Whenever you’re out and about, look for shots to add to your collection. Specifically, clouds.

Clouds over the Southwest

Cloud shots with just clouds are usually considered boring, if you want to make your sky shots stand out, include a foreground element so that your reader can place where in the world your shot was taken.

Why would someone have a collection of cloud shots? What if you took a photo and the sky was blown out? Didn’t HDR or even think to. Take your shot, mask the blown out boring sky and insert a new one.

But isn’t that cheating? I’m a photography purist, and this is on the fence for me - but why shouldn’t you be allowed to enhance an image to make it look like you saw it when you clicked that shutter button? Other things to ‘collect’? How about landscapes, seascapes, letters and numbers, signs? These last suggestions are a bit different than collecting skies for use later, but collect what you like, you never know when you need an element added to your image that makes all the difference in the world.

What’s the ‘Sweet Spot’?

Sweet Spot

…On a lens?

Read More…

Off Camera Flash

In the first part of this article (Link) we started to answer the question “What is the best way to light a person with one strobe?”. We talked about on-camera flash. Then we went to part two (link) and talked about external strobe, but still on the hot shoe of the camera - or a bracket, pretty much similar.

Off-camera strobe is the holy grail of lighting. It’s sort of simple too, take the strobe off the camera. When you get your light off the same plane of your lens, you can do all sorts of wonderful things. But, let’s stick to the topic of lighting a person with one strobe. For those of you who want extra curricular reading, head over to Strobist.com for enough off-camera information that will make you click your lil’ hot shoes together three times and say ‘Theres no light like off-camera light’.

What do we need to worry about when getting our strobe off-camera? Well, let’s tackle the biggest problem first. How will your camera tell the strobe to fire?

Read More…

Going Down

Every so often Man decides to break from the pack and go crazy. I really don’t need to cite examples, we all know at least one crazed excursion by a male family member.

Well, over the last week I had mine. It started with finding a Canon Elan IIe body and battery grip for $43 at KEH.com. It was originally intended for shooting the occasional slide and since it’s an EOS body, I can pack it neatly in my camera bag and use my regular EOS EF lenses with it. No harm.

Somehow, from receiving the camera on Monday and today, I purchased and shot a roll of Ilford FP4 125asa film, dug out my old developing hardware, purchased new chemicals, mixed and prepared them, took a huge nearly-pass-out breath of stop bath fumes and developed my first roll of film in years. I even took it to the lab this morning, had them drum scan the roll and print me 4×6’s. Not that I really wanted prints, but hey, I really wanted a quick look at my hard work.

Read More…

In the first part of this article (Link) we started to answer the question “What is the best way to light a person with one strobe?”.

We talked about evil on camera flash and why you shouldn’t trust it for anything except the most desperate of lighting situations. Truth is, if you want a much, much better source of light, get yourself a strobe. It doesn’t need to be fancy - it slides into your hot shoe and can pivot up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right (It won’t however press B or A).

Strobe w/Diffuser

The strobe does become an on camera flash, but here’s the benefits. First of all, it’s further away from your lens and you’ve got less of a chance of red-eye.

Next, look at where the light comes out of a strobe compared to your on camera flash! Wow! It’s also much more powerful. But so what? Why would we want that power when we’re shooting the strobe straight at our subject a mere six feet away?

Bounce. Well, first off and in a perfect world, Bounce. The best shooting scenario when you go out to shoot an event with a single strobe is to hope that they have a white ceiling and not too far off the floor. Aim your strobe up at a point on the ceiling roughly between you and the subject.

Why? Remember when we talked about the size of light relative to the subject? If you bounce a strobe off a white ceiling, your strobe’s size goes from roughly an inch by two inches to a matter of feet. That’s right, SOFTER shadows! But what else? Your light is coming from above the subject. That’s going to give you shadows too! What kind of shadows? Soft normal Earth shadows!

Read More…

Improper Reflector Use © IridessaPhotography

“What is the best way to light a person with one strobe?”

Here’s a question submitted yesterday, since this is a beginners column we’ll answer it first for those who have point and shoot or an SLR with on camera flash. Then we’ll go into using an actual strobe on camera, and then we’ll go even one more step and get that strobe off the camera. We use the term flash when the flash is built into the camera and strobe when it’s an external device. Pretty much anymore we’re using both terms interchangeably. Strobe or Flash is just a term for a device that generates a fraction of a second of light.

Here’s the problem with light. Well, there are lots of problems but sit back, grab a beverage and take a deep breath.

Read More…

Posing Polar through Rope Fencing

“Are there any tricks to making fencing less noticeable when shooting through it at a baseball game or at the zoo?”

Nothing says ‘zoo’ more than a photo of an exotic animal in its natural habitat with the abundant vine chainus linkus going through the entire image.

When we say ‘fence’ we’re also covering mesh, like that of mosquito netting or window screen.

The trick to shooting through fencing is to understand - to a point - how a lens works. When you focus on a subject there’s only a certain amount of distance in front of and to the back of your subject that is in focus. That’s called your Depth of Field. We can control the depth of field by adjusting our aperture/f-stop value on the camera. The shallower the Depth of Field the smaller that slice of focus.  dSLR cameras will have this option however not many point and shoot cameras will. If your camera does have the option, you can put it into Aperture Priority mode and set the aperture value as low as possible. If your camera does not have this option, fear not - hope is not lost.

Now what happens to objects that move further and further away from this magical slice of focus? They get more and more blurry. So the next step is to get as close to the fence as possible. This not only moves the fence away from the focal point but can help make sure your camera doesn’t focus on the fence instead of your subject. What happens if the camera can’t focus? In this rare instance, use manual focus if your camera has the ability.

Lastly, the sad truth. The fence doesn’t disappear from the image. It usually blurs so much that you really can’t tell its there. So, with this in mind - shoot through a section of fence that is in shadow. What happens when you shoot through brightly lit fence? You’ll usually have a slight wash of light over your image, not usually too much to ruin the photo, but we want the best possible image… Right?

Beginners’ Voice is a column intended for beginners in the world of photography. It’s intention is to explain as simply as possible how to achieve certain results. If you’re interested in an in-depth explanation of any of the concepts or photographic terms used in this article there are a number of resources on the Web that can help.

The Twist

Are you a photographer? Pro? Amateur? Hobbyist? I feel that one of the best things you can do is to help tutor new photographers.

‘Study those who are better than you but hang out with those who aren’t.’ - John Milleker (Via http://www.harrynowell.com)

Why? When we first start photography we’re not tainted by the whole camera aspect. We see the world for what it is, we can watch the Superbowl without pausing to oogle camera gear the sports photographers are carrying. What happens when we let a camera ruin our world? We’re worrying about film or memory cards, dust on a lens, trees sticking out of heads, thumbs over the lens.. We’re ruined, yep. Don’t worry though, we almost get back to center - a sort of photographic nirvana where the camera becomes an extension of ourselves, a place where we look at the scene and mindlessly raise the camera to our eye, set an aperture/shutter speed to convey the emotion, focus on the subject, expose off where we want to expose off of, and click.

There’s just too much to think about when making an image. I could probably fill a page. But why ‘hang out with those who aren’t'? Interracting with new blood can be a very rewarding experience for the both of you, the beginner can hopefully learn something from you, and you’ll learn something from them. What can you learn from them? Innocence. New ideas, questions and thoughts on what would make a great photograph. That’s innocence to me. When someone points at something and says ‘That’ll make a nice photo!’ - I really have the chance to see the world again, through pure eyes.

That’s what the Beginners Voice column is going to be about. In the past I’ve kept it a level or two above basic, but the more and more I work with and teach beginners I am reminded of questions that to us are so simple but to others can be a real mental block for someone who is holding a camera for the first time.

Are you a beginner and want to know more about something photography related? Contact me using the ‘Contact Us’ form!

Ahhh, it’s that time of year again - it’s like Christmas for Canon shooters. Here’s the details:

Note* Amazon links can list the product from a number of stores. Make sure you’re buying from the company you want to purchase from using the ‘More Buying Options’ box under the ‘Add to Cart’ button.

• Lenses:

Canon EF 200mm f/2L IS USM, $500 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM, $130 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM, $80 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon EF 17-40 f/4L USM, $50 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM, $30 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM, $100 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 IS USM, $75 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM, $50 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon EF 28-200 f/3.5-5.6 USM, $30 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM, $200 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM, $100 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM, $70 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM, $40 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon EF 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 II USM, $20 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM, $100 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM, $50 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM, $35 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS, $15 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)

• Camera Kits/Combos:

Canon EOS 50D
+ Canon EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS, $300 Instant Rebate (Link: Adorama)

Canon EOS 50D
+ Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM, $150 Instant Rebate (Link: Adorama)

Canon EOS 50D & EF 28-135mm IS Lens Kit
+ Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM, $150 Instant Rebate (Link: Adorama)

Canon EOS Rebel XSi & EF-S 18-55mm IS Lens Kit
+ Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS, $200 Instant Rebate (Link: Adorama)

Canon EOS Rebel XS & EF-S 18-55mm IS Lens Kit
+ Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III, $100 Instant Rebate (Link: Adorama)

• Flash Units:

Canon Speedlite 430EX II, $30 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon Speedlite 220EX, $30 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX, $70 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon Speedlite 580EX II, $50 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)
Canon Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX, $50 Instant Rebate (Link: Amazon, Adorama)

GPS Synchronizing

I’ve recently been asked a little about GPS and Geotagging. Geotagging is the process of encoding the the location you took the photo (latitude and longitude) into each images’ EXIF data. Flickr, as well as a few others will use this information to place your image on a map.

So, you open one of the many tools out there to meld a GPS tracklog and JPEG image. The software takes location information the GPS (called a tracklog) and cross references each image against the time stamp in the track log and comes to a conclusion. But, have you thought that perhaps your Camera and GPS clocks are not exactly synchronized? Sure, you don’t need them perfect, but we would sure like to keep them as close as possible. Without GPS/Camera clock synchronization you could be encoding your images with location data that is minutes or even hours off! It all depends on how far the clocks in your devices are from each other.

There’s hope. If you don’t mind getting close you can make sure your clocks are set every time you start a photography session you intend to Geotag. Or, what I do is make sure I take a photograph of my GPS showing the time of day down to the second. At least all of the Geotagging programs I saw let me compensate for devices that are not perfectly synchronized. Open the image you took of the GPS clock, look at the image timestamp and do the math. Simple, done, and no fussing around complicated menus to set the clock on these devices each time you leave.

Some companies make a clip-on GPS unit with no display. They only record tracklogs (position and time, usually every so often) and can be retrieved via USB. While nice, they’re not much cheaper than a basic trail GPS with basic waypoint capabilities (no mapping). I say don’t worry about these unitaskers, get one with an LCD - who knows when you’ll want the GPS for hiking or other purposes?

-J