Manfrotto School of Xcellence will be present at the Focus On Imaging trade show, offering inspiring and informative talks and the chance to meet some of the UK’s top photographers. Read more and comment . . . → Read More: Manfrotto School of Xcellence at Focus On Imaging
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Zoner Software has released a new version of its standalone Zoner Photo Studio Free software, which is based on Zoner Photo Studio 13. Read more and comment . . . → Read More: Zoner Software Updates Free Version of Zoner Photo Studio The Polaroid Grey Label GL10 instant mobile printer is now available. Read more and comment . . . → Read More: Polaroid Grey Label GL10 Panasonic has introduced the Lumix DMC-FH7 digital compact camera (DMC-FS22 in Europe). Featuring a Leica 4x zoom lenses starting at 28mm and 720p HD video recording, the 16Mp FH7 comes with a similar feature set to the 6-month-old FH5 but boasts a 3″ touch-sensitive LCD screen. Pricing and availability have yet to be announced. . . . → Read More: Panasonic introduces Lumix DMC-FH7 touch-screen compact  A Guest post by Saul Molloy from Shotslot . Image by Romain Ballez All the whistles and bells of the modern camera should, at least in theory, make crafting great images an easier and more straightforward process than it used to be – with all these exposure modes, focussing tools, picture styles and the like, camera manufacturers would like you to believe that it’s just a matter of squeezing the shutter and hey presto you’re Bailey. Certainly getting the tricky business of exposure right has become more straightforward for the technologically challenged – you really don’t need to know much to get some passable snapshots but what about if you want to take your photography further? Photography is so very different an activity from that of even ten years ago. Good modern photographers need to be able to do so much more than compose and frame a shot, and whilst the traditional skills required for messing around with chemicals in a darkroom are waning, a whole set of new techniques are needed if you want to develop your photography to a really high standard. Here’s what I think are five key ways to make your photography shine: 1. Know Your Software Hone your ‘developing’ skills to where you can take an image and get the very best out of it in your digital darkroom. This is a vital capability whether you want to be primarily a ‘photographer’ or an ‘image-maker’ and allows you to take greater control over your work so it’s the very best that it can be. This means choosing a solid piece of editing software and learning how to use it to its full potential. It doesn’t mean buy the most expensive thing and learn that – you have to choose something that best suits your interests and needs. Be prepared to change your mind. 2. Get the Basics Right You need to know composition, exposure and how to utilise your camera to get the most out of it. It doesn’t matter much what camera you’re using, if you don’t really know how to point it then you’re going to struggle to get anything good out of it. Know your manual and what your camera can (and can’t) do. Study and understand phenomena like depth of field, focal planes and shutter speeds. This stuff can get geeky and bit dull at times but it will help you to understand how to produce a particular effect or look when you start to frame in your mind what you want an image to look like in its final form. 3. Be Flexible It’s easy to get stuck in a rut taking the same kind of shots and processing them in the same way over and over again. Or just adopting one set of tools and failing to implement new ones as and when they become available. Developing your work means that you do need to develop the way you work. This means being conscious of issues such as workflow and how they impact on your ability to produce good images. Just like the dodo, if you fail to evolve you fail to survive in that will you fail to keep your interest in photography in general but you also need to be able to innovate and change if you’re really going to produce some impressive images. 4. Study Others’ Work Art rarely develops in isolation, the work of other people can be key in helping you to develop your style, hone your skills and increase your knowledge. Spend time every day looking at the work of others, thinking about how they created a specific look or effect and work out how you could replicate it. An important tool for the modern photographer is networking with other photographers on-line or in real life. On-line communities such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr are a great way to get your work ‘out there’ but are an even better resource for inspiration and discussion. They even allow you to engage in collaborative projects which will boost your skills and experience substantially. In real life, you should check out your local camera club or photo-walk group. Interacting with other photographers in the flesh is a great way to learn new things and increase your engagement with photography overall, it might give you access to new shooting opportunities and equipment and will certainly challenge the way you see your own photography. 5. Practice You can read all the books, internet sites or magazine articles you like but there’s no substitute for actually picking up your camera and using it. Passion for photography comes from the feeling of having created something unique and interesting with your camera – be that a single image, a small portfolio or an entire body of work. There is just no substitute for picking your camera up and pointing it at things in earnest and ideally, you should be using your camera as a portal to show others something you yourself passionate about. Having the ability to show something you love in a new and visually exciting way onlycomes with practice and thus practice is the thing that more that anything else will make your photographs stand out from the crowd. Go do that now! See more of Saul Molloy’s work at Shotslot . Post from: Digital Photography School – Photography Tips . Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips , Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras . 5 Key Skills for the Modern Photographer . . . → Read More: 5 Key Skills for the Modern Photographer  Our commercial photographer spotlights continue with travel photographer Julien Capmeil. Julien’s work has appeared in numerous publications including GQ, Mens Journal, Oprah, Japanese Vogue, German Vanity Fair and an impressively long list of Conde Nast Traveler covers and editorials. Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, Julien now calls New York City home. What was your first camera and what interested you about photography? It was a Pentax K1000, a great startup workhorse. The camera itself was so novel at the time. I mean you had your standard Nikon’s and Canon’s then, but this was totally workable and it ran me through the basics of photography. It’s kind of amazing how far photography has come in such a short amount of time. If someone has a desire to be a photographer they don’t have to sit there and spend $50 making a contact sheet anymore, or film and darkroom costs. A lot of the expenses are removed, so the entry barrier is much lower. And I think that’s a good thing. The fact I couldn’t draw annoyed the hell out of me so photography was the next best thing. I still wish I could draw though! A friend of mine was taking a photo class and he was going into a theatre to take a photo of a show that was going on, and it had a cinematic feel and it was so easy to see it all come together (as supposed to drawing) and it was a way to speak visually, but still in a manner I could do and interpret. With photography you’re given a technique and an ability to communicate with people on different levels and that’s great. How long have you been working as a professional photographer? How did you make the transition to full-time? I would say it has been about 7 years. I was a full time assistant for a great friend and mentor, it was such an amazing job that it was hard to leave. In the end I started door knocking just to test the water and the work trickled in. Eventually I had my foot enough through the door that it was time to leave assisting behind. Thankfully it was a fairly fluid transition considering. The woman I was working for, did a couple stories for Conde Nast Traveler, and she told me to go see them. It was almost like having the door opened for me, I showed my book to a few magazines and the Photo Director at Conde Nast Traveler said she’s like to use me. And it just goes from one job to another and builds like that. It was a slow process, but I don’t think you want it to go fast. You want to absorb everything and make sure you’re doing a good job and learning from each one, getting better. You don’t want to overload right away. Take us through an average day or week. What’s your routine, or non-routine? It really depends on the week, there is no average unfortunately. Seeing as so much of my work is location based I am either away shooting or back in the office editing, billing and catching up on all the loose ends. It makes things quite bi-polar to be honest. It’s usually a little too much of one thing haha. But that’s travel photography. I think it’s different as more of a studio based photographer, but most of my planning is done on the fly. I’ll get a brief outline of the story and what I’m doing and then it’s piecing it together. If it’s a story with luxury you have to figure out how to get all those elements together to work with the journalist. Where do you find inspiration? What’s your creative process? I find NY endlessly inspiring, from riding the subway and looking at the human diversity to the abundance of art, new and old, that is available for public viewing. The city helps recharge your creative batteries in a way. I find a lot of inspiration in landscapes and people. Just seeing how they actually live and get by and really live happily with so little. In comparison with us so many people have nothing, but they welcome you in to their house openly. And just how they present themselves. I went to South Africa and they just have these amazing aesthetics, but really minimal, and it let’s you appreciate what we have. The discrepancies in how people live across the world are huge. For example, in Varanasi, India there is this crush of humanity. Just stuffed to capacity and people are living blissfully. It’s remarkable to see how happy people are in these overcrowded conditions. The spectrum of people is amazing. You travel around the world quite a bit. Do you enjoy jet setting and working in different countries? I really enjoy it! What appeals to me most is the discovery of a new place or culture and interaction with locals. Everyone is willing to open their doors, share their secret spots and introduce you to someone “You just have to meet.” There are always challenges but somehow they make the experience richer and the images more memorable for me. You would never know what went into getting the shot sometimes but that is part of the fun. What are you looking for in travel imagery? What helps tell the story of a location? That really depends on the tone of a story. I think you can interpret a location in so many different ways. Time really only allows me to pick up the main threads that are appropriate to the writing and readership of the magazine, which is a shame because often there are other equally interesting elements that I am not able to cover. For instance I did a story in New Zealand that was a wine story. And all you’re really capturing is that, even though there is so much else in the area, but that’s the job you’re there to shoot and the story you have to tell. Some times you feel there are other stories left untold. You have to interpret what you see and at the same time capture what the journalist is writing and get what the readership is expecting. Do you think the printed magazine will ever disappear? What should photographers look for in the future? That is a tough question, I think print will always retain its allure and magazines pride themselves on their printed issues. That said the digital world opens up so many interesting user experiences that creative publishers and advertisers want to capitalize on. Conde Nast has been very forward thinking in their approach to digital media, developing Apps for many of their magazines, broadening content and allowing readers to optimize their digital devices. So I can see the two co-existing for a while and readers benefiting by being able to flip through their glossy magazines and then delve deeper on their iPads. I imagine that video content will become more important to magazines, the ability to embed it will give stories another layer of interest and photographers another medium to express themselves. How can our readers better their own photography? Without sounding cliché, I would say keep on shooting, experiment and more importantly critique your own photos. Identify the ones that you like and try to understand where their appeal comes from; is it the composition, the subject, the light? By continually examining your work you will nurture a style and improve your eye. I think so often people will take the same photo. It’s the idea of changing your crop or angle, shoot however you want first, look at it, and then just do something different while keeping the subject the same. Change your perspective. Then look again and do that critique. I think people just shoot, shoot, shoot, then pick the best of that one image from the same perspective. I think it’s better to change your perspective and find a really different but unique shot. I haven’t done a lot of workshops personally, but I think that would help people different levels. The main thing is to find something that will pull you up. To shoot something you wouldn’t normally shoot. Any secret principles to success? What does it take to make it as a photographer? I do not think there are any secrets and no set path. You don’t necessarily have to study nor assist, though in my opinion both give you invaluable experience and nurture your creativity. Regardless there are so many factors but determination and tenacity are definitely high on the list. The desire to produce work and the courage to show it to people are what sets photographers apart. So keep on shooting and keep on sharing your work. Where can we hear more from you or see more of your work? Feel free to look at my website www.juliencapmeil.com or pick up a current issue of Conde Nast Traveler, they actually published two of my stories in the same issue which is a first for me. Post from: Digital Photography School – Photography Tips . Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips , Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras . Julien Capmeil: Photographer Spotlight . . . → Read More: Julien Capmeil: Photographer Spotlight  New legislation in Sweden designed to protect bystanders against acts of voyeurism mixes ambiguously broad language with commonsense edicts, prompting one photographer to test the laws’ limits with hidden-camera portraits. Parts of the new law define spaces such as bedrooms and changing areas as “private,” but also ban photography that “irrespective of place, occurs in a way which is obtrusive, intrusive, or hidden and that is meant to be a serious violation of a person’s privacy as an individual.” With cryptic portraits of unknowing passersby captured through a one-way mirror, Moa Karlberg ’s Watching You Watch Me treads the fine line of these legal distinctions. While Sweden has better laws than many countries when it comes to safeguarding the activity of well-intentioned street and journalist photographers, Karlberg is worried that new laws may engender a culture of suspicion. “It can be hard to define when you are in a private space,” says Karlberg. “The law can easily be over-interpreted and affect other types of photography.” The Swedish government was pressed into action following a series of disturbing cases of peeping-tom intrusion, including a landlord filming a tenant changing and a teenager who distributed images of his naked girlfriend without his partner’s knowledge. The previous lack of actionable law meant the digital-voyeurs went uncharged and unpunished. Authorities were left red-faced. As Swedish English-language news site, The Local, reports, the law attempts to address photographers’ motives beyond its legal definition of “private space,” by referring to photos that are “meant to be a serious violation of a person’s privacy as an individual.” Proving or suspecting this intention seems particularly slippery. There can be no argument with the protection of individuals’ modesty and right to privacy, especially in bedrooms and changing areas, but critics of the legislation argue it may inhibit the work of legitimate journalists in the field. “It may seem trivial to worry about my rights as a street photographer, but I consider it important to discuss this issue before our rights get limited,” says Karlberg. “Until now, the laws have only restricted what you can publish. This new proposition puts the responsibility on the photographer […] This may lead to self-censorship among professional photographers.” Karlberg set up her equipment in a storefront window behind a one-way mirror, blurring the line between street photography and an act now considered intrusive and criminally suspect. “The store was dark and the street was light, so I was able to capture people looking at their reflection,” says Karlberg. “As I took the pictures, it felt weird standing two meters from somebody staring right at me without knowing I was there. As if I actually stole something from their integrity.” “I consider them an investigation of self-image,” she continues. “I have always wanted to know how people look when they see only themselves – a look that is almost impossible to get if you show the camera.” Watching You Watch Me can be viewed on Karlberg’s website and was recently exhibited in Sweden. This gave her subjects the opportunity for feedback. One subject was a photographer and supportive of the project, but one female subject was uneasy, says Karlberg. “She came to the opening and found it very uncomfortable seeing herself exhibited in a gallery and not knowing in what contexts her picture would be later published. I suggested I could cover her picture if she insisted.” Photos: Moa Karlberg . . . → Read More: Stealth Portraits Fuel Debate Over Privacy Laws  In this post Nyani Quarmyne talks about getting the shot – catching that moment in a show that captures the essence of a performer and the emotion they’re expressing. Much of what I’ve seen written on concert photography centers on gear and the technical aspects of shooting (there are a number of good tips on this site). Of course, gear and technical know-how are important, and I’ll touch on a couple of salient points. But there are other equally important, more esoteric concepts at the heart of stage photography. 1. Get the Exposure Right Stage lighting can be tricky, so you have to get your exposure right or you’ll wind up with beautifully composed, crap shots. Evaluative metering can’t be relied on in the high-contrast and variable lighting conditions that are typically found on a concert stage. Spot metering off your subject or a mid-tone can be useful, but when you have bright lights in the background it can result in a correctly exposed subject and ugly blown highlights in the background. The optimal exposure is often something of a compromise, so I personally prefer to leave the camera set to evaluative/ matrix metering and then get a feel for how much over- or under-exposure is needed for different parts of the stage through estimation and some trial and error. With practice you’ll begin to guesstimate the right settings. You’ll generally be shooting wide open, except when you may need to stop down to get multiple subjects at different distances from the camera in focus, so often it’s your shutter speed and ISO that you’ll be playing with. Once you have a sense of how much over- or under-exposure is needed, you can vary your aperture/ ISO/ shutter speed relationship while keeping the optimal exposure in mind. For example, say you’re getting sharp, correctly exposed images of a guitarist at 125th/s, f/2.8 @ ISO200. Then a singer joins him in the frame. You need a little more depth of field to keep them both in focus, so you leave the shutter speed as it is to keep your shots sharp, stop down two stops to f/5.6 to increase the depth of field, and raise the ISO two stops from ISO200 to ISO800. Your exposure is identical, but now you have the depth of field you need. Just remember to revaluate your exposure when shooting a different area of the stage, or when the lighting conditions change. A camera that allows for clean high-ISO images is a huge advantage as higher ISO settings allow you to keep your shutter speed relatively high, reducing camera shake and better allowing you to freeze action. 2. Use your Histogram! The viewfinder preview is too small to give you a sufficiently detailed view of over- and under-exposed areas of your image. The highlights view will show you where you’ve lost highlight detail, but it doesn’t show you what you may have inadvertently sacrificed in the shadows. So if you don’t already, learn to use your histogram – it’s an invaluable tool for evaluating exposure, particularly in tricky lighting conditions. I have my camera set up so that pressing the centre button on the 4-way navigator flashes up a full screen histogram. That way I can use my preview to check sharpness and focus, and then push the centre button to do a quick histogram check before I go back to shooting. Don’t obsess over checking your shots – if you’re looking at your screen you’re missing what’s happening on stage. Do enough checks to fine tune your settings for a given set of lighting conditions, and then focus on shooting. 3. Watch the Performers Now that you’ve got your exposure sorted, watch the performers. No, I mean really watch the performers. Analyse their performance. How do they move on the stage? Where are their favourite places to stand? What are their idiosyncrasies? Facial expressions? Favourite postures? Signature moves? How do they express emotion? It doesn’t take a long – just watch for a while once a band has hit its stride and you’ll begin to see that each performer has little habitual movements, facial expressions, individual quirks, that are unique. Identifying these is key to capturing the individuality and expressiveness of a singer or player. If you have the opportunity to watch several performances by the same artist you may also find that there are events that happen at particular points in a set – pyrotechnics, a leap off a speaker stack, entry of a stage prop – and you can plan for these, too. 4. Anticipate Once you know what you’re looking for, anticipate it. If you’ve noticed that a guitarist bends a certain way during emotional moments in his solos, anticipate it, compose for it, and be ready when the moment comes. If a singer leans away from the mike a certain way during soulful pauses between song lines, pre-visualise your shot, get set up for it, and execute it when the elements come together. Of course, you also have to be ready to react instantly to capture a spontaneous moment. 5. Compose for Form People, instruments, objects on stage and even the glow of stage lights create shapes and lines in the frame. The beautiful lines of a guitar, for example, generally look better from some angles than others, as do the combined lines of the guitar and its player. Try and see the shapes that the elements in your viewfinder create and use them in your compositions. Take into account things like whether a singer holds the mike in their right hand or left, whether a guitarist is playing a right- or left-handed guitar, and then move around to position yourself to get the right angles for your shots. Work with the stage lights – move around and use them to rim light, sidelight or silhouette your subject. If there’s a background light flaring into your lens, see if you can make the flare work for you. 6. Watch for Foreground Clutter One of the challenges of concert photography is the clutter that is generally found on a concert stage – microphones and their stands, monitor speakers, amplifiers, cables, and even roving videographers. Clutter detracts from your shots. Try and position yourself to get shots that are as clear of such distractions as possible. In particular, watch for microphones that obscure a singer’s face (their mouth in particular), and watch for the shadows microphones cast too. In general, avoid standing directly in front of a singer as more often than not you’ll end up with a microphone where their mouth should be. Drummers are particularly tricky to get clean shots of, as they are surrounded by all kinds of ‘hardware’ and are usually also far back on the stage. Try and get shots of them from the side if you can. 7. Watch for Background Clutter Too! Perth photographer Rob Miller likes to say, “Forget about the subject, it’s the background that makes your photo.” Of course he doesn’t mean that literally, but a fantastic moment captured against a messy background will ultimately be a messy shot, while a fantastic moment captured against a fantastic background will be a fantastic shot. Watch out for elements of the background that you want to avoid, like stage scaffolds, lighting rigs and even other performers, and try to compose for those that you can use to your advantage. Remember that on a well lit stage you can use the glow of stage lights, or even the lights themselves, as your background. If there’s nothing going on in the background, if possible, try and set your exposure so that your subject is correctly exposed but the background collapses to black. Fast lenses help with background clutter, too, as not only do they allow you to make the most of what light you have available, but the shallow depth of field produced by a wide aperture helps to blur out background distractions. Accordingly, I rely primarily on a 70-200 f/2.8, a 50mm f/1.4 for very low light and for close shots in small venues or to take in more of the stage, and occasionally a 17-35mm f/2.8 for close work and for stage, crowd and venue shots. 8. Be Nice Remember that while you are trying to get a job done, everyone else is trying to enjoy a show that they have paid to see. Be nice. Think about the people behind you – get your shots, but try not to block anyone’s view for too long. If you’re in a crowd and need to get right in someone’s face for a moment to get a shot, do so politely. I often find that if you’re nice to people they’ll actually help you get the shots you need by encouraging other people to let you get to where you need to be. I try to avoid the use of flash as it’s distracting for performers and annoying for the people around you (and often also not allowed). Flash can also look unnatural, as it typically casts light of a different colour to the stage lights onto your subject. The exception to the no flash rule is when I need to lift shadows over a performer’s eyes, for example when someone is wearing a hat. I also ensure that the autofocus assist beam on my camera is off so that it’s not poking performers in the eye, and I turn my viewfinder preview off so it’s not a blinking distraction to people around me. (This also stops people craning over your shoulders to check out your business.) It’s a simple matter to press “Play” every now and then when you need to check a shot. If your camera allows, create a custom settings profile so you can set your camera the way you want it with a couple of button pushes, rather than having to go wandering through the menus every time you need to get set up. 9. Show Your Appreciation Anyone on a stage likes to know they’re being appreciated. Show your appreciation. You don’t have to jump up and down and scream (it’s difficult to take steady shots while jumping and screaming…), but make eye contact, show your appreciation with a smile, give a nod of thanks when a performer looks down your lens. Sometimes you’ll find a little appreciation earns you your own little mini performance, when a performer heads over to where you’re standing, looks down the barrel of your lens and pulls some moves just for you. Nyani is a Ghanaian/ Filipino/ Australian photographer spending 2009 travelling around North America with his family working on a personal project. Find his work on his website and blog at www.nqphotography.com , and follow the family’s travels at www.YearInAmerica.net . Post from: Digital Photography School – Photography Tips . Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips , Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras . Rock Concert Photography – 9 Tips on How to Get The Shot . . . → Read More: Rock Concert Photography – 9 Tips on How to Get The Shot  Statue in Laos. Photo: Tomas van Houtryve A month after the launch of the new crowd funding platform for photojournalism, Emphas.is, one of its users reports from the road. Belgian photographer and Emphas.is fundraiser Tomas van Houtryve tells us about the good, the bad and the future of this work in progress. “It’s a bit like being a test pilot for an exotic new aircraft,” says van Houtryve. “I can feel the huge potential and the power of the platform, but I’ve also had to adapt and cope as the site engineers have worked through fixing the early technical glitches.” Van Houtryve is referring to coding issues that delayed the official launch of Emphas.is. As developers raced to finish the site, the launch was pushed back; first days, then weeks. Set to launch in January, Emphas.is went live March 7th. When Emphas.is was proposed last year, fanfare rang out among new media evangelists and photography bloggers alike. Like a Kickstarter for photographers, the site offered exclusive access to photojournalists and their projects in exchange for small contributions. Nieman Labs , The British Journal of Photography , New York Times , Fast Company , BBC and even we here at Raw File all lined up to spread the gospel of crowd-funding. “I really wanted to be one of the first photographers to give Emphas.is a try,” says van Houtryve. “Based on the launch dates that they initially announced, I cleared my schedule for several weeks to dedicate to fundraising, followed by a trip to Laos timed with key events on the ground.” Van Houtryve’s ongoing project 21st Century Communism documents the remaining Red nations in the world. Laos will be his final chapter. Unwilling to wait for the Emphas.is launch and risk missing events in Laos, van Houtryve took matters into his own hands and posted a project synopsis, video and an early call for support on his own website. He followed that with a “flurry of emails and Facebook postings.” His guile paid off – within three days he raised $1935. “It was short of the total $8800 budget that I need to finance the project,” says van Houtryve, “but I had enough [money] to book my plane ticket for Laos.” As it happened, the Emphas.is site went live the day before van Houtryve’s departure for the small Communist nation. Upon launch, Emphas.is site’s code sputtered; backers were unable to make donations. Three days later van Houtryve arrived at a town in Laos with an internet connection and saw contributions were starting to add up. The teething problems were being addressed. Van Houtryve sent out his first exclusive dispatch to the project backers, with details about crossing the border and a “shady Chinese casino in the Golden Triangle.” Then it was back on the road. The pressure of time has been the hardest challenge for van Houtryve, “I would not recommend tight schedules where one has to juggle shooting, fundraising and a withering travel schedule. It’s been very intense keeping all the elements on track.” Despite travails, van Houtryve sees a lot of promise. “It’s an intuitive model,” he says. “Backers have started to pose relevant questions. As my project proposal has made its way through social networks and attracted support from strangers, I’ve made some really fruitful new connections. In addition to generous funding contributions, several individuals have stepped forward with key contacts and very precise and helpful advice. I have already managed to make stronger photos due to their input. This is a pleasant shift over the lone-wolf existence.” The attraction of an initiatives such as Emphas.is are their transparency. As it skips, stumbles and grows up in public, we are witness to its successes and failures; funders learn at the same pace as the developers and the photographers. “Emphas.is isn’t a magic bullet that will solve every problem plaguing visual journalism, but I think it is turning out to be a good model for long-term documentary projects,” says van Houtryve. “I have a crowd of very supportive people behind me, and it is clear that they have a stake in the project’s success. It’s very inspiring.” – – – Check out Tomas van Houtryve’s Emphas.is pitch – 21st Century Communism – Laos and all the Emphas.is projects seeking funding. . . . → Read More: Crowd Funding for Photography Gets Off to Shaky Start  A Manchester-based photographer spends hours in the studio bringing you well-known cities — but as you’ve never seen them before. When Andrew Brooks learned the skills needed to manouvre the high-end post-production equipment used in advertising photography, his creativity and eye for detail lead him to completely new worlds. These panoramic and mystical images have been created from hundreds, and in some cases, thousands, of detailed photographs of urban scenes that have been meticulously spliced together. Speaking to Wired.co.uk, Brooks explained his work process: “They are all composite images, made of at least 40, if not hundreds of, individual photos. I don’t try to capture the image in one go, but prefer to gain as much detail as possible and then piece it together in Photoshop and post-production.” Brooks insists that, despite the amount of images he processes, his is not a mathematical process and boycotts the tripod when he’s out shooting: “It’s not about having the camera in one position. I shot the image of Pudong from ten different points in the tower. Afterwards, I build it how I want.” This “jigsawing” of multiple shots often produces staggering results. But sometimes a stunning view alone is inspiration enough: “I know when I’m in front of a view that’s really interesting,” says Brooks. “In these cases, I need to catch as much information as possible and then try to go back and try to define what it was that made that scene interesting; whether it was the detail or the light, for example.” Detail is still incredibly important to Brooks, despite the huge area his photographs cover, and he encourages viewers to explore the hi-res images of downtown New York and the fantasy scene of Sealand on his website. The latter image is made up of pictures of a pier in Holland, oil refineries and industry in Liverpool and tower blocks in Manchester and explores the story behind Sealand , a fort off the Essex coast which has been deemed its own country. Similarly, while the New York image may seem familiar, Brooks has worked his magic on some major landmarks. “You hardly ever see a picture where you can capture the real geography of Manhattan,” he explains, “but as I put it together I made downtown 30 percent larger than it is in real life and increased the size of the Statue of Liberty by 50 percent.” Although he arguably makes it look rather different, the world’s scenery remains Brooks’ inspiration: “I love using my photography as a way of travelling. It’s almost a framework for how I see the world.” Next on his list are the Aura Borealis and underwater shots of coral reefs. Check out a gallery of Brooks’ composites at Wired.co.uk . . . . → Read More: In Pictures: How Andrew Brooks is Photoshopping the World  Read Part 1 of this series on Wedding Photography . Lighting Image by Pelipe To truly master photography, not just the wedding genre, you will need to learn how light affects everything. Invest time in reading, training and experience to perfect techniques as on the day of the shoot you won’t have time to stop and think about what settings you need – you’ll need to understand the basic principles as well as the set up of your DSLR like the back of your hand. Not only will the subject’s grow impatient but you could find yourself missing those all important ‘moments’ because you were too busy fiddling around in the settings menu. Backing up If you have time and the equipment on hand – back up your images onto a storage device, laptop or use built in wi-fi technology or a wi-fi card (such as the Eye-Fi memory card) to beam the images to your desktop. Whatever you do don’t format the cards until you have edited your frames and ensured everything is securely backed up across a handful of hard drives. To limit the risk of losing files or shooting on a corrupt card on the day, take several medium capacity (2-8 GB) cards, perhaps even marking each for relevant parts of the day, for example: bridal prep, ceremony, reception and evening. Your style and manner Rather than be a jack of all trades it is advisable and perhaps even more lucrative to try and carve out a recognisable style and niche that shows what you are not only capable of but also enjoy doing. If your work is good and your style attractive, couples want to book you for their wedding day. You may need to alter this slightly as fashions change but always stick to what you enjoy creating and shoot in a style and manner that suits you. Be up front about your style and your manner when the client books, but to make that sale you may also want to consider being flexible if the couple wants something which is outside your normal ‘remit’. Have everything you are providing the couple down in writing before the big day, set a fee with payments guidelines and deadlines – never forget this is a business transaction. On the day be unobtrusive – this is their wedding – you are just there to record it and not ruin it. There are millions of wedding photographers out there but the ones who are really successful preach about the importance of politeness and respect. Yes be assertive and you will need to be as wedding photography is one of the most stressful jobs know to man, but do it with manners. Remember the little things As well as capturing the important stages of the day such as: bride and groom preparation, the ceremony, romantic portraits, candids, group shots, speeches and the first dance, you should use any time between these events to record the smaller – yet hugely significant details; in essence – anything the bride and groom have spent time and money on choosing for their big day. On your hit list should be: bridal accessories (such as jewellery, shoes, bouquets, bags, headwear and even underwear), table decorations, the cake, flowers, party favours, the seating plan, place settings, and even the bows tied to the seats used at the ceremony and reception venues. For creating a soft effect use a wide aperture such as f4 or 5.6 and crop in close using a fast lens. Post production As soon as you get back to your office, load the images straight into your computer and back them up on to the computer’s hard drive as well as several other portable external hard drives and online storage sites. Using an editing suit such as Photoshop, Lightroom or one of the other thousand options available, delete any images which don’t meet the grade whether that be because they are out of focus, blurred, incorrectly exposed – beyond redemption, the subject is pulling an unattractive face or has their eyes shut etc. Next begin cleaning the image, tweaking exposure, brightness and contrast and/or adding filters you may like to use. It is possible to run edits on multiple images at once, so check your software’s manual for advice. Load the final edit to an online library at low resolution for the couple to choose their favourites. With decision made make albums and send the couple the proofs. Administer any changes and then send the result off to the suppliers, which can then be returned to you or straight to your client. Most photographers estimate that after the wedding, the couple should receive their album within four to six weeks, however this ultimately depends on the volume of customers the photographer has, how quickly the suppliers can turn around products and how long the couple take to decide which frames they want. Breaks Wedding photography is hugely demanding mentally and physically, and it may be likely that you could end up working 12 hours without a break. Try to take five minutes when you can and get a soft drink to recover. Pack a few cereal or power bars and even a small tub of pasta to see you through the lulls as its unlikely you’ll get fed. Insurance If you are getting paid for your work you should definitely have adequate insurance in case something goes wrong. Not only will this cover you if your equipment is damaged, lost or stolen but will also protect you in case a third party injures themselves because of your equipment or because of a situation you have asked them to get into. What is more indemnity insurance will protect you and your businesses from claims of negligence, breach of duty of care, infringement of intellectual property, loss of data and client dishonesty. See our blog on Insurance for more information on this. Post from: Digital Photography School – Photography Tips . Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips , Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras . Wedding Photography 101 (Part 2) . . . → Read More: Wedding Photography 101 (Part 2)  If you’re a photographer, you’ve probably heard of Moo business cards. What makes MOO unique, is the ability to print a different image on every card in a pack. What I did not know before placing my first order is that Moo doesn’t just make mini cards. They also offer standard business cards, postcards, sticker books and greeting cards. All with the option of showing off a different photograph on each card! Another great feature that I was not aware of is the fact that I could transfer my selection of images directly from my Smugmug galleries! How much more convenient can it get? I placed an order of Mini Moos featuring some of my travel photography and an order of standard cards with a selection of images of my commercial work and enough space on the back side for my logo and all my contact info. I also discovered a cool decoration (and conversation) piece to display my mini cards: the Mosaic Frame. The Mosaic Frame allows you to display 20 of your favorite mini cards. It is available in black or white in the following dimensions 16.54” x 10.63” (42 cm x 27 cm). Each card is inserted in a mini frame which can be positioned in a variety of ways to accommodate horizontal and vertical images. You can also hang or display your frame horizontal or vertically depending on your space. It is a really creative way to display your work in your office or studio! The Mosaic Frame is also a great gift idea for the photographer in your life! To find out more about MOO, visit their website here Moo.com To learn more about the Mosaic Frame ($39.99 USD) click here . Post from: Digital Photography School – Photography Tips . Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips , Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras . Mosaic Frames by MOO . . . → Read More: Mosaic Frames by MOO  Concept Shooting is a way of approaching photography that can take your work to a new level. It takes a little more thought than just going ’snap happy’ but can really help you to convey a message with those viewing your shots. Christina N Dickson from www.ChristinaNicholePhotography.com looks further at Concept Shooting. Image by ~*Leah*~ . Winter is coming for many DPS readers. The weather is turning cold and frightful. And sometimes, you just can’t motivate yourself to bundle up and head outside to practice your photography. How can you keep developing your skills in the winter and prepare for next the next season? Concept shooting. Concept shooting is similar to advertising, stock, and photojournalism for several reasons. First, concept shooting involves some intense analyzing of a “message” you want to strongly convey. Second, concept shooting involves careful consideration of your audience and how the message will touch them most powerfully. Third, concept shooting is centered on emotions, and the telling of a story in its message. Concept shooting involves a great deal of “mental” preparation, rather than on scene analyzing. Before you shoot, you decide several things. For example, we’ll apply each of these considerations to the concept of love: Message : Is your message true love or broken hearts? Angle of the message : Is your angle the true love of family or the true love of kindred spirits? The bitterness and pain of broken hearts, or the recovery? Audience : Is your story written for first time high school lovers, or 50-year marriage partners? Emotional connectors : In what ways can you cause your story to resonate best with your audience? The love that brings a sense of belonging? The love that will last forever? The pain of betrayal? The despair of no hope for recovery? Creative composition : An audience of high schoolers will require edgy, high contrast, and inventive imagery. An audience of older couples will perhaps be impacted more by elegant, soft, and expressive imagery. Dynamic artistry : Camera angle, type of lighting, color, venue, depth, and motion…all such factors will influence the overall outcome of your concept shot. Story telling qualit y: In one image, does your concept tell the complete story? A picture is worth a thousand words, so one image can capture depth of story. It will simply take some time in thought, and some well developed shots. The following three images all expound on the concept of love. Each is an independent story. Each effectively reaches its audience. Take a moment to evaluate each image based on the 7 criteria before reading the project creation description. Concept : Love Message : Broken Heart Audience : Young women who lost their first love Emotional Connector : Feeling of aloneness and walking away from what once was; Creative composition : Taken from the ground so the broken heart is considered first before the girl; the girl is anonymous adding to mystery of who is experiencing the broken heart Dynamic Artistry : The broken heart is in 2/3rds of the frame dominating the image, but attention is given equally to the girl due to the fact that she is walking toward the vibrant blue ocean Story telling quality : Does this single image describe the feelings, the experience, and the hurt of a broken heart? Starting to make sense? Let’s evaluate one more. Remember to pause for a moment to evaluate the image for yourself before going on to the explanation: Concept : Love Message : True love Audience : lovers who know commitment Emotional Connector : Feeling of beauty, delicacy and precious value Creative composition : Taken from above to take advantage of a perspective of innocence Dynamic Artistry : the shallow depth of field completely isolates the rose without taking away from the story telling quality contributed by the hands, and the black backgrounds provides for no distracting elements Story telling quality : Does this single image describe the feelings, the experience, and the precious value of true love? No matter what level of photography you are, no matter what field you dominate, if you take the winter months to practice conceptual photography, you will find your imagery grow leaps and bounds in whatever field you pursue. Post from: Digital Photography School – Photography Tips . Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips , Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras . Concept Shooting in Photography . . . → Read More: Concept Shooting in Photography A group of photographers have got together to run some charity print auctions in aid of the disaster relief effort in Japan, and are now looking for both interested art buyers and more photographers who would be happy to offer some of their work for the cause. Read more and comment . . . → Read More: Photos for Japan  Brothers Will & Matt Burrard-Lucas are Wildlife Photographers from the UK. They aim to use teamwork and ingenuity to take striking and original images of wild animals in their natural environments. As wildlife photographers, finding new ways to portray well-covered natural phenomena is often one of the biggest challenges we face. We recently visited the Serengeti in Tanzania for the annual wildebeest migration and coming up with a new way to portray this incredible event was our primary objective. The ‘Great Migration’ as it is known, is the largest mass-movement of land mammals anywhere on Earth – around 1.5 million wildebeest and up to half a million other grazers, undertake an annual 3,000km round trip as they follow the rains and fresh pasture. As the animals travel between the Serengeti in Tanzania and the Masai Mara in Kenya, they are forced to cross the Mara River. The sight of thousands of animals battling against this mighty river is one of the Natural World’s most dramatic spectacles. When the wildebeest reach the banks of the Mara River, they congregate in massive herds, sometimes containing tens of thousands of individuals. The animals can dither on the banks of the river for many hours until one brave individual finally ventures into the river and the others then rush to follow it across. Sometimes ten thousand can cross in just half an hour. It was difficult to convey the scale and the drama of the river crossings through still photographs alone so we decided to film some time-lapse sequences. Our clips show the wildebeest entering the river in waves and being dragged downstream by the current. We have never before seen wildebeest river-crossings recorded using time-lapse: this may in fact be the first time it has been done. We also filmed some telephoto video clips using a Canon 1D Mark IV and a 600mm lens to show the mayhem and chaos as the wildebeest tried to drag themselves out of the water and up the steep riverbanks. We spliced together our time-lapse clips with this normal footage to create the following short film: We recorded the time-lapses using a DSLR camera on a tripod, which was snapping around three shots per second. We ensured the camera was set to manual exposure and manual white balance so there was no flicker between consecutive frames. We then used Quicktime Pro to generate the time-lapses. For some of the clips we removed alternate frames to speed up the motion even more. The pan and zoom effect was added later by cropping in on parts of the time-lapse clips. Finally, we licensed the music from a royalty-free music library and compiled the film in iMovie. Another technique we used to exhibit the scale of one wildebeest herds was to create a massive stitched panorama from over 30 overlapping images. This created the equivalent of a 300 megapixel photograph. If you click on the preview below you can explore a high-resolution version of this panorama (it has been shrunk to around 50% of the original size but is still over 16 thousand pixels wide!). When creating this panorama, we again set the camera to manual so that each frame had the same brightness. We were careful not to change the focus or the zoom with each shot. A focal length of 80mm was used so there was very little distortion in each frame. This made it easy to stitch it together using the ‘Photomerge†function in Photoshop. We hope our work conveys something of the drama and the magnitude of this incredible migration. You can see many more pictures from our trip on our Wildebeest Migration page. You may also be interested to read about the rare pink hippo that we photographed during the same trip! Post from: Digital Photography School – Photography Tips . Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips , Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras . Photographing a Wildebeest Migration . . . → Read More: Photographing a Wildebeest Migration  A Guest post by Jim Harmer of ImprovePhotography.com Athletes would never consider showing up to a game without having practiced, so why is it that most photographers shoot for the “wall-hanger” photo every time they go out without ever practicing new techniques? Consider applying these new workouts in your photography routine and you will improve your skills and creativity. The EXIF Drilldown In my photography workshops, I often show my portfolio to introduce myself before the class begins. After showing a few pictures, someone will inevitably raise their hand and ask, “How did you shoot that one?” I tell them the answer, but then I show them how to practice guessing camera settings so they will know what to use in any situation. The very best way to shoot like a pro is to analyse the work of the pros, and Flickr is just the place to look. Most photographers probably know that cameras save information about what camera settings were used to take a photo, and the information is saved in the jpeg image file. Some websites, such as Flickr, make this information easily viewable so photographers can see how other photographers created a photo. To view this information on Flickr, find a photo and click the small text link on the top right of the screen that reads the name of the camera that shot the picture. Clicking this link will bring up a new page showing all of the camera settings the photographer used. This photography workout simply requires going to Flickr or any other photo sharing website, finding good photos, and then carefully reviewing the EXIF data from the pictures. Ask intrinsically why the photographer chose those settings and what camera settings could change in order to improve the photograph. When this photography exercise is implemented, the question, “How did he take that picture?” is asked much less often. With practice, knowing the correct camera settings is easy. One Shot Most photographers take tens of thousands of pictures over the course of a year, but only a handful of those photos really stand out enough to make their way to your portfolio of best images. Many good images may be captured during each time shooting, but rarely is an image captured that is truly stunning. While all photographers understand this fact, their photography techniques rarely reflect it. Most photographers shoot hundreds of images and hope that some of them reach the level of quality necessary to make it into the portfolio. Though this method of never missing the moment has some merit, it also teaches photographers that if the first or second photo of a scene does not turn out, it is acceptable to simply forgive and forget the mistakes and move on to something else. Therefore, this straight-forward exercise is designed to work that bad habit out of photographers: Go out and shoot, but do not return home with more than one photo. Click the shutter more times, yes, but delete each photo if it is not perfect. Implementing this photography workout will teach photographers not to give up on a shot until it is perfect. Ten Shots, One Subject This workout works almost the opposite of the second exercise, but it has a similar purpose—keep shooting to capture the perfect shot. To practice this technique, find one subject and work to capture ten photos of that same subject before leaving. I recognized the need for this exercise while teaching my photography students landscape photography in Naples, Florida. We went to shoot the famous Naples Fishing Pier, but, not to my surprise, all of the students set up their tripods at the exact same spot immediately upon arriving at the beach. Their photo included all of the pier and the sunset behind it. This was a perfectly reasonable composition, but the students had a difficult time thinking of new ways to photograph the pier in an interesting way. I asked the students to all take 10 different shots of the pier. They struggled at first, but eventually ended up with beautiful photos. They photographed tiny details on the pier, captured photos of the water splashing up against the pier pilings, and shot the pier as a silhouette against the sunset. Soon the students discovered their initial photo of the subject was not quite as strong as the photos they took as they forced themselves to try new things. When something captures your eye, don’t leave until you have shot that same subject in ten different ways. As you practice your photography skills rather than simply shooting and hoping to improve, you will feel more confident in your ability to come out of any shoot with creative and technically-correct photos. Jim Harmer is the author of five photography instructional books and writes the ImprovePhotography.com photography blog. Post from: Digital Photography School – Photography Tips . Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips , Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras . 3 Workouts to Improve your Photography . . . → Read More: 3 Workouts to Improve your Photography Thanks to everyone for your support of the Tanzanian Blog Project that ran over the last week or so (I first wrote about why I was doing it here ). dPS readers were a massive support while I was away in Tanzania – it was a wonderful experience to share my time at the disability hospital with you. I’ve been back home after the trip for 5 days now and have almost gotten over the jet lag – however the impact of the trip continues as I process a lot of the stories that I heard and conversations that I had. It was an amazing week. Many of you have asked for a place where you can see all of the stories we posted on the project blog in one post – so here it is. I’ve broken it down into two parts – Photo Summary posts (which I know many of you enjoyed) and the story/video posts. For those of you who received the email about the trip – you’ll have probably seen most of Day 1 and 2 but not much of the rest. Daily Image Summaries Day 1 image summary Day 2 image summary Day 3 image summary Day 4 image summary Day 5 image summary Daily Stories Day 1 – 30 Years of Waiting…. Almost Over Day 2 – This is Amina – She Wants to Be a Doctor Day 2 – Baby Sharifu’s Fight for Sight Day 3 – Today I Watched a Life Transformed Day 3 – Fatuma’s Cataract Surgery: Now She’s Looking Forward to Chasing around her Grandkids Day 4 – Watch Athman Get Mobile Day 5 – A Tale of Two Women with Fistula Day 5 – Tatu’s Story (and Hopeful Smile) will be a Lasting Memory Day 5 – Sharifu gets his Cataract Surgery My Final Reflections on the Tanzanian Blog Project Thanks again to everyone for your support. I do hope you’ll continue to follow and support the work of CBM (who took me on this trip) on their blog and website . Lastly – to those wanting to hear a bit more about what I learned about the trip as a ‘blogger’ – check out this post on ProBlogger . Post from: Digital Photography School – Photography Tips . Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips , Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras . Tanzania Blog Project Photos and Update . . . → Read More: Tanzania Blog Project Photos and Update Nikon’s wide angle zoom masterpiece, the expensive and extraordinary Nikon 14-24 f/2.8, has one tiny issue: there are no lens filters for it, because it’s so large and its glass so complex. This is especially annoying for landscape photographers, who are used to using filters for their work. That didn’t … . . . → Read More: Nikon 14-24 f/2.8 gets third party lens filter  HDR (high dynamic range) processing can be a beast of a hill to climb. Especially with all the complicated programs out there for generating HDR images from multiple exposures. After all, what are you supposed to do with those seemingly endless amounts of sliders? Just learning to control the sliders can take quite a while to learn. Programs like Photomatix and Unified Colors HDR Expose can be guilty of having a bit of a learning curve. Because of this problem of not knowing how to control sliders, you see example after example of poor HDR images around the web. Images with blatantly obvious halo’s, blown channels, ghosting, and psychedelic processing are the usual suspects. Unified Color just released a program called HDR Express that aims to simplify the HDR process down to just a few crucial sliders. This could significantly cut the learning curve of HDR down to a minimum while still producing great results. Unified Color’s primary focus is built right into their name: Color. Good color balance and a natural feel are major ways to separate a good image from a bad one. White balance is absolutely crucial, and if you push an image too far past where it should be, it can be impossible to bring it back in Photoshop or Lightroom as a last step. In this post, you’ll get a look at a new program called HDR Express. We’ll look at what Unified Color says this program can do, and then compare it to actual results by putting a set of bracketed images through the program to see if everything adds up. Let’s go. Introducing HDR Express by Unified Color From the Unified Color website: “HDR Express™ is a game-changer in HDR Software . It combines all the critically acclaimed power of HDR Expose with an intuitive interface to give you fast, beautiful HDR results that you never believed were possible. HDR Express demystifies HDR software by giving you the controls and presets you need to create realistic or stylized HDR photos in the blink of an eye. And, HDR Express is based on Unified Color’s patented, ultra-wide, 32-bit color space to make all your captured color blossom in your final photographs.” So, let’s put this software to the test. Unified Color claims that HDR Express… is a game changer demystifies HDR software is intuitive and easy to use produces fast, beautiful and realistic results in the blink of an eye My Test of HDR Express For this test and review, I decided to push HDR Express from the get go. I loaded seven bracketed exposures into the program using the Export from Lightroom preset. Here are the seven exposures I chose. Recognize that bridge? I’ll give you a hint, it’s in Madison County, Iowa. In Lightroom, I simply right clicked on the highlighted images and chose “Merge and Edit in HDR Express.” This is a plug-in that comes with the software when you purchase it or try the trial version. Exporting seven 21-megapixel (25 mb) files to any program is a beefy process, so I didn’t expect it to go super fast. Unfortunately, this became a significant issue with the program. This export process took 3 minutes and 10 seconds on my system from export to showing the default image in HDR Express. However, the program more than makes up for this lost time (more on that a bit later). Here’s the default image without any changes made whatsoever. Pretty nice huh!? That’s one of the things I keep noticing with HDR Express; the default results are pretty much good to go! They just need a few minor tweaks here and there to get what I’m looking for. Let’s go over the work flow and sliders one by one. This should be easy, they are pretty intuitively labeled and there aren’t many options to mess with here. Histogram – One thing you have to realize and adapt to with Unified Color software is that the programs work in 32-bit mode. They have another special program called 32 Float that allows you to work on the image in Photoshop in 32-bit as well. Working in this mode prevents all the nasty color shifts that are apparent in some other programs. That’s also why the program can run a bit slower than others. When the default image shows up, you’ll notice that the histogram shows clipping on each side, but there is still information on the other side of the histogram boundaries. You need to now move the sliders around until the light information of the histogram fits inside the highlighted box, or at least get it as close as possible. Brightness – For this image, I didn’t mess with this slider too much. I adjusted it to +2 just to bump it up a tad. Highlights – This is the first slider that holds a great deal of power. If you have any clipping on the right side of the histogram, move this slider to bring the highlights back into play. Just be careful with it, because if you don’t have enough light information from your brackets, then your whites will become muddy and gross looking if you push the slider too far. Shadows – This slider performs the same function as the former one, but with the left side of the histogram. For this image, I moved the slider to the right to 113. Black Point – A good black point is pivotal to a great image. Adjust this as far as you can go in the image while keeping the histogram in good shape. Contrast – Same here, contrast is very important, especially with an HDR image. Sometimes these things can become somewhat washed out and almost look like there’s a film over the lens. Setting a good black point and contrast ratio will produce a really nice looking image. Saturation – I bumped this up just a hair to bring in a bit more red into the side of the bridge. Just make sure your histogram doesn’t spike above the box in the middle anywhere. White Balance – With this image, the white balance was pretty spot on, that’s one thing I love about this program. If it isn’t for any reason, just grab the eye dropper and click anywhere in the image that you see white. This will set that point as the white balance for the image and produce a great color balance for the entire image. Warmth – The eye dropper is actually going to affect this slider. You can use this to further tweak it if you’d like. Tint – Same thing here, you can tweak this around a bit to perfect your white balance. I didn’t use this slider at all for this image. Pretty simple, yes? Here’s the image after moving the sliders around, with absolutely no editing done in Photoshop. Here’s what is so cool about Unified Color software: I’m basically done with this image! HDR Express got me pretty much 90% of the way there. All I need to do now is pull it into Photoshop for some quick and minor touch up work. Here’s what I see in the image that needs fixing. There’s slight ghosting in the branches on the left side and the foliage beneath the bridge. My lens was quite dirty, as you can probably see in the sky by all the dust spots. I’d like to bring in a bit more detail in the bridge. I’ll use Topaz Adjust for that. There are a few chromatic aberrations in the image that you probably can’t see at 600 px wide. I need to get rid of those as well After knocking out that list, here is my final result…(oh by the way, final time spent in Photoshop – 7:16) Conclusion HDR Express completely surprised me. This program is designed for simplicity in editing, for people who don’t know how or don’t want to mess with a bunch of confusing sliders. I thought I wouldn’t care much for it because of this fact. I’m sort of a control freak when it comes to software programs and I like having power over as many aspects of the image as possible. The thing is, you don’t really need that much control when the program is capable of these results right out of the box! I will definitely use Express more often than not in the future. Most images in the past have taken me anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours in photoshop to complete. Remember how I said I’d get back to how Express made up for the 3 minute wait? Well, my total time to process this image was just over 10 minutes! That’s from Lightroom, to HDR Express, to Photoshop and exporting the image out to my portfolio folder. As far as the claims that Unified Color made about this software program… This program is definitely a game changer. I couldn’t recommend this more for beginners or even advanced photographers looking for natural results. It definitely demystifies HDR software by making the process easy to use. I didn’t even look at the instruction manual for this program and was able to run with it immediately. Definitely intuitive and easy to use While it doesn’t load images in the blink of an eye (not by a long shot), it certainly allows you to edit the image in that way once it is loaded. The process is super quick and the sliders update the image immediately. Like I said, I will gladly trade potential hours of processing for a few minutes of load time. Buy or Try Unified Color Software With any program, it’s always a good idea to try a program out before you purchase it. If you don’t like it, you aren’t out any money, and if you do, then you get a chance to test it out for before you make a decision. Be sure to check out the Unified Color website for more info. They offer a 30-day free trial or you can purchase the software for $99. If you’d like a link for 20% if you decide to purchase, be sure to hit me up on twitter ( @jamesdbrandon ) and send you the link through a DM (you must be following me for me to DM you). Here are a few more images processed with HDR Express… Post from: Digital Photography School – Photography Tips . Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips , Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras . Unified Color HDR Express – First Look . . . → Read More: Unified Color HDR Express – First Look  Sometimes it’s nice and refreshing to just strip a photo or scene down to it’s absolute bare essentials. Often times, I get too caught up in trying to fill every part of the frame with something interesting. The problem is, sometimes when we try to fill up the entire frame with objects, lines, people, shapes, etc, we actually overcomplicate things and leave the viewer wanting a place to rest their eyes. The trick/secret is this: Negative space can be just as interesting in a photograph as anything else, if done right. I encourage you to consider this the next time you go out shooting. Incorporating negative space into your images can be very rewarding, and at the same time quite challenging. Sometimes situations will present themselves where it’s clear. Other times you will have to get creative with a subject to find the proper framing to create this type of image. Here are a few examples of negative space and minimalism to get your creative juices flowing… Image by Brian Matiash In the above image, Brian Matiash actually set out to create a series of minimalistic, black and white images around Statin Island . This is just one image from that series. This is also a great example of successfully breaking the “rule” of photography about not placing your horizons in the center. Sometimes the composition of the image and the leading lines within the frame demand it. I believe that if Brian had composed the scene with less sky and more water, the reflections of the old pier would be complete in the scene, and he would lose that anchor to the bottom of the frame. On the flip side, if he had composed with more sky and less water, the image would lose interest by cutting out key parts of the reflection. Image by Mike Olbinski I love this image by Mike Olbinski. It’s from a photo shoot he did for a family back in December ( here’s a link to the post ). The post Mike wrote speaks to the importance of getting family portraits done and getting them done now. Just months after this photo shoot was completed, the great grandfather in this image passed away. While the loss of a loved one is always a time of mourning, it’s really great to know the little girl in this image will now forever have this beautiful image of her and her great grandfather. The simplicity and minimalism in the image is incredible. The light on the subjects is just enough to provide definition to the girl and the palm trees in the background frame the shot beautifully. Great image Mike. Image by James Brandon (that's me!) Finally, here’s an image from my own portfolio. In my blog post on this image, I discussed how I have this sort of list in the back of my head of shots that I want to get. This image was one of those list items. I didn’t go out to get this shot, but when I saw this hawk flying over head, I instantly knew it could be one of the shots on my list! I converted the image to black and white, and cranked up the exposure to completely blow out the sky. Yes, I intentionally created blown highlights. Oh no! Conclusion I hope this quick post will inspire you to go out and incorporate negative space into some of your work, if you haven’t already. It really is nice to go out sometimes with the intention of creating a certain type of image and finding creative ways to execute on that idea. If you have examples of minimalism in your work, we want to see it! Post the images, or links to the images, in the comments below. If you have anything to add, be sure to let us know as well. Post from: Digital Photography School – Photography Tips . Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips , Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras . Minimalism: Using Negative Space In Your Photographs . . . → Read More: Minimalism: Using Negative Space In Your Photographs |
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