We’ll first look at what the technique actually does. The entire premise of Frequency Separation (FS) is to separate the texture and color into two separate layers. By doing this you can work on each layer separately without affecting the other.

After I have done my global adjustments and any local tonal adjustments I am ready to work on the skin of the subject. It’s important to not do your dodging and burning on the skin until after applying FS. Otherwise, the adjustments you make to the color layer may affect those changes.

We’re going to use the image of the basketball player below. His complexion isn’t what he’d like so we’re going to smooth it out so something more pleasing.

Before Frequency Separation

The first thing you should do is to make sure all of the adjustments are consolidated into a single layer. To do this you should create a Merge Stamp layer by pressing CMD-Option-Shift-E, or Ctrl-Alt-Shift-E on a windows version. This will put a consolidated layer at the top of the layers palette. Now make a copy of that layer. Your layers palette should look something like the image below.

Layers After Merge Stamp and Copy

You should now have two additional layers at the top of the layers palette. To make it easier for me to follow I like to rename the layers and then group the FS layers together. Double click on the label of the top layer and it will be highlighted in blue. Then change the name to “Texture”. Now go to the second layer and do the same thing but change the name to “Color”. After that highlight both the top and middle layer and press CMD-G, or Ctrl-G in Windows. This will place the layers in a group. Double click on the group name and change it to “Frequency Separation”. Click on the “>” symbol next to your group to expand it. Your layer palette should now look something like the below image.

Grouping the Layers

Now that we have the layers ready, we need to be sure the Texture layer only has texture of the image and the Color layer has everything except texture.

We’re going to start with the Color layer. First, turn off the Texture layer. It’s above the Color layer, so if you don’t turn it off you won’t see any affect on the Color layer. Turn the Texture layer off by clicking on the “eyeball” next to it in the Layer palette. Now highlight the Color layer and select Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur from the menu. Move the Radius slider all the way left to 0. Now slowly move it to the right until you no longer see texture in the skin. Remember, the purpose of our Color layer is to have everything except for texture. In our case I moved the slider to 2.7. See the image below.

Removing Texture from the Color Layer

Now we need to remove everything but texture from the Texture layer. The way we do this is to subtract the Color layer from the Texture layer. How? By using the Apply Image function.  There are other methods to separating these two, but using the Apply Image function is how I learned so that's how I will show you.

Turn the Texture layer back on by clicking on the eyeball next to it in the Layers palette. Now click on the layer to make it active. From the main menu select Image->Apply Image to open the dialog box. The parameters in the dialog box depend on whether your image is 8-bit, or 16-bit. I normally process in 16-bit, but I will show you the dialog box with parameters for each just in case your image is 8-bit. See images below.

8-bit Setup

16-bit Setup

It’s important to note that the Layer selected in the dialog box is the “Color” layer because it’s the layer you are comparing to. Also, for the 16-bit be sure to click on the Invert checkbox.

When you apply this, by clicking on the OK button, your image should be turned to grayscale. If not, you have done something wrong. See image below.

Grayscale After Apply Image

Finally, go back to the layers palette and change the blending mode of the Texture layer to “Linear Light”. Now you should see the image as it was before doing anything with FS. That’s because the Texture layer is only texture and the Color layer is everything else.

Now we are ready to begin retouching.

The first thing to do is to remove the blemishes. We will do this on the texture layer by using one of four tools, the Clone Stamp tool, the Healing Brush tool, the Spot Healing Brush tool, or the Patch tool. Any of these will work, but my preference is the Healing Brush tool. With it we select a good texture and blend it on top of the blemish. The Clone Stamp tool completely replaces the blemish with the texture, where the Healing Brush tool blends it. That’s why I like it best. But, as I said, any of these tools will work.

Click on the Texture layer to make sure it is active. Select your tool of preference from the tool bar for removing the blemishes. Be careful to go over them individually and sample an area close by. Your sample should be about the same size as the blemish. Don’t try to remove the red blotchiness because we are only working with the texture. The red will be removed in a moment. Once you are done the face should look something like this.

After Blemish Removal

You can see that we still have red spots where the blemishes were. To remove those we will go to the Color layer. The objective here is to go around the red spots and blur them out using the Gaussian Blur filter. You can use any selection method, but I like to use the Lasso tool. With it I just draw a circle around the red spot and use the filter to blur it. With whatever selection method we choose, we should also look to feather the edges of the selection. This will blend the blur (color correction) into the skin more evenly. I usually use a feather of 15 pixels. Be aware that when you feather the selection it will shrink from what you actually draw around the blemish, so you may want to draw a little bigger that you actually want. See below how I make my selection.

Selecting Blemishes with the Lasso Tool

Now I want to remove the blemish by removing the red color. To remove the red we use the Gaussian Blur filter. With the selection made around the blemish just go to the main menu and choose Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur. Now move the radius slider to 0 and then slowly to the right until the red in the blemish disappears. Be careful, if you go too far the skin will begin to turn dark. See below how I removed the blemish with the Gaussian Blur filter.

Red Color of Blemish Removed with Gaussian Blur

Look at the selection and see how the red of the blemish is now gone. I slowly moved the Radius slider to the right until the color was gone. In this case I used a Radius of 9.5. Also, notice that inside the selection the texture remained even though we used a blur filter. That is because the Texture layer above includes the texture and is unaffected.

Now just go around the face and make selections on each blemish and blur it to remove the red color as indicated above. You can use larger selections for larger areas, but I would encourage you to be fairly specific. There is no reason to blur regions that don’t need it. However, with females you may want to blur a little extra and in areas that don’t really need it to soften the skin. Just be careful not to go too far and give it dark splotches.

Once you have completed with this step you should have something that looks something like the below image.

Final Image After Frequency Separation

We focused here on removing blemishes, but you could also use this tool remove other imperfections such as scars or rashes. The idea is to get the subject to look normal as if the “unusual occurrence” of this skin abnormality hadn’t happened.

The technique looks fairly complicated, but once you have done it a couple of times it will become fairly easy. Below is a comparison of the before and after so you can more easily see the change that was made.

                                                                     Before Any Adjustments                                                     After Frequency Separation

I truly hope this has been helpful with understanding how this technique works. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Happy Shooting
 

I always thought of this tool as a way to use blend modes, but as it turns out it's not related at all.  It does have the effect of blending two layers together, but not the same way as blend modes.  When you look at the tool you'll notice that the sliders have the same layout as a standard histogram.  On the left side is pure black, or a value of 0 and represents the shadows in the image while the right end of the slider is pure white with a value of 255 and represents the highlights in the image.  By moving those sliders inward, we are changing the black or white points.  Basically, it is a way to remove specific tonal values from the current layer to allow the layer below to show through.  For example, if I push the highlight slider to the left toward the shadow end to a value of 180, the tonal values of the current layer will be affected by pixels with values of 181 to 255.  You will see this exact effect in the examples below. 

But first, to set the stage for how this works we'll create and image with two gradient layers in Photoshop.  The bottom layer will gradate from a very light blue on the bottom to dark blue at the top.  The second layer on top of that will gradate from a dark black at the bottom to a near pure white at the top.  So your layer panel should look something like the image below.

Screenshot

Layers for our examples
 

The idea is to blend these two layers together by removing specific tonal values from the current top layer.  If you don't have two layers the result will be transparency where the tonal values are removed.  Once you have two layers in the layers palette open the Layer Style dialog box.  You can do this many ways, but I usually just double click on the layer (not the thumbnail or the label, but next to the label).   Once the Layer Style dialog box is open go to the bottom where the Blend-If section is (see below).

Layer Style dialog boxLayer Style dialog box. Use this to access the Blend If sliders.

Layer Style dialog box.  Notice the Ble
nd If section in the red box.

The first thing you should notice is the Blend If drop down menu.  This menu has four options, Gray, Red, Green, and Blue.  What this allows you is the ability to work with Black and White (the Gray channel) as well as RGB colors.  So ideally with these you should be able to blend all of the colors you need.  However, let's start simply by using the default of Gray.  Of course this means we will only be affecting different shades of gray, but I think that's probably the most common use.

First you should notice that there are two sliders.  One is labeled This Layer and the other is labeled Underlying Layer.  So what's the difference?  Well, both affect the current layer, but in different ways.  When you select This Layer it is looking at the current layer's tonal values as a point of reference for making the adjustment.  For example, if I move the highlight (white) slider to the left to a value of 180 any tonal values in the current layer with a value of 181 or above will be removed from the current layer.  Very straight forward, right?  However, if you select the Underlying Layer slider and move the highlight slider (white) to a value of 180 it looks at the layer below as a point of reference for making the adjustment.  Therefore, it removes tonal values in the current layer based on where the tonal values in the Underlying Layer are 181 and above.  Kind of confusing but let's go through some examples.

With the top layer selected (Layer 1) double click anywhere to the right of where it says "Layer 1" to open the Layer Styles Panel.  It defaults to the Blending Options style which is where the Blend If lies.  Let's click and move the highlight slider (for This Layer) to the left to where it gives you a value of 180.  You will see the white tonal values above 180 in the current layer begin to fade away and reveal the blue from the layer below.  

Screenshot

Moving the highlight slider left lets some of the below layer show through

Now let's do the same by moving the shadows slider to the right to a value of 60.  This time you see the blacks in the image with a value of 59 and lower begin to fade away and reveal the light blue in the image in the layer below.

Screenshot

Black and White points have been adjusted show the layer below

 Just so you can see exactly what's happening, click OK in the dialog box to return to the layers pallets.  Now turn off the below layer by clicking on the eyeball icon on that layer.  What this reveals is that the current layer is partially faded away (see my example below) exposing the transparency below.

Turning off the below layer reveals transparency where the Blend If has removed pixels

Pretty easy to see how the slider for This Layer works.  Right?  Well how about the slider for Underlying Layer.  With the same image selected we'll go back to the Blending Options by double clicking on the area to the right of the Layer 1 label.  We'll reset the sliders for This Layer by moving the shadow slider back to 0 and the highlight slider back to 255.  This way that slider will not affect this example.   Now click on the highlight slider for the Underlying Layer and move it to 180.  Notice how the bottom of the image fades into the light blue of the layer below.  This is because the reference point is the underlying layer and the tonal values of that layer that are above 180 fall in the light blue.  So that is the area that is removed and blended into the current layer.  A little confusing, but once you get it you'll think it's simple.  

Screenshot

Moving the highlight values for the Underlying Layer slider reveals the lighter values in the layer below

Notice how different this is from what happened when you did the same thing with the This Layer slider.  See the comparison below

                                 Highlights set to 180 on This Layer Slider                                                           Highlights set to 180 on Underlying Layer Slider

Just think about which layer you want it to use for referencing the highlights or shadows slider.  If you use the This Layer slider you are referencing the current layer's tonal values to determine where you want the pixels removed.  So if you change the highlight slider to 180 you are telling it to remove the pixels that are associated with this layer's tonal values that are greater than 180.

Conversely, if you use the Underlying Layer slider you are telling it that you want to use the layer below as a reference point.  When you move the Underlying Layer's highlight slider to 180 you are saying that you want to remove pixels in the current layer where the tonal values of the below layer are above 180.

One more thing I haven't mentioned that is key in the use of this tool.  You have probably noticed the hard line between those pixels selected and those that are not.  As I said earlier, when you select a highlight point of 180 it means that every pixel with a tonal value of 181 or above is removed and every pixel of 180 or less remains.  There is a way to gradate this where the transition is smooth and you have the ability to determine how much of a gradation there is.  To do this let's go back to our last example where we moved the highlights for the Underlying Layer slider to 180.  Now press and hold your Option/Alt key and grab the left side of that slider and move it to the left.  That will separate the slider into two parts.  Move the left hand part of that slider to 160.  That will create a gradation of 20 pixels.

Screenshot

Breaking the slider to gradate the effect  

We have only scratched the surface of this tool.  I find myself using it more and more now that I realize how it works.  It seems fairly complicated when you first try to use it but it's really fairly simple.  I hope this had been informative and helps break down that frustration barrier.

Enjoy!

What follows is something I learned several years ago from watching a video with two great photographers, Larry Peters and Brian Killian. It’s not what they were teaching, but something I stumbled on as I was trying to follow their instructions. It has to do with shooting High Key photography in black and white.

This technique is very easy to do and you can edit it either in Lightroom or Photoshop. I prefer Photoshop, but I am going to show you the Lightroom way since I know the vast majority of you use that as your editing tool.

The first and most important step is to shoot with this intent in mind. You want a white background and the subject should be wearing white. The effect will not be the same, but you could also cut someone out, put them on a white background, and have them not wearing white. You’ll see what I mean in a moment.

A key to getting this right is to shoot 1 to 1 1/2 stops over exposed. Sounds crazy but that’s part of the formula. Then, when you bring it into Lightroom take the Highlights slider and move it all the way to the left to -100. See my starting point below after adjusting the Highlights.

2 Stops Over Exposed in Camera and Highlights at -100
 

It’s here that you can do a few touchups, but steer away from any tonal changes. I like to sharpen the eyes, slightly sharpen the hair, and add some Dynamic Contrast from OnOne. The last one is not necessary, but it does increase some mid tone contrast and does it better than Clarity.

The next step is to launch into Nik Filters and open Color Efex Pro 4. If you don't have these filters you can still get them free.  That version is not supported any more, but it still works for me most of the time.  Open the Infrared Film filter and select Method 1. Select the value of 30% for all three sliders in the filter and then click on the Save button to return to Lightroom. See below.

Screenshot Nik Infrared Filter
 

Now obviously there is some extra work to be done here.  But, that’s all there is to it!  Of course you can adjust at your hearts content. You may like the sliders better at a different location. It’s all subjective, but this should be a good starting point.

And here is the final product after a little touch up to get rid of the dark band at the bottom and at the corners.

Final High Key with Nik Infrared Filter
 

You can easily see there is no separation from the background, especially where the white clothes meet the white background.  But I think it works. What do you think?

This should take only about 5 minutes and with very little work.

Enjoy!

In both Lightroom and Camera Raw you have the ability to turn on a mask so you can see the affect of your painting with a brush. In Photoshop you have the backslash (“\”) key that does the same thing. Just press the “\” key on the keyboard to toggle the layer mask on and off. See below.

Default Layer Mask is Red

The difference is that the layer mask in Photoshop is backward from Lightroom and Camera Raw. Pressing the “\” key shows what is being masked. You then paint away what you want to reveal. In the image above I adjusted the brightness of his skin by applying a Curves Adjustment and painting the mask away to reveal the adjustment on his skin.

The second tip is for changing the preview of the workspace. By pressing the letter “F” you can cycle through the different looks of the workspace. It works much like it does in Lightroom, except in Lightroom there is no Tab Mode. The default mode in Photoshop is the “Tab Mode”, the second is the “Window” mode, and the third is the Full Screen mode. See examples below.

Tab Mode is the default

This is the default mode. Notice the tabs at the top (red arrows) where you can see the images that are open and select the image to work on.

Windows Mode removes the Tabs

If you don’t like the Tab Mode, just press the “F” key to go to the Window Mode. Here the tabs are gone and to go to a different image you must select Window from the menu and select your image from the list at the bottom. See below.

Select your image from the Window menu in the Window View

If you want to see your image in the Full Screen Mode just press the “F” key one more time. This mode removes everything (except your ruler if it’s turned on) from the screen except the image. It’s great to get an overall look without the distractions. Not good for working, but very good for viewing. See below.

Full Screen Mode

Cycling through these screens by pressing the “F” key allows you different options for viewing and working with your image.

These were just a couple of quick Photoshop tips that are not usually mentioned much.  They are very helpful for me and I hope you find them helpful as well.  

Happy shooting!!
 

So how do you get it right in camera? First you expose for the background to get the look you want. You can even take a shot to see if you like what you see. I often do this to make sure of the composition as well as the exposure. Once you are happy with the background it’s time to expose for the subjects in the portrait. To do this you need to set your flash to equal the ambient light exposure you have set in the camera for the background. For example, if you expose for the background at 1/250, f/11, ISO 200, you need to set your flash power to equal f/11 and ISO 200. This will expose your subjects to the same light as the ambient light in the background.

Remember, flash has a different exposure triangle. For flash you expose using ISO, Aperture, and the Flash power. Your ISO and Aperture for your flash should equal what is in camera, but the shutter speed in camera has no effect on flash and the flash power has no effect on ambient light.

Below is an example of a background for a shoot I did recently. It was a very bright but dreary day with mist in the air. We were on a patio at Rockwall Golf and Athletic Club (formerly the Shores). To darken it down to the exposure below I increased my shutter speed. The overall settings were 1/3200, f/4.0, ISO 400. I wanted to keep my ISO fairly low because I was shooting with my secondary camera and it doesn’t shoot well when I push the ISO.

Bright and Blown Out Background Exposed Properly
 

Then I put the subjects in the scene and set the flash to equal the ambient. To do that I used the Guide Number for the SB-700 flash. I knew that at 10 feet at full power and at ISO 100 the flash fires at about f/8. Since I was at ISO 400 that would change to f/16 at 10 feet and full power (two stops of extra light). Needing to get to f/4.0 I lowered my flash power by 4 stops to 16th power. Then I realized the flash was closer to 5 feet away. Going from 10 feet to 5 feet I gain two stops of light, therefore, I had to lower my flash power another two stops to 64th power. With this I got the following shot.

Shot with Flash Set to the Same Ambient Light as the Background
 

Needs a little polishing but you get the idea. Most everything done in camera instead of fussing with lightroom or photoshop to get the light to match.

One more thing. If you don't have off camera flash you can use the flash on your camera. Just be aware that it will be flat light and that you may need to use the flash compensation if the light is too strong or not enough. The important thing is to get the shot.

NOTE:

I should mention that shooting at 1/3200 with flash is only possible if you are setup for High Speed Sync (HSS). I could have, and maybe should have, lowered the shutter speed and closed down the aperture a stop or two to broaden my depth of field. So I could have lowered my shutter speed to 1/200 (four stops) and closed down my aperture to f/16 (four stops). Then, being constrained to about 5 feet from the subjects I gained another two stops of light to put me at about f/32. Therefore, lowering the light to 1/4 power would have given me the proper exposure to f/16 and allowed me to shoot within my sync speed.

In this segment we are going to discuss two more aspects of portrait photography. These are posing the subject and how to relax them to help get the expression you want. We will also take a look at how to use DOF to separate the subject from the background or to remove an unwanted distraction from the background.

I could go on and on about lighting, but let’s move on to posing and expression. Posing is probably the most difficult part of the process for me. What I have learned over the past few years to make it easier for me is to learn two or three basic poses and then shoot from different perspectives. This means shoot the same pose, but shoot full length, ¾ length, and shoot tight head shots. Then shoot low, shoot a little high and shoot a little left and a little right. Just be careful that the light is correct for each perspective and that the background still works. From each pose you should be able to get about 4 to 5 shots of the same pose that are different. Learn a pose or two standing, one or two sitting, and one or two leaning against something (like a tree or wall).

Some of the things to look out for when posing are some of the basic rules of photography. One of these rules states that, “whatever is closest to the camera appears bigger”. This is especially important in portrait photography. When I mentioned above that you should shoot high and low you must be aware of the result you will get. When shooting low I am talking about getting the camera low and shooting up on the subject. Doing this tends to elongate the body causing the subject to look taller. This sometimes works well with females to give them longer legs that can look more elegant. It also can give the subject a more dominant look if posed properly. The dominant pose works well with males.

You should also keep this rule in mind when posing the arms and legs. For example, if you have an arm extended toward the lens be careful that it is not too far away from the main body of the subject. Notice in the image below how the elbow on camera right is almost as big as his face. It becomes a dominant force in the image. The more appropriate pose would be to have him turned a little more toward camera and have him lean his head in a little. This would put his face and elbow much closer to the same plane causing them to be in a more proper perspective. It’s a very subtle change, but makes a big difference in the image.

Probably most important for female subjects, is to make sure to slim the body as much as possible by posing them correctly. You can always take off pounds with the Liquify tool in Photoshop, but over indulgence with that tool becomes obvious and you want them to look like themselves. I have to admit that I use the Liquify tool on occasion, but I use it very subtly and it’s only to correct posing mistakes (unless I’m doing a composite where anything goes).

One of the best ways to slim the subject is to have them slightly turn toward the right or left of the camera. This tends to slim the face and body. Ask them to shift their weight to the back foot and to pop that hip. Then ask them to lean forward slightly. Remember, the closest thing to the camera appears bigger and you usually want that to be the face. Posing this way will slim the lower part of the body while emphasizing the face. You may also ask them to bend the front knee in front of the back leg, or to bring the entire leg in front of the back leg. This will cause them to turn the hips resulting in a slimmer look. This is helpful whether you are shooting full length or head shots. Separating the arms from the body also thins, so you probably want to see some space between the arms and the waist in most cases. This sounds like a lot, but the key is to turn the body slightly, lean forward, and separate the arms from the body.

Slimming the body is mostly important for females. With males you have more flexibility. I definitely shoot slimming poses for males but squarely facing the camera will always give them the broadest look and also a very dominant look. This is popular with athletes and some of my male seniors. They like posing in front of their trucks looking “bad”. Below is an example of this.

Another important thing to remember with posing is the rule of 2’s. This rule indicates that any two things (pair of things) on the body should not be on the same plane. This is referring to eyes, shoulders, hands, feet, etc.. So you should always think about tilting the head slightly, tilting the shoulders, not have the hands doing the same thing, feet separated and pointed differently, etc.. Remembering this helps you create interesting images and adds to the ability to light the subject to have dimension.

One more thing on posing that isn’t really a rule, but a technique that I like to help slim the body and give it a more elegant look. When you have the subject turn the face opposite of the body they will tend to look more elegant. Not necessarily a technique for males, but works well with females. See the image below for an example of this.

As with lighting I could go on talking about posing but let’s end this subject with a final word. It’s extremely important that the subject be relaxed and having fun. If they are not, the images will reflect it and everyone will know. The expression and body language will show the tension. Believe me I have shot my fair share of tense subjects and it’s very obvious. Do everything you can to connect with the subject to get over this hurdle. Your images will reflect that. I usually ask about something in their life and then show some interest in what they say. My subjects are usually seniors so I ask about the college they are applying to, or what they have planned after they graduate. Then I ask a lot of questions about that and show some real interest. This usually loosens then up and they become more relaxed.

It’s also good if you if you have a good wit. That’s not my personality, but if you can make them laugh they will usually loosen up and even be relaxed on serious shots. Just be sure if you tell a joke to keep it clean and remember who your audience is.

Finally let’s talk about color and DOF. It’s very important to have the color of the background and the color of the clothes on the subject in harmony. I tell all of my subjects to not wear anything busy or with bright “loud” colors. These will draw the viewer’s attention away from the subject. I am usually shooting in places with earthy tones (darker colors) so I usually ask that they wear something similar and have a few changes just in case something clashes. I explain to them where we are going and what to expect. They are usually pretty good about matching the environment. If I am shooting in a studio environment I will let them know the background I plan to use and the best colors that will harmonize with it.

Whether I shoot with a shallow DOF or a broad DOF usually depends on the look I’m going for, but it can also be determined by other factors. First, I look at the environment. If there is something I want to include in the image, like a landmark, I’ll usually shoot with a broad DOF. Imagine being in Paris and having the Eiffel Tower in the background. Wouldn’t your want the viewer to see it? On the other hand if there is something I didn’t want in the image, like a construction crane, I may want to shoot with a more shallow DOF to blur it out.

Another reason to shoot with a shallow DOF is to take advantage of the environment or be creative with what you are given. For example, if you are shooting a street portrait and there are streetlights in the background. You may want to shoot with a shallow DOF to see the beautiful “bokeh” of the lights. This is usually better late in the evening and you may need a flash to light up the subject. Just be sure that the bokeh is not over powering and becomes the subject of the image.

So, over the past few weeks we have talked about some very basic concepts. We talked about how to find natural light and then how to use its direction to light your subject in various ways. Then we talked about adding artificial light and the three principles (direction, quality, and color) that are important for good lighting of the subject. In the final segment, we discussed posing and some of the principles to think about to have your subject look most pleasing. Also in that segment we talked briefly about using depth of field to include or remove objects in the environment, or use it to add a creative look to the background while emphasizing the subject.

To bring these all together let’s discuss my approach to shooting a portrait.

1. The first thing I do is to visualize the image by evaluating the environment and determining the mood of the portrait. If I am doing a studio session this is done well ahead of the shoot, but if it’s on location it could happen at the time of the shoot. I usually try to shoot at locations I know or scout the location in advance so this is more predetermined, but sometimes it a little ad hoc.
2. Once the environment is analyzed and the mood determined I determine my camera settings. I always try to shoot at ISO 100 and the aperture is determined by the DOF I want to use. Remember DOF is determined by either creativity, or something in the environment that I either want to show or hide. Once I know my ISO and Aperture, I can determine my Shutter Speed. I envision the shot I want and set the shutter speed for that exposure.
   a. It’s important to note that DOF can also be affected by the focal length of the lens, but that’s a discussion for another time.
   b. Also of importance to note is that if the resulting shutter speed is too slow (I almost never shoot a portrait slower than 1/30) I may have to make concessions and increase the aperture or ISO.
3. With the background exposed the way I want I can now focus on lighting the subject. So I put the light(s) where I want it for the proper lighting technique and measure the light. The light should be exposed for the same aperture as the aperture set in the camera. For example, if I want to shoot at F-4.0 then I need to set the light to the proper power to expose the subject at F-4.0.
4. Now with the flash and background exposed properly I will usually shoot a gray card to use in post processing to assure the white balance is correct. I try to always have the camera’s white balance set to either sunny or flash.
5. Now I am ready to shoot the image. All of the lighting and camera settings should be very close to where I want them so I can focus on posing the subject. However, I usually take a test shot to make sure. Sometimes I will need to tweak the flash settings, but I NEVER change the settings on the camera unless I decide I want a different look or mood. Then I go back to Step 1 above and the subject can relax.

These steps are roughly what I do for every shoot. Some are more extensive, especially if I use multiple lights, or we are trying to do something unusual. You should also notice that these steps did not include shooting in natural light. The difference is that in analyzing the environment I find the direction of light and determine how the subject must be placed in the scene so they are lit in the most pleasing way. With this I can determine my DOF and set the camera for the proper aperture and shutter speed. Then I can move on to Step 4 and 5. Sometimes I shoot the scene without the subject to be sure I have the environmental look I want.

Suggested Practices:

1. Stand squarely in front of a full length mirror. Now turn slightly to face left or right. Notice how much thinner your body appears. Put all of your weight on your back leg and take your knee closest to the mirror and bend it slightly over the back leg. Notice how this slightly turns your hips to help thin the body. This also will tend to lower the shoulder closer to the mirror. Now practice tilting your head slightly (low shoulder for women and high shoulder for men). Finally, put one hand in a pocket (if you have one) and the other on your hip. It really doesn’t matter where your hands are as long as they are doing something different and not just hanging straight down. Your objective is to place them so that your elbows are bent and you can show space between your arms and body. While there are definitely proper ways to pose the hands don’t worry about it now. Get the body right and worry about the hands later.
   a. Practice different ways to turn your body and using the rule of 2’s so your body looks thin and pleasing. Do this with a standing, a sitting, and a leaning pose. Find something you like and remember why you like it.
2. Find a volunteer and take what you learned in practice 1 to pose them. Take some shots and be your own critic. Do they look relaxed? Did you thin the body? Find out what you got wrong and work on getting it right for next time.

Closing

I truly hope this has helped you think about how to approach shooting portraits. Please understand that these are only suggestions and there are many perspectives on this subject. Take these for what they are. It’s perfectly OK to break the rules some of the time. They are really just guidelines. Hopefully, there are some nuggets that you can take to improve your images.

There are so many subjects I didn’t talk about, including composition, distracting objects (trees growing out of the head), avoid bright areas in the image, etc.. My goal here was to discuss the most important basics regarding good portraits that I thought would help the most. Visualizing what you want is probably the most important part of shooting any image. By visualizing the image you will better know the lighting, the colors, and the camera settings required to achieve it. Ad hoc portraits are sometimes successful, but planned portraits have a much better chance of succeeding.

Click here to see this entire article where all three segments are discussed together.

If you would like to see more of my work please feel free to visit my website at http://www.bobwoodfin.com, or my Instagram page at bwoodfinphoto, or my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=bob woodfin photography

Additional Samples:

In this post we are going to continue discussing lighting by, first talking about artificial light.

In absence of natural light you must provide your own artificial light. I could write volumes about lighting your subject, but let’s talk about the basics. There are three principles of light that you should consider for any scene, particularly portraits. First is the direction of light. This was introduced last time when we discussed natural light. As you probably know, the direction of light has a direct impact on the mood of the image. We will expand on that here as we discuss artificial light and talk about the effect of putting the light in different areas around the subject.

Putting the light behind the subject is called “Backlighting”. The effect of this will tend to put a halo around the subject with the front of the subject being dark because no light is falling on it. You may want this direction of light to get a silhouetted subject, or you may light the front of the subject as well and use the backlight for accent.

Side lighting tends to show a more dramatic look and it also brings out texture. Lighting the subject at 90 degrees can be very powerful, however most side lighting tends to be more of 70 to 80 degrees to add a little light in the front. All subjective, but the idea is to light one side and let the other side go into shadows. The degree of shadows depends on how far to the side you have the light. Side lighting can also be used to add additional drama to another technique. In the image below I added side light to give the image some more punch. In this case it didn’t add a lot of drama, but it did add a different look.

Front lighting tends to have very little or no shadows. This is called “flat lighting” and what you will get when the flash is on your camera. Since there are minimal shadows you lose the ability to show depth, making your image appear to be two dimensional. This is why most photographers want you to take your flash off of the camera. However, there is a time where flat lighting is exactly what you want. Makeup manufacturers spend a lot of time getting great makeup to look just right. If you were shooting for an advertisement for makeup the agency would want you to show every bit of the face possible to promote the wonderful product. To do this, their photographers shoot very flat images. As a photographer yourself you may want to have your image emulate this look. I do it all the time. However, as a rule, flat lighting should probably be avoided for shooting portraits of individuals.

The only other time you should shoot with flat lighting, as a rule, is when you shoot groups of 3 or more. This is because any kind of side lighting will cast shadows from some members on other members of the group. You have probably seen this when you have shot groups, or seen them shot, where the light is coming from the side. Right? This could be families, or friends, or sports teams. You see it all the time in snap shots. Flat lighting will avoid this problem.

One of the most used methods of lighting for portraiture is what is called “45/45”. This puts the light at a 45-degree angle from the camera and high enough to point 45-degrees down at the subject. With this you get a nice inverted triangle below the eye opposite of the light. This is called “Rembrandt Lighting” after the famous artist that showcased it in all of his portrait paintings. This lighting also gives you a nice catch light at 2:00 if the light is on the left side of the camera and at 10:00 if the light is on the right side. If the catch light is not in the right place the inverted triangle will not be correct. This lighting method is not a must, but is fairly easy and always gives you a very nicely lit portrait. In the image below notice the Rembrandt triangle under the left eye and the catch lights at 2:00.

All of these lighting methods I have described have assumed a single light. Adding more lights to these basic lighting techniques can refine the lighting even more and help you attain your vision. We’ll talk about adding lights later, but for now we will concentrate on single light setups and move on to other elements of the basics on good portraits.

The second principle of light is the quality of light. This refers to the softness, or how gradual the light goes from highlights to shadows. You usually want softer light for the romantic or creamy type image. It goes especially well with females looking for the beautiful magazine fashion look. Harder light is usually used to show more drama or texture in the image. I typically don’t use hard light for my family and female senior portraits, although I do use it for some of my male seniors and athletic posters.

There are two things to think about when creating hard or soft light. The first thing is the size of the light source in relation to the subject. Bigger light sources in relation to the subject will be softer than smaller sources. To test this take an ordinary flash light and shine it close a subject. Notice how the light looks relative to the highlights and shadows. Then slowly move it farther away and see how the gradation from highlight to shadow becomes much sharper. Moving the light source away from the subject makes it a smaller source and creates the sharper light. This tells us that if we want to soften the light we need to move our light source closer to our subject. Of course, when you do that you will also have to adjust the intensity of the light.

The second concept regarding light quality is that you can soften light by diffusing it. There are multiple ways to diffuse light. Bouncing light off of an object is one way. This could be a wall, a floor, or a reflector (including an umbrella). As the light hits these and bounces it spreads in all directions creating a nice soft effect. The other way to diffuse light is to shoot through a diffusion material. Soft boxes, shoot through umbrellas, Octa boxes, and other modifiers are examples of this.

So to summarize, when you want to soften the light you can choose a bigger light source, or move the light closer to the subject, or bounce the light, or diffuse the light by shooting through a diffusion material. You can also use a combination of these to make the light even softer.

Finally, the third concept of lighting that is important is the color of light. Yes, we are talking about white balance. This is more important in shooting portraits than with landscapes because of the color of skin. Nothing looks worse than the portrait of a beautiful woman with green skin. It’s extremely important to get the skin tones right. My advice is not to shoot portraits with the camera set to Auto White Balance. This is especially important if you want to display a series of photos in the same setting, like a photo array or collage. The white balance in this case may not be the same in each image and the skin tones will show it. Instead, shoot a gray card if you can. Set your white balance on the camera to a preset like “Sunny” or “Cloudy” and keep it there. In postproduction, use the gray card to correct your white balance on all of the images in the series. If you don’t have a gray card image to use in postproduction, you can adjust the white balance in one image the way you like and then set the others to the same white balance so they are consistent. This will be easier if they all have the same white balance to begin with and is the reason for using a preset instead of Auto White Balance. Take the time to get the white balance right. You’ll thank me for it later.

If you are not shooting an array of images and you don’t have a gray card you should still color correct your images, if you want the skin tones to reflect reality. You can do this in post processing by selecting the White Balance Correction tool (in either Lightroom or Camera Raw, or whatever) and selecting a neutral color in the image. Neutral colors are any black to white tones that are suppose to be void of any color. If the white balance is incorrect these tones will have a little tint of color that needs to be removed. Using the White Balance tool and clicking on these areas will remove that tint. Color toning your images is always an option and you won’t have to worry as much about white balance, but even if you color tone them it’s always best to start with an image with corrected white balance.

Suggested Practices:

Take an object and place it on your dining table (or any place convenient). Place a flash light in each location (back lighting, side lighting, front lighting, and 45/45) to see the effect of the light. This should help you see how each different lighting location has a different effect on the subject.

Now get a volunteer to sit in a chair. If you have off camera flash use it to light your subject in each location (back light, side light, front light, and 45/45) and take a picture of each. If you do not have off camera flash use a flashlight or any kind of constant light that you can fix on a stand or table. Be careful with the your back light not to have it visible to the camera or you will have flare. You may want to place it a little low to avoid this. Also, take extra care with the 45/45 lighting and adjust it until you get the inverted triangle under the eye opposite the light and the catch lights in the proper position. This will help you understand exactly where the light should be to get that look.

Next, get a piece of cardboard (letter size or bigger) and tape or paste a piece of white paper on it to create a bounce card. Clip your bounce card on a stand or lean it against something. Now place your light source (flash or constant light source) in front of the bounce card and try to bounce the light on the subject. This will help you see the diffused light, but it will also help you see how to angle the bounce card to get the light to fall on the subject. When you get it bouncing the way you want take a picture. Compare this with the pictures you took in the previous exercise. You should see a huge difference in the quality of light.

Choose a subject that has a neutral tone in it. It doesn’t have to be totally neutral, but just have somewhere on it that you can take a sample from. Put your camera in Auto White Balance and shoot a picture. Now change your setting from Auto White Balance to Flash. Now shoot another picture of your subject but with flash this time. Take both images into LR or PS, or whatever your post processor is. Open the first image and place your cursor over the neutral tone in the image. If you are in LR you need to click on the Develop tab. With your cursor on the neutral tone look under the Histogram at the RGB values. If the White Balance is correct each of these values should be the same. Now open the second image and look at the values. Notice how the values of the same neutral tone in each of the images are different, but neither is absolutely correct. This is because Auto White balance uses algorithms based on the color and luminance of the scene to determine the white balance to apply, where setting the white balance to a preset of Flash applies a specific white balance of 5,400 to 5,500 degrees Kelvin.

Next Time

In our next segment we will discuss posing and depth of field.

Bob Woodfin
[email protected]

To see more of my work visit:
http://www.bobwoodfin.com/
https://www.facebook.com/BobWoodfinPhotos/
https://www.instagram.com/bwoodfinphoto/

There are so many things involved to creating a good portrait that it will be hard to include everything in a single post. Probably many of you will think of additional important elements that have been missed, and that’s OK.

The first things that come to mind for a good portrait are those things that are important in any image. This includes good exposure, focus, and good composition. Without these elements it doesn’t matter if your image has the other elements of a good portrait because it’s not going to work anyway. So for now we will assume that you have those and just talk about what else is involved in making a good portrait.

When shooting a portrait the first thing I think about is the look I want. Do I want it to be dramatic, romantic, happy, festive, etc.? This will make a difference in the lighting, the posing, colors, depth of field (DOF), and expression of the subject. These all have to work together or your portrait will have mixed signals for the mood you are trying to show. Think about this, it doesn’t make sense for the subject to be smiling or laughing when everything else in the image has a somber mood to it.

Let’s talk about lighting first. The idea of any image is to show depth. As photographers, we are trying to make a two dimensional media appear as three dimensional. The way to do this is with highlights and shadows. As the image goes from highlights to shadows our brains interpret this as depth. Think about an individual’s face. Having highlights on the right cheek that gradually turn to shadow on the left cheek shows that the light is partially blocked by the nose indicating there is depth. The light that creates this can come from two places. One is natural light from the sun and the other is from artificial light sources.

Natural light is the best light there is. It shows skin tones in the natural state and evens the light out across the entire scene. When I’m on location I always look for natural light first. The best natural light is when it bounces off of other elements in the scene. This could be the wall of a building, or the concrete of the sidewalk, or even a reflector that you put on a stand. Bouncing the light naturally diffuses it making it very soft and perfect for romantic or dreamy moods. The key with natural light is to be able to see it as it falls on the subject and the scene and to position your subject so the light is directed on the subject in a way that is most pleasing for the mood.

So how do I see natural the light? Seems like a silly question because when you go outside in the daytime there’s light. Right? Yes but photographically you must see the direction of the light. This is what determines where the shadows and highlights will fall on the image.

There are two ways to find the direction of the light. Look for a location where the light is being narrowed into a smaller area. This could be a doorway, a window, an archway, an overhang, or just a large opening in a building. Another place to find light is from reflections such as reflective glass, the side of a building, or even the ground. Once you discover one of these places put your subject in the area of the light and look for the catch lights in the eyes. When you see the catch lights you know you have light on the face. Then just position them for a good composition and take the shot. Always be sure to get light in the eyes. The eyes are the most important part of a portrait and they must pop. Even if the eyes are closed they should be well lit.

Suggested Practices:

1. Go outside and look for areas of natural light where you may want to shoot a portrait. You could also do this in your home where there is nice window light or in your garage with the door open where the light is bouncing off of the concrete. It’s best if you have someone with you so you can see how light falls on their face. When you think you see it ask them to be still, then ask then to turn their head slightly and see how the highlights and shadows fall on their face. Look for catch lights in their eyes. When you see these look around at the environment. Where is the light coming from? The catch lights will give you an indication of where to look. Is it bouncing off of a wall, is it being diffused through a doorway, or somewhere else? Try to get a feel of where the light is coming from so you can begin to understand those types of locations. Then you will know in advance that you can get good natural light images.
2. The next time you are out shopping, or out for lunch, or at work, when you look at other people see if you can find the natural light falling on them (preferably not in direct sun). Look for the shadows and highlights. You will be amazed at how easy it is to see natural light when you are looking for it. Then when you see it, try to determine where it is coming from. Before you know it you will be finding good natural light with ease.

Next time we will take a look at the other principles of light.

Bob Woodfin
[email protected]

To see more of my work visit:
http://www.bobwoodfin.com/
https://www.facebook.com/BobWoodfinPhotos/
https://www.instagram.com/bwoodfinphoto/

Additional Image Samples:

So how do you change the color of something in Photoshop and make it look realistic? You know there is a way, but not quite sure of it. Well as it turns out, there are several ways. I’m going to show you a couple of ways that are very simple.

The first way is with a Hue and Saturation adjustment layer. See the image below where the girl has on a shirt that doesn’t blend well with the background. I want the shirt to be more of a blue-green color.

Bad Color Harmony

So add a Hue and Saturation adjustment layer. This technique usually gets you about 90% there and then you have to mask out the rest. Below is the Hue and Saturation adjustment layer dialog box. There are multiple ways to do this, but I am going to show you how I do it and I think it’s probably the easiest.

Hue And Saturation Dialog Box

The first thing you do is click on the color sampler (hand with finger pointing, see above). Then click in the area of the color you want to change. You will probably have different tones of that color, some dark and some light. Try to click in a mid tone. Clicking in the sample area will set your color bar for your current color (see image above) and the sliders will indicate a range of that color. Most of the time it will include colors you don’t really want. For example, our image has kind of a rust color in the shirt. When we select a sample with the color sampler it selects a color range that includes pinks, reds, oranges, and some yellows. This is too broad of a range for us, but we will get back to that in a moment.

Next, drag the Hue slider to the left or right until you see the shirt change to the color you want. You may also want to adjust the Saturation and Lightness sliders to refine the color tones. As you move these sliders you will see it change everything in the image that is within the color range of the current color. Since her skin and shorts are included in the color range they too are replaced with the new color. See below.

Replace Color

Now you need to refine the color range for the current color to remove the pinks, most of the reds, and yellows. To remove these colors go to the color range sliders and move all of them in toward the center. You may have to play with them a little to get the replacement where you want. See the image below where most of the replacement color has been removed from her skin and shorts.

After Adjusting The Color Range

Below is the Hue and Saturation dialog box showing the settings I used.

Final Adjustments

You should also notice that the Colors dropdown (next to the pointing hand) has changed to Reds. This is because the color range you selected for the sample was in the red family of colors. It’s important because if you need to make a change later you need to be sure to go to the Reds color. That is where all of the adjustments will be. When you initially open the dialog box it defaults to Master.

Now the final adjustment is to mask off the adjustment where you don’t want it. From the image above you can see that the adjustment is still on her face and fingers but not really anywhere else. Most of this is pretty easy to mask. The only challenge is her fingers that are on her side. Be careful not to remove the adjustment from here shirt around those fingers. See below for the final adjustment.

Final Image

If you look closely you will see that there are still some edges that need cleaning up, but the idea is to understand the technique. It’s not hard once you have done it a couple of times.

Next time we will explore another method of changing color and making it look realistic.

Bob Woodfin
[email protected]

To see more of my work visit:
http://www.bobwoodfin.com/
https://www.facebook.com/BobWoodfinPhotos/
https://www.instagram.com/bwoodfinphoto/

Take a look at the diagram below.  Notice how the light is converging at a focal point.  The expectation is that all of the colors will converge at this point.

Courtesy of PhotographyLife.com

When this happens you won’t see the fringing, or halos, around the edges.  Below is another diagram showing what actually happens when the light rays converge at a different focal point.

Courtesy of PhotographyLife.com

See how the colors are converging at different points?  In this diagram the blue and red rays are converging at different focal points and will cause the fringing to occur.  This fringing will be off of the sharp edges and be somewhat out of focus.  This type of chromatic aberration is called “Longitudinal Aberration” because it occurs horizontally along the Optical Axis.

The second type of chromatic aberration is called “Lateral Aberration” because it moves along the focal point.  Take a look at the image below to see how the light rays move along the focal plane.  When this occurs you will only see the fringing along the corners, never in the middle of the image.  This typically occurs with fisheye, wide angle, or low quality lenses.

Courtesy of PhotographyLife.com

So now that we know what it is how do we prevent it?  Well the good news is that usually stopping down the lens will help with longitudinal aberration.  It’s much more common in fast aperture prime lenses than slower ones.  The bad news is that there is really no answer to controlling lateral aberration.  As indicated above, this type of aberration usually occurs with fisheye, wide angle, or low quality lenses.  The best thing you can do with this is to learn how to remove it in postproduction.

That being said, once you discover a particular lens that is prone to this problem there are a few of things you can do that may help.  First, avoid high contrast scenes with that lens.  These types of scenes are more subject to fringing and may include white backgrounds, bright sunrises, and backlight subjects.  If you see it occurring in a particular lens that you are using, you may want to recompose or change lenses.

The second thing you may do, as alluded to above, is to change your focal length.  If you are using a zoom lens, the fringing usually occurs at the shortest and longest focal lengths.  Therefore, if you have to shoot at a short or longer focal length you may want to change to a prime lens.

Finally, once you determine which lenses are prone to lateral chromatic aberration you may want to shoot with your subject more in the middle of the frame.  I know you were taught to compose in camera, but since lateral aberration does not occur in the middle of the frame you can avoid the problem and crop to a more pleasing composition in postproduction.  Not what I like to do, but it’s an option to avoid having to remove the fringing afterward.

Even high-end expensive lenses are prone to some chromatic aberration.  Many lens manufacturers have used certain techniques with special optics to reduce this somewhat, but still cannot totally eliminate it.  However, many of today’s cameras have included processing that can reduce or eliminate some of this issue.

I hope this has helped with the understanding of what this issue is and ways to reduce or eliminate it.  The reality is that I own high-end expensive lenses and still have to deal with this on occasion.  I would suggest understanding how to recognize which lenses may be prone to it and how to use either Lightroom or Photoshop to remove it.

Bob Woodfin
[email protected]

To see more of my work visit:
http://www.bobwoodfin.com/
https://www.facebook.com/BobWoodfinPhotos/
https://www.instagram.com/bwoodfinphoto/
 

I think the first thing you should get comfortable with is the interface itself. If you can’t get around and don’t know where to find things the frustration will only get worse. So let’s take a look at what you get when you first go into Photoshop. See image below. I use a Mac, but the Windows interface is almost identical.

Photoshop CC 2018 Screen Photoshop CC 2018 Screen

This opening screen is the default workspace. We’ll talk a bit more about workspaces in a moment, but for now just realize that you can customize the screen to look a way that works with your workflow.

There are 3 primary areas that you should become familiar with. The menus at the top follow the common practice of allowing you to get around and do most common functions such as opening a file, closing a file, editing a file, etc., including things unique to Photoshop such as working with selections, applying filters, applying adjustments, etc.. A deep dive into these will have to wait until another time. For now let’s just look at the workspace. You really can’t change the look and feel of the menu system and probably wouldn’t want to anyway.

Down the left side is the tool bar. This is where you can select tools to perform a particular task. These tasks could be making a selection, cloning an area, brushing, dodging and burning, erasing, adding text, etc..

Along the right side are the various palettes. These include windows into specific activities. For example, the History palette shows a history of all of the activities you have performed. The Layers palette includes all of the layers you have applied to the image. Other palettes include activities you can perform, such as the Adjustments palette. Here you can apply specific adjustments to the current layer.

These palettes can be grouped together and distinguished by tabs, such as the Libraries, Adjustments, and Styles. They can also be in a group of their own with no tabs. Finally, they can also be minimized and activated by clicking on their thumbnail, such as the History palette. See image below.

Palettes Can Be Made Available In Multiple Forms

So how can we customize the look and feel of these? You are not limited to the toolbar being on the left and the palettes being on the right. Let’s look at the Toolbar first. To move the Toolbar just click on the top of the Toolbar window and drag it. See below.

How To Move The Toolbar

You can also change the look of the Toolbar. Just click on the double arrow at the top of the Toolbar window. All this really does is change the tools to be in two columns instead of one giving it a shorter and more compact look. See below.

Change The Look Of The Toolbar

The Palettes can be customized even more than the Toolbar. At any time you can move a particular palette to a new location. As indicated above that palette can be grouped with other palettes, attached to other palettes but by itself (no tabs), reduced to a thumbnail, or out by itself. I’ll explain each of these next.

Let’s say I wanted to move the Swatches palette to be grouped with the Libraries, Adjustments, and Styles. All I have to do is click and drag the Swatches tab down to the other group. See below.

Move A Palette To A New Group

If you don’t like where it is you can always move it back.

At times you may want the palette to be in a group by itself. This may be if you use it often and do not want to have to click on the tab all of the time. However, the last tab used in a group is always the tab that is open when you open Photoshop, so not sure this is a valid argument. You also may want to create a new group that you will later add other palettes to or maybe it doesn’t really fit into any other group. To create the new group click and drag the tab to the separator line in between groups. When it turns BLUE, release the mouse and the tab will be in a group of its own. See below.

Click And Drag The Tab To The Separator Line Between Groups

New Swatches Tab Has Been Created

Now what if I know that I always use Swatches on every image so I want it to always be open and available. One way to do this is to add it to your workspace. To add it to the workspace just drag the tab out and on to the workspace area. See the result below.

Drag The Palette On To The Workspace

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this because it takes up valuable workspace, but it is an option. It may also be a temporary way to create a group that you want to move into the other linked groups later.

Finally, if I wanted to minimize or make the palette a thumbnail to save valuable workspace all I have to do is right click on the tab and select either Minimize or Collapse to Icons. See below.

Minimize Or Collapse The Palette Into Icons

Selecting these options will give you one of the results below.

Minimize A Palette

Collapse To Icons

Just like the groups, you can rearrange these items by dragging them to a new location. You can also create groups of icons by dragging one icon to another. When you see the BLUE bar and release it will snap them together. You can group them side by side or vertically.

Now that we know how we can add and create different ways to access the palettes let’s look at one more way to setup the palettes.

Let’s create a couple of groups of palettes to demonstrate. See below.

Two Groups Of Palettes

If I link these two groups together I get the following. Remember, you just need to drag one group below or beside the other until you see a BLUE line. Once you release the mouse they will be snapped together as one unit. Then you can drag them to anywhere on the workspace.

Link Two Groups

This is important because of the following. If you now collapse these into icons the icons for each group will be displayed, but the two groups will be segregated together as well. See below.

Groups As Icons

I bring this up because once you get the palettes the way you want and grouped the way you want they can be easily collapsed into icons to give you a tremendous amount of workspace. Take a look at the following. I have added only the palettes I want and grouped them the way I want. There are so many that they go off of the workspace without collapsing them.

Palettes Grouped And Linked Together

Now if you collapse the palettes into icons and move the toolbar under them look at all the room you will have to work with your image. I almost always have the Layers palette open, but I will only open the other palettes, as I need them.

All Palettes Collapsed Into Icons Except the Layers Palette

This is a pretty radical shift from what most people do, but it makes sense to me. One gripe I see all of the time is how difficult it is to see everything and work most effectively on the image. Hopefully this can help with that problem.

BTW, these are not the only palettes available. To see a complete list you should navigate to the Windows menu. Every palette that is open will have a check beside it. Since everything is now an icon you will not see a check beside any except the bottom three. Those three control some things we will discuss at another time. If you see a palette you would like to add just click on it and it will appear on the workspace. Then you can drag it to where ever you want.

If you have a palette that you want to remove from the workspace you can right click on the tab and select Close from the menu.

Using these tools you can customize the workspace to your liking. At first you probably will not know what you will use the most and what you will absolutely not use. To help you with this there are some pre-defined workspaces and I would start with one of them. There is one called “Photography” that Adobe provides. You may want to start there and then make some adjustments. As you make the adjustments you should save them to a new workspace of your own. To get to the workspaces select the Windows menu and select Workspaces. See below which includes my saved workspace.

Workspaces

You should notice that if you really mess things up all you have to do is select “Reset {Workspace name}” and it will revert back to it’s last saved settings.

There is so much to know about Photoshop. Not knowing how to setup your workspace, or adjust it as things change, can be daunting as anything else. I hope this has helped you get started, or if you have already started maybe it has given you some new ideas on how to improve your workflow.

DSLR’s (digital single lens reflex) cameras are designed to allow you to see, in real time, what the sensor will record.  When you press the shutter release the mirror moves out of the way to allow the light coming through the lens to expose the sensor.  The construction of the system that allows this process starts with the viewfinder.  When you peer through the viewfinder you see the object through the lens, but it is being reflected via several optics. 

First, your eye sees a Pentaprism that bounces a couple of times and directs your view to the mirror.  This mirror sits in front of the shutter and reflects through the lens to the subject (see image below).

Source:  farhek.com

Inside the lens you have several optics as well.  If the lens is a zoom there will be additional optics to allow you to adjust your focal length.  This occurs by allowing you to twist a ring around the barrel of the lens, thus moving one of the optics back and forth in the lens to zoom in and out on the subject.

A second ring around the barrel of the lens allows you to move another optic in the lens to control focus.  This optic also moves back and forth inside the lens and is available regardless if your lens is a zoom or a prime lens (see image below).

Source:  DrBob, SVG by User:Jxjl  via Wikimedia Commons

Finally, inside the lens is the aperture ring.  This controls the amount of light that passes through the lens to expose the sensor by changing the size of the lens opening.  For most current lenses this is controlled on the camera.  However, some lenses have an additional ring on the lens to let you set this on the lens itself.

 The aperture is one of the three pillars of exposure (others are shutter speed and ISO) and it’s important to understand how it works.  This understanding will give you a better idea of the aperture size you want for specific effects.  Whenever you open the aperture to allow for more light you are reducing the amount of focus area in the image.  This focus area is defined as the “depth of field”, or DOF.  Why does it work this way?  Because when you open the aperture you are reducing the amount of area in the “focus cone” (see image below). 

Source:  en.wikiedia.org

Notice in the first image how the dotted line (representing the size of the aperture) goes outside the focus cone (represented by the red line) rather quickly as you look through the lens.  This illustrates a shallow depth of field.  The second image represents a smaller aperture.  See how the area is much more within the focus cone as you look through the lens.

It’s important to note that the focal length of the lens also determines DOF.  Longer lenses will have a narrower focus cone.  Therefore, longer lenses are more susceptible shallower, or smaller, DOF.  So a large aperture on a long lens will be outside the focus cone much more quickly than with a wide lens.  This is why shooting at F2.8 on wide lenses has a larger DOF that F2.8 on longer lenses.

When light comes through the lens and you press the shutter a couple of important things occur.  First, the mirror raises up to expose the sensor.  However, before the sensor is exposed the shutter must be opened.  The shutter is another pillar of exposure.  The length of time it is open is determined by the setting in the camera.

The shutter is actually a two-part mechanism containing two “curtains”.  When the mirror raises up the front curtain begins to open.  When the sensor has been exposed for the proper amount of time (determined by the camera setting) the rear curtain will begin to close.  This timing is perfectly synchronized so that every part of the sensor is exposed the proper amount of time.  For example, for a very slow shutter speed the front curtain may expose the sensor completely before the rear curtain begins to close.  However, for a very fast shutter speed the front curtain may only be partially across the sensor before the rear curtain begins to close (see image below).

Source:  Illustration used with permission from B&H Photo

Notice how the front and rear curtains are moving across the image to expose the baseball to the sensor.  Again, how far apart the front and rear curtains are depends on the shutter speed.

Understanding how the shutter works is very important for shooting with flash.  Every camera has a specific “sync speed” that coordinates the shutter with the flash.  The sync speed is the fastest shutter speed you can shoot and allow the light from the flash to be exposed to the entire sensor.  If you try to use a faster shutter speed the rear curtain will begin to close before the flash has a chance to expose the light to the sensor and you will have a dark band across one side of your exposure.  When you shoot slower that your sync speed (called “dragging the shutter”) the flash will properly expose the flash to the subject and the slower shutter speed will increase exposure to the ambient light giving you a brighter background.  There are ways to shoot faster than your sync speed, but that’s a discussion for another day.

As the light goes through the shutter the photo cells inside the sensor record the light.  The sensor’s computer analyzes the light and stores the resulting image on the memory card.   How the sensor analyzes the light is, in part, determined by the ISO (International Standards Organization) setting in the camera.  This setting tells the sensor how sensitive it will be to the light coming through the shutter.  The higher the ISO setting the more sensitive the sensor is allowing you to shoot in less light.  Your ISO setting is the third pillar of exposure.  It is always available to help you get a proper balance of light.

It’s important to note that when you are setting the ISO to a higher value it means you’re compensating because there is less light in the image.  When there is less light coming through the shutter there are less photons for the sensor to process.  This means that the sensor must interpolate what the missing photons should be and add them to the image.  Doing this is not a perfect science and many times the added photons are brighter or dimmer than the other photons and appear as noise.  As technology moves forward this science is improving and many cameras can shoot at higher ISO’s without noticeable differences.

At the beginning of this post I indicated that I wanted to give you a high level understanding of how cameras and lenses work.  While the discussion may seem like a lot to digest, if you take each topic separately it’s really very simple.  Maybe you knew it but didn’t really understand it.  Hopefully the discussion helped clarified some things.  I hope that if you don’t quite understand it with the first read that you would use it for future reference.

The first things that come to mind are those things that are important in any image.  This includes good exposure, focus, and good composition.  Without these elements it doesn’t matter if your image has the other elements of a good portrait because it’s not going to work anyway.  So for now let's assume you have those and just talk about what else is involved in making a good portrait. 

When shooting a portrait the first thing I think about is the look I want.  Do I want it to be dramatic, romantic, happy, festive, etc.?  This will make a difference in the lighting, the posing, colors, depth of field (DOF), and expression of the subject.  These all have to work together or your portrait will have mixed signals for the mood you are trying to show.  Think about this, it doesn’t make sense for the subject to be smiling or laughing when everything else in the image has a somber mood to it.   

Let’s talk about lighting first.  The idea of any image is to show depth.  As photographers we are trying to make a two dimensional media appear as three dimensional.  The way to do this is with highlights and shadows.  As the image goes from highlights to shadows our brains interpret this as depth.  Think about an individual’s face.  Having highlights on the right cheek that gradually turns to shadow on the left cheek shows that the light is partially blocked by the nose indicating depth. The light we use to show this depth can come from two places.  These are natural light from the sun and artificial light sources.

Natural Light

Natural light is the best light there is.  It shows skin tones in the most natural state and evens the light out across the entire scene.  When I’m on location I always look for natural light first.  The best natural light is when it bounces off of other elements in the scene.  This could be the wall of a building, or the concrete of the sidewalk, or even a reflector that you put on a stand.  Bouncing the light naturally diffuses it making it very soft and perfect for romantic or dreamy moods.  The key with natural light is to be able to see it as it falls on the subject and the scene and to position your subject so the light is directed on the subject in a way that is most pleasing for the mood.

So how do I see natural the light?  Seems like a silly question because when you go outside in the daytime there’s light.  Right?  Yes but photographically you must see the direction of the light.  This is what determines where the shadows and highlights will fall on the image.

There are two primary ways to find the natural light that works well with portraits.  One is to look for a location where the light is being diffused by being narrowed into a smaller area.  This could be a doorway, a window, an archway, an overhang, or just a large opening in a building.  Another place to find light is from reflections such as reflective glass, the side of a building, or even the ground.  Once you discover one of these places put your subject in the area of the light and look for the catch lights in the eyes.  When you see the catchlights you know you have light on the face.  Then just position the subject for a good composition and take the shot.  Always be sure to get light in the eyes.  The eyes are the most important part of a portrait and they must pop.  Even if the eyes are closed they should be well lit.

Bella Schmukal - Image Submission

Shot in Natural Light.  Location a Parking Garage with diffused light on camera right.

Artificial Light

In absence of natural light you must provide your own artificial light.  I could write volumes about lighting your subject, but let’s talk about the basics.  There are three principles of light that you should consider for any scene, particularly portraits.  First is the direction of light.  As you probably know, the direction of light has a direct impact on the mood of the image.  We will expand on that here and talk about the effect of putting the light in different areas around the subject.

Putting the light behind the subject is called “Backlighting”.  The effect of this will tend to put a halo around the subject with the front of the subject being dark because no light is falling on it.  You may want this direction of light to get a silhouetted subject, or you may light the front of the subject as well and use the backlight for accent.

Backlighting added an accent or "glow" around the hair

Side lighting tends to show a more dramatic look and it also brings out texture.  Lighting the subject at 90 degrees can be very powerful, however most side lighting tends to be more of 70 to 80 degrees to add a little light in the front.  All subjective, but the idea is to light one side and let the other side go into shadows.  The degree of shadows depends on how far to the side you have the light.  Side lighting can also be used to add additional drama to another technique.  In the image below I added side light to give the image some more punch.  In this case it didn’t add a lot of drama, but gave it a different look.

Side lighting added punch to the image

Front lighting tends to have very little or no shadows.  This is called “flat lighting” and what you will get when the flash is on your camera.  Since there are minimal shadows you lose the ability to show depth, making your image appear to be two dimensional.  This is why most photographers want you to take your flash off of the camera.   However, there is a time where flat lighting is exactly what you want.  Makeup manufacturers spend a lot of time getting great makeup to look just right.  If you were shooting for an advertisement for makeup the agency would want you to show every bit of the face possible to promote the wonderful product.  To do this, their photographers shoot very flat images.  As a photographer yourself you may want to have your image emulate this look.  I do it all the time.  However, as a rule, flat lighting should probably be avoided for shooting portraits of individuals.

Front Flat Lighting Sometimes Works Well

The only other time you should shoot with flat lighting, as a rule, is when you shoot groups of 3 or more.  This is because any kind of side lighting will cast shadows from some members on other members of the group.  You have probably seen this when you have shot groups, or seen them shot, where the light is coming from the side.  Right?  This could be families, or friends, or sports teams.  You see it all the time in snap shots.  Flat lighting will avoid this problem.

One of the most used methods of lighting for portraiture is what is called “45/45”.  This puts the light at a 45-degree angle from the camera and high enough to point 45-degrees down at the subject.  With this you get a nice inverted triangle below the eye opposite of the light.  This is called “Rembrandt Lighting” after the famous artist that showcased it in all of his portrait paintings.  This lighting also gives you a nice catch light at 2:00 if the light is on the left side of the camera and at 10:00 if the light is on the right side.  If the catch light is not in the right place the inverted triangle will not be correct.   This lighting method is not a must, but is fairly easy and always gives you a very nicely lit portrait.  In the image below notice the Rembrandt triangle under the left eye and the catch lights at 2:00.   

45/45 Lighting

All of these lighting methods I have described have assumed a single light.  Adding more lights to these basic lighting techniques can refine the lighting even more and help you attain your vision.  We’ll talk about adding lights in a later post, but for now we will concentrate on single light setups and move on to other elements of the basics on good portraits.

The second principle of light is the quality of light.  This refers to the softness, or how gradual the light goes from highlights to shadows.  You usually want softer light for the romantic or creamy type image.  It goes especially well with females looking for the beautiful magazine fashion look.  Harder light is usually used to show more drama or texture in the image.  I typically don’t use hard light for my family and female senior portraits, although I do use it for some of my male seniors and athletic posters.

There are two things to think about when creating hard or soft light.  The first thing is the size of the light source in relation to the subject.  Bigger light sources in relation to the subject will be softer than smaller sources.  To test this take an ordinary flash light and shine it close a subject.  Notice how the light looks relative to the highlights and shadows.  Then slowly move it farther away and see how the gradation from highlight to shadow becomes much sharper.  Moving the light source away from the subject makes it a smaller source and creates the sharper light.  This tells us that if we want to soften the light we can move our light source closer to our subject.  Of course, when you do that you will also have to adjust the intensity of the light.

The second concept regarding light quality is that you can soften light by diffusing it.  There are multiple ways to diffuse light.  Bouncing light off of an object is one way.  This could be a wall, a floor, or a reflector (including an umbrella).  As the light hits these and bounces it spreads in all directions creating a nice soft effect.  The other way to diffuse light is to shoot through a diffusion material.  Soft boxes, shoot through umbrellas, Octa boxes, and other modifiers are examples of this.

Jenna Geyman - August 7, 2016

Soft Diffused Light

So to summarize, when you want to soften the light you can choose a bigger light source, or move the light closer to the subject, or bounce the light, or diffuse the light by shooting through a diffusion material.  You can also use a combination of these to make the light even softer.

Finally, the third concept of lighting that is important is the color of light.  Yes, we are talking about white balance.  This is more important in shooting portraits than with landscapes because of the color of skin.  Nothing looks worse than the portrait of a beautiful woman with green skin.  It’s extremely important to get the skin tones right.  My advice is not to shoot portraits with the camera set to Auto White Balance.  This is especially important if you want to display a series of photos in the same setting, like a photo array or collage.  The white balance in this case may not be the same in each image and the skin tones will show it.  Instead, shoot a gray card if you can.  Set your white balance on the camera to a preset like “Sunny” or “Cloudy” and keep it there.  In postproduction, use the gray card to correct your white balance on all of the images in the series.  If you don’t have a gray card image to use in postproduction, you can adjust the white balance in one image the way you like and then set the others to the same white balance so they are consistent.  This will be easier if they all have the same white balance to begin with and is the reason for using a preset instead of Auto White Balance. 

If you are not shooting an array of images and you don’t have a gray card you should still color correct your images, if you want the skin tones to reflect reality.  You can do this in post processing by selecting the White Balance Correction tool (in either Lightroom or Camera Raw, or whatever) and selecting a neutral color in the image.  Neutral colors are any black to white tones that are suppose to be void of any color.  If the white balance is incorrect these tones will have a little tint of color that needs to be removed.  Using the White Balance tool and clicking on these areas will remove that tint.  Color toning your images is always an option and you won’t have to worry as much about white balance, but even if you color tone them it’s always best to start with an image with corrected white balance.  Take the time to get the white balance right.  You’ll thank me for it later.

Posing

I could go on and on about lighting, but let’s move on to posing and expression.  Posing is probably the most difficult part of the process for me.  What I have learned over the past few years to make it easier for me is to learn two or three basic poses and then shoot from different perspectives.  This means shoot the same pose, but shoot full length, ¾ length, and tight head shots.  Then shoot low, shoot a little high and shoot a little left and a little right.  Just be careful that the light is correct for each perspective and that the background still works.  From each pose you should be able to get about 4 to 5 shots of the same pose but are different because of the different perspective.  Learn a pose or two for both a male and female that are standing, one or two sitting, and one or two leaning against something (like a tree or wall).  

Some of the things to look out for when posing are some of the basic rules of photography.  One of these rules states that, “whatever is closest to the camera appears bigger”.  This is especially important in portrait photography.  When I mentioned above that you should shoot high and low you must be aware of the result you will get.  When shooting low I am talking about getting the camera low and shooting up on the subject.  Doing this tends to elongate the body causing the subject to look taller.  This sometimes works well with females to give them longer legs that can look more elegant.  It also can give the subject a more dominant look if posed properly.  This works well with males.

You should also keep this rule in mind when posing the arms and legs.  For example, if you have an arm extended toward the lens be careful that it is not too far away from the main body of the subject.  Notice in the image below how the elbow on camera right is almost as big as his face.   It becomes a dominant force in the image.  The more appropriate pose would be to have him turned a little more toward camera and have him lean his head in a little.  This would put his face and elbow much closer to the same plane causing them to be in a more proper perspective.  It’s a very subtle change, but makes a big difference in the image.

Elbow closer to the camera appears nearly as big as his face

Probably most important for female subjects, is to make sure to slim the body as much as possible by posing them correctly.  You can always take off pounds with the Liquify tool in Photoshop, but over indulgence with that tool becomes obvious and you want them to look like themselves.  I have to admit that I use the Liquify tool on occasion, but I use it very subtly and it’s only to correct posing mistakes (unless I’m doing a composite where anything goes).

One of the best ways to slim the subject is to have them slightly turn toward the right or left of the camera.  This tends to slim the face and body. Ask them to shift their weight to the back foot and to pop that hip.  Then ask them to lean forward slightly.  Remember, the closest thing to the camera appears bigger and you usually want that to be the face.  Posing this way will slim the lower part of the body while emphasizing the face.  You may also ask them to bend the front knee in front of the back leg, or to bring the entire leg in front of the back leg.  This will cause them to turn the hips resulting in a slimmer look.  This is helpful whether you are shooting full length or head shots.  Separating the arms from the body also thins, so you probably want to see some space between the arms and the waist in most cases.  This sounds like a lot, but the key is to turn the body slightly, lean forward, and separate the arms from the body.

Slimming the body is mostly important for females.  With males you have more flexibility.  I definitely shoot slimming poses for males but squarely facing the camera will always give them the broadest look and also a very dominant look.  This is popular with athletes and some of my male seniors.  They like posing in front of their trucks looking “bad”.  Below is an example of this.

Brendan Cockroft - Senior 2017

Posed square to the camera to portray a dominant look

Another important thing to remember with posing is the rule of 2’s.  This rule indicates that any two things (pair of things) on the body should not be on the same plane.  This is referring to eyes, shoulders, hands, feet, etc..  So you should always think about tilting the head slightly, tilting the shoulders, not having the hands doing the same thing, feet separated and pointed differently, etc..  Remembering this helps you to to create interesting images as well as to light the subject to give you dimension.

Rule of 2’s and Space Between Arms and Body

One more thing on posing that isn’t really a rule, but a technique that I like to help slim the body and give it a more elegant look.  When you have the subject turn the face opposite of the body they will tend to look more elegant.  Not necessarily a technique for males, but works well with females.  See the image below for an example of this.

Head turned camera left and body turned camera right has a more elegant look

As with lighting I could go on talking about posing but let’s end this subject with a final word.  It’s extremely important that the subject be relaxed and having fun.  If they are not, the images will reflect it and everyone will know.  The expression and body language will show the tension.  Believe me I have shot my fair share of tense subjects and it’s very obvious.  Do everything you can to connect with the subject to get over this hurdle.  Your images will reflect that.  I usually ask about something in their life and then show some interest in what they say.  My subjects are usually seniors so I ask about the college they are applying to, or what they have planned after they graduate.  Then I ask a lot of questions about that and show some real interest.  This usually loosens them up and they become more relaxed.

It’s also good if you if you have a good wit.  That’s not my personality, but if you can make them laugh they will usually loosen up and even be relaxed on serious shots.  Just be sure if you tell a joke to keep it clean and remember who your audience is.

Color and Depth of Field

Finally let’s talk about color and DOF.  It’s very important to have the color of the background and the color of the clothes on the subject in harmony.  I tell all of my subjects to not wear anything busy or with bright “loud” colors.  These will draw the viewer’s attention away from the subject.  I am usually shooting in places with earthy tones (darker colors) so I usually ask that they wear something similar and have a few changes just in case something clashes.  I explain to them where we are going and what to expect.  They are usually pretty good about matching the environment.  If I am shooting in a studio environment I will let them know the background I plan to use and the best colors that will harmonize with it.

Shallow DOF to Hide Some of the Background

Whether I shoot with a shallow DOF or a broad DOF usually depends on the look I’m going for, but it can also be determined by other factors.  First, I look at the environment.  If there is something I want to include in the image, like a landmark, I’ll usually shoot with a broad DOF.  Imagine being in Paris and having the Eiffel Tower in the background.  Wouldn’t you want the viewer to see it?  On the other hand if there is something I didn’t want in the image, like a construction crane, I may want to shoot with a more shallow DOF to blur it out.

Another reason to shoot with a shallow DOF is to take advantage of the environment or be creative with what you are given.  For example, if you are shooting a street portrait and there are streetlights in the background.  You may want to shoot with a shallow DOF to see the beautiful “bokeh” of the lights.  This is usually better late in the evening and you may need a flash to light up the subject.  Just be sure that the bokeh is not over powering and becomes the subject of the image.

Summing it Up

So, we have talked about some very basic concepts.  We talked about how to find natural light and then how to use its direction to light your subject in various ways.  Then we talked about adding artificial light and the three principles (direction, quality, and color) that are important for good lighting of the subject.  Then finally, we discussed posing and some of the principles to think about to have your subject look most pleasing.  We also talked briefly about using depth of field to include or remove objects in the environment, or use it to add a creative look to the background while emphasizing the subject.

To bring these all together let’s discuss my approach to shooting a portrait.

1. The first thing I do is to visualize the image by evaluating the environment and determining the mood of the portrait.  If I am doing a studio session this is done well ahead of the shoot, but if it’s on location it could happen at the time of the shoot.  I usually try to shoot at locations I know or scout the location in advance so this is more predetermined, but sometimes it a little ad hoc.
2. Once the environment is analyzed and the mood determined I determine my camera settings.  I always try to shoot at ISO 100 and the aperture is determined by the DOF I want to use.  Remember DOF is determined by either creativity, or something in the environment that I either want to show or hide.  Once I know my ISO and Aperture, I can determine my Shutter Speed.  I envision the shot I want and set the shutter speed for that exposure.
   • It's important to note that DOF can also be affected by the focal length of the lens, but that's a discussion for another time.
   • Also of importance to note is that if the resulting shutter speed is too slow (I almost never shoot a portrait slower that 1/30) I may have to make concessions and increase the aperture or ISO.
3. With the background exposed the way I want I can now focus on lighting the subject.  So I put the light(s) where I want it for the proper lighting technique and measure the light.  The light should be exposed for the same aperture as the aperture set in the camera.  For example, if I want to shoot at F-4.0 then I need to set the light to the proper power to expose the subject at F-4.0.
4. Now with the flash and background exposed properly I will usually shoot a gray card to use in post processing to assure the white balance is correct.  I try to always have the camera’s white balance set to either sunny or flash.
5. Now I am ready to shoot the image.  All of the lighting and camera settings should be very close to where I want them so I can focus on posing the subject.   However, I usually take a test shot to make sure.  Sometimes I will need to tweak the flash settings, but I NEVER change the settings on the camera unless I decide I want a different look or mood.  Then I go back to Step 1 above and the subject can relax.

These steps are roughly what I do for every shoot.  Some are more extensive, especially if I use multiple lights, or we are trying to do something unusual.  You should also notice that these steps did not include shooting in natural light.  The difference is that in analyzing the environment I find the direction of the light and determine how the subject must be placed in the scene so they are lit in the most pleasing way.  With this I can determine my DOF and set the camera for the proper aperture and shutter speed.  Then I can move on to Step 4 and 5.  Sometimes I shoot the scene without the subject to be sure I have the environmental look want. 

Closing

I truly hope this has helped you think about how to approach shooting portraits.  Please understand that these are only suggestions and there are many perspectives on this subject.  Take these for what they are.  It's perfectly OK to break the rules some of the time.  They are really just guidelines.  Hopefully, there are some nuggets that you can take to improve your images.

There are so many subjects I didn’t talk about, including composition, distracting objects (trees growing out of the head), avoid bright areas in the image, etc..  My goal here was to discuss the most important basics regarding good portraits that I thought would help the most.  Visualizing what you want is probably the most important part of shooting any image.  By visualizing the image you will better know the lighting, the colors, and the camera settings required to achieve it.  Ad hoc portraits are sometimes successful, but planned portraits have a much better chance of succeeding.

First, let’s talk about the color of light.   You probably know about white balance but we should include it in the discussion.  It can be particularly important with flash because of the possibility of mixed colors of light.  Your flash is probably daylight balanced.  Most are.  This means the color of light coming from the flash is probably around 5,500 Kelvin.  However, what color is the ambient light where you are shooting.  Chances are that it’s not the same as the flash.  However, this is probably OK as long as it’s not too much different.  A big color range in light could make your image look a little strange.  If this happens you may want to put a gel on the light to match the ambient and then adjust your camera to the correct white balance.

The second principle we should talk about is the direction of the light.  Where the light is coming from can make a huge impact on the mood of the image.  This is true whether it is coming from a natural source or from your flash.  The difference is that you can control the flash a little easier.  For example, backlight will put a glow on the subject and cause it to be somewhat of a silhouette.  This look has a totally different feel to it than if it were lit any other way.  Side lit images will give you more contrast and tend to be more dramatic.  For what I call traditional shots where you want to see all of the front of the subject you typically want some sort of front lighting.  Most of the time you want to avoid having the light in the same direction of the camera.  When you place the light in the same direction of the camera you basically remove the possibility of shadows.  Shadows show depth and without depth the image is flat.

Source:  Pixelogist

Finally, we should talk about the quality of light.  Quality of light is measured by how quickly the transition from highlight to shadow is.  When the transition is very short the light is very harsh, but when the transition is very gradual the light is considered very soft.  So if you’re looking to soften the light how can you do it?  There are basically two things that affect the intensity of the light.  First, is the size of the light source.  The bigger the light source in relation to the subject the softer the effect.  So if you move the light closer to the subject, it becomes much bigger and, therefore, softer.  Second, is diffusing the light.  This can be done by placing diffusers in front of the light, but can also be done by bouncing the light.  Bouncing the light is the primary method used by natural light photographers.  They often use buildings, or walls, or concrete sidewalks to bounce light from the sun.

Now that we have talked about light in general, let’s talk about some topics that are particularly important when shooting with flash.  First, I think it’s important to understand how camera settings affect the light for determining exposure.

One thing you should always keep in mind is that Shutter Speed controls the ambient light while Aperture controls the light of the flash.  It can be a difficult concept to get at first, but it really makes sense when you think about it.  Consider that the light from the flash only travels so far and when you have it correctly measured on the subject the background tends to be unaffected.  So changing the power of the flash to better light the background really doesn’t make sense.  The flash also only last for a specific duration, so changing the speed of the shutter doesn’t really play a part in how much it exposes the image.  Conversely, changing the shutter speed to change the light on the subject doesn’t make sense because while it will change the exposure on the subject it will also completely change the exposure of the background where the light from the flash can’t travel.  This is why you first expose for the background and then set the light to match that exposure on your subject.

Although shutter speed doesn’t really affect the light on the subject very much you need to pay attention to it when shooting with flash.  This is because your camera has a specific shutter speed that you should use when using a flash.  You should use this speed because the camera and flash must be in sync so that the flash fires when the shutter is open and exposing the sensor.  If the flash fires at a different time the sensor cannot see the light and will not be able to expose the image properly.  The term used to describe this is called “Sync Speed”.  In short, it is the fastest shutter speed you can set your camera and have the flash expose the sensor properly.

How does sync speed work?  To understand this you must understand how shutters work.  Shutters work on a system of curtains.  Think of a show on stage.  The curtain opens, the show occurs, and then the curtain closes.  Unique to the camera, however, is that we have two curtains and they both move in the same direction.  Using the show analogy again, assume the curtain opens from top to bottom.  When the front curtain opens completely, the show begins.  After the show, a second curtain closes from top to bottom and the exposure is complete.   When your camera shutter speed is very fast, these curtains are very close together.  The front curtain is not opened completely before the rear curtain begins to close.  This is the only way the camera can expose the sensor properly.  Imagine a shutter speed of 1/1000.  When the first part of the sensor has been exposed for 1/1000 the rear curtain must begin to close.  This is the only way the sensor can be exposed properly (see image below).

Source:  Illustration used with permission from B&H Photo

There are also two different ways that the camera can be set for syncing with the flash.  What we have talked about is what is considered “front curtain” sync.  This is where the flash fires when the front curtain is completely open.  Most cameras default with this setting, but have the ability for you to change it to “rear curtain sync”.  With this setting the flash fires just before the rear curtain begins to close.  So what’s the difference?  If you are shooting at the camera’s sync speed there is really no difference because the rear curtain will begin to close as soon as the front curtain has completed the opening process.  However, while you can’t shoot faster than the camera’s sync speed you can shoot slower (called “dragging the shutter”).  This is because the light from the flash will be exposed on the sensor as long as your shutter speed is at or slower than the sync speed.  If you drag the shutter with flash and use front curtain sync any motion in the image will have motion blur in front rather than behind the action.  Rear curtain sync will give you a more natural trail of motion when you drag the shutter.  This may be the only time you should consider changing the setting to rear curtain sync.

While shooting with flash may limit your shutter speed there are ways to over come this.  When shooting with flash the conditions may be that the background light is too bright, or you may want to record something that is in motion.  Your sync speed may be too slow to allow you to get the desired exposure.  One way to over come this is with the use of Neutral Density (ND) filters.  These filters are placed over the end of the lens to darken the scene.  These are kind of like sunglasses for your camera.  They come in different stop increments and are designed specifically to slow your shutter speed.   So if your sync speed is 1/250 and you want to shoot at 1/1000 your can effectively do this by putting a 2-stop ND filter on the end of the lens.  It darkens the scene by two stops allowing you to shoot at 1/250 and get the exposure you want. 

Source:  Wikipedia

This method is good for darkening the scene, but not for shooting action with a flash.  For that you need to use “High Speed Sync” (HSS).  This is a function of your camera and your flash.  Both must be capable.  Most high-end cameras these days allow you to shoot with HSS, but not all flashes do.  It’s usually an extra feature you have to pay for.  However, having this capability can be very useful.

When you set this on the camera, you don’t ever have to change it again.  Even if you are not shooting with HSS.  However, on the flash it’s usually one of the modes you will select each time you shoot.  This is good because HSS has a downside that you must consider.  It takes a lot of power.  This means two things.  First, you will drain your battery faster than usual.  Second, the output will not be as strong.  So if you are shooting through a modifier, you may not have enough power for a proper exposure.  Especially if you are using speed lights.

How does HSS work?  It’s pretty simple from a conceptual perspective, but very complicated from an engineering perspective.  The camera and flash must be synchronized so that the flash can fire multiple times as the small slit between the front and rear curtains move across the sensor assuring a complete exposure to the flash.  The faster the shutter speed, the smaller the slit, and the more times the flash must fire.  These multiple flashes are imperceptible to the naked eye, but are seen as a slightly longer flash than normal.   These many flashes are the reason HSS takes so much power.       

So now that we know these techniques what’s better, speed lights or studio strobes?  Well it depends.  Each has its own advantages and disadvantages.  The biggest advantage for speed lights is their mobility.  They are obviously smaller and lighter.  Not only are they more mobile, but they are getting so smart and powerful.  Even with more power their biggest downside is the lack of power when compared to studio strobes.  Battery life for speed lights is not near as great and the output is much less.  If you are in a situation where you need extra light you may have to use multiple speed lights to get the same exposure of a studio strobe.  There are brackets you can purchase for holding several speed lights on a single stand designed to give you a more powerful light source.  This may be especially necessary if you are using a modifier that reduces the light by 1, 2, or maybe 3 stops.  Using several speed lights to accomplish the task may actually be more expensive than using the studio strobes.

Studio strobes on the other hand are much more powerful and usually do not use as much battery as speed lights.  Many studio strobes also have HSS capability allowing you to shoot action images.  They also may or may not have built in battery packs and radio triggers that you would have to purchase separately and setup separately on location.  The major downside to studio strobes is the size and weight.  Carrying these around on location can be a huge burden.  Especially if you do not have an assistant.

Source:  Photography-on-the.net

Finally, let’s talk about how to set the power of your lights.  It doesn’t matter what kind of lights you have the amount of output is determined by the power setting on the flash.  This setting is incremented by stops.  As you probably know each stop of exposure either doubles or halves the amount of light for your exposure.  With that in mind the power setting on your flash goes from full power, to half power, to quarter power, to eighth power, etc..  Each increment is half or double the amount of light as the previous setting, depending on which direction you are changing the setting.

So if I take a shot and the flash is too much I can change the setting to cut the light in half.  Conversely, if there is not enough light I can double the light for a brighter exposure.  You can also move your light closer or farther from the subject, but that’s a discussion for another time.  Here we are assuming the light says stationary.

Is this the answer?  Just move the power up and down until I get something I like.  Well, you can do that, but there are a couple of ways to get it right the first time (or at least close to right the first time).  First, you can use a light meter.  Many photographers swear by them, while others never use them.  I always use them in a studio setting, but rarely use them on location.  Light meters are very accurate, but many photographers have used their lights so much they tend to know where to set the lights and the setting for the look they want.  Then they just tweak it a little or even bracket the shots.

The second way to get the light right the first time is to use the Guide Number for the flash (GN).  Using the GN makes it easy to get you very close to the proper exposure immediately.  Every flash has a guide number.  This number is an indication of the flash output under certain conditions.  These conditions include an ISO of 100, the flash set at full power, and if you are using a speed light (or a light that zooms) a specific zoom setting (35mm for my Nikons).  So if you are shooting under these conditions you can easily determine the distance the light needs to be from the subject and at what aperture to set your camera.  Here’s how it works.  Divide your GN by the distance from your subject and it gives you the proper aperture to set your camera with your flash set at full power.

Source:  Shortcourses.com

Now it’s pretty typical that you wouldn’t shoot at the exact conditions, but if you can keep the ISO on the camera and the zoom on the flash constant the rest is pretty easy.  For example, the GN on my Nikon SB-910 is 111.5.  So if I divide my GN by 10 feet I get 11.15 for an aperture of F-11.  So if I put my flash at 10 feet from the subject and at full power, zoomed at 35mm with my aperture at F-11 and ISO at 100, I should get a good exposure.  So what if I want to shoot at F-2.8.  I can do that a couple of ways, but one way is to leave everything the same except the flash power.  Changing my aperture from F-11 to F-2.8 is adding 4 stops of light.  If I change my flash power from full power to 1/16 power I am reducing the light from the flash by 4 stops.  Therefore, I should have exactly the same exposure with a much narrower depth of field.

Instead of changing the power on the flash to adjust the flash you could also move the light.  The Inverse Square Law (also a topic for another time) says that if you halve the distance of the light to the subject you pick up two stops of light.  Conversely, if you double the distance you lose two stops of light.  So in the example above I could have moved the light from 10 feet of the subject to 20 feet from the subject and lost two stops and then lowered the power by two stops to ¼ power and maintained the same exposure.

One thing to note about this method is that when you use modifiers (like soft boxes or umbrellas) you will lose 1 – 3 stops of light depending on the number of diffusers (soft boxes sometimes use both an inner baffle and an outer diffuser).   Also if your are bouncing light off of a wall or a reflector you should estimate the distance to the bounce object and then to the subject and then subtract about a stop of light for diffusion.

All these numbers!!!  I hate Math!!!  As you may have expected there is an alternative.  One of the most popular ways of shooting with flash, especially with speed lights is with using Through the Lens (TTL).  This is an automatic mode where the flash determines the amount of flash to expose on the subject.

To use TTL both your camera and flash must support and be set to this method.  Most flashes now support TTL, but the ones that do are usually a little more expensive.  You probably won’t find it on low dollar budget flashes.  You must also have a triggering system (ex. Pocketwizard or Radio Poppers) that can send and receive the proper information to and from the flash.  Once you set your camera to TTL you don’t have to change it regardless of whether you are using it or not.  Then when you are ready, set your flash to the TTL mode.

Source:  Cloud9Design

So, how does it work?  When all of the settings for TTL are in place you only need to worry about your exposure settings on the camera.  You still must set your shutter speed to the sync speed or slower, but your ISO, flash zoom, and aperture can be whatever you want.  When you press the shutter your flash transmitter sends a signal to the flash for a preflash on the subject.  The flash fires a preflash that basically bounces a signal on to the subject and back to the flash indicating the amount of light on the subject.  The flash then fires the proper amount of light to light the subject depending on the aperture your camera is set on. 

The major problem with TTL is that the light falling on the subject is reflective, just like the meter in the camera.  Therefore, it doesn’t always get it right.  However, there is the capability to use a flash compensation.  This setting is much like the exposure compensation you have available when shooting in one of the Auto exposure modes (ex. Shutter Priority).  With this you can approach it much like shooting with manual flash.  Just let TTL get you close and then tweak the setting with the flash compensation.   

Source:  SLR Lounge

To sum up, how should you approach shooting with flash?  First, determine the look you are going for.  Lighting direction, lighting quality, and DOF are the things to think about first.  You really can’t think about camera or flash settings until you have determined these things.  Once you decide these things you can then worry about the mechanical side.

After determining look you want the first thing you should do is expose for the background.  Take a couple of shots and make sure the background is exposed the way you want.  This exposure should include the aperture setting you want and need for the flash.  The idea is to get the ambient light exposed the way you want and then use the flash to expose the subject to match.

If you’re using TTL there are no worries for setting the power on your flash, otherwise, you can use the GN number mentioned above for that.  Take some shots with the flash.  You should be very close to where you want to be.  Make some tweaks if necessary either by changing the flash power, or by using flash compensation if you are using TTL.  You should not have to change your shutter speed or ISO.  If you do the background exposure will change and you have already set it the way you want.

If you think of F-stops, or stops as they are usually referred to, as "measuring units" then you're already well on your way to getting it.  The problem with most is understanding how to use these measurements.  How much you make changes to exposure is measured in stops.  Any time you change exposure to double the amount of light you are exposing to the sensor it means you are adding one stop of light.  Conversely, if you change exposure where you are halving the amount of light it means you are removing one stop of light.  Anything in between are fractional stops.  Basically there are three ways to control exposure with your camera.  These are shutter speed, aperture, and ISO.  So let's talk about F-stops for each of these and then we'll bring them all together.

First we'll talk about shutter speed.  It's probably the one everyone can understand the easiest.  If you change your shutter speed from 1/500 to 1/250 then you are adding one stop of light.  This is because your shutter is open twice as long.  On the other hand if you change it from 1/500 to 1/1000 then you are removing one stop of light because you are leaving it open half as long.  Pretty simple.  Right?

Understanding stops with ISO is also fairly simple.  For example, if I want to change my ISO from 200 to 400 I am making my sensor one stop more sensitive to light allowing it to expose where the light is not as bright.  So, of course, this means that if I change it from 200 to 100 then the sensor will be one stop less sensitive to light.  Again, pretty simple.  Every time you double or halve the number you are changing the exposure by a stop.

The more difficult one to understand is aperture.  The measurement of these stops have a sliding scale that's a little difficult at first to understand.  Just like everything else, though, once you get it it's pretty simple.  As you probably know, the aperture is the opening of the hole in the lens that exposes light to the sensor. The sliding scale for measuring stops of light for aperture is the same for all lenses but where the scale starts and where it stops depends on your lens.  Theoretically scale goes from 1 to about 44 and beyond.  However, while some lenses exist on this scale they're not the norm, especially for 35mm cameras.  In reality, the scale goes from about 1.4 to 32.  With this in mind there are two aspects of aperture that are somewhat difficult to grasp at first.  One is that the lower the number the more open the aperture is to expose light to the sensor and the higher the number the less open it is.  It's a little counter intuitive but once you get it you're good.  The second difficulty is how to count stops of light for aperture.  Again, it's fairly simple once you understand how it works.  Think of a number line that starts at 1.4 and the second number is 2.0.  Starting with 1.4 and moving to the right, every other number on the number line is double the number you started with.  So 1.4 goes to 2.8 (the 3rd number on the number line), while 2.0 goes to 4.0, (the 4th number on the number line).  If you continued you would get a number line like this:  1.4, 2.0, 2.8. 4.0, 5.6, 8.0, 11.0, 16.0, 22.0.  So moving to the right every other number is double and moving to the left every other number is halved.  Notice it's not always exact.  For example, doubling 5.6 should yield 11.2, but the correct number is 11.0.  Just to clarify the concept of aperture F-stops, if we start at 2.0 and close down the aperture by 2 stops we would be at 4.0.  That's two slots (or stops) down the number line.

Here's a nice little image to help explain this
(courtesy of absolutelyfreeonlineclasses.com)

OK, so now that we know how to measure stops with each of these how do we use them together?  It's fairly simple.  If you change one of these by a stop you must change one or both of the other controls by a stop in order to maintain the same exposure.  For example, if I decide I want to narrow the hole in the lens (aperture) by a stop then I must compensate and add a combination of one stop from the shutter speed and ISO.  You may ask, "Won't my camera tell me when there's a good exposure?  Why do I need to know how much to change one of the other controls?  I'll just change it until the camera tells me there is a good exposure."  While this is true if you are shooting in one of the automatic modes, it's still a good idea to know what will happen when you make a change.  For example, if you're using shutter priority mode with an exposure of 1/500, F5.6, at ISO 400, and you increase your shutter by one stop (1/1000) then you must bring in more light.  Shutter priority will increase your aperture size to F2.8 in this case.  Increasing your aperture by one stop may not give you the desired result.  In this case it is narrowing your depth of field and you may not be able to maintain focus on your subject.  So you may want to increase your ISO instead.  Knowing how the changed aperture will affect your image and how much you must change the ISO is helpful to understanding how your exposure will be affected.  This increased knowledge will definitely help you in achieving your desired results.

When I think of this subject I usually think of Zach Arias.  This guy is an amazing photographer from Atlanta.  He did a workshop on Creative Live a few years ago that I purchased and watch from time to time.  It's called "The Working Photographer".  It covers many topics but one of them is the concept discussed above.  He calls it "The Reciprocals".  It's called this because when you change a component of exposure (shutter speed, aperture, ISO) you must change one or both of the other components in the opposite direction.  To do that you must understand F-stops so you know how much to change them to maintain a good exposure.

So if you're a casual shooter, this topic may not be important.  However, if you're aspiring to become a professional, or just want to shoot better images, then it is very critical that you understand this.  It's fairly simple and the more you shoot, the easier it will become.  By not understanding this concept you are taking chances and basically guessing at what to do for your desired result.

Hope this helps and happy shooting.  

A few months ago I joined the Professional Photographers Association (PPA).  One of the many benefits of this association is a forum called The Loop.  The purpose of this forum is to exchange ideas and opinions regarding photography.

There are many topics.  Some interest me and some don't.  There was one recently regarding what determines a Professional Photographer.  This quickly became a hot topic and some fairly heated exchanges (I stayed out of it, thank goodness).  The individual that began the topic suggested that there were some fairly determinable standards that can be used to measure this.  These standards may include ones ability to understand concepts such as light and how to control it, how Aperture, Exposure, and ISO work together, etc..  Most of them were, by default, qualities required to be a good photographer.

Many opinions began to come into the forum and most were opposed to using such pragmatic standards for determining a professional.  Most were trying to indicate the importance of an artistic ability that just can't be measured with a standard.  This really caused a passionate reaction from the individual that posted the topic.  He just couldn't understand why you could measure some professions, but not the photography profession.  He mentioned a certified electrician as an example.

Someone posted that trying to resolve this was like trying to determine which religion is best.  I totally agree.  Whether you are a professional is a matter of opinion and everybody has one.  So should there be specific standards to be reached for this determination?  Someone I respect once told me that a successful photographer needs to use both the left brain and the right brain.  The left brain is the more pragmatic side while the right brain is the more artistic side.  There should be a good balance.  Just because you know technically how to use your camera doesn't mean that you can create a good image.  Conversely, you may know what you want as an end result, but if you don't know how to create it you'll never get what you envisioned.

If I'm certified does that make me a professional?  The certification process and subsequent designation certainly shows you have the qualifications.  The written exam can reflect your understanding of the photographic process (technical side).  The required submission of images to be judged by other professionals also indicates you have attained important skills (artistic side).  This could be a good way for a young  photographer (young as far as photography experience) to advertise themselves as professional.

Like I said, everyone has an opinion and here is mine.  Professionalism can be reflected in many ways.  Just handling yourself in a professional manner can go along way to having others perceive you as a professional.  This means treating your customers or clients with the respect they deserve.  Make them feel comfortable that you are a professional and that you will provide them with what they need.  Second, provide a professional service.  This means, from start to finish, provide a professional work flow.  It starts with how they find you all the way through the follow up after you have delivered the product.  It should be both easy for the customer and profitable for you.  If you do this in a professional way you will have many return customers and networking will grow your business.  Finally, provide a professional result.  By default this requires a mix of the right and left brain as well as a good understanding of all of the standards suggested by the individual in the PPA forum.  This seems obvious to me and there doesn't need to be a defined list of what those standards are.  If you don't know how to control light you're not going to be a good photographer and your professional image will be diminished.

You don't have to make your living as a photographer in order to be a professional photographer although you probably do if you reflect professionalism the way I describe above.  Just because your livelihood comes from doing something different than than a photographer doesn't mean you can't be a professional as well.  You also don't have to be certified, although if you are you will possess the foundation to make it happen and it gives customers and clients a measure of your capabilities.  These are just tools that help you as a professional.  They don't make you a professional.

Finally just because you have a $5,000 camera (no brainer I know), a business license for photography, a website or Instagram page, and sell images on your website, it doesn't mean you are a professional photographer.  It's how you are perceived that makes you a professional.  These things may contribute, but it is all about perception.

Again, all of this is my opinion.  You may totally disagree and I can accept that.  Everyone is entitled to see things differently.

Happy shooting.

Most cameras now days give you several options for allowing it to determine exposure for you.  This is a pretty hot topic for many professionals and as you would expect there are about as many opinions as there are automatic modes.  As usual I'll give you my opinion.  Doesn't make it right but hopefully it will give you something to think about.

Professionals that shoot in manual mode usually take issue with the camera determining any of the aspects of exposure.  To them it removes their decision making and, therefore, control over how light is measured.  After all, the camera is just a computer with it's pragmatic rules for how to see the light and as a result set the components of exposure.  There are many  situations where the camera gets it wrong.  It can't always know what your intentions were.  A back lit portrait is a good example.  In full automatic mode the computer in the camera will look to determine the exposure of the entire image.  Therefore, all of the light spilling in from the background will tell the computer that the image is well lit and reduce the amount of light on to the sensor.  This will result in a dark subject in the foreground.  The computer did it's job but yielded an undesirable result.

This sounds like a testimonial to always shoot in manual mode, however, my opinion is that there are very valid times to use some of the automatic modes and many professionals agree with me.  When shooting in an automatic mode you must do so with a good understanding of what the camera is doing so you can make adjustments in particular circumstances.  I call this semi manual mode and I will explain in a moment.  First, let's discuss the automatic modes.

I cannot think of a situation where full automatic mode makes sense for my photography.  This is because it takes total control out of my hands.  This means it removes any creativity I may want for the image and I am at the mercy of the programmers that designed the camera computer.  I may get good exposure, but it's not my image, it's the computer's.  That being said, I can think of many situations where I can use some of the semi manual modes (ex. Shutter Priority, AV Mode, Auto White Balance, and Automatic ISO).  Let's talk about each one individually.

Shutter Priority mode is where you dial in the shutter speed you want and then let the camera determine the appropriate Aperture to get a good exposure.  When I shoot sports I usually shoot in Shutter Priority automatic mode.  I want to be sure that I stop the action but can't shoot in manual mode because the light is constantly changing.  The Aperture doesn't matter and is usually fairly wide by default.  In my case, I shoot high school football from evening into the night in a stadium with fairly poor lighting.  The end zone lighting is worse than at mid field so rather than constantly changing my Aperture I use this automatic mode.

Almost all of my sports images are shot in Shutter Priority mode

Portraits are a different story for me.  If I'm in studio I always shoot in manual mode.  Since I use strobes or constant lights I have complete control over the light.  This allows me to set my shutter speed (sync speed) and then I can be creative with my Aperture and ISO.  By the way I always us an incident light meter in the studio.  It's much more accurate than the camera meter.

I usually shoot differently if I'm not in the studio.  For these types of portraits I usually shoot in Aperture Priority or AV Mode.  This is where I dial in the Aperture I want to use and let the camera determine the shutter speed.  I use this mode because depth of field is the most important aspect of these shoots.  If the light isn't changing a lot I may switch to manual mode, but usually not.  I'm OK with the camera determining the shutter speed as long as I keep an eye on what the camera determines is appropriate.  If I allow the shutter speed to get too low there will be the probability that there will be camera shake resulting in a soft image.  I like this mode too because the camera computer will determine the exact exposure which may be in fractional stops.  For example the computer may decide an appropriate shutter speed of 1/425, where I can't actually dial that in manually.  I also use this mode for landscapes.  Again, I am most concerned with depth of field because I want foreground, middle ground, and background to all be in perfect focus so I want a very broad depth of field.  Since I shoot these primarily on a tripod I don't really care about shutter speed.  Unless, of course, it's a windy day and I don't want blurry trees or grass.

Shot in partial sun in Aperture Priority (AV) Mode

Almost every photographer you will talk to will take a stance against using Automatic White balance.  However, there are times when I use it effectively.  I use this only when I am forced to and it's when the light is constantly changing.  This may be with landscapes where cloud cover comes and goes or shooting concerts or indoor events where there are spot lights and ever changing color filters being used.  However, if the color of light is pretty constant I will try to either take a custom white balance with my Expo Disc or use one of the presets on the camera.  Presets are usually better than automatic but not always.  Also, if you shoot in Raw you can update the white balance after the fact.  It's just a pain and can really be time consuming.  The bottom line is don't use it unless you have to.

Using the automatic ISO mode is something I didn't get into until recently.  ISO is usually one of the last adjustments photographers think about, especially the amateur or enthusiast.  I think this is because it's not really thought of as a creative tool like the others.  One way to use Auto ISO creatively is to allow your camera to determine the ISO with limits while you manually set your shutter speed and Aperture.  What do I mean by this?  The Auto ISO mode allows you to limit the high end ISO amount that you will allow the camera to make when adjusting that value.   For example, if you're not comfortable with an ISO over 1600 you can set the limit for the Auto ISO at that value.  The computer in the camera will then automatically determine exposure and adjust your ISO not to exceed 1600. The setting also allows you to give it a starting point, such as ISO 400.  Therefore, in this example the computer will give you the lowest ISO possible between 400 and 1600.  Most high end cameras now days shoot acceptable images up to 1600, especially if you're only planning on using it online, or not expecting to print it bigger than 8 X 10.

My reference to using these in a semi manual way was meant to describe how you can make adjustments to what the camera determines is a perfect exposure.  High end as well as some mid level cameras will include what is called "Exposure Compensation".  While in an automatic mode this setting allows you to adjust what the camera has automatically set.  For example, while in Aperture Priority mode you can use the exposure compensation to change what the camera determines is the perfect setting for shutter speed.  However, you must be aware that the overall exposure will change.  So if the camera determines the shutter speed should be 1/500 and you set the exposure compensation to change it by -1 stop, then your shutter speed has now changed to 1/250 and thus the overall light is reduced by one stop.  I use this frequently when shooting outdoor portraits to darken the sky and make it a deeper blue.  Then I use speed lights to lighten the subject.  Again, I like this because it can determine fractional stops that I cannot directly dial in myself.

Shot in Aperture Priority (AV) mode with -.3 Exposure Compensation

to darken the back ground

The bottom line to me is that it really doesn't matter if you use manual mode or an automatic mode as long as you know what is going on and take measures to get what you want.  In my opinion, just because you shoot in manual mode doesn't make you a professional.  Conversely, if you shoot in an automatic mode doesn't mean you aren't a professional.  It's the final result that matters.  How you get there is up to you.

Happy shooting.

Picture of my granddaughter. One of my favorite first studio shots.

Shot in studio using an incident light meter to measure exposure

Just about everyone can relate to shutter speed.  You see amazing images of hummingbirds shot at 1/5000, or faster, that stops the motion of their little wings.  You see race cars speeding around the track at 200 miles an hour that are stopped using a fast shutter speed.  You also see amazing landscape images where the waterfall looks like silk or the lake looks very smooth and glassy.  This effect is due to slower shutter speeds allowing the motion to blur.  In short, shutter speed is how long the shutter remains open to allow light to expose on the sensor.  Think of shutter speed as how you will deal with motion in the image.  As indicated above, if you want to stop motion you need a faster shutter speed, but to blur motion you will need a slower speed.

The second aspect of exposure is Aperture.  This concept is a little harder to grasp but still fairly simple once you get it.  Aperture is basically how big the hole is in your lens that is letting the light into your camera.  The bigger the hole the more light is being exposed on the sensor.  So how should I use Aperture to create amazing images?  There is a concept called "Depth of Field" (DOF) that is important when thinking about Aperture.  DOF is the area, or plane along your image, that is in focus once you have focused on your subject.  For example, let's say you are shooting a portrait outdoors.  You decide to open up your Aperture as big as it will go to let in as much light as you can.  Now you focus on your subject.  As a result, you will have a very narrow DOF.  This means most of the area in front of your subject and most of the area behind your subject will be out of focus, leaving a very narrow area in focus around the subject. Conversely, if you close down your Aperture to reduce the light you will have a much broader DOF and much more of your image will be in focus.  This concept is how photographers capture those amazing portraits where the subject is in focus and the rest of the image is blurred.

Back lit image with speed light to light the subject

Finally, the third aspect of exposure is ISO (International Standards Organization).  If you were around in the film days you will probably understand this a little easier.  Basically, ISO is the sensor's sensitivity to light.  In the film days it was how sensitive the film was to light.  The more sensitive it is the less light will be required for exposure.  For example, an ISO set at 200 requires less light than an ISO set at 400.  So why should I care?  Shouldn't I just set it at the highest ISO allowed?  Well the answer is that the higher the ISO the more potential for noise, or grain.  In fact, the highest setting will most assuredly introduce grain into the image.  However, that may be OK.  It just depends on your use of the image. Usually it's best to have the ISO at the lowest setting that still allows you to have a good exposure.

Now that you understand what the three components of good exposure are let's talk about how they work together.  A perfect exposure is the combination of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO where the three are used in unison to create the image.  The length of time light is exposed to the sensor, the amount of light that is sent through the lens, and the sensitivity setting of the sensor can be measured to obtain a good exposure.  Typically this is accomplished with your camera's light meter.  Once a good combination of these three settings is obtained the camera alerts you that you will have a good exposure. It's up to you to be sure that the combination of these settings will reflect the desired result.

The following discussion regarding how the components work together assumes that you are shooting in manual mode with your camera, but you certainly do not have to.  It's just a little easier to explain how everything fits together.  There is and will always be differing opinions on whether a photographer should shoot in manual mode or one of the automatic modes.  That's a topic for another discussion.

The first thing you should ever think about before shooting an image is what you are trying to accomplish.  Then you should determine which of the three components is most important.  For example, if you're shooting a sporting event you may decide that the shutter speed is the most important.  On the other hand, if you are shooting a portrait you may determine that Aperture is more important.  ISO should only be considered as most important if you are shooting in low light or if you want to introduce noise in the image to give it a more retro look.  Otherwise, a low setting is always preferable.  Once you decide which of these three is most important for your situation you can set your camera to the desired setting for that component.  For example, you may want to set your shutter speed to 1/1000 for a sporting event.  Next, you have to set one or both of the other two components, Aperture and ISO in this case, to a setting where the camera alerts you that a good exposure will be obtained.  

Continuing with the example above, let's further say the sporting event is outdoors and at night where the lights may not be so good.  Since the shutter speed is fairly fast you may not be letting in enough light.  Therefore, you will need to compensate with your Aperture and/or ISO.  Opening up your Aperture all the way may not be desirable, or may not give you enough light.  As a result, you may need to increase your ISO to make the sensor more sensitive to the light you have.  Again, once you have a good combination of the three the camera's light meter will alert you that you have a good exposure. 

We rarely get snow in Texas. This image was taken about a mile from our house just outside of Dallas. Looks fairly rural, but it right in the middle of a very urban community.

Snowy landscape shot with a slow shutter speed on a tripod

This discussion could go on with multiple examples, but I think you get the point.  Determine what you want to accomplish, then adjust the component to drive that result, and finally adjust the other two components until you get a good exposure.  It seems really simple, but can get fairly complicated if the adjustments of the other two components yield undesirable results.  For example, if you want a very broad depth of field and close down your Aperture you are not letting in much light.  To compensate you may have to let more light in by slowing your shutter.  If you slow it too much you may not be able to hand hold the camera without having blurry results.  This is the type of thing you need to watch out for.  If slowing the shutter is not an option you must consider raising the ISO, or narrowing your depth of field.

Hope this helps those of you that have not been exposed (pun intended) to the three components of a good photographic exposure.  Let me know what you think.

Happy shooting.

High Key Black and WhiteHigh Key Black and White

High Key Black and White

To start with you need to observe three pretty critical but simple rules.  The first rule to this technique is to shoot into a white background and have the subject wear a white top (shirt or blouse).  Having them wear a white top helps them blend into the background better.  That's a little different than what you usually want, but for this look it is very important.  Since these shots are essentially anywhere from head shots to half body shots, the clothes for the lower half of the subject isn't important.

The second rule for my technique is to shoot about a half to 1 stop brighter than the light meter indicates.  This is the most important of the three steps and will result in a washed out look with a slight red cast.  You can still get the effect without this step, but this exposure makes it much easier. 

Original ImageOriginal Image

Shot out of camera about 1 stop over exposed

Now take the image into your editing software and sharpen and/or remove any noise in the image.  Resist any editing to adjust the exposure.  It's this way for a reason.

The final rule is to convert the image to black and white.  I know there are many different ways to converting images to black and white (ex. Silver Efex Pro, MacPhun, Perfect Black and White, Topaz Black and White, etc.) and I use these.  However, for this technique I will utilize the Infrared filter in Color Efex Pro 4 by Google.  Other Infrared filters may work as well, but I use this one because I can use the sliders to zero in on the effect.   Moving the Brightness slider has the most effect for this technique.  By bringing down the brightness you can add back some of the features you may have lost during the conversion.

Finally, bring the image back into your editing software and make any final tweaks to get it the way you like it.  For the image below I used a layer mask to bring back just a hint of the color in the eyes and lips.

Final image

So there you have it.  In summary I followed my three rules, shoot with a white background and have the subject wear a white top, shoot about one half to one stop over exposed, and process using Google's Color Efex Pro 4's Infrared Filter.  It only took about 5 minutes to process.

Hope this was helpful.  Let me know if you have any ideas about this technique, or if you have an easy one of your own.  I'm always looking for new ways to get great images.

Happy shooting.

One of the events I have been involved in over the last few years is shooting high school plays.  Since these are high school, and I know most of the individuals in charge, there is a little more latitude than you may see on a more professional circuit.  But I think the concepts are the same.  Also, while I haven't really shot a concert I'm pretty sure the same rules can apply.

Seussical - Presented by HCAGarrett Blankenship as the Cat in the Hat.

HCA - Godspell 2014

So you may say, "Well my subject has a white blouse and  I see it as white.  Why does my image show it as a light gray?"  This is because the white balance in your camera is incorrect.  If you use the Auto White Balance setting on your camera it will look at the entire scene and expose your image based on that.  It also uses a benchmark to change pure white to 18% gray and adjusts the other colors in the image accordingly.  "What", you say.  "Why 18% gray?  Why not 100% white?"  This is because 18% gray is an average of the white values in a scene that are perfectly exposed and perfectly lit. Even in scenes where the light has different colors, your Auto White Balance setting will try to expose pure white as 18% gray.  This is also why so many winter images show the snow with a gray tint. 

Here's a before and after. Notice the Red tint before correcting the white balance.

So how do you fix this.  First, you need to realize what your camera is going to do and respond accordingly.  Understanding what the camera is doing is the first step in determining a proper way to resolve the issue.  There are several ways to approach the issue.  One way is to continue shooting with Auto White Balance and fix all of the images in the computer.  The obvious problem with this is the time involved in getting the image(s) right along with the possible color inconsistency of images in a series.  A better option would be to use one of the presets on your camera.  So if you're shooting in shade, use the preset designed for shade.  The problem with this solution is that you're still relying on your camera to determine white balance.  It is still looking to average your image to 18% gray but making adjustments based on the preset.  So what should you do?

The best way to fix this issue is determine what the correct white balance is and apply it to your image.  There are several ways to do this but I will focus on three different approaches.  Two of these involve setting a custom white balance in your camera so that as each image exposed will reflect the correct white balance.  The method that goes back to the film days involves shooting an 18% gray card to set a custom white balance.  Different cameras use different steps to setting a custom white balance, but essentially this means shooting something that you want the camera to model it's white balance from.  By shooting this gray card you are telling the camera what to use as a reference for 18% gray when determining exposure.  Once this is done you can shoot your images with the proper white balance.  That is until the color of light changes (ex. moving from sun to shade, or from outdoors to inside).  When this occurs you must repeat the process of establishing your custom white balance.  There are many resources for how to do this properly so I will not cover them here.

The second method, and the one I have recently begun to use, is setting the custom white balance using a filter over the lens that is calibrated to 18% gray and shooting into the light source.  The tool I use for this is the ExpoDisc by Expo Imaging.  I think it's much easier to use than the gray card and for me it's more accurate.  As with the gray card, once the custom white balance is set in the camera you can begin to shoot all of your images with the proper white balance.

Finally, much like the gray card you can shoot the ColorChecker Passport card by Xrite.  This is a little checkerboard of multiple colored squares.  It actually does two things.  It sets a reference for use in post processing for both white balance and color balance.  During post processing you set your white balance based on the white square in the checkerboard.  This is your reference for what is truly white.  You can also use the entire checkerboard to create a profile for your camera in that particular light.  This profile is then used in the software during post processing to properly adjust exposure.  It's much like the presets for setting white balance.  This process works very well, but again you must apply the corrections during your post processing. 

Any of these will work to help you get the color right.  I'm not really advocating any one of them.  You should select the one that works the best for you.  The point is to use something.  Nothing screams AMATEUR more than incorrect white balance.

Hope this helps.  Happy shooting!

Here's another example of the difference between an incorrect white balance and a correct one.

The second rule is to shoot outdoor portraits either in shade or during the golden hour.  The golden hour is from sunrise to one hour afterward, or at the end of the day and one hour before until sunset.  This time is nice because the light is very soft and casts a golden glow on the subject.  Shooting in shade can pose its own problems if the background is in direct sun and much brighter than the shaded subject.

So here are my rules for shooting outdoor portraits.  I make it a rule to not shoot in direct sunlight, but if I do I will make my own shade.  Any translucent material that can be held over the subject to soften the sun's light will do.  I have an 8' diffuser that I use for this purpose.  Then I proceed to shoot as if I were in shade (explained next).

Most of the time when I shoot outdoor portraits I do one of two things.  I either shoot late in the day when the sun is low on the horizon, or I shoot in shade.  Living in Texas we have very long days which means most of my shoots occur at suboptimal times.  This means I usually have to find a nice shady spot for shooting.  There are two major things I try to remember when shooting in shade.  First, be sure to get your white balance right.  If you don't get this right your colors will not be right and your image will be muddy, or have a green or blue tone.  Second, expose for the foreground and light your subject with speed lights.  

Lighting your subjects with speed lights can be done one of two ways.  First, you can light using the manual mode.  This means to take an exposure with your meter and then set your lights to match that exposure.  To do this you will need a light meter like the one you use in your studio to measure those lights.  This is incident metering which means it only accounts for the light that is striking your subject to determine the meter reading.  The second way to use speed lights is to use the "Through The Lens", or TTL metering.  TTL metering means to let the camera determine how much flash is needed.  So if you meter your exposure to be F-8, 1/500, at ISO of 400, then TTL will use reflective metering to determine how much flash is needed for that exposure.  The problem with TTL is that it uses the entire scene to determine the amount of flash.  So if the background is fairly bright the metered amount may assume there is plenty of light and send very little flash.  This may result in a dark foreground.  So my rule for using TTL in shade with a bright background is to expose for the foreground using your camera's reflective metering.  This way the flash will try to balance the light for the foreground and will probably darken the background.  This almost always works, but sometimes still leaves the background too bright.  In that case I will bring the exposure down on the camera to darken the background (like the sky)  and increase the flash compensation by the same amount so the foreground is lit appropriately.

Finally, I try to position the main light above and to one side of the subject, usually the short side.  Then on the opposite side I will place another light to add some hair and rim light.  Below are some samples of shots I have taken recently using the techniques described above.

Jenna Geyman - Rockwall Shoot - 03-29-14

Jenna Geyman - Rockwall Shoot - 03-29-14

The best way I know to get a good consistent long exposure is with the use of a Neutral Density (ND) filter.  ND filters darken the light entering your camera making the sensor think the ambient light is less that it actually is.  To compensate for the darker image the photographer must either open the aperture, increase the ISO, or lower your shutter speed to maintain the proper exposure.  In our case we want the longer exposure to blur motion and, particularly for landscapes, we want to control both the aperture for depth of field and the ISO for noise.

So how does this work?  ND filters come in different stops.  What I mean is that these filters darken the light hitting the camera sensor in F-Stop increments.  I have a 2 stop filter, 3 stop filter, and a 10 stop filter.

In the image below I used a 10 stop ND filter.  I set my camera on a tripod, set my aperture to F11 and ISO to 100.  Then I measured the shutter speed and the result was 1/500 second.  So with that shutter speed, and the need to reduce the exposure by 10 stops, I slowed the shutter to 2 seconds.  Next, I screwed on the filter.  The filter is so dark you can't see anything through the viewfinder with it on, so I had to compose the shot before adding it to the lens. Finally, to reduce camera shake I used a cable release to expose the image.  It's also a good idea to close the view finder by placing a piece of gaffers tape over it.  Some cameras also have a built-in eye piece shutter that can be closed.

By slowing the shutter speed, any movement became more blurred, or silky.  The more this kind of movement is slowed the more glassy it will become for anything that is shiny, such as water.   It also smoothed out the clouds so I added back some structure to to give them more definition.  Even though the water had some ripples from the slight motion the slow shutter speed gave it a very glassy look.  

Recently I saw a great photo op near my home.  This was a tree extending out over a lake.  It was on a point with the trunk and limbs literally pointing at about 45 degrees over the water.  Knowing what I do about ND filters I knew I could get some pretty cool effects at any time of the day.  So I decided to try a long exposure on a mid afternoon June day.  I would have never done this a year ago.

The day was fairly windy with about a 20 to 25 mile an hour wind with some additional gusts.  This wind created a problem because I wanted some detail in the tree and clouds.  A windy day would not hurt a long exposure for the water because I didn't want the detail, but it would definitely cause some unwanted ghosting and blurring in the tree and the clouds.  To resolve this problem, I decided to stack two exposures.  One exposure for the detail of the tree and clouds and one exposure for the softness of the water.  Below are the two individual shots.

For the detail shot on the left I decided to shoot Shutter priority at 1/1000 sec to assure sharpness.  To make sure I got what I wanted I also bracketed three exposures at one stop increments.  For the long exposure I shot in Manual mode and started at 8 sec and f/16.  At this time of the day there was plenty of sunlight, so in order to get the longer shutter speed I had to stop down somewhat on the Aperture.  It was pretty difficult to see my shots on the LCD screen so I took some bracketed exposures of these shots as well.  There is a little difference in exposure in the two but that shouldn't be a problem.  All shots were at ISO 200.  

Stacking the images was pretty easy.  I started by importing them into Lightroom.  Then I found the two I wanted to stack.  Remember I was looking for detail in the tree and sky for one and softness in the lake for the other.  I also tried to be careful that there wasn't such a difference that blending them would be too unrealistic.  It was also important that the two be shot from the same perspective and on a tripod.  Otherwise, stacking and blending the images later would be very difficult if even possible.  Once I found these images (the two shown above) I used Lightroom's functionality to stack them.  Then by right clicking (control click on a Mac) I selected Edit In and then chose Separate Layers in Photoshop.  By creating separate layers in Photoshop I could then create layer masks to easily do selective edits.

Photoshop opened with the two images as independent layers, as was requested from Lightroom.  The first step was to be sure the two images are aligned with one another.   This prevents any kind of ghosting or misalignment issues that would be obvious in the final image.  To do this I selected Edit and Auto-Align Layers, then the Auto option.  After a few seconds the photos were aligned and I was  ready to move on.

With the long exposure as the top layer I created a layer mask for the purpose of removing (masking) the sky and tree to reveal the more detailed image below.  Using my Wacom tablet I used light strokes to reveal a small portion at a time.  This helped to blend the two images and not make the adjustments obvious.

After the blending was complete I merged the layers and finished the image as I usually do.  Here is the final result.

Our adventure was centered in the Black Hills of South Dakota and included beautiful landscape scenery as well as some of the local wildlife.  The idea of the adventure was to follow the light.  This meant there was no itinerary from day to day.  The only sure things were that we were going to Custer State Park for most of the wildlife, Wall Drug in the city of Wall, and the Bad Lands of South Dakota.  All of these, and more, provided a tremendous variety for our creative talents.  The group was limited to 8 photographers wanting to learn and absorb all they could from these two masters.

Moose is a big fan of the Pronghorn and Bison.  Both of these are very plentiful in Custer State Park and we were able to be in the midst of their herds many times to get some incredible images.  Below are a few of my favorites that I was fortunate to capture.

Also included in the park were a vast variety of birds as well as the prairie dog.  Here are few images of them as well.

Then there are the landscapes.  We were lucky to have Mother Nature cooperate and give us some beautiful weather.  The only exception was in the Bad Lands where it was very windy, cold, and rainy.  Even with bad weather the colors were magnificent and the skies were fantastic.  Here are my favorites from the shoot.

One of the best ways to learn a lot and get some beautiful images is to attend a workshop.  K&M Adventures gives you the opportunity to work with some of the industry's best with plenty of Q&A and on hand experiences.  If you ever get the chance you should jump at the opportunity to attend.

Some time last summer I decided to buy a new 85mm, f/1.4 portrait lens.  This is such a popular lens and due to the natural disasters in Japan, the lens went on back order.  It seemed like forever,  but I finally got the delivery just before Christmas.  I couldn't wait to give it a try and I have been shooting everything with it, including sports.

I saw a hoodie shot in a magazine and thought I'd like to try it myself.  So on a visit in February I asked my grand daughter to pose with her hoodie.  Below is the exact shot I was trying to get.  I put a tri-flector about waist high and in front of her and a 32" softbox directly over the camera.  The background is a white popup backdrop from Lastolite.  Without a background light the light fall off caused the backdrop to turn a light gray.

To add a little character I asked her to turn and tilt her head.  This gave us another look and a little different mood.

What a beautiful lens (and subject too of course)!  She doesn't look 9 years old does she?  Below are a couple of additional images to round out the shoot.

Gotta love it!

The highlight in the month of March was a senior shoot for a family I have known for some time.  We included some standard studio shots, some railroad and rural shots, and some in the town of Royse City, Texas.  This is a beautiful little rural city just outside of Dallas with some really nice historical buildings.  These buildings made for some colorful and textured backdrops that were perfect for a senior shoot.

The family is graduating triplets, so this was a bit unusual.  We wanted not just images of each, but of the three together as well.  Our time was compressed into a single day and only for a few hours.  This is not what I would prefer, but it was the constraints I needed to deal with.  Due to these limitations my studio shots were few and the railroad shots were in bright sun.  Again, not what I would prefer but we made it work.

Below is my favorite from the shoot.  The triplets are one girl and two boys.  I'm a little partial to shooting pretty girls, so it should come as no surprise that this would be one of my favorites.

Another of my favorites are of the three on the railroad track.  We wanted to symbolize them leaving home.  I think it worked pretty well. It was also used on the announcement for the same purpose.

This was in bright sun, as you can tell by the sky.  Placing them with the sun overhead and left really helped with their exposure.

Finally, here's one of them next to a wall in downtown Royse City.  I thought the background was perfect with good texture and color.  The sun was also shaded by other buildings.

215-Verano2016-ManuelCastano

Before we can discuss how to use Neutral Density (ND) filters it helps to get a little idea of what they are and how they help. For the most part ND filters screw on to the front of your lens. There are exceptions, particularly for larger lenses and for graduated ND filters. For our purposes we will assume you would use the screw on type.

When you screw this filter on your lens you are able to fool the camera into thinking the light is much less than it really is. For example, a 2-stop ND filter makes your camera think there are two stops less light than there really is. Therefore, with the filter in place you must change your exposure by 2-stops to get a proper exposure. The key here is proper exposure. Usually, you use one of these filters to slow down the shutter speed so you can show motion. Without them the only way to change the shutter speed and still get the proper exposure is to compensate with either aperture or ISO, and even then you have limits. Adjusting the aperture or ISO could have an adverse effect on the image, or not capture the effect you’re looking for. So it’s pretty safe to say that you use these when you want to slow your shutter speed.

When you buy one of these filters you will buy it based on the number of stops you want for adjusting the exposure. As mentioned, these filters are usually used to slow the shutter speed in a given situation. This means that you buy these, and use them, based on the number of stops you want to reduce the shutter speed. It’s difficult to know in advance the number of stops you will want to adjust for because you don’t know what the lighting will be. Therefore, you can buy an assortment of ND filters for differing number of stops. One thing to keep in mind is that the filters are stackable. This means you can stack a 3-stop ND filter on a 2-stop ND filter to obtain a 5-stop adjustment. Just remember that you probably will begin to push it when you get past 10-stops. Also, stacking these filters will multiply any deficiencies that may be inherent in adding any additional glass in front of the lens.  I would recommend you start with a couple, maybe a 2-stop and a 3-stop. You can find these for about $50 each on the cheap end and about $200 each on the expensive end. The differences are primarily the lens coating and whether they are glass or plastic. You will probably want to do some homework about the differences in results each type will render before making the purchase. I own both and the more expensive ones definitely make a difference.

So when will you want to use these? Well, there are a few different ways to get some really good results. As I said before they are good for showing motion. This is because they slow down the shutter without making you change the aperture or ISO. So you can still get the sharp image of the stationary items, but water or clouds in motion can show a silkiness that can be really stunning. Here’s an image I took of the waves on the beach in Bar Harbor Maine. It was shot at F-22, 1/30, and ISO of 200. 

This was at about 4:00pm in the afternoon on a fall day. The ND filter was a 3-stop filter causing me to change the shutter speed from 1/250 to 1/30. This allowed the moving water to have the silkiness you see.

It’s important to note the process. If your shooting in Manual mode you’ll want to get your meter reading before you screw on the filter. This is because the filters darken the view so much that you may not be able to see through the view finder. This is especially true for 3 or more stops. It’s not necessary if you are shooting in Aperture Priority mode because the camera will automatically adjust the shutter speed for you. One thing you will want to be sure to use is a tripod.  Most of the time you’ll slow the shutter down to a point where hand holding is not an option. Since you’re wanting to steady the camera for a slow exposure you’ll also want to use a cable release, or a mirror up procedure. This further increases the possibility that stationary objects will be tack sharp while everything else shows motion. Finally, if you find yourself exposing for extremely slow speeds you may want to block the view finder. A piece of gaffer’s tape will do the job.  This keeps extraneous light from finding it’s way into the exposure.

Below is another image. This one was taken in Big Sky, Montana just before noon. See how silky the falls look and how detailed the trees and ground are?

I stacked my 3-stop ND filter with the 2-stop ND filter to obtain 5-stops of difference. The shot was taken at F-22, 1/3, and ISO of 200. That means the original exposure measured a shutter speed of 1/100.

Finally here’s one I took of Sylvan Lake in South Dakota, just outside of Rapid City.

This was a fairly windy day with a bright sun above and a little left of the camera.  In this case I didn't want to show motion, but to show a stillness in the water and a hazy look in the clouds.  By slowing the shutter speed even more, than in the images above, I was able to go from a silky look to a very glassy look.  The image was taken in the middle of the day with wispy clouds and a very bright sun. Landscape photographers will tell you that as a rule this is the worst time of day, but if you have a 10-stop ND filter you can do some very interesting things. Notice how the clouds look very milky and the water is very glassy and still. The conversion to black and white also added some creativity to really make it interesting. This image was taken at F-20, 15 sec shutter, and ISO of 200. The original exposure measured a shutter speed of 1/60. The ND filter slowed it to 15 seconds adding the glassy look to the water and the milky look to the clouds. Scott Kelby has a very good and short video on how he does this.  Probably worth a look if you think you may want to try it.

One more thing I want to mention. It is important to note that if your objective is to show motion or stillness, as I have in these examples, then your camera should be set to either Manual or Aperture Priority mode. Otherwise, your camera software will adjust the exposure by making changes to the aperture and defeat the purpose.

This year I gave something to myself.  Well, sort of.  In the summer I decided to purchase a new portrait lens (85m, f/1.4).  I’ve rented this lens a couple of times and the sharpness and bokeh are amazing.  The problem was that the lens was not available.  Seems that the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan last year interrupted the production of certain photographic equipment, including this lens.  So, it went on backorder and it was finally filled the first week in December.  Just in time for Christmas.

I had to test it with my beautiful granddaughter and below are the results.

I really look forward to using this lens.  Even though it has been pretty much thought of as a portrait lens, I think it will work well in other situations as well.

Family values are the core of what drives most of us.  Especially during the holiday season.  This year with our troops coming home from Iraq many of you are experiencing this much more than the rest of us.  My heartfelt thanks to you as well.

With the Thanksgiving season and family value themes, November was a time for me to focus on family portraits.  For my family I had the privilege to compile the photos and design my daughter’s family Christmas card.  I do this quite frequently and it’s always a challenge.  Not because of personalities, but because of logistics.  With six family members it is not easy to get everyone in the room at the same time.  With this in mind I recommended either a composite or a collage so we could shoot individual images and accommodate everyone’s schedule.  The latter was the easiest since we could not guarantee all could be available to shoot under the same conditions as required by a composite.

To make this work I shot the four kids against a black background.  The thinking was that using a solid background would make the blending into a collage easier later.  As expected I couldn’t get a shot of the adults at that time since my son-in-law was on the road.  Then when he was in town, I was on the road.  Luckily, my wife can take pretty good shots and was able to get the one of the adults.  Here are the five shots.

We decided that converting them to black and white would add a nice touch.  Then blending them into a black background was pretty simple.  The only real challenging part was to make the artistic design and the transition from one image to the next.  Below is the result.

The other side of the Christmas card was festive in shades of red and gold with white lettering.

Another major shoot for November included another family of six.  These family members were all adults and mostly pretty young ladies.  This made shooting much easier.  The focus was a family portrait to be displayed over their fireplace.  Therefore, I shot several variations of the group.  I also took the advantage to shoot individuals and groups of the children.  What mother wouldn’t want some nice images of her children? 

Here’s the family.

I wanted to get some outdoor shots, but the weather didn’t cooperate.  These were taken in their home.  Thought they turned out pretty well considering the tight space.

My favorite portraits are tight headshots.  This makes it really important for me to get the eyes right.  To make the eyes of a portrait special you have to first make sure they are in crisp focus.  Anything less will not do.  I’m talking specifically about the iris.  The texture (I call it texture) and color of the iris really needs to be apparent or the eye will be dull and lifeless.  Therefore, the most important thing to remember regarding portraits is that the focal point must be the eyes.  This is where it all begins.  If the eyes are not in focus the portrait will not work, especially with a tight headshot.

With the eyes in focus you can concentrate on the rest of the face.  Probably the most important thing here is not to over do it.  I think we have all been guilty at some point of softening the skin too much, or too much white in the eyes, or thinning the face too much, etc..  There are so many tools for you that some times you tend to get carried away.  I know I have.  My advice is to trust what you got in the camera.  Do very light retouching.  I have learned over the years that if you light well, set your white balance correctly, and compose well,  then you usually get pretty good results. 

Most of the time my retouching includes removing blemishes or maybe lightly retouching wrinkles so they’re not so apparent.  Skin softening is usually done through a method to remove noise.  I have found that this not only removes the noise, but adds just a very small amount of softening which looks very natural to me.  Finally, though the eyes are in focus I will usually add a very small amount of sharpening to them.  This includes not only the iris but the eye lids to really bring out the lashes.  Sharpening the eye lids adds a little pop to the eyes that really gets your attention.

Anything else is for creative results.  Sometime I will make the portrait high key, or convert it to black and white.  Usually I have this in mind when shooting the image, but some time I will be processing the image and it will occur to me to try something different.  Especially if I think it’s a good image, but it’s just not wowing me.

Now tell me you don’t look at the eyes first.

Below are just a few of the fun of 6 man football.

While most of my time was spent with sports action I was able to continue to shoot some portraits as well.  Here are a couple of my favorites.

Enjoy.

In early August I got the idea to do go out in the more rural areas of the Dallas metroplex and get some images of the countryside.  My objective was to get an old barn or something that contained some real noticeable texture.  While I found some perfect examples, I wanted to be sure that I didn’t encroach on anyone’s privacy.  Sure I could have shot from the road into someone’s property, but I’m really not comfortable unless I know the owner is OK with it or if the property is publicly owned.  So I found some friends that were gracious enough to let me go on to their property and take the following images.

As you can probably tell, these images included some tone mapping that brought out the texture and tonal contrasts.  It’s not quite the barn I was looking for, but I thought the old car really made a great subject.  Pretty cool don’t you think?

September is also the first full month of the primary school year, at least it is in my immediate area.  With this comes quite a bit of school sports.  I took the advantage to get involved in photographing High School and Middle School football and volleyball.  Volleyball was a new venture for me but it is really exciting and full of its own challenges.  Here are some of my favorites from those shoots.

As a follow up to this I wanted to try something a little different.  I have always enjoyed the sports collages that feather the image edges to let them blend into the next image.  Using collage templates is pretty cool and I have been doing it for a while, but I have never really had the Photoshop expertise to make it happen the way I wanted.  So I decided to try one more time and I am pretty please with how it turned out.  Here’s the result.

By the way, I have been inundated with requests for additional ones.  This may be a new opportunity.  Sure is a lot of work though.

Finally, I was asked again to photograph some of the home coming couples for the Heritage Christian Academy.  These young folks are a class act and it is always a pleasure to shoot their pictures.  Here’s my favorites.

Enjoy.

I recently decided to make a switch in my workflow that had a domino effect and I am still reeling from it.  Last year I began a subscription with Mozy Online Backup.  It took about a week to back up all of my images (almost 2 TB).  At the time Mozy had a single subscription price of just over $100 a year for unlimited storage of up to two computers.  This was great because it was both cost effective and convenient.  This year I got a notice that they would no longer support an unlimited option.  The alternative price was cost prohibitive so I decided to go back to local backups.

To help secure my data I also decided to invest in a Drobo System.  If you haven’t heard about this system it is a box designed for you to easily add up to four (some you can add more) internal disk drives while your system sees them as one.  You have to add at least two drives and one is a fail safe drive to protect you if one of the other drives fails.  This sounded like the smart thing to do so I ordered it.

Installing the Drobo was just as easy as advertised.  Plug the box into a USB port and power it up.  Then plug in the drives by sliding them into the box until they snap in place.  The Drobo uses any internal SATA or eSATA drive and I elected to use 4 drives, each with a 2 TB capacity.  The Drobo Dashboard software will format the drives and you’re ready to go.  One of the neat things is that you see only one drive on your computer (unless you format it for more).

But then things started to go wrong.  Since I had so much data I wanted to do regular nightly backups.  Drobo gives you a backup program to help you with this.  It looked pretty good so I decided to use it.  Then every morning I would find my computer frozen.  No ability to click or use the keyboard.  The only option was to reboot.  Then it got to where it would occur in the middle of the day while I was working.  Writing data to the Drobo was also fairly slow.  One of the options was to replace the USB connection with a Firewire 800.  My system didn’t have the connection for this so I had to acquire an add-on card manufactured by Cisco.  This worked well but the system continued to freeze.

Finally one day, after a reboot, the Drobo drive was not readable.  The volume was corrupt.  It still showed more than a terabyte of data, but the directory could not be read.  I tried running Windows utilities, but nothing worked.  All of my data was on the Drobo.  Not only that but with my recent change I hadn’t had a chance to back up everything.  Talk about panic.  Now I understand why some photographers are a little anal and have two or three backups!

Now I want you to understand.  Before I start bashing Drobo too much you should know that I never contacted their Support staff.  However, I did look tirelessly through their support site at the knowledge base.  My thinking was that there was something on my system that was clashing with Drobo.  I disabled my PC Tools Firewall and enabled the one in Windows 7.  That didn’t help.  I also thought the Firewire connection may be the issue, so I went back to the USB.  Still nothing.

To retrieve my data I acquired a tool called R-Studio NTFS.  Using this tool I was able to see the files and recover them without a problem.  However, since there was so much data this took almost two full days.  I recovered these files on external drives in preparation of restoring them on the Drobo.  Once they were all recovered I reformatted the Drobo and the copied the files back to the Drobo.  Again, this took about 18 hours.

With all of this happening I was still shooting pictures.  Unfortunately I had no place to process them!  Basically, I copied them off of the CF card on to an external hard drive and did a little processing using my laptop.

After a week of frustration I was back to work.  Then the system started freezing again.  Not only was it freezing, but I was consistently getting the Blue Screen of Death.  After some more time of researching I had decided it was enough.  That was it!!  I decided to order a Mac Pro. 

This wasn’t necessarily spur of the moment thing.  I had actually been thinking about it for quite a while.  The problem was that I have been a PC user since the early ‘80’s.  I have always felt pretty good about troubleshooting and being able to ultimately recover from PC problems.  But I have always heard that Mac’s don’t have all of those problems in the first place and they are much more intuitive and easier to use in editing images.  So I decided that I was tired of wasting time having to research and spend money to fix PC issues. 

However, moving from a PC to a Mac isn’t just changing cultures.  There were so many things I hadn’t considered.  First was the software.  I knew there would be required changes in software, but I really thought it would be minimal.  After all I was just using the computer for image storage and processing.  Well, I hadn’t really done my homework on Photoshop.  Lesson learned.  I thought I could still use my Windows version on my laptop while changing to the Mac version for my desktop.  That’s not the case.  Adobe will convert the license from one platform to another at no charge, but they will not give you access to both platforms without acquiring another license.  Well, I’m not going to hold two licenses, so I lost my ability to process images with Photoshop on my laptop.  I will probably move to a Mac laptop at a later date, so I will have to find a way to accommodate until then.

The good news is that all of my Photoshop plug-ins did allow me to load the Mac version at no cost.  I own both the Nik Software Suite and the OnOne Software Suite, as well as some of the Topaz and Portrait Professional plug-ins.  All of these loaded without issues.

However, additional issues came with the new Mac OS Lion (10.7) version of the operating system.  This was totally unexpected and I would have never planned for it.  My monitor calibration software (X-Rite, I1 Display 2) and my Nikon Capture NX2 raw converter were not compatible.  Both of these are critical to my workflow. 

X-Rite Corp develops the software for the I1 Display 2 calibration tool I use.  I didn’t realize that this tool has been discontinued until I went to the support site and couldn’t find the product.  Since the tool has been discontinued they were not quick to update the software.  However, they have released a beta version of an update.  I downloaded and quickly found that the interface is very different from the original.  It used to be plug and play.  Now you have to make adjustments to the monitor.  Not as user friendly.  Then once installed I was able to see that the result was not very good as well.  Now I am left with either updating the tool or trying to see if there are other options.  In the meantime, I’m not sure how to color correct my images.

Capture NX2 is the software that Nikon developed to use with their products.  I have really come to love this product, but sometime Nikon is slow to react.  On their support site they have indicated that they will look into issues with the new Mac OS.  Doesn’t sound too definitive, so I’m not sure when to expect an update.  However, I do have options with this.  I still have my PC and can process files with NX2 and then move them to the Mac for further processing.  Very inconvenient, but doable.  I can also totally abandon NX2 and move back to Lightroom, or use Adobe Raw that comes with Photoshop.  Of course, this would require a bit of a learning curve and I’m not sure I’m up for it.  It would be preferable to continue with NX2, so maybe I’ll be inconvenienced for a while.  

The next issue came with my external drives and the Drobo.  Since these were formatted as NTFS drives for Windows they were not compatible with the Mac.  Again, this was a total surprise, but when I think about it, I should have realized they would be different.  Mac can read NTFS drives but not write to them.  So now what do I do since all of my data is on them.  I found a 3rd party product called Paragon that’s pretty cheap (only $20) so I downloaded the trial.  It worked really well, so this seemed to solve the issue.

Now that I could access and write to the drives I decided to use the Mac Time Machine program to schedule a backup from the Drobo to one of the external drives.  What I found was that even with the Paragon software the Time Machine software cannot backup to NTFS formatted drives.  So I decided to get everything on the Drobo and reformat the external drives to the Mac format then backup the Drobo to them.  However, after the reformat the Time Machine software still would not backup.  This time it was because I was required to exclude the Drobo from the backup set.  So the saga continued.

As a result I went to the Apple Store and looked for backup software and found one called Drive Backup for only $29.99.  It had very good reviews and indicated that it would back up to and from any volume type.  So far I am very happy with the result.

To sum everything up, you should plan very carefully when you think about changing your workflow.  This was a very small change that had a very dramatic effect.  I have currently disabled the Drobo until I get some extra time to work with it and I can plan better for another disaster.  The idea of the Drobo’s fail safe system is good, but my experience was that it is what caused my system to fail.

I travel a lot  and that usually gives me much opportunity to shoot images I would not usually be able to.  However, it also gives me the chance to see other work.  Recently I traveled through the Dulles airport and saw some beautiful landscapes hanging on the wall next to the gate.  I was really inspired by some of the nighttime cityscapes.  There is one of Detroit that is absolutely beautiful.  This inspiration let me to shoot the following images of the Dallas skyline.

As parents you naturally go through life documenting, through video and images, the lives of your children.  Then when they become adults and have families of their own you become involved in their families as well.  My daughter has a beautiful family with four children and you have probably seen their images on this blog in the past.  It has been a while since I actually shot my daughter and I wanted to update the images hanging on my wall with some recent ones.  So I spent an August afternoon with her and below are some of my favorites from the shoot.

Friday nights in Texas are especially exciting during the months of August through November for anyone involved in High School.  If your football team is lucky and gets into the playoffs, the season may extend into December.  Below are some shots I took of the Heritage Christian Academy High School and Middle School football games.

In previous posts I have tried to indicate the importance of being involved in photography clubs to help you learn from other photographers and network with them increase your exposure.  I have done it more this year than ever and it has really paid off.  In August I attended a meeting to discuss the use of speed lights on location.  These meetings always include a model and great instruction on the topic.  Even if you feel comfortable with the topic, it’s a great chance to reinforce your knowledge and meet with other photographers.  Below are my images.

Until next time.

It should go without saying that to do this most appropriately you must have a tripod.  Without a tripod you can probably get the images and stitch them together, but you will almost assuredly not get the quality you will want.  Especially if you are going to enlarge them.

The best way to shoot panoramas is to plan in advance.  The most common method of shooting these types of images is by shooting several images and then stitching them together.  When you do this it is very important to maintain exposure, maintain focus, and keep the horizon level.  To maintain exposure it is probably advisable to shoot in the manual mode.  Failure to do this could cause inconsistency in one or two of the images that will be stitched.  Shooting in one of the automatic modes may keep a close consistent exposure, but when the image is enlarged the difference may become noticeable.  In particular, you should maintain the aperture setting.  Otherwise, depth of field could change.

One of the problems I have seen, and experienced, is inconsistent focus.  Autofocus is almost a given for most photography.  It makes it so easy to assure the proper focus without having to determine it manually.  However, when shooting a pano you must be aware that shooting multiple images may result in different focal lengths.  They may all seem to be focused to infinity, but relying on the camera and lens to consistently determine this is not always a good idea.  Especially if there is something  (like trees) in the foreground at one part of the pano and something farther away in the background (like mountains) at other points in the pano.  Therefore, to assure a consistent focal point be sure to turn off autofocus and set your focus manually.  Then, start shooting your images.

Another consideration that will cause heartache is not staying level with the horizon.  Typically when you shoot panos you will start in one direction (like your left) and then progressively shoot several overlapping images across the horizon (to your right).  As you do this it is vital to maintain a level position.  If not, the final image will definitely show a distortion.  Here’s what it could look like if you do not maintain a level horizon.

See how the edges seem to dip down.  You obviously don’t want this, so be sure your tripod is level as you swing it around for all of the images you are stitching together.

When shooting these images you’re probably thinking about shooting them horizontally.  However, if you shoot them vertically you will add more sky and foreground which will give you more flexibility for cropping.  It will require more images, but that’s not really an issue.

Here is a recent image of the Dallas skyline.  There were six vertical images that I later stitched together in Photoshop CS5.  Only after being stitched together as a single image did I add some retouching.  Any kind of retouching before that would have the possibility of inconsistency.

Another way is to take a distant shot, maybe with a wide angle lens, and then crop it to the pano format.  The issue you will face with this is the quality of the image.  It must be very very sharp, or your final image must be a fairly small size, because you are basically zooming in.  As you grow the picture you are spreading the pixels out causing the image to contain a grainy look.   This option is probably only a good one if you image is going to remain small.

I started the month with some festive shots to celebrate Independence Day.  No, not fireworks, but some still life shots.

Throughout the years we have collected memorabilia from loved ones as they have passed on.  These items have been on display in our sunroom/studio for quite some time and I thought they would make a great backdrop for a still life.  Being from Texas I wanted a little of that cowboy sentiment.  Below are a couple of my favorites from that shoot.

I also had the opportunity to go on a model shoot with the Dallas Photography Club.  If you ever get the chance to do this you really should give it a look.  I can’t recommend it enough.  It was my second one and I always enjoy the opportunity.  The good part about this is that you get to shoot a beautiful model and she requires vey little direction.  Just give her the basic idea and let her do her thing.  Below are some images I took at the Las Colinas suburb around the Dallas area.

As usual I also had an opportunity to shoot some summer basketball games.  These will definitely give me a warm up for the high school sports coming shortly.  Below are some of my favorites.

Hope you enjoy these.  We’ll talk again next month.