May 4th, 2010 Rob Sheppard
I just got a copy of my friend Rick Sammon’s new book, HDR Photography Secrets for Digital Photographers. I have seen a lot of HDR books and I really think this is the best book on the subject, bar none. I don’t say that just because Rick is a friend. I really do like the way this book is put together and how it talks about HDR. Rick covers everything, from the funky, illustrative look that I am less interested in personally to very natural looking work. I find it all interesting and inspirational.
Rick is like the head cheerleader for fun in photography and this is an enthusiastic look at HDR.
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April 30th, 2010 Rob Sheppard
The environmental portrait is an important type of photography for people. This is a portrait that also shows the environment where the subject works or plays or otherwise lives. You see it in photojournalism where it is common in sports and business magazines. You see it a lot with portraiture studios where it is a staple.
You don’t see it as much in close-up nature photography. I am not sure why. It might be because photographers are excited about getting close and want to see the subject full on in their viewfinder. Those photos can be great fun and dramatic, but I also like close-ups that show off a bit of the setting and environment around the subject. These are, in a sense, ecological photos because they show connection of the subject to the real world.
This isn’t simply about backing up. Too much “environment” and the subject will be hard to see and discover in the photograph. The subject still has to be clearly seen. With light, color and composition, you can make even a small subject stand out in the scene if you look for this.
I love to use wide-angle lenses up close for this purpose. Some wide-angles focus within inches without any other accessories. For others, you might need an achromatic close-up lens such as the Canon 500D (which I use on my Olympus gear, too — it works on any lens with the right filter size or adapter ring), which works quite well with close-ups.
It also helps to get down low and be at the subject’s level. This means dirty knees, and for me, a tilting or swivel Live View LCD really helps a lot.
Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, nature photography | 1 Comment »
April 19th, 2010 Rob Sheppard
I know I have mentioned this before, but it is an important concept for photographers — just say no. What does that mean? We have many choices when photographing. We choose a subject, an angle, the lens to use, the time of day to shoot and so on. But sometimes the subject and scene just will not make a good photograph. This is confirmed by what you see in the LCD if you do take the picture. To avoid a lot of frustration, this is the point where you make the choice of “no, I am not going to take this picture.”
Probably the most common area this comes up is in exposure. I find that a lot of “exposure” problems are not strictly exposure, although I will hear that the sun is too bright, the conditions are too bright, and so on (often with that “too bright” thrown in — rarely is a scene too bright for a modern camera). The challenge is usually the contrast, not the bright sun.
One thing I find photographers often doing is try to take a picture when it is impossible for the camera to get a good exposure. It is important to understand that cameras cannot see the world the way we do. Even though you can see detail in the bright sun and shade just fine, the camera often cannot. Good exposure then is not simply about taking a picture of what you see, but about finding scenes with light that the camera can deal with. This then becomes a choice that is important, to say no to a shot when you cannot get a photograph that deals with the scene well. By making that choice, you will look for the shot that you can say yes to.
The photo here is of a blue dick flower in Central California. I knew I could control the exposure to hold detail in the clouds and the flowers when I made this composition, so I knew this was a photo to say yes to. If there had been heavy shadows with important details, I probably would have had to say no.
Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques | 2 Comments »
April 15th, 2010 Rob Sheppard
I am really pleased with my newest book, The Magic of Digital Landscape Photography, just out from Lark Books. This book truly is a culmination of over 30 years of photographing landscapes seriously. I put a lot into this book and it features a lot of things I really care about. For example, though there are some of the big icon landscapes, a lot of the book is about landscapes that are not often featured, small and large landscapes all around us, landscapes that I care about very much. For example, in very front of the book is a scene of layered hills going into the distance at sunset. These are not from some exotic location, but from the Santa Monica Mountains just outside of Los Angeles, a location within a short drive of millions of people — I never see photos from this area.
I tried very hard to cover what is important about landscape photography and show a lot of images from all over that could hopefully inspire people. Of course, there is the standard digital photo stuff that has to be in any book that purports to cover digital photography today. But I have included information on lenses and lens use that includes perspective that is rarely covered in digital photo books; I have included information about white balance that I know is rarely covered outside of my blog because it seems to be always new to my students (it won’t be new to my blog readers); I have included unique chapters that I cannot remember seeing anywhere else, including a chapter just on water and sky, a chapter on people in the landscape, a chapter about how landscape photography can affect the world, even a chapter just on winter landscapes.
A large part of the book is about something totally different than I have seen in any landscape or nature photography book, a section specifically about different types of landscapes and tips on photographing them. I have always wanted to do this. I think that landscape photography is about the landscape, not just about the photography, so there are chapters on deserts, forests, mountains, wetlands and more.
It sometimes amazes me what people see in a book. I always find it interesting to look at Amazon.com reviews of books I know that I have read — I look at some of the reviews and shake my head. Did this person read a totally different version than I remember?
I have to admit, I had that feeling when I saw the first review of my new landscape book. This person thought it had pretty pictures but had nothing new or magic about it. I had to wonder if she actually read anything beyond the first two chapters. Or maybe she wants a book about magic techniques that will instantly make one a good nature photographer (unfortunately, I know of none, so the book would disappoint on that account) or maybe she was looking for a guide to the tripod holes of great landscapes (don’t laugh — I know of people who really do look for that). The magic of the book is about the landscapes and photographing them, not in any magic techniques. I do believe there is a personal approach to landscapes that one will gain from reading the book that you will not find anywhere else.
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April 11th, 2010 Rob Sheppard
I love this time of year with all of the flowers. One reason we moved from Minnesota to California was because of the long spring. In Minnesota, it is very short — green leaves are out around May first and summer starts by mid-June. I am basing this on flowers and spring growth. In Southern California, that same time starts about the end of January and ends in mid-June.
I was up in Los Osos doing a workshop with the great folks at Light Photographic Workshops two weeks ago. We were doing flowers and landscapes and the flowers definitely cooperated. Here are some images with some brief notes about them from that week.
The opening shot is of a blue dick flower. A lot of people don’t appreciate the high quality you can get with an achromatic close-up lens. This was shot at a telephoto zoom setting with my Canon G11 and an achromatic close-up lens (this one from Century Optics, though Canon makes some good ones, too). Blue flowers don’t always record as blue, which was true here, so I had to correct the color in the computer (hue adjustment in Photoshop or Lightroom).
Lupines on a hill at dusk after a storm. There is no camera that can capture the full range of brightness in a scene like this even though we can see it fine. HDR doesn’t work because it was windy and the flowers were blowing, plus HDR affects the whole image. I shot two exposures, one for the sky and one for the lupines. I processed them in Lightroom then combined the exposures in Photoshop to get an image more accurate to the scene. I then added some traditional “burning in” (darkening) to the edges and bottom for more drama.
Telephotos for close ups give a really nice look with limited depth of field and a change in perspective. This makes the background a pleasing color and tonality.
I also like wide-angles up close. This gives the flower a context and environment. It places it into a specific ecosystem. The trick is to deal with the extended space and depth of field that can make the composition too busy. In this case, the low early light and the sky makes the monkey flowers stand out.
Here’s a good case for a tilting LCD. I had climbed a hill with the group where some bush lupines were. I decided to travel light with only my G11. I got this high angle by holding the camera over my head and framing with the tilting LCD.
In June, I will be leading a workshop on the landscapes and flowers of the Eastern Sierras. Late June offers some wonderful wildflowers in the mountains there. I will be working the area from Lone Pine, California, to Yosemite. GAPW June Eastern Sierras.
Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques, Lightroom, Photoshop, landscape photography, nature photography | 1 Comment »
April 6th, 2010 Rob Sheppard
It is very possible to use autoexposure and get excellent results. I do it all the time. Sometimes I do use manual exposure (I have to use it for video on my Canon EOS 7D). But I find I can use autoexposure quickly and accurately for exposure. My preference is aperture-priority exposure because depth of field (both deep and shallow) are important to me and I can always get a faster shutter speed by paying attention and choosing a wider aperture.
To do this, you have to understand a little about what the metering system is doing and then use exposure compensation. With a little practice, anyone can do that quite quickly and get excellent exposures that are as good as using manual exposure, yet are easier to do. I am not suggesting that anyone who has a good manual exposure practice change, but I am suggesting that manual exposure is not the only way to get excellent exposures.
Understand that a meter wants to interpret a scene and make everything middle gray from the exposure. In many scenes, that is fine, but not all scenes have a perfect balance of middle gray tones. The metering system tries to compensate for the emphasis on middle gray by metering multiple points in a scene and making some adjustments unique to those measurements (which is what the metering system is doing).
Still, if a scene is mostly bright (such as a scene with a lot of sky), the metering system will want to make it a middle gray which is darker than it should be. I will typically add plus compensation to such a scene immediately before even taking a picture. If a scene is mostly dark (such as a scene with pine trees filling the image), the system will want to make it middle gray which is lighter than it should be, so compensation on the minus side is needed. Knowing that allows me to interpret a scene right from the start.
I typically use the exposure warnings that appear in the LCD review of your shot as an indicator of good exposure. I think it is important that you set your camera so that this review is on longer than the default which is usually way too short (I like 8-10 seconds — you can always turn it off by touching the shutter release button). I adjust exposure compensation either plus or minus until the brightest parts of the photo just start to give the warning or until the warnings just disappear. It is important that you do not automatically accept an exposure that has no warnings as this could mean you are significantly underexposed. When you are adjusting your exposure this way, you are “setting” the brightest parts of the scene as the brightest parts of your photo. This is actually using a part of Ansel Adams classic exposure system, the Zone System, without doing a lot of study and work.
So I simply set your exposure as best as I can, then take a picture for a test. I will then check my review to be sure my exposure is correct by watching for those blinking highlight warnings. A quick adjustment of exposure compensation and another shot gets the right exposure quickly if the first exposure is off (and often it is correct). With practice, you can actually interpret what you see in the LCD to give a rough idea of exposure (it is not completely accurate, but it can be a start).
For difficult scenes, or when I am just not sure what the camera is doing, I will check the histogram. The important thing about the histogram is that you do not want large gaps at the right side with most of the histogram at the left (which is underexposure and an underuse of your sensor). A challenge is when you are constantly changing your shot so that the background changes and influences the exposure. For that reason, I pay attention to the shutter speed the camera chooses in order to make a good exposure with the aperture I chose in aperture priority. Then when the scene changes, I quickly shift the camera’s exposure compensation to give me that shutter speed for a specific shot. That way I am not constantly shifting back and forth between manual and autoexposure and my autoexposure is ready for changing conditions.
Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques | 1 Comment »
March 31st, 2010 Rob Sheppard
A lot of photographers use auto white balance and accept it. They largely accept it because they don’t necessarily know there is a better way. But I see the problems of AWB all the time — inconsistent color and compromised color outdoors (usually with a slight blue cast which really hurts red, orange and yellow, plus it mucks up neutral tones). I am teaching a class in Los Osos this week and we are photographing the wonderful wildflowers that are out now. One of the students decided to test AWB. He found, indeed, that auto white balance is very inconsistent. The same flower, for example, would change color depending on the background.
But choosing how to set white balance is very subjective. It may help to consider this. For years, pro photographers shot Kodachrome and Fujichrome for all outdoor images, including before sunrise, sunrise, sunset and after sunset. These were daylight balanced films, although they were actually warmer than Daylight white balance on most cameras (there is no standard for white balance settings). They did respond consistently to light conditions and give consistent color, color related to their specific daylight balance. I find that a lot of cameras work well with the Electronic Flash white balance setting outdoors because it is close to these films for normal conditions. I also find that Canon cameras tend to overemphasize yellow when you use Cloudy or Shady in sunlight.
I have shot with Daylight, Cloudy and Tungsten before sunrise and after sunset. There is no rule to this. I find that Cloudy works best for me and does respond like daylight films responded to these conditions. Try different settings and see what you like.
Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques | 6 Comments »
March 25th, 2010 Rob Sheppard
Most photographers really don’t need the expense or the big learning curve of Photoshop. Photoshop Elements does a wonderful job, especially when used as a supplement to Lightroom. Lightroom does the “heavy lifting” and Photoshop Elements can then be used for layers and to access Photoshop-type plug-ins. I use Nik Software programs such as Vivesa and Dfine all the time. While they are available as Lightroom export plug-ins, I prefer to use them as Photoshop or Photoshop Elements plug-ins because of the added control you get by using them with layers.
Elements has layer masks with adjustment layers, but not for layers with pixels. So if you wanted to change exposure by using an adjustment layer, you could control that layer with a layer mask. However, if you wanted to merge two photos, each on separate layers, you could not do that with layer masks as those layers have pixels. Here one photo has the right exposure for the ground, the other for the sky. We need to bring those two exposures together.
There is a workaround:
1. Click on the layer that you want to change and control with a layer mask.
2. Add a blank layer by clicking the add layer icon or from the Layer menu. This will add a layer over the layer you clicked on.
3. Click and drag the new blank layer under the layer you wish to control.
4. Click on the layer you want to change and press Ctrl + G or Cmd + G. This groups the layer with the blank layer, and since the blank layer is blank, the layer you want to control becomes blank, too.
5. Choose the paintbrush tool from the toolbox at the left.
6. Use black or white as the color (you could use other colors, but let’s keep it simple).
7. Paint into the blank layer wherever you want the hidden layer to now appear (if nothing happens, you are probably still on the grouped, hidden layer. Undo, then click on the blank layer before painting).
8. Erase from the blank layer to remove something from the grouped layer. You can go back and forth, painting and erasing, as much as you want, refining it so it looks natural like the real scene.
That’s it. You can also fill the blank layer with black or white (Edit menu, choose Fill, and Black or White for color) to show the hidden, grouped layer, then erase what you don’t want.
Posted in Photoshop Elements, Photoshop techniques | 3 Comments »
March 22nd, 2010 Rob Sheppard
I am now on Twitter at robsheppardfoto. Follow me for ideas and tips about photography, Lightroom and more.
Posted in Digital Photo Techniques | Comments Off
March 18th, 2010 Rob Sheppard
A lot of photographers now understand that it is important to back up their digital images on a separate hard drive (or drives). This is really important because hard drives do fail.
A lot of Lightroom users do not understand the importance of backing up the Lightroom database. Lightroom is a database. That means that it does nothing to the images themselves (until you export them) — that is a great advantage. You can freely work with images without worrying about hurting them. You can’t.
However, Lightroom has to store the information somewhere on what has been done with your photos. That is its database and is a .lrcat file usually found in the Pictures folder (both Mac and Windows) in its own Lightroom folder. Backing up this database is an important back up. You can simply go to the Lightroom folder just mentioned and copy the latest .lrcat file to a new location. You can also tell Lightroom to remind you to back this up when you open Lightroom (go to Catalog Settings under the Lightroom menu for Mac and the Edit menu for PC). Lightroom 3 will prompt you to back up your database when the program closes (who knows when Lightroom 3 will actually be out — Adobe is still messing around with public betas).
This backs up the Lightroom database. I have needed it more than once. This allows you to reopen Lightroom with all of your work if the database gets corrupted. Or you could have a crash of your computer and lose Lightroom. I had a situation where I think the Mac Genius folks were lazy and reformatted my hard drive because of a problem with the disc drive. I could reinstall Lightroom easily, but when you do that, it starts over from scratch. You don’t want to do that. You want to start from where you were before. So that’s exactly what I did, used the backed up database.
I can’t overemphasize how important this is. Without that database, your work in Lightroom can be lost. One safety thing is to tell Lightroom to save any processed files with an .xmp file (that is the data used for processing and will be reread by Lightroom if the database is lost). That is also under Catalog Settings, Metadata.
Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Lightroom | 1 Comment »
