In a comment to an earlier post, Rppizio, wondered about the vocabulary of photography. That made me think — I remember feeling like people were speaking a foreign language the first time I started to scroll through flickr, photo forums and photo blogs. So much jargon!
Reading a few books really helped. When I started writing this post, I listed all the books but since there were over ten I felt like the post was getting a little too long. So, for today, I’ll just talk about the two books that helped me understand aperture, shutter speed, ISO, exposure compensation and why all of that is important if I wanted to make the camera obey my vision.
Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera
This one was so key to understanding the difference between how WE see and how the CAMERA sees. Peterson does such an incredible job of making this easy to understand — all the f-stop and reciprocal talk that usually just buzzes around my head while I look at the pictures… he actually makes it all make sense. And the pictures are gorgeous and will inspire you. And before the end of the book you will understand why the “exposure triangle” and how it relates to your vision. Great stuff!
Perfect Exposure: The Professional’s Guide to Capturing Perfect Digital Photographs
If Peterson’s book is Exposure 101 than Freeman’s book is the advanced course. While he does touch on the basics, he spends more time on the technical aspects of your camera’s metering systems, dynamic range and digital sensors. It’s really an eye opener! He also spends a good deal of time on style and how your approach to exposure (or how you choose to expose in the “twelve typical lighting situations”) determines the mood of your photograph as well as becomes a key-component to your personal style. This book was really one big a-ha!
Any books that you would recommend on exposure? Which ones really changed your way of thinking, photographically speaking?
Thirty four days left until the 365 is over.
Whew!
I think.
But that also means I’ve only thirty four shots left. They need to be awesome shots — shots that prove (to me!) that I improved and grew as a photographer.
All through out the year I would “see” a shot and not have enough time to go back and take it. Or the set-up would be too complicated and hard to do with a toddler in tow. Or the weather wasn’t quite right for the shot. Plenty of excuses. I guess if I’m going to make those pictures than I better get busy.
The year has gone a lot faster than I would have thought — I guess they always do, don’t they?
If you’ve done a 365 what’s the best piece of advice you would give someone starting out?
Since I turned India into a charcoal print last week, I thought I’d try my eight year old this week! I know I had a Photoshop Creative magazine that had a tutorial on this very look — I should probably try to dig it up from the basement. I’m sure their way is probably a lot more direct. Anyway, it’s fun and a nice way to relax after a busy week!
Have a nice weekend!
In our last assignment Kat said, “Much of finding your eye is just learning to recognize what is already there!” I was a little more skeptical. My pictures just seem so much more varied and random. But then I followed her directions and created a “favorites” set in flickr. The nice thing about a set is that you can view it as a slideshow.
The first time through I didn’t really notice anything – except that I had some really nice pictures in there. : )
But I watched in through two more times, then three more times. Finally, I started to notice some things…Kat was right! So what did I find?
Motion
I do love to capture a sense of motion and this photo is one of my best, I feel. I was practicing panning while my kids were on a boardwalk kiddie park roller coaster. You definitely get a sense of motion with all the colors swirling around them.
Perspective
I love unusual perspectives. They are tricky though. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. It’s a fine line, I think, between an interesting perspective and one that is unusual merely for the sake of being unusual.
Rim Lighting
It’s that touch of light along the sides of the subject that helps to define it and separate it from it’s surroundings. Michael Freeman’s book, Perfect Exposure , was my first introduction to the term. He also taught me how to expose properly to capture that light.
Texture/Detail
I almost called this one color — but after viewing the slideshow several times, I decided it was really the texture of the image that was drawing me in. The textures, the different feel to the details, finding a way to combine them into a cohesive image… that’s the challenge of texture.
Looking back through my new “Favorites” set, I discovered that my most photographed subject was really a location — my foyer. The light is great in the afternoon — nice and bright — and the space is open and uncluttered (unlike the rest of my house). So for our homework I decided to use this location as the setting for my fifty shots. Now fifty shots of an empty foyer could be pretty boring…luckily the sunlight cooperated for me yesterday and began peeking in out of the clouds around the time I started to to shoot. I also have two little dogs that love to get it on the action. So here are my three “picks” of the fifty shots.
This area immediately attracted my attention while the sun was out because of the great reflections on the table from the cut glass window. It was interesting to try and catch the lights and show what was causing them while keeping the highlights from clipping or the shadows from clogging up. Couldn’t do it in camera — the dynamic range was too big. So Lightroom fixed the clipped highlights on the left with a graduated filter set for -1/2 stop exposure and Photoshop fixed the clogged up shadows with a simple curves adjustment. It was interesting to shoot this area knowing what the issues where going to be but also knowing how I could quickly compensate for them in post.
Large families have lots of shoes — and those shoes have to have someplace to spend the night! : ) My goal for this shot was to try and tell a story — to find some focus in the chaos. I decided to focus on the toddler’s shoes while letting everyone else’s go slightly soft in focus. Since color doesn’t really add anything to the story here I probably could have done this just as well in black and white.
Finally, our Cavalier, Pixie. She is convinced that there is something delicious hiding under the table and will spend hours poking her nose in there and sniffing around. Unfortunately she also scratches. You can see what she’s done to the bottom of the table. Oh the maddening dog!! But she is cute, isn’t she?
This is another shot that required a bit of help in post. Because of the angle I had to get down to include her eyes, I had the sun full force in my lens. I really had to do some levels and curves adjustments to fix the highlights and bring the blacks up to add more color. By which point her eye was back in shadow and so I had to do some dodging around there to bring it back. A lens hood may have saved me the work, but this was the best shot of the mulitple that I took of her with her nose under the table — it had the expression on her face that I wanted.
Okay, now that I’ve caught up with Sunday’s homework it’s time to do Wednesday’s. : )
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Interesting exercise from Kat Sloma’s class — Finding Your Eye.
Gratitude is the art of seeing the sun in the mud puddles…
After all most two solid weeks of rain, I finally decided to give up and go with it yesterday and then as I was trying to see if I could get an interesting reflection from the puddle of standing water on my lawn, the sun began to shine through the clouds…a little bit. The sun didn’t really shine — the area of the clouds he was hiding behind just became a little brighter but I managed to capture that bit of brightness in the water. Yeah for small successes!!
For our Texture Tuesday assignment, I used Kim’s Crackerjack and The Ladder textures as well as “Golden Orb” from French Kiss Textures and one that I got off of flickr a long time ago and sadly can’t remember whose it was. Here’s the layers palette:
After a long week there is nothing better than unwinding with a little bit of photoshop. : )
This one was quite complex — lots and lots of layers of textures that were all altered in some way before being applied — whether desaturated, inverted, run through the find edges filter or ripped in half and transformed across the vertical…
Have a great weekend! If it doesn’t rain, I will be going on the Fourth annual World Wide Photo Walk tomorrow — my third time out.. : )
I’d hoped to do a little bit more — Kim gave us such a great theme! But, it’s been a little busy. Yeah, I know, my usual lame excuse… ; )
The quote is from St. Thomas Aquinas, although I don’t know where exactly since I found it on google. I thought it was a nice sentiment about love. I also used the two textures I have of Kim’s that had “Love” in the title so one layer of “Love” and one layer of “Love in Layers.” I noticed several of us took that route too…
Here is the layers palette. If you want to see it bigger, just click on the picture.
Happy Texture Tuesday everyone!!
Why take pictures? Well, on one hand, I have a whole lot to document. I’ve got six (soon to be seven) kids — they kinda grow up fast and my husband and I would like to remember something of their childhood. Especially things like: who looked like who at which age, that really bad haircut, that really cute haircut, that first toothless grin, that adorable outfit, etc. I don’t scrapbook but I do have gigs of pictures of the kids (as well as several shoe boxes that pre-date digital!) So that’s the easy reason about why I love photography.
On the other hand, why do I love taking pictures of things that aren’t my kids? That’s a little harder to pin down and something I’m sure my husband wishes he could figure out too! (See yesterday’s 365 shot of the vacuum cleaner…)
The picture above is from my film days — even pre-SLR days. It was taken with a very nice 35mm camera that let me pick aperture or shutter priority — it was the tool that led me to check out EVERY SINGLE photography book (and video) in the library. It was the start of the learning curve and with film that curve was a bit steeper and much slower — no instant histogram feedback.
But as I was pondering why I take photographs, this one popped in my mind. The subject is sentimental — it’s the dirt road that ran in front of our very first home and the framed 8×10 has been on my dresser for thirteen years. But it’s more than the sentimental subject that attracts me.
It’s the light. It’s all about the light. That’s what the books always say — and I have to agree. For me the thrill in photography lays in catching the light doing something remarkable — whether it’s making the late evening autumn leaves glow, or creating mysterious shadows or simply adding warmth to the scene.
It’s the light that makes the photo interesting, it’s the light that shows the audience where to look, it’s the light that adds drama, mystery, meaning.
The whole street photography thing, that is. I really thought I would be out and about more once everyone was back in school and our routine had firmed up a little bit. Oh well. I’m lucky I’m even getting in a photo-a-day still — even though most of them are cell phone drive-by shots. That sounds vaguely like something that ought to be illegal…
Anyway, the 365 lives on for now — in name only if not yet again in the spirit of the project. It will come back, I suppose.
Just thought I’d post some interesting links from my tab bar… little nuggets of gold that I’ve come across… ; )
1. Intro to Portrait Lighting from Cambridge in Colour. I really like the tutorials on this site — they are very well put together and easy to follow. The do an excellent job of presenting some of the more technical aspects of photography with clarity and precision. In other words — it’s easy to understand.
2. In the Loupe looks like it could be really interesting — a web-based show on photo news and opinion hosted by three women photographers. Women (!) photographers…yeah!! It looks like it just launched so the archive is a bit thin…but I’m keeping an eye on it.
3. I tried making these cinnamon apple chips today — but my first batch burned. They smelled wonderful so I’ll try again. This time I won’t leave the house to pick up the preschooler and run to the grocery store while I leave them in the oven. That may have had something to do with why they burned…(don’t worry they were at a super low temp…)
So there you have it…I usually tweet out links that I find interesting. If you’d like to follow me I’m @jmaleski on twitter. I’ve also succumbed to the Pintrest virus and you can find my most recent pins here (mostly photography, some crafts and some food and little bits of kid stuff).
