Photographic techniques with a camera
I was inspired to write this post after reading about an unfortunate incident that happened to a photographer friend of mine. I’m not going to go into all the gory details here but suffice to say that he was a victim of someone ripping off an image from his gallery in Facebook and claiming it as his/her own work. Needless to say my friend was quite upset about the incident and rightly so.
So, what can be done to protect your images? Especially if you’re uploading them to a website?
I don’t normally do black and white but when I was processing this image in Lightroom it felt like the right thing to do. The original had a very muted colour palette to the extent it was virtually grey scale to start with. After applying a few tweaks this is the result.
I’m not overly pleased with the result though. It doesn’t feel as though this is the final image yet so any suggestions more than welcome. Alternatives and original image after the jump.
As I was capturing the images for my post on Bending colours to make a sunset sizzle I realised that there are a couple of flaws with this technique:
There are always workarounds: one could carry a whitebalance card for example but that is just more stuff to carry. If time is of a premium and you’re likely to be swapping filters then time to calibrate could become a big issue.
But what if you have a library of calibration images on a CF card that you can use? I don’t know about you but I have a few smaller cards lying around that are next to useless these days. The 16MB card won’t physically hold a full size RAW image from the 5DmkII and the 64MB card might just take 3 but that’s you’re limit. So, useless for capturing images but could be pressed back into service to hold a library of WB calibration images. Then, every time the gels are changed it is simply a case of loading the card, selecting the right image and creating a custom WB setting.
Haven’t tried it yet so I don’t know if it will work. It’s just a theory but could be very useful 🙂
Last year on holiday the sunsets were absolutely fantastic. This year they were nothing to speak of, mainly down to the lack of clouds. Nevertheless, with a little creative thought it is still possible to make a great sunset portrait without resorting to Photoshop.
Take this image for example. The inset is the true representation of the scene but by bending the colours of the background you can create a cool portrait, in camera. Granted you can achieve the same in Photoshop, and indeed I’m not averse to that, but as this is so easy to do at the point of capture it makes sense to avoid having to manipulate if after the fact.
The secret to this image is to get the camera to change the colours in the background for you whilst leaving those in the foreground untouched. Sound complicated? Believe it or not it is incredibly simple and only takes a couple of minutes to do. Continue reading Bending colours to make a sunset sizzle »
This is a great little technique you can use to give your subjects a little “pop” and really make them stand out from the background. It’s all done in-camera and takes moments to do.
I took these on a very bright, sunny day with no cloud cover. Normally I hate working in this kind of light as it is far too contrasty.
If you’re interested in how to create images like this, hit the “jump” to the full article. Continue reading Popping a little flash… »
Hi, I'm Gavin the photographer.
I used to work in IT until a few years ago. I was under a lot of stress at work and getting really p*****d off. Then one day I chose to give it all up and follow a dream. Everyone I knew thought I was nuts, that just made me try harder :-)
I believe any photographer can do what I did, earn money from their photos, maybe even start their own business.
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