Photographers Matt Kloskowski and Scott Kelby have a new website which will air a weekly show about Nikon gear and Nikon related photography tips. This is a little strange, if only because it seems like one big advertisement for Nikon… and basically, that’s what it is – because the site is in fact sponsored by Nikon. Still, all information is good information, and these guys are giving it away. So what if they make me want to buy that D700 in the process?

While we all love Nikon (except for those who don’t, for some reason) it’s clear that DTOWN will focus mostly on gear, which is fine – as long as you don’t expect too many DIY tips or third party gear tutorials.

What I would love to see is a show like this one, but unsponsored – an independent photography studio just talking about the tricks of the trade. I love studio photography, but have only been exposed to it in school – so that kind of insight would be really welcome. The problem with most photographers these days is that most pro’s don’t like to discuss their tricks, methods, and workflow – because that’s their livelihood, and they would rather keep it to themselves. In my vast exposure to the photography community, if I’ve discovered anything it’s that the photography community is fairly insular. That’s changing though, mostly thanks to the internet and attemps like DTOWN.

We can use that system to our advantage, however, if we take the time to really scrutinize the lighting in our picture. That means looking at shadows, evaluating hotspots, determining the best direction and measure of light, and checking for color casts in the light.

One of the easiest ways to improve the color in your picture is to understand White Balance. Let’s revisit the subject now, and I’ll explain why tinkering with your White Balance is good both in and out of the camera, and why ultimately, you may not want to settle on a “proper” white balance setting. Light comes in a variety of colors. It’s not just “white”. Tungsten light bulbs, for example, are yellow/orange in color. Flourescent bulbs are somewhat green. Daylight is blue. We know this is the case because of how these types of light reflect off a white surface… and we call this color cast the color temperature of the light. The common color temperatures are often listed in a chart, which is shown below. All temperatures are measured in degrees Kelvin. Contrary to what your intuition may tell you, the higher the color temperature, the cooler the color.

Setting Your White Balance

All digital cameras contain a sensor inside which houses not only the recording surface but also a white balance sensor. This sensor attempt to detect the color temperature you’re shooting under, and adjust the White Balance setting in your camera for it. Unfortunately, there are not always ideal circumstances for the sensor to make a good call on the White Balance, especially in situations where the light is constantly changing.

For this reason alone, it’s a good idea to set your own White Balance. Most SLR cameras have a number of pre-defined values in their menu for typical shooting scenarios… like Direct Sunlight, Shade, Incandescent (Tungsten), Flourescent, etc. More modern or advanced cameras will go even further and give you a Preset option, which let’s you measure your own particular color temperature off a neutral white or grey card. This is likely the most effective method for ensuring you get proper color, but you must make sure the card you’re measuring from is neutral in color (or rather, devoid of any color cast whatsoever). Using a regular piece of white copy paper won’t produce the desired results.

By using either a predefined White Balance or by presetting your own White Balance you’re locking your camera to a value that will not change during the course of your shooting. This means you’ll not only get accurate color, but you’ll get consistent color through the shoot. You only need to worry if you relocate to different lighting conditions, at which point you’ll want to re-evaluate your White Balance and possibly change or tweak it.

Using WhiBal Cards

The above is always good advice, but you can even go a step further with White Balance cards. These cards are now offered by a variety of manufacturers, but they are most commonly referred to as WhiBal cards. They are a set of credit-card sized cards on a ring containing neutral white, black, and one or two shades of grey.

The idea is that you or your subject hold or place the cards in the first frame of whatever you’re taking a picture of. This becomes your reference frame. It’s important to remember that this reference frame needs to be shot under the same lighting conditions as you intend to shoot hereafter… so if you’re using a flash, or studio lights, they need to fire for your reference frame.

After you’ve shot your reference frame, remove the cards and continue to shoot normally until, again, you relocate to new lighting – at which time you take a new reference frame. Most post-production photography software (such as Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, and higher end manufacturer software) allows you to use a white balance eyedropper tool to find areas of the photo that it can use to measure from and get proper color. Click on the white card, and you should find a neutral, proper white balance – no matter what your camera’s white balance setting was set to. This works best when shooting in RAW. Additionally, you can use the black and grey cards to measure the overall tone of the image.

Satisfying Your Eye

White Balance is subjective – and while the above might get you a technically accurate white balance, it may not be to everyone’s liking. After all, that’s why film stock like Kodachrome and Fuji Velvia sold so well back in the old days… they were oversaturated, warmed up versions of reality – which is what people seem(ed) to like. We tend to remember color much more vividly then the reality of the situation… a phenomenon called memory color. We remember that apple being bright fire-engine red, and the leaves as lime green, even if the reality wasn’t quite that vivid.

If you prefer your images a little cooler, or a little warmer, that’s your artistic choice. The best way to begin, however, is always to bring the picture to it’s most accurate starting point using the above techniques and modify it from there.

Well, yes and no. Ideally this would always be the case. In a perfect digital world, the picture would be perfectly sharp, perfectly exposed, and the color levels would all be perfectly recorded by your camera.

Sadly, the world of the digital photographer is often times less than perfect.

The sceince of photography is pretty fluid and the tools are not always calibrated exactly to our liking. Sharpening is almost always applied in-camera. A certain amount is dialed in by the manufacturer in-camera and is performed by the filter overtop of the image sensor. However, camera makers need to find a balance. Too much sharpening can cause moiré with certain subject matter. Too little sharpening will cause customers to complain about soft images.

That’s why most digital cameras have a sharpening control, to allow you to manipulate the amount of sharpening that is applied to the image. Usually the amounts that can be applied are harmless levels of sharpening, and won’t do any damage to the image. Still, the process of software sharpening In-Camera does alter the image in a way that cannot be repaired or altered unless you shoot RAW.

Going beyond that is sharpening done in post-processing. Technically this is the same process, but it’s performed a step later, with the difference being that it gives you a little more control over how the image will end up looking.

So should you use sharpening? Yes. The in-camera sharpening is likely set to a level that won’t harm your picture even if you crank it up and max it out. The post-processing sharpening in most software needs to be used with a bit more care, since too much sharpening can drop vital information and render a picture useless, but it’s also a handy tool when used conservatively.

HDR photography creates a very surreal effect, where every part of the image is “properly” exposed and well defined. I think of it as hyper-realism, because a properly done HDR image (when done properly) is one that best reflects what I see with my eyes.

Technically, this is done by combining multiple versions of the same image, all of which have been exposed slightly differently. It’s easy to push the images too far, however, and ruin the effect – but if you’re good, you can create simply stunning photographs.

Half of what we’re going to do is done in-camera and requires bracketing or the ability to shoot RAW files (or both). The other half is done on the computer, where you can use software to put the pictures together. For this tutorial we’ll use Photomatix from a company called HDRsoft, which is specifically designed for this type of thing… though you could also use Photoshop. As an aside, though I’ve outlined how I approach the process in a little more detail, you can also view the official HDRsoft tutorial here.

Step 1: Getting A Sequence Of Shots

The first step is acquiring the source material. Like I said above, you need multiple images, but there are a couple ways of getting them.

Bracketing

The easiest (and best) way of generating multiple shots of the same subject using different exposures is through the use of Exposure Bracketing on your camera. Three shots is often enough, but if your camera supports a greater number of frames in the bracket, you can try using more than three.

When you set up bracketing on a Digital SLR, you can usually set the number of frames in the bracket, but you can also set the exposure value difference between those frames. I’d suggest +/-2.0 stops, though you can get away with less or more depending on the contrast differentials in the scene.

Now you have to take three (or more, if you have your frames set higher for the bracket) pictures of your scene or subject. The trick here is that you have to shoot the pictures fast, and there can’t be any movement in the scene or in the camera. Any little movement will reflect in the end image when you overlay the set of images.

Single RAW File

There is another technique for doing an HDR image of a moving subject, and that involves a single RAW file. While we ideally want three (or more) images shot at different exposures, this doesn’t work if the subject is moving around – since they would move from frame to frame.

Instead, use a single RAW file (properly exposed) and load it into your favorite image editor. Save a TIFF copy of it at -2 EV, another at 0 EV change, and a third at +2 EV. Since we’ve stripped the EXIF data from file by saving it as a TIFF, Photomatix won’t know the difference and will properly process.

Step 2: Generating An HDR Image

Open the three images into Photomatix. From the HDRI menu select “Generate HDR”, and select “Use Opened Images” when it prompts you to use them. It will then attempt to determine the exposure variance between the shots, so just make sure it’s got it right (-2.0, 0, and +2.0). Click OK, and check “Use Standard Response Curve”.

If you are using a sequence of shots from the camera (as opposed to from a single RAW file source) you should check “Align source images” so Photomatix will try to line up any slight differences in composition. This is advised, even when you’ve shot using a tripod.

Now click Ok, and after a minute or so you’ll get an HDR image. At this point, it hasn’t been tone mapped to look good on your screen, so it won’t appear quite right. It will likely look overexposed, but you’re making progress. You’ve now got a 32-bit image that Photomatix will convert to a 16-bit or 8-bit image, but still retain all the tonal information we’ve compiled.

Step 3: Tone Mapping

Before you’ve begun the Tone Mapping process, you may want to save the source HDR image (in case anything goes wrong). This is a big file, though, so before you start saving all your HDR images for archival purposes, make sure you can afford the space. Then go to File > Save As, and save it.

Now go to the HDR menu and click on Tone Mapping.

At this point you’ll be looking at the Tone Mapping window using the “Details Enhancer” method, which allows you to see the HDR image as it maps lighter pixels onto dark ones and vice versa.

You can now experiment with the sliders to get the desired effect of balance. There aren’t any rules here – so this is typically the “make or break” portion of the process, where some people push the image too far. With an artistic eye and a little knowledge of what the sliders are controlling you can avoid that, and make a beautiful image instead.

Luminosity
This slider will effect the brightness. By moving this slider, you will boost the detail in the shadow areas and affect the overall luminosity of the image.

Strength
Essentially effects the contrast of the image, and moving this to the right will boost it. Set this too high and you’ll get halos or glowing edges.

Color Saturation
Increases the RGB values and results in a higher degree of color in the image.

Micro-smoothing:
Smoothes out local details enhancements, and reduces noise. By inducing micro smoothing, you can get a really surreal and arty look to your image.

Light Smoothing:
Set this too low (anything below 0), and you’ll get terrible results. Increase it a little to help remove the “halo” or “glowing” effect around objects.

One of the best ways to do that is through the use of panning – by blurring out the background while keeping the moving subject in the foreground in focus. You’ve likely seen the technique in pictures a hundred times, but here’s how you do it. The first thing you need to realize is that this technique requires practice. You’ll find that about 1 in 10 pictures comes out looking right. This success ratio will improve over time, but it’s really hit or miss a lot of the time.

Set your camera to continuous shooting mode. If you’ve got an older or less expensive camera you’ll end up shooting two or three frames a second. With a higher end camera, you can shoot more than eight or ten frames per second. The idea is to shoot lots. The more you do, the better your chances of getting that 1 in 10 shot.

Use a continuous focusing mode so that your focus doesn’t “lock”. You’ll be shooting a moving subject, and we want to track it as much as possible.

Now set your shutter speed. You need to have a shutter speed fast enough to keep the subject itself sharp, but slow enough to blur out the background while you pan. This threshold will depend on how fast you’re panning and how fast your subject is moving, but start at somewhere between 1/60 and 1/200.

Now you just need to perfect your technique. The trick is tracking the subject at their speed and panning in one direction (if you’re panning horizontally, don’t waver up and down). This is where image stabilization often comes in handy.

I find that if I point straight ahead with my body and tilt at the hips 45 degrees to one side, that’s where I want to start my shot. As I pan, I’ll end up tilting my hips 45 degrees in the other direction. During this movement, the shutter is firing at my cameras maximum framerate, and I can then review the images afterwards. Be advised though the LCD screen image is tough to judge for clarity.

Good shooting!

Depth of Field (DOF) refers to the distance between the farthest and nearest points which are in focus. It can also be identified as the zone of acceptable sharpness in front of and behind the subject. In the picture of Nemo, above, you’ll notice that in the left hand shot he’s totally in focus, from gills to tail fin. In the right hand shot, his tail fin is blurry.

When you take a picture, there are several factors which can control or impact your depth of field. Less depth of field is called “small” or “narrow” or “shallow”. Having great depth of field is called a “wide” or “large” depth of field.

There are lots of reasons why you may want to control the depth of field, and make it narrower or wider. Most of these are because of artistic decisions, when you want to force attention to one part of the picture, or when you want to obscure another.

Aperture

A wider aperture (small f/number) causes a narrower depth of field. A smaller aperture (big f/number) causes a wide depth of field. So, to blur out the background use a f/stop like f/2.8 or f/4. To get everything in the scene focus select f/16 or f/22.

Sweet Spot

Remember though, that your lens has a sweet spot and if you select an aperture that is too wide or too small, you won’t be as sharp as you could be.

Focal Length

Another way to control your DOF is through the lens choice. Longer focal lengths (200mm or 300mm) tend to have a narrower depth of field, whereas wider lenses (35mm or 50mm) have a greater depth of field.

Focal Point

Remember that DOF is extends beyond the focus point. Typically it extends further behind the focal point than in front, so if you’re trying to blur the background you may want to bring the focus in a little ways.

There you have it. Choosing a depth of field and attaining it relies on your choice of all those variables. You can usually use your DOF Preview button on your camera (most new SLR’s have it) to get a good idea of what to expect, but until you see the final shot it’s always tough to tell what it will look like.

In fact, I find the opposite to be true, and you will too, once you try it out.

When you’re shooting outdoors in bright, sunny conditions, you’ll find it’s hard to control the lighting. Sunlight is harsh, and will create harsh shadows on your subject, not to mention a tough situation to balance out. There aren’t too many light sources which are brighter than direct sunlight.

Cloudy conditions filter the sunlight. The sky becomes like a giant softbox, and a little flash can suddenly accent your subject, giving you the ability to create focal points in your scene and light it more like you would in a studio.

Add to that the effect of having clouds above your subject, which are infinity more interesting to look at than a blank, clear sky.

Just remember to keep your gear dry and clean, and a fresh set of batteries in your flash, and then try shooting on those less-than-perfect days. Soon you’ll find that your outdoor shoots pop just that little bit more, and before you know it – you’ll be begging for cloud cover.

What they’ve done is create this clever little light box that allows you to fire a strobe from underneath a subject (in this case, a bottle of beer… mmm, thirsty).

The top of the box is open, with a piece of clear plexiglass overtop of it, where the beer bottle sits. The best part of this effect is not only that it lights up the contents really well, but the reflections in the plexiglass as well.

Read the article here and part two here.

 Still, people like to delete pictures they think they won’t like using their camera. There are a few good reasons why you likely should avoid doing that – not least of which is the time it takes to weed through good and bad pictures.

Here are three reasons you should stick with what you’ve got until you have time to sort through them on your computer.

Don’t kill your batteries

Camera batteries are more robust than ever, but LCD screens on them still suck up a lot of juice using that backlight. The more you review and edit your pictures in camera, the sooner you’ll have an empty battery.

You can’t see the details

Remember, your camera’s LCD screen lies to you. It’s a liar. Screens are getting better… we almost have cameras with a 1 megapixel LCD monitor now, but those are usually expensive, and most of us have cameras with .25 megapixel (roughly) LCD screens. It’s pretty hard to see detail on screens that are that low quality, so you may be deleting a picture that will actually look much better on your computer screen once you download it.

Delete on your computer

It’s too fumbly even when you’re really good with your cameras buttons to scroll through all your pictures and weed out the bad ones. Save the deleting for when you’ve got them on your computer. If you insist on using the LCD screen and your camera to delete, eventually you’ll have trouble identifying a bad ones and you’ll delete a good one. Then you’ll kick yourself. Then you’ll think “Why didn’t I listen to Fotohacker?”

Leave the deleting for when you’re on your computer, and are able to get a better idea of the pictures you want.

This is tied in to your charisma as a photographer (and as a human being), and is something that can’t really be taught, but simply knowing that your banter accounts for a better working environment can dramatically increase your chances at producing the sorts of shots you’re looking for.

Garnering Inspiration

The quickest way to gain a little inspiration for the look you’re going for is by flipping through fashion magazines and taking a photographers interest in how the model is standing, what they’re doing with their arms, their heads, their feet. Posing is as much about what makes the model look natural as it is about what is striking to the eye.

When you’re working with a subject and posing them, having your working environment set up and ready to go beforehand is integral to a steady workflow. You can certainly play with manipulating your lights or your camera settings, but don’t take up too much of your models time doing so. Any nervousness or exasperation you are feeling will transfer to your model, so remain calm and relaxed.

When you’re working with a model or any subject, there are a few tricks to get the look you’re after. Double chins are a concern for a lot of subjects – have them stick their chin out a little further than normal. Tell them so suck in their belly a little. If they are standing, have them place one foot at a 45 degree angle to the other. Don’t avoid having them do things with their hands. Try having them place a hand under their chin, or on their neck or hair. Have them cross their arms, or place their hands on their hips.

Building Rapport

These tricks are a starting point. Eventually, the model will loosen up and you’ll find something that looks good on film. Move yourself around – get closer, move lower or higher, tilt the camera… do something unexpected and even if the result sucks, you can always learn from it. Tell the subject that you just wanted to try this out, and tell them when it just doesn’t work. The more information they have, the more they’ll be able to help.

Remember that even if you’re doing a great job chatting them up, your subject is likely still a little nervous unless they’re a professional. Tell them to keep breathing, and not to hold their breath during a pose. Don’t always have them look directly at the camera, tell them to look elsewhere… have a few props or points of focus where you can direct their attention.

For capturing unguarded moments, this is where rapport comes in. Being able to make your subject laugh and smile or keeping them engaged through storytelling or small talk is important to keeping them at ease, and you may even be able to shoot some of these moments of laughter or concentration.

Discovering your confidence

If this is your first time shooting a posed model, you’re bound to get a little nervous and they will pick up on that. Don’t let them see you sweat though. Take your time and work through your problems. As long as you get the shots in the end, you’ll gain more confidence for next time. The most important thing is getting the shot, through whatever means or technique necessary. Explain what you are doing while you do it, but don’t overload your subject with technical details.

It’s all about keeping up an exchange of words and ideas. Your subject may even have a few ideas they want to try on their own… so indulge them! Don’t be afraid to ask them for what you want to try. The shot you want is in there, you just need to finesse it out of them.

As with a lot of fotohacking, experimentation is key – but the real trick is to open your aperture fairly wide (this one was shot at f/2.8) and set your camera to a long shutter speed. Unfortunately, as long as my Nikon D70 would go is 30 seconds without using bulb, so that’s what I did for this shot. Use a remote or the self-timer so that you have no movement in the camera when the shutter is depressed.

Once you’re exposing, you can run around with lights and illuminate whatever you want. With small LED lights, you’ll get a finer streak and are able to write (albeit backwards) in the air. With a wider or more diffused light, you’ll get more general illumination, and you can light up segments of your environment.

Make sure you don’t have any ambient light coming in to the frame that might ruin the shot. This was an indoor shot, so I shut off all the lights, closed the curtains (to avoid street light pollution) and shut down anything with an LED. Outdoors would be a little trickier… and you would need to watch for traffic or street lights, as well as any possible lights in the sky. Even dim light will register as something much brighter when you expose it for 30+ seconds.

Another good tip for light painting is to have someone hold a black card over the front of the lens during a bulb exposure, while you move in and around the shot, setting up different lighting. Remove the black card when you fire the lights. The less exposure information the camera needs to record during periods of “blackout” the better – as it will save you from accumulating excess noise and any possible ambient light artifacts.

I would have to say that the best advice I ever received as a photographer, from somebody much older and wiser than myself, was to “get closer”. It may seem a little trite and obvious at first, but when I started really listening to this advice while I was shooting, I started to see a dramatic difference in my shots. Pushing myself that extra bit to get just a step closer, to fill the frame just a little more, was giving me much better results.

Depending on the focal length of your lens, getting closer can have a dramatic impact. The image here was shot with a 10.5mm fisheye lens – and within a few inches of the subject. This is pretty extreme, but it’s taking advantage of the space I have to fill and the qualities of the lens I’m using.

The problem is that when you look through your viewfinder, it’s like looking into a rear view mirror. Our brain makes us perceive objects to be larger than they will actually appear in the end result.

When you frame your subject and are preparing to fire, take a look around the edges of the frame and look for negative space. You likely want some to exist. Nothing is worse than cutting a slice off someone’s forehead.

The problem most people face, however, is too much headroom. In some shots, you could almost fit a whole second head into the space above your subjects head. If that’s the case, take a step forward. Don’t rely on the zoom too much. Physically move yourself toward the subject, or move your subject closer to you.

Push yourself further than you think you should. You’ll get more detail in your image, you’ll have less need to crop and loose data, and you’ll thank yourself for getting just that little bit closer in the end.

Let’s be frank. The dead-on angle of view is dead. Very few pictures look good when you pose your subject and take a straight, eye-level picture of them.

By simply changing the position of the camera higher, lower, or tilting it, you can come up with some much more exciting results.

This is usually a matter of playing with the composition in the viewfinder of the camera, and looking for something that works, but the trick is to actually play with it. Don’t just look at your subject, look at their surroundings and inject the photo with some elements that include those surroundings or alter the perception of your main subject.

Covering all the angles

Lower angles, where you shoot from a position below the subject, create a feeling of power and intimidation. They make the subject appear larger than life.

Higher angles, shot from above, create a feeling of submission around the subject, making them appear smaller and less significant.

Tilted angles can create a feeling of energy and excitement in a photo, since your eyes and brain are forced into “straightening” the photograph inside your head.

Framed angles are those where you shoot your subject in context with something in their environment – through an arch, or behind a tree. While the framing element may not be the focal point of the picture, it plays a prominent compositional role.

Subjective and Objective Viewpoints

The Subjective View is one where your subject is looking at the camera, giving the impression of interaction or connection with the viewer.

An Objective View is one where you catch the subject interacting with something or someone in their environment (apparently) oblivious of the camera.

Just about anyone who has taken a photo class or read a photography book knows about the rule of thirds. However, given that cameras these days have come down in price so dramatically, we have a lot more lay people shooting high-end cameras… and not everyone has been exposed to this little tidbit of wisdom.

The rule of thirds is a compositional rule that has been around since the mid 19th century, used for composing elements of fine art paintings. The rule says you can improve the tension and energy in a picture by aligning major elements of the composition to a grid, which divides the image up into nine squares.

Two horizontal lines and two vertical lines, equally spaced from the edges of the image, create four intersecting points on an image. By aligning these points and these lines to the subject, you can improve the look and feel of the subject.

The idea is combat centering all your photographs. Certainly some photos demand being centered, and I won’t claim that every photo must adhere to the rule of thirds. By using the rule as more of a guide or suggestions, however, you’ll find many shots you’ve taken will benefit from a simple crop that can drastically alter the drama of the picture.

Well, recently I was asked about taking pictures of the moon, which is when that buried information struck me again. Because of the way a DSLR meter measures light, by trying its best to find a balance of light and dark, you’ll find it’s difficult (even with a spot meter) to properly expose something like the moon. The ‘Sunny 16 Rule’, or more appropriate to this particular question, the ‘Moony 11 Rule’ – is perfect for this type of problem.

The Sunny 16 Rule

The Sunny 16 Rule goes like this. If in bright sunny conditions, if you set the aperture to f/16 and your shutter speed to the ISO you’re shooting at, you’ll get a proper exposure. So, if you’re ISO is at 200, set your camera to shoot f/16 @ 1/200sec.

If the scene is slightly overcast, you can modify the Sunny 16 Rule by opening the aperture to f/11. Heavily overcast, set it to f/8… and so on, depending on the level of light you’ve got.

The Moony 11 Rule

The Moony 11 Rule is useful for taking pictures of the moon. Because the moon reflects sunlight, it’s a similar exposure situation as a slightly overcast day. The rule works the same way. Set your aperture to f/11 and your shutter speed to the ISO of the camera.

Because the lighting won’t always fall squarely into these exposure rules, some tweaking may be required – but they’ll definitely get you in the neighborhood.