March, 2008 | Real Photography

Photoshop Friday…on a Thursday

Mar 27, 2008

Adobe launched their “Photoshop Express“–a free web-based photo editing program, and I thought it warranted a little Photoshop Friday even though it’s a day early. ;)

If you already own photoshop, the editing portion is nothing to intrigue you, but it does offer 2 gigs of free storage and a flash slideshow, so you can share photos with family and friends online without resizing for email. That part is neat (though I would never be wooed away from my precious smugmug).

At first glance, it seems to me like a beefed up version of flickr…and hopefully Adobe will do a better job protecting people from the weirdos than flickr has.

You can’t edit RAW files in it, but if you don’t have Photoshop or Elements or Lightroom, it would be very useful to have a free online area to edit your photos (adjust white balance or exposure, crop, resize, do some basic cloning/healing, add fill light, easy color pop and auto correct, etc)

There are a ton of people checking it out right now, so it’s running a little slowly (or at least I hope that’s the reason), but I wanted to be sure to sign in today and snap up a good username before the good ones were gone and I ended up having to add three silent “g”s to my name. (I feel a burning need to register for every new networking site even if I don’t have immediate plans to use it, because should I ever want to jump on the bandwagon, I want a good username.)

Scott Kelby has some training videos for Photoshop Express that will guide you through the process if you need a little assistance learning the ropes.

Posted in Photoshop Tips

Photography Tip Tuesday: Week #4, Portraits and Flash

Mar 25, 2008

It’s Tuesday which means it’s time for photography tips! I don’t know about you, but I am PSYCHED that this is week four, because I am so tired of looking at this Bad Picture. Egads. It is now posted FOUR TIMES in my pretty little blog.

For anyone new to the party, this month I’m going over two photos: one good, and one bad, and analyzing a few easy to change things that make the good one different from the bad. We could very easily go longer than four weeks, but, like I said, I am sick to death of these pictures, so it’s time for a change next week!

For one last time, we have the good picture:

portrait photography colorado springs

And the bad:

bad photographer portrait

Simple Tip – Your Camera’s Flash Sucks

Whether you have a $1000 camera, or a $200 camera, the flash that comes on it sucks. It is very good at exposing your subject correctly, but it is awful at making the photo look natural or beautiful.

All you need to do is look at The Bad Photo and you know instantly that my on-camera flash fired. Why? Nic has a white spot on his forehead (called a hot spot) and there is a horrible shadow behind his head.

In The Good Photo, no flash has fired. His skin looks nice, and there are no unsightly shadows.

In some situations, you absolutely couldn’t take a picture with a point-and-shoot without using a flash. But many cameras fire the flash almost always, regardless of whether or not it is needed. An easy way to make your pictures better is to turn off the flash. Indoor nighttime shots will take on an orange tone, but that isn’t undesireable–in fact, it will usually make you feel warm and cozy about the photo, because in that moment the light was nice and warm and orangey.

Step it Up – Make Your Flash Rock

As much as flash *can* suck, flash can also rock. There are as many things to learn about using as flash as there are about rocket science, and it all starts with getting an external flash. If you have a dSLR, you’re going to want to pick up an external flash. They aren’t super pricey (if you’re a nikon shooter, you can pick up this little baby for $100). The cool thing about external flashes is that the head can be rotated. Why is this cool? Because it enters you into the world of bouncing flash.

When you fire your flash directly at your portrait subject, the light source is small. If you turn your flash head toward the wall behind you (and in front of your subject), the light will bounce off the wall and then hit your subject. Instead of having a small flash-sized light source, you now have a light source the size of the wall! It’s like having a giant soft-box at your disposal.

Soft light is more flattering, won’t give you those “hot spots” like you see on Nic’s forehead in The Bad Photo, and avoids hideous flash shadows.

For more on flash and cool lighting, check out any of these sites (be prepared to start buying more strobes and accessories just as quickly as you collect lenses):

Strobist

Flash Flavor

Scott Kelby

Posted in Photographer Tips

toddler fun + photographer fun = everyone happy

Mar 24, 2008

Happy Easter! (I meant to post this last night but got sucked into changing things up around the blog again.)

Nic is sort of a scrooge about Easter. Well, only one part of Easter: the dyeing egg part. Apparently, he has been this way since before time itself. He says “I don’t understand the point.”

Ummmm….maybe he should have told me this BEFORE we got married. The point of dyeing Easter eggs is that it is AWESOME. Color is good. Making eggs a color is good.

I knew that Will would understand this. The child who plays for hours with all of my different fabric scraps, the child who adores crayons, would surely get the joy of coloring eggs.

toddler easter portrait colorado springs

What Nic could get behind, though, was an opportunity to try out some of our new lighting accessories. Based on Scott Kelby‘s recommendations, we picked up a few things last week, a justin clamp being one of them. It would have been a teeny bit crazy to stick a light stand up in our small dining area, but this clamped on nicely to our pantry door, providing the perfect spot for an off camera flash:

lighting set-up for photography

And so I had two happy boys on Easter evening. One had blue fingers, though.

Posted in Photographer Tips, Toddler Photographer