On and On We Go

I got over my nervousness and ended up doing some maternity shots for Sarah the other week. As it happens, she is a wonderful model, it was a very relaxing atmosphere, and I discovered something about myself that day too: when I look through the viewfinder, I lose all self-consciousness about what I'm doing. I kept the camera glued to my face most of the time which enabled me to find some great angles of her as she turned to talk to her sister or boyfriend:


Posted with permission

I had no qualms in telling her to "HOLD IT!" and overall they were really happy with the shots.

Another great thing was again, how much it taught me about post-processing. I had a minor disaster which turned out to be a blessing in disguise; each time I opened a shot and edited it, GIMP was compressing the JPEG a little further, until I ended up with some really weird and pixelated results which I only happened to notice on close inspection the day I was supposed to hand the shots over. I had to redo them all from scratch - but it was a good thing really, because I had overcooked the shots a little bit, and second time around I went a little easier, just let the mother's beauty show through with less editing, and I was much happier with the results.

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In other news, I did another gig shoot for Goldrush Radio where the lighting was terrible and I wasn't as happy with this set as the previous:



Still, the guys liked them enough to ask me to do a promo shoot with them. This will again test my creativity as I have no idea how to do this sort of thing without it coming out cheesy. Much input from the band will be needed.

In between all that I've been shooting some more nature shots, mostly because I find them easy and fun and very relaxing. Cliché I know but I am still able to use this type of shooting as a learning experience. For example:



Ah, I love love love this shot. The light, the colour, the bokeh... The sun was just setting and the light was such a beautiful colour; I was lucky enough to chance upon these blooms coming out of someone's garden so I took a few shots of them from different angles and this one really captures the scene I saw. Taking light into account in composition is not something I'd considered that much because in the past couple of months, due to the time of year the light has always been pretty much the same. Now I can see what the spring/summer evenings have to offer and again, it has given me something else to think about.

One area I am struggling with is my 365 Project. A 365 is, simply put, a project where you have a shot for each day of the year (preferably taken on the day in question). For the first three weeks it was a piece of cake to pick up my camera every day and get something a little different each time, but the past ten days or so have proven a little trickier. It's not that I have no opportunity to shoot, but more that I have no idea how to be original every single day. So yeah, between you and me I have cheated a little bit; missing a couple of days then uploading a few from the same day and changing the date stamp. It's hard, man! Although on reflection I'm surprised I only have four flower shots in the whole collection thus far.

The hardest part is getting out and about. There's only so much random crap in my home that I can take extreme DOF shots of. But out in the world there is no end of opportunity as long as you keep your eyes open:



MOO.

Happy snapping, darlings.

Jargon: The Exposure Triangle Part III -- ISO.

Ugh, totally lazy late update from me. Believe it or not I've been so caught up in actual photography I've had no time to blog about it. :)

So far I've described how aperture and shutter speed can control the amount of light that falls onto your camera's sensor. ISO is more about light sensitivity. In the old film days you would have to buy different types of film for indoor or outdoor shooting; the indoor film would have a higher sensitivity to light, meaning it was able to detect it better.

These days with the nifty DSLRs we have, we have more control over what ISO setting we use, as well as being able to ramp it up to much, much higher than was available in the past.

The lowest ISO setting available on most DSLRs is ISO100. This setting pretty much allows us to control the exposure of the shot purely using aperture and shutter speed. If you're in a position to shoot in darker conditions and allow for increased shutter speed (i.e. through use of a tripod) then the lower ISO is still the way to go, to maintain the integrity of the shot. However if you find yourself in a dark condition with nothing but your hands to stabilise the image, bumping up the ISO can allow you to keep your shutter speed relatively fast - noise is always preferable to blur, and some editing software even comes with a noise reduction feature which can help.

In the below pic I was in a fairly crowded bar with no choice but to ramp up the ISO to keep the shutter speed fast enough to reduce blur. In this instance it actually works really well, giving the shot a gritty, "rock star" edge to it:



Of all the settings I use, this is the one I always, without fail, forget to set back if I then shoot in brighter conditions. If you look closer at the sky you can see what I mean:



Blech, I hate looking at shots from when I first started.

So there you go. Higher ISO can enable shorter shutter speeds but compromises the quality of the shot with digital noise.

Thus concludes my crappy explanations of the exposure triangle!

Updates - the Nifty Fifty.

I'm working on a post explaining the last part of the exposure triangle (ISO) but I've hit a wall with it, in that I understand what it does and when to use it, but am struggling to explain it in an understandable way. So bear with me on that. :)

In other news, I received a new lens the other week - a 50mm f/1.8 portrait lens, otherwise known as the "Nifty Fifty". It has a fixed focal length, meaning no zooming in or out, but I really haven't found that to be much of an issue, and at 50mm it's roughly close to the focal length of the human eye, meaning that what you see through the viewfinder should be more or less the same magnification as what you see normally. This lens has a ton of practical applications and really hasn't been off my camera since I got it.

First off, the wide maximum aperture allows for some seriously shallow depth of field. While I'm already sensing my skill improving past the "bokeh-whore" stage, I do love bokeh, and opening that aperture right up allows me to capture some really great shots.



What I have learnt though, is that opening the aperture up to its widest at f/1.8 is inadvisable if you are doing close-ups and your subject might move even the slightest amount, e.g. a flower in a breeze. The DOF is so, so shallow that movement of the subject will throw it outside of that narrow focus area:



What's happened in the above shot (f/2.2) is that the breeze blew slightly and I ended up with the little leaves cupping the bud being totally focused, and the bud itself slightly out.

As I've used the lens more and learned about its strengths and weaknesses, it really has proved itself as a marvellous bit of glass. When I have used it for its intended purpose (portraits) the results have really been stunning.



Just look at that little sweetheart. Doesn't his face just make you "aww"? Look at the little water droplets in his beard! Is that water or drool?!

This shot was taken the first day I had the lens, and I went mad with the wide aperture (that shot is f/1.8). The result is that, even at 6pm on a pre-Spring evening, there is enough light coming into the camera for the shutter speed to speed up and capture him crisply before he moved. Unfortunately though, the focus is roughly at the bridge of his nose, and due to the insanely shallow DOF, his eyes are ever so slightly out. If I had stopped the aperture down to about f/2.5 his whole face would have been tack sharp, and in fact reviews I have read say this particular lens performs at its best when stopped down to f/2.5 - f/2.8. Either way I am very happy with that shot.

The other most impressive use of the lens so far was when I went to see my friend's band play the other night; I took my camera to experiment with the sort of candid photography a gig atmosphere provides and when Dan spotted it he asked if I would try and get some shots of the band. I played the whole thing down a little (I'd never shot in such dark conditions before, am a total amateur, didn't want them to anticipate any really good shots) but I was really, really happy with the results.



I opened the aperture up all the way (f/1.8) but because I wasn't right on top of the guys, the shallow DOF was less pronounced. This meant I was letting in the maximum amount of light possible. I also had to bump up the ISO (light sensitivity -- will explain this more when I get rounf to finishing the jargon post!) to 1600 which is very, very high and resulted in a lot of digital noise (or graininess) on the shots. However in doing so I was able to speed up the shutter speed to about 1/25 sec, and avoid the guys just being artsy blurs as they performed. Grain is always preferable to blur -- it can be fixed, to an extent, in some processing software, and also for the black-and-white shots it added a really gritty, "live" feel which I think added to the shots.

Speaking of black-and-white... my researching on the best way to turn a picture from colour into B&W has generally led me to believe that a) don't use your camera's B&W function as you then have much less control over the highlights in post-processing; and b) use the Channel Mixer instead of just desaturating as it means you have control over the highlights, luminosity and tones. I will cover B&W post-processing in more depth in the future, but the gig shoot has helped me to learn a lot more about how to do this successfully. Most of the B&W shots in that gig set were done because the real light was so red or unflattering; the Channel Mixer enabled me to turn the light into something more natural-looking.

Overall I am beyond happy with the 50mm lens. The band were so chuffed with the shots that they have asked me to do some staged promos. Also another friend whose girlfriend is very heavily pregnant has asked me if I would do some artsy bump shots before she drops -- the prospect of this is a little daunting but I'm going to do it; if it goes wrong at least it's just my friends and not someone who is paying me!

Erk...

Jargon: The Exposure Triangle Part II -- Shutter Speed

So we've talked about Aperture and its role in the Exposure Triangle, and how to create bokeh using shallow depth of field. The next part of the triangle is the shutter speed.

Where aperture is the size of the opening which allows light into the lens, the shutter speed is the length of time your camera's sensor is exposed to the light. Use faster shutter speeds to capture instant moments and sharp images where the subject (or you yourself) is moving.



In this shot the wind was blowing a little, but where the exposure is set to 1/250th of a second, there is no movement blur.

If the light is low, the shutter speed will need to be increased in order for enough light to fall on the sensor and your shot to be correctly exposed. You can balance this somewhat by opening up the aperture wider (and increasing your ISO... more on this in a later post).



This shot was taken in the evening in my living room -- we only have two 60-watt uplighters lighting the room, and as I had the camera in Aperture Priority mode, the camera automatically chose an exposure of 0.5 seconds. This may not seem a lot but if you're shooting a moving subject or hand-holding the camera it can be an age. I had my elbows propped on the table to reduce hand-shake.

So for moving subjects or bright-light situations, a faster shutter speed is required. You can set your camera to Shutter Priority mode to control the shutter speed and let the camera work out the other particulars.

There will also be instances where you are actually aiming for a longer exposure; because you want to illustrate movement, or during night-time shooting, shooting fireworks or similar.



Here I was actually deliberately trying to capture the movement of the carousel so I switched to shutter priority mode and stopped down to 1/8th of a second. I wanted to go for longer but the shots were coming out way over-exposed even with the smallest aperture. Normally in long-exposure situations you absolutely MUST use a tripod (to avoid movement blur due to hand-shake) but miraculously I managed to stay still enough for this.

So, to capture crisp blur-free shots, a faster shutter speed is required (and wider aperture to compensate the light). To illustrate movement or shoot outdoors, a longer shutter speed is needed.

Next jargon post will be on ISO.

Improvements So Far

So I guess it's been about six weeks since I started out and already I have noticed my own improvement. The first time I went out with a specific intention to get some shots, I came back and was happy with the results -- but now I look back at that first shoot and hate every single capture.



Blech! What the hell is going on here? No definitive subject, totally overexposed, generally awful.

Even the shots I'm producing now, which I like a lot more, I believe I will go back again in a few weeks and hate them all as well. But at least I have a little better idea of what makes a good shot; composition, exposure, post-processing, etc.



This shot is much, much better. Well-exposed, great colours, nice composition -- I've had some good feedback on this shot (and quite a few or my more recent ones) which is really encouraging.

The most important thing for a beginner is to shoot, shoot, shoot -- and to get as much feedback as possible. Sites like Flickr are good for amateurs to share their shots but you have to join the right groups and add your shots to the group pools, otherwise nobody will see them. Also community forums like The Photography Forum will always give honest feedback and tips on what you need to do to improve. I recently started a 365 Project, which just means you have to add a shot a day for one whole year to your portfolio. You don't have to limit yourself to one shot overall, of course! There is no central theme, no rules to follow as such, just that you add one shot a day to the project. I personally started this as a means to get myself shooting every single day, and to discipline myself to be a bit more creative.

And of course, you must educate yourself. Learn what your camera settings are, read tutorials and how-to's on shot-taking and post-processing.

Happy snapping. xxx

Jargon: The Exposure Triangle Part I - Aperture (and Bokeh)

There are a million blogs and a million articles on the web that will explain these terms in more eloquent or technical ways than I can, but I will give it my best shot.

When taking any photograph, the first consideration has to be the exposure. The exposure is exactly that: how well the camera's sensor was exposed to the light at the moment the shot was taken. There are three main things to consider when aiming for the right exposure: Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO; known collectively as The Exposure Triangle.

Aperture

Aperture was, for me, the more confusing term when I first started out. The aperture setting controls the size of the lens opening to allow more or less light into the camera. If you consider your camera lens to be like the human eye, the aperture would be the size of the pupil. Bigger = more light, smaller = less light.

As well as controlling the amount of light let in, the aperture also controls something called Depth of Field; that is, the area or amount of the shot that is in focus. A narrow depth of field means that only a small area of the shot is sharply in focus:



See how just a small part of the fence is sharp, but the foreground and background are all out of focus? That's what a wide aperture will do to a shot, especially one where your focus is very close.

A smaller aperture limits the amount of light coming into the camera, but also ensure more of the shot is in focus:



Here you can see the sundial in the foreground is just as in-focus as the trees and sky in the background.

Ok so here's where it gets confusing, and why it is this way, I couldn't tell you. To select a larger aperture on your camera, you have to choose a smaller number, and to select a smaller aperture, you choose a higher number.

Narrow depth of field = smaller number = wider aperture.
Wide depth of field = larger number = narrower aperture.

In order for your shot to be correctly exposed, if you limit your aperture you must then slow your shutter speed to allow enough light in to the camera. I'll go over shutter speed in more detail in a later post.

If you select your camera's Auto mode, you will have no control over any of the settings; however all DSLR cameras and even some Point and Shoot models have an Aperture Priority mode. This will allow you to select the aperture size you want, and the camera will then work out the optimum shutter speed to correctly expose the shot. I currently shoot almost exclusively in Aperture Priority mode.

Bokeh

Ahh, bokeh. I've come to realise from my reading that bokeh is a notion that is more pleasing to amateurs, and the more experienced photographers out there don't really consider it that much.

The word "bokeh" (pronounced "bock-eh", not "bow-kay") is a Japanese word and it refers to the part of a photograph that is out of focus. A lot of people, myself included, will compose a shot not just to capture a subject, but also to capture some attractive bokeh in the background. I find it pleasing to the eye; in the professional world I don't know how much weight it carries. To achieve bokeh, one must open up their aperture really wide when photographing a foreground subject; the subject will be in focus, the background out of focus, and this blurry background is the bokeh.



See how the cute little flower is sharp and then there's loads of out-of-focus jazz in the background? That background jazz is bokeh. The best bokeh, in my opinion, is created with a really narrow depth-of-field (the capability for which, my current lens just doesn't have) and contrasting colours or lights in the background. Bokeh itself can be an artistic device, or can be used to highlight the subject of the shot even more.



My next Jargon post will be about shutter speed.

Happy snapping.
xxx

Helpful Websites

Ok, it's been quite a while since my last post and there is good reason for that. I realised that there was no point in a total newbie trying to explain to other newbies what any of the jargon meant. So I have spent the last month reading, reading, reading, every forum and tutorial page I could find.

So before I crack on with it in upcoming posts, let me point you to the blogs and forums which have helped me the most.

1) The Pioneer Woman -- Ree Drummond has lately taken the blogosphere by storm by being one of the first bloggers to transcend the medium into the really real world. She had a cookery book published last year, has made tons of TV appearances, is now writing a book detailing her journey from city girl to ranch wife (which last week was optioned by Columbia Pictures and rumour has it Reese Witherspoon is on board) as well as winning Weblog of the Year more than once. Her photography page was very inspiring to me and she does explain in layman's terms what a lot of the jargon means.

2) The Photography Forum -- this forum is populated with photographers whose experience ranges from total novice (me) to experts and professionals. There are sections for critique, for shot-sharing, for beginners and professionals alike. The folk there are incredibly friendly and very, very honest in the most helpful way. I have learned a lot from them already, especially when it comes to what gear to buy and use.

3) The Digital Photography School -- this thoroughly AMAZING website has given me so many tips and also really encouraged me to keep on. There is an article about practically any photography topic you can imagine, including an extensive "How to Photograph" section if you have a particular theme in mind and want some tips on how to make it happen.


There is a WEALTH of information on the web and while plenty of folks might tell you to buy a book and read up, I'm not 100% convinced that's necessary.

Ok I will eventually get on to the jargon and terminology in an upcoming post. Happy reading!