Saturday, June 26, 2010
New Farm Park Wedding
The 'best of' series of a wedding I shot today in New Farm Park. The photos are, annoyingly, in reverse chronological order. Stupid blogspot!
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Photo Disect - Natural Light Portrait
I've been keen to write a post about this kind of shot for a while - just like the city at night and professional event shots, mastering a simple but beautiful portrait is a popular challenge for beginners with DSLRs. While the pros may use thousands of megawatts of studio flashes with softboxes and reflectors, there is no reason that anyone can't use natural light to produce a portrait just as stunning.
Before we start - there's one massively important thing you need to know. Simple portraits almost always work best with out of focus background (and sometimes foreground) elements. This means you'll need a lens with a nice maximum aperture such as f/2 or under. Lenses that come with digital SLRs, known as the kit lenses, will usually have a maximum aperture of about f/4. This is not good enough for portraits!!!! The best option here is to get a 50mm f/1.8 lens. Canon's version is about $130 new and I think Nikon's is $170. This lens is the shit, go get one now!!!!!!!! The reason it is so cheap is that it doesn't zoom in and out - saving lots of effort for the manufacturers. As well as having a much wider aperture, it is much much sharper than your regular kit lenses. Anyway, enough about that..
I just shot a great example today of a simple but effective professional actor headshot portrait (that I was paid to take!). The rest of the shoot was strobed with external flash equipment, but I saw the opportunity to use natural light and took it:
There are some pretty basic rules for portraits that ensure you get a good shot. They're not by any means the only way to shoot a portrait - photography that breaks the rules is often the most amazing - but they will definitely help you get a great shot especially as a beginner.
The first portrait rule I used is a wide aperture. I selected f/1.8 on aperture priority mode to ensure a narrow depth of field, this sends the background out of focus and brings focus towards the face of the subject. The background elements however were close enough to the camera to not appear as a complete blur - you can still see shapes and outlines which keeps interest. Hypothetically, I used f/1.2, the background may have been lost, and if I used f/2.5 it may have been sharper and distracting. You should do well with apertures around f/1.8 - f/3.5 when you're using a 50mm lens.
The second portrait rule I used is the positioning of light. Photos of people look most natural when light is falling across the face - usually looks good at about 45 degrees. I have positioned the subject here with an open window to the right, which allows nice soft ambient light to fall across the face. The backdrop is also relatively dark compared to the subject which is always a bonus. Always, always, always be on the lookout for where the light is falling when you're shooting natural light. 45 degrees is safe - but it can be fun trying out different angles too for different dramatic effect.
The third portrait rule I used is what is known as 'the rule of thirds'. This involves intentionally placing interesting elements in a photo at the intersections of lines at 1/3 from the top or bottom and sides of the shot:
You can see here the eyes are in line with the line 1/3 of the photo from the top. This is usually an extremely effective way to shoot a portrait. Check out Obama's official presidential portrait, same thing!
There are plenty of other compositional elements that photography lecturers could and would go on about here, but in my mind getting the basics right in this case made for a good shot. The shot isn't amazing or overly interesting, but it has a very professional look and has pleased the client.
So if you don't already have one, get a 50mm 1.8 and remember these three:
Wide Aperture
Position of Light
Rule of Thirds
Have a go shooting family members or my personal favourite, pets, for practice. Once you understand how to use wide aperture and position your light, feel free to openly break the rule of thirds as much as you like and go for some interesting and different shots.
Good luck!
Cheers
Tal
Before we start - there's one massively important thing you need to know. Simple portraits almost always work best with out of focus background (and sometimes foreground) elements. This means you'll need a lens with a nice maximum aperture such as f/2 or under. Lenses that come with digital SLRs, known as the kit lenses, will usually have a maximum aperture of about f/4. This is not good enough for portraits!!!! The best option here is to get a 50mm f/1.8 lens. Canon's version is about $130 new and I think Nikon's is $170. This lens is the shit, go get one now!!!!!!!! The reason it is so cheap is that it doesn't zoom in and out - saving lots of effort for the manufacturers. As well as having a much wider aperture, it is much much sharper than your regular kit lenses. Anyway, enough about that..
I just shot a great example today of a simple but effective professional actor headshot portrait (that I was paid to take!). The rest of the shoot was strobed with external flash equipment, but I saw the opportunity to use natural light and took it:
There are some pretty basic rules for portraits that ensure you get a good shot. They're not by any means the only way to shoot a portrait - photography that breaks the rules is often the most amazing - but they will definitely help you get a great shot especially as a beginner.The first portrait rule I used is a wide aperture. I selected f/1.8 on aperture priority mode to ensure a narrow depth of field, this sends the background out of focus and brings focus towards the face of the subject. The background elements however were close enough to the camera to not appear as a complete blur - you can still see shapes and outlines which keeps interest. Hypothetically, I used f/1.2, the background may have been lost, and if I used f/2.5 it may have been sharper and distracting. You should do well with apertures around f/1.8 - f/3.5 when you're using a 50mm lens.
The second portrait rule I used is the positioning of light. Photos of people look most natural when light is falling across the face - usually looks good at about 45 degrees. I have positioned the subject here with an open window to the right, which allows nice soft ambient light to fall across the face. The backdrop is also relatively dark compared to the subject which is always a bonus. Always, always, always be on the lookout for where the light is falling when you're shooting natural light. 45 degrees is safe - but it can be fun trying out different angles too for different dramatic effect.
The third portrait rule I used is what is known as 'the rule of thirds'. This involves intentionally placing interesting elements in a photo at the intersections of lines at 1/3 from the top or bottom and sides of the shot:
You can see here the eyes are in line with the line 1/3 of the photo from the top. This is usually an extremely effective way to shoot a portrait. Check out Obama's official presidential portrait, same thing!
There are plenty of other compositional elements that photography lecturers could and would go on about here, but in my mind getting the basics right in this case made for a good shot. The shot isn't amazing or overly interesting, but it has a very professional look and has pleased the client.
So if you don't already have one, get a 50mm 1.8 and remember these three:
Wide Aperture
Position of Light
Rule of Thirds
Have a go shooting family members or my personal favourite, pets, for practice. Once you understand how to use wide aperture and position your light, feel free to openly break the rule of thirds as much as you like and go for some interesting and different shots.
Good luck!
Cheers
Tal
Monday, May 24, 2010
Photo Disect - Simple Sport Shots
Sports photography, like event photography, is a discipline that will see you heading home with hundreds of photos on your card to sort through, especially if, like me, you are doing it as a job. With so many shots to individually sort through and post, I don't want to be doing edits on individual photos to perfect brightness, saturation and everything else. This means I'll always try to get the settings right on-camera as much as possible. It is inevitable though that you'll need to crop almost every sports shot you take, as the action is usually quite fast and unpredictable.
Here is a simple example.
I haven't edited the photo in photoshop - only cropped from this, the original image from the camera:
I have hundreds of sports shots to choose from but this one is a better example, there's a definite scene unfolding - you can see competition between the teams and most importantly for ball sports, you can see the ball. It's not difficult to understand the concept of a good sports photo, however it can be extremely difficult to nail your technique, especially with consistency.
I have shot this photo in aperture priority mode on f/7.1 and ISO800. This gave me a very fast shutter speed of 1/3200s. I have selected f/7.1 as a decently sharp aperture for my lens - a 70-300mm telephoto. Cheaper plastic lenses like mine don't cope too well at smaller f/numbers like 4-5.6, especially when zoomed to the maximum. This is why I like to stay around f/8 to ensure good sharpness. I will use ISO800 even on bright days to get as fast a shutter speed as possible to stop the action. 1/400 is probably the slowest you would want to be shooting at. Don't be afraid to go to higher ISOs if it will mean you get a sharp shutter speed - its better to have a grainy sharp shot than a blurry one! Sports shooting is about capturing moments as they happen, and its ok to sacrifice some image quality to make sure you get 'the shot'. I shoot JPEGs with my personal +2 saturation edit so the shots come up vibrant and natural off camera (tutorial here).
Nailing the technical stuff is important and can be difficult, but as I said you should be fine shooting aperture priority at ISO800-1600 and around f/8. If the photos are too dark or too bright, use your exposure wheel to compensate. Keep in mind these settings are best for shooting outside in the daytime. If you are shooting indoors or at night, you're best cranking your ISO as high as possible and having your f/number as low as possible. You still may struggle to get a fast shutter speed - unfortunately the best way to shoot indoors or at night is by spending thousands and thousands on cameras with great high ISO perfomance (eg. Canon 1d markIV for $6000) and lenses with apertures around and below f/2.8 (eg. Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 IS for $3000). Ouch!! If you must shoot indoors or at night, try out that 50mm f/1.8 of yours that you picked up for a lowly $130. You won't get as close, but you'll be able to use f/1.8 to get a very fast shutter speed, making your shots nice and sharp - just make sure you crop in photoshop afterwards.
More on the technical side - autofocus. You will want to shoot on continous autofocus mode, which means that the camera will constantly change focus based on what youre pointing the camera at. For example if a player comes toward you, the camera will continously focus on the player closer and closer and you can shoot as you please. On Canon DSLRs this is called AI focus, on Nikons I believe it is AF-C. DSLRs also give you the option of selecting one certain point to focus with (check out this page and scroll down to 'autofocus points'). I always find that the middle point is perfect, and very simple. With all the action going on to worry about, its best to simplify your focussing as much as possible - so remember, always shoot continous focus mode with the middle point.
Now that we're done with settings, lets move on to something even more important - where you take the photo from. Obviously firstly try to be as close to the action as possible. The best shots will tend to be taken as the player is coming towards the camera. For example shooting something like rugby its always good to shoot up and down the sideline (yes, you have to run) and stay about 20 or 30m in front of the where the action is happening. As the play gets closer to the goal you would want to shoot from behind the goal-line. This is going to be different with every sport but just keep in mind that a player facing or running towards the camera will always be a simple way to get a great shot.
Another part of your positioning will be to do with lighting, especially during the day. If it's cloudy, you can actually count yourself lucky as you'll be able to get great shots from all angles (even if you have to bump up the ISO for darkness). If it's sunny, you have to be very aware. You have no control over which way the sun is shining, only over where you position yourself in relation to it. Always try to have the sun at your back so players are well lit. Most sports will have teams running in different directions per half so you will get away with it, but sometimes like with athletics you won't get a choice. Try to only shoot with the sun behind players' backs when you absolutely need to. Here's an example of a photo taken with the sun behind a player's back. Usually you will need to dial up your exposure wheel to compensate for the dark shadows.
The photo has still turned out ok, but you can see how bright the grass is compared to the player, taking away the eye's natural focus towards the action. Scroll back up to the original photo I posted and you can see the difference. As I've said, if you can help it, try your best to get the sun pointed at your subject.
There's really only one more thing to cover, which is the most obvious but without some decent experience can easily be the most difficult. Pressing the button! It's surprisingly hard to capture a certain moment in sport - getting that ball sailing perfectly off a foot, capturing a high jump right at its peak, etc. This can really only be helped by combination of experience, knowledge of the sport and using a DSLR, which has no lag between when you hit the button and when the picture is taken. People think that they can buy a camera with 7 photos per second and they'll just hold the button down and hope to get the shot. Surpringly, sport tends to happen even faster than that so no matter how fast your speed, you still need to hit that button at the exact time. There's an easy way to practice this. It sounds silly, but I've taken this advice from some professional sports shooters, to just sit at home and take photos of the sport on TV. Practice hitting the shutter button at the very best moment - you'll be surprised how much it helps you.
There's not really much more I can think of right now. Keep in mind that this tutorial is for capturing 'simple' sports photos. Like anything, there is infinite room to be a bit more creative, but for general sports shooting, this tutorial should have you covered. If you don't like sport much (photographers tend to be pretty nerdy), it's still very helpful for your photography to get out and shoot the action. It is awesome to help you practice getting 'the shot', balancing settings, zoom, position and a lot of things happening at once. If you go shoot a mate's game, you'll be in their good books for a while - sports shots make great facebook profile pictures ;)
Good luck!
Cheers
Tal
Here is a simple example.
I haven't edited the photo in photoshop - only cropped from this, the original image from the camera:
I have hundreds of sports shots to choose from but this one is a better example, there's a definite scene unfolding - you can see competition between the teams and most importantly for ball sports, you can see the ball. It's not difficult to understand the concept of a good sports photo, however it can be extremely difficult to nail your technique, especially with consistency.
I have shot this photo in aperture priority mode on f/7.1 and ISO800. This gave me a very fast shutter speed of 1/3200s. I have selected f/7.1 as a decently sharp aperture for my lens - a 70-300mm telephoto. Cheaper plastic lenses like mine don't cope too well at smaller f/numbers like 4-5.6, especially when zoomed to the maximum. This is why I like to stay around f/8 to ensure good sharpness. I will use ISO800 even on bright days to get as fast a shutter speed as possible to stop the action. 1/400 is probably the slowest you would want to be shooting at. Don't be afraid to go to higher ISOs if it will mean you get a sharp shutter speed - its better to have a grainy sharp shot than a blurry one! Sports shooting is about capturing moments as they happen, and its ok to sacrifice some image quality to make sure you get 'the shot'. I shoot JPEGs with my personal +2 saturation edit so the shots come up vibrant and natural off camera (tutorial here).
Nailing the technical stuff is important and can be difficult, but as I said you should be fine shooting aperture priority at ISO800-1600 and around f/8. If the photos are too dark or too bright, use your exposure wheel to compensate. Keep in mind these settings are best for shooting outside in the daytime. If you are shooting indoors or at night, you're best cranking your ISO as high as possible and having your f/number as low as possible. You still may struggle to get a fast shutter speed - unfortunately the best way to shoot indoors or at night is by spending thousands and thousands on cameras with great high ISO perfomance (eg. Canon 1d markIV for $6000) and lenses with apertures around and below f/2.8 (eg. Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 IS for $3000). Ouch!! If you must shoot indoors or at night, try out that 50mm f/1.8 of yours that you picked up for a lowly $130. You won't get as close, but you'll be able to use f/1.8 to get a very fast shutter speed, making your shots nice and sharp - just make sure you crop in photoshop afterwards.
More on the technical side - autofocus. You will want to shoot on continous autofocus mode, which means that the camera will constantly change focus based on what youre pointing the camera at. For example if a player comes toward you, the camera will continously focus on the player closer and closer and you can shoot as you please. On Canon DSLRs this is called AI focus, on Nikons I believe it is AF-C. DSLRs also give you the option of selecting one certain point to focus with (check out this page and scroll down to 'autofocus points'). I always find that the middle point is perfect, and very simple. With all the action going on to worry about, its best to simplify your focussing as much as possible - so remember, always shoot continous focus mode with the middle point.
Now that we're done with settings, lets move on to something even more important - where you take the photo from. Obviously firstly try to be as close to the action as possible. The best shots will tend to be taken as the player is coming towards the camera. For example shooting something like rugby its always good to shoot up and down the sideline (yes, you have to run) and stay about 20 or 30m in front of the where the action is happening. As the play gets closer to the goal you would want to shoot from behind the goal-line. This is going to be different with every sport but just keep in mind that a player facing or running towards the camera will always be a simple way to get a great shot.
Another part of your positioning will be to do with lighting, especially during the day. If it's cloudy, you can actually count yourself lucky as you'll be able to get great shots from all angles (even if you have to bump up the ISO for darkness). If it's sunny, you have to be very aware. You have no control over which way the sun is shining, only over where you position yourself in relation to it. Always try to have the sun at your back so players are well lit. Most sports will have teams running in different directions per half so you will get away with it, but sometimes like with athletics you won't get a choice. Try to only shoot with the sun behind players' backs when you absolutely need to. Here's an example of a photo taken with the sun behind a player's back. Usually you will need to dial up your exposure wheel to compensate for the dark shadows.
The photo has still turned out ok, but you can see how bright the grass is compared to the player, taking away the eye's natural focus towards the action. Scroll back up to the original photo I posted and you can see the difference. As I've said, if you can help it, try your best to get the sun pointed at your subject.There's really only one more thing to cover, which is the most obvious but without some decent experience can easily be the most difficult. Pressing the button! It's surprisingly hard to capture a certain moment in sport - getting that ball sailing perfectly off a foot, capturing a high jump right at its peak, etc. This can really only be helped by combination of experience, knowledge of the sport and using a DSLR, which has no lag between when you hit the button and when the picture is taken. People think that they can buy a camera with 7 photos per second and they'll just hold the button down and hope to get the shot. Surpringly, sport tends to happen even faster than that so no matter how fast your speed, you still need to hit that button at the exact time. There's an easy way to practice this. It sounds silly, but I've taken this advice from some professional sports shooters, to just sit at home and take photos of the sport on TV. Practice hitting the shutter button at the very best moment - you'll be surprised how much it helps you.
There's not really much more I can think of right now. Keep in mind that this tutorial is for capturing 'simple' sports photos. Like anything, there is infinite room to be a bit more creative, but for general sports shooting, this tutorial should have you covered. If you don't like sport much (photographers tend to be pretty nerdy), it's still very helpful for your photography to get out and shoot the action. It is awesome to help you practice getting 'the shot', balancing settings, zoom, position and a lot of things happening at once. If you go shoot a mate's game, you'll be in their good books for a while - sports shots make great facebook profile pictures ;)
Good luck!
Cheers
Tal
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Photo Disect - Long Exposure Movement
Here I'll be disecting two basic types of long exposure photography - one where the background is steady but the subject is moving, and one where the subject is steady and the background moving. Both of these especially convey movement, and will give different effects depending on the subject and technique involved. Here are the shots I've chosen:
The first is a very cool moving shot of some scooters in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. The shot for me sums up the extremely hectic pace of the city and its constant traffic. One of the scooters is pin sharp with the background of the shot in motion blur. This kind of shot is fantastic for conveying speed and chaos. What you have to do to get this kind of shot is keep your lens pointed directly at the moving target. You may need to take 10 shots in a row to get a sharp one, but it will be worth it. I usually work these types of shots at a shutter speed between 1/4 of a second and 1/50th of a second depending on how fast the subject is travelling and how long your lens is.
This shot, I was shooting on Tv (Shutter speed priority) at 1/20th of a second, ISO100. This shutter speed was fast enough that I could expect my subject to be sharp, but slow enough to show lots of movement. Have a try yourself! Set your camera on shutter speed priority mode, ISO100, and work between 1/4 and 1/50th tracking and shooting cars as they go past and see what results you can get. This technique is very interesting and popular as it really stands out.
As for the second photo, this is working with a very similar concept but in a different way. You will need a tripod for this method. This shot keeps a still background with your subject a blurry moving object in the foreground. I was standing across from the opera house close to sunset getting shot after shot, the same boring view, and wanted to get something different. Instead of waiting for the ferries to go pass before I took a photo, I decided to try to include them. A regular snapshot would just have the ferry looking stationary in front of the opera house - it would just make me look like an amateur! So I thought the ferries might look good in motion skimming across the water in front of the opera house instead - it would be less distracting and would show off the movement that occurs so constantly in the harbour.
The ferries weren't going as fast as the scooter, and I had a tripod to keep the shot stable so I decided to go for a longer shutter speed of about 3 seconds. I was shooting my lens at 35mm, I connected my remote shutter to my camera and waited for the moment that two ferries were about to pass each other exactly in front of the opera house. I hit the button, the camera did its thing, and voila! There was a few attempts before and after this one, but it came out the best.
Neither of these had any editing done apart from a simple levels (brightness/contrast) adjustment.
So you can see the kind of cool results that are possible shooting longer exposure times to show movement. Whichever option you choose will be dependent on your environment and what you are trying to shoot.
Good luck!
Cheers
Tal
The first is a very cool moving shot of some scooters in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. The shot for me sums up the extremely hectic pace of the city and its constant traffic. One of the scooters is pin sharp with the background of the shot in motion blur. This kind of shot is fantastic for conveying speed and chaos. What you have to do to get this kind of shot is keep your lens pointed directly at the moving target. You may need to take 10 shots in a row to get a sharp one, but it will be worth it. I usually work these types of shots at a shutter speed between 1/4 of a second and 1/50th of a second depending on how fast the subject is travelling and how long your lens is.
This shot, I was shooting on Tv (Shutter speed priority) at 1/20th of a second, ISO100. This shutter speed was fast enough that I could expect my subject to be sharp, but slow enough to show lots of movement. Have a try yourself! Set your camera on shutter speed priority mode, ISO100, and work between 1/4 and 1/50th tracking and shooting cars as they go past and see what results you can get. This technique is very interesting and popular as it really stands out.
As for the second photo, this is working with a very similar concept but in a different way. You will need a tripod for this method. This shot keeps a still background with your subject a blurry moving object in the foreground. I was standing across from the opera house close to sunset getting shot after shot, the same boring view, and wanted to get something different. Instead of waiting for the ferries to go pass before I took a photo, I decided to try to include them. A regular snapshot would just have the ferry looking stationary in front of the opera house - it would just make me look like an amateur! So I thought the ferries might look good in motion skimming across the water in front of the opera house instead - it would be less distracting and would show off the movement that occurs so constantly in the harbour.
The ferries weren't going as fast as the scooter, and I had a tripod to keep the shot stable so I decided to go for a longer shutter speed of about 3 seconds. I was shooting my lens at 35mm, I connected my remote shutter to my camera and waited for the moment that two ferries were about to pass each other exactly in front of the opera house. I hit the button, the camera did its thing, and voila! There was a few attempts before and after this one, but it came out the best.
Neither of these had any editing done apart from a simple levels (brightness/contrast) adjustment.
So you can see the kind of cool results that are possible shooting longer exposure times to show movement. Whichever option you choose will be dependent on your environment and what you are trying to shoot.
Good luck!
Cheers
Tal
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Photo Disect - Event Photography
Event photography, in my opinion, is pretty much the perfect place to start out for someone with an SLR looking to learn how to use it properly. It gives you a fun environment to practice with ambient light and shutter speed, and with so much happening, you find yourself learning how to change settings quickly - which is very important.
Saying that, I think it's easy for people to be bogged down and typecast into an event shooter. Yes, you're the life of the party and your photos are a hit on facebook but trust me, after a year everyone is pretty much over it (especially you) so in the meantime you should be getting into landscapes, portraits, urban shots, anything else etc as much as possible so you have some skills to go on from when the events are getting boring.
This is not to say that events aren't a great source of revenue - they really can be, I still shoot up to 10 events a week for great rates (30-80 per hour). I just think that you shouldn't be putting all your photographic energy into shooting your friends' birthdays (yes, 'photographic energy' does exist, by day 12 on my road trip I was really really sick of shooting).
Call me cynical, but I won't shoot events these days if they're not paid. It's not hugely difficult to find paid jobs - it's more of a social thing, the more people know that you're a photographer, the more interest you will get. I was lucky to be able to start off with getanightlife, but if you get some decent event shots in a little portfolio on facebook or a website you can start from there.
Anyway, now to the photo. There are literally thousands and thousands of photos I could use as examples here, but I'll just show you a nice one that I got last night:
The best thing about this photo is that it's not edited! Event photography is a discipline where you'll be getting loads and loads of images, so you won't be wanting to go through and individually or even batch edit 200 shots every time you shoot an event (cough cough romanceinmypants).
There's a few simple bits of gear you'll need to shoot events.
Any DSLR - I have a Canon 450D
A mid-range zoom - I have a Canon 17-85mm but a cheap kit lens will do just fine.
A speedlite flash - You might think it's too expensive, but these flashes are crucial. May as well get one and learn how to use it now, and you'll be reaping the benefits for years to come.
A flash diffuser - I've linked that to an ebay auction - these are about 5 dollars and extremely handy. Best 5 dollars ever spent - just make sure you buy one that fits your flash.
There's a few simple things you'll need to do to shoot an indoor event.
Saying that, I think it's easy for people to be bogged down and typecast into an event shooter. Yes, you're the life of the party and your photos are a hit on facebook but trust me, after a year everyone is pretty much over it (especially you) so in the meantime you should be getting into landscapes, portraits, urban shots, anything else etc as much as possible so you have some skills to go on from when the events are getting boring.
This is not to say that events aren't a great source of revenue - they really can be, I still shoot up to 10 events a week for great rates (30-80 per hour). I just think that you shouldn't be putting all your photographic energy into shooting your friends' birthdays (yes, 'photographic energy' does exist, by day 12 on my road trip I was really really sick of shooting).
Call me cynical, but I won't shoot events these days if they're not paid. It's not hugely difficult to find paid jobs - it's more of a social thing, the more people know that you're a photographer, the more interest you will get. I was lucky to be able to start off with getanightlife, but if you get some decent event shots in a little portfolio on facebook or a website you can start from there.
Anyway, now to the photo. There are literally thousands and thousands of photos I could use as examples here, but I'll just show you a nice one that I got last night:
The best thing about this photo is that it's not edited! Event photography is a discipline where you'll be getting loads and loads of images, so you won't be wanting to go through and individually or even batch edit 200 shots every time you shoot an event (cough cough romanceinmypants).
There's a few simple bits of gear you'll need to shoot events.
Any DSLR - I have a Canon 450D
A mid-range zoom - I have a Canon 17-85mm but a cheap kit lens will do just fine.
A speedlite flash - You might think it's too expensive, but these flashes are crucial. May as well get one and learn how to use it now, and you'll be reaping the benefits for years to come.
A flash diffuser - I've linked that to an ebay auction - these are about 5 dollars and extremely handy. Best 5 dollars ever spent - just make sure you buy one that fits your flash.
There's a few simple things you'll need to do to shoot an indoor event.
Attach the speedlite to the top of the camera, and place the flash diffuser on the end. Sometimes it's a snug fit, but mine is a bit loose so I just use duct tape to keep it in place. Tilt the flash head up 45 degrees and turn it on auto. This is what it should look like:
Turn the camera on to its manual setting. Set the aperture to its lowest f/number (should be about 3.5 or 4). Set the camera to ISO 400. Shoot on JPEG, with a +2 saturation if possible (tutorial here). Once you have all this, you're pretty much set. All you have to worry about now is composition and shutter speed. This will depend on the amount of ambient light, and I will usually go between 1/2 of a second and 1/50th of a second. I would be using 1/2 (looks like 0"5 on the camera) at a dark club, 1/6th at a bar with a few lights around, 1/20th in a normally lit room and 1/50th in a bright indoor room. The beauty of digital is that you can just try out different speeds and see what looks best on the screen. You should be aiming to have an even lighting of subject and background. This is why you need to shoot manual, on auto, the camera will just choose 1/60th and your subjects will just be in front of a boring black backdrop (cough cough romanceinmypants).
The photo example here was shot in front of a decently lit bar at 1/5th of a second. The camera and flash diffuser set at 45 degrees did the rest.
So getting the lighting right isn't too hard, and you'll be able to master it pretty easily after a little practice. You still have to worry about composition though! Event photography is usually something that really doesn't benefit from empty space. I love to fill the frame with people, it looks great. I try to get heads about 1/4 of the photo from the top, and fill the remainder with body. I usually shoot portait (vertical) with 1 or 2 people, and landscape (horizontal) for 3 or more. I also find its much more attractive to shoot on your lens' widest setting (mine's 17mm) and get pretty close in to the subjects, rather than standing further away and zooming in. Shooting like this, the flash will do a much better job and it gives the photos better perspective.
So there you have it! Follow these instructions and you should be able to get great event shots straight off of your camera, no editing required. The diffuser cap is great for softening the shots and an absolute must-have, especially at $5!
Good luck.
Cheers,
Tal
Turn the camera on to its manual setting. Set the aperture to its lowest f/number (should be about 3.5 or 4). Set the camera to ISO 400. Shoot on JPEG, with a +2 saturation if possible (tutorial here). Once you have all this, you're pretty much set. All you have to worry about now is composition and shutter speed. This will depend on the amount of ambient light, and I will usually go between 1/2 of a second and 1/50th of a second. I would be using 1/2 (looks like 0"5 on the camera) at a dark club, 1/6th at a bar with a few lights around, 1/20th in a normally lit room and 1/50th in a bright indoor room. The beauty of digital is that you can just try out different speeds and see what looks best on the screen. You should be aiming to have an even lighting of subject and background. This is why you need to shoot manual, on auto, the camera will just choose 1/60th and your subjects will just be in front of a boring black backdrop (cough cough romanceinmypants).The photo example here was shot in front of a decently lit bar at 1/5th of a second. The camera and flash diffuser set at 45 degrees did the rest.
So getting the lighting right isn't too hard, and you'll be able to master it pretty easily after a little practice. You still have to worry about composition though! Event photography is usually something that really doesn't benefit from empty space. I love to fill the frame with people, it looks great. I try to get heads about 1/4 of the photo from the top, and fill the remainder with body. I usually shoot portait (vertical) with 1 or 2 people, and landscape (horizontal) for 3 or more. I also find its much more attractive to shoot on your lens' widest setting (mine's 17mm) and get pretty close in to the subjects, rather than standing further away and zooming in. Shooting like this, the flash will do a much better job and it gives the photos better perspective.
So there you have it! Follow these instructions and you should be able to get great event shots straight off of your camera, no editing required. The diffuser cap is great for softening the shots and an absolute must-have, especially at $5!
Good luck.
Cheers,
Tal
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Photo Disect - ND Grad Seascape
The photo:
I'm hoping this photo disect is something that will be very interesting - when I was doing my initial research on ND grad filters it took so long to work out what they actually are. Check out my accessories page to have a look at that:
ND grad filter means "Neutral Density Graduated Filter", meaning that the top half of the filter is dark at a neutral density (no colour), and gradually fades into clear at the bottom half of the filter. You can get these at different magnitudes ND2, ND4, ND8 etc - I find getting 2 ND4s is usually the best option. I have 2 of these, and half the time I use 1, the other half I like to stack them on top of each other for more of an effect. Just don't store them in the same case, or they will rub and scratch.
I was out shooting sunrise at a beautiful harbour in eastern Victoria on the summer holiday road trip I had with some other photo-minded mates. I saw a great cloud/water reflection happening and wanted to shoot it against the subject of a pier and sailboat. I shot it without any filters, and noticed that while the reflection was present, the water was considerably darker than the sky (as usual) and the photo wasn't very effective. This often happens - your eyes will automatically lighten dark areas and darken light areas - the camera cannot do this. Being able to see like a camera takes a bit of experience - whenever you shoot, make sure you note the difference between what you see and what comes up on the camera screen - it will help! ND grads are a great help with this.
I decided to stack my two ND4 grad filters together and got this shot straight off the camera. I was shooting Av (aperture priority mode) on f/6.3 with my sigma 10-20mm lens set at its very widest at 10mm. To get a quick shutter speed (as I didn't have a tripod - mistake!) I was on ISO400 - a lot faster than ISO100, but a little bit of grain. ISO400 is probably my favourite for handheld shooting, the noise is manageable and you get a nice quick shutter speed. Here's the result straight off camera:
Nice, but pretty drab, and I find the water to still be a bit dark for my preference. Also find the patch of trees at the right distracting. You might also notice a purple/pink tinge to the top half of the photo. This usually occurs with plastic filters - it can be edited out in photoshop but I actually like the effect in this shot, makes it interesting!
Now to photoshop :) Don't call me a cheat - this is just the equivalent of going into the darkroom for all those purist film photographers. Lots of people (usually oldies :P) come up to me and say oh I used to take such good film photos but my digital ones just aren't very good, I can't work out all the settings etc etc. Silly! The cameras are the same - you still only really have to worry about aperture, shutter speed, ISO and white balance. All the other settings don't make a massive difference, or are gimmicks to get you to buy a new camera. The difference for people who used to shoot film is that they would have their shots professionally processed by people who knew what they were doing. This is the equivalent of sending your digital originals to a photoshop guru - the results are obviously going to be great. People need to understand the importance of at least a decent grasp of the basics in photoshop which really aren't hard to learn. Check out my photoshop tutorials for that.
Anyway, rant over! I cropped to get rid of the distracting element at right. I then used a gradient quick mask edit using levels to keep the sky the same exposure, but lighten the water. After the photo was even, I used levels again on the photo as a whole to get the contrast and exposure perfect. I then added in some nice saturation to make it pop.
Et voila!
Here's a comparison of original to edited. Not too big an edit really - exactly the kind of thing that a film lab would do for you back in the day.
If you're into landscapes - ND grads are awesome. Get 2 cheap on ebay -
http://shop.ebay.com.au/i.html?_nkw=nd+grad+p&_sacat=0&_trksid=p3286.m270.l1313&LH_AvailTo=15&_odkw=nd+grad+p+series&_osacat=0&bkBtn=
Look for one of the cheap rectangular ones, and just hold them in front of the lens when you're shooting - with the darker top half over the light sky and the clear bottom half on the dark ground. Best for sunrise and sunset - light during the day is still too harsh for these filters to make much of an effect. Great results!
Here's a few more shots I've got from my ND grad filters:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewtallon/3708989536/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewtallon/3708180169/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewtallon/4140047330/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewtallon/4199079853/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewtallon/4199859102/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewtallon/4199856030/
Good Luck!
Cheers
Tal
I'm hoping this photo disect is something that will be very interesting - when I was doing my initial research on ND grad filters it took so long to work out what they actually are. Check out my accessories page to have a look at that:ND grad filter means "Neutral Density Graduated Filter", meaning that the top half of the filter is dark at a neutral density (no colour), and gradually fades into clear at the bottom half of the filter. You can get these at different magnitudes ND2, ND4, ND8 etc - I find getting 2 ND4s is usually the best option. I have 2 of these, and half the time I use 1, the other half I like to stack them on top of each other for more of an effect. Just don't store them in the same case, or they will rub and scratch.I was out shooting sunrise at a beautiful harbour in eastern Victoria on the summer holiday road trip I had with some other photo-minded mates. I saw a great cloud/water reflection happening and wanted to shoot it against the subject of a pier and sailboat. I shot it without any filters, and noticed that while the reflection was present, the water was considerably darker than the sky (as usual) and the photo wasn't very effective. This often happens - your eyes will automatically lighten dark areas and darken light areas - the camera cannot do this. Being able to see like a camera takes a bit of experience - whenever you shoot, make sure you note the difference between what you see and what comes up on the camera screen - it will help! ND grads are a great help with this.
I decided to stack my two ND4 grad filters together and got this shot straight off the camera. I was shooting Av (aperture priority mode) on f/6.3 with my sigma 10-20mm lens set at its very widest at 10mm. To get a quick shutter speed (as I didn't have a tripod - mistake!) I was on ISO400 - a lot faster than ISO100, but a little bit of grain. ISO400 is probably my favourite for handheld shooting, the noise is manageable and you get a nice quick shutter speed. Here's the result straight off camera:
Nice, but pretty drab, and I find the water to still be a bit dark for my preference. Also find the patch of trees at the right distracting. You might also notice a purple/pink tinge to the top half of the photo. This usually occurs with plastic filters - it can be edited out in photoshop but I actually like the effect in this shot, makes it interesting!
Now to photoshop :) Don't call me a cheat - this is just the equivalent of going into the darkroom for all those purist film photographers. Lots of people (usually oldies :P) come up to me and say oh I used to take such good film photos but my digital ones just aren't very good, I can't work out all the settings etc etc. Silly! The cameras are the same - you still only really have to worry about aperture, shutter speed, ISO and white balance. All the other settings don't make a massive difference, or are gimmicks to get you to buy a new camera. The difference for people who used to shoot film is that they would have their shots professionally processed by people who knew what they were doing. This is the equivalent of sending your digital originals to a photoshop guru - the results are obviously going to be great. People need to understand the importance of at least a decent grasp of the basics in photoshop which really aren't hard to learn. Check out my photoshop tutorials for that.
Anyway, rant over! I cropped to get rid of the distracting element at right. I then used a gradient quick mask edit using levels to keep the sky the same exposure, but lighten the water. After the photo was even, I used levels again on the photo as a whole to get the contrast and exposure perfect. I then added in some nice saturation to make it pop.
Et voila!
Here's a comparison of original to edited. Not too big an edit really - exactly the kind of thing that a film lab would do for you back in the day.
If you're into landscapes - ND grads are awesome. Get 2 cheap on ebay -
http://shop.ebay.com.au/i.html?_nkw=nd+grad+p&_sacat=0&_trksid=p3286.m270.l1313&LH_AvailTo=15&_odkw=nd+grad+p+series&_osacat=0&bkBtn=
Look for one of the cheap rectangular ones, and just hold them in front of the lens when you're shooting - with the darker top half over the light sky and the clear bottom half on the dark ground. Best for sunrise and sunset - light during the day is still too harsh for these filters to make much of an effect. Great results!
Here's a few more shots I've got from my ND grad filters:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewtallon/3708989536/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewtallon/3708180169/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewtallon/4140047330/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewtallon/4199079853/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewtallon/4199859102/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewtallon/4199856030/
Good Luck!
Cheers
Tal
Friday, April 23, 2010
Photo Disect - City at Night
A city night shot is one of those shots that really sets your photography apart from those with compacts, or pretty much anyone shooting on auto. It really impresses people! It's a great place to start learning how to control manual settings, as you have all night to get it right - there's no pressure on getting the shot quickly. And you can always come back again another night. Sometimes, like the following shot (which was taken when I didn't have very much experience at all) you'll get a lucky one that stays in the portfolio for years down the track.
Here's a shot I took from a great spot in Paddington overlooking Brisbane City:
There is an extra element in the light trails of a passing car, but the method behind the shot is still the same as any city night shot.
To make your shot stand out, you really need an 'extra element' in it than just a few buildings. An easy way to get this is to have water in the foreground which will create attractive reflections from the lights. Another option is to get a unique perspective, perhaps using an interesting lens such as a wide angle. Here, I've opted to add in the light trails from a car travelling past.
For this kind of shot, you'll need a tripod and I strongly recommend a remote shutter, cable or wireless. If you don't have a remote shutter you'll need to select the shutter delay option in shooting modes. Because you have the tripod, you won't need to worry about camera shake, so always aim for ISO100 or 200. You also have the freedom to aim for the sharpest aperture possible. In this photo, I was shooting on aperture priority mode and selected ISO100 and f/11 for those reasons. The camera chose a 20 second exposure. This was enough for me to get the light trails going all the way down the hill. If the camera had chosen something like 5 seconds, I would have increased the f/number to something like f/20 to make sure my shutter speed was long enough. The camera's shutter speed should default from about 1/4000 sec to 30 sec.
To shoot longer than 30 seconds, you'll need to shoot on manual mode on 'bulb' with a cable release. You'll have to guess your aperture and ISO that will shoot whatever shutter speed you will use. The magic of digital is seeing the results straight away. If it's too light, increase f/number. If it's too dark, decrease f/number or increase ISO.
Anyway, I was happy with 20 seconds. I mounted my camera on my tripod at its shortest length so it was nearly level with the road, to get a good perspective. This is a very simple photography trick - get low, low, low, low.. Changing your angle from head height (which is everyone's normal perspective) to down low will give you a much more interesting angle.
I plugged my cable release into the camera and fixed composition. Just as the car was about to drive past I clicked the button, the camera did its thing, waited 20 seconds, and the shot popped up on the screen. Excellent! I'd had many other goes at this shot, with cars going each way and different perspectives but this one was easily the best. Once you think you get 'the shot', don't stop! You will learn what you like from that shot and keep improving on it. Half an hour before this one I thought I'd got something brilliant, but I kept shooting and ended up discarding that one and going with this!
I only did some minor levels adjustments in photoshop - you generally won't need much editing for city night shots as the lighting is quite even.
So get out around the town at night with your tripod and have a go at this. Having the time to get used to playing around with aperture, ISO and shutter speed will help you so much - and you've got all the time in the world to practice and get it right.
Good luck!
Cheers
Tal
Here's a shot I took from a great spot in Paddington overlooking Brisbane City:
There is an extra element in the light trails of a passing car, but the method behind the shot is still the same as any city night shot.
To make your shot stand out, you really need an 'extra element' in it than just a few buildings. An easy way to get this is to have water in the foreground which will create attractive reflections from the lights. Another option is to get a unique perspective, perhaps using an interesting lens such as a wide angle. Here, I've opted to add in the light trails from a car travelling past.
For this kind of shot, you'll need a tripod and I strongly recommend a remote shutter, cable or wireless. If you don't have a remote shutter you'll need to select the shutter delay option in shooting modes. Because you have the tripod, you won't need to worry about camera shake, so always aim for ISO100 or 200. You also have the freedom to aim for the sharpest aperture possible. In this photo, I was shooting on aperture priority mode and selected ISO100 and f/11 for those reasons. The camera chose a 20 second exposure. This was enough for me to get the light trails going all the way down the hill. If the camera had chosen something like 5 seconds, I would have increased the f/number to something like f/20 to make sure my shutter speed was long enough. The camera's shutter speed should default from about 1/4000 sec to 30 sec.
To shoot longer than 30 seconds, you'll need to shoot on manual mode on 'bulb' with a cable release. You'll have to guess your aperture and ISO that will shoot whatever shutter speed you will use. The magic of digital is seeing the results straight away. If it's too light, increase f/number. If it's too dark, decrease f/number or increase ISO.
Anyway, I was happy with 20 seconds. I mounted my camera on my tripod at its shortest length so it was nearly level with the road, to get a good perspective. This is a very simple photography trick - get low, low, low, low.. Changing your angle from head height (which is everyone's normal perspective) to down low will give you a much more interesting angle.
I plugged my cable release into the camera and fixed composition. Just as the car was about to drive past I clicked the button, the camera did its thing, waited 20 seconds, and the shot popped up on the screen. Excellent! I'd had many other goes at this shot, with cars going each way and different perspectives but this one was easily the best. Once you think you get 'the shot', don't stop! You will learn what you like from that shot and keep improving on it. Half an hour before this one I thought I'd got something brilliant, but I kept shooting and ended up discarding that one and going with this!
I only did some minor levels adjustments in photoshop - you generally won't need much editing for city night shots as the lighting is quite even.
So get out around the town at night with your tripod and have a go at this. Having the time to get used to playing around with aperture, ISO and shutter speed will help you so much - and you've got all the time in the world to practice and get it right.
Good luck!
Cheers
Tal
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Processing - Gradient Edits 2
And here we are at part 2, to continue from part 1 here if you missed it. I will now be covering the other gradient quick mask option I use most.
Radial Gradient. This one produces a circular gradient, and is perfect for attracting the viewer's eye to a particular part of a shot. I find most use for this in portrait, fashion, or band shoots. I will usually darken areas around the face and lighten and sometimes sharpen the face. This is done subtly - you want the viewer to look at a certain part of the photo without realising why. There are plenty of wedding and portrait photographers who will completely overuse this or the vignette tool for effect. It looks gross, and unprofessional!! If you nail a gradient edit on a face in a portrait subtly, the effect will be many times more effective.
Here's a portrait style shot I shot recently at a pre-formal event. This was shot on Av mode at an aperture around f/2.0 for background blur, ISO400 for a quick shutter speed to make sure of sharpness. His head, the main focus, is at about the intersection of 2/3 to the right and 2/3 to the top, bit of a rule of thirds! Check it out on wikipedia - just search rule of thirds, a professional way to shoot portraits that will help you stand out from those shooting dead centre. Shots like the official presidential portrait of Barack Obama are done this way!:
Nice shot off camera - but a good idea to make the attention more towards his face. Time for a radial gradient. In photoshop CS, hit gradient, at the top choose radial (the circle one, second from the left). Then hit 'q' to enter quick mask. Drag the cursor out from the centre (his face here) to twice the length of the radius you're looking to edit, like so:
You will see a red circle fading outwards appear over the target. This is the gradial area that won't be affected by your actions. Press 'q' to escape quick mask and you will see a selection circle. Everything outside this circle will be affected by your edits, but it will be faded, and not obvious. This gives you a great opportunity to subtly lead the viewers' eyes to a certain part of your photograph. For this shot, I used levels to darken midtones in the area around the face, and then hit select -> inverse to reverse my selection, and brightened highlights on the face. I deselected the area and gave the whole photo some brighter midtones using levels again. Here is what I came up with, and a comparison of the original. It is subtle, but a big difference, exactly what you should be looking for. Original is the left, edit on the right:
The photo looks barely edited, but draws attention straight away to the face. Great way to use radial gradients in my opinion - but as I've said, DON'T OVERDO IT! Or you will just be another one of those people that over-vignettes every photo - unprofessional, and lazy!
So hopefully these 2 tutorials have helped you understand the possibilities involved with using the gradient -> quick mask option. Even though it does gradially edit, you still have to be careful that it's not obvious to the viewer that your photo has been edited. Have a play around with bigger and smaller radius options for both linear and radial gradients and see the effects.
Good Luck!
Cheers
Tal
Radial Gradient. This one produces a circular gradient, and is perfect for attracting the viewer's eye to a particular part of a shot. I find most use for this in portrait, fashion, or band shoots. I will usually darken areas around the face and lighten and sometimes sharpen the face. This is done subtly - you want the viewer to look at a certain part of the photo without realising why. There are plenty of wedding and portrait photographers who will completely overuse this or the vignette tool for effect. It looks gross, and unprofessional!! If you nail a gradient edit on a face in a portrait subtly, the effect will be many times more effective.
Here's a portrait style shot I shot recently at a pre-formal event. This was shot on Av mode at an aperture around f/2.0 for background blur, ISO400 for a quick shutter speed to make sure of sharpness. His head, the main focus, is at about the intersection of 2/3 to the right and 2/3 to the top, bit of a rule of thirds! Check it out on wikipedia - just search rule of thirds, a professional way to shoot portraits that will help you stand out from those shooting dead centre. Shots like the official presidential portrait of Barack Obama are done this way!:
Nice shot off camera - but a good idea to make the attention more towards his face. Time for a radial gradient. In photoshop CS, hit gradient, at the top choose radial (the circle one, second from the left). Then hit 'q' to enter quick mask. Drag the cursor out from the centre (his face here) to twice the length of the radius you're looking to edit, like so:
You will see a red circle fading outwards appear over the target. This is the gradial area that won't be affected by your actions. Press 'q' to escape quick mask and you will see a selection circle. Everything outside this circle will be affected by your edits, but it will be faded, and not obvious. This gives you a great opportunity to subtly lead the viewers' eyes to a certain part of your photograph. For this shot, I used levels to darken midtones in the area around the face, and then hit select -> inverse to reverse my selection, and brightened highlights on the face. I deselected the area and gave the whole photo some brighter midtones using levels again. Here is what I came up with, and a comparison of the original. It is subtle, but a big difference, exactly what you should be looking for. Original is the left, edit on the right:
The photo looks barely edited, but draws attention straight away to the face. Great way to use radial gradients in my opinion - but as I've said, DON'T OVERDO IT! Or you will just be another one of those people that over-vignettes every photo - unprofessional, and lazy!So hopefully these 2 tutorials have helped you understand the possibilities involved with using the gradient -> quick mask option. Even though it does gradially edit, you still have to be careful that it's not obvious to the viewer that your photo has been edited. Have a play around with bigger and smaller radius options for both linear and radial gradients and see the effects.
Good Luck!
Cheers
Tal
Processing - Gradient Edits 1
Not sure what the official term for this is but I usually just call it 'gradient editing' - basically it's a combination of the gradient tool and the quick mask option, which I find the most amazing way to subtly edit shots for a great result. It works on the basis that you can target certain areas of a photo to edit, without making it obvious. Whether you want a certain area to be darkened, lightened, sharpened, saturated or anything else this is one of the easiest ways to do it.
I find this editing process relevant for most types of photography, but tend to enjoy its results a lot more on portrait and landscape shots.
When you open the gradient tool on the left menu in photoshop (a rectangle that fades black to white, could be hidden under the paint bucket tool if you can't find it), you have 5 options at the top which look like this:
From left to right, you have linear, radial, angular, reflected and diamond. I've only ever found the linear and radial options useful. I will show an example for each of these three following.
First, the linear gradient. This is a fantastic option for landscapes where you have a simple sky and land or sky and water set up, and either the sky or ground needs to be lightened, darkened, saturated, sharpened or anything else.
The best way to even out sky and ground in a photo is always with an ND grad filter (see accessories). If that's not available, or you've used an ND grad and still need some more adjustment, this helps. Usually I will use both an ND grad (or 2) and this tool as a combination.
This is a photo I took recently at airlie beach, using an ND4 grad filter (to darken sky, lighten water) and an ND8 filter (darkens all of the photo, slowing the shutter speed to smooth water). This was shot at 5 seconds, f/22 at ISO100 - the smallest ISO and largest f/number giving the slowest shutter speed possible, which smooths out water. This was at 10mm on my sigma 10-20mm.
As a general rule, the sky will pretty much always be lighter than the ground, so I use a setup like this very often. This is the shot straight off the camera, a bit red/purpley as that is the effect of the plastic filters. I don't mind the effect though as it gives it quite a cool sunset look:
Never mind the dust spots in the top left of the photo - the filters are a bit dirty. I will get rid of those at the end using the clone stamp tool, google it if you're not sure. Next thing to do - it's a nice shot but there is some saturation and light lost in the water in this photo. What I want to do is subtly lighten and saturate the bottom half of the photo to even it out nicely.
Here we go! Select the gradient tool -> linear gradient (the first one out of 5). Hit the 'q' button to enter quick mask mode. What you'll need to do now is drag the cursor perpendicular to the area boundary that you want to change. Drag this from the area you want kept the same, towards the area you want to edit. The longer the drag distance, the more graduated your edit will be. The boundary between water and sky in this shot is quite obvious, so let's not drag too far:
In other circumstances, or when I want the edit to be less obvious, I might drag the cursor all the way from top to bottom. As a simple horizontal sky/water arrangement, this wasn't needed.
When you release the cursor, the photo will look like this. The red area is the area that won't be edited, the clear area will be:
Hit 'q' again to escape. Now your photo will have a selected zone which you can edit:
Now all actions you make will only be made on this gradiated section - even though it looks like a rectange, the top of it is graduated, so what you do will be very subtle and not look like it was overprocessed. I used levels to brighten midtones, and added some saturation to the magentas to bring the purple up. I deselected the area, and used levels again on the photo as a whole, now that it was evened out. After clone stamping out the dust spots and also the distracting tree at top right corner, voila! A nice and evenly exposed and saturated photo, from top to bottom:
It's not a massive change - but that's the thing, it never should be. The best way to edit is to make it look like you didn't at all, to make subtle changes that vastly improve the shot without the viewer noticing. The gradient tool is massive for me in making this happen.
Check out part 2 for usage examples of the radial gradient!
Cheers
Tal
I find this editing process relevant for most types of photography, but tend to enjoy its results a lot more on portrait and landscape shots.
When you open the gradient tool on the left menu in photoshop (a rectangle that fades black to white, could be hidden under the paint bucket tool if you can't find it), you have 5 options at the top which look like this:
From left to right, you have linear, radial, angular, reflected and diamond. I've only ever found the linear and radial options useful. I will show an example for each of these three following.
First, the linear gradient. This is a fantastic option for landscapes where you have a simple sky and land or sky and water set up, and either the sky or ground needs to be lightened, darkened, saturated, sharpened or anything else.
The best way to even out sky and ground in a photo is always with an ND grad filter (see accessories). If that's not available, or you've used an ND grad and still need some more adjustment, this helps. Usually I will use both an ND grad (or 2) and this tool as a combination.
This is a photo I took recently at airlie beach, using an ND4 grad filter (to darken sky, lighten water) and an ND8 filter (darkens all of the photo, slowing the shutter speed to smooth water). This was shot at 5 seconds, f/22 at ISO100 - the smallest ISO and largest f/number giving the slowest shutter speed possible, which smooths out water. This was at 10mm on my sigma 10-20mm.
As a general rule, the sky will pretty much always be lighter than the ground, so I use a setup like this very often. This is the shot straight off the camera, a bit red/purpley as that is the effect of the plastic filters. I don't mind the effect though as it gives it quite a cool sunset look:
Never mind the dust spots in the top left of the photo - the filters are a bit dirty. I will get rid of those at the end using the clone stamp tool, google it if you're not sure. Next thing to do - it's a nice shot but there is some saturation and light lost in the water in this photo. What I want to do is subtly lighten and saturate the bottom half of the photo to even it out nicely.Here we go! Select the gradient tool -> linear gradient (the first one out of 5). Hit the 'q' button to enter quick mask mode. What you'll need to do now is drag the cursor perpendicular to the area boundary that you want to change. Drag this from the area you want kept the same, towards the area you want to edit. The longer the drag distance, the more graduated your edit will be. The boundary between water and sky in this shot is quite obvious, so let's not drag too far:
In other circumstances, or when I want the edit to be less obvious, I might drag the cursor all the way from top to bottom. As a simple horizontal sky/water arrangement, this wasn't needed.When you release the cursor, the photo will look like this. The red area is the area that won't be edited, the clear area will be:
Hit 'q' again to escape. Now your photo will have a selected zone which you can edit:
Now all actions you make will only be made on this gradiated section - even though it looks like a rectange, the top of it is graduated, so what you do will be very subtle and not look like it was overprocessed. I used levels to brighten midtones, and added some saturation to the magentas to bring the purple up. I deselected the area, and used levels again on the photo as a whole, now that it was evened out. After clone stamping out the dust spots and also the distracting tree at top right corner, voila! A nice and evenly exposed and saturated photo, from top to bottom:
It's not a massive change - but that's the thing, it never should be. The best way to edit is to make it look like you didn't at all, to make subtle changes that vastly improve the shot without the viewer noticing. The gradient tool is massive for me in making this happen.Check out part 2 for usage examples of the radial gradient!
Cheers
Tal
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