High Key Photography

Here are four high key examples using Sarah Halstead and Ashley Sisk's instructions:

The point of High Key photography is to eliminate as much shadow as possible, and make the photo as bright as possible.

I am so impressed with the instructions to use levels layers to mask away white spots on my make-shift background! So that's an easy way to get rid of splotches and wrinkles in backgrounds! It involves to levels adjustment layers. Both are left at 100% opacity. The first layer is based on a spot close to the center. You can't brush over the object with a black brush at 30-40% opacity if it also gets whitened.  The 2nd layer is based on a spot sampled more in the shadows on the edges, then invert the adjustment mask, and brush over any darker spots that need to be eliminated. Then merge all layers.  Here's the link to the nice and detailed instructions: Ramblings and Photos

This little piggy is the piggy that contains our spare quarters, and the rule is that whoever of our three children comes home next gets the quarters for their laundry. Recently, Dianna is collecting all the quarters!

Here's how the piggy opens. Note that these are not quarters! Actually, he HAD to have some money in him, because his nose is so heavy, he falls over unless he gets to gobble some money.

And the link to the brilliant Tuesday Tutorials:  http://sarahhalstead.com/photography/tutorial-tuesday-high-key-photography/

I'm in love with my SB800!

I've been working hard at understanding two new things to me: off camera flash, with my Nikon SB800, using the D300s as the "master", and the SB800 as the "slave", set on remote.

The second thing I'm working on is using my SB800 on manual rather than TTL or TTL-BL. (I know, I know. . . I've had the flash for over two years, but it's only now that it all seems to be coming together for me now!)

One thing which has made a huge difference was picking up the "One Light" DVD by Zach Arias on eBay, and it is incredible! He is making the concepts so clear that I'm finally making some headway with this!

The second thing that has been helpful has been getting a copy of Bryan Peterson's "Understanding Flash Photography." The only down-side is that he focuses pretty heavily on the Nikon SB900, which is difinitely different from the SB800, BUT he focuses extensively on putting the flash in manual. What a difference this makes!

Now, I can finally read some of the information on Strobist, and chunks of it are making sense to me now! Like, whole sentences full!

Literally, I can barely sleep at night, wanting to play with my flash now. (Doesn't that just sound wrong?)

Anyway, here are two rather serendipitous shots of Ruby, shot immediately after first learning how to put my camera in off-camera remote, the flash sitting on the couch next to me, Ruby walked up, and I "shot" her.

She's such a good sport! Like Bonnie, she knows Camera=Treat. None of the rest of my family will work so cheap for food.

Tuesday Tutorial: Low Key

Another Tutorial Tuesday! But I had such a hard time with this. The concept seems so simple: use one light source, against a black background, control a minimal amount of light on your subject, and take your shot.

I did not have a black background, but used a dark hallway. I used an external flash, set on manual, remote, 1/4 power. The camera was set at ISO 400, 1/320, f/11, and I used a 50mm lens on manual focus.

Then I blocked off part of the external flash with a gobo (translation: a Yogi Ginger tea box, and two of my fingers) to try to block more of the external flash light, in order to have less of it spill off Ruby and onto the background. ("Gobo" apparently means "go between" your subject and flash).

Then I processed the photo with a RadLab black & white action.

I'm not thrilled with the shot; I think it makes sweet Ruby look like a wolf. She wasn't completely happy with this process, but she's such an agreeable puppy, and there was one miserable piece of dog kibble hanging in the balance, so she waited and waited and waited. . . . . and this was the best I got!

Here's the link for Tutorial Tuesday if you'd like to play along and learn cool things:

I'm not completely happy with these. After 145 shots, this was the best I could do. I really wanted to get the paper in the background nice and sharply focused in the water drop, but, alas, this was the best I could do. And figuring out how to keep the shadow of the faucet out of the shot was also an interfering variable.

But here they are, without further ado:

And this is the setup for the waterdrop photos.  The patterned scrapbook paper is near the faucet, and I tried to use a reflector to diminish the shadow of the faucet cast by the flash. Settings were ISO 200, ss 1/250, and f/5.6.  I tried using f/11 to see if I could get more sharpness of the pattern in the drops, but it allowed to much of the background to be in focus to be satisfying.

Fun with Bubbly Fruit

I had WAY too much fun doing this!

But you would not believe how many shots I took to finally get it how I wanted it.  The instructions for this are at Bonnie's blog.

My main mistake at first was using a round container.  You just cannot get a good, sharp, focus when the light is "bent" by the curves of the glass!  Finally, I headed off to Pier One Imports and picked up a small vase with flat edges.

I did try using a reflector  to direct the sunlight for my shots, but could not get enough light.  I finally gave up after 30 shots or so, and used my flash.  Direct flash reflects off the glass, so bouncing it slightly seems to be the best approach.

I didn't have seltzer water, but have bottles of Sprite in my garage, left-over from Christmas.  Here's a truism:  no one likes Sprite, except in punch.  I have not been able to give this stuff away and have tried for months!  I finally found a use for it. I also found that if you use a straw and blow into the vase, you can stir up the bubbles a little more if they start to lose their sizzle.

Long wooden skewers work MUCH better than toothpicks.  I had lots of toothpick disaster before I headed off to the store to get bamboo skewers.

Here's a shot of the set up:
The clamp on the end of the skewer helps position it exactly where you want it suspended in the bubbly.
The construction paper against the foam board can, of course, be any color you want to contrast with the fruit.

A macro lens may be essential.  I used my Nikon 105mm, ISO 200, f/3.2, ss 1/30 with the SB800 set on TTL.  I had to keep adjusting the flash to get the level of light I wanted for the background as well as on the fruit.

At one point, I played with a string of Christmas lights around the vase to see if I could get colored sparkles of light on the bubbles, but I couldn't get it to work.

Important last step:  Eat the fruit!  Throw away the Sprite (because it really is disgustingly sweet), unless you had the foresight to use champagne, in which case, you should drink it!

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Tutorial Tuesdays: Using Reflectors

Last year, for Mother's Day, I got a reflector. And then promptly set it aside and let it collect dust.

So when I saw that Tuesday Tutorials was focusing on using a reflector, I thought it was time to dust off the reflector, dust off my (mostly) willing favorite husband and try it out.

I don't exactly know what I'm doing, so I hope I can get some feedback.

This first photo is back-lit by 6 pm western light and a reflector held on my husband's left side. Should I be aiming the reflector higher up? Above his eyes?

This is the same set up with no reflector.

Next, I had him move so he was side lit, on his right side, by the sun, and the reflector positioned on his left.

And this shot is with no reflector.

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To learn more about Tutorial Tuesdays, check out the link below:

Depth of Field

I thought it was time to revisit "The Wizard" for a little Depth of Field wisdom:

There are four major factors that affect depth of field: 1) Lens aperture (f stops); 2) focal length of the lens; 3) the distance from the subject to the camera; and 4) the distance from the subject to the background.

You'll see only the effect of three of the factors affecting depth of field, because I never changed the distance of the subjects to the background.

So! Here's my trusty 50mm 1.4 lens, Dorothy (no, Glinda! First, I wrote "Dorothy", but someone corrected me and of course, this is Glinda!), The Tin Man, The Scarecrow and the Lion. Glinda is the focal point. The background is a DVD case and the ugly base of a poinsetta (a pretty poinsetta, but not the foil around the pot), and some random yellow flowers.

f/2.8 50mm
In the photo above, you can see that a large aperture produces less depth of field. Remember, f values like 1.4, 2.8, etc., mean large aperatures relative to f values like 11, 16, 22, etc., which produce more depth of field. The greater the depth of field, the more of the background that is in focus. Including ugly, cluttered backgrounds.

f/5.6 50mm


f/11 50mm
The photo above has a smaller aperture, or opening, with an f value of 11, than the first photo with the f value of 2.8. And now Glinda has to share the spotlight more with her buddies, the Scarecrow, The Lion and the Tin Man. How annoying is that? Let's dump them with a large aperture again, and a lens with a longer focal length.  Larger aperture = shallower depth of field.

This next set of photos shown were taken using the 85 mm 1.8 lens. Obviously, 85 mm is a longer focal length than the 50 mm lens. Wide angle lenses have more depth of field than longer lenses. Compare this next photo, at f/2.8, with the first 50 mm photo above, also at f/2.8. Longer focal length = shallower depth of field.

Oh, that Glinda! She's just about completely ditched the Lion and Tin Man, and all that you can see of the Scarecrow now is a blur of his elbow. (The Scarecrow is missing primarily because of the much more narrow angle of the 85mm lens than that of the 50mm, but it's the shallow depth of field that booted his buddies.

f/2.8 85mm


f/5.6 85mm

And by f/11, the Tin Man and Lion are making more of an appearance again.
f/11 85mm

Now look at this next set of photos, using my 70-300mm lens, set at 200mm. I had to move the tripod further away from the subjects for these photos, in part because there was no way I could get the camera to focus on this subjects while staying as close to the figures as I was with the 50mm or 85mm lens.

And the 3rd factor affecting depth of field is distance from the subject to the camera, so these next two photos are introducing two variables: the long focal length of the lens (less depth of field), and greater distance from the subject (more depth of field).  The closer you are to the subject = shallower depth of field.

If I had been able to keep the distance the same as the f/5.6 50mm, and the f/5.6 85 mm above, you would have seen even more pronounced blurring of the background in this 200mm photo:
f/5.3 200mm

Even at f/11, with the 200mm lens, look how creamy the background continues to be. Now imagine the possibilities of shooting outside using a longer focal length, keeping your subject at least 10 feet from a background, and you being as close as you can to your subject.  The further the subject is from the background = greater blurring of background (which can be quite useful in isolating your subject as the focus of a photo).

(Personally, I'm not going outside until it's significantly warmer!)

f/11 200mm
And because we all know that the Wizard used smoke and mirrors, if you have any additional bits of information about depth of field that you'd like to add in the comments, please do so!

And here's a helpful DOF link:

PS (I wish I had Dorothy!)

And a link for a  DOF calculator

And a video tutorial

Lab or RGB?

An editing question for you. . . which version do you prefer. . . AND do you ever edit in LAB mode rather than RBG? I signed up for a month of lynda.com lessons, and have been working through some RBG photo editing suggestions and a course on LAB editing.

The 2nd photo was edited with very basic, and minimal, LAB editing; the first in RBG. It's not actually a completely fair comparison, because the settings in RAW in the two are different. . . I left more contrast in the LAB version, added it more after RAW in the RBG version.

SB800 flash, Manual mode, f/4.0; 1/40; ISO 400, 28-75 mm lens at 75mm.

And here's a bird update! After putting up Hedwig (thanks Shirley!), the next day, I looked out the window, and there were about 20 cedar waxwings in the trees all lined up and Staring at my house! I kid you not; they were all facing the house, not looking left or right or dangling upside down from the branches.

But they stayed away!

The next day, I looked out, and The Birds were now all in one tree, looking at the house, and a squirrel was in the other tree.

And THEN! The next day, there was a dead squirrel in my driveway!!!! (aren't you glad there's no photo?)

And then today, two birds crashed into my window in the front of my house, (not the back, where the Cedar Waxwings have been massing; and I'm not sure the kamikaze birds were waxwings --I haven't checked for corpses yet.)

Huh. There's a war of some sort going on, and I know Hedwig, my Owl, is so far being successful.

London Street: Waterloo Tube & Consulting the Map

In keeping with this week's theme, I'm posting two photos, with their unedited versions.

This first, SOOC shot, is a very unexposed photo of Dianna, Brian & Emily consulting the map, deciding which double-decker bus to take next.

Nobody is patient or trusts my map reading; I have to hold the map 1" from my nose. Yesterday, I found out an icky, luck-of-the-draw, reason why. It turns out that I have the beginnings of cataracts!!!!!

I lost my sun glasses in London, and really hate glare. I have been frustrated with my glasses this past year, and thought it outrageous that less than a year later, I seemed to need new glasses. Losing the sunglass clips gave me justification to check out new glasses.

I'm very excited about the prospect of seeing better, but was not happy to hear the word "cataracts," or the words "$700!" Could be worse, but I'm bummed (no, wait! I'm cantankerous about it); think of the much more exciting lens I could buy with this money!

This photo, while not great, would have been a total reject without having shot it in Camera Raw. In ACR, I increased the exposure, increased black and recovered the detail in the shadows. In CS3, I added contrast with luminosity blend mode, and sharpened. (yep! us ancient ones will probably want LOTS of sharpening in our photos.)
This next shot is a street scene in London near the Waterloo Tube station. The first photo is SOOC.

For this editing, I decided to tweak the photo using Scott Kelby's "recipe." I opened it in Camera RAW, slid Recovery, Fill Light, Contrast, Clarity & Vibrance all the way to the right. Then I opened it as a Smart Object (press Shift).

In CS3, right click and make it a New Smart Object Via Copy. In layers, I double-clicked the image thumbnail, which brings you back to Camera Raw. In the menu in the Basic palette, I selected Camera Raw Defaults. Once this opens in CS3, I changed the Blending Mode to "Color", and played with the opacity, and flattened. I wanted a little more intensity and then ran an acid action on it, giving me this colored-pencil-like version.

(And this photo better look really, really good when I look at it with my frickin' new $700 glasses.) (At least I'll get to show you a picture of them when I get them.

Day 9: Noah, Skin, and The Deep Freeze

Pat is so funny! She thought Noah might be getting kind of bored when it issued the "seemingly interminably endless winter event" last week! I forgot to mention that Noah is actually NOAA, the North Atlantic Atmospheric Organization, and is a computer-generated voice. NOAA alternates between a male voice and female voice, and the male voice sounds like a cross between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steven Hawkings. Today, NOAA said we might get wind chills of 40 below in this next week, and "a cold weather warning may have to be issued." "MAY have to be issued!!!!!" If this doesn't result in a cold-weather warning, what exactly would?

Here's a photo taken of me and my daughter, on auto, with on-camera flash, in a restaurant about a month ago. I tried to play with the skin tones.



Last night, I liked it. Today, I don't know. My daughter's skin looks pretty good; maybe I need new skin. (And hair.)(Dang, it was after a long day of work.)(I think my husband's tired of hearing about this.)
But here is a tutorial, and a thread on 2peas, that I did find helpful in trying to establish a beginning point for skin tones. Now, my plan is to first try to adjust for color balance, whether it's with a WhiBal or custom white balance, or finding a neutral point in the photo. Then I'll try the smugmug settings in cmyk mode.

From this, I'll guess. I'll probably use a selection tool around skin areas and an adjustment layer, either selective coloring, or hue saturation.

Any HHCC most welcome!
http://www.smugmug.com/help/skin-tone

http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/mb.asp?cmd=display&thread_id=2654510

Day 342: Terror in the Northern Plains: aka Cleaning my Camera Sensor

I have a tutor in my photography class at proudphotography.com, and he pointed out something important to me the other day. I have dust bunnies! In my house, I knew that. . . they're everywhere! But he pointed out that in one of my photos, at a fairly small aperture (f/8), showing sky, the little specks on my photos were sensor dust and my sensor needed cleaning. Sure enough, as I looked back over many photos, I could see the little specks, especially at small apertures and when zoomed in. I decided to research cleaning my sensor.

Many sites said it was easy to do, but scary, because it's the camera sensor! (It's actually the filter over the sensor, technically.) The other option is to mail it in, and be without the camera for at least a week, and pay around $120. Sites also suggested that this is a routine thing that needs to be done after dusty environments, before major shooting events, and anywhere from every month to every 6 months. I've never cleaned mine.

I ordered the Giotto rocket blower, a Visible Dust sensor brush, and Visible Dust sensor swabs from B&H. But being the impatient person that I am, I then made some Unfortunate Decisions.

I picked up my little lens blower/brush, followed the directions in my Nikon D40 Field Guide by David Busch,went to Setup, Mirror Lock-up, exposed the sensor/filter and blew out the dust from the sensor. Except that's not what I did.



Because this little brush is definitely NOT the Giotto rocket blower, does not have the force of the rocket blower, and is basically blowing air past a dusty brush, I tripled the dust on my sensor. Here's a photo of sensor dust, shooting a sky, at f/18. Notice all the specks, blurs and even fibers. If you look at some of my previous posts, like the one with the guy in the cherry picker putting up Christmas lights, you'll see some of the sensor dust, at a larger aperture.



OK, now I was upset. And still a good week from cleaning supplies coming in. I was driving 350 miles to my daughter's concert, and decided to stop at a camera store in Minnepolis and see what they had to say. National Camera Exchange said they could clean the sensor for about $45, but it would have to be sent elsewhere, and I'd get it in about a week. (About a week, and 350 miles away from me!) They said they really discouraged anyone from cleaning their own sensors, did not sell supplies (although they had the Giotto rocket blower on their shelf) but would sell this sticky tape dust-off stuff. You're suppose to stick the tape to your sensor and lift it off. I opted out of this, because I'd read that goo could be left behind. They did think that the rocket blower on a regular basis was helpful.

So then, on my way home, I stopped at Mall of America, and went into the Ritz Camera store. Here, the employee did say that because of liability issues, they could not recommend that people clean their own sensors, but that many sites and individuals see it as a perfectly practical thing to do, and certainly not as profitable for the stores that would like to clean your camera for you. This person also said, though, never to use anything to blow air into the camera because it would introduce static electricity and make more things stick to the sensor. (I hadn't heard anyone else say this. . . although MOST DEFINITELY NEVER, EVER, BLOW COMPRESSED CANNED AIR into your camera. It'll leave all kinds of residue behind. Think of the liquidy stuff that comes out when you spray off your keyboard!)

But I bought this at the Ritz store. The directions encourage using their little vacuum cleaner product in conjunction with this, but I'd read elsewhere that that wasn't considered particularly effective.

So, then I got home, wanting my camera to be better, still needing to wait 5 days or so, and I, foolishly or not, pulled out my foot pump for filling up my Pilates ball. The air pressure felt about the pressure of the Giotto rocket blower. . . and I followed the directions to access my sensor. With a fully charged battery, lots of light, minimal coffee, I turned on my camera, went to Setup, Mirror lock up, pressed OK, took off my lens. . . I now had access to the sensor/filter. Holding the camera down, I used the air pump to blow loose dust out (or around. . . whatever.) I then put the camera lens back on it, and turned off the camera. Turning it off then lets the mirror fall back in place over the sensor. I'm not sure this was the best thing to do. . . there could have been dust and residue in this pump itself. I'm just stubborn like this and wanted to see. I also know that I have a Nikon D40 camera that is not a top-of-the-line camera, and that if I messed things up, would result in me being so traumatized that I would talk in gibberish for the rest of my life. And besides, then I'd be forced to mail in my camera to see if it could be cleaned professionally.

I went outside and took another photo. It was dramatically improved, but I could still see dust.

Next, I repeated the process, exposing the sensor/filter, opened the Wet portion of the wet-dry swabs, and carefully swabbed from left to right, at about a 45 degree angle, making sure it was perpendicular to the sensor as I reached the right side. You have to make sure you have the right size swab for your camera. This took two passes, so one side of the swab was for one pass; I used the other side for the 2nd pass.

Then I opened the dry swab, basically repeated the same process, sort of sponging up the liquid. I read that you should use pen-like pressure, like you're writing something.

This is a photo of the sky, after I cleaned the sensor, now at aperture f/32. If you click on this, makeing it larger, you'll see there's still dust visible. But much, much, much less. And since I don't often shoot photos of something bright, like the sky, at f/32, and know where to look for dust specks (to clone them out), I finally decided this was good enough for now.
Here are a couple of sites I found helpful in helping me think about what to do. I know that from now on, I'm going to be much more careful in cleaning dust off my lenses BEFORE I put them on the camera, and to blow out the dust periodically.

http://photojojo.com/content/tutorials/digital-slr-sensor-cleaning/

http://www.cleaningdigitalcameras.com/cleaning.html

http://www.bythom.com/cleaning.htm

http://www.macworld.com/article/49711/2006/03/sensorclean.html

http://www.copperhillimages.com/shopping/pgm-more_information.php?id=3&=SID#MOREINFO

http://www.photosol.com/swabplus.htm

https://www.micro-tools.com/store/mainframe2.aspx

I would very much like to hear how others have dealt with the whole sensor dust issue! And if this were your sensor, in the last photo at f/32, would you give cleaning it another try, or not be perfectionistic about it and leave well-enough alone?

Day 316: Sheila

A photo of my friend, Sheila.



I took this photo a while ago, and as part of the processing, did some skin smoothing, using this tutorial. I really like the technique and use it often now on people photos.

Skin smoothing tutorial at Phaunt Actions.

Day 307: and a few random photography tutorial sites

And a few more of the Halloween decorations. . . Almost all of these are from just one person's yard!








I'm so glad that I don't have to take all these down and put them away!

And here's a few photography tutorial websites. Some of these are kind of basic, but they're good.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/

http://web.canon.jp/imaging/enjoydslr/part1/1B.html

http://dryreading.com/camera/index.html

Day 239: Dianna 1993

Another photo from long ago, the 1993 five year old version of Dianna, scanned in. Again, I used the technique of reducing some noise by feathering a selection, using darken blend mode, and shifting downward a few pixels. But I also white to change the exposure a bit.

I used Scott Kelby's technique of taking a jpeg file, and opening it as a RAW file to adjust white balance settings. In CS3, you use "open as", select the file, and open it as a "camera RAW" file. Then it opens just as if it had been shot in RAW! You can adjust the white balance, saturation, etc. I also increased the "black" setting, and then used "fill light" to recover more detail.

Then once I opened it in photoshop, I did a "defog" and popped the colors just a little, and touched up the eyes a bit.

And don't you just love the green shag carpeting! Oh, how I LOVED getting rid of that eventually!!!!!! Almost as much as the red, flocked, wallpaper in the dining room!

Day 238: Scanning old Photos

This week's theme is "family" and I don't always have the, uh-hem, most stellar cooperation from family in getting photos these days (during college breaks, etc.) And our extended family all live far away.

So I thought I'd play with some old photos of family. I'm actually getting ready for Scrapfest at Mall of America, in September. Two of my sisters and I meet in Minneapolis and have a lot of fun hanging out with each other and strangely participating in this scrapbooking addiction.

I'm scanning some photos for some of the workshops, and one thing I've noticed about scanning old photos is that you can get a lot of noise or what looks like "dust spots" when you do any sharpening action on the photos. I tried a process decribed in Photoshop CS3 by Blatner, Chavez and Fraser.

I'm not sure that these two photos will be as clear in showing this as I'd like, but it's really evident when you print the photos!

The first photo (23 years ago of my son, Scott, playing with the sandbox in our back yard) is how it looks when scanned. I'm not sure why, but scanned photos also seem to end up with this little tag in the upper right and bottom left corners.

Especially in dark areas, like the shadow in the upper left, especially after defog, or sharpening, there are lots of noise, or little white specks.

I used CS3 and first defogged. Then I used the polygonol selection tool to select most of the photo. But you can actually just select a small section if you want to just did with a bunch of dust-like specks in only one section. Set "feather" to 1 or 2 pixels.

Hit control "J" on windows; command J on Mac. This creates a new layer with just the selection.
Now, for white specks, select blending mode to "darken." For black specks, you'd set the mode to "lighten."

Now use the move tool and move the new layer just one or two pixels up, down, left, or right. Instant fixing of a bazillion specks! Now you can flatten the layers and run any other kind of actions you want on it, or pop the colors, or paint with light, or sharpen. I just wanted a slight boost in saturation, so I ran Lady Ren's gentle boost, and reduced the opacity.

I cropped the photo slightly to get rid of the weird tags, saved and printed. I don't know if you can see the difference as much on-line, but you would if you printed them!