Archive for January, 2007

Web 2.0, meet Photoshop

Ever find yourself on a computer without any editing software? All you want to do is to crop an image, fix the contrast, and resize it? Well, if you've got a reasonably new browser, you're saved: Enter Picnik, a brand new type of image editing software, bringing the genre well into line with all the other Web 2.0 apps out there. In short, Picnik is to Photoshop what gmail is to e-mail, YouTube is to videos, Flickr is to pictures, Pandora is to music, and CleVR is to panoramas!

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Using adjustment layers

Photo editing falls into two categories: Adjustments, which affect the whole photograph (much like our introduction to contrast, using the levels tool, from yesterday), and spot editing, which affects a smaller part of an image. Any photo editing you do with brushes, selection tools etc would be a spot edit. While spot editing can be useful, it's adjustment editing which is the big advantage for most photographers. Exposure a little bit off? Fix it in Photoshop. White balance problem? Photoshop. Want your picture in black and white? Photos... you get the idea. What most photographers don't know, however, is that you can do a wide array of adjustment editing experiments without even touching the original photograph. You can do this by adding so-called adjustment layers. This is a layer added on a photo which affects all the layers underneath. The upside of using this technique is that you can turn adjustments layers on and off, you can change their order, and their parameters. The main effect is that it is much easier to experiment with your photos, in the hunt for finding a combination of adjustments that makes your photo perfect.

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Contrast in photos

If you are reading this, you have probably heard people moaning about lack of contrast in one of your pictures. I am sorry about that, but -- really -- it is one of the most annoying things in the world. The medium of photography allows you to enhance the way you see the world, so you have an option of showing what you would like to show better. When the option is there - why not use it? This is the picture we'll be working with for now. I know it isn't exactly the best picture in the world, but at least it is bland - it is nothing short of boring. Why? Well - mainly because nothing is the way it should be. I believe that, in photography, black should be black. White should be white. In most cases, there is no real excuse for having almost-white and almost-black as the darkest and lightest point of your photograph (unless it is part of a photographic effect, in which case this all doesn't apply.) It's worth noting that this article is aimed especially at beginners, who aren't that clued up on Photoshop. If this doesn't apply to you, you may just want to dive right into the adjustment layers instead!

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Photographing smoke

Abstract photography is nothing new, and people constantly come up with new -- or re-invent old -- versions of photography techniques. One of the ones that is going like wild-fire (excuse the pun) around the interwebs at the moment is the art of photographing coloured smoke. The trend started with the highly talented Graham Jefferey, of Sensitive Light fame, whose phenomenal photographs went around the world via blogs, We've managed to talk to Graham, and find out how he does his smoke photos...

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Renting camera equipment

I know I keep going on about this, but there's no denying that photography can be an insanely expensive hobby: Especially if you're curious about why people start shelling out thousands and thousands of dollars/pounds/euros on glass with a little red L on it... Once you've shot a couple of hundred photos with professional equipment, it's too easy to reach for your credit card and let 'er rip: The sheer sharpness of the photos and the vastly superior results than you get from average-grade consumer lenses is staggering. The solution, many people find, is renting camera equipment for a weekend or so. But how do you go about choosing what you rent? And what are the benefits of renting over buying? What are the downsides? My good friend Andrew over at Golden God has taken a closer look, exploring the topic in greater detail in this guest writer article.

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My book is finished!

Even though it won't go on sale for another couple of months - It's on sale now!, things are starting to happen really quickly now. I've finished most of my involvement of the book, and I've handed it over to the project-, copy- and technical editors, designers, and publishing boffins. They never told me quite how much work it is to write a book on macro photography. It's been a hell of a ride, and I've loved every second of it. I was first contacted by the publishers on the 10th of August last year. Today, nearly six months later, I am sending the last files of the last chapter to the publisher.

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Time for some Frame Storming!

Just after we run our 'photography with rules' article, Popular Photography magazine comes along and beats us to it with an even better idea, by declaring January 21st as 'international shooting-all-the-time' day! The concept? Take a photo at least every 5 mintutes for 15 hours of the day. But surely, that is complete and utter madness? Well, no -- much for the same reasons that stream of consciousness helps writers getting in touch with their inner voice, and much like brain storming is a much-loved route to corporate grandeur, forcing yourself to keep photographing even when your shutter finger hurts and your ideas are drier than a nun's hoo-hoo can be a way to develop as a photographer.

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Dogma photography

As a kinda-sorta follow-up from my most recent critique, where several of the commenters mentioned that they felt that their photography got better when they imposed rules on themselves, I started thinking: Which other constraints can you put on photography? First of all -- why? Well, in a machoistic kind of way, making rules about the way you take photos is a creative way to think about photography. Take this restraint, for example: For a day, only take photos that have a strong diagonal. It means you start thinking about framing your photographs in a completely different way than you would otherwise. Perhaps you don't get home with a single photo that is actually worth using, but the lessons you learn from the experiment will come in very handy for later photography assignments.

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Think of photos as paintings

There's a lot to be said for how the accessibility of affordable digital cameras has improved the level of photography overall, and I'm strongly in favour of the idea that digital photography is a good thing. The downside of digital photography is that we are seeing a whole generation of people who never saw a frame of film as something precious. There are thousands upon thousands of photographers out there who only started thinking about photography when they weren't limited to 24 or 36 frames before bringing the film to the local shop, and then wait for hours for the results.

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Competitions on Photocritic

The hawk-eyed among you will have noticed that we've got a couple of new features here on Photocritic. The most noticeable is a competitions calendar in the sidebar on the Photocritic home page. You might have spotted that I've every now and again included some competitions into the site. This is because I love the idea of using competitions to turn you into a better photographer. Sadly, keeping a complete list of photography competitions up to date is damn near impossible, especially because that would detract from some of the other things I would like to talk about here on Photocritic. Instead, I've teamed up with the gang over at Photo Competitions. You should probably subscribe to their news feed anyway, but just in case you forget about entering a competition, you will have a reminder in the sidebar! The other news item is that I've started promoting Earth Shots a bit more, by including their 'photo of the day' in the sidebar of the article pages. I really enjoy their photos, and quite frequently they serve as a reminder of why I became a photographer in the first place -- to capture some of the beauty we surround us with. Photo Competitions and Earth Shots -- Welcome to Photocritic!

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