This week, Andrew Ford kicked things off, showing us how to create an Animated GIF in Photoshop. Then, Jemma Pollari gave some tricks on how to get clients to smile.
Bryan Esler talked about intent during chaos in communities and James Maher showed how to make street photography more intimate. Finally, Julie Powell talked about the importance of calibrating monitors.
How will you choose to capture chaos in your community? - Over the weekend, I put up an article on tips about how to stay safe while photographing protests. Little did I know that just a few hours later, my hometown of Grand Rapids would experience a major protest followed by violent riots throughout our downtown area. I chose to not go down for the protest, but I know several people who did. From what I was told it was peaceful for the first couple hours, and then other protesters turned up and it got violent. Several storefronts were damaged and looting took place. Cars and garbage containers were set ablaze like I had never seen before. I decided right there and then that I needed to go downtown the next day and see the aftermath for myself. I knew that there was going to be several people downtown cleaning up. I figured if I could document the community coming together and try to help where I could, it would be well worth my while. Deciding what to document, and how I was pretty shocked when I got downtown. There were already several hundred people helping to clean — they had gotten there as early as 5 a.m. That’s miraculous in and of itself, as a few small groups of people were still rioting an hour before that. It was right then and there that I decided to focus on the cleanup, instead of focusing on the damage. I met up with my client — Downtown Grand Rapids Inc. — and talked to them about documenting everything. We waked the downtown area for four hours, and helped at a local business for about an hour, too. I walked away with hundreds of photographs that I then culled down and turned into them, promoting the community effort to clean up our city. While I did capture some damage, I only chose to share one specific photograph. It was a close-up of a double-pane window that had been smashed. It was from the first building that had its glass smashed in the city. I did this because I didn’t want the focus to be on the bad. I wanted it to be on the good, that showcased the community coming together. And I wanted it to say “we’re broken, but not shattered.” Should you become a part of the story? I’ve lived in Grand Rapids for 16 years, dating back to the first time I stepped foot on the Aquinas College campus. I fell in love with the city. In my photography, I photograph for several community organizations, and have captured outdoor events ranging from concerts to food truck rallies and everything in-between. So for me, being downtown was more than just documenting what had happened. It was about trying to help out and present a positive message to the community. I photographed people scrubbing off spray paint, boarding up windows, sweeping up glass and more. Local construction companies donated time and supplies to help secure businesses. Restaurants were feeding all of the volunteers to a feast — some that had been damaged — all for free. Others who couldn’t physically help were handing out water and snacks with their kids, or handing out supplies like gloves. You’ll often hear many journalists say that it’s important to not become a part of the story. This helps to avoid things like bias. Up until this past weekend, I thought that, too. But I realized I was wrong. When you can make a positive difference in your community — whether it be through picking up trash, moving furniture in a retail store, hanging positive messages on windows or helping secure businesses — that’s worth your while. Sure, capture the destruction. That’s important. But be sure to capture the good things that come from it, too, and help where you can. For me, it was extremely important to document everything. But it was equally important to lend a little bit of time to the cleanup efforts, too. After all, this was my community. My city that I love. My client estimated that a couple thousand people came to help. And while I was by no means as involved as those who got downtown before sunrise, or those volunteers who worked to clean up all day, I was happy to be able to document everything and to lend just a little bit of time into the efforts.
How to make your street photography more intimate and unique - Street photography may seem simple on the surface, but it is actually a very complex and nuanced form of photography. Despite what some may think, the genre goes much further than just photographs of people in public. It is an art form that combines one’s personal vision with hints of documentary photography, storytelling and flat out chance. When done well, the sky is the limit in what you can portray. But how do you do this well? How do you get past the phase of just capturing random moments and happenstance to start building and sharing a vision? How do you make your work more intimate and more unique? While I’m not trying to tell you what makes for good street photography— because that’s such a personal opinion — the goal of this article is to help you bring out what is interesting for you. Here are my tips to help bring out that vision. Become familiar with the same areas and visit them constantly To create photographs that are intimate, you first have to know your subjects well. That involves exploring the same places over and over again. Yes, you can do great work with limited exposure to a place. Yes, you should explore new areas often. But it can’t be argued that the more you get familiar with an area, the more nuanced your work will become. As you go back to an area over and over, you will find yourself becoming more comfortable. You will learn the people, the pace and the feeling of the area. You will know where the best spots area, the best light at different times of da, and you will start to anticipate moments in ways that you were not aware of on your first visits. And most importantly, you will notice more. It is frightening how so many obvious scenes will pop out at you that you completely missed the first handful of times you visited the area. Linger more I’m a walker and I’m assuming if you’re reading this, you are too. Street photographers generally love to walk and explore. But there is an importance to slowing down and waiting when you find a good location. We spend all of this time looking for interesting places, so one of the most important things we can do is give that location time to present us with the perfect moment. This is how many special street photography moments are created. A special location + time = magic! In addition, it will be easier to photograph people in more intimate ways if they are entering your personal space instead of you entering their space. This will change the dynamic of photographing them significantly. And even more so in these times of social distancing, I find it can be much easier to capture a respectful and safe photograph that doesn’t invade someone’s space if you are already in place and waiting for people to come by. Visit quiet places Busy places will usually yield the most chances for interesting moments to happen. That’s the nature of the game, to put yourself in a spot where things happen. That being said, just as many interesting moments can happen in the quietest of locations. Go purposely to places that are quiet and ‘boring,’ and figure out how to get a good photograph there. Figure out how to explain the area. This tip may be much more necessary as well as we tried to avoid busy areas as much as possible for the time being. Escape people, go for a quiet walk and over time you will start to find fascinating photographs without any people in them. Shoot around the block from where you live. It doesn’t matter where you are. You will find the photography opportunities to be very different from the busy areas, but the best shots will be just as fascinating. Focus on expressions, eyes and gestures To create intimate photographs, it’s important to show emotion and feeling as often as possible. One of the most effective ways of doing this is showing the emotions we want to portray in other people. Try to find people who are feeling what you are feeling and then capture them showing these emotions. This is tough to do of course and takes time, but the more you focus on it the more it will work out for you. Watch the looks in people’s eyes, the expressions on their faces and the gestures in their bodies and wait for them to reveal their inner feelings. And if you see this occur, shoot quickly! Often these moments pop out for an instant and then disappear before you know it. Read up on the masters and educate yourself with photo books Learning from the works of other photographers is integral for finding your own voice. By seeing the wide variety of inspiring work that is being done with this genre, you will start to file away the best photographers and photographs while you are out shooting. This will help you figure out what it is that you want to show and how you want to show it. In addition, I highly suggest learning more about classic street photography books and purchasing some to study. It is one thing to learn about the works of photographers on the internet and on their websites, but books are the final form of street photography for many photographers. This is where they show their vision and there is just as much of an art in sequencing a book to tell a story as there is for taking the best photographs. This is where a photographer’s vision truly shines. Find your voice Think about yourself and your area. What is it about both of these that you want to bring out and show? The more you know about yourself, the more this will show in your work. Search through your work for photos that begin to show this, think about it during editing and
Ways to make Animated GIFs in Photoshop - Making Animated GIFs is useful for a variety of digital marketing reasons. It’s also just some good ol’ fashioned fun! Photoshop makes it easy. In the video below, I’ll show you how to make GIFs from three different starting points — from standard Photoshop layers, a video imported as frames converted to layers and using a standard video import. Regardless of how you create them, there are recommendations on the file specifications for GIFs. Although GIFs can be, for example, 100MB in file size, 15 seconds in length and 1280×720 pixels in size, it doesn’t mean that it’s good to do that. Many GIFS are used in digital marketing materials, such as emails and web banners, so file size matters. Various websites have different GIF recommendations, but the bottom line is that if you can make a quality GIF that’s under a couple of megabytes, as few frames as needed and smaller in image size (unless it’s a banner) … then do it that way so it has more web uses.
Say cheese: Tricks for photographing clients who hate their smile - “I hate how I look when I smile!” It’s not an uncommon complaint to hear when working as a family and portrait photographer. Maybe it’s the way her teeth look. Or it’s the way his cheeks pop out. Or she’s just 13 years old and hates this ridiculous family photoshoot that Mom is forcing on her. Whatever the reason, when you find a client who feels they look ugly when they smile, it’s a delicate problem to navigate. In this article, I will share some tricks to help your client achieve a relaxed, cheerful look and avoid looking sullen, grumpy or arrogant. It’s rarely helpful to force a cheesy grin. When you feel happy, it shows in a lot of different ways: All over your face, in your posture and in the way you interact with the camera. Try it in a mirror: Imagine you’ve just lost your job, your dog just ran away and you’ve lost all your money to an internet scam. Really feel that worry and despair. Now smile. Did you look happy and relaxed? Probably not. When you force a client to smile who doesn’t want to, you won’t get the result you want. They’ll immediately worry about how they look, and the last thing you want to say is, “Smile! Hmm … OK, um … smile, but not like that …” Try these prompts as an alternative to a cheesy grin With your client in front of the lens, try giving these suggestions instead. Find out why your client hates their smile Ask your client what they don’t like about their look, and then adjust their pose, your angle and the lighting to flatter their features. If all else fails, try getting philosophical When you can’t get a relaxed look that your client likes, you can at least try to soothe their urge to dissect how they look. Getting a beautiful portrait is possible despite having a client who struggles to smile (even if they tend to look like a serial killer in photos). With patience and empathy, you’ll be able to capture their inner beauty.
Why calibrating your monitor is important - What you see is what you get, and it begins with a calibrated monitor. I found out just that when I was given a Spyder X Pro to try out. I have never calibrated a monitor before, even though as a photographer I know I should have. Working predominantly with digital images, I thought that as long as they looked good on my screen, that was OK. WRONG! Future clients may look at your work and see something wildly different from what’s on your screen. I was lucky — my differences were quite small. Maybe it’s time you take a look at calibrating your monitors, too? So what does calibrating your monitor actually mean? Even with high-end calibrated monitors straight from the factory, they may still require calibration when you get them home. Generally, you attach a calibrator to your monitor and run the diagnostic software. This will read the output from your monitor based on color and brightness, and adjust them as required to hit a preferred profile like sRGB. Another feature of current monitor calibrators is the ambient light readout. What this means is via the inbuilt sensor it can adjust your monitor’s brightness depending on your how bright or dark the room is. You can then be confident that your monitor is accurately displaying brightness and colors. Why calibrate your monitor? As someone who had never calibrated their monitors before, this is a really good question. I have had some problems in the past with images on my monitor appearing differently on different screens and when I print. It was frustrating. Even though I had switched from a cheap generic monitor to a high-end one, this did not guarantee it was properly calibrated. Even subtle deviations can make a big difference when it comes to printing. If your monitor is set too dark or the color is off, it can really make a big difference to HOW your edited images can look. You could easily be looking at images that are a full stop or two under or overexposed on an uncalibrated monitor. I guess it really boils down to the fact that if you truly respect your work, you calibrate your monitor. Regardless of whether you’re a Pro or an enthusiast, it can’t do your images any harm to calibrate. Why bother calibrating if others don’t? You can only control your own environment, but if your monitor(s) are calibrated correctly you know that the images you are working on are true to how they were taken and how they should look. You also know what to expect when you print them, and that they will look very similar (if not the same) as what you see on your screen. Without calibrating your screen your images could look too warm or too cool. So how do you actually do it? That is the easy bit. With a Spyder X Pro, it is actually super quick and easy. Visit their website, download the software and install it, connect the calibrator to the PC and attach it to your screen, in under two minutes you’re done! When should you do it? Datacolor suggests running a calibration every 4-6 weeks. Why so often, especially when you may not have been doing it at all? Over time, subtle changes and variances in brightness and color can happen in monitors as they age. There is also dependence on the ambient light in the room. The light can change depending on the time of the year, which could possibly affect your ambient light in the room. Where do you get it? So now I have convinced you that you should be doing this too, where can you get yours? Check out Datacolor’s website. They have a few different variants, like the Spyder X Elite. But for the average user, the Pro version seems to be a great starting point. I have been running my monitor calibrated for a while now and have been going back over some older images. Even though my monitor was not so bad, it is still amazing a small difference can make such a big change. If you haven’t made the jump yet, I suggest you invest in a monitor calibrator. Think of it as an investment — it really can make such a big difference. We spend so much money on all our camera gear, we are only letting ourselves and our hard work to get those amazing images down if our monitors are not calibrated correctly.
