Photo Shoot with Anna Muzzy

In this video you can follow the post-production process of a photo of the series above:

Photography Tips: Make Every Wedding Look like a Royal One

With William and Kate's wedding dominating the news for the last couple of weeks, it's now time to get back to normal. After all, they are not the only couple getting married. In fact, if you have a fancy camera, chances are that one day your best friend will ask you to become their wedding photographer (happened to me just now).

Now, you might want to know that wedding photography is one of the most difficult fields because you only have one shot (figuratively).

A wedding can't be repeated just because you ran out of memory cards, the batteries for your flash died, or you forgot to photograph the groom because you were too busy stalking the bride in her private dressing room.

Moreover, it doesn't matter if you work for free or not. The wedding has been planned months if not years in advance, so everything has to be perfect. So, the couple, (and especially the bride) expect nothing less than superb results.

Your life is constantly on the line if you don't deliver--the term 'bridezilla' was coined for a reason. Therefore, consider this tutorial as an attempt to save your life (and a guide to make the photos of any couple look royal).

1. Focus on the bride. Always.

The bride is the most important person at a wedding. Therefore, be with her before, during and after the ceremony. Never look away from her--especially if you want to sell your photos afterwards because the bride (directly or indirectly) generates the most income for you.

2. Manage your shooting time efficiently: Start with everyone and release people gradually.

If you take formal photos after the wedding ceremony, gather everyone you want to shoot around you. Otherwise you might have to wait for some people for a very long time because people tend to disperse after the ceremony. Start your formal photo session with the groom and bride (they might get stressed if they are the last couple to shoot and it takes too long; after all, they have a wedding reception to attend and have a lot of hands to shake). Then, move on to large groups and finish with small groups. Shoot groups with older folks first and release guests as you finish shooting.



Tip for large groups: Make sure you choose an aperture that puts everyone in focus, e.g. f/11 and smaller. Minimize accidents by focusing on the first row of people. If the first row is blurry, the whole photo is ruined.

3. The perfect light for the bride

Use available light as much as possible. For example, a nice portrait of the bride with her father before the ceremony, use a window where the sun doesn't shine through directly and place the bride about 1,5 to 2,5 meters away from the window to soften the light on her skin and dress. In this lighting condition it's really hard not to take a good photo.



Posing tips:

- For more intimate portraits (e.g. bride and father), make sure that the heads are close together.

- Tell the bride in formal portraits to slightly raise the shoulder facing the light source to create a diagonal line. Moreover, the bride should put her feet in a V-position.

4. Photographing movement, e.g. dances

Use a slow shutter speed and pan the camera along the dancing people to create a movement effect. Should you have forgotten this during the wedding, you can still add this effect in Photoshop: Filter > Blur > Motion Blur (use the eraser tool on people you want to appear sharp, e.g. the bride in the middle of a headbanging crowd).

5. Photographing details

A photojournalistic style is en vogue. You basically tell a story by creating a collage of different shots, and photographing details--especially behind the scenes and before the actual ceremony--is an essential part. Here's a list of things you should have on your list (you can use them as a background for the album as well):

• The bride's shoes
• The wedding gown on a hanger
• The jewelry
• The wedding invitation
• The song book used during the ceremony
• The guest book (with a few entries)
• Glasses with sparkling wine
• Name cards on the tables
• The wedding rings (maybe on the wedding invitation with a couple of rose petals)
• The flight tickets for the honeymoon
• The CD for the first dance
• The groom's flowers
• The bridal bouquet
• Details of the wedding gown

6. Make a list of things and events you have to photograph

Preparing a list of events and things you and your clients want to have taken a picture of is essential because a wedding is quite stressful for a photographer. Without that list you can be sure you forgot photos that the clients wanted badly.

7. Using the flash at church

Use the slow-sync function of your flash to freeze movement while making the background appear in natural light. If you want to do this manually, use a large aperture (5.6, 3.5, or even 2.8), set the shutter speed at 1/60s and use ISO 800. Now take a test shot. If the background is too dark, reduce the flash power. Ideally, natural light should be 30-35% and the flash should provide 60-65% of the light. If you work with high ISO settings you should use plugins/programs such as NoiseNinja to reduce the noise and smooth out the skin tones.

Advanced technique: Use a diffuser for best results or let the flash bounce off the ceiling.

8. Flash 'em in sunlight!

This might sound superfluous but even if the sun is shining outside you should use the flash. Why? It brightens the faces, which would otherwise be spoiled by harsh shadows from the sunlight.

Tip: Use flash compensation setting "-1" to make the flash less obvious but still effective.

9. Better too many than too few.

This rule applies to the amount of photos you take during the wedding as well as your equipment, and especially memory cards and batteries for both flash and camera. Get memory cards with a lot of storage to make sure you never miss an important moment because you had to change cards. Moreover, make sure batteries and memory cards are easily accessible (e.g. in the pocket of your jacket).


Despite all the stress, wedding photography is also a lot of fun. And isn't it a great feeling that you preserved the memories of the best day of a couple's life together?





You know you have done everything right when the couple invites you to come along on their honeymoon as well.

How to Create a Bobblehead Portrait

In this tutorial I'll show you how you can create a funny bobblehead portrait. Since we're using the liquify tool you'll need a newer version of Photoshop.

The bobblehead images were used for a yearbook because the seniors wanted something special and it kinda fits their attitude--just nod all the time when the teacher is speaking...

This is the original shot:



1. Using the magnetic lasso tool (L), I selected the head and created a new layer via copy. Now we have a head layer and a body layer:



2. Using the move tool (V), I resized the background, so that the body shrinks. After that I used the crop tool (C) to cut the transparent background:



3. Now on the head layer we use the eraser tool (E) to erase parts of the neck and get a smooth transition to the body layer:



4. Should the neck be a little too big for the body you can fix it in warp mode. To do that, select the head layer, click on any transformation handle on the selection and then click on the warp mode icon in the top right-hand corner:



In order to fix the neck now you have to grab the handles at the bottom corners of the head layer and drag them toward the center, as indicated in the image above.

5. After that it's time to give the guy the comic-slim body. Select the body layer and open the liquify tool (Filter -> Liquify -> Forward Warp Tool). Depending on the image size you have to change the brush size so that the brush diameter is about the size of the body. Then you can squeeze the body the way you like. Practice makes perfect, and if you made a mistake you can always click on "reconstruct" or "revert all".

After the warping my image looks now like this:



All you have to do now is crop the image one more time to get rid of the white space.

Here's the final image as it appeared in the yearbook:

Old-School Photography: Tutorials from the 70s and 80s

In the days before the Internet, newspapers were a good source for photography tips and tutorials. Although the following articles were written in the decades of film photography they are still helpful in the digital age because they focus on old-school aspects every photographer has to know:

1. Photography Tips/Lakeland Ledger, 22 July 1979
2. Available Light Photography/The Montreal Gazette, 22 Dec 1979
3. Cold Weather Best for Photography/Harlan Daily Enterprise, 27 Jan 1981
4. Pro Gives Advice on Winter Photography/The Milwaukee Sentinel, 8 Jan 1981
5. Wedding Photography Tips/Harlan Daily Enterprise, 18 Feb 1981
6. An Editorial about Ansel Adams/Tri City Herald, 2 Oct 1979
7. Outdoor Photography Is Fun/Ladysmith-Chemainus Cronicle, 17 Oct 1979
8. Photography Tips from Sandved/Lewiston Morning Tribune, 9 May 1982
9. Photography Tips Help Vacationers/The Albany Sunday Herald, 22 Jun 1986
10. Holiday Photo Tips/The Sumter Daily Item, 22 Oct 1986
11. Tips on Sunset Pictures, Lakeland Ledger, 29 Feb 1980
12. Put Some Art into Those Vacation Shots/The Courier, 16 Apr 1987

Making of the Hotel Room Shoot with Maya

Thanks to Maya I was able to conclude my work in Thailand with a set of outstanding glamor photos. Here's the making-of:

The setting was a small hotel room in the Novotel, Siam Square, Bangkok, something like this:



Since the room was rather small we only worked with the window and the beds. The sun was shining brightly, so the window together with the white curtains served as a huge soft box. This available light looked good enough, so by using fast lenses I was able to shoot completely without a flash or tripod.

For the first set, we were going for a backlight effect with Maya standing right in front of the window. There were about 40cm between the floor and the window, so Maya had to stand on an ottoman, while I was standing on a table at the other side of the room to get the perspective right (imagine this and Maya's sister sitting on the bed watching TV and you get a picture of our set ;).

In order to get the model bright enough, I chose the Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro lens and used the manual exposure setting (the auto modes would have underexposed the model due to the bright background) at ISO400, 1/100s-1/160s and f/2.8, which is just enough to leave some parts of the curtain visible in the background and to make Maya's body shape glow, giving it a more glamorous appearance. By holding the curtain in different ways Maya was able to vary the background and feel of the images:





Scarves added some more color:





For the second set on the bed I used the Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens at ISO400, 1/125s and f/2.2-2.8, which kept the face sharp while blurring the rest of the body, thus making the model appear extra soft:





Although the raw images looked quite good already, I nevertheless retouched them with Photoshop. The most common procedures were brightening the body, decreasing the vibrance, and desaturate red tones in order to get softer and more natural skin tones. Here's one example:




You can view these and more photos in our portfolio section or on Facebook.

Enhancing Contrast and Colors with the Overlay Blending Mode and Eraser Tool

In this Photoshop tutorial I am going to describe a technique that allows you to enhance the contrast and deepen the colors of an image with extreme level values without over- or underexposing any areas. For this purpose, we're going to use the blending mode "overlay" and the eraser tool.



Above is my original picture. As you can see, the sun is bright while the tree areas are rather dark. If you tried to adjust the levels for the whole picture at once you'd probably just increase these extremes, causing the bright areas to be overexposed. Here's how you can avoid that:

1. First, open the picture in Photoshop and duplicate its layer by right-clicking on the background layer in the layers window (F7) and on "Duplicate Layer...".

2. In the layers window, click on the duplicated layer (default name: "Background copy"). Now the drop-down menu on top of the layers window becomes clickable. Click on it and select the "Overlay" blending mode. My picture now looks like this:



3. Next, select the elliptical marquee tool (press M or select it from the toolbar) and enter a value in the "Feather" field in the top toolbar that's high enough to ensure a seamless color flow. For this example image (800px wide) I used the feather value 100. Larger images require higher values.

4. The next step is a trial and error procedure. First, make sure your "Background copy" layer is still selected. Then, using the marquee tool, I selected parts of the sky where I wanted to enhance its contrast and had Photoshop auto-adjust the levels (Image > Adjustments > Levels > Auto). Now my picture looks like this:



5. I did the same thing with the ground area to increase its contrast, making the picture look like this:



6. Now, in order to brighten up the areas that are too dark, I used the eraser tool (E) and erased the dark areas from the "Background copy" layer, mainly trees and dark spots on the ground. I also erased some areas around the sun which were overexposed by the overlay mode.

Make sure the eraser tool's hardness (similar to the feather value) and size are adequate. In order to change these values, simply right-click on the image after selecting the eraser tool. Additionally, reduce the "flow" value for the eraser tool in the top toolbar.

Now my picture looks like this:



7. Finally, in order to reduce the noise in the sky and to enhance the details I applied the Noise Ninja plug-in. And there you go:




Here are some other images I processed using this technique:

58 Free Photography Book Gems at Google Book Search

Need to brush up your photography skills or get some inspiration? Here's a list of interesting photography books, which are all available for free at Google book search. Even if most of them are only available in limited view, they complement each other, so that you can get the whole picture by browsing a couple of books per section. Additionally, while most of them focus on film photography, topics such as posing, lighting and composition can be applied for digital photography as well.



General/Accessories

1. The Essential Photography Manual by Tim Daly
2. Langford's Advanced Photography by Efthimia Bilissi, Michael Langford
3. The Photographer's Guide to Light by Nigel Hicks
4. The Photographer's Guide to Filters by Lee Frost
5. Digital Photography Hacks by Derrick Story
6. An Advanced Guide to Digital Photography by Vincent Oliver
7. Photographer's Filter Handbook: A Complete Guide to Selection and Use by Stan Sholik, Ron Eggers
8. Photography: The art of composition by Bert P. Krages
9. Digital Photography for Dummies by Julie Adair King
10. The Complete Guide to Night & Low-light Photography By Lee Frost
11. Mastering the Basics of Photography by Susan McCartney



People/Fashion/Glamor

1. Lighting Techniques for Fashion and Glamour Photography by Stephen A. Dantzig
2. Rolando Gomez's Glamour Photography: Professional Techniques and Images by Rolando Gomez
3. Fashion Model Photography: Professional Techniques and Images by Billy Pegram
4. A Comprehensive Guide to Digital Glamour Photography by Duncan Evans
5. The Portrait Book: A Guide for Photographers by Steven H. Begleiter
6. Photographing People: Portraits, Fashion, Glamour by Roger Hicks
7. High School Senior Portrait Photography by John Giolas (with good tips on how to get clients)
8. 50 Lighting Setups for Portrait Photographers by Steven H. Begleiter
9. Black & White Model Photography: Techniques & Images by Bill Lemon
10. Swimsuit Model Photography by Cliff Hollenbeck (with a good props list)



Nude

1. Creative Techniques for Nude Photography in Black and White by Christopher Grey
2. Glamour Nude Photography by Robert Hurth, Sheila Hurth
3. Digital Nude Photography: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Perfect Photos by Roderick Macdonald (no photos but good tips)
4. Professional Secrets of Nude & Beauty Photography: Techniques and Images in Black and White by Bill Lemon
5. Classic Nude Photography: Techniques and Images by Peter Gowland, Alice Gowland
6. Black & White Nude Photography by Stan Trampe
7. Glamour Nude Photography at Home by Mark Lidikay
8. Master Guide for Glamour Photography: Digital Techniques and Images by Chris Nelson
9. Garage Glamour: Digital Nude and Beauty Photography Made Simple by Rolando Gomez
10. Fully Exposed: The Male Nude in Photography by Emmanuel Cooper
11. My Nude by Tom Jacobi
12. The Art of Pregnancy Photography by Jennifer George



Nature/Landscape/Travel

1. Digital Landscape Photography Step by Step by Michelle Perkins
2. Step-by-step Digital Landscape Photography by Tim Gartside
3. Travel Photography: A complete guide to how to shoot and sell by Susan McCartney
4. Black & White Landscape Photography by John Collett, David Collett
5. The Art of Outdoor Photography: Techniques for the advanced amateur and professional by Boyd Norton
6. Beginner's Guide to Nature Photography by Cub Kahn
7. Essential Skills for Nature Photography by Cub Kahn
8. Landscape and Nature by Michael Freeman
9. 100 Ways to Take Better Landscape Photographs by Guy Edwardes
10. Outdoor Photography: Landscape, Action and Wildlife Photography by Jon Sparks



Street

1. Street photography: From Atget to Cartier-Bresson by Clive Scott
2. No Rules Street Photography by Nitsa



Infrared

1. Digital Infrared Photography: Professional Techniques and Images by Patrick Rice
2. Infrared Portrait Photography by Richard Beitzel



Press Photography

1. 5000+ Days: Press Photography in a Changing World by British Press Photographers Association, Harold (FRW) Evans
2. Photojournalism: The professionals' approach by Kenneth Kobré, Betsy Brill



Underwater Photography

1. The Underwater Photographer: Digital and traditional techniques by Martin Edge



Pet/Animal Photography

1. Professional Techniques for Pet and Animal Photography by Debrah H. Muska
2. Animal Portraits with the Digital Photography of John Crippen by John Crippen



Sports Photography

1. Sports Photography: How to Capture Action and Emotion by Peter Skinner



Fine Art

1. Fine Art Photography: Creating beautiful images for sale and display by Terry Hope



Wedding Photography

1. Wedding Photography: Creative Techniques for Lighting, Posing, and Marketing by Rick Ferro
2. The Best of Wedding Photography by Bill Hurter
3. Master's Guide to Wedding Photography: Capturing Unforgettable Moments by Marcus Bell
4. The Best of Wedding Photojournalism: Techniques and Images from the Pros by Bill Hurter

Getting Started with Animal Photography

Animal photography is one of the most difficult fields of photography. However, with these basic explanations of vital skills, technical requirements and composition techniques it’s easy to get started.

Vital Skills

The most important skills you need for animal photography are patience and constant alertness. Unlike humans, who can be told how to pose (and especially how long to pose until you got the shot!), animals are hard if not impossible to control. Therefore, waiting for the right moment and then being ready to press the shutter is the base everything else stands upon.

Another essential skill is anticipation. The better you know how the animal will behave and react in its environment, the better you can plan your photo and take the necessary preparations, i.e. choosing the right lens and aperture.

Technical Requirements

Depending what kind of animal you want to take a picture of, the technical requirements vary greatly.

For example, shooting a pet or a savage animal in the wild is a makes a big difference. Your pet will probably not run away when you come a little closer, but savage animals such as deer instinctively flee as soon as they see or hear you or your camera shutter. Therefore, in order not to intimidate the animal and scare it away you should choose a telephoto lens, which allows you to take the shot from a greater distance. Camouflage is also an advantage.

If you like insects a macro lens will come in handy to discover the world of smaller life forms. Divers and underwater enthusiasts will go for a waterproof camera case or a special underwater camera.

Depending how fast the animal is moving you may want to freeze the action, e.g. when taking a picture of a bear capturing a fish, a dog jumping through a ring, or a flying insect at a flower. For action photography like this you require a lens with a low f-stop number, and a camera with a fast shutter speed and/or a high ISO setting.

Composition Techniques

If you do not want your photo to look like a lucky snapshot, there are several composition techniques to consider.

First of all, an animal photo taken from the human eye’s level usually looks ordinary and boring. Therefore, if possible take the photo from the animal’s eye level. Thus, the shot will become more intimate and interesting. You could even add a more dramatic effect by taking the shot from the perspective of the animal’s prey.

Next, find the right balance between focusing on the animal and including the right amount of surroundings. Apart from zooming in or cropping the image to eliminate distracting surroundings you could narrow the depth of field, which will result in a sharp animal and a blurry background. You can maximize this effect by choosing a low f-stop number, a short distance to the animal and a high zoom level. This technique is particularly helpful when you go to the zoo and want to blur the metal bars of a cage.

Finally, make the photo special by capturing a special scene, which could be caused by interesting lighting, a distinctive prop, or something the animal is usually not doing. This will help your photo stand out from the huge crowd of animal photos.

Better Black and White Photos with Channels

Sometimes the best things are already there, waiting to be discovered ;)

In this tutorial I will demonstrate how you can use Photoshop to extract a channel from a picture for better black and white conversion.

This is my original shot:


The first thing you have to do is open the channels window by clicking on the 'Channels' tab (next to the 'Layers' tab in the layers window or Window > Channels). As you can see, in an RGB image we have the red, green, and blue channel:


All you have to do now is choose the one you like the most (in my case I prefer the green channel) and click on it.

Next, convert the image to grayscale (Image > Mode > Grayscale), otherwise you won't be able to save it as a black-and-white image.

Finally, you might want to increase the contrast a little. You can do so by duplicating the layer (click on the 'Layers' tab or Window > Layers, right-click on the background layer > duplicate layer) and choosing the 'soft light' blending mode from the drop-down menu:


If the contrast is now too much, you can gradually decrease the opacity of the duplicated layer until you get the desired effect. My final result looks now like this:


Now it's your turn--see the world in black and white!

How to Take Great Cat Photos

Cats are known for their laziness. However, this very treat poses a great challenge for a photographer--how can you take an interesting shot of such a lazy subject? And how can you capture the cat's cuteness without making the picture look like a random snapshot? In short, how can you create something special? Let's find out.

1. First rule: Do not place the cat in the center of the image. Or positive: Place the main object off-center. Since cats are usually lazy and still objects, placing it in the center like in the example image on the left makes the picture look static and boring. (Other flaws in this image: the shadows in the cat's face are distracting. Moreover, the cat's eyes are almost closed and the background doesn't look artsy either.)
However, you can place the cat in the center if you want to accentuate symmetry.

Just to see the difference, here's a shot where the cat's head is placed off-center:





2. Make it special by capturing something special. Although it may look cute, a sleeping cat is nothing special. However, with the right surroundings, props and lighting you can make it even look mystical:





Additionally, it pays off to watch out for reflections:





3. Go down to the cat's eye level. Most cat pictures are taken from the perspective of the human eye, which looks boring. It's better to take the picture from the cat's eye level--or from the prey's perspective, as you can see here (although it's still not perfect because the cat is slightly blurry while the background is sharp):




4. Choose the right depth of field (i.e. the area that's sharp). The picture above has a wide depth of field, which means that everything from the cat to the background is sharp--but this also means that the picture includes a lot of distracting surroundings. In contrast to that, take a look at these examples of a narrow depth of field:







All these images focus solely on the cat by blurring the background and foreground, thus leaving out unnecessary distractions while including just the right amount of surroundings. You can narrow the depth of field by using a low f-stop number (i.e. open up the aperture) and/or a large zoom factor.


5. Focus on details. Similar to portraits of human beings, taking a detailed shot can spice things up, as you can see here:





6. Try black and white. Black and white colors make a photo of a kitten appear more intimate and emotive:




7. Catch the cat in action. Even the laziest cat will jump once in a while (if not, a popping balloon will help). If it does, be ready to catch the action.



Read more about action photography here (under "The Right Timing").


8. Take the photo with a special camera. This one is certainly special (and this last tip not to be taken too seriously):