SDuffyPhotography.blog

Experimenting with layers and textures

I’ve been a little under the weather the last two days and, this morning, when I just couldn’t sleep anymore, I started experimenting with layers and textures in Photoshop. I took an old image I had of my wonderful girlfriend and decided to play around with it a bit. I thought I’d share it below…

Click on the image for a larger version…

I wish I could tell you exactly how I did it. Like I said I was playing around and trying different things and this is what I ended up with. The basic gist of what I did was, duplicated the image twice to end up with three identical layers. I used the Multiply blending option on one of them and desaturated the color to varying levels in each of the duplicates. This left me with a somewhat dark image. Then, I used the Eraser tool at varying Opacity levels to bring out her face and eyes. Finally, I overlayed a texture on top, and brought out the Eraser tool again, to smooth out the texture around her face and arms.

I was actually going for a dark, goth-like feel and I managed to get to a point where I was happy with the image.

I hope my explanation above helped… Once I get more practice and get this down to a repeatable process, I’ll consider writing a brief tutorial.

Tags: layers, photoshop, portrait, textures

How To: Multi-Shot Panoramic HDR Photos

Every time I am in Pittsburgh, I love going up to Mount Washington and taking photos of my hometown. This time, though, I wanted to do a multi-shot panorama in HDR. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do but had never done it before. Here, I’ll walk you through the steps for turning your multi-shot panoramas into awesome high dynamic range panoramas!

This tutorial assumes you have the following:
- A camera with Automatic Exposure Bracketing capability
- A tripod
- Adobe Photoshop
- Photomatix Pro
- Basic knowledge on creating HDR photos… For a great, basic HDR tutorial see Stuck in Customs.

First, I’ll show you the finished product. The full-size original image is comprised of twelve photographs and is about 750MB and 23 megapixels in size:

Click the photo below for a larger version…

Taking the Shots

First and foremost, you’ll need to actually shoot the images you want. This is, of course, the most important step.

Set your tripod and point your camera at the most important part of your panorama. For this example, I used the large group of buildings on the right hand side. I chose these because they are a natural subject for a city panorama and also because they are the most detailed and complex parts of the finished product.

After the camera is pointing at your subject, begin setting up your camera:

ISO

Use the lowest ISO setting possible. For most cameras, this is ISO100. My 5D does go down to ISO50, but 100 is what I used for this shot. HDR photos, depending on your final settings can have a fair amount of grain or noise in them. Increasing the ISO also will introduce noise into the final images. Multiply that by three and add on the potential grain from an HDR and you’ll see what I mean.

Manual Mode

This is extremely important. If the camera’s aperture, light metering, or shutter speed differ from shot to shot, you’re going to end up with a panorama where each section is different in tone, exposure, and focus. I’m only a Photoshop newbie, but I can imagine how difficult this would be to fix. For a landscape shot, particularly a panoramic landscape shot, I use a smaller aperture to increase my depth of field. In this particular case, it may not matter much since the city is so far away from me, but it’s a good thing to keep in mind. Once you set your aperture (I used f/7.1 in these photos), adjust your shutter speed so that the main part of your panorama is properly exposed. I used the default average metering for this shot, which will likely work fine unless your dealing with drastic differences in lighting. Based on an aperture of f/7.1, the camera’s light meter told me that 10 seconds would give me proper exposure.

Manual Focus

Turn off your lens’ AutoFocus feature. If you use AutoFocus, the lens is going to refocus every time you move the camera to take a new set of shots. For a small aperture and distant subject, you may not notice the difference in the final shot, but, then again, you might. Using Manual Focus is the only way to go. So, again, adjust your focus so that the main part of your panorama is sharp.

Automatic Exposure Bracketing

After setting up the camera’s ISO, aperture, and shutter speed, you’ll want to enable Automatic Exposure Bracketing, or AEB. Most, if not all, SLR cameras have this feature. This will allow you to take three shots at configurable exposure compensation settings. For most of my HDRs, I set AEB to +/-2. This means that the next three shots will be at 0ev (proper exposure), -2ev (2 steps underexposed), and +2ev (2 steps overexposed).

Swinging Through

Now that your camera is all set up to take the photo, look through your viewfinder and slowly swing through the entire range of the panorama and make sure your zoom is set so that you can get the entire landscape in without having to adjust. Without doing this, you may find that your subject is lined up right but when you go to move to the next segment of your shot, something is running outside the frame.

Zoom

If you have a “wide-angle” lens, don’t use it. It may seem like a good idea but it isn’t. Wide-angle zoom lenses sometimes introduce distortion at the edges of the photo. This happened a lot when I had the Canon EF-S 10-22mm lens. I loved that lens but, at 10mm, the objects at the edges of the photos would lean inward. This will totally screw up your efforts to merge your panoramas later. For this example, I zoomed in to 43mm.

Taking the First Shot

For HDR images, it is vital that your camera move as little as possible for the multiple shots you’re taking. This is especially true at night and even more so for night panoramic images. If you have one, use a remote shutter release. Or, if you don’t have a remote shutter release, use your camera’s timer. This will allow you to take the long exposure shots without risking your hand moving the camera when you press the button. As an extra bonus for those of you that use the timer, your camera may take all three shots in a row when AEB is set. My 5D does this and, even though I have a remote shutter release, I still tend to use the timer. All I need to do is enable AEB, use the timer, and hit the button once. After the timer expires (10 seconds), the camera fires off all three shots.

You can shoot in any direction (left-to-right or right-to-left), but I prefer to shoot from left-to-right. It simply seems more natural to me. So, after I set up my camera while looking at the city, I swung it around and began taking photos on the left side of the image.

Taking the Next Shot

When you’re doing panoramas, you’ll want to make sure that each segment overlaps the previous one significantly. I believe I’ve heard they should overlap as much as 30%. That’s fine. The more the better, in my opinion. That will give your photomerging software more to work with when it has to merge them later. So, after you take your first set of photos, make a mental note of some landmark on the edge toward where you’ll be swinging the camera next. When you slowly swing the camera to the next position, make sure that landmark is easily visible and not too close to the edge. Now you’re ready to take the next few shots.

Another word on framing… Photoshop, in my limited experience, does a pretty good job of stitching images together. That being said, try not to have major overlaps right in the middle of your subject or right in the middle of a particular complex area. You want as much of your subject in one frame as possible. That way, if Photoshop doesn’t stitch them together perfectly, it won’t be in a critical part of the photo and may be easier to fix.

The Shots

Here you can see the shots I ended up with after taking after setting up my camera as described above. At each spot, I had the camera take three photos via AEB:

Each segment’s photos are as follows: 0ev, -2ev, +2ev

Segment 1:

   

Segment 2:

   

Segment 3:

   

Segment 4:

   

Export The Shots

Now, we will export the photos to a folder on our hard drive. Make sure to export all the photos at the same exposure level into the same folder. We’ll be merging the photos into three big panoramas before we do any HDR work. I export the photos into folders with descriptive names such as “Pan-OverExposure”, “Pan-UnderExposure”, and “Pan-ProperExposure”.

For example, the following four photos will be in the folder “Pan-ProperExposure”:

     

Repeat for the under-exposed and over-exposed versions.

Merging The Shots in Photoshop

Open up Photoshop and select File -> Automate -> Photomerge:

Next, you will see the following dialog, where I’ve already added the first set of four photos from “Pan-ProperExposure”. You’ll also notice I selected ‘Cylindrical’ for the Layout, though you’re free to experiment with the others for different effects:

Click for larger version…

Click OK.

Now, Photoshop will churn away a bit, depending on the speed and memory in your computer and what you’ll end up with (hopefully) will look like a complete panorama that’s a little rough around the edges.

Repeat this for the other two exposure sets and you should end up with a desktop that looks something like this:

Click for larger version…

On the right-hand side, you should notice that all three layers of each panorama are selected. If the panoramas look acceptable to you, merge those layers into a single image. If the panoramas look “off” you may need to retouch them with Photoshop or reshoot while following the directions at the beginning of this article. Merge them by right-clicking (Ctrl-Click) on the selected layers and select “Merge Layers…” as shown to the right. (Click on image for larger version…)

Repeat this for all three panoramas. After you’ve merged them all, consider naming the single layer something descriptive. Double-Click on the Layer Name and replace it with something like “Pan-Over”. This tells me that this is the overexposed panorama. This will come in handy later. See below:

And, when you’re done, consider saving them as Photoshop documents in case you need to go back.

Uniformly Resizing and Cropping

Now that we have three panoramas at different exposures, we need to crop them to make sure that they’re all the same size. Photomatix won’t be able to merge them if they’re not. To do this, make sure all three panoramas are open and select the Move Tool as shown to the left.

Next, we’re going to pick one of the images where we’ll drag the other two. The other two images will be added as layers on top of the image you pick. In my case, I dragged the low and proper exposure images to the over-exposed image. Once you have done this, you’ll see one image with a few edges sticking out around the side and three layers corresponding to each of the images. See why we named them?

Click image for larger version…

Now, with your mouse, make sure all three layers are highlighted, then go to “Edit -> Auto-Align Layers…” and select “Auto” Projection as shown in the images below…

Click OK.

Once your computer stops churning, all three layers should be perfectly aligned with each other. Now, we need to apply a crop that will resize all three layers (soon to be separate images again). Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool as shown on the right. With this, select the biggest region of the photo that you can without getting too close to the edges. See my example below:

Click image for larger version…

Next, select “Image -> Crop”:

Your result should now be a three-layer image that’s nice and trim.

Separating the Layers

Photomatix requires multiple photos at different exposure levels. So now that we have three layers that are all identical sizes, we need to use that to create three individual files. Select all three layers in the layers box on the lower right-hand side of the screen and then select “File -> Scripts -> Export Layers to Files…”:

Click on the image for a larger version…

Now you have three identical images at different exposures that you can easily turn into an awesome HDR photo! For help on creating an HDR with these three photos, see this awesome tutorial from Stuck in Customs.

Again, here we have our finished product:

Click on each image for a larger version…

And, one more, with a little more color and different post-processing:

Have any panorama or HDR tips? Leave them in the comments below!

Tags: hdr, panorama, photoshop, pittsburgh, Tips and Tricks, tutorial

Gallery Shows: What I Learned

As you are probably aware by now, I had my first gallery show on Friday night. Overall, it was a huge success and was an incredible experience for someone like me who has never had their work displayed publicly before…

But now that I’ve had some time to reflect on the opening night’s festivities, I wanted to share some of my thoughts on the event… What I think I did right and would do again, as well as, things I wish I would have done or should have done differently…

Things I Wish I Had Done Differently

Mingle
This is my number one regret. I was really looking forward to meeting a few Flickr friends at the show. Unfortunately, between the packed gallery, the heat, and making sure I got to spend time with my friends and family, I really didn’t get to meet anyone at all. On top of that, I have a tendency to be shy. I’m hoping that the upcoming Emerge Exposed event will be a little less hectic and crowded so I can take the time to meet more of my fellow photographers.

Postcards
One of the photos on display at the show (moo by static-photo) was a photo of a cow’s nose sticking through a fence. It was definitely one of my favorites and, judging by the reaction of others, it was a favorite of many others. Toward the end of the show, though, static-photo placed what looked like small postcards of the image on top of the hanging photo. I didn’t get a chance to wade through the crowd to grab one but I can imagine that, on the back there could be contact information on how to buy more prints. What a great idea! Even though I had my business cards available on top of my frames, who knows if anyone would remember which photo they were associated with after going through a gallery of so many talented photographers? The postcard solves that problem. Anyone who picks one up will easily remember what photo compelled them to grab the postcard. Make sure you know whether or not you’re allowed to put something on top of the hanging photos… There may be rules prohibiting you from doing so.

Dress Appropriately
This little bit may be more specific to this particular show but worth mentioning all the same… This show was packed. The gallery itself was so full that it was difficult to move. And, of course, with a small room packed with people comes heat! It was pretty hot in there. So much so that, after about 15 or 20 minutes, I had to step out to cool down. I wanted to look nice so I wore a pair of khakis and a decent button-down shirt. If I had to do it over again, I would have worn (maybe) nice jeans, and a polo shirt. Hell, you could have had on a T-shirt and jeans and you wouldn’t have looked out of place. Keep that in mind if you ever show your work in a gallery… Hopefully, it will be as crowded as this one was and, if it is, you’ll be happy to left the sweater and jacket at home.

Things I Would Do Again

Preparation
What if your photo completely blows away the crowd? Are you ready to handle the increased interest in your work? I would highly recommend putting up some sort of website where people can buy your photos. I know most of you have blogs but are you ready to sell your work? Or, at the very least, have somewhere online specifically carved out for the prints that were on display at the show. I decided to set up a SmugMug Pro account, a Current Limited Editions page, and a post that was specifically scheduled to be published at 7pm Friday night to coincide with the start of the opening night’s reception.

Pricing
Again, this was not about the money. Sure, we all would love to make thousands of dollars off our work (work that has probably already cost some of us thousands of dollars), but this is about the exposure and sharing your work with the general public. If you sell a print or two, that’s wonderful! But going into this by only thinking of the potential financial reward is the wrong way to go. Having said that, based on the recommendations of my fellow photographers and event organizers, I priced both of my photos at $100. Being a new photographer who had never sold a photo before, at first I thought this seemed high. After all, it certainly wasn’t difficult! I love taking photos and take thousands of them for free! But, after I thought about it a bit, $100 seemed very reasonable. After all, I was offering something unique. And, while I didn’t spend a lot of time post-processing either of the pieces, I still spent the time to take each photo. For example, for the Air Force Memorial photo, I spent two hours in the middle of the night in the cold to get that shot. Plus, you have a special talent or eye that not everyone has. If you didn’t, your work wouldn’t be on display! How much is that worth? Think about it and don’t sell yourself short.

Limited Editions
Many people believe that the concept of “limited edition” prints is meaningless in the digital world. Perhaps. But, again, based on the recommendations of previous gallery photographers, I decided to run both of my prints in limited editions of 25. That means after I’ve sold 25 of them, I will no longer sell that print. Ever. I think this gives each print some added value to a potential buyer. I’m new to the art world myself, but I know I’d be willing to pay a little more for a nice photo if I knew I could have one of only 10 that ever existed. As to what constitutes a print, there is some discussion… Does a new crop or new post-processing make it a new print? What about a new size? Technically, I guess. But if I were to buy a limited edition print only to find out that the photographer simply re-cropped or added some post-processing and sold it again, I’d be a little put off. Decide what “limited” means for you and stick to it.

Business Cards
First and foremost, when you drop your prints off at the gallery to be hung, include a card with each one. This way, my card was hung up on the wall underneath my print and title card. That way anyone viewing the print can find out immediately where they can go to see more of my work. At the show itself, bring business cards! A lot of them! Before the show, I had a whole box of 100 Moo cards. Now, I only have about 20 left. What did I do with them? Well, I gave some out to people attending the show when they approached me about my photos. But I also left a small stack at the tiny table in the back for anyone to take. Finally, about halfway through the show, I saw someone leave a small stack on top of their framed, hanging print. I decided to follow suit. Since people couldn’t really take the one hanging on the wall, this gave them the option of taking a card home for themselves so they wouldn’t have to remember my website or write it down.

Bring The Camera
I debated back and forth with myself on whether or not to bring my camera to the show up until I actually walked out my door with it. I could go either way on this one as far as recommending it to others. On the one hand, you’re a photographer and this is a significant event! On the other hand, you will have to carry it all night and, if you’ve got gear like mine, that’s a 10 or 11 pound weight you have to lug around. If I had to do it again, I’d still bring it.

Thank the Organizers!
Last, but certainly not least, be sure to thank the people who organized the show! The show appeared to go off without a hitch… And I can’t imagine the amount of time and effort that went into planning something like this. So, from the bottom of your heart, thank the gallery organizers!

Here are a couple other related articles from the web:
Showing Your Photos in Art Galleries via Photopreneur
Your Photos in a Photo Gallery via Photocritic.org

Have any tips on showing your work in a gallery? Any other photographers from DCist Exposed wanna share their thoughts and experiences? Feel free to leave them in the comments!

Tags: dcist, exhibit, exposed, gallery, tips

(Photo)Blogging Tips: Part Two

As this site has grown and my subscriber count has gone up, I’ve been feeling a little pressure to keep coming up with decent content. Not only to attract new readers, but to give my current readers a reason to stick around. I’ve been thinking a lot more about the act of ‘blogging’ than I had originally planned. I’m not used to this new pressure since all of my past blogs combined wouldn’t add up to my current subscriber count. And I have to tell you, I kinda like it. It’s a good kind of stress because I know that it’s this pressure that is pushing me to improve my photography. So, I wanted to post a follow-up article to my recent post (Photo)Blogging Tips.

In that article, I talked a lot about the act of blogging: the content, organizing your site, networking and marketing your site, etc. But, to have a successful photo blog, you still need good content. I mean, you can just do nothing but post a photo of yours every day. There’s nothing wrong with that. I see plenty of good sites that do precisely that and I still subscribe because I love seeing new, compelling images every day. But if you want to build more interaction and you want to increase the chances that your blog will be linked to, shared, and discussed, you’re going to need good content. But how? Even though digital photography is somewhat of a niche, it’s a huge niche. There probably isn’t too much you can write that hasn’t been written already.

Given that, I thought I’d share a few of my own thoughts on how I come up with topics to blog about. I hope you find them useful:

Visit other blogs’ archives

I’m sure everyone has a few top photo blogs that they always go back to because they always end up learning something new when they visit. Well, take a look through their archives and look for topics that haven’t been discussed for a while. There’s no reason you can’t revisit the topic. Of course, your content must be original. Don’t steal content. Ever. Just use it to find some new topics. One of my most popular articles, Reading Histograms certainly isn’t anything new. There are definitely other articles that discuss it at great length. But this is something I hadn’t seen in a while and it was something I wanted to learn, so I wrote an article. And since it hadn’t been discussed for a while, it gets a fairly high Google rank when searching for related terms.

Read comments and forums

When you’re out browsing the web looking for ideas, be sure to take the time to read the comments in the articles you’re looking at. Often, especially on more popular sites, there will be plenty of comments from readers who might have follow-up questions. This is a great way to, not only find new ideas, but to include content that the original article left out. For example, in the histograms article I just mentioned, I didn’t cover color histograms. A reader, Niels Henriksen pointed this out and wrote some great info in the comments. That’s a new blog post waiting to happen!

Stop blogging for the cool kids

As a fairly new amateur photographer, I sometimes get discouraged because I read so many awesome blogs written by photographers that are light years ahead of me in terms of technical know-how and talent. I often find myself thinking. “What could I possibly write that Photographer Joe Smith would find interesting?” Probably not a whole lot. But that’s no reason to get discouraged. Keep in mind that, no matter how new you are to photography, the fact that you’re blogging about it probably means that most people who own a camera don’t know as much as you do about photography. Write for them! And if you’re trying to grow your blog, instead of going for that one link from some kickass professional photographer (which may be difficult and discouraging), why not go for 100 links from less advanced photographers? And, before you know it, while you’re still looking up to the photography masters, a lot of other people might start thinking you’re one of the photographers they want to emulate!

Dig out your manuals

I hate reading manuals. When I get a new toy, I want to begin playing immediately. However, there is some really good info in your camera’s manual. A typical DSLR camera will have a ton of functions and options. Most people, especially beginning photographers, quickly get into a comfort zone where they probably only use up to 50% of their camera’s capability. So, from time to time, browse through your camera’s manual again. It is chock full of topics that you can dive into and blog about. For example, when was the last time you used the AI or AI Servo focus modes on your camera? I hardly ever use them. Well, take some time, read about it again, take some shots and blog about it. What worked? What didn’t? Any tips on how to use it that go beyond the manual? Of course, this is valid for any piece of complex photo equipment. I have a Canon Speedlite 580EXII. I love it. Do I use all of the functionality it has? Not even close. With all the different modes and options in your photo equipment, there are at least two blog posts waiting for me in each of my manuals.

Get hyper-technical

Often times, we take a lot of things for granted. For example, we know what ISO is and how to use it… We know that the higher the ISO number, the more sensitive the camera sensor is to light, thus allowing us to preserve shutter speed in lower light situations. But do we really know what ISO is? Where did ISO come from and what does it stand for? How does it really work? Why is it measured as 100, 200, 400, 800 instead of 1,2,3,4? Why does noise increase when I increase the ISO? A great example of this came from Antoine over at All Day I Dream About Photography. Based on a question from one of his readers, Antoine explored the relationship between ISO value and an image’s file size. This is something I just took for granted and never really thought about until I read the article. The great thing about these articles is: even if you don’t feel like you’re a master photographer, it doesn’t matter. These types of articles only require a little bit of research.

How do you come up with new content? Got any tips? Feel free to share them in the comments…

Tags: blogging, iso, manuals, tips

Shooting Galleries

I’ve never been an art guy. Paintings and sculptures just don’t do it for me. I couldn’t tell you what ‘impressionism’ was if my life depended on it. However, yesterday morning, prior to meeting some friends downtown, I had the opportunity to walk through the National Gallery of Art. I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would… Primarily because I had my camera with me. There are a suprising number of neat photo opportunities in an art gallery. If there is an art gallery in your town, I would highly recommend visiting it. A few things to keep in mind before you go…

Click on each photo for a larger version…

• Check the rules - If possible, visit the gallery’s website before you go and make sure they allow photography at all. The National Gallery of Art does allow photography, for the most part, but given the nature of what you’ll be viewing, many galleries may not allow cameras. Also, when you show up, be prepared for extra scrutiny if you’re carrying a DSLR with a nice lens. To many people not familiar with camera equipment, stuff like this can spell “professional”. They may wonder why a professional photographer would be coming to shoot the gallery and may assume he/she will be selling the photos. For obvious reasons, this can make many art galleries nervous.



• Follow the rules - Yesterday, the National Gallery was running a special exhibition called Bronze and Boxwood. As I entered the room, a security guard politely asked me not to take photos. I asked if it was flash photography that was prohibited and he said that one of the conditions of being able to display these particular pieces in the gallery was to not let them be photographed. Be prepared for these types of special rules within the gallery. If you’re not sure, ask one of the gallery staff. Don’t try to be slick and snap a photo when no one is looking. This will likely get you kicked out of the gallery. Even if it doesn’t, remember, you’re an artist and you expect people to respect your artwork so respect the artwork of others.
• Leave the flash at home - Some pieces of art, depending on age and material, may be damaged by harsh, bright light. As a result, even though the gallery may allow flash photography in general, many exhibits within the same gallery may strictly prohibit flash photography. You’re better off leaving the flash at home. I was able to take all of my photos yesterday with an ISO setting between 500 and 800 and aperture set to 2.8. You might also want to consider spot metering some of your shots given the large variances in light between a piece of art and the surrounding room. There’s another reason you’ll want to leave the flash at home, too. You’ll want to…



• Travel light! - Upon entering the gallery yesterday, I was told that I would have to carry my holster bag in my hand rather than slinging it over my shoulder. This is, of course, to make sure that you don’t accidentally knock things over. However, had my girlfriend not been with me, I would have had a really hard time shooting with my camera in one hand and my bag in the other. As for checking it in the coat room (if there is one), forget about it. First of all, you don’t want to do that because the gallery certainly isn’t going to be held responsible if your gear gets stolen or broken. Secondly, most coat rooms won’t even take a camera bag, given the perceived value of the equipment inside. So leave your bag in the car. You can also do what I did and bring your wonderful and beautiful girlfriend with you so she can put her purse in the empty bag and carry the bag with her. Yes, she reads this site, too. Thank you baby!

Now, go out and visit your local gallery! You’ll be glad you did!

You can see the rest of my gallery set here.

Tags: art, dc, gallery, national, tips, washington

Marketing: The Flickr Way

When I first started thinking about selling my photos online, I was considering using this blog and my SmugMug site as the focal points of my online marketing efforts. I figured Flickr would stay in the background because I couldn’t sell photos there and, unless I changed my settings, people could download them or “blog” them for free. Then I woke up. Flickr is the ultimate photographer’s network! How could Flickr not be used by the aspiring professional photographer?

So I started thinking of how I could use Flickr to market my own photography. After a year and a half of browsing through Flickr and uploading almost 3,000 photos, here are a few things I came up with…

NOTE: Some of these things I’ve done, others I have yet to do… Your mileage may vary.

JOIN Flickr!

This may seem like a no-brainer but, over the last few months of browsing photo blogs I’m astonished at how many new photographers don’t appear to have a Flickr account. I’m not saying it’s impossible to build a photo business without it, but when you can get an account for free and a pro account for only $25, why wouldn’t you? It’s arguably the best (and most engaging) way to get eyeballs on your work. All you need is a Yahoo! account. Go now.

Put some effort into your uploaded photos

Upload in the right order

Flickr allows you to change the layout of your main page. The layout I use can be seen below:

Click on image for larger version…

Let’s look at this a bit. There is one main image and a few sets that you can see as soon as you visit my page.

After the jump, tips on tagging, groups, cleaning up your stream, and being social!

More »

Tags: business, flickr, marketing, sell, tips

(Photo)Blogging Tips

I’m not really new to blogging… I’ve blogged for most of the last four years. But, I am new to actually trying to build an audience and making the blog into something that someone other than my mother would read. I started this blog about 2 weeks ago and, so far, I am up to 100 subscribers and about 400-500 visits per day. Yeah, I know it’s not going to break any records but I’m happy with it. It’s exceeded blogs I’ve had for years by a long shot.

In the meantime, I’ve learned quite a bit… I’ve also noticed that many people who appear to visit my site regularly also have blogs, so I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve learned over the past two weeks. Some of this you’ve undoubtedly heard on other blogs, some you probably haven’t. This is only based on my own blogging (and browsing) experience so if you have had different experiences, let me know in the comments!

The content

It’s about YOUR photos

This is a lesson I’m still learning. I’ve been focused so much on building this site and coming up with good content that, honestly, I’ve almost forgotten that this is a photoblog! I’m not saying you have to take photos everyday, but don’t forget that the most original content you can come up with is your photos. And, if you go through a stretch where you haven’t had a chance to come up with any new masterpieces, go through some of your old stuff that no one has seen. As you may have noticed, once a month I publish an article that “looks back” on photos I took a year ago. Flickr has an “archive” view so you can see your photos from any day in the past. Use it.

Write what you DON’T know

You might be thinking: “Huh? How am I supposed to do that?” Most blogging tips I’ve seen always say “write what you know” and that is certainly good advice. But, as someone who’s only been into photography for a little over a year, there really isn’t much that I know. At least not enough to fill a blog that people will keep coming back to. So, I decided that I wanted to use this blog, primarily, as a way for me to learn. So I started writing down the things I still needed to learn about photography… It’s quite a list! And I decided the best way for me to get good content AND grow personally, is for me to begin researching all of it. I’m a lazy person. I love to read but I hate reading dry photography books on techniques and rules. But this site gave me a reason. For example, when I started this site, I didn’t know how to read a histogram. I had an idea but I never bothered to sit down and learn it. So I dug into it a bit, learned how to do it, and wrote about it. That article is now one of my most popular posts with more external links to it than anything else I’ve written. Could it have been better? Sure. But that leaves me with the opportunity to write a follow-up article. If you don’t know something, chances are there are plenty of others that don’t know it either. Find out, teach them, and they’ll come back for more…

More »

Tags: blogging, tips

Photowalking Tips

On Wednesday, I mentioned that I would be participating in a photowalk in Bethesda, MD with some local photographers. I’ve gone photowalking plenty of times by myself but I’ve never actually gone on a group photowalk. So I started thinking about what I needed to know and bring before I went. I’ve decided to share a list of things to bring and know for your first photowalk. I hope you find it useful.

What To Bring

Your camera(s) - This is an obvious one but I also wanted to mention bringing, perhaps, a small point-and-shoot as well. Most point-and-shoot cameras can easily fit in your camera bag or pocket and you never know when having a second camera might come in handy.

A small camera bag - Again, pretty obvious but you definitely want to make sure you bring a bag that is easy to access. I have a great Quantaray backpack that, inevitably gets loaded with a ton of gear that I don’t necessarily need. I’d stuff five lenses, all my cleaning equipment, and just about anything else I could fit. Why? Because I could. At the end of the walk, though, I found that I rarely went into my bag at all. Consider getting a small shoulder or holster-style bag that will hold your camera, one general purpose lens, and a few accessories. You’ll be glad you did.

A video camera - You might be saying “Huh? A video camera? I thought you wanted us to travel light?” Well, I do. But, recently, I won a small Flip video camera in a employee photo contest where I work. It’s pretty neat. It easily fits into my pocket or into a small compartment in my holster bag, records up to 60 minutes of video, and makes uploading to the Internet insanely easy. It’s nice to have when you’re confronted by some private security guard who claims you can’t take photos of a particular building. More on that later… If you don’t want to buy a Flip video camera, you’re cell phone or point-and-shoot might also have video capability.

More »

Tags: feature, geotagging, gps, PhotoWalking, rights, tips

Reading Histograms

When I bought my first SLR (a Canon Digital Rebel XTi), I really didn’t understand anything about exposure. I simply took photos of things that I thought would look cool, I’d check the image on the LCD screen and, if it looked good, I moved on to my next shot. I knew enough to know that if the photo looked too bright, I needed less exposure (a smaller aperture, a faster shutter speed, or a lower ISO) or if the photo looked too dark I needed more exposure (a wider aperture, slower shutter speed, or higher ISO). But if the image on the LCD screen looked “good”, I figured there was nothing else I could do. Of course, this was a lot harder on very bright days. I would find myself trying to shade the screen as best as I could with my body or my hand, while squinting my eyes to look, ultimately getting frustrated at not being able to tell whether my shot had turned out like I had hoped. Finally, I’d get home, view the images on my computer and find out that part of the “good” image I thought I took was too underexposed or overexposed in one particular area that I didn’t notice when viewing it on the back of the camera. Now what?

I only had one of two options: Go back and re-shoot or try to fix the under/overexposure with software. It wasn’t often that I’d go and re-shoot because of one bad image (I tend to be lazy) so I’d start editing the photo. Often, this would work out OK but it bothered me that, as a new photographer, I was relying heavily on post-processing and not getting the image I wanted from the camera. What could I do?

This is where histograms come in.

More »

Tags: exposure, histogram, tips

Monday Link Love

Just a few links from some of the photo blogs and sites I visit regularly:

• 10 Digital Photography Tips - January 2008 from Digital Photography School
• How to Get a Job With a Photographer from Chase Jarvis
• 27 Photoshop Tutorial Sites from Photo-Projectz
• Exposed: The memory card and ISO affair from All Day I Dream About Photography
• Joe McNally: The Moment it Clicks from Strobist

Enjoy! Be sure to check this site again soon, though. I have a ton of new content planned including posts on photowalking, understanding exposure, and a new weekly feature: Photographer of the Week!

Tags: links, tips