PHOTOGRAPHIC FLAT ART

When you photograph anything flat, like this ancient cave painting in Baja California, Mexico, make the back of your camera -- i.e. the plane of the sensor -- as parallel as possible to the subject. This helps maintain depth of field. If the light level is low, as it was when I took this picture, and you can't use a tripod, a small lens aperture may not be possible because that will make the shutter speed too slow for hand-holding.

Therefore, the only way you can show all of the detail in the subject with tack sharp clarity is to angle the camera such that the sensor is as parallel as possible. Then you'll have all the detail you want at any lens aperture.

COOL PLUG-IN EFFECTS

I conducted a Photoshop workshop in my home this past weekend, and in demonstrating the many techniques I love to work with I often come up with new images. One of my favorite Photoshop plug-ins is Snap Art made by Alien Skin. It is a quick and easy way to turn photos into paintings. The horse portrait you see here was done with one of the many oil brushes that are part of the program. I embellished the colors using Image > adjustments > hue/saturation in CS4, but the basic abstraction was created simply by moving the sliders within Snap Art. When you print something like this on canvas, it looks exactly like a painting done with oils or acrylics.

A second image I created was a composite of a tall ship taken in terrible lighting (because the 'Parade of Ships' occurred near noon) with a sunset seascape. I demonstrated to the students how the blend modes within the layers palette (accessed by the submenu that has the word 'normal' on it) allow you to combine images without the necessity of using selection tools to cut out the subject from the original environment. Study the unmanipulated shot of the ship and you can see that it would be impossible to cut this out of the background.

To create the final image, I first increased the contrast in the shot of the ship so the bluish sky became white (Image > adjustments > levels) and then I pasted the whole image into seascape. Using the 'multiply' blend mode, the light sky was eliminated but all the rigging on the ship was still there. Using several of the tools in the tools palette, I then put the finishing touches on the scene.

The next Photoshop workshop in my home is scheduled for Feb. 20, 21, 2010. There are a couple of spaces left.

PHOTO OPPORTUNITIES MISSED

I learned a long time ago that when you see a photo opportunity, don't pass it up thinking you'll come back to it later and take the picture. Almost certainly it won't be there. It doesn't matter what it is, if you don't make the effort to capture the moment, more than likely it will be gone forever when you decide it's finally time to go back and take the shot.

A case in point is this photograph from India. I was leading a photo tour and my group and I were driving past this temple complex in Jaipur. I spotted this group of women on the balcony and I thought to myself it was a great shot, but we were on our way to a restaurant about 3 blocks away. I knew it would be a lot more convenient to reach our destination and park, and then after lunch walk back to the temple to grab the shot. I also knew, though, that this scene could very easily evaporate. Upon our return the graphic architecture would still be nice to shoot but the women might not be there. So, I asked the driver to stop in a very inconvenient place and we all got out of the vehicle and quickly took the picture.

It pays to push yourself to get the shot. A missed opportunity sticks in your mind forever, and you remember the incident with a bitter sweet sting.

BAITING SEABIRDS

If you like photographing seabirds like gulls and pelicans, it’s easy to bait them with fish or fish parts. I photographed these gulls in North Carolina as they were hovering in front of the place a fisherman was cleaning his catch of the day. It was like shooting ducks … or in this case, it was like shooting gulls -- and it was as easy as any wildlife photography can be. This picture was taken with a wide angle lens for a different kind of look. I then added the reflection using the Photoshop plug-in ‘Flood’ made by flamingpear.com.

WHITE BALANCE for OUTDOOR SHOOTING

I shoot all my outdoor images on a daylight white balance. Even when the sky is cloudy and the colors in pictures tend to go a bit bluish, I don’t use cloudy WB to correct for this. I happen to like cool colors like you see here with the megalithic head at the summit of Mt. Nemrut in Turkey. However, if I choose to warm them up later, I can do that as long as I shoot in RAW mode. This is one huge advantage to using RAW – you can change the color temperature in post-processing. By using the ‘temperature’ slider in ACR (Adobe Camera Raw), you can easily change the white balance. If you shoot in jpeg mode, you can alter the color in Photoshop but it won’t look as good as if you had originalLY captured the image in RAW.

NIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY IN LOS ANGELES

I was in L.A. over the Thanksgiving weekend for my niece's wedding, and I had the opportunity to photograph the beautiful historic street lamps from the 1920s situated in front of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Wilshire Boulevard. Instead of merely photographing the lights, however, I wanted to add a little more interest to the scene. Therefore, I asked my wife if she would pose in the costume that she made to be worn during my photography workshop in Venice, Italy that I conduct every year during Carnival.

I photographed her both with sidelighting from a portable flash (the Canon 580EX) as well as with nothing more than the ambient light. I think both scenarios worked out very nicely. For the flash picture, I used the Canon ST-E2 transmitter to trigger the off-camera flash. Both pictures were taken with my 14 mm ultra-wide-angle lens.

MAKING A COPY IN PHOTOSHOP

When you have something selected in Photoshop, you can make a copy of it without copying anything to the clipboard and pasting it in the photo again. All you have to do is select the move tool in the tools palette and then hold down the option key on a Mac or the alt key on a PC and drag the image to the side. This duplicates the selected portion of your image. You can repeat that process over and over again for multiple copies of the same selection.

That's what I did to the zebra photo you see here. I worked on a high contrast black and white image and then I added the color after I had this 'herd' of zebras. I added the color by simply making a new window and using the gradient tool to create a blend of color. Then I pasted the black and white zebras over the color and played with the blend modes until I liked the result.

The 'blend modes' can be found in the layers palette. There is a submenu there where you see the word 'normal'. These blend layers together in various ways, and some of the effects will be good and some won't work at all. It's just a matter of trial and error.

SHOOTING INTO THE SUN

Taking pictures directly into the sun is a good way to add drama to your images. The issue, of course, is how to handle the exposure. If you use a wide angle lens as I did in this shot of a Maasai warrior in Kenya, the sun will be relatively small in the frame and therefore it won't have a significant impact on the meter's accuracy. However, if the sun is close to the center of the picture, then it's influence on the meter reading will increase and there is a probability that the photos will be too dark.

The safest way to deal with this is to check the LCD monitor for your exposure. If it is too light or too dark for your taste, change the exposure by using the exposure compensation feature on your camera. In this picture in Kenya, my first picture was underexposed, so I used + 2/3 f/stop in the compensation menu and that solved the problem.