Extremely Average

Last night I posted a photo of a fawn at my parent’s yard.  My twitter buddy Lisa Byrne really liked it.  She is very cool, so I thought I would ask Daisy to write a guest blog post for me.  This is Daisy.

Daisy’s Blog:

Hello, my name is Daisy.  I’m just a kid, as my mom likes to remind me daily.  She says I need to learn to be cautious.  I say, I need to spend more time playing.  We like to hang out at the Meeks house.  They have a nice yard and it is a good place to nibble on things.  Mom tells me not to nibble on the flowers, because it makes Mrs. Meeks clap her hands at us.  Mrs. Meeks seems really upset when we snack on her flowers.  We try not to, but even Mom can’t resist snacking sometimes.  If she didn’t want us to eat them, then why does she plant such tasty flowers?

This is my Mom, she is keeping an eye on me.

It is a very nice neighborhood.  There are a couple of dogs, who bark some, especially Zoey.  Zoey is very talkative and not dangerous at all.  We scare her more than she frightens us.  Everything scares her.  She likes Mr. Meeks, especially when he rubs her belly.  Sometimes we watch from the woods and giggle at how happy Zoey gets when she sees him.  Such a silly doggy.  This is Zoey.

She is a good dog.  There are other deer in the woods, quite a few actually.  This is a picture of one of our friends, his name is Tommy and he has a twin sister Trina.  Tommy thinks he is really tough, but he isn’t.  When he is pretending to be a grown up he will stomp his foot.  He says it is to warn us about danger.  It is a good idea, but he stomps his foot a lot.  Trina and I giggle at him when he does it.  His mommy says we shouldn’t tease him, but we do anyway.  Here is a picture of Tommy.

I sort of think he is cute, but don’t tell his sister, she would say, “Gross”.  Well, that is about all.  It was fun being a guest blogger on Brian’s blog.  Have a great weekend.

- Daisy

Yesterday I wrote about dreams; dreams of traveling the country taking photos. Nothing has changed in the last 24 hour.  No lottery wins.  No great windfall.  But I have a truck and a Nikon D200, so there isn’t any reason I can’t explore the county.  Jones County is a beautiful place.

This is where I live.  I love it.

Tonight’s post was originally written for a photography blog, but sadly, was rejected.  I wasn’t too crushed, as I sort of liked the post.  So I decided to share it with you fine folks.  I hope you enjoy it.

The music was pounding across the club like a tidal wave of optimism.  Graham felt like he had the world by the tail.  He had just signed a new record deal, his fans loved him, and best of all, and he had stopped hearing the voices.

The voices had been present for years.  They would tell him to do things, like destroy a hotel room, or abduct a monkey from a local zoo.  He had been in therapy, but strangely, whenever he was in a session, the voices refused to talk.  It was maddening.

So he enjoyed the evening, dancing, drinking, and generally having his wits about him.  When he woke up the next day, in his hotel room, surrounded by passed out beauticians, from a local convention, and reeking of aged cheddar, he knew that the voices had returned.  His toe nails were pink. It seemed that things had gone horribly wrong.  Graham wished he had followed his mother’s advice and become a tax attorney.  It was going to be a long day.

Standing Out

The term blog is a short hand version of the original web log.  I have been blogging for a while, but I prefer the term blahg.  Far too often the content is, well, sort of blah.  That is why I sometimes start a piece with several paragraphs of strange and bizarre drivel, much like what you just read.  The opening three paragraphs don’t have anything to do with photography, or today’s subject, photos for blogs, but they made me laugh.  Monkey and aged cheddar are funny words.

Avoiding the Blahs

The easiest way to really make an article grab someone’s attention is to stand behind them with a big snake, and demand that they give it a read.  This is not scalable, so one might try adding photos or graphics to their blog.  They don’t eat nearly as much, and rarely escape, only to be found wrapped around the neighbor’s lifeless Pomeranian.  So I would say that given a choice, photos are the way to go.

I write a blog, which is about woodworking mostly, but I also like to write about photography, social media, and sometimes events in the news.  The pieces about woodworking or photography lend themselves well, to including pictures.

For woodworking, it is simple to set up and capture images relating to what is going on, in my shop, that day.  One day, I got out an old English hand plane, and used it to flatten a board.  It was an exercise designed to improve my skill at using hand planes.  It also made a nice subject for the photo.

When I originally published the blog piece, I didn’t include the white boarder with the black stroke effect.  I started to do it months later and realized, it acted like a mat board, which made the photo look better.  Anything to improve the quality and aesthetic of one’s site is a good move, in my humble opinion.

Benefits

The obvious benefit, to the blog, is an improved appearance.  This will catch the reader’s attention and when they first land on your blog, help persuade them to read for a while.   This is important, because a recent blog, by Anne Helmond at ‘The Blog Herald’, mentioned that, “Technorati currently states it is tracking over 112.8 million blogs, a number which obviously does not include all the 72.82 million Chinese blogs as counted by The China Internet Information Center.”

With 200 million blogs, there is a lot of competition.  If one doesn’t grab the reader’s attention they will lose those eyeballs.  Conversely, if one does a really good job, and makes their content stand out, they may not only increase the amount of time spent on the site, they may get the person to return.  And if done really well, the reader might subscribe, which is ultimately the goal of every aspiring blogger.

There is a third benefit, which surprised me, but has proven true over the last year.  If one tries to capture their own images, several times per week, or in my case 7-10 times per week, they will improve their photography.  It is incredible how much better I have become at my lighting techniques.

Some of the photos, which I took for the blog, have been good enough to sell.  I am an exclusive contributor on istockphoto, and you may check out my blog piece about this industry here.  It is interesting how one can combine interests like blogging and photography, to improve at both.

Ideas for Shots

There was a day, back in January, where I had a great photo, which I wanted to use.  So I wrote a piece about cats and my confusion on a project I was working on.  The focus was all of the errors I had been making, and how some of them had completely baffled me.  I also addressed comments, by some of the readers, who seemed to think my blog had a cat bias.  There had been previous post which featured cats and the dog lovers were feeling slighted.  This is the photo I included in that post.  I thought it was funny to have a dog photo, in a blog post, which didn’t mention dogs at all.

If one is creative, almost any photo may be included in a blog.

What if one doesn’t have time to take a photo or the piece doesn’t lend itself to photography?  The simple solution is to buy a photo from a stock photo site, like the one mentioned above.  They offer millions of photos and graphic design images, which only cost a few dollars to purchase.  It is quick, easy, and they look great.  Plus one is not violating copyright laws by taking ‘free’ images they run across on the internet.

Another solution is to create a graphic element.  Excel is a helpful tool in this regard.  If the blog piece has statistics or data, which you are sharing with the reader, you might consider creating a quick graph, in excel, and including it as an image.

Building Readership

As I mentioned before, including images will greatly enhance the quality of the blog posts, which should improve the retention of the reader, and make people want to return to your site.  Since most blogs fall into the ‘blahg’ category, it will help you stand out from the crowd.  Plus, who knows, you may just become a better photographer in the process.  And if you get some good shots, you may have a future in stock photography.  This, of course, will make you more money, which you may use to buy additional photography equipment.  It is a vicious cycle, but a fun one.

One can not always do woodworking.  When one is visiting one’s parents, in their house without tools, one looks for other hobbies to enjoy.  My mother and I decided to take our cameras to Madison county.  A few years back Robert Redford made a movie, ‘The Bridges of Madison County’, and we went to see the bridges.

Iowa has a lot of treasures and is a fun place to visit.  I looked at the guest book, in the Winterset tourism center, and saw that some people from Texas had been there earlier in the morning.  Bridges are not the only attraction in Winterset.  John Wayne was born there and his house is a popular attraction.

We were there to see bridges.  Now many of you, who follow my daily ramblings and occasional Tweets, will know, that I have had a bit of a cold.  On this day, mom and I got up and left the house at 6:30 AM.  I hadn’t gotten much sleep, but was excited to do some photography.  I mention this, because my limited energy meant we didn’t make it to all six bridges.  In fact, we only saw two of them.  But they have been there for 140 years, chances are good we can return and see the rest.

We went to the city park, where one of the bridges is located.  It was about 7:30 am and the light was really good for taking photos.  Generally the hour before sunrise through the first two hours of the day, and the last two hours, plus the 1 hour after sunset, are called the golden hours.

There aren’t many covered bridges around anymore, but the ones in Madison county are lovingly taken care of by the county.  Some people might wonder why one would build a roof on a bridge.  We found that answer while at the information center.  It turns out, that in the late 1800′s, it was less expensive to build walls and a roof, than it was to rebuild the floor.  The winters in Iowa can be brutal and these bridges lasted longer, because of their coverings.

I took many pictures, but my computer is still in the computer hospital, so I was not able to share any of them with you.  Mom is becoming quite a photographer, so I am using her as the official Extremely Average blog, guest photographer.   Her photo of the Bridge is just lovely, wouldn’t you agree?

We did not stop with bridges though.  We were driving the dusty gravel roads, having taken the scenic route past another of the bridges, when we came across a farm.  There were all sorts of people there, with small people in tow.  Many of the small people were riding ponies.   Mom and I found lots of things to take photos of here too.  There were old tractors, which are on my camera, and I may share with you later.  There were also pumpkins and flowers and best of all….Goats!

The goats were very friendly.  They were an eating machine, and what did they eat?  I am not sure, but there were lots of other small people getting coins from the big people, and putting them into goat food machines.  Then the small people would laugh as they fed the goats.

There was one goat, who when he heard the velcro on mom’s camera case, mistook it for the sound of snacks.  He was a very nice goat.  We quite enjoyed taking photos of him.

If I ever write a story about a goat, and we all know that is likely, he will be my inspiration.  So that was our day out in rural Iowa.  I guess one can have fun, even without doing woodworking.

“I am fascinated by all that I see.”

-  Brian Meeks

This sums up who I am.  My love of the visual knows no bounds.  It is perhaps why I find photography so satisfying.  Photography isn’t just about ‘seeing’ the place, it is about being there, in that moment in time.  It is about the smells, the sounds, feeling deep down in your stomach,  when you eyes fall on the perfect shot.  And sometimes, photography is like a present from Santa.  It is the gift, which is unexpected, that absolutely stuns you the moment you see it.

March 1, 2009, 3:30 am, Georgetown in the District of Columbia.  A light dusting of snow had been sprinkled across the city.  The hour, and the general terror felt by the denizens of DC when every the slightest frozen precipitation appeared, left the streets nearly empty.  I am from Iowa.  We know snow.

An hour before I had grabbed my camera gear and headed out, suspecting that Georgetown would be mostly empty.  I like to see places when they are outside their comfort zone.  Georgetown is a place which thrives on people.  When the everyone is gone, it is a little bit lonely, a little bit uneasy.  I kept her company for a while and she let me capture some wonderful shots.

On the 12th of June, 2006, it was an oppressively warm day across DC.  On days like this, I liked to take my camera to the National Cathedral, which is always calm, cool, and a thousand miles away from the chaos of life.

There is a short window of time, pun intended, when the sunlight passes through one set of windows and perfectly illuminates the pillars across the room.  I had known that I was close to the right time of year, but wasn’t completely sure if I was too late or not.  My heart jumped just a bit when I saw it.  The coolness of the church, the quiet footsteps of tourists shuffling about, and the warm glow of light as it landed on the pillars, brought me to a stand still.

I took it in for a few minutes.  My spirit was lifted.  Then I quietly set up my tripod and took my shots.

March 12, 2008, Arlington VA.  Sometimes the image isn’t about what is seen, but what is known.  I have been to Arlington National Cemetery many times and taken quite a few photos.  This one makes me weep.  I can look at it for hours and think about all that isn’t pictured.  I think about the families, the soldiers, the sacrifice, a wonder about their lives.  We remember these fallen heroes once or twice a year, which doesn’t seem like it is quite enough, for all they have given.

Sometimes though, we build places to remember our heroes.  In April of 2008, I went down to the WWII memorial.  I had seen it many times at night, brilliantly lit up, and on this day I was excited to capture this beautiful memorial.  I arrived at 10:56 pm.  I wasn’t aware that the lights on the fountain shut off at 11:00 pm.  I had just put my camera on the tripod when there was a muffled thunk.  It was suddenly much darker.  Had I not stopped for an emergency double cheese burger from McDonalds, I would have had plenty of time to capture its brilliance.  Damn you tasty burger!

It would have been silly not to take a few photos anyway.  So I did, with low expectations.  I had to shoot a 30 second exposure and just didn’t know what I would get.  When I got home I found that I had accidentally taken the best photo of my life.  Hurray tasty burger.

On January 26th, 2006 I was driving along and I saw the smoke from an old train up ahead in the distance.  I stepped on the gas and got ahead of it a little bit, hopped out of my car and was able to grab a few quick shots.  Then it was gone.  Sometimes photography is about capturing the briefest moments in time, and when one succeeds, it feels wonderful.

 

It is amazing what one can see, if the are always looking.  June 17th, 2006, while wondering around the Mall, near the Smithsonian, I ran across some people doing some film work.  I am not sure why we are so fascinated with film and TV, perhaps it is that when we are watching a good story, it helps us to imagine the lives we hope to live one day?  Tom Cavanagh, who stared in one of my favorite shows, ‘Ed’, was doing a show for the Smithsonian.  I watched them for a bit, took a couple of photos, and moved on.

 

I have taken thousands of pictures.  They remind me of snippets of time, the places I have been, and the memories I want to hold on to.  Last year, I moved back to Iowa, from the DC area.  My parents invited me to go with them to Alaska.  This was not a hard sell on their part, and I jumped at the chance.  I believe I actually jumped around and squealed like a six year old girl with a new Malibu Barbie (Not Pictured…thankfully)  This was my first, and hopefully not last, cruise.  We left Seattle in early June.

There were Brilliant Sunsets.

There were fun people we met along the way.

But most of all, it was a time I got to spend with Mom and Dad.  Truly a Slice of Heaven.

This is part of #Letsblogoff which happens on Tuesdays. This is my first time playing! These other fine folks wrote posts about their ‘Slices of Heaven’ too.

On this day, the 239 post, as has been the tradition among bloggers for centuries, will be something completely worthless.  The history of the 239th post, being rubbish, dates back to the days of the of the early renaissance.  It was around 1432 when little known blogger and artist Jon Van Eyck, the little known brother of Flemish painting legend Jan Van Eyck, wrote his 239th post.

He was a bit under the weather, the night before had been spent at his brother’s house, where there was much food, drink and fawning over his brother’s latest painting.  He had gotten drunk, loud, and generally offensive.  The chamber maid that he had propositioned had shown remarkably good judgment, and a surprisingly quick left jab, which had caught him squarely in the jaw.  Normally an offense which would have led to her dismissal, Jan gave her a raise and led the other guests in a rousing round of applause.  Everyone but John enjoyed the rest of the evening.

Because he didn’t feel very well, he just didn’t feel like writing much on his blog that day.  He reasoned that there were two really good reasons not to blog that day.  One, he felt poorly, and two the internet wouldn’t be invented in the next 500 years, so he reasoned he might  be able to make it up before then.  It did nag at him though, that if he didn’t blog, it would break his streak.  He was fairly certain that quitting on number 239 would bring even more shame to his family than the time he crashed the birthday party at Piero de’ Medici place in Florence, and accidentally passed out on the cat, killing it.  He had never lived down that trip to Italy.

So he dug through his hard drive and found some pictures from a less embarrassing time in his life and wrote something less than memorable.  He included a photo of an old man playing checkers, a building in disrepair, a drawing of a child in repose, and wrote something inane.  This was the start of the tradition of the 239th post being completely rubbish.

My sleep is all messed up.  Though it is early evening for most people, I had to wake up to write this drivel.  I am not proud of it.  But I think I can find a nice picture (or three) to include, perhaps that will make this less painful for everyone.  Here is one of well known blogger Abraham Lincoln.  I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think his 239th post was rubbish.  So this may be a bad example.

Here is a photo which captures the essence of the U.S. Capitol building, as viewed by a U.S. Senator after a 7 hour, 12 Martini lunch, paid for by a lobbyist who just secured 37 million dollars worth of pork for the bacon industry.

This is a photo of a mallard.  He was just hanging out in the reflecting pool in front of the U.S Capitol building.  He mentioned that he finds the term, ‘lame duck’, offensive.  He made a convincing argument for changing the phrase to ‘lame chicken’, then swam away.  It never caught on.

There are other photos, but I have lost interest.  I will do better tomorrow.

I haven’t been able to do much relating to woodworking, as I have been having too much fun hanging out with Mom and Dad. Yesterday Dad and I golfed. Today Mom and I went and viewed Reiman Gardens. It is a beautiful 14 acre complex next to the Jack Trice Stadium, home of the Cyclone football team. They even have a Butterfly Garden, which was especially cool. Today’s post, is mostly going to be photos, as that will best sum up what we did.

The first picture is from the Butterfly Garden.  This is one of the coolest examples of camouflage I have seen.  It looks like the eyes of an owl.

The next photo is also of a butterfly.  I have never taken many butterfly pictures, actually I don’t know that I have ever taken a butterfly picture, but I learned today, that one must be patient.  Some of them will eventually land and hang out in one spot for a while, then you can get a good shot.  It is important to remember to have your shutter speed pretty fast, so any movement is stopped.  That being said, there were still plenty of pictures which didn’t turn as I had hoped.  Those blurry examples of failure will not be included today.

More insects, who have entered the larva stage and emerged as a beautiful, much less gross looking insect.

I have lots of pictures.  The below picture I have titled, “Butterfly en repose, after a bit of water, on blue spongy things, in a glass bowl.”  It holds two distinctions, the first being, my best butterfly picture of all time, the second being, my worst titled picture of all time.

More pictures…They have 24 gnomes hidden around the gardens.  Mom and I found 22 of them, including the Mid Iowa Wood Carvers entry.  It is brilliant. The gnome’s name is RipVanArtWinkle, which is very clever.  All the other gnomes are made of concrete and painted, so the hand carved one is quite special.

Lastly I have a picture of a pond which I quite like, so I am including it too.

It would be silly to have a blog about going to a garden without having a picture of a flower.  This is a bromeliad.

So that was my day with Mom at the Gardens.  We had fun.

I started in high school, taking classes and learning the ins and outs of photography.  I remember one class period when the teacher took me aside and said, “Brian you have a really good eye, but you stink in the darkroom.”  It sounds much worse than it was, as I really did stink in the dark room and I knew it, but I wasn’t aware that I had a good eye.  Believe it or not this compliment/criticism made my day and I have been in love with shooting ever since.

1) The larger the photo the better. Prices increase with the size of the image, at most sites. Some people will want really large images, and those that have only the minimum size allowed will be left out.

2) Don’t up-size your image. The inspectors are very clever and they will reject it immediately.

3) Learn and understand the sites rule with regard to copyright. If the image has a person who is identifiable, or a child of any sort, you will need a model release. The model releases can be downloaded from the site. If there are any copyrighted images within your shot, they must be edited out. This could be a logo on a pair of jeans, a sign above a restaurant way off in the background, or even building that is famous. The Eiffel Tower can be photographed during the day, but all the night photos, with the lights on are copyright protected. Any of Frank Gehry’s buildings are off limits. Don’t even think about using the Opera House in Sydney. And lastly, most all makes of car and all cruise ships, if they are the main subject, are not allowed by most places.

4) Learn to use Photoshop CS 2, 3, or 4, or something similar. Stock photography is about creating images that are salable, not about capturing ‘truth’ as one would do in journalism. On average I spend between 30 minutes and 3 hours working on a single image.

5) Shoot in Raw! This is worth repeating. Shoot in Raw! Raw gives one the most flexibility with regards to adjusting the white balance and getting the highest quality images possible.

6) Learn to shoot images isolated on white. This gives your customers a good deal of flexibility; they can use the image in combination with their own designs.

7) Study what other people are shooting and selling.  This will give you a good starting point if you want to try to do this as a career.  For me, I shoot what I like and if someone needs a picture of a cactus, then just maybe they will buy my shot.

This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to stock photography, there are lots of other things one can learn.  For instance, the milk in the photo of the cereal is Elmer’s glue and the bubbles in the coffee are dish washing soap bubbles.  Learning to shoot and process photos well enough to get them accepted has made me a better photographer.  The excitement of selling a photo, well that is just a delightful bonus.

I have been giving one tip to people for years.  It is so simple, I hesitate to even call it a tip, but alas I don’t have a thesaurus handy, so I have little choice.  This applies to every photo, whether it is an image of your latest woodworking project or a prize winning picture of a yeti.  The last thing I do, before I press the button, is to slowly force myself to run my eyes around the edge of the image.  I know it sounds dumber than Jethro Bodine, but that is because it is so easy.  In the words of a thousand commercials for footwear, ‘Just Do It’. 

When you start to look at the rest of the image, not just the finely turned bowl, you will notice that there is a corner of a box of diapers sneaking into the image.  You will also get better at taking pictures of people.  The stop sign that is ‘growing’ out of your girlfriend’s head, or the car with your angry wife driving by the shoot, will suddenly pop out to you, and thus you can make slight adjustments (like making sure you take pictures of your girlfriend only when your wife is visiting her sister in Saginaw).  This tip will work with any camera you have, though I still think you should get those lazy six years olds their first job, and get a fancy pants model.  But I digress.

Along a similar line, when taking a picture of your work, if you wish to put some extra items in the background, like tools behind a project in process, or a delicious ham behind the aforementioned finely turned bowl, try to use a shallow depth of field.  Depth of field is the distance (or depth) in the image, which is in focus.  This generally applies to SLRs (Single Lens Reflex…aka…fancy pants cameras), but there are some point and shoots which have this capability.  My mom’s camera, the Powershot G10, is able to set the f-stop.  So when I say shallow depth of field, I mean a small number on your camera’s lens, or a small f-stop.  For example an aperture setting of 3.5 will cause the background to be out of focus, thus causing the subject to stand out, while f22 (f stands for aperture, I could make up a story for why they use f and not a, likely involving a priest, a Rabbi, and an Episcopalian yak farmer, but I have already digressed.), would leave everything in focus.  It is also important to understand how aperture works with light.

Shallow depth of field requires less light than a longer depth of field.  This is helpful when you are taking pictures in artificial light, because the shutter doesn’t need to stay open as long as it would if you were trying to have everything in focus.  If you are getting really excited about photography and are starting to read up on the subject, you might run across the term ‘fast lenses.  This confused me for a long time.  It is simply a lens that allows for a very shallow depth of field.  They are generally much more expensive than a normal lens.  For instance a zoom lens that goes to 300 mm, can be picked up for 3-400 dollars, a ‘fast’ lens, the giant lens that the photographers use on the sidelines of football games, those start at about $7000.00.  This is not a lens you should need, as it is too ‘long’, for shooting your work, but it brings me to my next and last subject for the day.

This photo shows tilt shifting in the table, an annoying shiny bit from a Jet clamp in the top right corner, and also demonstrates shallow depth of field.   This image can be improved substantially by simply removing the clutter in the top right corner.  Were I to shoot it again, I would also slide the mortar slightly to the left.  It feels slightly out of position where it is.

The amount of zoom you should use when shooting.  If you are limited in space, you can use the wide angle portion of your lens, or zoom out.  Zooming out, a back up the image, but it also causes something called bowing.  Have you ever taken a picture of a tall object, like a dresser, and in the photo it looks warped?  That is bowing.   If you are taking a picture of a tall building, the building seems to bow out and the edges don’t run parallel with the sides of the image.  That is tilt shifting.  It can be corrected in Photoshop CS 2, 3, or 4, but that runs you another $1000 and 8 or 9 months of intensive study to master, so fixing it, is not the best solution.  It is better to try to take the image of your dresser from a greater distance and then zooming in on it.  This will give you much better results.  If you can put the dresser in one room, and stand out in the hall and zoom in, you will be much happier with the results.  One last note, if you are taking a close up of your girlfriend’s face while your wife is in Michigan, then try to stand further away, such that the zoom is at 135mm.  This will be much more flattering.   That is all for now.  I am off to do some woodworking.

If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it’s as though I’ve neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up.

      -Richard Avedon

I didn’t know about the work of Richard Avedon before his exhibit at the Corcoran at the end of 2008.  As a volunteer docent at the gallery I got to hear a lecture from the curator of his traveling exhibit, and learn about his amazing works.  I became a fan.  This wasn’t the beginning of my love of photography, but it definitely gave me a jolt of energy to continue to practice and work to improve.  My weakest area is the use of lighting; in fact, I just had 3 of my images rejected for ‘poor or uneven lighting’.  I am not kidding, as I was typing that sentence I stopped to check a message from Shutterstock, and sure enough the images I used in the blogs ‘The English Plane’ and the image of the ‘stack’ were rejected.   I don’t sweat those setbacks, because I submit my images to 6 different sites, and it is rare that the inspectors agree, so they will probably get reject by 2 of the 6.

The point is that the subject of proper lighting is somewhat subjective.  There are however universal sins.  Harsh lighting is always bad.  The most common cause of this unfortunate faux pas is the use of an on camera flash.  How does one tell if the lighting is harsh?  The truth is in the shadows.  If one wants to improve their photography, striving to eliminate the hard shadows is a great first step.  I am not an expert, as I have said, but I can share the tips I have learned.

In learning how to create ‘saleable’ images for stock sites, I have read thousands of forum posts, several books, and a few tea leaves, trying to unravel the mysteries.  One of the first tips I would give is to take your photos, with the camera on a tripod, and use the timer.  The reason for this is that you are able to shoot in situations where the light isn’t spectacular.  I don’t mean to digress again, but I should mention a little bit about light, and the way cameras work.

Assuming you not shooting in manual mode (and if you are good enough to shoot on manual, you don’t need to continue reading, so go eat a donut and come back in a paragraph or two), your camera is using the tiny computer inside of it.  That computer is taking a reading of the available light and it is deciding how quickly it need to open its shutter to get a picture that you will be proud of.  Your camera really wants to do a good job for you.  When you and your camera are shooting outdoors, with natural light, the camera has a lot more flexibility with how it is able to take the shot.  But when you are indoors, in a workshop for instance, under artificial light, the camera looks out into the room and sees almost total darkness.  It decides that in order to get a shot that  has enough light it must keeps its shutter open for 2, 3, 5 or more seconds.

Now that may not seem like a long time, when compared to the life of a  star, or even the time it takes to learn woodworking, but in the world of photography it is an eternity.  To hand hold your camera, it needs to open and close its shutter in 1/60^th of 1 second.  If it is open for twice as long or 1/30^th of a second, the vibration from your pulse will cause there to be camera shake.  This will lead to a slightly blurry image, and force your significant other to lie to you about how much he or she likes your picture.  This is why we want to use a tripod, we don’t need to hold the camera, hence the camera can keep its shutter open until it feels there is enough light to get a clear image.  Having the camera lounging on a tripod isn’t enough to eliminate camera shake though, you must also use the timer, lest the slight vibration from the pressing of the button, undo your efforts.

 

In the world of stock photography, the top photographers shoot medium format Hasselblad, with Carl Zeiss lens, and a digital back.  This set up will set you back fifty to sixty thousand dollars.  Do you need to run out and buy equipment of this quality?  Well, yes you do.  I would recommend, if your children are young enough, that you sell a couple them.  Another, less recommended option, is to keep the children and introduce them to the joys of spending their afternoons working in a sweat shop.  You should still be able to get some nice Nikon or Canon equipment.  That being said, it will still take you a little while to get your new equipment, so you will need to get along with your current set up.  This is fine, as long as you don’t let it go on for too long.  If you have a digital camera, even if it isn’t a fancy pants Nikon or Cannon, it is likely that there will be different write setting which determines how the camera takes the image and writes it to the disk.  Once you find the different settings, there will likely be something like, small, medium, large, fine, and raw, or something along those lines.  Basically it is determining how high a quality image you are taking.  The important one is Raw.  Shooting in raw will drastically reduce your memory card capacity, but that is what you want to use.  The reason is that in raw, your little camera is basically capturing all the information it needs to make lots of adjustments after the fact.

I can tell by my word count that I have rambled on a bit, and I am not close to finishing my photographing woodworking rant, so I will make this a multiple part series.  So before I put this drivel to bed for the night, let me reiterate the main points.  Use a tripod, because it gives you flexibility with regards to lighting, and shoot in raw, because after you shoot, you can make adjustments to the image, to get it to look the way you want.

Once you have shot the image and downloaded it to your computer, you will be given an option to open the image in an editing program, usually included with the camera.  This is where you can play with the image.  You are able to overexpose (make brighter) or underexpose (make darker) the image.  You are able to adjust temperature of the light (a future post will go into greater detail about warm vs. cold light)  I have included 4 images, the 1^st one is cold, the second one is warm, the third one has the black increased, and the 4^th one is desaturated and darkened to create a black and white image.  They are all from the same single shot, taken in raw.  I hope this illustrates the value of raw and will encourage you to give it a try.  I also have included a shot showing my lights.

So class, I expect that you are all eager to try out the tips from today’s lecture.  Your homework is to write a brief description of the camera equipment that you have in the comments section.  Also I invite you to pose any specific questions you might have, though I must warn you that I am not good with world capitals or the periodic table of the elements.