Tag Archive for: tip

Lens flare control can be very easy

/in , /by

Light is the language of photography.
Learning to understand and control lighting is in my opinion vital for a photographer, in essence you should be able to take a good shot in almost any situation. That’s also why in my workshops and instructional videos I always give a lot of attention to the more “cool” lighting tricks you can pull off when you are able to manipulate your light.

 
In this blogpost a very simple tip, but a very powerful one.
If you shoot with strong backlight there is a huge chance on lens flare, and although some think that is a bad thing, I actually love to play with it and also love the effect it has in a photo like this.

 

Now as you can see I show you two images, one with lens flare and one without… how did I do this?
It’s actually very simple.

 

Your lens hood has a certain “reach” and sometimes that’s just not enough to take away the lens flare if you want it out of the shot, the solution is however very simple… just use your hand to block off the lens flare, hold your hand above the lens hood and move it forward until (in the viewfinder) you see the lens flare go away. You can even spread your fingers and play with some cool effects 😀

Sharon Januari 8 2016 30840

Transport and opportunities

/in , /by

We all travel while traveling, right?
Often however I see photographers traveling with their camera in the bag just hanging in their seats waiting to arrive at the location, however there are often many cool options to shoot while traveling.
Today some images I shot on the ferry from the mainland UK to the Isle of Wight.
It’s only an one hour commute but there is a lot to shoot and the time flies when you’re shooting 😀

UK - 162 - January 22, 2016

UK - 147 - January 22, 2016

UK - 144 - January 22, 2016

UK - 127 - January 22, 2016

UK - 92 - January 25, 2016-Edit

UK - 38 - January 22, 2016

UK - 45 - January 22, 2016

UK - 79 - January 22, 2016

UK - 91 - January 22, 2016-Edit

UK - 92 - January 22, 2016

 

Different looks for different moods

/in , /by

In the old times we choose the filmrol for the look we wanted, now a days everything is of course digital and although I still love to shoot with film my workflow is 99% digital. I do however always say that “In my workflow I’m a 99% digital photographer, however in my heart I’m a 100% analogue photographer”, now why do I tell you this today?

 

When I look at my digital files I always feel something’s missing.
They are not bad, or looking weird, but they are just a bit “too” perfect, I know it sounds weird from a guy teaching to use the color checker and light meter however do realize that these tools are just to get the basis right, from this basis I always build up to the final look.

ALL the images you see from me are in one or another form tinted.
The last few years I’ve been mainly using the awesome DxO filmpack for this but since the release of Alien Skin Exposure X I have to be honest I’m more and more switching “back” to Alien skin, the X release is just really nice. If you already have filmpack… don’t upgrade (unless you want to) but if you don’t have any tinting plugin yet make sure to check out Alien Skin Exposure X (follow this link for a cool discount).

 

But what does tinting do?
To show you this and also to let you see my thought process I included 4 images from a session we did with Nadine in 4 different looks, it’s the same image, the only thing I changed are the colors, judge for yourself which one you like the best 😀

Nadine Januari 6 2016 1352 BW

Nadine Januari 6 2016 1352 SC

Nadine Januari 6 2016 1352

As you can see 4 totally different looks with different “feelings”.
I would normally just go through some presets I created and sometimes it just fits, but there is more….

 

If you shoot a commercial series it’s very important to keep the look constant, in other words use the same preset for all your images, now you also understand why it’s important to keep that basis correct, because if the basis is the same/correct the preset will give you the same results.

 

To make sure you select the right preset I would advise to try out your favorite preset on a few images and if they look awesome that’s the preset to use, however very often a really cool preset can look awesome on Photo 1 but terrible on Photo 2, often you will quickly see what the “problem” is, it’s better to select a different preset than that fits great for all images.
For commercial shoots I will also normally show a few images in a black and white conversion I really like, this way the client can always choose and making sure the clients gets a lot to choose from means that they will order more prints, but you will actually have a bigger chance they will hire you again because you give them a lot to choose from.

 

So the next time you’re done with your image…. and you think it’s perfect….. run it through a tinting plugin and I’m sure you will be very surprised 😀

Don’t take it too easy

/in , /by

We all know that photography is taking pictures…. However is it just that or is there more….
Well when a blogpost starts like this there is of course more, right…
During our travels we often also visit landmarks and to be honest I always find these challenging, not to shoot them but to create something that hasn’t been done before, because let’s be honest everything has been done once or twice at least. As soon you realize that one burden is actually lifted… pff we don’t have to be unique…. but at least lets try to do it slightly different.

 

The easiest shot is always from the what I call “Kodak point”, you can find these at some sights and the only thing you have to do is point your camera in the “general” direction and shoot, and in all honestly you’ll end up with a good shot of the landmark…. but if you try to move around, zoom in, shoot from a very low or very high angle, shoot it with an extreme wide-angle or even fish eye you will actually get something totally different. You could even use your “selfie-stick” to get some stunning shots that you would normally not get (so we finally found a good use for that stick).
In the end it’s all about one thing…
As a photographer it’s not enough to just see the landmark, treat like you would treat a model…. and ok it doesn’t listen and you can’t pose it, but you can still wait for the light, change your own position, zoom in to show details or leading lines, add something in the frame to make it funny, or weird… when you think about it the options are limitless.

 

Even from the “kodak point”.

UK - 319 - January 25, 2016-Edit