Digital Photography

Even if you are just beginning to learn about photography you will be aware of the special requirements for capturing subjects that are in the dark or with very low light available. Most people are aware of this when they first purchase a point and shoot camera for everyday use.

Evening cityscapes with the glimmer of thousands of lights require special settings and planning before a successful image can be captured. There are also special methods needed to capture celestial objects like the moon or the stars, and a modern digital camera is the ideal tool for night time photography.

The basic requirement of a digital camera for night time photography is to have:

• A Fully Manual mode (Many automatic settings are too fast to take a proper photo of the night sky)
• Self-Timer (This removes your “hand shake” and prevents blur)
• Tripod (Will help you to take repeat images without blur)

Taking a Few Practice Shots

With a digital camera on full manual mode all of the settings required for ideal photos can be adjusted to allow for exterior lighting or brightness. A digital camera also allows for experimentation and many “retakes” if necessary. Take a few images with the slowest shutter speeds and the aperture fully open, this may allow in too much light, but you will be able to review your photos and make adjustments as necessary. Then it is just a matter of adjusting the shutter speed and/or aperture to get the picture you desire.

Shooting the Paths of the Stars

A fun project in night time photography is to leave the shutter open for greatly extended periods of times, for minutes or tens of minutes, to trace the paths of the stars overhead. This is best achieved by composing the picture to have a focal point, such as a tree or horizon line to heighten the drama in the traveling stars above. A great idea is to put the camera, on its tripod, on the ground with trees and grass surrounding.

Shooting the Moon

Another method of night time photography involves photographing the moon, which is a great deal trickier than it sounds. The moon is best photographed when there is a comparative object, such as a cityscape or tall building nearest to it in the image. The same manual adjustments and tripod usage will have to occur when photographing the moon as when photographing stars in the night sky. Next a process called “bracketing” (or simply experimentation) will be employed to determine the best settings for a good image. The manual focus is set at infinity then the exposure level is determined by using each shutter speed through the 1/1000 setting, while the aperture or f-stop is at 5.6. Film or ISO speed of 200 is recommended for moon photography. Keep checking results on the LCD and soon a perfect image of the moon will be recorded on the camera!

Happy Shooting,
Amy Renfrey

Photoshop allows some essential and basic photographic editing to be done, but even just the most basic processes can greatly enhance images for both amateur and professional photographers. Photoshop is also known for its creative capabilities as well as its aesthetic corrective tools.

Eliminate the Ever Devastating Red Eye

Many group, holiday or special events photographs are ruined by the occurrence of a photographic phenomenon known as “red eye,” which is simply light reflecting back from the wide-open pupil of the subject(s). Some digital cameras have a flash setting meant to conquer red-eye occurrences, but they are not always a guarantee against it. Photoshop has a red-eye tool to identify, diminish or completely eliminate the appearance of red eye in an image. With Photoshop, you can remove all red eyes, even those of your cat or dog.

Create Clearer and Brighter Photos

Another Photoshop tool meant to help clean up an image or improve its appearance is the suite of color enhancing tools that will increase or decrease contrast and hue and brightness. This allows a photographer to manually adjust an image’s color settings to give it the sharpest and cleanest appearance possible, even when you’re starting out with an all too dark image.

Who is that Person in the Background? Crop them Out!

Photoshop also has several tools for cropping an image, or cutting elements out of a picture all together. The cropping feature allows for an image to be resized and enhanced, meaning that a group image taken from too far a distance and with too great of an allowance of background can be cropped down to fill the frame and refocused to be clear and sharp at the new focused setting. Or, if there’s someone in the photo you don’t know or aren’t fond of, you can simply cut them out.

Get Artistic

For more artful experiments, Photoshop allows color images to be altered to black and white or even altered to a whole variety of hues and colors. There are a tremendous numbers of palettes, tools and filters to apply to images to great effect. A color photograph can be cropped or resized, have all of the colors reversed and the hues changed, or filters applied to make the image appear to be textured or created from another medium such as a painting. The experimentation possible with the software program is almost limitless. As both an image repair program and an artist’s tool, Photoshop is a good place to explore photography and photographic enhancement.

Amy Renfrey

If you have ever been interested in taking peoples portraits then listen up, because I’ve got some handy tips and advice to share with you. In my five years of photography experience I have learnt one thing about taking someone’s portrait. I’ve learnt that successful portrait photography hinges on your ability as the photography to bring out the absolute best in someone. We’ll go into lighting and the “gear” in just a minute, but I want to draw your attention to the fact that portrait photography depends on the interaction you have with the person.

It takes a lot of concentration and skill to be able to work successfully with people in photography. Landscape or nature photography affords you the luxury of time. People don’t. Whether they get fidgety and bored easily or they don’t want to sit there all day and roll with your creative urge, portraits require relationship skills as well as technical skills.

One of the first aims in portrait photography is to capture the best side of people. The aim is to take them reflecting a positive and happy demeanor. Now this doesn’t mean laughing and kidding around (although it can), it can mean capturing someone when they are concentrating on something they really love doing. A thoughtful and meditative manner is always an interesting photo. This can work well for people who play a musical instrument or partake in a creative hobby. 

There is another important aspect of portrait photography that I wish to share with you. That is your outdoor background when you don’t have a studio. Your person and the props you use in the photo are considered your foreground but your outdoor background will enhance or completely kill a portrait photo. I’ll give you an example. Think of the location in which you take the photo. You may have someone standing under a tree on a sunny day. Sounds nice right? Yes but you may not have noticed the dog taking a leak on the tree in the background…not a very nice example I know. I only say this because it happens. Its life and it can happen to any of us. So unless you are using a completely blurred background, or intend to adjust the background in Photoshop, be very careful.

A great way to combat this (as much as you can), is to make a list of locations that make for a beautiful background. Here are a couple of ideas:

·        Secluded beach

·        Field of green

·        Mountain range

·        Church

·        Old buildings

·        Sky

Keep your background simple. That’s what I was aiming for with the above list. It’s fine to have a busy background if you are not going to have it in focus. To make this work I suggest making a detailed list of places that you can go to that are easy to get to and will make great backgrounds for your portrait. Keeping in mind this is if you do not have a studio. Also think about the light at the time of day, the weather and local regulations about photography.

You can work out what gear you need as soon as you have worked out your location. This will determine your technical needs and a creative plan usually manifests from there.

You can choose whether to use soft lighting, a flash with a soft filter, hard sunlight, etc. It’s a very creative exercise and a lot of fun. You’ll be amazed at what you come up with.

If you have any questions about portrait photography, please drop me a line. But for now, good luck and happy shooting!

Amy Renfrey

A few weeks ago we experienced an uncommon, celestial event. This was when our moon turned “red”. If you didn’t catch it you certainly missed out on an amazing, humbling scene. It was one of the most beautiful things in nature I have ever seen.

Let’s take a look at some pictures of the moon. Of course it doesn’t truly demonstrate how it looked in person, but you will get an idea. The truth is that the moon lost a lot of its two dimensional aspect and really looked like a true three dimensional object hanging in the sky. The moon actually looked like a ball, rather than a flat disk. It looked as if you could have just got a really long ladder and climbed up and had a walk on the surface it appeared that close.

Here is a stunning image taken by Jenny Rollo:

It’s quite breathtaking actually. She said:

“These are rather grainy as they were taken with 1600 ISO using just a camera and tripod, but it gives an idea of the lunar eclipse over Sydney last night (28/8/07).”

If you are taking moon pictures in the future you’ll quickly realise that your ISO is very important to be aware of. Just to reiterate again, the Iso is the digital cameras light sensitivity. The more ISO you have, the more sensitive to light your camera will be. You may experience a bit more digital noise so you have to weigh up which give you the best image.

In a nutshell you’ll need a telescope and an attachment for the camera. It’s all in the lens and the exposure which is why the lens is just the beginning. A picture like this where the moon was not as bright white as it usually required some exposure settings that were not as high as what you would use for a normal full white moon. This may have been taken with the shutter speed left open for a while. I would have guessed anywhere between 20 seconds and five minutes or longer.

Remember normally the moon is very bright if it’s a clear night. You will have to meter off the moon and you’ll find your camera may suggest somewhere between 1/125 and 1/500. If you are not sure then try some exposure bracketing to help.

In the mean time don’t stop looking at the beautiful night sky. You may be surprised at what you see; falling stars, a shift in position of the moon and constellations and even a satellite of two. They may for excellent time lapse shots. Never underestimate the sheer beauty and brilliance of the night sky. It offers us a chance, as photographers to capture the distant past and marvel at the place we live in.

Not impressed by the Universe? Then take a look at this, it’s from the Hubble Telescope:

This is the Spiral Galaxy M81. Just to give you an idea of the sheer size, let’s just say this is our galaxy (which its not.) You would have to expand this photo to an 8×10 print. Then to find Earth, you’d have to take a magnifying glass just to get a glimpse of Earths region and then maybe, just maybe, see earth as a teesnie spec on the very outer arm. We you think of it that way you start to one why the human race can’t just get along. After all we are one planet united.

Happy shooting,

Amy Renfrey

Last week I spoke about positive and negative spaces in digital photography. To compliment that article I am going to go further into subject placement in your photos to get the ideal composition.

To start with, one of the things that detract from a beautiful digital picture is distraction. I see it all the time. A vase on the table in the background that had nothing to do with the message the photographer is conveying. Or perhaps something sticking out the top of something that ends up being irrelevant and a visual nuisance.

To avoid this I would like to draw to your attention the importance of story telling in photography. In each individual photo you take, when you are capturing a situation, what you are really doing in photography is telling a story. A big, majestic landscape is the photographers way of saying “see how this scene creates feeling of tranquility and calm”. Another picture might show you the adrenalin of a race and another might show you the depth of emotion at a birthday party.

Now what makes these pictures work so well is that every single thing, or object, in the photo has ideal and relevant placement in relation to the story you are telling in the photo. A relevantly placed object can completely increase the nature and feeling of the story. Just as equally powerful, an irrelevant object can ruin or down-play the intensity of emotion in your images and they won’t be as powerful. And don’t be fooled by thinking the space around the subject doesn’t matter just because its space and not an object.

Take this next example:

Copyright by Petr Kovar

I understand what the photographer is trying to do but the Moon is distracting. Where does the photographer want us to look? Is it a shot of the moon with birds? Or is it a shot of birds with the moon? I’m not sure. You see how one simple additional subject can detract from the essence of the photograph? As a consequence it looses a lot.

Since we are using birds, an example of an additional subject that enhances the feeling and story of a photograph is this next one.

This photo works okay because the chimney and the white bird to the left make sense for each other to be there in the same photo. They are linked and we understand that. We can understand that perhaps the chimney is the birds dwelling place and has relevancy in the bird’s life. It makes sense.

Always remember that no matter how big or how small, other objects will really make or break your photo. And the size doesn’t matter, as you have seen in these two examples. Its not about the size of something in the picture, it’s about relevance.

Happy shooting,

Amy Renfrey

Today I would like to introduce you to something really important. It’s a term used in art and painting but for the purposes of artistic education I’m going to borrow it to teach you something important. Have you ever heard of negative and positive space? If you haven’t you’ll love this article. It will help you three fold in your photography.

In digital photography you’re dealing with aperture, shutter speed, lighting and focus every moment. It’s a lot to manoeuvre. And one thing you are also working with quite precisely, whether you are away of it or not, is ‘space.’ Lets have a look at what this means for you to enhance and develop your skills as a photographer.

Negative space is defined as…”the space around the subject of an image.”

It means the empty space around your main subject. This kind of space seems like unimportant background space but it’s this empty space adds an important aspect to the composition.

Positive space is defined as the focal point of a work of art or shape of the work of art. The primary subject matter in a work of art, as opposed to the background or unoccupied spaces.

Okay so those are the technical definitions. So how do we apply this practically?

To start with, negative space is a huge element in your composition. Your negative space is the space around your focal point and having too much or too little can completely ruin a potentially good digital photograph.

So to improve your photography always look at how much space is around your focal subject. Even the slightest bit too much or too little can completely put your composition out of kilter. Particularly when your subject has a distinct point of focus such as a persons eyes or defining lines coming to a point or even an aspect of sharp colour.

Let’s examine these two photos to show you what I mean.

This picture has a lot of really interesting negative space around it. For starters the negative space is blue, which is quite different to our main focal subject. The dobs of white, which are the colours, seem to glide nicely into the main subject without distraction or hesitation. The clouds do distract our eyes from the branches momentarily but not in an inconvenient way at all. The negative space in this picture works very well to support the positive space.

Look at the picture now without the support of the right amount of negative space. Let’s edit some of this space out of the picture and see what effect we get.

The focal point changes due to a 3cm crop from the right. Removal of the negative space changes everything. Now, the end of the tree trunk is the main focal point. Our eyes don’t follow the branches outward as much as they did before. This change does not make the picture drastically worse, it actually ok. But you see how this negative space alteration changes a lot about the picture artistically?

If you have been taking photos with your digital camera and everything is right technically but you feel something is missing, then it could well be your composition. Pay close attention to what you are taking and the negative space around your main subject. Changing the slightest thing can improve or reduce the quality of your photos.

Happy shooting,

Amy Renfrey

Photo copyright by Manu M

It’s quite an extraordinary thing, colour. It can enhance or diminish emotion in a digital photo. It’s really that powerful. Yet working with colour, it can assist the photographer to emphasise, dramatise or detract from a certain feeling in a digital photograph. Its funny that colour can impact our senses to such a degree. When there is the absence or presence of certain colours we can feel a certain level and depth of emotion.

So how can we add drama to photos by using colour? Well the first thing to understand about colour is what it does to our senses as I have just briefly mentioned. To understand what impact colour has on us think of a digital photo that has we must look at what colours mean. For example think of a color that has lots of yellow in it. A photo with a colour like this reflects energy, a sense of optimism, extroversion.

The same goes for red, which is a quite intense colour if used as the main subjects colour. Red can have an impact especially if its against a contrasting colour, which we’ll get into in a moment. These warm colours such as yellows, oranges, reds, etc have a strong photographic presence. In other words it’s kind of hard to ignore them.

Now let’s take a look at the other side of the scale; the cooler, more introverted colours. Colours that are emotionally quieter are blues, purples and greens. These colours tend to be a little less energetic but don’t be fooled into thinking they are any less passionate as the bold reds. These introverted colours tend to offer us a depth, visually, that we would not get from the warmer colours.

So that’s all very nice you say, but how can you bring this altogether to create dynamic color in a digital photo? Well first of all you can improve your colour skills by having a look at a colour chart to tell you what colours work together really well and what clashes. In my book “Digital Photography Success” I’ve explained about the magic of bringing colour together and what a dynamic impact that creating that colours, united well, can have.

Lets take for example your blues and yellows. Completely opposite but they work together beautifully. Here’s a quick snap I took at Stradbroke Island (Queensland, Australia) last year. The photo is really average, but its all I had at the time and I wanted to capture the enticing contrasts of blue and yellow on a natural background.

So lets look closer what colours work together well so you can improve your digital photography.

You’ll notice that all the basic colours are here. And what works really well are the opposing colours. Take for example the blue and yellow. They are not sitting close together on the wheel, they’re almost opposite. In fact, visually, they are opposite. Colours that have this opposing nature tend to work together so well that we can’t help but be captivated by the contrast.

So as a big hint from me, look for these opposing values in colour and you’ll find you have a lot of brilliance in your colours in your digital photography.

Now with portrait photography this is going to change again. Peoples “colours” vary according to skin tones. For example, someone with blonde hair, very fair skin and green eyes is a “Spring”. This means that people with this colouring look best in earthy colours, pinks, greens, browns etc. And someone who has blue eyes and dark brown hair and a medium skin tone is a “winter.” So what’s this got to do with photography? Everything! If you are taking some ones picture, try to encourage them to wear something that compliments their skin tone. Once again, colour can play a huge part in your photography.

So look at colour wheels, look at skin tones and charts and really examine colour what can work well and what doesn’t

Amy Renfrey

Picture of color wheel courtesy of www.flooringdirect.co.nz

Did you know that one of the fundamental things that makes your photography work lines and shapes? One handy thing I did to teach myself about photography was to grab copies of magazines that feature architecture, advertising photos, portraits and sculpture and learn from what I was seeing.

Our composition is the placement of things in our digital photos. Lines and shapes are what give us our strength in our composition. So it makes sense to always examine your lines. Lines can mean how straight lines become curved, how curved lines become straight.

To demonstrate this point, think of a road running into the distance. You can emulate this strong composition in your every day photography by using this as a guide by the straight lines. In other words take the design of this type of photo and take shots that have featured lines too. You can start practicing using strong lines in your composition with every day objects such as knives and forks, paper, pens etc. Use the start of lines as main focal points.

It’s a good idea to look at professional photos to gain insight into your own photography. Even landscapes and beaches have beautiful lines and shapes you can study to improve your own photography.

And the best design of all? The simple design with a main line that creates direction is the best. Keep it simple and you can’t go wrong.

Happy Shooting,

Amy Renfrey

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