Keeping it Real in HDR using Photoshop

There are many articles on our blog about HDR, we have always thought that using HDR to try to recreate what the eye sees is the best use of the technology and advocate the excellent tutorials on the Cambridge in colour website. This article By Jason Row on Lightstalking says much the same and gives a step by step guide to doing so

If you would like to read more of this article on Lightstalking go here

How to Get Your Photographs Accepted at Stock Libraries

From Lightstalking By Jason Row comes this very useful article to help you get your images accepted by picture libraries.

These days more and more people are considering selling their images via stock libraries. However some people find initially getting into a library be it macro stock like Alamy or micro stock such as iStockphoto a hugely frustrating ordeal. You prepare and send your very best images time after time and keep receiving the dreaded submission failed email. Today we have a look at how to prepare images for stock so that your submission is accepted.

Shoot What’s Needed!

Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes, would be stock photographers make, is sending their best images. This statement is not as daft as it sounds, the simple fact is, your best images may not be what the library is looking for. What you actually need to be sending is images the library needs. Working out what this is can be tricky, but you will often find that stock agencies publish a list of required images, failing that, fire off an email to the curator asking if there is a particular area where they require more images.

How to Prepare Your Photographs for Submission

Once you have established what the library is looking for and found suitable images to send, it is time to prepare them for uploading……………..MORE

Click Here: How to Get Your Photographs Accepted at Stock Libraries

A Beginner’s Guide to Colour Temperature

Before digital became the medium by which we made photographs the control of colour temperature was something that only professional photographers considered seriously. We had colour temperature meters that would read the colour of the light, not the brightness. From that we could deduce the colour correction filters we needed to adjust the colour of light to match the film we were using. Since the advent of digital cameras we use the White Balance controls to manage colour temperature. This article on the Lightstalking site  By Jason Row explains this process

“Lord Kelvin, AKA William Thomson has a lot to answer for. It was this Glasgow University based physicist that developed the scale of measuring temperature that we use in photography today. So why does a scale of temperature have relevance in photography? Well the Kelvin scale also measures the colour of light. The science of this is somewhat complicated but put in it’s simplest terms, if you have a pure black radiating object and heat it up until it is glowing, when the temperature is below 4000K it will appear reddish, above 7500K it will seem bluish.

So why is this important to us photographers?

Well, light at different times of the day and under different conditions will have different colours. Our eyes are so highly developed that we do not see this change, our brain quickly adapts to the difference but colour film and more recently digital sensors cannot adapt.

In terms of film, it can only be set to one color temperature, usually 5500K which is the average colour of the shade on a sunny day at noon, or, 3200K which is the temperature of tungsten light, for example the average household light bulb or professional photoflood studio lights. Digital sensors can be set to a range of colour temperatures but rely on one of two things to get the right white balance – the camera’s metering system or the user setting it manually.

Neither of these are entirely infallible so if we can understand a little of what the colour of the light is in a given scene, we can improve the colour rendition of our images.”.….MORE

As the camera saw it – Photo by The Odessa Files

As the eye saw it – Photo by The Odessa Files

Click Here: A Beginner’s Guide to Colour Temperature

Click Here: A Beginner’s Guide to Colour Temperature

A Rough Guide to Adobe Camera Raw

Shooting in RAW and having to spend time processing your images might seem a bore when your camera produces perfectly nice jpegs as you press the shutter release however most serious photographers only shoot in RAW. This is because of the extensive image adjustments you can make to colour and density without producing ugly damaged looking images. Shooting RAW and using Adobe camera RAW found in the various versions of Photoshop and as the backbone of Lightroom has distinct advantages in the range of adjustments but also the plug ins and controls on offer.

On the pages of Lightstalking  Jason Row  gives a basic breakdown of the important options available

“Although many of us now use image management programs to process our Raw files, Adobe’s Camera Raw is still one of the most comprehensive convertors around and benefits from being tightly integrated into Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. One bonus of this, is that its user interface will be very familiar to Photoshop users. In this brief guide, we will give a rundown of ACR’s interface and most important features.

ACR’s Main Screen

When you open a Raw file in Photoshop, the program will automatically open the ACR plugin and preview the image in a large window. Surrounding this window are the important tools you need for your Raw conversion. Running along the top of the preview window are a set of image manipulation tools, in essence, very similar to Photoshop’s own tool palette.”

Click Here: A Rough Guide to Adobe Camera Raw

What You Need to Know About Night Photography

From the pages of Lighstalking another great article By Jason Row . Now the days are at their longest you can be out shooting those lovely dusk images right up until bedtime…..

“Night photography can be split into to distinct timeframes, the hour just after sunset, l’Heure Blue as the French call it, which translates as the Blue Hour and the time after, the night proper. The two need slightly different approaches and can give very different results.”

Old Dubrovnik during the Blue Hour

“Tips for Shooting in the Blue Hour

l’Heure Blue is in many ways perfectly described, it is the time after the sun goes down when the sky and the shadows become a dark rich blue. The first thing you need to do is pick your subject carefully, by its very nature the Blue Hour still leaves a little ambient light mixed in with the artificial light. Architecture, bridges and other large infrastructure subjects are good things to shoot at this time. Look for a subject that is well lit with artificial light as well having enough space around to show some of the detail in the sky. It is that combination of the rich blue with the orange, red and yellow of the artificial light that makes these images so potent.”

Click Here: After Dusk – What You Need to Know About Night Photography

Into the Sun – The Art of Stunning Silhouettes for Photographers

“One of the first things you are told by non-photographers when you buy your first serious camera is “don’t shoot straight into the sun”. Listen to this advice and you will be missing out on some the most emotive and powerful images photography can provide.

So what is a silhouette?

Oddly, the original term comes from French politics and has nothing to do with art or photography but today we take it to mean an image where the main subject is in complete shadow from a strong backlight. That backlight is most often the sun bit it doesn’t have to be, any light source, a flash, a lightbulb, even the moon can be used. Also the light source does not have to be present in the image, it just creates a very bright background, forcing the subject into shadow.”.….MORE   By Jason Row at Lightstalking

©Keith Barnes

Click Here: Into the Sun – The Art of Stunning Silhouettes for Photographers

Selling Your Photographs Through Stock Libraries: An Introduction

This useful article By Jason Row  comes from the well thumbed pages of Lightstalking

“Before the advent of digital photography, there was no micro and macro in stock photography, royalty free was a little used term and image catalogues were large glossy books with just a selection of the best images. To purchase an image you either asked one of the library’s researchers to look for it or you went in person and trawled through thousands of transparencies on light boxes. Apart from a few big stock agencies there were hundreds of smaller ones each dealing in their own niche’s such as music or historical images.

The face of traditional stock photography was changed beyond recognition by two major developments, the advent of the digital camera and the rise of the Royalty Free license, both of which lead to the development of the microstock agency . So if you wish to offer your images for sale at a stock library, which should you choose, micro or macro?”..….MORE

An image that has sold well at a macrostock agency

Here are some links to stock libraries

http://www.istockphoto.com/

http://www.alamy.com/

http://www.reflexstock.com/index.cfm?&DIS=1

http://www.corbisimages.com/

Click Here: Selling Your Photographs Through Stock Libraries: A Primer

How to Use Photoshop Curves to Correct Exposure and Colour

From the always useful Lightstalking site comes a brief tutorial By Jason Row on the use of curves in Photoshop. I usually do most of my adjustments using levels but I do know that many people consider curves to be a much more delicate tool that allows for corrections not possible in levels. I do always make extra effort to get correct colour balance and exposure when I shoot so maybe I do not need the refinement of curves.

“In this brief tutorial, we will demonstrate the power of the curves tool in Photoshop to adjust exposure and color. The shot I am using has the potential to be a good photo, but as it was very much a quick grab, there was no time to adjust exposure or white balance. There are may facets to the curves tool, far too many to detail in a brief tutorial such as this, so we will show you the basics of adjusting the curve itself, to get you started on this powerful Photoshop tool.”

Click Here: How to Use Photoshop Curves to Correct Exposure and Colour