A Couple of Things

Hi Everyone.

I’m sorry. I missed last Friday. We had a death in the family and stuff has been crazy. I think Develop is going to be on hold for a couple of months while I catch my breath.

ALSO – my friend Crystalyn is putting together a little photographer’s PlayGroup for photographers who are friends or want to be friends and want to get together. The PlayGroup is this upcoming ANYONE who wants to come can –

Rooms will be at the Hotel Monaco in SLC and you can email Crystalyn about making reservations.

We’ll shoot, talk photoshop and other fun things.

Feel free to come.

basics

Basic Settings and Helps — Part 1

***note – i hate most things technical. it’s not my forte and i’m going to be honest, it’s not in the forefront of my mind when i’m shooting. SO, I’m attempting to do this next couple of posts on technical basics for you. But it’s a sheer labor of love. If I don’t know something I’ll link you to it or ask Nichole Van, who is a master of all things technical. Bear with me.

SO you’re shooting digital?? I’m assuming you are.

You need to know a few basic things.

PIXELS- stands for “picture element”. A pixel is the smallest single element of a digital image. A digital picture is made of millions of pixels – a megapixel is 1 million pixels.

A sensor is the heart of the camera. It’s the place where the image passes through the lens and is digitally recorded in your camera.

The bigger the sensor size, the better the quality of photos you can take in low light.

You can read more about sensors here

Here are a few questions that I get asked about a lot…

WHITE BALANCE

What is it?? White Balance is how your camera sees true white.

“Definition of “white balance”

White balance is a camera setting that adjusts for lighting in order to make white objects appear white in photos. This is more difficult than it might seem due to the fact that light cast from different sources is different in color (technically called temperature). That is to say, light is rarely truly white in nature. The light from an incandescent or halogen bulb, for example, is red/orange in color, while that from the sun is relatively blue. A proper white balance setting in a camera will prevent, for example, a white bed sheet in a photo from appearing orange in color when it is being illuminated by a candle.”
Definition above found here.

Light has color. Ever think about it? The room you’re in looks totally different with the glow of candle versus when a bright fluorescent bulb is turned on. Think about the difference you see when you walk into a K-Mart versus when you enter a candlelight dinner.

Fluorescent is a COOL (blueish or greenish) light

Candle light casts a WARM (orange, red, yellow) light.

It’s tricky to get a proper white, no matter how experienced you are as a photographer.

ISO or Film Speed

Back in the day when film was really grains of light sensitive silver crystals on a gelatin surface, the lower the ISO (which stands for International Standards Organization) was, the smaller and finer the grains of silver were that moved to form the image portrayed through the lens onto the film. The lower the ISO, the finer the quality of the final image, however, the tradeoff was that you needed lots more light available to help these grains of silver find their way.

If it was a dark situation, you’d use a high ISO or fast film speed. The faster the film speed is, the larger the crystals that are. These larger grains can result in a loss of detail (especially when you’re enlarging an image) but they capture light more quickly. (They also lend a delicious texture to your photos if you ask me).

Remember it like this — Film speed is more a function of the SIZE of the light sensitive crystals. Larger grains of these light sensitive crystals can grab more light more quickly than smaller ones can. The smaller ones, however give you a finer picture with more details and subtlety

Good standard –
·   ISO 100 – good for outdoor photography in bright sunlight
·   ISO 200 – good for outdoor photography or brightly lit indoor photography
·   ISO 400 – good for indoor photography
·   ISO 1000 or 1600 – good for indoor photography where you want to avoid using a flash

In a digital situation, we’re trading light sensitive crystals with digital pixels, but the tradeoff is still pretty much the same. Instead of “grain” you get digital “noise”.

examples - i shot these on the Canon 5D Mark II which handles high noise beautifully – if I’d been shooting on the XT you’d see a HUGE difference…

low ISO w/ low noise

high ISO w/ more noise

extra: carpe luce

Have you ever been driving along and noticed how breathtakingly beautiful the light is outside? And you know it’s not going to last very long or be like that later in the day or the next day.

This light can be beautiful and subdued and moody – like on a stormy, wintery day. Or it could be glowing and flaring like a peeking sunrise or dying sunset.

It can even be just a lamp shining at your face, silhouetting a subject beautifully.

Do what it takes to shoot it.

Shoot it through the car window (while someone else drives, naturally), grimy and all.

Drop off the kids at school and call someone you know and go SHOOT.

Embrace that light – live by the spontaneity of the moment and be inspired by the light.

Tell yourself – “Seize the Light — CARPE LUX”

challenge – the very, VERY next day that you notice outstanding light grab your camera and take advantage of it. Go on a spontaneous shoot and make the light an important part of it.

natural light

By Guest Contributor Nichole Van

Thanks so much to Jefra and Liz for giving me this chance to chat with you! I’ve loved looking in on all the fabulous things that you’re talking about with Develop on Fridays!

I’ve decided to chat about finding beautiful natural light in photos. For many years, I shot exclusively with natural light . . . no flashes or lights or reflectors . . . just me, my camera and the light my situation gave me. Obviously, through this, I’ve learned through trial and error what works and what doesn’t when shooting portraits with natural light. So here are a few tips about using natural light effectively in your photographs.

To begin with, when using natural light, you need to constantly be aware of the strength and angle of your light source. This is, for me, the most difficult part of using natural light in portraits. You really need to study the light and truly “see” how it’s affecting your image. It’s really the same as using studio lights . . . except that you can’t control where the light comes from or how strong it is. But you still use the light source as you would use studio lights.

So for example, when you’re shooting outside, the sun shines from above for most of the day, even on cloudy days. If you just put someone outside and take a photo with the light source coming from overhead, no matter how diffused, you will get what I call racoon eyes . . . . the light will shine down your subject’s face, emphasizing the shadows underneath the eyes. You can see this on my son’s face in the shot below. This was shot on an overcast day. I attached this image SOOC just so you can see how bad the shadows are right out of the camera. Also note the brighter spots on his upper forehead and cheeks. You can clearly see how the light is skimming his face from top to bottom.It’s not a flattering photo of him and there are no catchlights in his eyes, making them dark and dead.

So in my lovely drawing below, you DON’T want your light source to come from overhead (A) or from below (D). You will get funky shadows on the person’s face if that happens. You want your light source to ideally be at about a 45 degree angle to the face (B), but any light source between B and C below will give good results. So in the photo I posted above of my kids, you can see that the light is good on my daughter’s face. That’s because she has her head turned toward the sky and the light is hitting her face at a 45 degree angle. Notice that the light is even on her skin . . . there aren’t any funky shadows or hot spots.

So how do you get the light right when shooting outdoors?

Well, the simple answer is to make sure that you have something over your subject’s head to force the light to come in from the side. A tree, a doorway, a reflector, a porch . . . any number of things can fix the problem. So here is another shot of my son taken in a doorway. Notice how the light comes in from the front, not overhead, and how that opens up the shadows on his face. The light is smooth and even on his face and there are beautiful catchlights in his eyes.

So when taking portraits with natural light, look carefully at the face before taking a portrait, and then move around the person or move them into a situation where the light comes from the side or front.

Sometimes, however, it just isn’t possible to move somewhere where there is something overhead. In that case, assuming that it’s an overcast day, I put the person’s back to the sun (wherever it may be in the sky) and place myself above them (easy to do with a child) and have them look up at me. This puts the light at 45 degrees to their face and they shouldn’t squint as long as the sun is at their back. It results in a photo like the one below.

Assignment: Find the light . . . . .beautiful, gorgeous light! Go on a light safari and look for places that have beautiful natural light. Please post your images and tell us what you did to find that amazing light!

ETA — Please feel free to link to your posts regarding this lesson w/in the comments section so we can see what you’ve done!! thanks.

this friday...our guest will be....

Just wanted to give you all a heads up that this friday’s guest, if you haven’t guessed already, will be the fabulous and talented (and one of my best friends…) Nichole Van!

visualize it…. you won’t want to miss it!

Come back Friday and hear what her challenge and lesson will be.

hints for our guest

Next Friday we’ll be having a guest posting our Develop on Fridays post.

I want to divulge a few hints who it is to you….

Three things about this person –

My fav chocolate combo is mint and chocolate, forget peanutbutter or hazelnut or caramel or whatever, I’m mint all the way.

I got my first camera for Christmas when I was 9. It was a Kodak Disk 4000 camera that took disk film. Here’s a photo of it:

. . . . man, that brings back the memories, haha.

Besides photography, my other passion is cooking, particularly desserts. I would love to be a pastry chef.

any guesses??

SIMPLE

SIMPLE – keep your pictures simple.

Here’s why…

…a photograph is a 3 second piece of communicative artwork — You have just a few seconds to capture the attention of a viewer and speak to them. While a busy photograph can be pulled off, by keeping a picture simple you eliminate all the confusion and static that a viewer would otherwise have to sort through. So you You basically have three seconds to grab the viewer’s attention, hold it, and say what you want to say.

The one of the easiest ways to do this is by keeping your image simple

ways to keep it simple -

A. COMPOSITION Design and composition are long tried and true ways that the human brain visually reads a situation. This is a whole other post in itself, but here are some links that talk more about this for now…

B . COLOR. Sometimes a photograph reads faster in black and white. Sometimes in color. I love a BW photo as much as anyone and same for a gorgeous color. But when you’re messing around, pay attention to what happens to the photo when you turn it BW versus a color conversion.

This one works better in color in my opinion but you can decide for yourselves -

it’s nice in BW too, but it just reads faster in color.

EXAMPLE 2

a. this one’s better in BW to me

b. the color version – so much color baggage and caca

last example –

you tell me – bw or color (looking for the one that reads the fastest)…

C. MOVE IN OR MOVE OUT. Sometimes a picture is more powerful when you’ve come in really tight and sometimes, the expanse of negative space around your subject can add more power to the image.

move in -

or move out –

D.WATCH THE CRAP. Sorry but ‘crap’ is the only word that comes to mind to effectively describe the visual clutter that ends up in the background and sometimes foreground of our shots. Edit it out through your composition of your shot. Do this well enough and you won’t have much editing to do in Photoshop after the fact.

example

shot 1….clutter in the background (not bad – mostly bokeh’d out, but the picture could be better and more succinct)

picture b … less clutter through composition…

ASSIGNMENT: Take a photo. Then find a way to make it simpler. Post both photos. Go ahead and do this lots of times and post lots of examples.

go for it!

PS – a hint about our guest poster for March 12…

she lived in Italy for a year and a half.

new post friday….

just telling you it’s coming soon –

WELCOME!!

Hi everyone!!

WELCOME

welcome to the new home of Develop on Fridays!

We’re excited to be continuing this project and are excited to see more from all of you.

GUEST CONTRIBUTORs

AS of right now our new format will be a post and challenge every other week.

The first week will be a challenge/post from me, we’ll skip the second week to give you guys more time to work on the assignments (if you want) and Liz and me a little more time to feed and clothe our kids. The third week will be a challenge/post from a guest contributor.

We have some phenomenal photographers lined up for you guys and I can’t wait to learn and develop with what they have to share.

I’m really excited about this and really can’t wait to bring this to you all.

you can follow all our updates on twitter.

See you next week with our next challenge!

VOICE

develop on fridays :: lesson one | your creative voice

VOICE
by Jefra Starr Linn

What is your voice? Everybody has one. Do you know what yours is?

Your “voice” is how you uniquely express the way you see things. It is uniquely you expressed through your work

It’s what you have to offer the world. It’s how you see the world. It’s something that changes and evolves and intensifies/mellows and matures over time. It’s something you work on and feed. It’s how you serve the world around you.

The writer J L Blackwater says “we all have voices in our head. Artists actually listen to them on a regular basis.”

And as artists it’s easy to feel alone in what we have to say or in what we see. we worry about popularity. We worry about being understood and about being isolated in our uniqueness. But it’s all these things that actually make us the artist that we are and allow us to contribute and speak in our own rare way.

Here’s how I envision it — everything you see, everything you hear and love and everything that attracts you are like little banks and rocks and grasses along a river, they all influence the direction that the river flows in some way or another. The key is to let your influences be just that – influences on YOUR style. If you BECOME your influences, you’re not being true to yourself.

Your voice cannot be borrowed, bought or stolen, When you borrow or steal someone else’s voice you become an impersonator. There’s no shortcut to developing your unique voice – sometimes the road is short but most often it’s a lifelong journey.

Often the hardest part about voice is recognizing that you even have one. It’s the same thing as hearing yourself on a tape recorder – you say to yourself “is that what I sound like??!” It’s something that’s such a part of you, something that you’ve lived with all your life, that you don’t know what it is that makes it unique to you and it’s so comfortable and common to you that you don’t know what it sounds or looks like.

So how do you find your voice? We’ll explore this in a little more detail next Friday, but here are a few ideas for now.

Jim Hart says “an artist’s job is to experience technique as one would a buffet. Try everything. If it tastes good, swallow it. If it is not right for you spit it out. What is ultimately your technique should be what works for you personally. If you are like most artists …this technique will be a patchwork of many influences – not just one approach of one or two institutions.”

In fact, I recommend reading his entire article, “Ten Steps To Finding your Artistic Voice”

So your job is to one of the most critical and difficult aspect of allowing your voice to develop is just that – allowing it to develop and not forcing it to develop – like a flower opening. There’s a certain amount of letting go involved. Some give and take and then above all just allowing it to be and grow.

Avenues by which growth and refinement in your own voice is achieved — Work, work work work. Produce boatloads of work – don’t try to create the One Masterpiece that’s uniquely you, the best method of developing your own voice is to produce tons and tons of work.

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity “ – Carl Jung

Continuing the analogy above of the river being your voice – a river flows based on all sorts of factors. When you try to impede it’s course it’s called a dam. Rivers find their own way. Trying to artificially manufacture your perspective is possible, but it won’t be the organic, natural course the river takes.

Stephen Covey said, in his book, “The 8th Habit”, “One word expresses the pathway to greatness: voice. Those on this path find their voice and inspire others to find theirs. The rest never do.”

To help you do this – he suggest you ask yourself four questions

1. What are you good at? That’s your MIND
2. What do you love doing? That’s your HEART
3. What need can you serve? That’s the BODY
4. And finally, what is life asking of you? What gives your life meaning and purpose? What do you feel like you should be doing? In short, what is your conscience directing you to do? That is your SPIRIT.

‘Voice’ is a way of approaching problem solving and life in general. It’s how you see and do.

“As far as I’m concerned, taking photographs is a means of understanding which cannot be separated from other means of visual expression. it is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one’s own originality. It is a way of life.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson”

Assignment for this week –

Take at least 75 photos. Maybe more. That’s up to you. But start out without restraints on how many photos you take. And it needs to be of one thing, one subject.

(I feel like with photography, as with any other art form, I need to get warmed up. Usually the first 50 shots are pretty dry and once I get warmed up and the creative juices flowing I start really working with my own muse symbiotically.)

Now after at least 75 photos, find the one photo that you feel, out of all those photos is the closest to how you see and what you see. Post that. Also, to give us a little context, post your top five runners up for your number one choice.

how i did it…

I wanted to shoot some vintage photography books that I have.

This is my final choice for my favorite -

The shoot started out pretty blah (as they all do for me – gotta get warmed up)

like this -

after about 25 shots I got this –

and this…

and this…

and then it started moving towards this…

Now you go give it a try…

……….

Post your assignments where you feel most comfortable – you blog, your favorite photo sharing site or at one of these three virtual spaces that we’ve set up specifically for this group:

develop on fridays forum / message board
This is where the bulk of our group activities will take place. Both Jefra and I will be checking this board to moderate discussions. If you have a question about the assignment, feel free to jump on the message board and ask away! You can also post/share your photo assignments here.

A note about forum registration – If you’ve registered and haven’t received a confirmation email, please check your spam box.

flickr group
Share your photos here. Make friends. Find each other and lift each other.

facebook group
This group will serve the same function as the flickr group. Share your photos. on facebook (upload your photos and add it to the facebook group photo albums).

Wherever you choose to post, be sure to come back here and link us to where you’ve posted in the comment section below so we can find each other.

- jefra + liz

blinkie

Archives

A Couple of Things

basics

extra: carpe luce

natural light

this friday...our guest will be....

hints for our guest

SIMPLE

new post friday….

WELCOME!!

VOICE

develop on fridays :: lesson one | your creative voice

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jefra

paislee press

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