Photography Resources

Anonymous — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 20:45:41 CDT

Other Information

Photography session by Kris Krug, from Northern Voice 2007
Apple - Aperture - Profiles - Vincent Laforet
Tell a story in 5 frames Flickr group.
A tutorial on cleaning your digital SLR's sensor. Both Vincent and Don send their cameras out to be cleaned, but if you want to take a chance or just want an interesting read, check out the article.
All of us need to learn more about the basics of digital photography. Here is a collection of tutorials that contain some great tips.

Telling a Story Through Photography

gpaille — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 01:19:12 CDT

Vincent Laforet and Don Henderson

Also see and hear:

Tami Brass attended the same session and took notes on her blog.
Larry S. Anderson's recording of this session and the session on Aperture.

Things to remember:

Think of your frame as a rectangle.
Determine what's important visually.
Think about what to include and exclude when composing. Most people are good at including, but the important part is what to exclude.
Think about your position, aperture, shutter, film speed, etc

Capturing an Image

Research the site and try to only bring the equipment you need.
Shoot RAW to maintain data.
Rule of thirds.
Light

Looks totally different from every angle, so move around to get the best light results for the effect you are looking for.
Use your hand as your "free" light meter.
An eye is much more sensitive than a camera, so squint your eyes to better approximate what the camera sees.
Hard, unfiltered vs soft, diffused.
Try to use natural light as opposed to flash.
Go off the automatic settings, but auto-focus is fine, usually.
ISO

Low ISO -----> sharp : High ISO -----> grainy
SLRs do much better at high ISO as compared to the point-and-shoot.

Shutter Speed

How steady you are able to hold your camera, and the movement of the subject are both important important when choosing shutter speed.
Slow = Blur : Fast = Freeze
A tripod recommended at slow shutter speeds.
Try using walls, pillars, your elbows, and other objects to steady your hold.
1/4 of a second is about the slowest for hand-held shots.
The goal is 1/125 - stops a bicycle — 1/500 stops the rotor blades of a helicopter.
Try for 1/60 to 1/125

Bracketing - use several settings for both F settings and shutter speeds to find the best results. Some cameras have an auto-bracketing feature.
Going down (increasing F number) by one stop, shutter speed decreases by one setting.

F number goes up (less light) , shutter speed goes down (more light).
Sunny 16 rule - F16, use a shutter speed of the reciprocal of the ISO setting.

Wide shots.

High aperture to give a full DOF (Depth of Field).
Wide angles makes what is closest to the lens look bigger than what is at a distance. Close shrubs as compared to distant mountains.

Mid shots

Action shots
When shooting a moving subject that requires you to swing to track the subject before shooting, place your feet in such a position that you will not be twisted at the waist at the end of the swing when you need to be steady while making the photograph.

Close-up

Change lenses to compensate when you can't move.

If you have to choose between under, or over-exposing, choose under-exposing to make post processing more effective. RAW is important for this.
Don't look through a camera as you would through a rifle scope. i.e. you often won't want your main subject to be in the centre of the frame (bullseye). Related to rule of thirds.
Photography speak to your subjects: Don't "shoot" or "take" (aggressive in some countries), but "make" a photograph.
Perspective lines - lines (like a fence, telephone or power lines, and road markings) that come out of the corner of a frame focus the eye on the centre of the image.
Change the perspective by kneeling, moving up, down, left, or right.
Avoid using the zoom - move closer if you can. Moving closer to the subject may be more effective than using zoom.

Choosing Lenses and Using a Lens

Choose the lens for the effect.
Wide angle less emphasises the foreground and makes the close subject/objects look bigger than they actually are.
The most important thing to know about a lens is how to work with compression factor/perspective with the camera settings.
For portraits, use 50 mm or up, preferably 85 mm.
If you can afford an F2.8 lens, get it.
Image stabilized lenses have 2 settings - setting 2 is for panning; i.e., it only stabilizes vertical movement.

Scope out the Scene

Think about the sun - where will it rise compared to where you can/could be located?
Think about the background.
Use DOF to emphasise or de-emphasise the background.

Lighting

Angle of the light is crucially important.
Sharp facial features - light from above.
Chubby face - from the side.
Never light a face from below, unless you want them to look scary.

Apple Aperture

digitalnative — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 15:18:40 CDT

Keyboard Shortcuts

W - gets rid of library
Shift+W - rotate the orientation of the browse/view panels
I - toggle the metadata display panel
F- full screen
V - change view
Left, right, up and down arrows.
J, K, and L for scrolling through images.
Tilde ~ full size with a loupe
Z - zoom and then spacebar to drag around image.
Return - compare and select two images.

Apple return to get out.

Number keys 1 to 5 for star ratings.
C - crop
control+s - add "edge sharpen"
Click on image and use - and + to increase or decrease rating.
M - show master (original)

Lift and Stamp - apply adjustments for one photo to multiple photos.

unselect rating to preserve ratings for photos.

Drag to order photos.

in browse mode, select multiple images (dragging and/or shift/option/command clicking) then hit F to view them all in fullscreen mode for easy comparisons. Deselect any of these images to remove it from the view (command+click an image)

ADE Summer Camp Monterey 2007 - Recently Updated Pages