Tips

On Location HDR Shoot

Posted by Richard Harrington on March 17, 2013
Posted in: HDR, Technique & Tutorials, Tips. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 3 comments

I wanted to share a video that I recently shot on HDR.  It was a look at the shooting process produced with a friend of mine, Abba Shapiro.   I went shooting at Great Fall National Park along the Potomac River (think George Washington and a boat).  We look at the whole shooting process on both Canon and Nikon bodies.

In this show you will learn:

  • The benefits of High Dynamic Range photography
  • The camera settings needed to achieve HDR photography
  • How to work with moving subjects when capturing HDR images
  • What gear you need to capture HDR Photography
  • The benefits for using a remote shutter release

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Playing Fair In Business

Posted by Richard Harrington on March 10, 2013
Posted in: Opinion, Tips. Tagged: , , . 4 comments

©iStockphoto

©iStockphoto


Creative professionals are facing a wealth of problems when it comes to pricing. I have found that many are running  a race to the bottom.  Gear keeps getting cheaper, which is a good thing in many ways.  The problem lies in the cost barrier.

Being a professional used to have a certain barrier to entry with gear, computers, and software creating a certain threshold of investment.  These days most of those restrictions are gone. Add to this sudden influx hundreds of schools pumping out graduates and you have a cluttered workplace.

I do not say the above to be protectionist or confrontational.  The fact is that the photo, video, and design industries needs to evolve and will benefit from fresh talent and fresh ideas. Just don’t piss in the pool after you jump in. Take a look around you and see what business practices others are following.  Here are a few that I wish more would follow for the good of all:

  • Price fairly – Different businesses will need to charge differently for their services.  Still, be sure you price services so you can survive for the long term.  Be consistent with your prices and be sure to cover related costs like insurance, and equipment.
  • Don’t do spec work – There is a lot of pressure to do unpaid work.  Taking spec jobs to prove yourself or show interest in a client really only shows desperation.  Look at other professions; they don’t face these same pressures.  If you truly need to expand your portfolio, seek out legitimate nonprofit organizations and make a donation of your time and skill. You can also take on personal projects and expand your portfolio through self-funded projects that are deigned to show you in the best light.
  • Don’t badmouth your competition – Your only true competition is yourself. Speaking ill of your peers will only lower the standards of the industry as a whole.
  • Your problems are your problems – Always pay your subcontractors (even if you haven’t received client payment). Similarly, you should not accept excuses from others above you in the client chain due to delayed payments.  Make sure you responsibly keep payments flowing to those you hire.
  • Act more like a lawyer and less like an artist – I’m not saying shelve your creativity… but remember that you are a trained professional with a code of conduct. You need to remember the important aspects of client management, professional communication, and ethical business practices if you want to succeed  for the long term.

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Organizing your Aperture Library, Part 3 of 3

Posted by Richard Harrington on March 8, 2013
Posted in: Tips. Tagged: , , , , , .

Guest Post & Photos by Joseph Linaschke of ApertureExpert.com | Follow him on Twitter

(Did you miss parts 1 and 2? Start here. then read this.

Now that you’ve determined your strategy and structure, and you’ve been organizing old photos (and importing new ones) following your new system, you may want to get more granular on your organization—for some photos, at least.

ALBUMS

The easiest way to break a big project into bite-sized chunks it to create albums. Let’s say you took a long holiday and visited the beach, a museum, took a neighborhood tour, etc. It can be handy to separate those events, but not actually move them to different projects. This vacation was all one trip, or “project”, after all. So you can create an album for each sub-set, or event, or however you like to think of it, and put photos there. What’s great is that you will still see all the photos from that trip whenever you click on the trip project, but when you want to just see the photos from the museum for example, you can view only that album. The same photo can appear in multiple albums, too. Following the above example, you may have every photo in an event album, but then make another album called “best of” and just drag your favorites into there. They will still show up in the project and the original album, and also in the “best of” album.

3.1-Aperture_albums

KEYWORDS & SMART ALBUMS

If you want to get really specific, you can apply individual keywords to photos or groups of photos. Once those are applied, you can create complex search criteria to find exactly the photos you want. You can search on the fly, or create a Smart Album that will re-search your photos every time you click on it. It’s easy to create a search to find, for example, photos of trees or flowers shot in January with your Canon 5D Mk II and 50mm lens rated 3-stars or better that haven’t yet been printed.

3.2-Aperture_Smart_Albums

As you can see, organizing your photos in Aperture can be as simple or as advanced as you like. The most important thing you can do is to follow a consistent strategy—whatever that may be. Even doing the basics, like naming the project intelligently and perhaps adding more info to the Project Info panel will ensure that you can find that picture of little Johnny under the Christmas tree – or that gotta-have-it-now old client photo – years and years from now.

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88 Secrets of Photoshop — Mini Bridge

Posted by Richard Harrington on March 7, 2013
Posted in: Screencast, Tips. Tagged: , , , , , .

Mini Bridge

By Rich Harrington — Follow Rich on Twitter

Inside of Photoshop you’ll find an extension called Mini Bridge.  This essentially gives you  the most useful tools of Bridge within Photoshop. This useful panel helps you with tasks related to browsing and opening your files. Mini Bridge lets you visually browse your files.  Mini Bridge can  make it easier to manage files by ranking, sorting, and renaming them.

  1. In order to use Mini Bridge, you must have already launched Bridge.
  2. Choose File > Browse in Mini Bridge to open the panel. The panel is likely docked at the bottom of your screen.
  3. Use the Favorites list and navigation controls to locate your images.

Mini Bridge gives you many of the same benefits of Bridge without having to leave Photoshop.

This post is a sneak peak of our new Photoshop book which will be released this Spring.

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Five Things That Need To Happen If Micro Four Thirds Is Hoping To Take Over The World

Posted by scottbourne on March 6, 2013
Posted in: Tips. Tagged: , , , , . 23 comments

Screen Shot 2013-02-26 at 4.31.05 PM

I am an unabashed fan of the Micro Four Thirds format. I sold all my DLSR gear and am using MFT gear for just about everything. As a professional photographer, I am probably stretching it a bit by shooting only MFT, and here are five things that the Micro Four Thirds format needs to change the conversation, dethrone Nikon and Canon, and eliminate the notion that you need a DSLR for professional work.

1. More Players

Four Thirds (which led later to Micro Four Thirds) came about just seven years ago. The original members of the Four Thirds consortium were Fuji, Kodak, Leica, Olympus, Panasonic, Sanyo, Sigma. There were early rumors Nikon would sign on but they didn’t formalize those plans based on the research available to me. Since the advent of Micro Four Thirds, (2008) Fuji, Leica, Sanyo have essentially dropped out of the game and Kodak only recently announced a new MFT camera. Sigma has only produced a single MFT lens. Olympus and Panasonic are responsible for the vast majority of MFT gear. This limitation works against the MFT format. One more major player could change the playing field forever. Nikon is notorious for being difficult to work with. Canon is bigger and less likely to feel threatened by opening up its technology to MFT. But even if it were some other company (Sony likely to get involved since they own a big piece of Olympus now) got involved, it would matter. And it has to happen in my opinion for MFT to really dominate.

2. Pro Support

Canon has Canon Professional Service, Nikon has Nikon Professional Service and MFT makers – nothing. If you are a professional you need access to quick repair turn around. You need access to gear loans. You need the ability to test new gear. Currently, sending an Olympus camera for repair can take four to six weeks. How do I know? It happened to me. If the MFT camera makers want more pro uptake, which is essential to bring the consumer buyers on board, then they need to offer pro support. It’s a major failing that can easily be addressed. Canon started charging for CPS. Olympus and Panasonic could offer the same service and if they are concerned about cost, just charge money like Canon does. I’d rather have quick, reliable turnaround on repairs and know I can count on my gear being available when I need it than keep a few hundred dollars in my pocket.

3. Education

The manufacturers need to invest in more education and photographers who use and support the Micro Four Thirds format need to jump in and help. I am doing my part. My pal Rich Harrington and I are working on training for Micro Four Thirds systems. There are one or two books, but there needs to be more. New photographers especially will need help making the switch and without the proper educational materials out there, the system will have a harder time gaining market share.

4. Spokespeople

Canon has the Explorers of Light. Nikon has a less in-your-face system of Nikon mentors. Olympus has just a few people representing its products but ALL the MFT makers of lens and/or bodies need to work with high-profile photographers and other thought leaders in the field to get better representation. Because the mindset (right or wrong) of most new photographers is “Gee that guy made that picture with that camera so I could too.” Without the prominent voices in photography singing the praises of MFT gear, it will take longer than it should to gain MFT acceptability.

5. More

MFT just needs more. More of everything. More lenses, more fast glass, more accessories, more tours & workshops, more fixed aperture zooms, more bodies, more manufactures (as mentioned above) more, more, more. This format is in my opinion, a real common sense choice for lots of photographers. But the MFT market penetration is not nearly what it could or should be, because the manufacturers have been timid to really commit to the MFT format. Olympus and Panasonic are starting to ramp up here and I applaud them both for it. But we still need more of everything. When that happens, you’ll start to see even the cool kids shooting MFT.

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Lazy Scanning — Photoshop’s Crop and Straighten Command

Posted by Richard Harrington on March 3, 2013
Posted in: Tips. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

scan_auto1

By Rich Harrington — Follow Rich on Twitter

I hate scanning photos…  it takes so long to suck up an image at high-quality. However the alternative is letting the print fade and die a slow death.  Are you in the same boat?  Here’s a lazy way to scan faster.

Step 1 Put as many images on your scanner bed that will fit.  Just make sure that you have a small gap between the images.

Step 2 Scan the images to a high-res file.

Step 3 Open the file in Adobe Photoshop.

scan_auto2

Step 4 Choose File>Automate> Crop & Straighten.  Each photo will be detected and moved into it’s own document (cropping the borders and straightening files).

Step 5 Rotate and files 90˚ as needed (Image > Image Rotation > 90˚ CW or 90˚ CCW).

Step 6 Save each file and touch up as needed..

Isn’t being lazy great?

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Fibonacci, Nautilus Shells, and Photography

Posted by Richard Harrington on March 1, 2013
Posted in: Tips. Tagged: , , , , , . 8 comments

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about composition lately.  I am really trying to push myself to get beyond the rule of thirds and try  out some new methods.

The method I’m experimenting with now is called the Golden Spiral.  It’s based on of all things an ancient sequence of numbers that often repeats in nature.

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144

The sequence is often called the Fibonacci numbers and is named after  Leonardo Fibonacci who was an Italian mathematician.  He didn’t actually invent the series (it’s though to have originated from the Hindu–Arabic numeral system.

The sequence is based on adding the adding adjacent numbers in a string, then carrying the results.

0+1=1, 1+1=2, 1+2=3, 2+3=5, 3+5=8, 5+8=13, 8+13=21, 13+21=34 (and so on)

A tiling image with squares whose lengths are successive Fibonacci numbers By Borb — Wikimedia Commons

A tiling image with squares whose lengths are successive Fibonacci numbers
By Borb — Wikimedia Commons

If you draw  circular arcs to connect the opposite corners of squares, you end up with an approximate shape of the golden spiral.  This shape actually takes on the exact look of a nautilus and expresses the number Phi (or golden ratio).

By Dicklyon — Wikimedia Commons

By Dicklyon — Wikimedia Commons

Okay, enough match class…  but you have to admit it’s a little creepy how often this appears in nature… the most obvious is here.

Detailed photo of a halved backlit shell of a chambered nautilus (Nautilus pompilius) isolated on whitePhoto by Fyletto — iStockphoto

Detailed photo of a halved backlit shell of a chambered nautilus (Nautilus pompilius) isolated on white
Photo by Fyletto — iStockphoto

But it shows up in lots of other places too… by using this ratio, you can often add some energy into the composition.  The good news is that you can also get here trough cropping in Photoshop or Lightroom.

gs1

  1. Open an image with Photoshop or Lightroom.
  2. Choose the Crop tool.
  3. Press the O key to cycle through the crop methods.
  4. Press Cmd+O (Ctrl+O) to rotate the asymmetrical options.
  5. Crop as desired using the Golden Spiral as a guide.

gs2

There you have it… the Golden Spiral applied to postproduction as well.  Give it a shot and see that you think.  Aim for in-camaera composition for the best results, but use the Crop tool where needed.

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