Photographing Tattoos — Tatoo photography

September 17, 2009 By 3 Comments

We eas­ily acquire tips to pho­to­graph flow­ers, peo­ple, and still life. Yet one sub­ject that often doesn’t have clear cut tips and direc­tions is pho­tograph­ing tat­toos. This sub­ject is art in itself, and to effec­tively shoot this piece requires not only patience and an eye for com­po­si­tion, but also tips from peo­ple that have already done it.

Tip one: Do not use a tri­pod unless you have a spe­cific effect (e.g blur) in mind. It is likely going to limit your mov­ing around and will take extra time to set up for each shot.

Tip two: If pos­si­ble, shoot out­side if you’re new to the game, or use great win­dow light, it’s so much eas­ier. Pay atten­tion to clut­ter and dis­trac­tions though. Be aware of what’s in the frame, what’s out of the frame, and make deci­sions on what to include or chop.

Tip Three:‚ Eas­ier light to han­dle might be around sun­set time or on a cloudy day with dif­fused light. A reflec­tor like white card­board can help if needed.

Tip Four: If you already know how to work with flash and/or are com­fort­able with your tech­nique, feel free to shoot in a tat­too shop if you get the per­mis­sion. You’ll likely get cool effects if you try slower shut­ter speeds on their own and/or mixed with flash.

You can find loads of fine tat­too pho­tog­ra­phy in the gallery at vanishingtatoo.com

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Portrait without a head

September 7, 2009 By 2 Comments

Do all por­traits need a head or is it okay to frame or crop a photo so that it is head­less? Most times I’d say, “for the love of God include the head”. Nor­mally we con­nect with the sub­ject of a por­trait pri­mar­ily by look­ing at the subject’s eyes, which reveal much about the per­son being photographed.

But.…once you know the rules, you can try to break them to achieve a par­tic­u­lar result. This image is a good exam­ple of a head­less por­trait that works IMO. If we try to ana­lyze WHY it works, it works because the cou­pled ele­ments tell a story. The Jake tat­too on the hand cou­pled with the suit, cou­pled with the Royal Monaco car actu­ally tell a SPECIFIC story. These are all ele­ments of the movie The Blues Broth­ers and both the pho­tog­ra­pher and I likely show our age by know­ing this fact.

How­ever, even if I did not catch the Blues Broth­ers con­nec­tion, for me this shot still works. The ele­ments are still there. The tat­too, older freck­led skin, suit and older car all sug­gest a story. The fact that the shot is in black and white rein­force this fact. It’s up to the viewer to extract the story for them­selves, but all the ele­ments are there.

Okay then — do you agree? What do YOU think about this shot and the con­cept of a head­less portrait?

Many thanks to 1putts of our pho­tog­ra­phy forum for allow­ing me to use this image. Here’s the orig­i­nal photo.

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The truth about polarizing filters

September 5, 2009 By 2 Comments

The truth about polar­iz­ing fil­ters is that every pho­tog­ra­pher should have one in his/her bag at all times. It is pos­si­bly THE sin­gle most impor­tant and‚ use­ful photo acces­sory you’ll own. When there is light out­doors, this fil­ter is on my cam­era the vast major­ity of the time.

A CPOL (cir­cu­lar polar­iz­ing fil­ter) can be used any time you’re in the out­doors, espe­cially in the bright sun. It reduces reflec­tions, and deepens/saturates col­ors like a blue sky. In bright sun,‚ you’ll often get skies that are blown out if you don’t use this fil­ter. It makes the sky much bluer and richer look­ing in many cases with­out really affect­ing the other tones in the image. You will note the great­est results when the sun is low in the sky (so early morn­ing and later afternoon/evening). The CPOL will not help your color and sat­u­ra­tion much on over­cast days, or when the sun is high in the sky.

For more infor­ma­tion on this amaz­ing lit­tle gad­get, includ­ing a lit­tle insight into the ‘rule of thumb’ when using a CPOL, visit this link on polar­iz­ers in our pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Here’s a link from B&H where you can look at or pur­chase dif­fer­ent polar­iz­ers.
Buy­ing from this link helps sup­port our site.

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Photography subjects that are off limits

August 28, 2009 By 2 Comments

What is con­sid­ered ‘off lim­its’ in pho­tog­ra­phy? Well, the answer of course can cer­tainly vary from one pho­tog­ra­pher to the next.

These days, pho­tograph­ing chil­dren raises a red flag for many peo­ple and some pho­tog­ra­phers steer clear away from them. There may be a sense of ‘intru­sion’ into the lives of these chil­dren, and pho­tograph­ing them may just not feel right. There is also the per­ceived risk that some­one may call the author­i­ties sug­gest­ing that the pho­tographs are being taken for sex­u­ally moti­vated rea­sons. Other pho­tog­ra­phers that pho­to­graph chil­dren do so in order to show the true beauty and inno­cence of who chil­dren are. They don’t care about per­ceived risks as they know that the pho­tographs they take are art­ful and eth­i­cal. Com­pletely dif­fer­ent sides of the story, right?

Another inter­est­ing choice of sub­ject to some pho­tog­ra­phers are street scenes — cap­tur­ing the beauty of sur­round­ings with peo­ple pass­ing by. No wrong doing right? Well again, to some pho­tog­ra­phers, there is a sense of dis­com­fort in shoot­ing com­plete strangers with­out get­ting their per­mis­sion first. Other pho­tog­ra­phers that know their rights (it’s legal to pho­to­graph any­one in a pub­lic place) have no issue with the ‘shoot first and ask ques­tions later’ policy.

There are many inter­est­ing sub­jects to shoot, and which is right depends on the photographer’s pref­er­ence, taste, and com­fort zone. What sub­ject mat­ter are YOU uncom­fort­able shoot­ing and why?

For more on this sub­ject, check out the Pho­tog­ra­phy sub­jects — off lim­its thread in our pho­tog­ra­phy forum.

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Done to Death

August 25, 2009 By 3 Comments

There are so many sub­jects out there to pho­to­graph, yet accord­ing to some, there are also sub­jects that have been ‘done to death’. Sub­jects such as a sun­sets, or ‘drop of water’ close-ups come to mind. What about flow­ers — why are they so pop­u­lar to shoot? Per­haps because flow­ers are acces­si­ble, beau­ti­ful, and they just stand there and smile. Yet flow­ers ( as well as other com­mon ‘over­done’ sub­jects) are quite good learn­ing tools for sev­eral aspects of pho­tog­ra­phy includ­ing DOF, focus, com­po­si­tion, color, and exposure.

There’s also some­thing to be said for the “who gives a crap atti­tude”. Just because these types of shots are com­monly shot, does that mean you should not shoot them? I mean are you NOT going to shoot the Eif­fel tower or the Taj Mahal or a sea of red tulips just because they are com­monly shot? You’re going to shoot them because these are YOUR shots.

If you absolutely adore these types of shots, but feel as if they are all too com­monly done, chal­lenge your­self. Be as cre­ative as you can with the shot and it will be sure to stand out among the rest.

For more on this sub­ject, visit our photo forum: http://www.photography.ca/Forums/showthread.php?t=4202

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Thanks Mad Aussie

August 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment

A short while ago a mem­ber of our pho­tog­ra­phy forum, Mad Aussie, toured west­ern Aus­tralia. Dur­ing one of his shoot­ing days, he etched out our web­site address on a beach. I thought that was really cool and just wanted to say thanks!

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries

Thinking Sharp

August 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Have you ever found your­self with a hand­ful of images that just don’t give that ‘crys­tal clear’ or sharp look you wanted out of your images? Well, you are not alone. Many pho­tog­ra­phers run into the same prob­lem. So why the prob­lem and how to fix it?

Along with a high shut­ter speed for mov­ing objects, and good depth of field, the qual­ity of your lens has a lot to do with image sharp­ness. Shutter-speed may affect the sharp­ness of your image if you get to a point where you’re too slow to hand-hold. In gen­eral though, most dig­i­tal images need a tweak in sharp­en­ing. A dig­i­tal photo that was shot with a good depth of field and a high shut­ter speed will nor­mally be blur­rier‚ than the same image shot from a film cam­era. To go about sharp­en­ing, pho­to­shop (or Gimp) have tools (like unsharp mask and smart sharpen) to help you make your images nice and crisp
For more infor­ma­tion on keep­ing your images crispy.. err.. crisp, read more check out this link on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum and this link to a pod­cast on get­ting sharper images.

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Lens Hoods are necessary

August 10, 2009 By 2 Comments

Out of all the acces­sories to buy for your cam­era, is it truly nec­es­sary to invest in a lens hood? The answer is YES. A lens hood will help pro­tect the front of the lens from bumps and acci­dents, but it is also great for pre­vent­ing lens flare. Lens flare hap­pens when light does not flow through the lens to the sen­sor or film but instead, bounces around the lens ele­ments. This cre­ates unusual and unwanted (nor­mally) arti­facts in the image. Com­mon shapes include poly­gons and lin­ear streaks. How­ever flare can also wash out an image in addi­tion to the weird shapes it cre­ates. The shapes of these arti­facts are depen­dent on the lens ele­ments, the aper­ture blades and the angle of the light.‚ A com­mon sit­u­a­tion where this hap­pens is when you are shoot­ing into a light source like the sun or the light source enters the lens from an angle. Although the sun is the most com­mon thing to cause flare, any light source can cause it if it hits the front of the lens at the right angle.

The sim­ple solu­tion to this is buy a lens hood. They are inex­pen­sive and they help pre­vent stray light from enter­ing your lens. Many pros keep them on their lenses 100% of the time, even at night, since city lights and car lights can cause flare.

You could use your hand to block the light of course… it is cer­tainly a cheaper alter­na­tive! But for the long run, the lens hood will be quite ben­e­fi­cial in both pro­tect­ing your lens (from the wild party hap­pen­ing next to you) and in pro­duc­ing shots with­out the ‘unwanted’ flare.

Check out this link in our pho­tog­ra­phy forum for more infor­ma­tion or to com­ment on this topic.

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Painting with light

July 30, 2009 By 1 Comment

LIGHT PAINTING
Light paint­ing has actu­ally noth­ing to do with ‘paint­ing’ per say, but rather is an artis­tic form of pho­tog­ra­phy. To go about it, choose a sub­ject to shoot, turn off the lights, and while hold­ing your light source, move it around. Play­ing around with‚your shut­ter speed will affect the out­come of the shot; a good shut­ter speed for this type of artis­tic imagery is 20–30 seconds.

Image by Marko Kulik

Image by Marko Kulik

This is a fun way to exper­i­ment with your cam­era and light­ing, and can pro­duce some fab­u­lous results. Best thing? You don’t need to have much‚patience for it! 20–30 min­utes is all you need and you’ll get a nice hand­ful of shots.‚Nice idea when doing this type of exer­cise is to wear black cloth­ing… oth­er­wise you may become the focal point of your shoot!

For some tips and exam­ples check the link in our pho­tog­ra­phy forum
You can also take a lis­ten to our paint­ing with light podcast

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Memory Cards

July 9, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Let’s talk mem­ory cards. More specif­i­cally mem­ory cards with higher writ­ing speeds, qual­ity, and size. Higher writ­ing speeds are a def­i­nite asset when shoot­ing things like wed­dings, lit­tle league games and dance recitals — any­thing that requires you to shoot long bursts of shots. Higher writ­ing speeds are also use­ful when the card is full and you need to trans­fer the images to a com­puter as quickly as pos­si­ble via a card reader.

Qual­ity is cer­tainly not com­pro­mised whether or not you pur­chase a ‘brand name’ ver­sus a ‘no name’ mem­ory card — if the card works, chances are you have pur­chased a fine card which will hold those price­less moments for you.

And what about size… does it really mat­ter? 2GB, 4GB, 8GB… it’s all a mat­ter of pref­er­ence. But a great tip for those who shoot events would be to buy a few smaller mem­ory cards (4 GB) in case some­thing ‘should’ hap­pen to one card, you know you have a few other cards that your shots are on. Now that’s safe think­ing! FORUM LINK:‚ http://www.photography.ca/Forums/showthread.php?t=2522

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How Important are External Flashes?

July 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Exter­nal Flashes have many advan­tages over on-camera flashes; not only is an exter­nal flash much more pow­er­ful than a small‚on-camera flash, but it also has a tilt-able head so that you can bounce it. Bounc­ing a flash is a great way to soften the light since direct flash is quite harsh.

An exter­nal flash gives you far more con­trol over how you want the scene lit — the built in flash on your cam­era is usu­ally only good enough to light a sub­ject from a short dis­tance and the light from the flash can only be used from one plane. This is another area where an exter­nal flash shines :)

Exter­nal flashes can be taken off cam­era. This allows the pho­tog­ra­pher to cre­atively light a sub­ject from dif­fer­ent angles. You’ll need a way to trig­ger the flash and there are sev­eral good meth­ods depend­ing on your bud­get. The cheap­est way (20 bucks or less) is with a sync cord but a bet­ter way is a wire­less trig­ger­ing sys­tem like the Pocket Wiz­ard.

So if your bud­get can cope, an exter­nal flash is a prime invest­ment and a step­ping stone to get­ting you closer to the ‘advanced pho­tog­ra­pher’ sta­tus. For addi­tional info check this link from our pho­tog­ra­phy forum.

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Lenses not making your image sharp? Think again.

July 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Lenses are one of the most impor­tant com­po­nents of your cam­era in terms of get­ting crisp and clear images. The lens does all the focus­ing, so the bet­ter the lens, the bet­ter the pho­to­graph (espe­cially when mak­ing enlarge­ments). How­ever, there are other ele­ments respon­si­ble for the sharp­ness of your images. Before you blame an unsharp pho­to­graph on the lens, there a few other cru­cial things to con­sider. In fact I hate to say this but the vast major­ity of unsharp shots are the result of pho­tog­ra­pher error not a lemon lens.

Shut­ter speeds that are too slow for some shots such as mov­ing tar­gets, will not pro­duce the sharp­ness you are look­ing for if you are look­ing to ‘freeze’ the action. Mov­ing tar­gets require faster shut­ter speeds. Gen­er­ally though, for objects that are not mov­ing, the rule of thumb is 1/focal length of the lens as the slow­est shut­ter speed to use while hand hold­ing a cam­era. This means that if you have a 200mm lens the SLOWEST hand­held‚ shut­ter speed you need on any sub­ject is 1/200. Choos­ing a speed slower than that intro­duces the photographer’s own move­ment into the image and sharp­ness is sac­ri­ficed. Gen­er­ally fol­low­ing this rule will give you favor­able results. Prac­tic­ing at dif­fer­ent shut­ter speeds will give you a good grasp on things; so prac­tice, prac­tice, prac­tice. While you’re prac­tic­ing, slap the lens on a tri­pod and shoot some text on a news­pa­per pasted to your wall at dif­fer­ent aper­tures. Use a cable release. Now you can gauge the sharp­ness of that lens you were questioning!

For more info on this topic click the link to our Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

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