Photo of the Week - Week 8

As we've traveled and lived in different places, one of the challenges is to try and photograph sometime that has been photographed thousands of times, but to do it in a unique way.

Give it some thought

The scenic overlooks are there for a reason, but what can we do different with the lighting, exposure, framing and composition? What is your narrative for your image? What story are you trying to tell?

Scout your area - Pay attention

Once you are on location, take a look around. What do you see? What is the light doing? What is unique?

When I've got my kids with me, I task them to help Daddy find pictures, which serves a few different functions. First, they are occupied with a task - but make sure you do take some photos of what they point out. Pixels are free. If they feel you are paying attention to what they find, they'll continue to be enthusiastic and they will develop their own photographic eye. Second, kids tend to notice a lot of things we adults overlook or ignore. They have a different perspective on life. And they are a lot shorter, so their viewpoint is physically different.

Sometimes you have to wander off the beaten path a little. What are the tourists NOT taking pictures of? What is behind the group or off to the side?

Change your perspective

How does your three-year old see the world? Crouch down and see. What would this statue look like if you were lying on your back looking up at it?

This takes a bit of gumption - some people may inevitably look at you as the crazy foreign tourist laying on his back. Well, do you want the shot or not? I'm hoping that as my children grown up seeing me do this, it'll mitigate their embarrassment as teenagers ...

Revisit the location

One of the benefits of living somewhere, anywhere, is that you have the opportunity to see the same places under different conditions. In our case, we've been to some tourist locations around the world multiple times- each visitor that comes has got to see the Parthenon or the Equator. As I've trekked out to some places for the fifth or sixth time in the last 18 months, there is always something different.

Photo of the Week - Week 7

This week's post - cropping. The photo is from last summer, but it's one of the few instances where I have a couple of different versions of it and it makes the point well.

Here's the original photo:



Here's the cropped version:



Shutter Speed: 1/800s
Aperture: F4.0
ISO: 100
Lens: Canon EF 70-200mm F4/L
Aperture Priority Mode
Exposure Compensation: +1/3

While neither is a prize-winning photograph, I think they illustrates how cropping can be used to improve the composition and framing of an image we've made. You can't manipulate a bad image into a great one, but cropping can improve the framing and, to an extent, the composition of an image.

The original image, one of a series of rapid-fire shots (trying to shoot a bird in flight and get the wings in the right position), was not a well-thought out composition; I was just trying to get an image of the bird in flight. I knew I wanted the bird on the left side of the reflection and sun and the wings up or down, hence the rapid fire shots. As a result, the composition is kind of blase, the bird not really centered, and the whole image, really, lacking in balance.

The cropped image has symmetry and feels more balanced. In the image below I've added some lines to illustrate this:



While the sun and bird are on the right-hand side of the image (though the bird is almost centered), the bird is in flight, with implied motion into the left side of the image. He's still got someplace to go.

Again, neither is a really stunning image, but I think this example illustrates well how a bit of cropping can help improve an image.

Photo of the Week - Week 6

We were recently able to take another trip to the LDS Temple in Guayaquil. These are always beautifully constructed buildings; we would be staying at the lodging on the Temple grounds, so I was anxious to get some pictures at night.

Shutter Speed: 1s
Aperture: F11
Mode: Aperture Priority
Exposure Bias: -1
ISO: 400
Focal Length: 17mm
Lens: Tamron 17-55mm

Processed in Adobe Lightroom 4 beta.

This was the first time I brought real camera gear to Guayaquil, having regretted not doing so on previous trips. While staying in the lodging was a different story (sharing a room with all three girls who were excited AND hopped up on sugar), I was pleased with the images I was able to make of the Temple. Here is a slideshow of all of my Temple pictures:

Leaving the Open-source Software Bandwagon ...

I've been debating for a while about changing my software tools for photo editing and manipulation. For years now I've been a big proponent of the open-source tools available, my primary tool being GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, but also including QTPFSGUI (Luminance HDR), a HDR creation tool, and UfRAW for RAW file processing. However, the biggest reason behind my shift has been failure to deliver, bugs, and lack of features in the open-source software, the biggest being a lack or difficulty in dealing with higher bit-depths on image files.

The first big jump I made was in my HDR processing software - I ponied up the money and switched to Photomatix Pro, which is really the industry standard for HDR image processing. Why? For the longest time I had been quite happy using Luminance HDR and got comparable results when compared to Photomatix. Recent releases, however, were a bit buggy and I was not able to get the results I wanted, no matter what work-arounds I tried.

And thus the slide down the slippery slope began ...

I saw that Adobe is offering a free, fully-functional beta download of their Lightroom 4 and figured I would give it a shot. It will work until LR4 is officially released, but that gives me about two months to give it a trial run. Well, their ploy has worked, for me at least. I plan on purchasing the full copy when it is released.

Not having delved into the Photoshop/Lightroom world (scorned it, actually, for the longest time), I have to say I am very impressed with LR4, even in Beta. First, it handles the higher bit depths of RAW files. For a brief discussion on this and the importance of working at a higher bit depth, go here. GIMP works at the 8-bit level while my Canon 7D RAW images are at 14 bits. Secondly, the interface is great - the basic workflow you take an image through is essentially top to bottom in the Develop module. Third, features. This follows on a bit from the interface and workflow setup. LR4 beta has great features and they are easy to find and use. You don't have to go hunting through a series of drop-down menus or get a third-party plugin (that you hope works) to do many basic functions. Fourth, available training. Adobe has great training videos on their web site that walk you through the features of a product and how to use it. This is a company that wants you to learn and enjoy and the tools they have created - and pony up the big money for them - their existence depends on that.

The one hook is that, while LR4 can do many things, it can't do them all. One feature that is lacking in LR which I use often is layers and layer masks. Photoshop does this, plus so much more.

Photo of the Week - Week 5

This post is a bit late, so I'll have the next week right after this one...

I have been wanting to work more with the softbox, to get some practice before I do a "real" shoot with anyone. Luckily, we've had some birthdays this past month, so that gives me a great excuse.I also have downloaded the beta version of Lightroom 4 to play with - so far I'm hooked.




Shutter Speed: 1/100s
Aperture: F7.1
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 50mm
Lens: Tamron 17-55mm

This is a simple portrait, but just a couple of things I like about it: The background color brings out the green in her eyes and the color of the bear compliments the scene nicely. The lighting is simple - just the softbox at about 1/4 power, just enough to open the shadows up slightly.

Photo of the Week - Week 4

This week's topic - shooting at a high ISO.

I typically try to shoot the lowest ISO possible (usually 100) in order to get the cleanest image possible. That said, sometimes it just isn't possible to shoot that low. Since I haven't used my higher ISO settings that much on my camera, I figured I needed to play around with it a bit and try to push my camera a bit to see what it can do.

I usually shoot in manual mode and changing the ISO was just one extra thing to do. Besides, I usually want to shoot at ISO 100 so that just left me with the aperture and shutter speed to get the exposure I wanted. However, one of the reasons I bought my new camera last spring was (supposedly) to be able to shoot cleaner images at a high ISO. This past week I finally got around to it and have found some rules of thumb I like for shooting decent images at a higher ISO.

My general settings have been to shoot in Aperture Priority mode (Av), with the exposure compensation set to over expose slightly: +1/3 to +1 stop.

I did use Canon Digital Photo Professional 3.8.1 (came with the camera) to reduce the chromatic noise just a little bit, but not much. When I previously shot higher ISOs, I would use Noiseware, but I generally used much stronger noise reduction.

Follow the links through to view the full-size image via Flickr.

Shutter Speed: 1/5s
Aperture: F8.0
ISO:1600
Exposure Compensation: +1
Focal Length: 50mm
Lens: Tamron 17-55mm

Shutter Speed: 1/500s
Aperture: F5.6
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation: +1/3
Focal Length: 50mm
Lens: Tamron 17-55mm

Shutter Speed: 1/20s
Aperture: F5.6
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation: +1
Focal Length: 47mm
Lens: Tamron 17-55mm

The trade-off: With the noise reduction, the image may not be as sharp as one shot at ISO 100 with no noise reduction. But then, I don't plan on printing any of these poster-sized ... so that works for me.

But just as an example, contrast the above images (full-size view) with the below, which is shot at a low ISO and lit with a softbox:

Shutter Speed: 1/100s
Aperture: F5.6
ISO:100

Focal Length: 50mm
Lens: Tamron 17-55mm

Photo of the Week - Week 3

I finally got the rest of my Christmas presents and got a chance to play around with one of them - a 24" square softbox for my flashes. I've been using shoot-through umbrellas and my homemade beauty dish, but have wanted a softbox for a while. I'll post some other pictures another time, but wanted to get one posted.


Shutter Speed: 1/200s
Aperture: F4.0
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 50mm
Lens: Tamron 17-55mm
Flash: 1/4 power, through softbox

True to its name, a softbox gives nice, soft light that just wraps around your subject. In the above shot it's about two feet from her, above and slightly to the left, as you can tell by the highlight in her eye.

I had been shooting some pictures of the cats - surprisingly enough, they hung out and let me snap a few photos of them - when Natalie came by. She insisted that she wanted to take "lots" of pictures, most of which were her jumping through the air. After a while, she laid down and relaxed on the couch, which is when I got this picture. Just a bit of post-production to make it black and white (red filter) and to add a slight vignette.

New Black and White Gallery

On my Zenfolio storefront web site, I have added a black and white gallery, with some of my black and white images. I'll be adding to this as time goes on, but just wanted to put something out there now!

There are some images in here that are not in other galleries.

Photo of the Week - Week 2

We finally were able to make it to the Panecillo, a prominent landmark here in Quito. I had tried to go there before with some friends who were visiting from out of town, but despite driving for way too long, we never made it. I decided that the Panecillo was a kind of mythical place that one could never reach. This time, however, some local friends guided us. I have to admit, however, that in all the long time I drove around unsuccessfully, I never once saw the roads we went on ... it was a whole neighborhood painted a kind of orangish-red.

Anyway, I had been trying to imagine the kind of images I wanted to make, should I ever actually get to the Panecillo. It's a large statue situated on a hill and overlooks the Old Town. If you've seen photos from Quito, there is probably a photo of this statue in there somewhere. I wanted to get photos of this icon that were not the standard, iconic photos. Having never been there, plus having five small kids in tow, meant this would have to be more of a recon photo shoot, though I did get some images I liked.

My thought was to really change the perspective of my shots - try and look at the statue from a different point of view than the standard. The idea I had was to lay on the ground and look up at the statue, as well as pulling in tighter for more detail shots. Here's one of the resulting images:



Shutter Speed: 1/60s
Aperture: F13
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 70mm
Lens: Canon 70-200mm L
Camera mounted on a tripod

In many of the other shots, I was able to get some good clouds in the background, which really add to the shots. In this one, however, no clouds, just plain blue sky. I wanted something to modify this and give something of a back lit appearance to the statue. I added a lomo effect, which gives a slight vignette to the edges of the frame. This time around, it worked well to achieve the look I wanted for this particular image.

The only other post-processing I did was to use the clone tool to get rid of the lightning rod sticking out of her head; just too distracting.

Photo of the Week - Week 1

Here's the first post of the new year and my new goal ...

Flash and Movement

Taking pictures with flash while the subject is moving can sometimes be a bit tricky; most flashes will have a maximum sync speed of 1/250 second, while kids will often be moving much fast than that ... If you've coughed up the money for a brand-name flash, then you can do high-speed sync, which will allow you to get to much higher shutter speeds. Another discussion for another time; I'm using more economically-priced flashes and remote flash triggers.

Timing - If you get your timing right, then you can mitigate ay effects of movement and the use of flash. Basically, your subject is moving slow enough that you won't get ghosting (see next part).

Shutter Speed: 1/320s
Aperture: F5.6
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 50mm
Lens: Tamron 17-55mm

In the above photo, I got him right at the apex of his swing - he's slowed down enough that he's essentially not moving, though just for a split second, so the timing is crucial. His father is holding the flash, which is at 1/8 power, with a diffuser cap on it, about three feet from his face, with the flash sideways (long side up and down to match the subject's body angle). Confession: I lucked out with the higher shutter speed - usually anything above 1/250s gives me a black band across the bottom of the frame. It may have been because the flash was at such a low power it gives me that extra bit of light but doesn't do too much more to the exposure of the frame. In other words, I get the highlights in the eyes, but the overall exposure is pretty close to what it would be without the flash. I wish I could say it was all planned out that way, but it wasn't ...

And now for something different ....

Shutter Speed: 1/15s
Aperture: F6.3
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 50mm
Lens: Tamron 17-55mm

In this case, the subject was spinning around and dancing when I make this exposure. The slow shutter speed will accentuate motion, giving me some blur/ghosting. The flash in this case fires when the shutter opens, at the beginning of the exposure, giving me part of the image that is well-exposed and in focus. As the shutter remains open other parts of the image are exposed, though not as much as with the initial flash. You can also set the flash to fire at the end of the exposure, right before the shutter closes. This is helpful if you want to "burn in" a dark background but then have a subject you want to expose with a flash.

The tricky part is making sure that part of the image that is well-exposed and in focus is the part you want, in this case the face. Since I wanted to convey movement in this image, it's going to be different than a crisp, static shot.