This is a great video from Robert Vasquez from Photo Magic Productions. He simply explains, shutter speed, ISO, and depth of field. Awesome job!! His website is www.smays.com
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Here’s another shot from the shoot last week with Rodger Newbold from the Salt Lake Arts Center. Rodger brought along a number of reflectors as well as large plastic mirrors he picked up from an industrial type of store. The mirrors were more powerful than the traditional reflectors and were helpful adding more light to shape around the model.just didn’t cut it. Here, by reflecting the early evening light back on to the model, Jessica, it eliminated shadows and created those beautiful catch lights in her eyes (love this light). Here are a few other steps that I always do for outdoor pictures. If you want to take better pictures, you’re gonna need to learn WHAT makes a good picture. This is a picture I shot, that I like. It’s pretty good, definitely not great. But it has some elements I really like. I can tell you what I think makes a good picture. You definition may be different, but here are my thoughts. 1. Synergy and Composition – The technical elements all work together (depth of field, color quality, etc.) and the composition is well done. If you say to yourself, “I just want to take pictures of my kids or my dog, do I really need to know that stuff?” Here are my two favorite places to visit to view outstanding images. You will find work that moves you, photos that make think, “What the h#$% is that?”, and photos most likely you will hate. It’s fabulous! It’s a collection of some of the world’s best photographers in two places. If you have an image that you shares the beauty in your life, share it with us and we may feature it here. I’m also taking submissions for step-by-step edits. marcel@myphotographica.com
“I love to shoot wide open!” I found those words coming from a newbie photographer who shoots in auto focus a little scary. Let me digress a little and explain what wide open means and then show you WHY you better know something if you shoot wide open and want to have your pictures turn out good.
This is Marcel speak. I’m throwing out technical terms and just going to give it to you plain and simple. Shooting wide open, at a low depth of field, on your aperture means you are using a low number and thus the portion of the image that will appear in focus will be more limited. This was shot with an aperture of 2.8. Shooting wide open means you get a nice cool blur effect. It’s great for portraiture, dandelion stems, and low light situations.
My son, Child 2 as I like to call him, asked “So I’m standing here in the middle of this field holding this stem because….?” Because I want to help you, dear readers, to get this concept. This was shot with of aperture of f/stop of 10. F/10 means more will be in focus. This picture should be sharper, but standing in a middle of field with Child 2, pondering the meaning of the situation, I was laughing…a lot. Let’s just leave it at that for right now. If you want a lot to be in focus, use a higher depth of field. Why shooting with a lower depth of field can be scary? Because people shoot in auto focus (or Auto Frack as I like to call it). You really want to mess up your pictures, shoot them in Auto Frack.
This shot? Auto Frack at 2.8. Beautiful golden autumn evening. My daughter or Child 1, is here wearing her favorite hat (which is actually mine by the way). Auto Frack focuses lovely on the hair, but the eyes? Generally the most important feature to be sharp, blurry, but boy that hair and part of the hat NICE! X for Blurry and Stars for Focused=bad shot.
Ok, so now I tell Auto Frack to go to heck and manual focus at 2.8, oh wow! It worked! Still, the left eye is softer than the right. For them both to be in focus they need to be on the same plane. They are not. You will have a button on the side of your lens that will give you the option of auto or manual focus. On the Canon lenses, it is located generally on the left side and will say AF for auto focus or MF for manual focus. Switch to MF for the most consistent results.
So, now I shoot at f/6.3 and look, oh wow, both eyes in focus (almost. the left is still out a little…the dog was jumping on me, the cat was lounging on my feet, and Child 2 was throwing dandelions stems in the shot, we will call it good). Now, if I’m standing 10 feet away will this difference be so pronounced? No, but I’ll leave that for another day. You want to understand depth of field, turn off the auto focus and practice. For a more in depth discussion and somewhat confusing article, visit, http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/dof.shtml. You may have to read it ten or fifteen times. I will visit this subject again. Next week on Photography Tips, “Why your Camera LCD is a Liar and how to avoid Deception and Betrayal from the one you love”. I’ll be here on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays.
I do not know this man. This is not my child. But this is what I do know. This is the man who could someday save my child. He’s a firefighter, that’s what he does. But the way he holds this child and coos to him as the baby grabs his face while the child’s mother climbs aboard the fire engine, tells me something even more. This is the man who would brave a burning building, and hold this child as tenderly as he would hold his own while embers of fire rained upon him. This moment tells me that for this man, what he does is more than a job. This photo testifies to this. So this is my photography tip for the week. Take pictures of your life around you. People you don’t know, moments of daily goodness that testify to the beauty of daily living or the challenges that life presents. You have a thousand pictures of your child smiling or of your cat or of you and your friends, use your camera to do more. I took this picture for nobody other than myself. I don’t anticipate it will ever be in a magazine or gallery or that it will bring me income of any sort. I took this picture because it is a moment that testifies to the beauty of the world I live in, here and now, and it fills me with a measure of wonder, gratitude. and happiness. I encourage you to the same for your life.
Due to techincal challenges, “How to Add Text and A Border in Photoshop” will be featured at a later time. I broke something which if you know me shouldn’t be any big surprise. So today, I’m giving a hot photography tip! These are my parents. My dad actually hasn’t retired yet. He’s been too busy having fun. It makes me wonder if he’s having this much of a good time now, what will retirement be like? Skydiving in the South Pacific if my mom has any say. I titled this shot, “When I’m 64″. My dad, who rarely if ever reads my blog, wanted me to make sure I knew he really wasn’t 64…yeah I know…but there’s a song by the Beatles, “When I’m 64″ thus the title. Photography Tip for the Week Sometimes getting the right shot requires thinking outside of the box. Earlier this week I talked about capturing motion and emotion. This goes along the same lines but takes it even a step further. When I was boating with my family, I wanted to capture the sense of freedom and joy that I felt as I watched my parents enthralled with the moment. There wasn’t a lot of room to move around on the boat so I kneeled down and shot into the rear view mirror. I made sure my exposure was spot on and clicked away. We were speeding along at 40 mph and it was choppy so I was lucky get the shot without bruising my eye. If you have a point a shoot, make sure the setting on the top is in action mode, like with guy running or my friend has a guy swinging a golf club (whoever thought golf could be action must be a huge Tiger Woods fan). You memories can be posed pictures of you standing with your friends or family in front of a boat or they can look something like this. It’s totally up to you. Good luck and happy memories! So it’s fall which means the phone starts ring because everyone wants to get in for family photos for their Christmas cards. They want the fall leaves, the matching outfits with freshly combed hair. Maybe that’s your family, but it certainly isn’t mine.
How often do we stand for pictures with our eyes wide like deer caught in the headlights, unmoving, almost like mannequins. What are you going to say to your kids? Remember that time when we went to Yellowstone and stood in front of the lake? Wasn’t that great? So my photo tip for the tip is to be brave, capture your life as it.
Take pictures when your hair is messy. Who cares if you look 10 pds overweight? You probably are. So here I am with my hair messy, 15 pounds overweight, with my bra showing, and you know what my kids do when they see this photo? They laugh hysterically and start recalling every detail from that moment they can remember. As I often tell my children, “You only live once!” So capture your today. As a wise man once said, “There are no remembered tomorrows.”
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