Just thought I’d share this. I did a tattoo shoot with a few models a couple of days ago. Most of the photos are done using a single battery flash – in this case a manual flashgun and a radio trigger on top of a basic light stand. This was bare bulb for the low key shots, no light modifiers, except a snoot. Post processing using just Adobe Lightroom 3.0.

Just goes to show that you don’t need huge amounts of kit and resources to get professional results if you understand how light works.

The background is a white wall, but since I’ve overpowering the daylight in the room, and not lighting much of the wall, it’s turned grey. To get the graduated look on the background the single key light lighting the model has a fall off onto the wall, and the snoot attached to it, gives me a reasonably tight pool of light. The key light is about 5ft from the Any, who’s about 5ft from the wall. If I move the light higher, the graduation of the background will go lower down the wall.

Although Amy’s blonde, she’s wearing a black hat, so by keeping the light at around 7ft high, this still sheds enough light on the background to separate out the rim of the hat, rather than it just disappearing into the top of the frame. The light is also high enough to give her a nice shadow under the chin and around her cheek which defines the shape of her face, and a small shadow around her nose gives a bit of depth as well. Read more

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Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the ‘ah-ha’.

Ernst Haas, Comment in workshop, 1985

Ernst has hit the nail on the head. The answer to “What’s the best wide angle lens?” isn’t necessarily the  Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM Lens (although it’s very nice) … but which ever lens you have with you at the time.

Why would I say something like that? As a Professional Photographer, sometimes I can’t see the wood for the trees and get fixated about the next generation of new lens with a faster “this” and smaller “that”, and for a couple of weeks will lust after it until the feeling finally subsides.

Photographers in general tend to be “gear hounds”, but at some point you have to use what you have and not make an excuse that you didn’t get the shot – but if you had the best wide angle lens you just paid xxx for, you would have!

When travelling, I can’t take all the gear I’d like to because:

1. I’d never fit it into the small hand luggage size requirements airlines use these days.
2. I’d never be able to carry it all day out and about.

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HDR images are still not completely mainstream since it still takes a bit of expertise to do them properly. There are a few programs out there that can take a non-HDR image and turn it into a HDR, but I’ve yet to find one that has the subtly of the human eye and brain.

The standard way to create a HDR is to bracket you shots with a normal exposure, plus a few of that around a +/- 1 stop minimum, so you end up with at least 3 duplicate shots of differing exposures. You then use software to blend the lightest and darkest areas to provide a reasonable balance.

DPS has a tutorial on using Adobe Lightroom with a single RAW file to create a HDR, which makes life easier if you didn’t take your tripod along to make sure all the shots were exactly the same framing. Have you experimented with HDR, and how do you feel about the images?

25 photos

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Over at TechMilieu.com , they’ve shown some excellent examples of underwater photography. I’m actually a qualified PADI Rescue Diver, and find diving very relaxing, but have never taken the step to actually document my dives. The photography kit required for these shots depends greatly on what you want to do.

Basic underwater cameras that are good down to 3m are not really what you’re looking for since all of these photos are taken far deeper. The limit for recreational diver is 39m and you can buy decent waterproof housings for many compact cameras that will be good down to 30m.

When I bought a new digital compact for day to day use I choose a Canon s90, and made sure there was a waterproof housing available should I ever want to use it for diving. If you’ve never seen what one of these looks like, here’s a link to to the housing for the S90 on Amazon – Canon WP-DC35 Waterproof Camera Case for PowerShot S90 Digital Camera

Have you even done any underwater photography, or even thought about it?

Beautiful Underwater Photography

There are many scuba diving sites around the world. Under the water you will find coral reefs, in touch with many fish, beautiful plants, etc. Underwater photography is usually done while doing the scuba diving activities. Here are some of the beautiful examples …

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How secure are your photo backups?

Ok, so maybe the question should be “WHY do I backup my photos?”. As a (digital) photographer, I generate quite a bit of raw data at every shoot. Once it’s moved off onto my workstation to process, I need to make sure that there’s a backup copy. There are many reason for this, but these are the main two:

• If it’s a commercial shoot, then the data I have is worth real money since I’m being paid for it. If I loose it, then I potentially won’t get paid.
• If it’s a private shoot of someone, they may order copies going back over a few months/years, so I need to have the data available.

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Over at Chase Guttman’s blog, he’s gone through how to compose your images for the best photographic composition. It’s a excellent resource for taking your photography to the next level. Although there are 10 rules here, from my personal point of view, the rule of thirds is the most powerful, an easiest to implement.I’ve marked this post as a “Medium” level, because some of the terms may be beyond novice photographers – if that’s the case, please post a reply, and I’ll expand on an sections that may be a problem.

Composition- Composition is the process of visually organizing the essential elements of your image through the unique framing of your camera. Composition serves as an anchor for the eyes of your viewer as they scan an image, and therefore it is probably the most crucial tool a photographer can use to tell a story. A well composed image is measured by its ability to convey the photographer’s message. Even though many professional photographers utilize the basic rules outlined below, the following are simply guidelines. For amateurs, these guidelines are important, until that is they understand when to break them. Read more

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There are very few “rules” to follow for better photography composition, and once you know these, your photography will improve no end.

By learning about how to frame a particular shot, you can turn a good “picture”, into a great “photo”.  I’ve been doing photography for so long, that these have become second nature, and you can apply these whether you have a camera phone or a pro digital SLR.

What did you think of the video?

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Ok, so it”s the time of the year, and your tree is all decorated and presents are piled up underneath. So how do you take good pictures of your Christmas tree?

Here are a few tips:

1. DON’T use flash – although this may seem counter-intuitive, if you use a flash, it’ll evenly light the tree, BUT, it’ll also overpower any lighting you’ve put up. So Keep the room lit by whatever light you usually use, and keep the lights on the tree switched on.
2. Use a tripod. Since you’re going to be using the ambient light in the room, you’ll be using a slow shutter speed.
3. Since you have a tripod, there’s no hurry to use a fast shutter speed, so you can also keep the ISO low, say (100-200). This will keep pixel noise to a minimum. Read more

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There’s an excellent article on Digital Photography School on photographing firework displays. It’s US based, and meant for the 4th of July celebrations, but a firework is a firework regardless of the time of year.

I’ve taken a few in my time, and have developed my own style for these (photos to follow when I’m not travelling about).

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