There’s something inherently special about using natural light for your photography.  I love the creamy skin tones & beautiful catchlights coupled with that natural glow.

So how do you achieve great results using only natural light and how do you overcome the shortfalls & limitations of low light?  Learn these photography basics & creative photography tips … Read more

Natural light photo by xtianyves
http://www.flickr.com/photos/xtianyves/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Here’s  a neat video I discovered recentely which I found very helpful and thought it would be good to share with you all.

Jim Talkington: “In this video we’ll look at three fundamental styles of portrait lighting. Whether you’re using a studio strobe or a Strobist setup, this is a great intro to portrait lighting with just one light.”

I’ve just returned from a lengthy, much needed holiday with my family and now I’m slowly trying to catch up! I came across this article from Smashing Magazine which I thought you might find useful on “beauty retouching” using Adobe Photoshop tutorials.

Beauty retouching is probably one of the most popular application areas in which Photoshop is used extensively. There are two simple reasons for that. First, Photoshop offers a variety of advanced tools to smooth out skin and hair, optimize body proportions and emphasize some beautiful details. And second, if you have some experience with Photoshop it is easy to learn the basics and quickly produce very impressive and beautiful results … after all, we want our photos to look the best and our clients want their photos to look the best!

On to the tutorials ….  click here!

Speak to you soon friends.

With the Fourth of July coming up this week I’m sure there are many hopefuls who’ll be hoping to photograph their July 4th fireworks. This is one of those things that throws a lot of people when you only have a few minutes to capture that spectacular shot.  With the thousands of other digital shooters that share this pain we thought we’d offer some tips.

Because you’re going to need a slow enough shutter speed to capture the falling light trails you are going to need to shoot fireworks with your camera on a tripod.

Now this is when you’ll really benefit from using a cable release or remote, because you’ll need to see the direction of the fireworks to know when to push the shutter button—if you’re looking in the viewfinder it will be more of a hit or miss proposition … not to mention you’ll not get to fully enjoy the fireworks display too!

Ideally a 200mm or more zoom lens would be best so you can get in tight and capture just the fireworks themselves. If you want fireworks and the background then use a wider lens.

Here you’ll wanna set your camera to full Manual mode, because you just set two settings and you’re good to go:

1. Set the Shutter Speed to 4 seconds
2. Set the Aperture to f/11. Fire a test shot and look at the LCD monitor on the back of your camera to see if you like the results. If it overexposes, lower the shutter speed to 3 seconds, then take another shot and check the results again.
3. I would recommend a manual focus as well so that your autofocus doesnt keep trying to fix on a focal point each frame and slow down your shooting. Try to set your focus to infinity and leave it there, check mid show and make sure it hasn’t moved.

Here’s another couple of things to try …

1. If your camera has “Bulb” mode (where the shutter stays open as long as you hold down the shutter release button) you can try this.  Hold the shutter button down when the rocket bursts, then release when the light trails start to fade.
2. Or keep the shutter open in “bulb” mode but place a black card over the lens.  Slide it in front of the lens periodically while shutter stays open, so you can include blooms from several series in one shot.

(Most Canon and Nikon digital SLRs have bulb mode).

The rest is up to your imagination & timing — because now you’ve got the exposure and sharpness covered.

Hope you all get some great shots! I’d love to see your shots or comments below or post.

Here’s some more fireworks inspiration.

Today I thought I’d show you how I transform my family room into a studio & set up my photo-shoots in less than 5 mins and how the setup I used for the silhouette shots. Truly!

1. Our family room has lovely big windows which let in lots of natural light so I simply slide the lounge out of the way to expose a blank wall (besides the hanging art) which faces the window and I’m good to go.

I prefer to shoot with natural light so this is perfect.

2. I have two painters extension poles (pics 1-4) which I have added a rubber stopper to the ceiling end (pic 5). I simply extend to the height of the ceiling and lock. Two poles cost around $48 from Bunnings (Australia)

3. I have an old white faux-satin King size sheet which I use. Unfortunately it has a seam through the middle but I can usually cleverly hide this in this pic or clone it out with PS afterwards if necessary. The trick here is to have the subject stand away from the backdrop so that it is out of focus or over expose it so that it blows out … I do love high key photography.

I also have a large black faux-satin sheet and some interesting fabrics which I can drape over the white or black if I want a different effect. Fairy lights & similar also work well to give a night bokeh light effect.

4. The backdrop sheet is simply clamped to the poles with a couple of small clamps (pic 4) – too easy!

5. The lights I use (pic 6) are simply $25 (Bunnings again) workman lights that pump out a massive 500w each. (They get extremely hot so don’t touch or put anything too close and watch where you place them for safety issues). They come with halogen globes which give off a yellow light which works if you want a warmish feel otherwise you can get white light globes for them. The telescopic stand extends to 1.6m off the ground.

These lights are just placed behind my backdrop for the silhouette effect.

Now obviously I took these photos at night with no other lighting on just the worklights from behind.

And that’s it.

If I’ve missed anything or you have questions or comments please leave a comment below. I’d love to hear from you.

I love to experiment. I believe it is the only way to truly learn something and explore your creativeness within.

Soooo…. I decided to have a little fun with some silhouettes the other night and was happy with how they turned out. I am always being asked how I manage to achieve different effects so I thought I’d share this one with you.

1. Placed a white sheet as a backdrop with some high powered work lights behind. You can view the actual setup details here.

2. Had one of my sons & my daughter stand in front of the light and snapped away until I found one I liked.

3. Boosted the light slightly in PS and then added 2 texture overlays – Brick wall with graffiti and the other music.

Easy really!

Feel free to leave any comments below. Have fun experimenting!

I love photographing and being creative with high key and I came across this advice which you might find helpful also.

But first I hear you asking “what is high key“?

High Key is generally a picture that consists almost entirely of light tones with relatively few mid-tones or shadows. There are varying definitions for high key which can pretty much confuse most people. So to keep it simple, any image that has deliberate overexposed areas either in the subject or background is pretty much High Key (of course you can end up with high key by accident but here we are talking about deliberate).

The question was …

“Hi, Please I need help with this studio setup. I need to photograph children(between 6 and 11 years old).
The client wants the background completely white (high key), and the children well illuminated. They are little models of children’s clothes. “

And the response by Steve.Korn from Flickr.com ….

“Usually, a 4:1 ratio is what many will say, but with digital, there is an easier way to do it without frying the background.

Before the kids arrive, set up your background lights and do a few test shots. Shooting at your desired ISO and aperture, set the background light levels so that they are just hot enough to clip the right side of your histogram. This will ensure that the background is a pure white but not bionically bright.

Be sure your kids are not too close to the background or the background lights will spill or make a glowing halo around them. If you can get them 8-10 feet in front of it, you’ll have no problems. A little closer and you’ll be fine, but if you can err on the side of more distance it will ensure you are safe.

Next, turn off your background lights and meter just your key and fill lights.

When the kids arrive, turn everything on and you will be good to go.

Have fun and good luck with the shoot. “

It doesn’t take much to get great shots indoors. In fact the secret is so simple that it’ll amaze you once you know what it is. The first secret to taking good indoor shots is that you need light. The major problem with indoor shots is really just they are far too dark. I’ve taken shots of things inside and sometimes found that no matter how hard I try, without the aid of an overhead lamp or sunlight streaming through the window my shots just won’t turn out.

Portrait shots are a classic example of this. There is a very good reason as to why photographers who work at their family residence, have lots of big and obtrusive lights, lamps etc, creating a lot of light. That’s because they know that in order to work successfully indoors, they must have adequate lighting or forget it. It’s really that simple.

The correct balance of a light is a tricky one at times. You can have too much light which tends to create too many areas of white light. These blocks of overexposed light eliminate detail.

The problem with indoor pictures is that too often the picture is underexposed. This means not enough exposure to light. Because we see differently to the camera, it’s difficult to know exactly how much light to have in your picture.

The good news is that the more you take pictures indoors and play around with the light, the more you know about what light you need at that time to take that subject. Its really just a matter of practice. With this practice you develop a subconscious knowledge about what light will work. Its funny how that just happens automatically after a while of practice.

To work successfully indoors try taking a picture of your subject under window light in the beginning of the day. Even turn the overhead light on to create more light to help the camera pick up the subject more clearly.

You may even want to angle the light onto a wall to be reflected back onto your subject. This can work well inside if done properly. You can even create different types of light on your camera itself. And if you want to get really creative, remember that there are things you can do to create different effects with a very limited amount of money.

This Indoor Photography Tip was submitted by Amy Renfrey – author of the popular Digital Photo Success – an e-book filled with similar tips on all types of digital photography.

Jayson from Image World Photography left a useful comment on the Christmas Photography Tips post that I thought our IntoFotos.com readership would find useful.

A setting that has always worked for me to achieve great indoor photography. This came about after many corporate photography functions in doors and wedding photography inside churches. These settings allow you to see people or subjects in the foreground and still see the warmth of the room or any features or lights in the background.

Settings for Indoor Photography

• Put you camera onto M for manual (this is the setting on Canon’s, not sure about other models).
• Set you aperture to as big as it will go eg. F4.0 or F2.8.
• Set your shutter speed to around 1/60. It is hard to shoot handheld with anything below 1/60. As a rule of thumb you should never shoot lower than your focal distance while handheld. Eg on a 50mm lense you should never shoot lower than 1/50 sec.
• You will then need to use you external flash, if you can bounce your flash do this, if you have a catch light reflector built into your flash even better.
• Take a few shots and see what they look like.
• If they are not bright enough try bumping up your ISO to 200 then 400 and so on until you achieve an acceptable result.

This style of photography will have great lighting on people in the foreground and still have the impact of the room lighting and features in the shot. Just a plain old photo with the flash will normally burn out people in the foreground and black out the background. Give it a go!

You can see some examples of Jayson putting this technique to work at his site – particularly the Corporate Photos Section.

The problem with 98% of the photos of Christmas lights is that most people wait until way too late to start shooting. After it gets completely dark, you can either have the lights or the surroundings properly exposed. But not both.

Conversely, if you were to shoot the lights in the middle of the day, they would not show up at all. The trick is find the sweet spot (actually there is a whole range of sweet spots) where the ambient light and the Christmas lights balance.

I found a really helpful article on this and thought I’d share it as we approach the Festive Season – Read the full article …

I have also created a new group on Flickr.com so you can show off your Christmas Photography.