The Daily Click - Everyday Amateur Photography

Textures

2009-09-08T18:18:00.000-07:00

This weekend while working in the yard I decided to aim my camera at all the textures I could find. I snapped pictures of the Spanish moss hanging in the trees, the inside of our rusty wheelbarrow and the metal roof of our shed. I continued on through the yard and into the house and even took some pictures of the different textures found in our bathroom. I have added all 20 textures that are on the left and I compiled them to a zip file you can download by clicking here.

Now you may be wondering what is the big deal about textures and how can you use them. The simplest way I know to explain using textures in editing your photographs is that texture adds that extra oomph your picture may have been lacking. Sometimes the texture is so subtle you may not notice that it is even there but you do notice when it isn't.

Here is the SOOC picture we are starting with, Barbie at the beach.

After I make all the initial adjustments that I want this is what we now see:

I added a layer mask of the Spanish moss texture :

And then I adjusted the opacity of the moss and masked off Barbie's skin so it would not take on the moss effect.

The effect is subtle but it adds a nice texture to the bland background.

~ame

Beach Barbie

2009-08-23T01:54:00.000-07:00

~ame

Post Production

2009-08-18T10:46:00.001-07:00

While I am working on a tutorial about White Balance (by request of Buttercup), I thought I would take a few minutes and give my views on a subject near and dear to many: Post Production.

If you are new to photography and are navigating the many web sites out there you will come across the term PP a lot. PP is simply post production and that just means what you do with the picture once you have downloaded (or scanned) it into your computer.

You may also come across the acronym SOOC which stands for Straight Out Of the Camera, meaning no editing at all has been done to the picture you are viewing. I like SOOC best to be honest.

My aim in photographing someone or thing is to make it as lifelife as possible; I want to capture what I am seeing in reality on paper or in this case: in pixels. Do I use a little PP here and there? Of course. For the most part though my aim is to correct something I did incorrectly when I pressed the shutter release button: sharpen, lighten, straighten etc.

The above picture though has been through some PP. Just a touch. I blurred the first layer and added a super sharp layer on top of that. I then added a cloud texture layer and border. I am not quite sure what to think of the outcome. I'll let you decide for yourselves, as here is the original:

Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi
Shutter Speed: 1/125 seconds
Aperture: f/7.1
ISO: 400
Focal Length: 18 mm
Flash: None
Return: None
Metering: Patterned

~ame

Tonight's Moon

2009-08-04T19:37:00.000-07:00

Fireworks 2009

2009-07-06T18:39:00.000-07:00

There is a bit of a blur and some hot spots but I rather like the way this one turned out.

~ame

VIew from Coachman Park

2009-07-04T20:18:00.000-07:00

Shutter Speed: 1/250 seconds
Aperture: f/6.3
ISO: 400
Focal Length: 135 mm
Flash: None
Return: None
Metering: Patterned

~ame

Big Bear, California

2009-07-03T20:55:00.000-07:00

While my back is healing I have not been able to shoot. Here is a shot I took with my old Olympus. I stood inside a hollowed out redwood tree that had been struck by lightning.

~ame

Look both ways....

2009-07-03T02:52:00.000-07:00

Shutter Speed: 1/160 seconds
Aperture: f/9
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 55 mm
Flash: None
Return: None
Metering: Patterned

Macros

2009-07-02T01:38:00.000-07:00

For the sake of simplicity I will refer to any close-up photography on this blog as a macro and not get into the difference between close-up and actual macros. I don't think the average amateur photographer needs to know the ratio differentials between the two.

Shutter Speed: 1/500 seconds
Aperture: f/4.5
ISO: 320
Focal Length: 33 mm
Flash: None
Return: None
Metering: Patterned

Shutter Speed: 1/200 seconds
Aperture: f/5.6
ISO: 400
Focal Length: 53 mm
Flash: None
Return: None
Metering: Patterned

It was a rainy day so I didn't get the chance to shoot much. I did want to experiment with my new +10 macro lens. The first photo is taken with the camera on the macro setting without the lens. The second photo is with the lens. It was fairly windy and I discovered that while using the lens the subject matter needs to be not moving or I got blur. I don't know how much use I will get out of using the lens by itself unless I plan on splitting an atom and I can't find my neutron microscope.

I had mistakenly thought this lens would come in handy for taking close ups of my flowers. However, I discovered today that to get the shot in focus I had to be really close to the subject matter. We are talking lens-dang-near-touching-the-flower close.

I'll keep experimenting.

~ame

Aperture

2009-07-01T01:11:00.000-07:00

Once you get beyond being satisfied with the factory settings that came with your camera, the first concept you need to understand fully is aperture. Note that if you have a simple point and shoot camera, this information will be moot to you as the aperture is fixed and will only be adjusted by your camera and it can not be adjusted by you. But if your camera has a ton of little options like this:

then you can adjust your aperture and let the fun begin. Let's first define what aperture is. Aperture simply is the opening in your camera that adjusts the amount of light that hits the lens and in this case we can adjust the aperture ourselves instead of having the camera do all the work for us. We can use the much maligned pupil/camera analogy and you can think of the opening and closing of the aperture as the pupil of your camera. Just as the pupils in your eyes dilate to let more or less light in, so does the opening or aperture on your camera.

The diameter of the opening is called the f-stop, f-number or aperture value; different names for the same function and depending upon the setting it allows a certain amount of light to pass through the lens and onto your camera's sensor. As you can see in the above diagram, the smaller the f-stop number the larger the opening. To me logic would dictate that the larger the f-stop number the larger the opening, but it is exactly the opposite.

After you grasped the 'bigger is actually smaller' concept you are now ready to understand what all of this means to you:

By adjusting the aperture, you adjust the depth of field, which I will attempt to define at a later date. Simply put you have control over what elements in your picture will be in or out of focus. A rule of thumb to start with is the lower the f-stop (f-2.0) the blurrier the background or technically put: the shallower the depth of field. By the same token the higher the f-stop (f-14) the more in focus the background will be. If you want your entire shot to be in focus, your subject and all of the background, then you will want to use a higher f-stop. Got it? Good.

f/5.6

f/32
Jonquil flowers credit: Wikipedia.org

Additionally, the amount of light you allow will effect the outcome of your picture. Too much light and you picture will be overexposed, too little and your picture will be underexposed and dark. Selecting the right aperture is the first step in framing a perfectly exposed shot with the desired effect on the subject and background. Please note though that sometimes an overexposed or underexposed shot ends up being more visually pleasing to some than the 'perfect' shot. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder they say and that is true in photography as well.

Classic overexposure

Now you are probably wondering why on earth you need to know about aperture, f-stops and such. Control, friends. Control. It is all about control. Sure you could continue shooting in your factory settings mode and take perfectly fine pictures for the rest of your life. -Or- You can venture out a bit on the daring side and experiment. I can guarantee nothing but good will come from this and after using the f-stops a few times you will begin to grasp the concept and see the difference it makes in your photography. And when all else fails: Photoshop.

~ame

Honeymoon Island

2009-06-30T01:40:00.000-07:00

Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi
Lens: .42 Super Wide Angle
Shutter Speed: 1/500 seconds
Aperture: f/10.0
ISO: 400
Focal Length: 90 mm
Flash: None
Return: None
Metering: Patterned

Welcome

2009-06-28T22:31:00.000-07:00

~An exercise in daily photography. One picture, each day for a year.~

Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi
Shutter Speed: 6 seconds
Aperture: f/8.0
ISO: 1600
Focal Length: 80 mm
Flash: Fired
Return: None
Metering: Patterned

~ame

Disclaimer

2009-06-27T18:23:00.000-07:00

Thank you for visiting my photography blog. It needs to be said that I really have no idea what I am doing for the most part when it comes to using my camera. Up until a few months ago I was completely happy to keep my camera on the auto mode and point and shoot.

Then it happened. I took this picture:

The sun and sky portion of the picture is lovely but there was a problem. This sunset was not orange. At all.

This picture was taken just minutes after the one above and is an accurate representation of what the sky looked like at that time. So I was perplexed. Why did some of my pictures turn out orange and some turn out exactly like I was witnessing them? I figured something just had to be wrong with my ~~baby~~ camera and I headed up to Ritz Camera for some answers.

Silly me. Really. I explained to the camera guy what was happening and he explained to me what the problem might be. He wanted to know what my white balance was set to. Um. White Balance? I knew what white balance was but was clueless as to knowing how to adjust it on my camera. I just smiled and nodded and pretended like I knew exactly what he was telling me about and promptly went home and Googled the heck out of white balance for my camera.

In my studies I found out that my camera was the All Powerful Oz of cameras for amateurs. I kinda knew that to begin with and had been happy in my stupidity for years. Then it hit me: I have a camera that we paid a ton of money for, that has options I had never even thought about using. If I was only going to shoot in auto, I should have saved myself some money and spent $79 at Wally World for a basic point and shoot camera. I owed it to myself to learn how to use my camera properly.

I did more research and learned about white balance and as fate would have it the kids had a concert at the school. For the first time ever, I took pictures that didn't turn out with the famous orange wash-out that signifies your white balance is off. I was ecstatic I could take a decent picture that I didn't have to run through Photoshop to fix.

And here we are today.

In essence I just wanted to state that this blog is more for my use than yours. If you are some Ansel Adams type who has been shooting for years and has converted your living room into a dark room - this isn't the blog for you. This blog is designed for folks like me, the clueless ones who want to learn a little bit more. My descriptions of photography terms are put into a format that I can understand and hopefully I will have taken the technical jargon out and made photography something everyone can understand.

Thanks for taking this journey with me - now get clicking!

~ame

2009-06-27T13:02:00.000-07:00

Coming soon!