It happens to the best of us. We get blemishes on our skin – zits, cuts, scrapes, scars, what have you. Some of these things you may want to leave in a picture. Someone might not want a permanent mole or beauty mark to disappear. But, I don’t know that you’ll find many people who want their zits, cuts, and bruises to stay in their pictures!
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Photo by: Sziga.

I found this simple studio portrait in the “Portraits” tag on Flickr. It’s a good execution of a simple two-light scheme. If you click through to the photo page, there’s a description of the lights. But, you should have a decent idea based on the catch-lights in her eyes. The left eye tells it all – one light coming from off to camera left and one light off to camera right. They’re pretty even in terms of power output, because you don’t have a real contrast between the left and right sides of the face; there’s just a little shadow on the left cheek where the hair blocks some of the light.

Although this isn’t a web design site and I usually write about web design on another site (Nerds at Work), this little tip should be of special interest to photographers. WordPress is a great all around website platform. If you don’t know how to custom design a template (like I did for Olinda Gibbons Photography), you can find many a good template to use that will suit your needs.

There are also a lot of plug-ins that help you personalize your site without a lot of technical know-how. One of these plug-ins is the Lightbox 2 plugin for WordPress. This allows you to automatically create a “Lightbox” effect, where when a user click’s on an image they can see a full-size version of it without leaving the page. Instead, the full-size image is laid over the current page, and the background is darkened.  The roll of film to the left has nothing to do with this post, really, but I put it there so you can click on it and see what I mean. Keep reading…

Previously, I wrote about the meaning of the term “exposure” in camera talk. To briefly recap, a “stop” is a relative term describing how well-lit and well-exposed the image is. Adjusting the camera settings to increase the light by “one stop” will effectively double the amount of light in the picture (either by opening the aperture, raising the ISO, or lowering the shutter speed).

The same terminology applies in post-processing, although at this point you’re no longer changing the camera settings. In photo editing software, including Adobe Lightroom, you will usually find an “Exposure” adjustment or slider. Dragging this will digitally alter the image and brighten or darken it as if you had adjusted the camera settings. Keep reading…

Photo by: henrikj.

Found this in the Recent Interesting section of Flickr. It’s such an awesome scenic shot, I couldn’t pass it up. I love the composition, with the body of water in the lower left flowing out into the ocean. And there’s just a hint of a sky and horizon at the end of the picture, the bulk of it being land. Really makes you want to go travel and find some awesome scenes like this. There’s nothing like this in central Jersey…

Photo by: Viele Geischter.

This photo of some football (soccer) players posing together came out of the recent uploads section of Flickr. It’s a great illustration of how to take a quick posed shot outside in the afternoon: find some shade! Look in the background (or in the other pictures in the photostream) and you’ll notice it’s a very bright, sunny day. Put the three lads out in the sun, and they’ll be squinting and have some harsh shadows all over. Instead, they’re sitting in the shade and they’ve got some nice, soft light all around them. One problem with this is your background (if it’s in the sun) will usually get blown out, so don’t expect to get a lot of definition out of it. It can also help to throw in a little bit of fill light from a flash, but you don’t want to over do it.

From what I can tell? No.

Yesterday, I read an article on DPS about online backups, and one of the commenters recommended Crashplan over Mozy. Never used Crashplan, so I can’t comment. Reader said he had a horrible experience with Mozy, which is certainly possible, so I won’t comment.

But he also claimed that Mozy throttled your uploads to 10gb per day – in other words, Mozy artificially restricted you to uploading 10gb a day when you could easily upload more. The problem with this, of course, is that it takes much longer to upload an initial backup or any large change to your directory structure. This I can comment on, and from my experience it is patently untrue. Keep reading…

Photo by: Ft. Couch Potatoes.

This snapshot of some cyclists taking a break came out of the recent uploads section of Flickr. Two things of interest here. One, a “sports” shot doesn’t necessarily have to be an action shot. Those are cool and all, but at the end of the day a lot of sports shots start looking alike – a cyclist riding down the road, a football player making a catcher, a pitcher tossing a ball. The really cool, defining pictures catch moments and faces that draw you to the picture. Which brings me to the second point. I love the way the guys are just standing around, in the middle of doing their usual stuff, and they looked over at the camera. It’s a lot more candid than a “Get together for a group picture!” group shot, but at the same time everyone (except the one guy checking his bike) is looking at the camera. Nice capture.

A stop (might also be called an f-stop or an exposure stop) is a basic but important term in photography. You might hear someone say that a picture is “Underexposed by 1 stop” or “The picture is overexposed, turn the exposure down one stop.” The term “stop” is a relative term defining the amount of light in a picture.

If you increase the exposure by one stop, you double the amount of light in the picture. If you decrease the exposure by one stop, you halve the amount of light in the picture.

If someone says, “The picture is underexposed by 1 stop,” they’re making a comparison between the picture they see and what they think the proper exposure should be. If you double the amount of light in the image, it should look better. Keep reading…

A battery grip is a camera accessory with two purposes – to add battery capacity to your camera and to allow you to more easily turn the camera to portrait orientation and take a vertical picture. The image to the left is one example: the official Canon grip for a Canon T1i.

One reason to have a a battery grip is that it increases the battery life of your camera. For example, the battery grip for my Canon T1i allows me to have two batteries in the camera instead of one. Effectively doubles the battery life of the camera, reducing the need to pull out batteries and change them in the middle of an event. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had to stop and change the batteries in the middle of an event/shoot now that I have the battery grip. Keep reading…