Photo insights january '16

Jim Zuckerman’s

PH OTO I N S I G HTS

January 2016

Anatomy of Eight Photographs Canvas size Photo tours Negative space Student showcase 1

4.

18.

21.

23.

26.

27.

29.

34.

38.

22

Anatomy of eight photographs Canvas size What’s wrong with this picture?

Short and sweet Ask Jim Photography tours Negative space Student showcase Back issues On the cover: A baby harp seal laughing at a private joke, Magdalene Islands, Nova Scotia, Canada. On this page: An abandoned cabin in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado

M

any people think bigger is better with pretty much everything. That’s certainly true with diamonds, vacation time, and bowls of ice cream, but is it true with megapixel counts? The new Canon 5DS R 50.6 megapixel camera makes me ask this question.

For most photographers, I would argue that 50 megapixels is overkill. Most of us don’t enlarge our images to make monster prints. If you happen to be in the billboard business, then sure, the camera is essential. If you sell your work in art fairs or galleries, this camera would be fantastic.

Also, if your passion is shooting birds and you find that you often have to crop your pictures to fill the frame with a small bird, having 50 MP is a great advantage.

There is a price to be paid, though, for having such incredible resolution. The frame rate is only 5 frames per second. If you only shoot landscapes, portraits, and architecture, this is fine. But for wildlife, sports, and especially birds, this is way too slow. You will miss too many shots. Having all of those megapixels also means you need more and more hard drives to store the images as well as larger flash cards, and working on the huge files in Photoshop takes longer due to the computing power needed to render plugin filters, etc. You’ll have to buy more RAM or possibly a newer, faster computer.

Viewing images on the LCD monitor on the back of the camera also takes longer because of the extra data the camera’s processor has to display.

If you are tempted by the bigger-is-better mind set, think carefully about the kind of photography you do and what you really need out of a camera.

Jim Zuckerman www.jimzuckerman.com

3

Anatomy of Eight Photographs

E

very time you take a picture, several decisions have to be made simultaneously: what shutter speed to use; what f/stop is correct; what ISO is ideal; how much exposure compensation is needed, if any; how to prevent blown highlights and shadows with no detail; what is the best exposure mode to use; what autofocus function will insure that the subject is sharp; and what, if any, Photoshop work will be required.

That’s a lot of decision making! And when you have to make those decisions in a split

4

second, it’s easy to get confused and overwhelmed and miss out on capturing a great photo opportunity.

What follows are eight photographic situations and a discussion of the strategies I used to get the results you see here.

1.

White Horses of the Camargue, Provence, France Most of my pictures of these horses taken during workshops were done with a telephoto lens. I wanted to try something differ-

ent, so I switched to a 24-105mm zoom. This did two things. It showed a huge expanse of sky, and it produced an environmental shot as opposed to capturing the horses with a tight composition.

The first decision here was shutter speed. I wanted to freeze the action, complete with sharp water drops and flying manes. Had I used a telephoto, the shutter speed would have had to be very fast -- in the 1/2000th range -- because telephotos magnify movement. Because I used a 24mm focal length, I could get away with 1/640th. That meant that the ISO didn’t have to be extremely high. 400 ISO is what I used.

The lens aperture I chose was f/18. I could have gotten away with a larger opening due to the wide angle lens and its incredible DOF, but this was fine. It insured that the immediate foreground as well as the distant sky were both sharp. This was essential.

horses are a bit dark. But in this context with the sky correctly exposed, I was happy.

Yes, the highlighted area of the sun is completely blown out, but that’s correct. The sun has no detail at all as seen from Earth and captured with our photographic equipment. What I didn’t want was a larger area of the sky to be solid white.

2. Evening view of Shanghai, China Most of my photo tours to China begin in Shanghai because it’s such a stunning city to photograph, and this is one example. I took this picture from an observation deck on the 100th floor of the Shanghai World Financial Center.

Twilight and night are the most beautiful times

For the exposure mode, I chose Program.

With fast moving subjects and with precious little time to think about all of these numbers, Program mode is a good choice. It wasn’t the only choice here, but as long as the shutter speed was fast enough per the ISO selection, Program worked because it’s biased to producing a very fast shutter.

Because I was shooting into the sun, I was concerned that the image might be underexposed. Therefore, before the horses ran, I did a test shot in which I composed the picture mostly with sky. With minus 2/3 f/stop exposure compensation, my usual camera setting to protect the vulnerable highlights in a scene, I felt the picture was a bit dark. There, I brightened the image a little by using minus 1/3 f/stop compensation. As you can see, the 5

to photograph any city, and that requires a tripod, of course. A tripod means that the shutter speed is no longer a consideration for cityscapes (unless there are imporant elements moving in the scene, such as fireworks). If the exposure were 1/30th of a second or 4 seconds, it wouldn’t matter because the pictures would be sharp due to the stability of the camera.

However, it was important to use either a cable release or the self-timer built into the camera.

With slow shutter speeds, you don’t want to push the shutter button with your finger because you’ll possibly introduce subtle movement in the camera that can blur the image.

The lens aperture, also, wasn’t important because depth of field was not relevant since everything was far away. There was one caveat, though. I was shooting through glass, and if there were any dirt or grime on the outside of

6

the window, this needed to be completely out of focus. Therefore, the ideal was a large lens aperture for shallow depth of field. Because of this, I chose aperture priority and chose the largest aperture possible on my 24-105mm lens, which is f/4. This produced a shutter speed of 1/2 second. Since I had the luxury of a tripod, I selected 100 ISO for a minimum of digital noise.

The challenge here, though, was the angle of the glass window. It was not perpendicular to the lens axis due to the design of the building and also because the camera was angled downward. The reason this presented a problem was because the lights inside the observation deck behind me were reflecting in the glass.

To deal with that, I placed the lens up against the window. I could still see a few unwanted light reflections, and to eliminate them I had to

block the gap between the edge of the lens and the glass. I did this with the microfiber lens cleaning cloth I always carry.

When shooting at night, blown highlights are common. Street lamps, large neon signs, and distant windows often blow out due to the extreme contrast you see when shooting at night.

You can deal with that using HDR, or you can accept it because it adds glitz to a scene. In this case, I opted to accept the blown highlights.

3. Snowy owl in flight To capture the beauty of a bird in flight, the picture must be sharp. Blurring motion shots of birds to show the fluidity of movement is a nice exercise in creating abstracts, but those kinds of pictures dont inspire the awe and appreciation that tack sharp actions shots do.

The choice of shutter speed, then, is the first decision you have to make. When it comes to photographing birds, what separates tack sharp pictures from all the others are the wing tip feathers. If they are sharp, then everything will be perfectly sharp as well. Snowy owls don’t flap their wings as fast as hummingbirds or sparrows, but the need for a fast shutter is still paramount. For the picture below, I selected 1/3200th of a second.

In addition to shutter speed, I also wanted a certain amount of depth of field because the fairly large birds have depth. I didn’t want the face to be sharp and the tail soft, and I definitely didn’t want the tail to be sharp while the face was soft.

I was using the new Canon 100-400mm lens lens, so I selected f/11 as the lens aperture. I mentally calculated that given the distance of the shooting position to the owls and the fo-

7

w

UPCOMING PHOTO WORKSHOPS Carnival in Venice, Italy Jan. 29 - Feb. 4, 2016

Outrageous costumes in a medieval environment! Venice is beautiful any time, but during carnival it’s beyond amazing.

Frog & Reptile Workshop Close-up encounters with poison dart frogs and exotic reptiles in St. Louis, MO.

May 21 - 22, 2016

Home Photoshop workshop Learn amazing techniques that will give you unparalleled control over your images such as replacing the sky, making composites, using layers, and more.

April 2 - 3, 2016

8

cal length I was using, f/11 would give me the depth of field I needed for the bird. Given the laws of optics, there was no way I could render the distant trees sharp as well, but as it turned out, I wouldn’t want them sharp because that would be too distracting in my opinon. The trees are soft enough to show the environment without drawing attention away from the owl.

So, the next question is how can the shutter speed of 1/3200 and a lens aperture of f/11 be guaranteed? The answer is to use auto ISO. By allowing the ISO to adjust according to the light, I essentially agreed to be willing to accept any ISO setting, irrespective of noise, in exchange for using the camera settings I determined to be the best.

That’s exactly what I did, and the result was an ISO of 640. That wasn’t bad at all. In this case, the white snow and bright sky provided enough light to keep the ISO fairly low. Sometimes, though, if the light level is muted, the ISO will be much higher when using auto ISO.

To determine the exposure in this whiteout condition, I made a test shot and tweaked the exposure compensation to give me what I wanted. I ended up using a minus 1/3 f/stop adjustment.

4. Confederate cemetery The last major battle of the Civil War was fought 10 minutes from where I live in Franklin, Tennessee. Nearly 10,000 men died. Fourteen hundred Confederate soldiers are buried in the cemetery shown below.

The cemetery is spread out and there is an unattractive fence around it, so I didn’t want to use a wide angle lens. I felt a telephoto would do it justice because the many headstones would appear to be compressed, giving the feeling of a

To focus track the owls in flight, I chose all of the focus points available in my Canon 7D Mark II. This is the best strategy for flying birds because they are difficult to keep centered in the frame, and when the wings are outstretched they can catch some of the focus points. If you try to use tightly bundled focus points in the center of the frame, there is little chance you’ll be able to keep a bird in focus. I used AI Servo, which on the Canon means that the lens continulously tracks the movement.

The Canon body I was using offers 10 frames per second, and that’s what I used. This allowed me to capture every position of the wings as the birds flew. When I tried using the Canon 5D Mark III with six frames per second, I found that I was missing too many good shots.

9

large number of graves. However, a telephoto lens presented a problem: depth of field.

Because I positioned the camera so close to the foreground headstone, depth of field became an issue. I used a 70-200mm telephoto set to 200mm, and that meant that even at f/32 the background wouldn’t be tack sharp. It would be clearly visible, but not as sharp as I wanted it to be.

Therefore, I had to use focus stacking. I set up my tripod and chose a lens aperture of f/8.

This is the sharpest aperture on the lens, and with focus stacking f/32 wasn’t necessary. The shutter speed didn’t matter since I was on a tripod and nothing was moving in the frame. A low ISO of 200 guaranteed no noise.

I took 12 frames, focusing first on the most dis-

10

tant elements in the composition. I re-focused in tiny increments closer and closer and took a shot each time until the last frame was focused on the immediate foreground. At home I used Helicon Focus to meld all of the images into a picture tack that was sharp from front to back.

5. Running cheetah I had always wanted to photograph a cheetah running full speed, but in the wild it’s a very, very tough thing to see and even more difficult to get the perfect picture. This is a captive cheetah exercising in a rescue center in Namibia, and even then it was a daunting challenge to take the ideal picture.

I first had to determine if I wanted (1) a sharp cheetah and blurred background, (2) both cat and background sharp, (3) both cat and back-

ground blurred, or (4) the cheetah blurred and the background sharp. I opted for the first choice as you can see in the photo on the previous page.

However, the plot thickens, so to speak, because if I used a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the cheetah, the background would also be sharp. That’s not what I wanted. I chose for the shutter 1/1600th of a second and, as I predicted, the background vegetation was sharp enough to be distracting to the beautiful lines and grace of the cat.

Because the sun was fairly bright, the ISO didn’t have to be high. I used 320 ISO with an aperture of f/7.1. In this context, since depth of field was not relevant, the f/stop could have been anything.

The solution in dealing with the background was to take second picture in which I panned the background landscape with a shutter speed of 1/30th of a second. That produced the horizontally blurred background that I later placed behind the cheetah in Photoshop.

The cat ran a defined course chasing a lure, so I knew exactly where it would be. It ran from left to right, and I positioned myself at the midpoint of the run such that when I took the shot, the lens would be perpendicular to the path of the cheetah. I realized that it would be a mistake to focus on the cheetah just before it started running. The distance from the camera position to the cheetah at that point was greater (because of the diagonal) than when it crossed the midpoint of the run (the red arrow versus the green arrow in the graphic at upper right).

The reason this was significant was because I would have to rely on the AI servo to change focus extremely fast if I focused on the cat at the beginning.

Automatic focus tracking is good, but it’s not perfect. I didn’t want to take a chance that the AI servo might not be able to keep up with the fastest land animal on the planet, and therefore I focused on the point of the running path indicated by the green arrow. When the cheetah started running, I followed it in my viewfinder and shot with the fastest frame rate I had at the time -- six frames per second.

The exposure mode I used was shutter priority, and I took this with a 300mm f/2.8 Canon telephoto.

6. Baby chimpanze I photographed the mother and baby chimpanze on the next page at the Jane Goddall Research Center in Kenya. They were sitting only a couple of feet from me, and we were separated by an electric fence. I was laying on the ground to get the shot, and I was shooting with a 70-200mm lens plus an extension tube which turned the medium telephoto zoom into a telephoto macro lens. That meant that the depth of field was quite shallow.

The lighting was low, so I had to use a large lens aperture. My settings were 1/125th of a sec11

12 12

ond, f/2.8, and 320 ISO. I could have raised the ISO for some additional depth of field, but this picture was taken with my first serious digital camera, the Canon 1Ds Mark II, and it was fairly noisy. I didn’t want to go too high, and I knew I could solve the depth of field issue with Photoshop.

The problem was that when I focused on the eyes of the baby, the mother’s hand became unattractively out of focus. In most cases I don’t like soft foregrounds because they are visually annoying, and that protective hand was an integral part of the image. It needed to be sharp.

I determined that the solution was to take two photographs quickly. For the first shot I focused on the baby’s eyes, and for the second one I manually focused on the mother’s hand.

Then, later, I used Photoshop to cut and paste the sharp hand onto the picture of the baby.

This took some cloning finesse to make the edge of the hand blend correctly with the background.

The exposure mode I used was Program because it’s designed to assume the photographer is hand holding the camera, and therefore it is biased to choosing a fast shutter speed.

7. St. Andrews Cathedral ruins, Scotland I was looking for a unique perspective in capturing the ruins of this once great 12th century cathedral, so the first choice I made was to use a wide angle lens -- a 14mm -- placed very close to one of the medieval stone walls to dramatize the perspective. That gave me a bold and elongated composition.

By doing so, though, that made depth of field an important issue because the closer the fore-

13

NEW eBOOK One of the most important ingredients to great picture taking is lighting. Most of your pictures are taken with natural light, and that’s what this ebook addresses. You will learn to recognize the best types of lighting for the most stunning photography, which types of light to avoid, how to make the most out of bad lighting, how to expose perfectly every time even in tough situations, and how to deal with the constant problem of contrast.

If you are in any way insecure about your photography when it comes to using natural light, this easy to read ebook is a resource that you’ll feel is essential to your growth as a photographer.

Click the photo to see inside the ebook

14

ground is to the camera, the more depth of field is lost. Therefore, a small lens aperture was important. Due to the low light level and the desire for a low ISO, that dictated the need for a tripod.

I chose an aperture of f/22, an exposure mode of aperture priority, and an ISO of 200. The shutter speed was 1/4 second. I used the built in self-timer set on two seconds to trip the shutter. This insured that my finger wouldn’t introduce any vibration in the camera.

With a super wide angle lens, vertical lines tend to converge. Buildings lean inward as do trees and everything else. This is called keystoning.

This happens when the camera is angled upward as when we photograph highrises. However, if the back of the camera (i.e. the plane of the digital sensor) is held parallel to the plane

of the vertical subject, keystoning doesn’t occur. That’s why in the photo of St. Andrews the lines of that distant structure are parallel with the left and right sides of the frame.

The original sky in this picture was white, and that wouldn’t do. I replaced the white sky with stormy clouds because the diffused lighting on the scene could come only from an overcast sky, and the dark, gray clouds are so much more dramatic than a washed out boring sky.

8. Lello Book Store, Porto, Portugal On my photo tour to Spain and Portugal a few years ago, I included a visit to a remarkable book store with a stunning staircase, below.

To gain the vantage for the best picture, I had to climb the stairs and then lean out over the railing to shoot straight down. There was a lot

15

of furniture along the railing, and I had to rest one knee on a reading chair in order to lean over to take the picture. This made it impossible to use a tripod. The strategy, then, was all about ISO and shutter speed. In other words, I had to raise the ISO until I was able to use a fast enough shutter for a sharp picture.

The lens I chose for this picture was a 15mm fisheye. Ultra wide angle lenses allow a slower shutter speed in low light environments because the camera’s movements appear to be so subtle. I decided I could get away with 1/30th of a second while bracing myself on the railing.

The ISO choice was 2000, and I used aperture priority so I could select the largest aperture on the lens -- f/2.8.

I wasn’t worried about depth of field because fisheye lenses have almost complete DOF at any lens aperture. As you can see from the picture, even at the largest aperture on the lens everything is sharp.

The middle tones in this composition made exposure easy because meters are programmed to read subjects like this. However, there were a lot of shadow areas that had to be lightened in post-processing. For that I used the shadows slider in Adobe Camera Raw. The lighting in the bookstore was a mix of tungsten and window light, but deep inside the store the predominance was tungsten artificial light. Therefore, I selected tungsten (or indoors) white balance which produced accurate colors. §

Photo Tour to Nepal March 3 - 14, 2017 Awesome landscapes Great portraits Holi festival Birds Ancient temples

16

Become a better photographer with

eBooks

Click on any ebook to see inside

17

Canvas Size: Fixing problematic edges

I

photographed the running horses below in Iceland, and I like this action shot because of the semi-silhouetted lighting, the flying manes, and the dynamic extensions of the legs. However, there is one major problem with it. The two horses on the left have their heads cut off, and the horse in front is missing the bottom of his left leg.

With action shots like this, it’s impossible to critically compose the picture because everything changes in milliseconds. Sometimes you get the shot, and sometimes you don’t. I was shooting at six frames per second, but even so, it’s just not feasible to control what you’d like to control. For example, the horses got too spread out as they ran past my camera.

On the right side of the picture, two horses were cut off but their heads are intact, and while that may not be ideal, it doesn’t ruin the picture.

There is a way to fix this kind of problem in Photoshop, though, as long as you can ‘borrow’ the missing part from another area of the pho-

18

tograph. The strategy is to use the pulldown menu command, Image > canvas size. This is a tool by which you can expand the working area of the image.

In the dialog box that opens, you’ll see a tic-tactoe graphic, and this represents the photo. If you click in the center right box, as I did in the screen capture at right, the new, expanded area will be added to the left side. Simply type in a larger number in the width box. What number you choose depends on how much new area you want. In the horse picture, the original width was 23.5 inches, and the new number I typed in was 25. I then hit OK. The color that you see in the expanded area doesn’t matter, but it is taken from the background color box at the bottom of the tools palette.

The next step is to clone the sky into the new

area. To maintain the tones so they blend naturally, clone in a horizontal direction. Even a slight diagonal clone direction will cause the sky to look blotchy.

Next, I used the lasso tool to make a rough selection (including some of the sky as well as the mane) of the head of the horse on the far right, and then with Edit > copy I placed that selec-

19

tion into the clipboard. Using Edit > paste, I then pasted the horse’s head into the frame.

With the move tool, I moved the head to the far left where it belonged, and then with Edit > transform > scale I sized the head to fit the new body. I also had to rotate the head a bit, and for that I used Edit > transform > rotate.

To blend the edge of the new head with the body, I used the healing brush. I also had to adjust the exposure of the new head to make it slightly lighter. For that, I used Image > adjustments > levels.

The final step was to clone the sky around the new head. I magnified the image to 100% to do this so the edges looked real. Then I cloned some of the mane so it wasn’t identical to the horse’s head on the far right. To add that one leg, I repeated the process.

When you use Image > canvas size, the proportion of the photograph changes. In this case, it

20

became slightly longer.

This technique can be used in many types of applications. It’s very easy to clip the edge of a subject when shooting fast, such as the wing of an io moth, below.

In the example below, I used the lasso tool to select the wing tip on the right wing of the moth, and then I added that tip to the left wing.

However, in this case, after I pasted the wing tip into the image, I had to choose Edit > transform > f lip horizontal. Then the wing tip had to be rotated with Edit > transform > rotate to be oriented correctly, and with the move tool I moved it in place.

It’s important to blend the hard edge of the pasted in element with the new background.

This is done with the healing brush. You can adjust the size of the brush using the bracket keys on the keyboard: the left bracket makes the brush smaller, and the right bracket key makes it larger.§

LEARNING TO SEE

online course

by Jim Zuckerman

The ability to ‘see photographically’, to really grasp how your camera and lenses capture a subject or scene (which is different than how we see with our eyes) underlies successful picture taking. It is the bottom line that you’ve been looking for to take that quantum leap forward in your photography.

The great thing about online courses is that they can fit into any schedule. Life gets in the way at times, and Jim puts no limit on the time you can submit your work for his critiques. CLICK THIS PAGE to read more about this course.

21

INDONESIA WILDLIFE & CULTURAL TOUR July 8 - 22, 2016

orangutans komodo dragons birds Bali ancient temples

22

What’s wrong with this picture?

S

hadows can add a graphic and dynamic quality to a composition, but somethings they just plane distracting and/or unattractive. I love the portrait of this young girl from Rajasthan, India, but the vertical shadow on her right cheek (our right) is not good. It’s visually annoying. It draws attention away from her eyes.

If you look at this picture for a few seconds, you’ll see that your gaze moves from her eyes to that shadow too often, and that’s not correct. That’s not how a successful picture is supposed to work. Our eyes should stay focused on the subject, and in this case the subject is the compelling expression in her eyes.

One could also argue that the shadows on the right side of the background are distracting, too, and to some extent they are. But it is the shadow on her check

23

that is the real issue here.

In the above version, I eliminated that shadow. You can see that this one change made a huge difference. Cloning skin can be very difficult because of the myriad shadows of color and tone. It’s not easy to remove something from a cheek, for example, and then blend the skin correctly so it looks natural. In this case, it was especially tough because I had very little skin from which to clone.

I used a small brush and worked with both the clone tool and the healing brush, going from one tool to the other until the skin looked pretty good. However, when I was done it still wasn’t as good as I wanted. Therefore, I opened the picture in Portrait Professional to smooth the skin just enough but still retain the roughness in the original capture. Portrait Professional is an amazing program for portraits.

Notice how only the left eye (our left) is sharp. This happened because the girl’s head was turned from me and my depth of field was shallow. If you can only get one eye in focus, it should be the eye closest to the camera position. § 24

SHORT AND SWEET 1.

Do goofy things with pet pictures. It’s fun. Your pet may never forgive you, but you’ll love the images.

For example, online you can buy doggy costumes. Using Filter > liquify, I enlarged the eyes to exaggerate the silliness of this cocker spaniel portrait.

3.

Stay in hotels with unique architecture. This is the Colony Hotel in Delray Beach, Florida. The wild colors and unique furniture and decor made for some very compelling images. The colorful stairs with the rag doll is also here. Online you can see what every hotel offers in terms of cool photographic possibilities.

2. Carry small props with you that have photograph-

ic potential. Or, look for them when you travel. In this case, the rag doll was in the lobby of a hotel and I borrowed it for this shot. The colorful stairs made a cool picture, but with the doll it was much better.

4.

Air shows offer dynamic photographic opportunities. You’ll see everything from experimental aircraft to military jets. You can photograph them upclose on the ground, and when they fly in formation it’s especially exciting. Depth of field isn’t relevant with flight shots.

It’s all about a fast shutter. Use 1/500th or more. §

25

ASK JIM

Every month Jim will answer a question from his online students, from people who participate in his tours and workshops, or from subscribers to this magazine. If you have a question you’d like Jim to answer, please drop him a note at photos@jimzuckerman.com.

Q:

Jim . . .I have a Sekonic I 358 hand held light meter, and I was curious how you would meter an animal or bird from a distance. I understand that on incident mode the white hemisphere dome on the meter must face the camera, but that is a little hard to do with wildlife especially when they are dangerous or impossible to approach.

Al Roland, Colville, Washington

A: If the animal or bird is in the same light as you are -- let’s say it’s an overcast day and both you and the

subject are in the open -- then you can use the incident meter mode and simply hold the meter in front of you with the dome facing the camera. If the subject is in a different lighting condition such as shade while you are in the open, or if the animal is in sunlight while you are in the shade of a vehicle, then you can’t use the incident mode. In that case, you must use the reflected light mode and use the one degree spot mode to take an accurate reading on a middle toned portion of the subject or scene. §

26

Photography Tours 2016 - 2017

ARMENIA & GEORGIA June 2016

CARNIVAL IN VENICE Feb, 2016

CROATIA, SLOVENIA, MONT. May, 2016

INDONESIA July 2016

KENYA migration Aug. 2016

CHINA Sept. 2016

GREECE Oct. 2016

AMERICAN SOUTHWEST Oct. 2016

THE PANTANAL, BRAZIL Nov. 2016

PATAGONIA Apr. 2017

NEWFOUNDLAND Jun. 2017

KAZAKHSTAN Aug. 2017

For a complete list of all the photo tours/workshops Jim conducts, go to his website: www.jimzuckerman.com.

27

KENYA PHOTO SAFARI August 4 - 15, 2016 The greatest concentration of wildlife on the planet - The Migration

28

NEGATIVE SPACE T

he concept of negative space seems somewhat strange because space is always filled with something -whether it be a vacuum, air, or some other matter. In Photography, the concept refers to a large portion of the frame that (1) is not the subject and (2) consists of fairly homogeneous and/or monochromatic elements such as the sky, the surface of a lake, or a stucco wall.

The reason photography and art instructors discuss negative space is because it is a compelling way to focus attention on a subject.

The elements that make up the space around

the subject frame, define, emphasize, and draw the eye to the subject.

Why is this important? Because everything in the picture should support and complement

29

30

the subject. If anything in the background is distracting, visually annoying, or draws the eye away from the whole point of the picture -- i.e. the subject -- it doesn’t belong there because it degrades the image.

In the photo examples I use in this article, the elements that make up the negative space -clouds, blue sky, stucco, and out of focus foliage -- direct our attention to the subject even if that subject is small in the frame and off center like the Masai warrior in Kenya on page 29.

Many photographers prefer to place subjects in this context off center, and I like that, too. But sometimes center positioning works as well. A case in point is the costumed dancer from the Philippines on the previous page. It’s perfectly fine to break the rules of composition for artistic purposes, but it’s also fine to conform to them.

Notice that in each of these examples, the subjects are very graphic. They have strong lines and bold shapes. If there were a rule to follow regarding negative space, I would say that the subject should virtually always conform to this idea. With a graphic subject, the contrast between foreground and background is bold and visually dynamic, and that makes for successful pictures. §

31

32

AMERICAN SOUTHWEST photo tour October 7 - 16, 2016

33

Student Showcase Each month, Jim features one student who took beautiful and inspiring images on one or more of his photography tours or workshops. It’s really fascinating how photographers see and compose such different images even though we may go to the same place. Everyone gets great images on my trips.

Robin Yong, Singapore Carnival in Venice, Frog & reptile workshop

Š 2016 Robin Yong

34

34

Student Showcase, continued

Š 2016 Robin Yong

35 35

Student Showcase, continued

Š 2016 Robin Yong

36

37

PHOTOSHOP WORKSHOP in my home

Sat. & Sun., April 2-3, 2016

Photoshop is a photographer’s best friend, and the creative possibilities are absolutely endless. In a personal and ‘homey’ environment (I have a very cool classroom setup in my home), I start at the beginning -- assuming you know nothing -- but I quickly get into layers, cutting and pasting, plug-ins, using ‘grunge’ textures, modifying lighting, replacing backgrounds, using layer masks, blend modes, adding a moon, and a lot more. I promise to fill your head with so many great techniques that you won’t believe what you’ll be able to do. I go over each technique several times to make sure you understand it and can remember it.

Photoshop instructors approach teaching this program from different points of view. My approach is to be as expansive in my thinking as possible in creating unique, artistic, and compelling images. In addition to showing you how to use the various tools, pull down menus, layers, and so on, I spend a lot of time giving you

creative ideas that will inspire you to produce amazing images with the pictures you’ve already taken.

I live in the Nashville, Tennessee area, and if you fly into the airport (BNA) I will pick you up. If you drive, I’ll give you my address and you can find my home on Mapquest or with a GPS. For the $450 fee, I include one dinner in my home (prepared by my wife who is an amazing cook and hostess) and two lunches, plus shuttling you back and forth from my home to your nearby hotel.

Contact me if you would like to participate in the workshop and I will tell you how to sign up (photos@jimzuckerman.com). All you need is a laptop and a lot of your pictures. If you don’t have a laptop, I have two Mac Book Pro laptops I can loan out for the duration of the workshop. §

37

Click on the past issues of

PH OTO I N S I G HTS you would like to read.

Nov. ‘12

Dec. ‘12

Apr. ‘13

May. ‘13

Sept. ‘13

Feb. ‘14

38

Oct. ‘13

Mar. ‘14

Jan. ‘13

Feb. ‘13

Mar. ‘13

Jun. ‘13

Jul. 13

Aug. ‘13

Nov. ‘13

Dec. ‘13

Jan. ‘14

May ‘14

Jun.‘14

Apr. ‘14

Click on the past issues of

PH OTO I N S I G HTS you would like to read.

Jul.‘14

Aug. ‘14

Sept. ‘14

Oct. ‘14

Nov. ‘14

Jan. ‘15

Feb. ‘15

Mar. ‘15

Apr. ‘15

Dec. ‘14

Jim Zuckerman’s

Jim Zuckerman’s

PH OTO I N S I G HTS

PH OTO I N S I G HTS

February 2015

January 2015

• Topaz Glow • A different approach to composition • Photographing puppies • Kaleidoscopic images • Online photo course • Student showcase • Photo tours

1

Jul.‘15

Jun ‘15

May ‘15

• White balance • When can highlights be blown • Abstractions in soap • Fisheye lenses • Online photo course • Student showcase • Photo tours 1

Aug.‘15

Sept.‘15

Jim Zuckerman’s

PH OTO I N S I G HTS June 2015

• Realistic HDR • Selective focus • Simulating bokeh • Sepia & Dark Contrast • Online photo courses • Student showcase • Photo tours 1

Oct.‘15

Nov. ‘15

Dec. ‘15

Jan. ‘16

39

Baby grizzly, Montana

PHOTO INSIGHTS® published by Jim Zuckerman, all rights reserved © Jim Zuckerman 2016 email: photos@jimzuckerman.com mail address: P.O. Box 7, Arrington, TN 37014

40