While on a variety of locations, Bob will share his vast knowledge of photography and Nikon digital SLRs to educate you on:

· Camera settings for best quality in various situations
· Lens choice for creative and practical shooting
· Utilizing the Retouch Menu for in-camera editing
· Exposure fundamentals and shooting options

During the day’s shooting, Bob takes us to familiar situations around the home and demonstrates a variety of creative photographic opportunities. Understanding Digital Photography covers the use of the Nikon Creative Lighting System, using Nikon Speedlights for portraits and small groups. Bob continues removing the mystery of overcoming photographic challenges in a variety of environments including the difficulties encountered with twilight portraits and landscapes.

This DVD offers valuable instruction to anyone interested in digital SLR photography, particularly those who have some familiarity with a digital SLR’s basic functions. For those unfamiliar with basic digital SLR operation, I recommend beginning with the Nikon School© DVD, Fast, Fun& Easy: Great Digital Pictures.

If you can find $1500 USD to work with then the answer is pretty simple: go Lowel. A Lowel Tota/Omni Core kit comes with three decent lamps with a lot of varied usage. They will work, no matter how much people fade them.

Tota/Omni Core 44 Kit (Soft Case): $1345.00 (list)

Used/New Mafer Clamp $20-40
The mafer clamp is a do anything clamp, that attaches to your stand and accepts a stand pin connection (a “spud”) for lights, arms, whatever.

Photoflex/Flexfill $50
You’ll see these EVERYWHERE, from photo studios to film sets. They’re fairly cheap and extremely versatile. They can be puchased from just about any online photo store (B&H, Calumet, etc).

Tyvek (yeah, the stuff in your walls) $10
Tyvek has an aluminum coated side that has UNBELIEVABLE reflectivity. It will catch and reflect a TON of light. You can find it at any building supply store.

Avenger Articulated Arm (with clamp) $75
Attaches to your stands and can hold most any light modifier… cardboard, gels, whatever.

Assorted Black and White “Backerboard” Scraps (Free!)
Go to your local frame store and ask from their backboard and matte board scraps. The white and black types are usually color neutral and hold up to a lot of abuse, while easily cut to your own needs. Sometimes stores will have entire sheets they’re willing to part with for free.

Go Tube Kit (Soft Case) $685.00

Windshield Heat Reflector $10
You can find these things at auto parts stores and department stores, for very little money. They have one shiny side, aluminum, and one white side. They are essentially the same thing as a photoflex/flexfill. Just take them and repeatedly crush them into a little ball to distress the material (provides a more even and defect free quality of light).

4′x8′ Foam Core $55
You might have to search a bit for this, but it’s simply unmatched in giving large areas of fill, and can always be cut down for your needs. I use them constantly, on location and in the studio.

Cheapest solution

So, you’re really poor (like all of us) and you can’t spare more than 250 bucks for your lighting needs. Well. Okay. I’ve got a kit for you. You can’t complain about the way it looks, but it might just get the job done. I have to admit, this kit is the coolest because it’s just so ridiculously cheap.

CTB Photofloods (250w) x3 – (each) $3.00
White Photofloods (250w) x3 – (each) $3.00
Clamp Lamps x3 – (each) $9.00
China Balls/Lanterns x2 – (each) $10.00
Tyvek – $10.00
4′x8′ Foam Core – $55.00
Gaffers Tape – (each) $25.00
Used C-Stand (With Arm) – $80.00
QuikClamps – (each) $5.00
Assorted Backerboard/Matte Board – $Free
Windshield Heat Reflector – $10.00
Duffle Bag – $Free

That’s 250 bucks for a working kit. It ain’t pretty, but it will do the job. You can usually find a duffle bag for free or nearly free at Goodwill, or from some company outing, or some sort of corporate merchandizing. I know you can find one for free.

China balls/lanterns can be found at most cheap stores, like “BigLots” or “Ocean State Job Lot” (if that exists still, I don’t even know). I’m sure there’s international equivalents of all these places. China lanterns are just paper wrapped around a metal frame, either as a sphere or a rectangle. Both are extremely versatile. And combustible. So keep an eye on them.

For as many introductions there are to studio lighting, there are also as many types of studio lighting. If you wish to some day work as a professional, it is in your best interest to be able to light any situation from products to models, table top to cloth swatches. There are two major principles to beginning any studio project.
The first is the location of the “key” light. The second is the object to be photographed and the material of which it is made.

The materials we’re photographing are important indicators to what is “normal” in a proper exposure. If we want to photograph a young woman in a black velvet jacket, we do not want the jacket to be grey on our exposure, we want it to be black, particularly when shooting chromes.
However, with digital offering us more and more tools, we could probably fix most minor exposure problems in post-processing. Nonetheless, the studio allows for total creative control. The better each step is, the better the final product.

The first rule of thumb with studio work is to think about the image before you even begin to set up the shot. The second rule of thumb is “Don’t Panic!” I have yet to do a single project professionally or otherwise that goes perfectly to plan. If the idea begins to undergo metamorphosis, go with it. If you try to force a shoot to specifics, you’ll get frustrated and it still won’t be correct.

Let’s say we’ve got one light (bare bulb, meaning that the light is not confined or controlled with modifiers) and 2 different objects: a cell phone and a stuffed animal.
There is a lot of technical knowledge that you can use in studio work but most will benefit far more from achieving an understanding of how light “looks” rather than all the tools of a million-dollar-a-year studio. The cell phone, made of metallic surface, will cause reflexion of the light, while the stuffed animal is rather in danger of loosing details if shot with a flash. That being said, let’s look at the one light studio applied on the stuffed animal.

When using just one light, youu have to make your subject have shape and motivation from a single direction. One light photography can provide beautiful results for creative portrait work. In the earlier periods of cinema photography, a single source was commonly used for illumination in tight quarters, to provide extremely dynamic and moodily lit images.

When using multiple source lighting, the location becomes less of a contributor to the subject: the ratios of the light to the reflectance and resulting “reflectors” (like walls, the ceiling, the floor) become moot.

Three strobes directed at a single subject will outweigh most of the “reflected” light in the room. When using single source lighting, the objects in close proximity to the subject become a factor, because they will “cast” light onto the subject, sometimes to your benefit, sometimes not so much.

If you do not have a studio at school, or some other connection, you might be using lamps, or flashlights or whatever other sources of illumination you can concoct. That’s fine.

The example above it’s photographed on two surfaces, a light wood and a black velvet. Black velvet reflects very little light (for you geeks, it’s rated usually at 2% reflectance) and the light wood has a nice finish that makes it quite amber.

The differences between the two images should be immediately visible but perhaps a little misleading. Because the exposure and distances between all objects has not changed, the change in “feel” is a result of A) contrast edges and B) surface reflectivity.

One surface reflects more light than the other, which does many things.
Firstly, the owl on black velvet looks more dynamic because it is! Black velvet acts as “negative fill” or creates areas on your subject that have a lesser value due to a lack of receiving light because of an object placed in the way of its light receiving surfaces.
In other words: you added something to the set to get in the way of the light. Even though the black velvet is not in the direct way of the light source (between the light source and the subject), it still affects the object, compared to the same setup with a different surface.
The second cause for the change in “feel” is the “contrast edge” or lack thereof. In the black velvet owl image, shadow areas on the subject are adjacent to a low-reflective material and the human eye lumps them together.

The owl on wood has more light being reflected into shadow areas, providing a greater value, but also has a “high contrast edge” which provides a distinct difference for the eye to perceive. It essentially prevents us from being lazy, but also contributes to the motivation of the image: the “darker” image pushes you into the areas of highlights, while the “lighter” image causes you to look at the entire object.
Again, I caution that the camera exposure has not changed…

Now you can recognize that elements in the scene and around us contribute to the subject, even if we don’t directly intend them to do so. You can use this to our advantage however.
Let’s say that you want the black velvet surface in the image, but we want the reflected values in the shadowed areas of the owl to be more like it is with the lighter surface… you can still use just one light, but by using a “fill card” we can “fill in” the shadow areas of the owl, without changing the key light or altering the surface in frame.
I use fill cards regularly, with one or two lights, as you can see in this example, to reveal details about the object:

As you can see in this comparative diptych, the owl on the left has the same moody feel, as the owl on the left in the first example. The surprise is, there is no difference between the values on the surface of the owl on the left in the second example, and the owl on the right of the first example: the only change is that of the “contrast edge” and adjacent areas of “light” and “dark”.

The image of the owl on the right has even MORE light in the shadows than the owl on the right in the first image, and is still on black velvet. No source of light has been added, but the distance between the light, fill card, and owl has been altered.

In the second example, the left owl has a fill card at an equal distance to the subject as the light source, on the same plane as the other two objects (in other words, if you held a string from the fill card to the table lamp, it would pass through the middle of the owl, and the light and the fill card would be equidistant).

The wonderful thing about the Newtonian mechanics of light is that it is extremely predictable and we can use ratios for it easily. The same values of light at the surface of a subject will be achieved (basically) if the subject is 5’6″ high and the light source and fill boards are nine feet away.

Tags: photography tutorial, photography tutorials, photo tips, lighting, photography lighting, studio lighting, one light photography, bulb, table light, illumination

Now let’s see the tips:
1. Use a textile background that makes a few soft “natural waves”
2. Use one little colored piece in your white composition as a reference
3. Use lights from all sides to avoid big dark shadows
4. Use fill flash (better with diffuser on it) to naturally brighten up the scene and reveal the details
5. Use custom white balance to ensure real white
6. Only use matrix light metering
7. Do not overexpose the picture in the attempt of getting pure white
8. Use manual focus if the auto does not find the desired focus point
9. Do not completely remove the shadows – let the shapes be visible
10. Use a software to remove dark corners that may form

Sometimes, even if I use custom white balance, I still need to cool the picture a bit later. The whole task of photographing white objects on white background can be very difficult and require allot of practice. On the other hand, shooting in RAW format may let you change the exposure even after the shot was taken.

Tags: White Object on White Background, photography tutorials, photo tips, macro photo, macro photography

Tags: food photography

Marketing is the Key to Success

Now that you learned to think about how to please the costumers, you must also learned how to grow your business with little marketing and advertising tricks. This is about some economic thinking which you can find on blogs like Photopreneur and others.
The Most Overlooked Photography Business Marketing Tool – you might find out things you never thought of: like a specific logo on each web gallery on the Internet (flickr, deviantart, etc.) in order to make a brand for people to recognize you.
Then, Building a Microstock Portfolio – is another thing to do.
Fotolia offers the possibility to find affiliates (if you want to know more about how this helps, search for affiliate marketing), which means that if they sell photos, you will also get paid. For example, if you make an account at Fotolia coming from Photoaxe, you will get paid each time I sell and Image and vice-versa.
You can buy books that offer plenty of information about how to obtain great success with you business and books about photographic opportunities. It’s a little investment that might bring you thousands dollars more back. As an example: Photographer’s Market – an yearly database.

Legal Issues in Photography should not be Ignored

Copyrighting and Model Release are the words you will hear all the time in this business. You can’t even upload a self portrait without a model release. But don’t worry too much: all photography stock websites offer model release examples which you can change, print, sign by hand, scan and upload.
As for copyrighting, as long as you are a reasonable photographer who does not steal photos from other, you don’t have to worry. Don’t forget that Creative Commons license stand that the photo under it may not be used in commercial purposes. However, you might worry about others stealing your work and by knowing the law you can get paid for the damage.
5 Of The Fastest Ways To Get Sued – will guide you inside the general issues for which one can get in trouble with the law.
But, before suing someone, make sure you read well the papers (even web pages) you signed. Again, Photopreneur comes with an article that quotes paragraphs from the aggrements of different stock photogrphy companies: Have You Read Your Rights?. In a few words: some stock agencies tell you that the author of the pictures are the owners, other agencies take the ownership over them once the photo is uploaded and you won’t be able to sell the same photo to other agencies for a period of time. These rules must also be read when applying to a contest.

Go read part I of the article.

Tags: stock photography, photography business, photographers market, selling photos, commercial photography

Where Should I Sell My Photos?

Sooner or later it would have happened: thinking about entering the stock photography business. Before even looking for a reseller of your photos, make sure you have the right gear for high quality photos: the minimum accepted is 6MP, 2700×1800 resolution. Some may ask for at least an entry lever SLR.
First I looked over at http://www.stockphoto.net/ in order to find a website (or laboratory) willing to accept me as a photographer. But… the big well-known iStockPhoto, and StockExpert delayed too much in responding. Fotolia was the most responsive and yet it has the same quality of the database as the other two. After the immediate validation of you account, your uploaded photos will be reviewed in 24 hours. Most of them will probably be rejected because it appears to me that Fotolia team is very strength in sorting and accepting images, but I don’t blame them: it’s not a bad thing to encourage photographers to get better and think more about costumers demands.

Learn to Think Commercial

Stock photography is definably commercial and while browsing thru my archive, I realized that I don’t have such photos yet. Changing the perspective from an artistic angle to a commercial one is not as easy as I thought.
In order to redefine my thinking when looking at the world around me, I found this blog called Photopreneur who draw my attention because of the clean writing and plenty of good advise on this matter. The site has reasonably good photography business advice adapted for the brains of todays forward-thinking youth and covered in a simple design.
How To Lose A Client In One Day – this gives you advises on how to relationate with your clients so that they will go on asking for your service. It not only applies for stock agencies, but also it’s very useful when shooting at a weeding or other social events.
11 Signs That Your Photo Is Going To Be A Big Seller - is an article that will help you self critique your own work in order to send the stock agencies only the best you got for them (if you don’t send the best from the begging, they won’t look at you).
Keywording Secrets For Big Photo Sales – even if your photo is accepted by quality and relevance, if it doesn’t show up at the costumers search, it’s like it wasn’t even there, so read this article.
Rasmus Rasmussen also has a must read article on the matter of “pay attention to what you upload”: 10 Common Mistakes by New Stock Photographers. This gives tips on how to process the image in order to keep the high quality and don’t loose it at compression. Read more of this guy’s articles to learn how to obtain great quality of your images. Later on I will write about creating a studio for this type of photography.

Go read part II of the article.

Tags: stock photography, photography business, photographers market, selling photos, commercial photography