Photography Tips Guide

Archive for the ‘digital photography’ Category

It is not uncommon for entry level photographers to feel uncertain about what to charge for their work. Many feel as though price structures are the most complicated area of their business. As a result, these photographers under cut themselves and unknowingly undervalue their work.

Don’t be overwhelmed. Take the guess work out of pricing your work by thinking through the following aspects:

1. Know your market: What is the average value of photographers work in your area? Compare and contrast and decide where your work can fit in. Don’t forget to evaluate your service, quality of imagery, and professionalism.

2. Know your client: Some people would rather pay more for a service if it means higher quality. Some people cannot afford anything but the basics. Determine what clients you want to reach and begin arranging your price structure from here. Take note: Unless you are in similar circles and arena’s as your potential clients, you may find it difficult to keep to a higher price bracket.

3. Evaluate your investment: How much time to you put into a senior shoot? A wedding? Evaluate hours of prep, driving, shooting, editing, development, service, quality, and interaction. When you have an idea of your hours of investment per shoot, divide your price by this number. How much are you really making by the hour? What is your return on investment?

4. Determine your expenses: Every photographer has expenses above and beyond the time spent in a shoot. This is where many photographers fall short of “making it” in the business; they have not learned to identify the additional expenses of running this business outside jobs. Equipment costs. Time spent. Services. Presentation and packaging. Insurance. Unless your jobs can cover this overhead, you will be hurting for a way to increase your income. Add up this number to get a ball park figure of additional coverage from your jobs.

5. Establish your jobs: Total your hourly rate, and your expenses. This is the number you need to shoot for when pricing your work. After you have totaled this number, divide it by how many jobs you would like per year. This final number is what you ought to charge for your sessions and shoots. Of course, you may need to adjust your pricing more or less, or increase the number of jobs you aim for. At this rate, you will be able to target the pricing of your work to maximize your overall profitability.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

How to Set the Price for Your Photography

Some of the most captivating light shows witnessed here on earth, are actually occurring 300+ miles above our heads, in the upper atmosphere. A result of spectacular solar storms, the Aurora Borealis has captivated thousands of men, women and children. I am one of them. I have spent countless hours, in mind-numbing temperatures (-42 Celsius), chasing the lights in an attempt to capture what many people fly half way around the world to experience.

Have I been successful? I guess that`s subjective. At -42, after standing on a frozen lake, in the middle of nowhere, just shy of the Arctic circle, success can be very subjective. I made it back home alive, so I would consider that a success. After many attempts, and many frozen fingers, I have captured photos which I am proud to share. So I consider that a success. But it seems the more times you venture out, the more you try to hone your skills and capture more unique and inspiring photos.

Experiment

I am by no means an expert – in fact I`m quite new to this, only having started just over a year ago. As I mentioned, many attempts later and having captured hundreds of photos, I have found a few things which seem to work. I hope they help you in your attempts to capture some of these incredible light shows.

I have found that experimentation is the key to finding what works best on any particular night. There are so many variables, you really need to explore – your camera, your location, the conditions outside, all have an impact on your final shots. So be creative, experiment and have fun.

Lens Choice – Wide Angle, Fisheye, …

If you have a wide angle lens, it will help you capture some great Aurora shots. You can get good Aurora shots quite successfully with other lenses, but I have come to like the results I get with the wide angle lens. Be aware that wide angle lenses result in slightly underexposed images compared to the same scene taken with a standard lens. You may need to adjust your exposure length or aperture accordingly. Others find great success with a fisheye lens. They create some very unique perspectives, especially with Aurora shots.

Settings

Using my wide angle lens (Tokina 11-16mm), I find the following settings to produce the best captures:

• ISO 400 to 800 (less noise at 400 but require longer exposure with the wide angle).
• Lowest possible aperture (my lens goes to f2.8)
• 15-30 second exposures (again, depending on the available light – i.e. ambient, city, moonlight, etc…, try variations)

Creativity

If you want to really get creative, take a flashlight (or independent flash if you have one) and play around with it. Scout out some interesting locations, expose for 15-30 seconds, flash a foreground object. It’s an interesting effect. Introduce some light painting effects, and you’ll get some great creativity to your photos. Vehicles can be a night photographer’s nightmare, but with Auroras, a vehicles lights passing through an exposure, with Aurora dancing across the sky, can be very interesting.

About the Author: David Heffernan is from Yellowknife, Northwest Territories) – you can see more of his work at http://picasaweb.google.com/droyheffernan

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Photographing the Aurora Borealis – i.e. Northern Lights

You know those random life questions you think of? Heres one.
sorry if this annoys. I can see how it might
Why smile for photos? To make it look like you’re happy doing whatever you were doing when the photo was snapped? If you aren’t happy why smile when a camera flashes? DISCUSS!
MQ: Songs about Happiness, Sadness?

While Photoshop includes some filters you can use to apply a painted effect on your photos, you can also paint them yourself very easily. This way you can achieve a custom look as you paint.

The process involves using the little known Art History brush in Photoshop to do the work, here’s how:

Open your image in Photoshop. You don’t need an image that is in sharp focus (which makes this process a good one for dealing with a slightly soft image), but it should be well exposed and have a good range of tones. If necessary, apply a Curves, Levels or Exposure adjustment to the image. Flatten the image.

If you resize or crop the image, you must save it and reopen it – the Art History Brush won’t work if you don’t. Ditto, if you’re working in 16-bit mode you’ll get a program error if you try to use the History Brush so use Image > Mode and select 8-bit then save and reopen the file.

Duplicate the background layer of the image 4 times. Name your layers (from the bottom up): underpainting, detail, fine detail and color highlights. Hide the three top layers and select the underpainting layer.

Select the underpainting layer’s contents by Control + clicking on the layer thumbnail (Command + Click on the Mac) and press the Delete key to remove everything from this layer. Deselect the selection by choosing Select > Deselect.

Click the Art History Brush (it shares a palette position with the History Brush Tool), select a brush shape to use and make it a fairly large size. Choose a Style such as Tight Short and an area value of around 50px and paint all over this layer. All you want right now is some general color but no detail at this stage.

Click the detail layer and turn its visibility on. Select its contents and delete them. Make your brush smaller in size and now paint on this layer to bring back some of the image detail. Experiment with different settings in the Art History Brush toolbar such as Dab, Curl and Tight. If you get an error stating that the brush won’t work because the history state doesn’t contain this layer, view the History palette using View > History and click in the left column opposite one of the Duplicate layer states to make it the one to paint from.

Once you have some detail in the painting, click the fine detail layer, delete its contents and paint on this layer using a very small brush. This time focus on the elements you want to see in some detail such as the horse.

Select the color highlights layer, make it visible, delete its contents and using a slightly smaller brush, this time just dab a few small scattered brush strokes on the image, you want a smattering of detail but not much at all. With the layer selected, choose Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation and drag the Hue slider a little to the left or tight and adjust the Saturation to a little higher value. This changes some of the color and detail in the image to give it a more painterly look.

When you have a result you like, select the top layer of the image and press Ctrl + Al + Shift + E (Command + Option + Shift + E on the Mac) to create a new layer with a flattened version of the image on it. Choose Filter > Texture > Texturizer and apply a Canvas texture to the image.

You can back off the effect by decreasing the Opacity of the top layer to reveal some of the detail from the layers below.

Next time you’re looking to create a painting from an image, consider by passing the filter menu and use the Art History brush to make your own custom painting.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Painting a Photo in Photoshop

Lighting is the single most important element of “Still Life” photography. The way a photographer uses light for still life will add mood, give context, provide interest, and ultimately, create a dynamic still life photograph. Lighting for still life is not complicated. In fact, stick to these 5 tips, and you will nail your still life shots every time.

1. Use an simple backdrop: Wrinkles and ridges in a still life photograph - unless a part of the setting - will be distracting to your main subject. Be vigilant about keeping your backdrops smooth and simple.

2. Make your lighting contrasty: Whether you are using strobes, speedlights, or LED’s, it’s important that your “ratio” from one light to the next is varied. The main light should be strongest, and the second light should simply provide a nice fill.

3. Light directionally: Side light is always most effective for bringing out texture and creating dynamic variation between the highlights and shadows. Whether rings, or florals, side light will enable you to give dimension and depth to your still life imagery.

4. Pay attention to your angles: Two things to think about when faced with a studio lighting scenario. a). The position of the lights to your subject and b). the position of your subject to the camera. Side light will give dimension, but so also will the angle at which you take your shot [ie. side, above, below, etc.]. Don’t be afraid to experiment and change up angles. A photo is most interesting when you give a new perspective to something that is ordinary.

5. Light for shape: We see life 3 dimensionally. For this reason, the most dynamic photographs are the ones in which the audience could walk into the scene, or reach out and touch the subject. Lighting for shape will be most emphasized by side light, when your highlights spread along the edge of your subject and add that 3rd dimension.

Whether or not commercial Still Life is an area you want to enter professionally, practicing in a still life context will give you a better understanding of directing light for maximum photographic impact.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

5 Still Life Lighting Tips for Beginners