking of your second. So, if you’d like to publish a photography zine, where do you start?
Zine ideas
The concept of most zines or books revolves around an idea. Your zine could be made up of images from a road trip, a wedding, your favorite city, or your neighborhood.
A zine could also show off a photographic style, a personal project, tell a story through images, or be a showcase of your best work. It can also be a combination of all of those things or none of them – it’s up to you.
My first zine is a collection of images that I took on the Isle of Wight in England. When I reviewed the images in the weeks after my holiday, I felt there was a certain magic to them, so I decided to put together a zine.
It’s also becoming increasingly common for photographers to collaborate on zines together, typically with the same subject or style in mind.
Choose your images
Choosing and editing your images is a process in itself.
It’s not necessarily about choosing all the best images but choosing images that work well together and continue a narrative throughout your publication. For example, there were some images that I loved from the Isle of Wight, but there didn’t seem to be a point in the zine where it made sense to include them, so I left them out in favor of other images.
The first 20 pages of my zine Every Summer in acontact sheet view. Choose images that work well together and continue a narrative. Also, note the double-page spread on pages 6-7.
Some people find it beneficial to print out small copies of their images and arrange them on the floor to work out an image order. I tried this approach, but I found that it just left me with a stack of paper to put in the recycling bin. I found it easier to rate images in Lightroom and then drag them onto pages in InDesign, where I could play around with the layout.
To add text or not to add text?
There are two schools of thought around adding words to a photo zine or book. The first is that the photos should do the talking and everything else is a distraction. The second is that well-thought-out text adds context to the images and makes it a more rewarding experience for the reader.
Generally, I fall into the latter school of thought.
I decided to add passages of text to my zine for one simple reason – I wanted to introduce locations by recounting anecdotes from when I visited these places on the Isle of Wight. These passages detailed what attracted me to photograph those locations.
Adding text throughout my zine gave me the opportunity to provide context to the locations I photographed on the Isle of Wight.
Either way, it’s commonplace to write an introduction at the start of your zine or book. This should introduce yourself to the reader and explain your motivation behind producing the zine and your relationship to the images.
For example, in my photography zine Every Summer, I reflected on my relationship with England, my home for over a decade, and how travel photography has influenced the style of images I take. In my introduction, I also added my contact details so readers could send me feedback about the zine.
Zine design
The design of your zine can be as simple or as complex as you like. Some online publishing companies have their own software that makes it as easy as possible for you to choose a layout, drag and drop photos, and add some text.
With other zine publishers, you can create your own design in software programs like Adobe InDesign and then upload them as a PDF for printing. Always make sure you read and understand the instructions your printer gives you about document set-up and exporting your publication – especially with regards to the quality of your images, color space, page bleed, and margins.
Of course, you can also work with the book module in Lightroom too.
Many pages in my zine follow a standard layout. This is broken up by double-page spreads and full-page photos throughout the zine.
Creating your zine in InDesign also gives you the flexibility to produce an electronic PDF version of your zine to distribute to people. You can also do that with the first option, but some online publishing companies charge an extra fee to download a PDF copy of your work. You can also create a PDF version in the Lightroom Book Module too.
Whichever road you go down, remember that simplicity is often at the heart of good design. Try and stick to a standard way of displaying your photos throughout the book, with the occasional breakout from that design for a double-page spread or full-page photograph.
Simplicity should also be front of mind when working out your choice of font. Don’t choose too many fonts to work with and always make sure they’re easy to read. For my photography zine Every Summer, I chose two fonts.
Part of the introduction to my first photography zine. I explained who I was, my motivations for putting the zine together, and my relationship to the subject matter.
For headings, I chose a retro font that captured the spirit of the 1970s. This matched the subject matter of some of my images such as the retro ice-cream van and the seaside pier at Sandown. For body text, I used a typewriter-style font that is easy to read, and also conveys some of that retro charm.
Print vs screen
Looking at images on a screen is not the same as looking at images in print. Digital images are usually in the RGB color space, which has a wider color gamut than the CMYK color space used for printing. Our screens are also back-lit, so often digital images look brighter and more saturated than images exported for print.
At some stage, your publication will be converted to the CMYK format. Some online publishers do this process automatically for you, but if you are uploading a PDF to a printer, they will typically ask you to supply a PDF in the CMYK color space. Always check with your printer on the exact settings to use.
Seeing your images in the CMYK color space for the first time can be a bit of a shock: it has a narrower gamut than RGB, which means that not all colors from the RGB color space can be displayed when printed. This means some colors may look slightly different in the printed version. For example, the vivid blues, yellows, and oranges of the ice-cream van on the front of my zine are not quite that vivid in the print version, but they’re close.
Laying out images and text for my zine in Adobe InDesign. A lot of people shy away from InDesign, but it really isn’t difficult to pick up, especially if you’re familiar with Adobe Photoshop.
Zine format and size
When you publish a photography zine, you will also need to decide on the dimensions of your zine and how many pages it will have. Remember, the more pages your zine has, the more expensive it will be to produce and potentially ship to customers.
For my first zine, I chose a square 210mm by 210mm format (just over 8 inches). I’d seen a friend’s zine using the same dimensions and it felt like a good size to me. Square pages also have an advantage: they suit portrait-orientation images, landscape-orientation images, and square images.
Another consideration is the type and weight of paper you want your zine printed on. There is usually a range of types including satin, gloss, uncoated, and even recycled. Many publishers will send you a sample of their papers for free. This sample pack will also help you decide on the weight (thickness) of different paper stocks.
Many online printers offer a wide range of choices for your publication.
Final review
When you’ve finished your layout and have a zine ready to publish, check everything as many times as you can. After you’ve completed your checks, ask a trusted friend to do the same. I made one small error with my zine and it still annoys me. As it turns out, a couple of people I sold my zine to didn’t even notice it.
If you’ve never printed anything before, you can also get in contact with your printer to ask for their advice on your publication. For example, you could ask them if the images are good enough quality to print, if the layout will work, if you’ve done the page bleed and margins correctly, and if you exported your PDF in the correct color space.
When you’re satisfied that everything is correct, it’s time to print.
If you’re a little nervous about the final product, order the smallest quantity that is financially practical. This will give you the opportunity to check you’re happy with everything before another print run.
After that, it’s time to show your zine to the world! I’ve sold my zine via my website to friends, family, listeners of my podcast, and others in the photography community. For the launch, I even had some art print postcards created featuring three images from the zine as a bonus for my customers.
Exporting my zine from Adobe InDesign. Find out what settings you should be using from your printer for the best results.
Conclusion
I hope this article has been helpful for those wishing to publish a photography zine. Self-publishing can be a lot of work, but ultimately, it’s a very rewarding process. There are so many skills related to photography that you can learn and improve, adding to the creative challenge.
Seeing your images in print for the first time in a publication that you’ve created is very special. I’ve learned so much creating my first photography zine and plan to create another in the coming months.
Whether it’s just for fun, a creative challenge, or to promote your business, learning how to publish a photography zine is a fantastic way to get your images in front of other people and reach a wider audience.
If you have any questions about the zine-making process, please let me know in the comments below.
The post How to Publish a Photography Zine to Promote Your Photography appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Matt Murray.
The post Heaps of Fun Creative Photography Ideas to Keep Your Photography-Juices Flowing appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.
This week, I thought I would compile a few videos of creative photography ideas that will get your photography juices flowing.
These videos are from Jordi Koalitic, who shares some of his unique, fun ideas.
Some of these you can do in your own home or out and about. Check them out, try them out, and share some of your photos with us in the comments section!
Still looking for more creative ideas?
Then you may also like:
10 Great At-Home Creative Photography Ideas
Creative Photography Exercises to do at Home (video)
10 Creative DIY Photo IDEAS when Stuck at Home (video)
Creative Abstract Photography with Food Coloring and Milk
Creative Water Photography – A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Water Monsters
Creative Photography Exercises: Setting Limitations to Achieve Better Photography
How to Use a Pinhole Body Cap for Awesome, Creative Photography
The post Heaps of Fun Creative Photography Ideas to Keep Your Photography-Juices Flowing appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.
If you are still stuck indoors, photograph from your windows, or step out into the garden (if you are lucky enough to have one). Alternatively, go back through your archives and do some brand new edits on your photos, like false-color infrared or black and white.
Use backlight, sunsets, sunrises, intentional camera movement or close-ups of foliage.
The choice is yours! I look forward to seeing what you share
Check out some of the articles below that give you tips on this week’s challenge.
5 Tips for Capturing Nature Across Different Seasons
5 Tips for Taking Beautiful Photos of Nature
How to Take Creative Landscape Shots using Intentional Camera Movement
Simulating False-Color Infrared Photography in Photoshop
Create Powerful Black and White Photos with the Photoshop Gradient Map
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 favorite photo-sharing site and leave the link to them. Show me your best images in this week’s challenge.
Share in the dPS Facebook Group
You can also share your images in the dPS Facebook group as the challenge is posted there each week as well.
If you tag your photos on Flickr, Instagram, Twitter or other sites – tag them as #DPStrees2020 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.
The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Trees appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.
The post The New Corona Photography Workflow- Shoot Privately but Share and Participate Publicly appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Herb Paynter.
The bad medical virus
While the planet seeks a solution to the pandemic problem, may I suggest we use this opportunity to participate in an innovative photographic exercise? This might be just the spherical ray of light (corona) we photographers need in the midst of a dark and scary time. Fortunately, photography is a very personal process. We all use digital devices to capture interesting subjects and express emotions, but none of those devices are multi-person in function. So why not step up your personal photography and share your projects more openly online with a Corona photography workflow.
There are two obvious opportunities available to everybody that are both extremely safe while being very public. Why not join both the Facebook groups of your local photo club as well as the DPS Facebook group and (safely) start sharing more openly with thousands of your closest friends?
I’m appealing to the leadership of every photo and camera club to provide online assignments and challenges based on the subject of light. Publish each submission publicly and give recognition to all entries.
The assignments and challenges can be announced on club Facebook pages and posted (in larger sizes) on club websites. This will not only promote activity within the clubs but will share those talents with the rest of the world’s photo enthusiasts. This kind of effort will show the heart of the digital photo community and will widen the family circle and lift the spirits of millions.
Digital photography is a very dynamic and growing lifestyle, especially with the increased photographic capabilities of today’s camera phones. Photo clubs are comprised of all echelons of experience and all levels of equipment and now includes a growing number of phone photographers.
We’ve all seen some pretty amazing examples of great pictures captured by camera phones, with several clubs even featuring dedicated internal groups. The software features within these phones are both mind-boggling and beyond the capabilities of many very expensive dedicated digital cameras.
Add to this the ability of camera phones to immediately (and extensively) edit and post images to all forms of social media.
The good digital viral process
Lifestyle photography is widely accepted, and the sharing of images is commonplace in our world culture. Since we all travel with these mini-marvels, virtually everybody can participate in this Corona photography workflow project, and with little effort, it will go viral quickly. This kind of virus is good. This way, personal creativity can be unleashed and shared almost without limits in either subject matter or interpretation.
If well-coordinated, it can unite the minds and emotions of people and redirect emotions to a positive place while the medical world works diligently on an effective solution to the medical problem.
Social community should be a goal that is openly promoted and encouraged by local photo clubs sponsoring “socially distanced” group activities and photo opportunities. Photo challenges can be organized online through a number of social media. During a time of world crisis like we are currently facing, the nervous human psyche can either suffer fear-overload or be creatively redirected. This is one avenue that we can all travel safely.
Shared activities need not stop; they simply need to be redefined as virtual group activities. This new sharing can become interpersonal and actually create stronger bonds between individuals who otherwise might not participate in typical meetings.
Social media has proven to provide a community sharing process that is even more inclusive than literal clubhouse meetings. This digital extension of the photo community clubhouse has a very real chance to involve persons from all aspects of society and age groups.
Keeping your distance
Digital cameras offer the ability to capture images from a distance and thus maintain and observe the six-foot protection rule. Even if you don’t have a telephoto or zoom lens, the higher resolution of cameras and phones allows image enlargement to reveal distant detail – especially since Internet images are usually restricted to around 1500 pixels (long dimension). No longer are photographers restricted to close proximity to the subject to capture significant detail.
This resolution restriction can actually work to your advantage in this respect: you can enlarge images to a greater magnification with no noticeable loss of detail.
Keeping your distance also allows you to capture images more candidly and thus more naturally. This is how you turn a limitation into an advantage.
While the normal reticence of sharing in public is a barrier that holds back some from participating in public meetings, with this online Corona photography workflow, sharing ideas and experiences might just break that barrier for some and provide them a fresh opportunity to participate. Now they can share a voice and increase personal involvement in a (socially and medically) safe environment.
In social media, everybody is on level ground and has an equal chance to “speak up” and participate. Sharing is a vital part of the human experience, and this unique opportunity could provide that social spark that we need to get through this situation and be better for it.
The Internet provides both good and not-so-good subject material and expression, but within the individual online club environment, this behavior can be more carefully monitored and even protected.
The challenge
Here’s what I propose that we adopt and promote without hesitation…
Individuals:
If you are not currently a photo club member (either local or online), join (at least) one right now; I am a member of several.
Each local club has a website and a Facebook page. Even if you only read DPS articles and rarely comment, this will give you a chance to speak out (in a silent way) and let us hear from you!
Search your favorite social media for online groups and clubs. There are dozens available, and many are geared to unique kinds of photography. There is rarely a fee involved, and your involvement is welcomed.
I just started an online Facebook group called “Corona Camera Club” just to push back on the negative connotation and put a new twist to the term. This will be a group based on light, not darkness. The basic “focus” of the group will be on the lighter side of photography. I invite everyone to join in and start sharing photos and posting positive experiences. There’s enough negative energy in the world right now, let’s turn up the light and keep it positive.
Club and group leaders
Post challenges to your members based on weekly (or monthly) themes. Keep these themes upbeat and creative. Provide online access to articles and presentations that would normally be presented in your local club meetings.
Contact all your members individually and encourage them to enlist one friend every week to join the group. This Corona photography workflow effort is like an old fashioned block party where all neighbors gather and share food and activities. Okay, we can’t eat online, but we can interact more frequently.
Don’t hesitate to research group sharing opportunities available to businesses and online schools to conduct interactive meetings and turn them into online clubhouses. I certainly invite your current members to join our CCC Facebook group too. Let’s make this a universal family project.
Get creative
Take this opportunity to show your creative imagination. Share images that are upbeat, positive, and inspiring. We all need to be realistic about the problems and risks and our physical activities are restricted, but our minds can run wild. Use this time to brighten eyes and uplift spirits. I’m using this post to try out a personal interpretation of some of my nature shots.
Finally, make your contributions and comments often and regular. Since this Corona medical crisis has limited our physical gatherings, let’s just gather online and channel our energies in a more positive collective enthusiasm. Use your computer, your tablet, and your phone to connect with friends and loved ones using all the services that are available. Love and camaraderie are contagious too, and this kind of infection is all good.
Let’s determine to find the lighter side of this dark cloud and turn the threatening negative into a big positive. When this scary time is over, the new friendships and associations will be all the deeper, and we can resume our lives on a higher level.
Remember, the word corona only recently has been defined by a virus. One of the dictionary definitions of corona describes the super bright crown of light that surrounds the Sun. It’s time to get out of the darkness and dive into the light.
Let’s participate in this Corona photography workflow and give this word a new meaning as we lighten up.
The post The New Corona Photography Workflow- Shoot Privately but Share and Participate Publicly appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Herb Paynter.
The post Black and White Photography Exercises to Help You Improve Your Skills appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kevin Landwer-Johan.
Black and white photography exercises can help you gain an understanding of how it differs from color photography. Concentrating on black and white images helps develop your photography in many ways.
“Color is descriptive. Black and white is interpretive.” ~ Eliott Erwitt
Loading a black and white film into your camera forced you to think in black and white. This is different with digital photography because it’s easy to convert a color image to monotones.
There are plenty of tools to help you do this. The Nik Software Silver Effects Pro is a superb Photoshop plug-in for converting color images to black and white.
Purposefully photographing in black and white is different than converting during post production. A photographer must think differently when their intention is to create photos without color. You see in color, so you must learn to disregard the color and think in black and white. Good black and white photography is not about taking the colors out of a photo.
Black and white photography relies on contrast and tone range and how these relate within your compositions. You must learn to look at the tones, not the colors, as you compose your photos.
Light has a huge influence on the tones in a photograph. The camera records reflected light to make photos. The amount and quality of the light used defines how a subject will appear when you take a photo of it. Hard light or soft light will produce very different results. This is the same with color, but it’s more pronounced in black and white photography.
One of the best ways you can learn to do this is by practicing black and white photography exercises.
Choose one subject for these black and white photography exercises
Find one or two interesting subjects to photograph for these exercises. You may even choose to set up a small still life scene with various objects you have around the house. This will allow you to make comparisons and see differences.
You need to find things you can move around and place in different locations.
Look for things that are not all black or all white. A mixture of tones will produce the most helpful results. If you photograph something(s) with white, black and mid-tones you’re going to be able to see the effects more clearly in your photos.
The main aim of these black and white photography exercises is to help you develop a better understanding of tone. Don’t try to make masterpiece photos that you’ll hang on your living room wall. If you do, that will be a bonus.
Soft light, outdoors on a cloudy day using Averaged light metering. Nikon D800, 55mm f/3.5, 1/800 sec, f/8, ISO 400, Manual Mode, Pattern Metering.
Lighting for black and white photography exercises
The reason you need to photograph something you can move is so you can photograph it in different locations and lighting conditions.
The type of light you photograph your subjects in, directly affects how they will look. Using hard light will produce very different-looking black and white photos than when you use soft light.
Strong light creates high contrast, no matter what tone your subject is. Soft light makes an even exposure much easier. Think about the quality of light and how it affects the look and feel of your photographs as you work.
Hard light
Place your subject in a location with hard light. Outside on a sunny day is ideal because you’ll be able to see where the shadows fall.
If you can’t manage that, using an on-camera flash with no diffuser will produce a hard light. You’ll need to take test images and study them to see where the shadows fall.
Take a series of photos from the first angle you think of. Expose some normally. Use averaged metering and set your exposure so the meter reads zero, or let your camera choose the setting if you use an auto mode.
Hard light, outdoors on a sunny day using spot metering from the highlight on the steel jug. Nikon D800, 55mm f/3.5, 1/800 sec, f/11, ISO 400, Manual Mode, Spot Metering.
Next, expose for the highlights.
Take a light meter reading from the brightest part of your composition.
To do this, set your camera’s meter to spot and point the spot at the bright area to take your reading. If you use live view, your camera may display the way your photo will look when you use manual mode. This way, you can adjust the exposure for the highlights based on what you see on your monitor. On many mirrorless cameras, the viewfinder will display the exposure the same as this when you are set to manual mode.
After taking a few photos with these settings, use the same technique to set your exposure so the shadow areas will be exposed well. Take another series of photos.
Hard light, outdoors on a sunny day using spot metering from the darkest area on the black jug. Nikon D800, 55mm f/3.5, 1/250 sec, f/11, ISO 400, Manual Mode, Spot Metering.
If you’re finding this exercise valuable and you have time, repeat this process.
Move around your subject and make compositions from different angles. Remember, the first angle you think to take a photo from is the most obvious, but not always the most interesting. Look at the way the light is falling on your subject and how the shadows look. Repeat the process and take photos at the three different exposure settings.
Soft light
If you’re photographing outdoors in the sun, move your subject into a shady area. Find somewhere outside where there’s still plenty of daylight.
If you’re inside and have been using your flash, take this next series of photos without using your flash. You may need a tripod if there’s not much light.
Soft light, outdoors on a cloudy day using spot metering from the highlight on the steel jug. Nikon D800, 55mm f/3.5, 1/2500 sec, f/8, ISO 400, Manual Mode, Spot Metering.
Repeat the same series of exposures as you did when you were photographing in hard light. Think about the tones in your composition when you are making your exposure readings and looking at the results.
If you’ve been photographing outdoors, move your subject inside and away from any windows or other strong light and repeat the whole process. This lower contrast situation will produce different results again. The variation will be subtle, but it’s interesting to see.
During this process, make notes about what you are doing and your thought process. You don’t need to record your camera settings as these are included in the EXIF data. Instead, write down what you are observing with the tones, light and shadows. Why did you take photos from these angles? How has the light and tone affected the way you’ve chosen to compose your photos?
Soft light, outdoors on a cloudy day using spot metering from the darkest area on the black jug. Nikon D800, 55mm f/3.5, 1/80 sec, f/8, ISO 400, Manual Mode, Spot Metering.
Make the most of shadows
Especially in hard light, shadows have a major impact on black and white photography exercises.
Think about where the light is coming from in relation to where you are with your camera. How does this change the way the composition looks when you move around your subject? How does it change when you move your subject?
This is easier to see when you are working with the sun as your light source. Using flash, you’ll need to refer back to your monitor often to see the variations. Look at the differences in the shadow areas in the different sets of photos. How different do they look when you exposed for the shadows and when you exposed for the highlights?
Once you’ve uploaded the photos to your computer. Select one image from each setup and each exposure setting. Simply desaturate all of these photos. This is not an ideal means for converting your photos to black and white, but it will suffice for this exercise.
Now look at these and compare them. Think about the way they look and the differences between the exposure settings. Consider how the various light has had an effect on the tone of your subjects.
Under hard light and soft light, you’ll notice the tone of your subjects looks different. Each set of photos taken at the various exposure settings will produce very different results. This is particularly noticeable with those taken under hard light.
Choose one photo from each set to make some further post-processing adjustments. Work with the sliders for:
contrast,
shadows,
blacks,
highlights
and whites.
Experiment with these various settings. Play with them. Discover how much impact post-processing has on these black and white photography exercises. What you can do with post-processing monotone images is beyond the scope of this article, so just have some fun with it.
I’d love to see some of your best results and know what you learned by doing this exercise. You can share your photos and thoughts in the comments section below.
The post Black and White Photography Exercises to Help You Improve Your Skills appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kevin Landwer-Johan.
Window light is the way that the sunlight comes through a window or glass door and creates interesting light-play on walls, floors and other surfaces. It creates shadows, it can sometimes create colors. Anyway, get your cameras out and capture the way the light falls through your windows.
You can also play with them in post-processing if you like – make them black and white, or boost contrast. The possibilities are endless.
Check out some of the articles below that give you tips on this week’s challenge.
Tips for photographing WINDOW LIGHT
How to Achieve Great Black and White Photos in Editing
How to Use Color Temperature in Black and White Conversions
How to Create Silky Split Toned Black and White Photos Using Luminosity Masks
12 Tips For Indoor Natural Light Photography
How to Split Tone Black and White Photos in Lightroom
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 favorite photo-sharing site and leave the link to them. Show me your best images in this week’s challenge.
Share in the dPS Facebook Group
You can also share your images in the dPS Facebook group as the challenge is posted there each week as well.
If you tag your photos on Flickr, Instagram, Twitter or other sites – tag them as #DPSwindowLight 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.
The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Window Light appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.
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