Written on Nov 12th, 2008 by Dave Adams

Posted In: Camera Techniques

Save Your Photos, Don’t Delete

DVD, histogram, lcd screen, memory cards, Photography, photos, Post Processing, risk, storage, Tips 0 comments

One of the key things I have learnt over the last couple of years of shooting digital is that you should never delete anything you take. Well, OK, maybe you can delete the odd one or two that are very obviously out of focus or have the exposure completely wrong when viewed on the LCD screen on the back of your camera, but you should try and keep as many as you can.

Why Save All Your Photos?

There are number of reasons why you shouldn’t get ‘delete happy’ when viewing your photos in the LCD screen on the back of your camera.

LCD screen can be misleading

The LCD screen itself isn’t that accurate at showing you whats good and whats bad, and unless you are zomming in on each image you look at, the standard preview doesn’t give you a good enough indication of whether a photos is sharp or not. It may also misrepresent the exposure of the photograph. Use the histogram function (if your camera has one) to ensure exposure rather than the preview in the LCD.

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Written on Nov 11th, 2008 by Dave Adams

Posted In: Social Media

Ten Tips To Improve Your Flickr Experience

Flickr, Photography, Technique, Tips 0 comments

You’ve been using Flickr for a while now, but you don’t seem to get any comments or views on your work. You’ve been busy taking hundreds of great photographs, and you would love it if just one or two people would stop by and tell you they like what you have been doing, but its not happening.

So whats gone wrong? Why do some people seem to get hundreds of comments for every photo they upload to Flickr when you get none?

While I don’t have all the answers, and my Flickr photostream is by no means popular in comparison to the big hitters on Flcikr, I do get steady stream of feedback, which is nice. So here are some tips to help you improve your Flickr experience and perhaps boost your popularity. Most importantly it may get the ball rolling and kick start your participation in the Flickr community.

1. Photo Quality is Critical and Volume Counts

This is the first tip, and its critical. Get this wrong and (99% of the time) no one will take any notice of your photography. You have got to get the basic photography skills right and be uploading only your very best work.

Uploading hundreds of shots of the same thing with only small variations in content mean that people will get bored very quickly. Limit the amount you upload to a small proportion of the photos you take, and make sure you only upload your best. Remember that for anyone who has made you a contact, they will only see the last five photos you uploaded in their contacts list (unless they have opted to only see the last photo uploaded by contacts), so that last photo you send to Flickr is vital. Its got to be the best it can be as that may determine whether a contact checks out your photostream or not.
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Written on Nov 6th, 2008 by Dave Adams

Posted In: Photoshop

How To Create Stunning HDR Photographs

Aperture Priority, Balance, HDR, Photography, Photoshop, Shutter Release, Technique, Tripod 1 comment

What is HDR Photography?

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and within photography refers to a process of combining multiple exposures of the same scene to enable the capture of both the darkest and lightest areas of a photograph.

While the human eye is very good at distinguishing between dark and light areas as it looks around, and adjusts the iris accordingly, camera sensors cannot adjust to compensate for an area in a scene that is both too bright (overexposed) and too dark (underexposed) all in one photograph.

To overcome this shortcoming, a system was devised where multiple exposures of the same scene could be combined into a single image, thus blanacing out any under or over exposed areas. With film photography, acheiving the same result would have meant doidging and burning a photograph to ensure an evenly exposed final image.

Once multiple exposures have been combined into a single HDR file, the image is then put through a tonemapping process, and it is this part of the process that most people think of when they talk about HDR photography. HDR photography has become so popular that it is no longer used to just compensate for over and under exposure issues, its actually used as an artistic technique to produce visually stunning digital artworks. In fact many of the HDR photographs that you will see on the web could have been taken with a single exposure with no tonemapping, as the dynamic range in the image is not that wide. however, the process of tonemapping can give a real lift to a photograph, and depending on the artist the effects can be anything from mild to wild.

The following HDR image is one I created from 9 exposures, tonemapped and then applied a Topaz filter to. I will talk a little bit about the best way of taking photographs for generating a HDR image, and give a little more detail on the way the following photograph was processed. It should give you some idea of whats possible with the software thats available today. I would put this in the medium-mild category - beyond photorealistic but not over the top.

Final Result after Tonemapping and Topaz Filter

View Larger Version

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