Archive for the ‘photo technique’ Category
Beyond the Basics of HDR Photography
Posted on: 2 June 2011
Watch Matt Kloskowski in a video that shows you how to complete an HDR photo using Photoshop.
Intro to Compositing
Posted on: 16 June 2010
Compositing, or photo compositing, is the technique—art and craft—of combining images to create a new image. The newly created image often presents its own version of reality.
Compositing is often used in advertising, where the use of the technique is sometimes intended to be obvious and at other times is designed to be seamless. Compositing has sometimes been used in journalism, although this use is generally frowned upon when discovered. The opprobrium hasn’t stopped the usage—for example, the Communist party under Stalin used old-fashioned compositing to “purge” out early party leaders as they were discredited by altering historic photographs to remove those who had been purged from the party.
Compositing comes into its own as a fine art technique, where concerns are conceptual, aesthetic and visual rather than related to factual concerns, ethics and marketing. This article concentrates on compositing to create art images—in any case the techniques are essentially the same no matter what the intended usage.
As art, photo composites usually present essentially unreal or “impossible” worlds (this phrase has been used as a description of M.C. Escher’s work, and I like to apply it to many of my photo composites).
If you’ve ever considered this art and would like to learn how to do it in Photoshop, you’ll want to read this article in photo.net.
Finding Your Lens’ ‘Sweet Spot’
Posted on: 11 June 2010
From B&H Insights:
…while we can’t possibly address the optimum shooting parameters needed to squeeze the highest performance out of every lens on the marketplace, there are a few guidelines we can offer up that might at the very least influence the way you go about taking pictures.
The first thing we have to do is define the difference between maximum sharpness and maximum focus. If your goal is to squeeze the maximum levels of image sharpness out of your lens you can achieve this by simply stopping your lens aperture down 2.5 to 3-stops from the lens’s maximum aperture. As an example, if the maximum aperture of your lens is f/2.8, you’ll want to shoot with your lens aperture set between f/5.6 and f/8. For a lens that has a maximum aperture of f/3.5, the sweet spot of your lens resides somewhere between f/8 and f/11. Similarly, if your lens has a maximum aperture of f/1.4, the sweet spot of your lens is located somewhere between f/2.8 and f/4. And this simple rule of thumb works with most every lens you’ll ever own.
Read the rest of the article here.
David Peterson of Digital Photo Secrets has a couple of photos that illustrate how making a few minor changes can make a dramatic difference in your photo.
Here’s the first photo:
And here’s the same scene with a few minor changes.
The changes do not include any post-processing and they also do not require any equipment changes. Find out what was done and see how you can begin to make dramatic differences in your photos by paying attention to smaller details.
When I look at something that I am interested in photographing, I am very aware of patterns and light. I look for the patterns within the object whether it be nature or stock photography. I look to see where the light is coming from and where it places the shadows. That being said, I came across this article which shows a number of photos depicting geometric patterns within the photographs. Take a look for yourself.
Properly photographed architecture is an art unto itself, doing so that showcases the unique aspects of a building, or portions of a building really takes your breath away. Same thing can be said about light and how shadows have a direct impact on it. Framing these photos it’s hard to say if the photographers goal was to showcase geometric patterns as the primary focal point, but they sure did a great job of it (via Light Stalking).
ChromaticSoul :: The Blog 