Tips and Tricks: Black and White

The question is when to use black and white or color.   Fortunately with the age of modern computer software, its fairly easy to see if your photograph will work in black and white or not.  I  use Aperture 3 to do my post-processing.  I will try and give you some tips and tricks on black and white and the built-in filters.  I won’t tell you percentages, because that is going to vary from software to software.  Then of course you can always play with the percentages to get the image you want.  I usually find the one that fits the closest to what I want and then play with the sliders and percentages to get it perfect.

Tips and Tricks – Cropping for Flowers

One thing I’m really known for on Redbubble is my flower photography!  Most of the flowers I take are in nurseries or flower farms which results in me using natural lighting.  For this blog, I took an ordinary dahlia capture of the Bitsy Dahlia with a couple of buds from Swan Island.  And I’d  like to show the steps (just on cropping and flipping) that I do with flowers. I think this image kind of shows the promise of things to come with the almost open bud.   Also, notice on the bottom left there is a dahlia bud showing. In my initial crop I took the bottom bud off.  Then your eyes will complete the look of the flower.  And the “noise” from the bud is removed.

Tips and Tricks: Always Get Your Photos in Focus

A couple of years ago, I took a 6 hour basic photography class.  One of the first things the instructor did was teach everyone how to hold their camera.  Whether they have a point and shoot or SLR or DSLR.  Once I learned this method, I’ve not used my tripod since.  And it gives me so much flexibility on shooting different angles.  Yes, I’m the model and photographer all at once.  So these photos may not be the best, but hopefully they will give you the idea.

The first image shows how most people hold their cameras.  Look familiar.  It’s wrong!!

Holding your camera this way, means that every time your finger hits the shutter, your camera is going to move just a little bit.  And a little bit more with your bigger SLR/DSLRs.

One Object Photographed and Processed Differently

It’s is interesting how many different ways that one object can be photographed and don’t forget about the numerous ways it can be processed afterwards.   Chris and I received a gift from Sobha, a friend of ours who just got back from her native India.  This statue is about 8 inches tall and so full of intricate detail and looks so lovely.   And I set up a little studio and took a bunch of photographs of it.  Here is a photo of it.  I didn’t do a lot of post processing with this one.  Brought out the details a little bit.

Photographed using my Lumix FZ100

Tips and Tricks – Cropping Photographs

As a photographer I consider myself an artist.  I’ve got a specific type of photographic style.  I like simple, clear, crisp and vibrant.  A photograph can tell a story and I feel it’s up to me to tell the story I want to tell.   This first example I’m using tells two different stories.  Always have your camera set a fine picture quality.  That pretty much assures when you crop you will still have wonderful clarity.  When cropping I try to maintain the original ratio aspect, for example 4×6 dimensions.  I will sometime flip the image too.

Above is my original of Swan Islands Dahlia field.  Where the car is parked, there is actually a two way road and ample parking space on both sides of the road.  In the photo it really looks like one continuous field of flowers and the car is parked in the middle of the field.  The next I’ve cropped it just so the field shows.   And the final one shows the car in the field.