Photo Insights September '13

Jim Zuckerman’s

PH OTO I N S I G HTS September August 20132013

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Table of Contents 4. Shooting parades 11. Exposure technique 13. Calculating for fill flash 16. Generating fractals 22. What’s wrong with this picture?

24. Short and sweet 26. Ask Jim 29. Student showcase 33. Back issues

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It takes many years to develop a photographic vision and to mature in your picture taking. To put this in perspective, I’ve been shooting seriously for 44 years, and when I look back at some of the images I was taking after I’d been a professional photographer for 10 years, I say to myself, “What were you thinking?”

If that surprises you, just think how it surprises me! At the time, I thought most of my pictures were quite good. In retrospect, and compared to what I produce now, they were mediocre at best. Some were very good, but most were not.

My point is that you need to have patience with yourself and to enjoy the process of learning to see photographically. Don’t be intimidated by other photographers’ pictures that you think are better than yours. Instead, be inspired. Try to figure out what they are doing that you aren’t. That’s how I improved my photography, and you can do the same.

On my photo tours and in my photo workshops, many people express to me their disappointment in their pictures. They make statements like, “I’ll never be as good as so and so,” or “I am never really happy with what I take.” First, let me say that this isn’t necessarily a permanent condition. Maybe tomorrow, or next month, you’ll take some images that will be awesome. Instead of focusing on the disappointment, focus on the steps you need to improve. Is lighting the problem? Choice of subject matter? Depth of field? Composition? Exposure? Messy backgrounds? Try and tease apart your images and define what the problems are, then figure out how to address those issues. If you can’t determine why the pictures are not successful, ask someone whose photography is an inspiration to you and see what they say.

Photography should be a joy from the very beginning. Let it be exactly that. Look at your failures as stepping stones to the pictures you’ll be excited about in the future. photos@jimzuckerman.com www.jimzuckerman.com 3

STRATEGIES FOR SHOOTING Parades

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n my entire photographic career, I’ve never photographed anything as outrageous, as visually compelling, and as fun as the fashion festival in Jember, Indonesia.

I just returned from leading a photo tour to this exotic destination, and in an afternoon I took 1500 pictures. This is a record for me because I’m so deliberate in my shooting.

Inherent in any parade or outdoor festival are several problems. Busy backgrounds, harsh light, moving subjects, and competition from other photographers are constant challenges, and they get in the way of taking outstanding images of great subjects. Let me give you some strategies to deal with these issues.

1. Choose your camera settings and don’t change them. If you are constantly fiddling with ISO, exposure modes, shutter speeds, and depth of field, you miss pictures and confuse yourself.

Here are the settings I recommend: -- P for program mode. This mode is biased to giving you the fastest shutter speed possible, minus 1/3 f/stop. Due to the movement of the subjects, you need the fast speed. If you need depth of field, you can use aperture priority -- but the danger of that is that in the heat of shooting, you will most likely forget to watch what the shutter speed is doing. Thus, slow shutters will produce soft or blurred pictures.

-- ISO set to 400, or if the sky is deeply overcast, use 640 or even 800.

-- Daylight white balance 2. Overcast conditions are ideal so contrast is minimal, but if the sun is out situate yourself so it is at your back, thereby front lighting the subjects. Most parades and festivals occur in

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the middle of the day. Direct sunlight creates too much contrast. Front lit subjects will still show some dark shadows, but they won’t be nearly as distracting and uncomplimentary as they would be if the sun were directly overhead or behind the subjects. You can see this in the photo below. There is a shadow on the forehead of the young lady, but that occured because of the protrusion of the headdress. The rest of her face is lit fairly well even though I shot this at 2:30pm when the sun was fairly high. The sun was at my back, and that’s why this works.

3. If the parade is on a typical street, darken the asphalt or concrete so it is less obtrusive. Also, if there are white or yellow traffic lines, clone them out.

4. Distracting backgrounds, such as power lines, unattractive architecture, light poles, etc. should be replaced. The picture on the next page of the

dazzling procession of incredible costumes shows a forest in the background, and this replaced ugly buildings and light poles in the original shot that significantly hurt the picture.

5. Use the burn tool to darken the audience along the parade route. Onlookers in normal street clothes are visually annoying. If you are doing a travelog or shooting for a story in a magazine, then spectators are part of the event. For fine art travel photography, though, I recommend toning them down so they are completely unobtrusive. If some of the onlookers are wearing bright colors, I select those areas and de-saturate them so the eye is not drawn to those parts of the background.

6. Alternatively, you can carefully select the background and then render it out of focus or, for maximum drama, fill the background with black. This still requires you to make a pre-

cise selection around the subjects to isolate the background (I use the pen tool or the quick selection tool in Photoshop), but the results can make or break the picture.

than Filter > blur > Gaussian blur. It accurately simulates the shallow depth of field from a telephoto lens. This is a good way to artfully eliminate distracting and unattractive backgrounds.

On page 9, you can see what I’m talking about.

The original shot of a Christmas parade in San Juan, Puerto Rico is at the top of the page, and it shows a great subject but a horrible background.

The background actually ruins the shot.

In the bottom photo on page 9, I used the same selection to fill the background with solid black using Edit > fill. This effectively removed the costumed subject from the parade and made it look like a studio shot.

The photo in the middle is much improved. After selecting the subject with the pen tool (see the August issue for an explanation of how to use the pen tool), I then chose: Select > inverse.

This grabbed everything except the subject, and that meant the background. Then, I feathered the edge one pixel (Select > modify > feather), and finally I used the pull down menu command: Filter > blur > field blur in Photoshop CS6. This is a much more realistic blur effect

To make the solid black portion look exactly like part of the original capture when examined at 100% magnification, it’s necessary to add noise to match the rest of the image. Therefore, choose Filter > noise > add noise. In the dialog box, you’ll have to experiment to see how much noise is needed. I usually use 3 to 4.5, depending on the original ISO of the picture. If you shot with a higher ISO setting, you’ll need a higher number for noise.

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UPCOMING PHOTO WORKSHOPS Winter Wildlife Workshop Hinckley, Minnesota Jan. 31 - Feb. 2, 2014

Baby WildlifeWorkshop Hinckley, Minnesota June 13 - 15, 2014

Frog & Reptile Workshop St. Louis, Missouri Jan. 25-26, 2014

Two back-to-back Carnival Workshops, Venice, Italy Feb. 21 - 27 - 23, 2014 Feb. 27 - March 5, 2014

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Original capture, 70mm, f/7.1

Background selected and blurred with Filter > blur > field blur in Photoshop.

Background selected and filled with black using Edit > fill in Photoshop.

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7. Get a press pass to get behind the scenes shots as well as the best vantage points. You can often photograph the parade or festival participants putting makeup on and putting themselves together for the show. This also gives you the opportunity to take closeups, and if it’s a sunny day, you can bring the subjects into the shade of a building or tree to capture them in soft light.

This is how I photographed the little girl at right. She’s just six years old, and her costume was twice as big as she was.

I asked her to come into the shade and pose for me while she was getting ready for the parade, and because my photo tour group and I had press passes, we had this wonderful opportunity to get great closeups in perfect light.

How do you get a press pass?

You contact the media person who is in charge of such things, and ask. Sometimes you’ll be asked what company, publication, or Internet site you work for, and that’s not a problem. Contact a local newspaper and tell them what you’ll be shooting, and if they like any of your pictures might they be interested in using them. You can even offer them photos for free -- after all, what you really want is the press pass.

If they say yes, you can then affliate yourself with their good name. You can also say that you contribute to various social media sites, 10

stock agencies, and sites devoted to photography.

If you would consider contributing to a magazine, such as a regional publication, a photography magazine, or a travel magazine, call the editor on the phone and tell him or her that you’d like a shot at getting an article published on the event, and ask them if you can use their name to get a pass. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain by giving you permission.§

exposure technique

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xposing for white subjects can be challenging, and this is especially true when those subjects are centrally located in the composition.

All metering modes take the majority of their information from the center of the frame. The difference is how much of the center is used.

For example, in spot mode the meter looks at the middle 3 - 5% of the viewfinder, while in partial mode it bases the exposure on the center 9%.

Since meters base their readings on middle gray, or middle toned subjects, when white subjects are composed in the center of the frame, the meter tries to make it exactly that -- middle toned, or gray.

Obviously, in the case of the albino peacock, I

didn’t want a gray bird. All exposure modes, including matrix and evaluative, would underexpose this image in an attempt to do what the meter is programmed to do, which is interpret all subjects and all light values as being halfway between black and white, or gray.

Therefore, there are three approaches you can use to obtain a correct exposure: 1. Use a hand held light meter, such as the Sekonic L-358, on incident mode to read the ambient light. Using incident mode, the meter is not adversely affected by the lightness or darkness of the subject. I used this technique for many years when I shot film.

2. Set the exposure compensation to a plus value, like +1 f/stop, to off-set the guaranteed underexposure. This approach has two inher-

ent problems, though. First, this takes time.

When shooting fast changing situations like the peacock (I wanted a straight-on shot and the bird keep turning away from the camera), the few seconds it would take to make the adjustment could mean losing the shot. Second, how can you know exactly how much to tweak the exposure compensation to get a perfect image? Should the adjustment be +1 f/stop, + 1 1/3 f/stop, or something else? You can make an educated guess, but the first attempt may be wrong. In the process, the photo opportunity will probably be lost.

the white areas of the image -- the highlights -are protected from overexposure. This is very important. If you blow the highlights, meaning there is a complete loss of texture and detail, they can’t be recovered. Therefore, I would rather err on the side of caution and underexpose my pictures a little and then lighten them later. Assuming you always shoot in RAW mode, this is easily done with a couple of sliders in Lightoom or Adobe Camera Raw.

3. You can do what I do, which is take the picture with no exposure compensation and let the image become underexposed. Then, in postprocessing, make the exposure adjustment to taste. This solves the problem of missing the shot because you are fooling around with the settings on the camera and, at the same time,

Some people will object to my exposure approach insisting that the underexposure introduces too much digital noise. I maintain, though, that the reduced exposure is relatively minimal (in the case of the peacock picture, it was about 2/3 f/ stop underexposed before I corrected it), and any increase in noise is negligible. §

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I used this same technique for the cleverly folded towels on my bed in my hotel room in Bali.

Calculating for Fill Flash

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hen Indiana Jones saw a pit full of snakes in Raiders of the Lost Art, he revealed his phobia when he lamented, “Why did it have to be snakes.”

I feel the same way about spiders.

When I saw this monster spider in Indonesia (about the size of my hand with fingers fully extended) suspended in a giant web constructed between trees waiting for God-knows-what to catch, poison, and eat, my first inclination was to catch the first flight home and to sign up for a year’s worth of psychotherapy! Nevertheless, the photographer in me kicked in, I swallowed my fear and made sure my shutter finger wasn’t paralyzed and then started taking pictures. The problem, though, was the light-

ing. The sky in the background was fairly light, and the arachnid was much darker. A simple shot with no exposure adjustment would mean a silhouette. I wanted all of that grotesque detail to be seen (I figured I could deduct the therapy sessions from my taxes due to the occupational hazard of a close encounter with this creature from hell), so that required fill flash.

If I simply used the exposure compensation feature without flash and lightened the shot, the sky would be totally blown out -- i.e. solid white. I didn’t want that.

To get the shot you see here, I had to consider two separate exposures: the spider and the sky.

There wasn’t any detail in the sky, but it had 13

tonality. My first calculation was the sky. I took a shot of the spider with no flash with aperture priority (because I wanted as much depth of field as possible) and looked at the density of the sky. The settings were 1/125 at f/22. It was a little dark for my taste, so I switched to manual exposure mode and set the camera to 1/125 at f/16, one f/stop lighter.

I then turned the flash on, dialed in ­–2/3 f/stop flash compensation because I didn’t want to overexpose the spider, and took another shot.

The arachnid was still too light, so I changed the compensation to –1 1/3. This was exactly what I wanted.

You can see that even after decades of experience with photography and flash, it’s still a trial and error proposition. Don’t think that if you don’t get it right the first time, you don’t know what you’re doing. Flash isn’t like that.

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The picture of the long tailed macaques, below, required the exact same technique. I shot this in the Monkey Forest in Bali where there are scores of these guys all over the place (one of these little devils grabbed my wife’s wide angle lens out of her open camera bag and then dropped it, breaking the skylight filter).

In this case, even thought the sky was overcast and the light was soft, there was enough contrast to give the digital sensor a problem.

The monkeys were took dark without flash, so I used flash fill to solve that problem. In this case, I wanted the flash to be barely perceptible, thus I used a flash exposure compensation of –1 2/3.

The two types of exposure compensation -one for the ambient light and one for the flash -- work independently of each other. They both must be used when calculating correct exposure for fill flash.§

E-books to help you take better pictures Click on any ebook to see inside

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GENERATING FRACTALS

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ractals are complex graphic images based on mathematical formulas, but you don’t need to know math at all to generate them. All you need is the software, and the computer handles the math.

Some fractal programs are free, some are very inexpensive, and others more costly. The program I used to create the wild image above is called Fracal Domains (http://www.fractaldomains.com) and it cost only $20. For the intriguing and very different design at right, I used Artmatic 5 which costs $249.

Most of the fractal generating programs work

on both Macs and PCs. Some, however, are specific to one platlform or the other.

The programs usually come with a tutorial about

how to get started. I wouldn’t exactly call the dialog boxes user friendly, but once you read just the first few paragraphs of the text (or watch an online instructional video if one is available) you’ll be on your way to creating remarkable abstract images.

There really isn’t any step by step procedure to follow when creating various fractal designs.

It’s trial and error. You simply try everything in the dialog box to see what it does. If you don’t like an effect, undo it and try something else.

This isn’t photography, of course, but you can incorporate a fractal with a photograph using Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. For example, the image at right shows a section of a fractal plus a mannequin head and a ‘star field’ (which is really a picture of glitter sprinked on black velvet). On the following page, I combined a Venetian mask with a fractal and then added a reflection using the plug-in Flood.§

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Photo Tour to Burma April 20 - May 4, 2014 Ancient ruins

Monasteries

Culture

Temples

People photography

New OnLine Course: LEARNING TO SEE

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.

When you register for this new course, you will be given download links to eight easyto-understand lessons that look like beautiful mini ebooks. At your convenience, you can study the material and then upload your photos for a professional critique

by Jim. Included in the course is a phone call once a week to discuss your submissions or any other aspect of photography you want -- what new equipment to buy, advice about airline travel, problems with flash, or anything else.

This course can be purchased directly from Jim’s website by clicking here.

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.

LEARNING TO SEE online course The 8 lessons that comprise this course are: Graphic design, Backgrounds, Depth of field, Patterns, Natural light, Color, Composition, and Motion. These lessons are beautifully illustrated and full of concrete steps to dramatically improve your photography.

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What’s wrong with this picture?

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othing, really. I was thrilled to see this and capture it since I’d never photographed a leopard leaping from one branch to another. The cat is perfectly placed between the sections of the tree (this was luck -- I set the camera to motor drive and fired just as the leopard launched himself). The small twigs and leaves in the lower right corner don’t bother me because those elements make this look real as opposed to the ‘perfect’ Photoshop image. This picture is exactly as I captured the scene.

The problem for me, though, is that the background is boring. The sun was close to the horizon, and the bright background, devoid of color, caused the image to be exposed as a silhoutte. As my photo tour group and I watched the leopard climbing on the tree in Botswana, I knew the image was going to be essentially black and white. Some photographers would be happy with this shot as is, but I love color too much to leave it alone.

The picture on the next page, in my opinion, is much better artistically. I chose a sky from my folder of sky pictures that wasn’t ultra dramatic (I wanted to avoid the cliche of the huge setting

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sun in the background . . . although it was tempting) because I wanted it to look as real as possible.

Plus, I wanted all the attention on the cat instead of the background.

If you enlarge this page on your electronic device, you should be able to see the subtle definition in the whiskers of the leopard. Had I selected the cat and the tree in Photoshop, there would be no way that I could have retained this kind of detail. Therefore, the only way to add the sky such that the composite would be perfect was to use a blend mode.

In the layers palette in Photoshop, there is a drop down submenu that shows the word normal. I clicked on that to access the many ways of blending two photographs, and in this instance I chose darken (green arrow, right). That’s all there was to it. No need to meticulously use the pen tool to select the silhouette. The only reason it was so easy, though, was because the original image was essentially black and white.§ 23

SHORT AND SWEET 1. Greenhouses are great places to photograph flow-

ers because the lighting is usually diffused and there is no wind. Wind is the enemy of macro photography.

Most public greenhouses allow tripods, too, so you can have as much depth of field as you want.

Landscape photography requires complete depth of field virtually without exception. I recommend using f/22 or f/32 if foreground elements are close to the camera. If everything in the composition is far away, then you should use f/8 for maximum sharpness.

3. When traveling to another city, stay in a hotel with

4. When you photograph people outdoors in the shade,

a great view. You can research this online. Look for rooftop restaurants, buildings situated a few blocks from downtown, as well as hotels with great lobbies.

I’ve taken dozens of cool shots just because I stayed in a hotel with photo ops. This is a shot of Singapore.

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2.

you don’t need fill flash as long as the background is shaded, too. In this case, a white wall was behind the young girl at the Jember Fashion Carnaval in Indonesia.

The soft lighting was ideal to show the great color and the girl’s beautiful features. Contrast wasn’t an issue. §

Photography Tours 2013 - 2015 COSTA RICA December, 2013

BURMA (Myanmar) April, 2014

TIGERS, PANDAS, ICE FESTIVAL in CHINA. Jan. 2014

CARNIVAL IN VENICE February, 2014

WHITE HORSES April, 2014

SOUTH INDIA May, 2014

GREENLAND June, 2014

KENYA August, 2014

INDONESIA August 2014

POLAR BEARS October 2014

JAPAN February, 2015

MOROCCO March, 2015

Check out the itineraries and photo galleries from these and other tours: www.jimzuckerman.com.

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, what is the difference between the flash exposure compensation adjustments and manually changing the power output using the manual mode on the flash?

Carl Kask, McCormick, South Carolina

A: When you adjust the flash exposure compensation feature, the ETTL (iTTL) mode is being used. This

means that the automatic exposure function is active. When you adjust the flash either plus or minus, such as + 1 2/3 f/stops, the light output will increase accordingly. With a –2/3 f/stop adjustment, the light output will decrease. The auto exposure mechanism still calculates the correct amount of light required based on its programming, and the plus or minus adjustment is added or substracted from the basic exposure reading.

By using manual mode on the flash, the auto exposure function is turned off. The capacitor in the flash is emptied every time you take a picture, thus the flash delivers the greatest amount of light it is capable of. When you reduce that amount by choosing, say, 1/8th power, then the flash is reduced from full power to this particular fraction. At the same time, the flash duration -- the actual length of time the flash tube is illuminated during the exposure -- is reduced. So, if a typical flash duration is about 1/1000th of a second, with 1/8th power you can expect a duration of approximately 1/8000th of a second.

Jim

© Carl Kask 2013

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Carnival in Venice February 2014

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Get professional critiques of your work with Jim’s online courses Betterphoto.com

Get professional critiques of your work with Jim’s online courses

betterphoto.com Learn composition, exposure, Photoshop, beginning fundamentals, techniques in low light photography, flash, making money in photography, and more at your convenience and on your schedule.

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Student Showcase

Each month, Jim features one student who took beautiful and inspiring images on one 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.

Dr. Maryanne Morrow, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Botswana photo tour

Š Dr. Maryanne Morrrow

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Dr. Maryanne Morrow, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Š Dr. Maryanne Morrrow

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Dr. Maryanne Morrow, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Š Dr. Maryanne Morrrow

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PHOTOSHOP WORKSHOP in my home

Sat. & Sun., Sept. 21, 22

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, 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.

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

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

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. §

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. 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.

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Click on the past issues of

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

Nov. ‘12

Dec. ‘12

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Feb. ‘13

Mar. ‘13

Apr. ‘13

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June ‘13

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PHOTO INSIGHTS®

published by Jim Zuckerman, all rights reserved © Jim Zuckerman 2013 email: photos@jimzuckerman.com physical address: P.O. Box 7, Arrington, TN 37014

Teddy at 7 weeks 34