Tag Archives: How to Shoot

Three great ideas to make group shots more compelling

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Damon (Editor) | Leave a comment

Bloomingdale beach girls put their heads together by JeromesPOV, on Flickr

Bloomingdale beach girls put their heads together
Click image to view large
Bloomingdale beach girls put their heads together by JeromesPOV, on Flickr

Group shots are about togetherness.

The most important thing in any picture is to connect subject and viewer. Some pictures are more compelling than others. Here are three powerful eye pulling ideas for groups.

Cohesion

One of the more compelling group compositions is to introduce cohesion. A happy group of friends has more cohesion than say, a bunch of people on a street corner waiting to cross the road. Something in a friend-group holds them together. There are lots of ways you can build in cohesion to a shot. One method I use is to get the group to put their heads together. Somehow when people go out of the way to touch heads, or to bring their heads close, there is a lot of intimacy shown. That cohesion is very powerful.

Another form of cohesion is arms around each other. More intimate is for the group to be leaning in the same direction in some way. That imparts a powerful togetherness to the group. Another idea is to pose arms in a similar way or a similar direction. You can do the same with legs too.

Commonality

Groups can hang together really well without being personally intimate. A common theme in the group can give everyone a dynamic togetherness. Sometimes a colour is a good theme. If I am doing family portraits it is important to capture the faces. Any distraction takes away the family feel. I urge my family group to have similar colours and clothes. That helps prevent distraction from the faces and gives a sense of togetherness – all wearing jeans and a blue tee-shirt for example.

If you think creatively there are lots of ways to achieve the same thing. Poses of all sorts can help too. When you are all doing the same thing it pulls the group together. The pose does not have to be intimate.

• Saudi Graduates •
Doing something in common like the pose here, or wearing similar clothes helps the group to have a common theme.
Click image to view large
Saudi Graduates by Ben SJ, on Flickr

Framing

One of the strong compositional elements in portraiture is framing. If you can find a frame that constrains the group in a small place it helps them to look more cohesive – especially if the frame pushes them close together. One of the best examples of this is in wedding photography. Close members of the family pictured between tight columns outside a church is a good way to pull the group together. The columns prevent the eye from straying out sideways and the family in the middle hold the eye as a result.

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Group intimacy with effective framing can be shot among trees or other landscape features. There are plenty of ways to fit people between features. As long as the framing feature is not too strong the group will gain from the close proximity and still be the centre of interest. Using landscape features is great for impromptu family portraits on holiday.

A more traditional form of framing is the use of the vignette. You put the vignette in in post production. The use of shadow or white-out techniques at the edge of the picture and particularly the corners, helps focus the eye gently to the centre of the picture.

• Fishermen … and friends! •
Small group portrait shot in Green Harbour, Massachussets
This shot pulls it all together. Close head intimacy (right hand three). Togetherness pose (arm positions, smiles/expressions). Commonality in colour/clothes. Common theme – fishing. Framing – the boat roof stops the eye straying upward.
Click image to view large
Fishermen … and friends! Small group portrait shot in Green Harbour, Massachusetts by Nicola Zingarelli, on Flickr

Getting it all together

There are lots of ways to help make your group hang together. If you can add cohesion, commonality and framing to your group shots you will be well on the way to a compelling shot.

By Damon Guy (author and editor)

Damon Guy (Netkonnexion)

Damon is managing editor of Photokonnexion.com with professional experience in photography, writing, image libraries, and computing. He is also an experienced, webmaster and a trained teacher. Damon runs regular training for digital photographers who are just starting out.
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Posted in Composition, Photography, Post Processing, Shooting specific subjects, Things to try, Tips Tutorials & Techniques

Tagged Cohesion, Commonality, Composition, Framing, Group, Group photography, Groups, How to Shoot, Intimacy, People Shots, Portraits, Portraiture, Togetherness, Vignette, Vignetting

The simple secrets behind good food photography

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Damon (Editor) | Leave a comment

Food for Her World Vietnam magazine.
Food styling by Dang Phuong
Photography by Mads
Food for Her World Vietnam magazine. Photography by Mads • on Flickr

We all love good looking food…

So what is it that makes great food photography? I love to cook and make tasty food. But great cooks also have a skill with presentation. It is the presentation which really makes great food shots too.

Food photography seems to be centred on three things – good looking food composition; great light and picking the right focus/centre of interest. Duh! Wait a minute, isn’t that pretty much photography summed up all over? OK, I jest. Good food photography does seem to require a particular approach.

Here are some of my observations on food shots. You should look to achieve…

Understanding and practice with small-sized and table-top compositions.
A working knowledge of lighting at the table-top scale.
Simple natural light from one source (window).
Able to use reflectors/black cards to shape the light.
Simple centre of interest in the shot.
Carefully chosen depth of field.

And with the food itself…

Natural and where possible bright colours.
The colour mix should work together.
Avoid odd clashes of colour.
The food combinations should be simple and few.
Focus on the main interest.
Use bokeh sparingly.
Avoid highlight bokeh spots where possible.
Try to emphasis the texture of the food.
Use simple but eye catching cutlery and plates.
Avoid cluttering the shot with too much food.

More after this…

Book recommendation:

Food Photography:
From Snapshots to Great Shots
Simple advice on lighting including great diagrams. The pictures include camera settings. Excellent advice on setting up a table-top studio which was also inexpensive to do. Lots of tricks and techniques like the pros use. Great presentation ideas.

Food Photography Tips – Video

In this video we look a range of ways to look at and shoot food. It is a great introduction to the basics and covers a wide range of important points.

AmyR

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Light and Lighting – Resource pages on Photokonnexion

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Posted in Composition, Light and Lighting, Photography, Shooting specific subjects, Things to try, Video included

Tagged Black card, Bokeh, Centre of interest, Composition, Compostion, Creativity, Cutlery, Depth of Field, exposure, Focus, Food, Food lighting, Food photography, How to Shoot, Light, light and lighting, Lighting, Lighting food, Natural light, Plates, Reflectors, Simple lighting, soft light, Table top composition, Table top studio, Video, Vocabulary

The secret to world travel – but staying at home!

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Damon (Editor) | 1 Comment

• Winchester Cathedral •
Chroma key work is quite easily done in Adobe PhotoShop and a range of other quality photo-editors.

When you want to be somewhere else…

There are places we would rather be than where we are now. I would like to be on an island paradise …not going to happen! But you can do it photographically. The secret is something called Chroma Key photography or green screening.

Substitution

In chroma key photography the subject is photographed against a uniformly lit green background. Then, in post production the subject is easily selected out from the green background. The selection can then be pasted into any other photographic background.

Any uniform colour can be used as a backdrop for the chroma key shot. The picture above is selected from a blue background and pasted into a picture of Winchester Cathedral in SE England. The two pictures were taken on different days.

To make the selection of the subject from the background it is important to light the background evenly. When the colour is even the selection is easy and can be completed in one operation. Colour variations from uneven light make it more technical to isolate the subject.

Green is the most frequently used colour in chroma key photography. The colour is very easily separated from human skin tones. Where the subject has green tones, blue is often used as the chroma key alternative. Blue is a common colour for clothing. It is therefore less suitable than a strong bright green which is not so popular as a fashion colour. However, green does have other advantages. The human eye is able to see more shades of green than any other colour. This makes it easy to see variations in the green when setting up the lighting. Green sensitivity is also built into software applications to match the abilities of the eye. This helps us to work with the background when doing awkward selections.

Fun and games

The substitution of a subject into any other photographic background provides great opportunities for doing fun things. Film stars can be placed in your garden. You can apparently travel the world without leaving your front room. Just find the right pictures and substitute yourself into the background of your choice.

Of course there are also opportunities for advertising, graphic art, product photography, still life, portraiture, action shots and many other false situations. Of course we should be careful not to be immoral about such things! Feel free to have fun though. You can really make it look like you have travelled the world.

How is it done?

Basically you need a chroma key background, lighting to illuminate it evenly, a camera and a subject. On a small scale this is easy to do. A lot of people doing chroma key work for the first time start with still life or table-top photography to get the technique right. Probably the most common use of the technique is for portraiture. Take a picture of yourself or your friends and then start playing. For this you need a larger screen…

The video is a complete introduction to the use of chroma key photography. You can take the same techniques and scale them to any size. The video introduces the ideas you need to grasp and shows how to set up the lights and the equipment. It also shows one of the software applications. After the video I will briefly look at that software for you.

How to Green Screen (ChromaKey) with Photography!

markapsolon

Software

There is a whole range of software that is capable of doing chroma key. In essence chroma key software has two jobs. The first is to select the subject off the green background (or whichever colour you are using). The second is to successfully blend the abstracted subject with the new background.

The software from the video is called PhotoKey from FXHome . It has been produced specifically for chroma key compositing. It is not alone in the market. However, there are not many applications specifically aimed at this work. Instead there are plenty of applications that do chroma key blending as part of a general suite of editing tools.

The website advertises a “try for free” download system. I did download the editor and install it on my computer. However, the try out does not produce a viable picture. The watermarking is so heavy the try out is really just to have a go at using the tools. So don’t expect to get something for free in reality. Here is the same picture from the top of the page done in Photokey…

• Winchester Cathedral •
Produced in PhotoKey from FXHome. The watermark is put onto the image when you use the trial download version of the application for free.

As you can see the result is similar to my Photoshop version at the top of the page – except for the heavy watermarking ruining the picture.

The actual process for producing the final blended image is relatively quick and easy. The tools are quite self explanatory if you have some editing experience. On the right are the main steps of the process arranged in order of use. Starting at the top you can created a final blend of the two images by clicking on each step in turn and working your way down. As you select a step the tools for the import, selection, blending and finishing of the image become available. As with any editor the blending tools manage colours, contrasts, edging and so on. The order of work is simple and the use of tools quite easy. Most tools are simple sliders. I did like the reset button on each which allowed you go back to the default for that tool if you made a mistake.

At the end of working through the blending process you final image is on screen. You can make further changes to it if you wish. If you are satisfied with it you can export it to make a .png, .jpg or .tiff image. If you are not satisfied with the final output you can go back to the blend left in the editor and do further work.

I liked the application interface. It was simple and easy to use. However, it had some tools that were a little difficult to understand. I think those would become clear with practice. This is not an application you can use immediately – it requires practice.

On balance I liked the application. However, for a beginner in chroma key work it is hugely expensive. At £119 (around $180 US) for the basic version it seems prohibitive. I think I would rather spend that amount of money on a full blown editor like Adobe Elements which could do the same work, and a lot more, for substantially under £100. An editor like GIMP could also do the same work and a lot more and it is free.

The one benefit that makes it worth investing in this application is the simple and fast processing. If you have a lot of chroma key work the use of this software would save a lot of processing time. If you happen to be doing a lot of it professionally then it would be worth investing in the Pro version at £229 (at time of writing).

While I was not impressed with the basic price, the application was useful and could fill a niche in the market. However, it is not worth it for the beginner. Instead, it would be better to invest in a decent image-editor and broaden the work you do overall. However, if you are specialising then it may be worth considering providing you return income to cover your investment.

The way to do it in Adobe PhotoShop

The general photographer is most likely to have use of a quality image editor like PhotoShop, Elements, GIMP, PaintShopPro and others. All these are able to do the type of work that PhotoKey can do. Admittedly it takes longer. But for beginners it is better to save your money for more general photography kit. For those who are interested, here is a short video explaining the Photoshop method of doing a chroma key composite. It is a simple technique using standard photoshop tools.

Isolating with a Chroma Key Background

This tutorial is aimed at Photoshop intermediate level users.

TutorVidCom

Overall…

Chroma key work is fun. There is quite a lot to learn, but it adds flexibility to your photographic work and post processing. The use of up to date quality image editors is probably better than splashing out on expensive specialist applications. Nevertheless specialist applications do a great job, saving time in post processing.

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Chroma Key
Post production
Definition: Backdrop
GIMP

PhotoKey from FXHome

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Tagged Accessories, Action shots, Approach, Art, Chroma key, Colour, Compositing, Composition, Creativity, exposure, Green screen, How to Shoot, light and lighting, Portraiture, Presentation, Software, Vocabulary

Ten simple ideas to help your portraiture improve

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Damon (Editor) | Leave a comment

Video

Straight forward portraiture advice is difficult to come by…

In the video we have some great ideas that help you to map out a great Portraiture session. This is straight advice aimed at getting you to a good quality completed portrait as directly as possible.

I have to add that the book advertised in the video is also a great book. It is packed with some excellent ideas and written in a simple and easy-to-read way. If you are interested in following up on the book I can highly recommend it. My copy is pretty dog-eared these days!

Portrait and Candid Photography: Photo Workshop This is a great book packed with lots of hints, tips and ideas like the ones below. A really worthwhile read.

Ten points at the core of good portraiture

In the video Erin Manning highlights the importance of the following ten points…

Don’t fix your subject in the middle of the frame. Instead, think about the rule of thirds – a more dynamic outcome.
Poses and “cheesy” words to force a smile are false and make the photo look strained.
Make your clothes simple and un-distracting. Forget patterns and fussy details. Simple solid colours help the subject to stand out, not the clothes.
Avoid straight on shots with a big flash. The open pupil in the eye will cause light to reflect back to the camera and show bright red eyes… You don’t want your subject to look like red-eyed monsters. Use red-eye reduction settings if your camera has them.
Vary your poses, angles and heights. The more angles you get the more you are telling a story about your subject. Get them in many different ways.
Use flash to help reduce harsh shadows. The sharp sunlight of the middle of the day is very unflattering. The use of fill-in flash softens the shadows bringing out the subjects character.
Look for great quality of light. Remember that hard light (harsh edges and strong contrasts) is very unflattering. Shoot in the later afternoon or early morning to get soft light with better colours. Use shade to reduce hard light if you are forced to work in bright mid-day light.
Don’t stand too close and use a wide angle lens. This exaggerates the nose. Stand away and zoom in. This reduces nose size and is much more flattering. (Great advice).
Pay attention to the background. If it is too busy make sure there is nothing distracting. Check to make sure the background has not created odd effects like poles sticking out of heads and flowers in ears!
Make sure you have enough battery capacity and memory card space to cover the whole session. You don’t want to lose any shots when you are in full swing.

Erin Manning’s Top 10 Dos and Don’ts for Great Portraits

Erin Manning

By Damon Guy (author and editor)

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Tagged Composition, hard light, How to Shoot, Light, light and lighting, Lighting, People Shots, Portrait ideas, Portraits, Portraiture, Potraits, soft light, Techniques

A hidden compositional element to pull the eye into your images

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Damon (Editor) | Leave a comment

• Honiston Pass in the English Lake District •
Overlapping elements in the picture promote a strong sense of distance.
Click image to view large
• Honiston Pass in the English Lake District • By Netkonnexion on Flickr

Add depth to your images.

Look at the scene and find ways to show depth. If you want a scene to be convincing you should consider all the compositional angles. In particular the depth. A flat image is not convincing. One of the ways to achieve depth is to incorporate overlap in the scene elements.

What is overlap?

In composition overlap is where one element of the scene is partially obscures another. It is a simple concept and one that creates a marker for the eye. If we see something that is obscured by another thing we have learned from experience that there is a distance between them. The relative sizes of the objects help us to guess what distance separates them.

We cannot immediately tell the relationship between far away or small objects if objects don’t overlap. We don’t have a reference point between them. We can project some sort of guessed perspective and under some circumstances we can guess by the effect of atmospherics (like haze, fog or dust in the air). However, in most cases that takes thinking and time to do. When a viewer is looking into an image they will not take the time to do that sort of guesswork. We need to make the depth immediately obvious, or we will lose the viewer.

The picture above is an example. There are several overlaps. The foreground road and grass verge slightly overlaps the large foreground rock. The latter forms a strong overlap with the wall. The mountain pass disappears into the distance around three spurs that inter-space with one another giving a strong sense of overlap right to the horizon.

Overlap is the key to the immediate recognition of depth in a lot of situations. Landscapes, and often in strange environments like tiny-scale close-ups, are good examples. When you are looking to help the viewer understand the image try and find ways to provide some overlaps so that the image clearly shows relative distance between objects throughout the distance into the shot.

Overlap the villain

Overlap is not always the good guy in an image. There are occasions when it is a source of confusion. For example the image below…

• Overlapping – the deer problem •

The picture shows three deer. You might need to take a second look. I did, and I took the picture. You see? Overlap has killed the image.

The most difficult overlaps you will find are the ones where there is little distance between the overlapping elements. In the case of the deer above the merge effect is almost absolute and the resolution of the second deer is spoiled. Its outline merges with the third one at the back. The legs are completely visually entangled. This is a clear confusion for the viewer.

The general rule with overlaps that do not work is clear…
Avoid overlapping objects that are similar and close.

Unfortunately that often includes people. When they overlap there is frequently confusion. This is especially the case when the clothing is similar (say, all black suits). Another example of problematic overlaps is with silhouettes. The outlines have to be very clear to carry a true sense of character. Otherwise, you cannot tell where one person ends and another begins.

Judgement call

As with so many good things there is a bad side. While overlap is a great help in establishing distance for the eye it can also be the villain. The trick is in understanding how much the eye interprets the similarity of the overlapping element and how much distance lies between them. Your judgement call, as a photographer, is to look at your composition and ask yourself if the viewer will interpret the overlap as help or confusion.

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Tagged Art, Camera, Composition, Creativity, Depth, How to Shoot, Image depth, Light, light and lighting, Perspective, Vocabulary

Inexpensive Close-Up Photography – Tips and Tricks

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Katie McEnaney | 4 Comments

• Oil and water •
These bubbles of oil in water were shot with a
Canon 50 mm f/1.8 and a +10 close-up filter.Click image to view large
Oil and water • by ArchaeoFrog on Flickr

Easy, budget macro.

Macro or close-up photography is accessible without investing in a pricey macro lens. The first three articles in this series covered techniques for inexpensive macro-level results: close-up lenses, reverse rings, and extension tubes. In this article, I offer suggestions for achieving great-looking results using any of these three techniques.

Choose Your Depth of Field

Depth of field is a term that refers to the area of the image that is acceptably sharp and in focus. Depth of field is a function of many things. Our interest is in three factors. These are aperture, the distance between the camera and the subject, and the orientation of the subject relative to the camera.

Aperture has a direct influence on the depth of field. A wide aperture (smaller f number, such as f/1.8) creates a shallow depth of field. Areas of the image outside of the zone of sharpness fall out of focus quickly. Wide apertures can be used to create bokeh – unsharp sections of the image.

A narrow aperture (larger f number, such as f/22) creates a deep depth of field. The majority of the image is in focus. Narrow apertures are often used by landscape photographers to capture front-to-back sharpness throughout an image.

The distance between the camera and the subject also influences the depth of field. Generally, the closer that you are to your subject, the narrower the depth of the field becomes. This is particularly important when using macro and close-up photography techniques where you need to be physically close to the photographic subject.

• Bokeh penny •
Penny shot with a Canon 50 mm f/1.8 lens and a full set of three, generic extension tubes (7, 14, and 28 mm). The plane of sharpness lies parallel to the flat of the lens. If the plane is not parallel the focus is quickly lost.
Click image to view large
Bokeh penny • By ArchaeoFrog on Flickr

It is also important to consider the orientation of the subject relative to the camera. The depth of field can be thought of as a plane that is parallel to the camera lens. If you can orient yourself so that the subject is parallel to the flat of camera lens, more of your subject will be in focus than if it is at an angle to the camera. In the penny shot above, I tilted the camera lens slightly away from the parallel position. The loss of focus from right to left is obvious.

• Flowers and Depth of Focus •
Click image to view large
• Flowers and Depth of Focus •

The flower photographs show how depth of field influences an image. Both were taken with the same lens (Canon 50 mm f/1.8), the same aperture (f/1.8), and the same technique (reverse ring). Both images have a shallow depth of field (wide aperture) and are close to the subject. The appearance of the depth of field is very different. The yellow flower (left) is sideways to the camera. Only the closest edges of the petals are within the depth of field and are in focus. The purple flowers center is shot parallel to the camera. The entire center of the flower is within the depth of field and appears in focus.

If you want more of your subject in focus use a narrower aperture. Increase the distance between yourself and the subject, and set the camera (and thus the depth of field) parallel to the subject. If you want less of your subject in focus, you can use a shallow aperture, get in closer to your subject, and orient the camera and depth of field perpendicular to the subject. Try it many different ways and see what works best for what you envision!

The Tripod: With and Without

It is possible to achieve acceptably sharp macro results hand-holding the camera. The majority of images in these articles were shot hand-held. If you have a stationary subject using a tripod will greatly improve the sharpness of your image. A tripod allows you to use longer shutter speeds. This helps you get crisper images in lower light. It also allows a narrower aperture to gain a deeper depth of field. The steadiness of the tripod will significantly reduce hand movement.

If available, also use the Live-View function on your camera to fine-tune your focus. Live-View lets you use your display screen rather than the viewfinder. Many cameras allow you to zoom in on a portion of the image to check the focus.

Without a tripod a good stance improves stability while hand-holding. Create your own tripod with your body by bracing yourself or your camera. In the diptych image below, I am using my elbows for support. The elbows in combination with my feet create a similar a three-point stability like a tripod. In the extension tube article, I demonstrated a similar human-tripod by bracing my elbows on my knees while shooting.

• Simultaneous diptych •
These two images were taken at the same time and show my hand-holding position as well as the image captured. The flower was shot with a reverse-mounted Canon 50 mm f/1.8 lens.Click image to view large
• Simultaneous diptych • by ArchaeoFrog on Flickr

This three-point position allows me to lean in and out very slightly with the camera. I can manually find the exact focus that I want in the photograph. Focusing with body movement allows me to place the depth of focus exactly where I want it relative to the subject.

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When you are hand-holding practice breathing slowly and pushing the camera shutter button gently, without imparting additional motion to the camera. (More tips on stance)

Play, Combine, and Find What Works for You

You can use extension tubes in combination with either a reverse ring or close-up lens for even more detailed images. However, the working distance between the lens and the subject is narrow and the depth of field is incredibly shallow. With the pennies below, I found it impossible to keep both Mr. Lincoln and the columns of his memorial in focus together, as the columns are slightly raised relative to the surface of the penny.

• Penny diptych •
These pennies were both taken with a Canon 50 mm f/.18 lens and a set of three, generic extension tubes (7, 14, and 28mm). In the left-hand image a +10 close-up lens was added, and in the right-hand image the lens was instead reverse mounted.
Click image to view large
• Penny diptych • By ArchaeoFrog on Flickr

Close-up lenses can also be screwed in to each other for greater magnification. I used both a +4 and +10 close-up lens for the snowflake image below. There is some distortion visible in the image particularly around the edges. I also found it more difficult to focus when looking through both lenses.

• Macro snowflake •
Snowflakes shot with a Canon 50 mm f/1.8 lens and a +4 and +10 close-up lens.
Click image to view large
• Macro snowflake • By ArchaeoFrog on Flickr

The final curtain

The varieties of subjects for macro and close-up photography are endless. I have tried to highlight a variety of them during this series. Flowers, insects, and falling water are perennial favourites, as are coins, Lego figures, and other small objects. Your imagination and creativity are your only limitations. Enjoy!

• Lego water crown •
This Lego mini-figure and falling water crown were shot using a
Canon 50 mm f/1.8 lens and a +4 close-up lens.
Click image to view large
• Lego water crown •

Articles on Close-Up and Macro Photography
by Katie McEnaney

Part 1 of this series focused on using close-up lens, Part 2 covered reverse rings, and Part 3 explained extension tubes.

Inexpensive Close-Up Photography – close-up rings
Inexpensive Close-Up Photography – Reverse Rings
Inexpensive Close-Up Photography – Extension Tubes
Inexpensive Close-Up Photography – Tips and Tricks (this article)

By Katie McEnaney (contributing author)

Katie is an elementary school teacher in Wisconsin, USA. She is an avid photographer with wide interests. She is always interested in learning more and growing in her photography. Katie is in the third year of her 365 project as ArchaeoFrog (profile) . Her 365 project can be found at 365Pproject.org and she has a growing body of work on Flickr .
By Katie McEnaney :: Profile on Google+

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Posted in Camera control, Composition, Equipment, Guest Contribution, How to..., Things to try, Tips Tutorials & Techniques

Tagged Aperture, Bokeh, Close, Close up photography, Close-up, Composition, Deep field of focus, Depth, Depth of Field, Focus, How to Shoot, light and lighting, Macro, Macro lens, Macro photography, Macro reversing rings, Macro tubes, Parallel focus, Shallow field, Tripod, Vocabulary

The simple secrets of dodge and burn – post processing

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Damon (Editor) | Leave a comment

• Dodge And Burn
Important techniques for affecting the light and dark in an image. (Video below).
lynda.com on YouTube

Dodge and burn – powerful light/shadow effects

Two of the oldest techniques in the photographic skill set are dodging and burning. In the old days of chemical baths and film developing they were the most effective way of changing the image out of camera. Simple stuff really. During the development of your film you allowed parts of the developing film to become overexposed. Other parts of the film you allowed to become underexposed. The effect on the final print was to increase the brightness in some areas of the film and darken others.

In modern post-processing we still use these techniques. Most post processing software packages have ways to create dodges (whitening or brighten) or burns (darkening or blacking). The aim of this? Well its simple really. If you have a picture and you want to do any of these things you need these techniques…

Increase/decrease the intensity of shadowy parts of the image
Increase/decrease the intensity of brighter parts of the image
Brighten the bright spots and darken the dark spots to increase contrast
Darken down intensely bright spots in the image to prevent distractions
Brighten the darker areas in the image to bring out detail
Pick out highlights

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Dodge and burn

Although this tutorial is based in PhotoShop, most of the techniques shown in this video can be used in most editing software. If your software does not have the same tools as those found in PhotoShop check your help files for more information.

You may have to do some trial and error experiments to get these techniques working – after all, the practice will give you control of your software. Trying out these skills will give you the basic command of light and dark in the post processing context. Dodging and burning are really important techniques. Watch the video for how the techniques are used.

Photoshop dodge and burn

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Photokonnexion Photographic Glossary – Definitions and articles.
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Post Processing Images – Resource page on Photokonnexion.com

By Damon Guy (author and editor)

Damon Guy (Netkonnexion)

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Posted in Composition, How to..., Light and Lighting, Post Processing, Things to try, Tips Tutorials & Techniques, Video included

Tagged Approach, Burn Dodge and burn, Dodge., exposure, Highlights, How it works, How to Shoot, Light and dark, light and lighting, Shadow, Video

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