Photo Tips

Choosing a camera

2010-07-21T18:08:00.000-07:00

People ask me all the time which type of camera is best. Honestly, there's a lot of truth to the saying, "the best camera is the camera you have with you."

Short of carrying a camera around at all times, odds are when you see something that just begs to be captured, you don't have your camera. This is why I adore the camera built into my iPhone. I always have it with me. It doesn't take the most fabulous photos of all time, but the resolution is good enough that if I post the image to the web, you can tell what it is that I have photographed, which is more than most older cell phone cameras could manage. That technology is just going to keep getting better.

"What camera should I buy?" You can Google that question and find all kinds of answers. You can ask your friends and family what kind of cameras they use and what they like and don't like about them. You can ask someone like me. I can give you pretty decent advice, since I've been a photographer for many years. I also worked part time at a camera store for a while. When I worked there, I had access to all the different brands and got to play with them. That was great education, and watching our customer's reactions to the different brands, and listening to what they wanted in a camera. Teaching classes gives me great access to the different models, too.

Currently, my main camera is a Nikon D300S. The lens I use with it is a Nikon 18-200 VR. It's a fabulous camera. It's the nicest camera I've ever owned, and it took me many years in the field to get to the point to where I could afford such a camera. However, even though I love this camera, it is not the camera for everyone, and as I found out hiking in the mountains last week, it's not really the camera for me all the time. It's heavy, for one. It's a great camera for studio shooting, for events and general walkabout, but for hiking four miles into the mountains, it's too much. For that instance, it's also too nice. It was hot when I was hiking, and I was sweating like you know what. I was reluctant to put my sweaty face and my sweaty fingers on my nice camera to get a shot. I was also preoccupied with getting from point A to B, and by the time I got to the top of the mountain to take a photo of the view, I was all out of breath from exertion and also breathless with how beautiful it was. I was so overcome, in fact, that I neglected to check my camera's settings as I snapped away in the bright, mountaintop summer light. I had my ISO set to 1600. Ooops. (1600 is what you want the ISO on when shooting in dim light)

So. There is such a thing as too much camera. If all you want is a good camera to take snapshots, you do not need a camera like my D300S.

When buying a camera, I would suggest asking yourself these questions:

What is your budget?
What are you primarily going to be photographing?
How much camera do you want to carry around?
What are you going to do with the photos you take? (Put them on the web, print them, make posters, etc...)
How durable do you need the camera to be?

I'd say budget is probably the most important thing to consider, followed by what you want to photograph. Most point and shoot cameras can capture anything the casual shutterbug desires, but there are several situations where only an SLR will work well. Those situations are primarily for stopping action, photographing in low light, and if you want to make large prints.

Image quality is always going to be better with SLRs, but not everyone wants that much camera, or wants to learn the nitty gritty information about settings on cameras. Ask yourself just how much do you want to learn about photography. Do you just want to get good shots, or do you really want to know how the camera captures the image and how to manipulate that to your advantage?

Also ask yourself how much time you want to spend learning it. Everyone is busy, and photography can be a time consuming (and expensive) hobby. But if you really love photography, then jumping into it with both feet might make you really happy. Once of the best things about being a teacher is seeing people really enjoy photography, and learning more about it and pushing themselves to be creative. Everyone can use a dose of creativity in their lives, and we all have it in us.

So I identified my main camera, but it's not the only camera I have. If you've bought a digital camera in recent years, you'll know that they become outdated almost as soon as you get them, like computers. And just like old computers, once they are outdated, their value decreases at a heartbreaking rate. Because of this, when I bought my current camera, I didn't even bother selling the SLR I had before the D300s, the Nikon D70. I figured I'd use it as a backup. I haven't done that so much, because the image quality of the D300s is better than the D70, but I have used the D70 for workshops I teach kids. I let them use the D70, and they love it. I would feel more comfortable hiking up a mountain with it as well, because if I dropped it or got it all sweaty, it wouldn't be as big of a deal. I urge you to hang on to your old cameras when you upgrade, and let your kids use them, or take them to the park or on the boat. Might as well get as much life out of old cameras as you can.

I also have a Canon Powershot SD600. For little bitty pocket cameras, Canon makes some of the best. They are very lightweight, and small enough to fit in your pocket or purse. I used to use it a whole bunch for snapshot type photos, saving my SLRs for professional or fine art work, but now that I have my iPhone, its camera has kind of replaced my Powershot. The iPhone camera isn't as good as the Powershot, but it's not bad, and with the iPhone, I can take a photo and immediately share it on the web, which is a fun thing to do.

Again, it's all about what you want to do with your photos, and what you want to carry, how much you want to spend, etc....

Personally, I like Nikon and Canon best of all the brands. They consistently make a quality product, have been in the business for years, and because they are in competition with one another, each brand always has something new and interesting to offer. You really can't go wrong with either brand, in an SLR or a point and shoot. There are other brands out there, and some of them are pretty decent, but I'm always going to recommend Nikon and Canon first. There are many different models to choose from with both brands, but these days, any of their cameras are going to take a good picture. What you do with the photo afterward is up to you.The possibilities are endless!

Summer Nature Photography classes at Blackacre State Nature Preserve

2010-04-19T12:26:00.000-07:00

I am teaching two sections of a 3 week Nature Photography class for JCPS Adult Education at Blackacre State Nature Preserve. This is a fun class and it only meets for three weeks. If you haven't been to Blackacre, you're in for a treat! There is a historic house on its grounds, a barn with some animals- goats, horses and cows, and hiking trails.

Here is some more information:

Summer classes for Jefferson County Public Schools Adult Education at Blackacre State Nature Preserve. To register, call (502) 485-3400 or visit the JCPS Adult Education web site.

Nature Photography
Mondays, June 7-June 21
5:30 - 7:15 p.m.
Blackacre State Nature Preserve
$65

Learn unique ideas for taking good photos of nature and the great outdoors. This class is for digital or film cameras. While it is geared toward SLR camera users, point-and-shoot camera users are welcome. NOTE: The class will include moderate walking.

San Diego County Library Workshops

2010-03-02T14:54:00.000-08:00

I am teaching a series of photography workshops at the San Diego County Library March 6-14. For a list of when I am teaching and where, click here.

To visit the site I created for the classes, click here.

If you've attended one of the classes, you will receive a handout with a password that will give you access to PDF versions of my presentations with clickable links. To access that part of the site, click here.

Photographer and writer Ken Rockwell gave our workshops a plug on his website on March 1st on his "What's New" page. Click here to visit the page, and scroll down to the March 1 entry to read more.

For more info about me, visit my web site. You can find me on Facebook here. Follow me on Twitter here.

Portrait links

2009-10-12T10:38:00.001-07:00

Kodak has a great website about how to take good portraits:
Kodak's Portrait Tips website

You can find the blog entry I wrote on portraits here.

Also, visit Flickr to see examples of portraits:

Here are just a few Flickr portrait groups:

Flickr Portrait Photography

Flickr Wedding Photography

Flickr Children's Portraits

Flickr Photos of children taken in natural light (no flash)

Flickr Sports Photography

Finally, here are some examples of my recent portrait work:

Here are two portraits that I took last week of my friend while he was playing with his band at a festival in New Albany:

See how color vs. black and white changes the mood of the photograph? I zoomed in close to capture the emotion on his face as he sang. If you want to see some other photographs like this, visit my blog on my professional website.

I have two weddings and three portrait sessions scheduled for this fall. I'll be posting a few shots from each session on that blog page if you want to keep up with me after the class is over.

Composition Assignment Companion

2009-09-20T10:26:00.000-07:00

Here is the link to the website that I mentioned in the Composition assignment:

http://3191.visualblogging.com/index.html

Here is where I wrote more about the above mentioned website last year:

http://huberphotoclasses.blogspot.com/2008/02/3191-year-of-mornings.html

For further reading about composition, visit these websites:

General

http://digital-photography-school.com/digital-photography-composition-tips

http://digital-photography-school.com/6-tips-for-perfect-composition-in-portrait-photography

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/learnmore/composition.mspx

http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=14055&pq-locale=en_US&_requestid=6437

Highly recommended books on photography

2009-05-12T08:14:00.000-07:00

This is a list of books that I've come across in the years I've been teaching photography that I find to be great resources. I use them myself and recommend them to all my students.

Essential companions to the study of digital photography

These books are great for photographers of all levels and skill, for both point and shoot and SLR camera users.

The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby
Find it on Amazon here.

The Digital Photography Book, Volume 2 by Scott Kelby
Find it on Amazon here.

Buy them both as a boxed set on Amazon here.

KODAK Guide to Digital Photography by Rob Sheppard
Find it on Amazon here.

The Betterphoto Guide to Digital Photography (Amphoto Guide Series) by Jim Miotke
Find it on Amazon here.

This is a great book on nature photography

The BetterPhoto Guide to Digital Nature Photography (BetterPhoto Series) by Jim Miotke
Find it on Amazon here.

Digital Photography and Software

Digital photography and Photoshop go hand in hand. Photoshop is a difficult program to learn, but it can greatly enhance your experience with photography and digital technology. For most people, Photoshop Elements, a simplified version of Photoshop, is all you will need. It can do most of the same things that the full version of Photoshop can do, and costs a fraction of the price.

I've studied and used Photoshop regularly for the past ten years. Of all the books I've read about Photoshop, Scott Kelby's are by far the best. They are colorful, well designed and most importantly, Kelby explains concepts in a way that makes sense.

Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, like most computer programs, have many versions. The most current version of Photoshop Elements, as of today, is 7. I'm figuring that most people don't have the most current version, so I recommend Kelby's book on Elements, version 6:

The Photoshop Elements 6 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter)by Scott Kelby
Find it on Amazon here.

If you are in the photography, graphic or web design industry, or if you are planning on or are trying to start your own photography business, I strongly suggest that you purchase and learn the full version of Photoshop. The most current version of Photoshop is CS4. CS stands for "Creative Suite." Again, I am assuming that most people don't have the most current version of Photoshop, so I recommend Kelby's book on Photoshop CS3. I am currently using CS3 on my personal computer for all of my personal photography and the photography I do for freelance clients.

The Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby
Find it on Amazon here.

Taking a photography class is a great way to learn photography skills, but I think it's always a good idea to have reference materials around that you can refer to again and again. I have a whole library of books about photography and software that I find essential to my day-to-day use of my camera and computer, so I hope this list is helpful to you too.

The Art and Challenge of Portraits

2008-11-16T15:07:00.000-08:00

As you probably know, taking a good portrait of someone is not as easy as one might think. The camera makes a lot of people nervous, and it makes people pose even if they aren't meaning to. A good portrait is a shot of someone where they look natural and relaxed. It's hard for most people to relax in front of the camera. The photographer's challenge is to make their subject relax and let down their guard.

There are several ways to do this. One way is to take lots of photos. These photos I present below are from a group of about 60 shots. As you can see, of those 60 shots I took, only about 3 or 4 are worth keeping. This is pretty typical. If you are shooting digitally, taking lots of photos is not going to cost you anything, and it's worth doing no matter what the subject, but is especially essential when shooting portraits. Another technique that is often used by photographers to get their subjects to relax and forget that the camera is there is to engage them in conversation. I usually do a combination of both. You have to be careful with the conversation, however, because if you snap a photo of your subject while they are talking, then you might capture them with their mouth open. Plan on taking one shot after the other- that way you'll get some good ones during conversation pauses, or even better, when your subject is laughing. It's always good if you can get your subject to laugh.

This set of portraits below are of my sister. I have one sister and she is three years younger than me. We've always been close, growing up and now that we are adults. However, just because I have a good relationship with her doesn't necessarily mean that I can take a good portrait of her. She's always presented a challenge to me photographically. She's an attractive woman, but we tend to cheese it up when we are around each other, so my portraits of her are often stiff. She doesn't look at ease in front of the camera, and her smiles don't always look natural.

(Captions refer to the photo above) I think this was the best shot of the group, because I managed to trip the shutter when she was laughing. This is how she really smiles and the look on her face is relaxed, open and natural. However, her face is in shadow a little bit, and when I looked closely at the photo, the focus on her face is not as sharp as I would have liked. You have to watch your camera when taking these types of shots. Sometimes the autofocus does not focus on the elements of the photograph that you want it to focus on. Often, you don't find this out until the shoot is over and you're viewing the photos on the computer screen. That's another reason to take several different shots of the same pose. Chances are one of them will turn out the way you want it to.

In some ways, I like this shot more than the above shot where she is smiling more. The light is better overall, and the angle of the photo is more interesting. She's not looking directly at the camera, which might bother some people, but I don't mind it. It looks like she is contemplating something.

Usually you never want to undershoot (placing yourself lower to the ground than your subject, causing you to have to point the camera up to take the shot) when taking portraits, because it is not a flattering angle for anyone. I sort of did that here, but I liked the resulting angle. The portrait probably would have been a little stronger had I not undershot it quite as much, but it was salvagable.

When working with people, you have to watch the expression on their face in each shot. This is much easier to do now with digital photography. As you photograph your subject, take the time to review the photo on your camera's LCD screen. Make sure they have their eyes open and mouth closed. Eyes closing in portraits is probably the most typical thing that will botch a portrait. Take many shots of the same pose in sucession (even use the continuous mode on your camera) to make sure you'll get a few shots where they eyes are open and your subject is looking good.

Sometimes portraits end up looking too serious. That's fine if what you're going for is a serious "artsy" or documentary photo. However, if the object of the portrait session is to get some nice relaxed photos of your subject that give off a warm, happy vibe, you don't want them to look like this. When reviewing photos as you shoot them on your camera's LCD screen, also watch for the mood that your sujbect's expression conveys. Make sure it captures the look that you want.

If you're shooting with film, it's a little more difficult to monitor how your portraits are looking as you shoot them. You really have no way of knowing until after the film is processed. We are spoiled in the digital age by not having to worry about this as much anymore, but there was a day not too long ago where all photographers had to combat this problem. The solution to this is just to take lots of photos.

Flower Photography

2008-06-15T18:35:00.001-07:00

Flowers are a popular subject for photography. Since they are such a popular subject, sometimes the challenge is to try to capture them in interesting ways. Anyone can take a photo of a flower, but it can take some skill to take a flower photograph that stands out in the crowd.

I have a perennial garden in my front yard. It was planted by the woman who owned the house before my husband and I bought it last year. We moved into our house last July, and I've been enjoying our first full year here. Since I wasn't the one who planted all the flowers in my garden, I haven't really known when things were going to bloom, and so it's been exciting to watch it since this spring. Our house's former owner was a skilled gardener, and most gardeners who really know what they are doing plant so that there is something blooming at every point in the growing season, rather than planting things so that everything blooms at the same time. By planting this way, the garden always looks pretty, and it always looks different.

I've been trying to capture my garden as it blooms this year. Below are a few examples of photos I've taken this year that I will use to illustrate a few techniques.

This is a clematis that is in my backyard. The shot below is taken at point blank; me standing right in front of where it blooms. I took this shot to show the placement of the plant in my yard, but it is not an especially eye catching photo. This is a photo used for the sake of documentation, and it does not really show off the beauty of the plant. You can't even see the purple blooms on it in this shot.

Using my 18-200mm lens, I zoomed in on one of the plant's flowers to take this shot. Notice how the background blurs as I zoomed in, and also how the flower fills most of the frame. By placing the flower in the frame like this, the shot becomes all about the flower, and shows the detail and structure of the flower.

Zooming in on a flower, or in this case a weed, puts the focus on the flower. You can also open up your aperture to blur the background. Usually flowers occur in places where there is a lot going on in the background, whether it's all the other flowers and plants growing nearby, or houses or buildings in the background, or just the busy texture of grass. To make the flower stand out from busy backgrounds like this, the afore mentioned techniques are often used. I opened up the aperture of my lens to its widest to take this photograph of a dandelion. I also crouched down on my knees to take the shot at weed level, as it were. Positioning yourself level with the flower can make flower shots more interesting than shooting down on them while you are standing up.

Irises are one of my favorite flowers, so I was excited to see that a plant I had thought might be irises bloom in my garden this spring. Irises don't bloom for very long, so I had to act fast to capture them at their peak. The photo below was taken of an iris blooming in my front yard. I could crouch down low enough so I could shoot the iris so only the fence showed in the background. I positioned myself carefully, because the irises are toward the front of my yard, and if I'd shot some of the other blooms on the plant, the street would have been in the background, with parked cars and other unphotogenic items showing. I didn't want that, and didn't want a cluttered background, so I zoomed in on this particular flower, right after it had rained, which is always a nice time to capture flowers.

I wasn't thrilled with the fence background, though, so I clipped a flower and brought it inside my house where I'd set up a black backdrop. This is an excellent way to photograph flowers, because you don't have to deal with busy backgrounds, wind which can botch the focus of your shot, bugs or any other distractions. This is a more formal way to photograph flowers, but it can be striking, depending on the flower.

So there are a few ideas for you to try. Enjoy!

Why shooting in the RAW format is a good idea

2008-04-08T22:35:00.000-07:00

When I first got my digital SLR (DSLR) in 2005, I didn't bother to read much about the RAW format. I set my camera on the highest quality JPEG (JPEG Fine in Nikonspeak) and went on with my business. I'd heard a little bit about RAW reading photography articles on the internet and books about digital photography, but at the time RAW just seemed like kind of a pain in the rear.

A RAW file is like a digital negative. It captures the raw image, literally. When you change the RAW file to a JPEG, or if you shoot on the JPEG setting, the resulting files are not the original data captured; rather the files consist of chunks of pixels that the JPEG process corrals together to produce a close approximation of what was originally shot. For a much more accurate description of what a JPEG is, go here.

There's nothing wrong with JPEGs, in fact you must always convert RAW data to the JPEG format if you want to print a photograph shot in RAW, or if you want to upload the photo to the internet, or e-mail it or do just about anything with it. This is why I resisted the RAW format for so long. Usually I do want to print or e-mail my images, so the notion that I'd have to convert each and every image from RAW to JPEG if I wanted to do anything with them just seemed like an annoying extra step to me at the time.

Another thing about RAW is that you must have RAW conversion software if you want to deal with that format. Most cameras come with software, but typically photographers who work a lot with RAW images don't use the "free" software that came in the box with their camera. I, for one, never loaded any of the software that came with my Nikon D70 on my computer. I don't use it to download, I use a card reader to do that, and I don't use it to process or edit photos- I use Adobe Photoshop CS3. Photoshop CS3 comes with a plug-in called Camera RAW, and I like it. There are other RAW processors out there- Aperture, if you use a Mac, Lightroom, which is also made by Adobe, or there is Open Source software that will process RAW files as well, if you are into that sort of thing. I use Camera RAW because it works for me and it's part of my million dollar Adobe CS3 software package and since I paid over $600 for the upgrade from CS2, I'm not in a hurry to go spend another $300 on Lightroom or any other program.

Anyway, I digress.

Several of my photographer friends tut-tutted at me when I said I never shot in RAW, so I finally capitulated and gave it a try. Once I did, I asked myself why the heck I'd waited for so long?! Yes, it adds time to post processing, yes the files take up more room on the memory card. Wah! It's really not a big deal, those things. The versatility of RAW files more than makes up for the hassle.

When you open a RAW file in Camera RAW (and other RAW processors), you have very fine tune control over exposure, white balance, tonality, saturation, sharpness- etc.... Working with a RAW file is like working with a negative in the darkroom, only without all the smelly chemicals (I do miss those!). Everything you need to finesse your images is right there in the form of sliders and buttons. You can play with all of them and watch the effect they have in a large preview. CS3's Camera Raw even has the ability to recover blown out highlights (whites that are too harsh)- something that would be utterly lost in a JPEG. It has another slider called "Fill Light" which I quite like too.

Once you've adjusted the image to your liking, you can have it open up in Photoshop and from there save it as a JPEG to print or put on the web.

The example below illustrated just how effective editing an image in Camera RAW can be. The first photograph I deliberately shot on the wrong white balance setting. I was shooting with natural light, and I set my camera's white balance to tungsten (otherwise known as indoor/incandescent lighting). As you can see, the shot has an ugly blue cast to it. Had I shot the photo in the JPEG format, I could have tweaked the color balance in Photoshop a little, adding yellow to take some of that blue out, but it wouldn't completely fix the shot.

Notice also how the image's whites are pretty harsh, especially on the left hand side of the vase.

Now look at what happened when I changed the white balance to daylight within Camera RAW, plus used the Recovery slider to bring back some definition to the whites. I was pretty amazed with the results. This shot looks just like some others I took during the same shoot with the white balance set correctly.

These shots were taken during a demo I gave to my Intermediate Photography class about hot lights. Hot lights provide a constant source of light, often used for product photography and sometimes portraits. They are much cheaper than strobe lights, so they are popular with people who set up small photography studios in their home, or for photographers that don't have big budgets for strobe lights. In order to shoot with these lights, you must set your camera's white balance to tungsten. During this demo, I took some of my shots with just the existing light coming in through the window from outside, and some of my shots with a hot light. When switching back and forth between daylight and tungsten lighting, it's easy to forget to set your white balance back to daylight once you finish shooting with hot lights. You can tell that you have it set incorrectly if you look at the image on your camera's LCD screen once you've taken the photo, but sometimes in the flurry of the moment, we forget. Sometimes too, lighting situations are very tricky, or you might find yourself having to shoot in mixed lighting, and in those situations you might really need to custom tweak each shot to make it look right after the fact. Camera RAW. It's a good thing.

Macro photography with close up filters

2008-03-02T22:36:00.000-08:00

There are many ways to take photographs of something up close, or to photograph something small. This type of photography is called macro photography. Most modern cameras have a macro setting, usually noted as a tulip on the shooting mode dial of SLR cameras and as a little tulip symbol on one of the buttons on point and click cameras. Sometimes that setting is accessed through menus on point and clicks- it depends of the model. This "tulip" setting has a certain amount of latitude- usually you can get about 6-10 inches away from your subject and still capture the subject in focus. Most built in macro settings will not allow you to get any closer than that.

In order to photograph subjects closer than 6-10 inches, you will need a special lens, called a macro lens. These lenses tend to be rather pricey, but they are the best way to take macro photographs. Both Canon and Nikon make several macro lenses, the more expensive ones allow you to put more distance between you and the subject, and sometimes also have technology like Vibration Reduction built into them.

There are other techniques for macro photography, devices called extension tubes, or there are ways of taking a normal lens and mounting it backward on a camera to allow it to focus up close. I don't have expertise with any of those methods, so I will not go into explaining any of those methods here.

The "poor (wo)man's" way of taking macro shots involves a set of close up filters, which you purchase to fit the end of your lens. They come in a kit of three, as seen below. I use these filters and this method of macro photography a great deal. These close up filters cost me about $70, whereas the macro lens that I'd like for my Nikon costs almost $900, and is not currently in my budget, as it wouldn't be for most people's.

The filters are made to be screwed on to the end of your lens one at a time, though you can "stack" them for a more powerful magnification. The first photo below was shot with the +1 and +2 filters screwed on top of each other, on the end of the 18-70 lens that I have for my Nikon. Conversation hearts are pretty tiny objects, so in order to capture them in any detail, I needed to use these filters.

Focus is tricky with close up filters, and even with a true macro lens. A tripod is pretty much essential, though I have gotten some good shots outside in good lighting using macro filters and no tripod. All of these shots were taken indoors without a flash, all using a tripod.

When you shoot with these filters, you have to be almost right on top of your subject to be able to focus, so the end of my lens was probably literally less than an inch from the hearts in each shot.

The first shot I took of the hearts with the +1 and +2 filters turned out pretty cool, but I wanted to magnify the shot even more, so I screwed my +4 filter on top of the +1 and +2 to get both of the shots below. The more filters you have stacked onto your lens, the more likely you'll get vignetting, which causes black to appear on all four corners of your shot, or as you can see in the close up shot of the group of hearts up close, the focus on the edges of the shot falls off a bit. Focus with the +4 filter is very selective. Sometimes these results are not desirable, but sometimes they end up looking kind of interesting.

Though I have always taken my closest close up shots with all three filters stacked on the camera's lens, I read recently that you can just screw the +4 filter on the camera lens by itself and get the same basic effect. Try it both ways.

Even with all three filters stacked on the camera, this is as close as I could get to the one individual heart. If I wanted it to be blown up more, or to take up more of the frame, then I would have to use a real macro lens or employ one of the other macro photography techniques.

However, another way I can have the heart take up more of the frame is to simply crop the photo.

This is by no means an exhaustive explanation of macro photography, but hopefully it will show you what you can do with close up filters. They can be a lot of fun to use.

How to Resources

2008-02-15T12:43:00.000-08:00

The class I am teaching now has a long lull thanks to the weather and President's Day. While we are waiting for the class to commence, here is some information about DVDs and books that show you how to use your camera.

Magic Lantern Guides

This is a company that makes books that are essentially an extended version of your camera's owners manual. The link above will take you to the Rebel XTi guide, sold on Amazon.com. You can easily search Amazon for other camera's manuals as well. Usually you can find these guides locally at Murphy's Camera.

Magic Lantern DVD Guides

I did not realize that Magic Lantern made DVD guides as well. A student in my current Beginning Photography class told me that he bought one locally at Circuit City and found it to be helpful. You can also order them through the website linked above.

Murphy's Camera does not carry the Magic Lantern DVDs to my knowledge, but they do carry the QuickPro Camera Guides DVDs. They are not terribly expensive, and I've heard good things about them from customers.

Murphy's also carries some DVDs put out through Nikon's Nikon School. There is one called "Understanding Digital Photography- Release Your SLR's Potential," that sounds pretty good.

Most of these DVDs are about $25-$30, which is not bad considering the usual price for how-to books or DVDs which address computer software or other technology.

There are many ways to learn technology, and I've found that any little bit helps. I've been a photographer for years and learned many of those skills in school, but technology changes so often that I find myself constantly scrambling to keep up with it. I've got photography down, but I've been trying to learn more about graphic design and website design for the past several years. Typically, I have at least three books strewn around the house which attempt to teach me about all of these things. I have a DVD tutorial which covers the new Adobe Creative Suite 3 sitting in my inbox. I might get around to watching it someday. Meanwhile, there are tons and tons of tutorials and websites which offer tips on using Photoshop and other computer software that I check out on a semi-regular basis.

I've found that I learn best when I take a class or have someone teach me one on one, but having books and DVDs help too. It's all too easy to forget how to do certain things when you are several weeks, months or years away from a class you took, or if you've been too busy to practice.

So, while I hope the classes I teach are helpful to my students, I encourage you to keep studying outside of the classroom. Some people find books helpful, others might find DVDs helpful. The best way to learn photography is to keep shooting. Take what you learn in class and in books or on the internet or by DVD and use it when you use your camera. There's no such thing as a bad photo if it helps you learn how to use your camera along the way.

Light

2008-02-09T12:25:00.000-08:00

This series of photos illustrates how to capture the best light. These photos were taken at 4 p.m. on an overcast day. The first two were taken in my kitchen, which receives indirect light from two windows on either side of the room.

Our house is long and narrow, and it is bordered on either side by our neighbors' houses, both of which are less than 8 feet away. As a consequence, only the very front and very back rooms of our house get direct light. Direct light, however, can sometimes be too harsh. Sometimes if the light is directly on your subject, its colors can be washed out, and the contours of the object are obscured because there are not enough shadows to show the shape of the object that you are shooting. For this reason, I have found that the indirect light coming in through my kitchen windows makes for a nice, flattering light in which to shoot objects.

If you look closely at the shot above and especially the next one, you'll see that neither shot is quite in focus. Because I was shooting at 4 in the afternoon in indirect light, even opening my aperture as wide as it would let me at that particular focal length, there was still not enough light to get a proper exposure without slowing down the shutter speed as well. The shutter speed on the photo above is 1/5; a fifth of a second. That's pretty slow. Had I put my camera on a tripod, though (I didn't have the camera on a tripod for any of these shots), then the shot would have been in focus. Because I was trying to take the shot at 1/5 without a tripod, the movement of the shutter plus the subtle movement I was making just by standing there and pushing the shutter button, the shot ended up blurry. I had my 18-200 VR (Vibration Reduction) lens on the camera, and even with the VR activated, that was still too slow of a shutter to get an in focus shot without a tripod. So rule of thumb here: use a tripod in this shooting situation.

I placed the wine bottle on my kitchen table for this first shot. Our kitchen table is in the center of the room, away from the window. I thought the resulting light in this shot was sort of flat. Can you see how the whole shot is sort of dull? None of the colors "pop" out of the shot, and there are not many interesting highlights or shadows to make the wine bottle look more interesting. In order to capture the wine bottle in more interesting light, I moved it to a small table close to the window.

In this second shot, you can see that I still had the same problems with focus due to the slow shutter speed, but the lighting is a little more interesting. There are shadows cast by the wine bottle, as there were in the first shot, but unlike the first shot, there are some highlights in this shot as well- the bright parts on the left hand side of the wine bottle. A photograph with good lighting should have both highlights and shadows, plus a little bit of midtones as well.

Highlights: the brightest part of your shot; white tones
Shadows: the darkest parts of your shot; black tones
Midtones: everything in between

You have to be careful with the highlights, especially when shooting digitally. If the highlights get too bright in your shot, then they tend to get too "hot," in that they show up bright white and washed out with no detail captured.

The second shot posted here, despite having a little better lighting, is still not all that much different from the first. Sometimes the lighting in certain places just doesn't flatter your subject very well. I could have improved either of these shots with the addition of a tripod, or with flash or photo lights. All of those things require set up time, though, and for the sake of brevity, I decided to take the wine bottle to another, better lit location to get a good shot.

When the skies are overcast, they produce a nice, even type of lighting that is very flattering for portraits or still lives, so I decided to take the wine bottle outside to my back yard to shoot it under the overcast skies.

Notice that with this shot, I was able to shoot it with about the same aperture (f5), but the shutter speed changed to 1/60. 1/60 is a much faster shutter speed than 1/4, so I was able to take the shot hand holding my camera without the results being blurry. The lighting outside on that particular day was pretty even, as you get with overcast skies. This particular lighting is not especially dramatic, but if drama is not really what you are going for, then this type of lighting will work just fine.

You can also see here that the background of the shot is blurred, but the wine bottle is not. I put the camera on the widest aperture that I could get, which was f5. If I had a lens which would allow me to open the aperture to f2.8 or wider, then the background would have been even more blurred. As it was, f5 blurred the background out enough to draw attention to the wine bottle and away from my messy, wintering over yard.

3191 A Year of Mornings

2008-02-05T21:30:00.000-08:00

photo from http://3191ayearofmornings.com/

Sometimes when I teach my photography classes, students ask me how to take photographs that will make people say "wow" when they look at them. I'm never quite sure how to answer that question. For one thing, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and something that I think is beautiful is not necessarily something everyone else will think is beautiful. Still, there are photographs out there that grab the attention of a lot of people- often photographs taken in exotic places. The exotic is compelling to a wide audience. However, I sometimes scoff at this sort of "National Geographic" standard of photography. You'd really have to try to take a lousy photograph of say, the Eqyptian pyramids or of a safari in Africa. Where is the challenge in that? I don't want to denigrate the work of National Geographic photographers or the photographs of people lucky enough to have the budget to visit Paris and Africa on their summer vacation- those photographers have plenty of skill and talent (and National Geographic photographers tend to use top of the line cameras and lenses, which can't hurt).

I believe it is a far more difficult and worthy task as a photographer to turn something ordinary into something extraordinary through the camera and the lens. If there is any 'trick' to getting taking photos that rise a cut above all the rest, it's that. Anyone can take a picture, but not anyone can take a good picture.

I heard about this website sometime last year. It is a collaboration between two women, one living in Portland, Maine, the other living in Portland, Oregon. This is how the site is described:

3191, A Year of Mornings began on January 1, 2007 as an almost daily photo conversation, in blog form, between two friends that live 3191 miles apart. It lasted the entire calendar year ending on December 31, 2007.

The project is now being transformed into a book which will be out in the Fall, published by Princeton Architectural Press. In preparation for the book, A Year of Mornings is no longer available for online viewing.

I think it is one of the best exercises in rendering the ordinary into something extraordinary that I've seen in a long time. As mentioned above, the Year of Mornings photos are no longer online because they are being made into a book. The photos on their website currently are from their current project, A Year of Evenings. The evening photos have the same feel as the morning photos, so you can get an idea of the type of photos both ladies shoot.

Both women photograph simple scenes from their everyday lives, and they can make something like a piece of toast look lovely, by the way the shot is framed, by the light in the photo, by the sometimes unusual points of view captured in their photos. Something else I found fascinating about their project is how similar in theme and composition the photos often are, despite the distance between the women. It is almost like they have a creative mind meld.

I was excited to hear that a book is being made of their work. If it is in my budget, I will certainly purchase it. Having a years' worth of these gentle, cozy and beautiful photos gathered together in a finely printed and bound book would be a treat. Perusing the book will make you feel like a lazy Sunday morning; a comfortable morning at home.

Welcome!

2008-02-02T13:18:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Photo Tips and Good Things, the not so imaginatively named blog that I've created to be a companion to the photography classes that I teach.

I've been teaching photography since 2000. The first few classes I taught were undergraduate photography classes at the school where I received my Masters Degree, Virginia Commonwealth University. I taught basic usage of the camera, as well as how to make prints in a darkroom and how to cut and display them in mats. Some people assume that I am not old enough to remember the days of black and white film and the darkroom, but that's how I learned as an undergraduate at the University of Louisville and at VCU as a grad student. The digital revolution was just starting to impinge on the art and science of photography in 1999-2001 when I was studying at VCU, and we had a few Photoshop classes.

I remember how many of my colleagues and even myself fought against digital photography back then. Some people hate digital photography even now, in 2008 when that method of shooting has clearly taken over the world of film shooting. It is true that digital photography is less tactile, and there is nothing quite like the experience of working with prints and negatives in the darkroom. I still lament from time to time that I have nowhere to set up an old fashioned darkroom.

However, once I got to experience taking pictures with a digital camera, I was hooked. The immediacy of the process makes it much easier to do business, and it also allows you to know right away if you got the shot you were aiming for, or not. I traded my Nikon N80 SLR camera for a Nikon D70 digital SLR in 2005 and I have not looked back. I bought an iMac computer and the Adobe Creative Suite of programs, which includes Photoshop, Illustrator (a computer drawing program), InDesign (a page layout program) and Dreamweaver (a web design program) later that year, and I've spend all subsequent years using and trying to learn more about shooting digitally and using these computer programs.

Regardless of whether you've made the switch to digital photography or not, the world wide web and the internet contain a wealth of information about photography and how to master the use of your camera. Websites and links change so rapidly that I've never (until now) cobbled together a list of online resources for my students. It seemed that as soon as I typed up a handout with links to good sites, that it was out of date- one of the drawbacks of the digital age. There is definitely a very transient nature to technology these days. Products and equipment are out dated as soon as you buy them, but try not to let that discourage you.

I wanted to come up with a way to share links to good photo sites and also share images with my students online. I can easily change and update links by hosting this information online. I also find that I never have enough time to share everything that I'd like to share with my students during our classes. I show examples of my photography during classes, but students see the images only briefly. I wanted to put some my images on the internet so that my students could look at them more in depth, as well as obtain information about how each image was shot. For this purpose, I've created a flickr stream. Flickr is a photo sharing site that you can join for free, or for about $30.00 a year, you can purchase a "flickr pro" account, which allows you pretty much an unlimited amount of posting of photos.

So to sum up (I tend to be a somewhat verbose writer- my apologies), it is my hope to share information and photos and photo tips with this blog, and to share a more voluminous amount of photos over in my Huber Photo Classes flickr stream. Hopefully these sites can fill in some of the gaps that occur when I teach my classes, as well as share information with potential students and photo enthusiasts.