Wedding etiquette

© 2008 Claire Voelkel

My wife and I are going to a friend's wedding tomorrow, and I plan on bringing my camera. I want to take some good pictures, but at the same time I don't want to be "that guy with the DSLR." Here's a few tips for getting the most out of attending a wedding with a camera:

- Let the pro do their job. Couples pay a lot of money for a professional to come and shoot their wedding. Whatever you do, don't distract them or the people they're shooting for any reason. You're there as a guest to have fun, not to ask questions about how much their gear costs or whether Canon or Nikon is better. (The answer is Nikon, obviously.) Be wary of shooting near them - people see multiple cameras and get confused about where to look. You don't want to be the one that screws up the family portrait.

- Take unique pictures. The professional has a list of must-have shots, and at the end of the day you're not going to be able to top anything they take. They have the gear, the access, and the experience. So focus instead on things that the photographer won't have. The photographer will be mainly focused on the bridal party and the immediate families, so you should look for other opportunities. Get a shot of the bride's friend crying during the vows. Catch the groom's aunt laughing at the toasts. Find stories happening while the bridal party is doing formal portraits. This way, you stay out of the photographer's way and produce shots that the couple will appreciate.

- Have fun! You're there to enjoy the wedding and celebrate, not to be a photographer. Take some pictures, but don't forget to experience the wedding. When someone asks "how was it?" you shouldn't have to say "not sure, haven't looked at my photos yet."

- Only pass your best shots on to the couple. Getting pictures from guests is nice. Getting 700 nuked flash snapshots... not so much. Find those unique shots and share those.
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Thanks to Claire Voelkel and Matt Mendick for today's photo. Check out Matt's flickr photo-stream.

~S

[title of blog] on flickr

A matter of perspective

© 2009 Simon Hucko

Zoom lens 101: You see a scene, but only want to capture part of it. Zoom in, and voila. This is very useful, especially when photographing something where you don't have a lot of room to move around.

Zoom lens Advanced: Deliberately use your zoom to influence the perspective of the picture. I do this a lot when photographing animals - I set my zoom to a wide setting and hold the camera close and below their eye level. It gives a very unique perspective that you don't usually get in person. For the shot above, I employed this technique to capture the bull. My lens was literally inches from his nose, somewhere my face has never been, and it produced a dramatic, almost comical effect. For the shot below, I shot at a more 'normal' focal length, resulting in an image that looks very natural:


© 2009 Simon Hucko

Same bull in essentially the same place, but two very different feeling photographs. It's not the exact same shot because I wasn't thinking about this as an exercise at the time, but I think it illustrates the point well.

Wider angles will really emphasize depth and distance from the camera. In some cases this is desirable, but in others (portraits, for example) it can result in unpleasant distortions of the subject. Telephoto lenses are said to "compress" distances, and will produce a flatter looking image. This is generally considered more flattering when photographing people. It can also be used to compress a landscape with a lot of depth to emphasize the lines (a series of rolling hills, for example).

If you haven't played around with this before, I suggest you give it a try. Find a subject that won't run away from you. Set your zoom to its widest setting and get in close so that the subject fills the frame. Grab a shot. Zoom in a little, and move back so the subject is the same size in the frame. Grab a shot. Repeat until you're at your longest focal length. (You can even switch lenses if you want to experience the full range of your kit) Notice what effects the focal length had on the subject and the background.

Next time you're out shooting, try to use focal length as an artistic tool, not just a way to frame the scene.

~S

[title of blog] on flickr

Reducing camera shake

© 2009 Simon Hucko

Today's post is about reducing camera shake to get sharper pictures. The easiest and best way to accomplish this is to use a sturdy tripod and head. However, you can't always carry a tripod with you (and it can be a real pain to lug around), and the good ones tend to be very pricey. Here's a few steps you can take to improve your hand-held photography:

- First and foremost, make sure that you are holding your camera correctly. Here's a short video on how to hold your camera from Chris Marquardt (Tips From the Top Floor). The key is to support your camera with both hands, and to keep your elbows in and as close to your body as possible. That will help you keep it stable while you shoot. This is especially hard when shooting vertically (portrait) - make sure you don't let your elbows go flying out everywhere when you turn the camera.

- Another very important step is to make sure your shutter speed is fast enough. Generally, you should avoid shooting slower than 1/(35mm effective focal length) - ie a 50mm lens on a crop sensor dslr is equivalent to a 75mm lens on a full frame camera, so you won't want to shoot slower than 1/80th or so. This can be pushed a little slower with good technique, but your rate of blurry shots will increase dramatically the slower you get. Open your aperture or increase your ISO if possible to get a faster shutter speed.

- If you're lucky enough to have some sort of image stabilization on your camera/lens (VR for you Nikonians, IS for the Canonites, sometimes OS for other brands), you can push the above rule by an extra 2-3 stops.

- Find additional support. Lean your body against a wall, rest your elbows on a table, or find some other way to add support from your environment. With solid holding technique, this added stabilization can buy you a stop or so of shutter speed.

- Make a "string tripod" (tutorial here). Not as good as the real thing, but it's lightweight and very portable - you could easily keep one in your camera bag.

- Pan your camera (only works for a moving subject). Today's photo (above) was taken with a 1/10s shutter speed. Normally that would result in a blurry mess, but since I was panning with the car my constant body motion helped prevent some jerking or shaking.
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Don't forget to check out [title of blog] on flickr!

~S

[tob] flickr group!

© 2009 Simon Hucko

I decided to create a [title of blog] flickr group as a companion to the blog. I'm hoping that this will encourage readers to share their images for comments and critique and discuss what I've written here. I also hope that people will post some questions or interesting bits of news/discussion there that I can work back into the blog.

The group is open to anyone with a flickr account (which are free), so please come on over and invite your friends!

~S

HDR tutorial

© Stuck in Customs, used under Creative Commons license

Today's link is to an excellent HDR tutorial from the Stuck in Customs travel photography blog. HDR, or High Dynamic Range imaging involves merging multiple photos of different exposures to increase the dynamic range of a photograph. A digital sensor captures between 4-6 stops, depending on the camera and the ISO setting. The human eye can perceive somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 stops. As a photographer, we often have to make the decision on what is the most important part of a scene, and resign ourselves to losing some detail outside of that range. With HDR, you can capture all of that detail in several different exposures. You can then merge that information into one photograph through a process known as tone-mapping.

There have been a lot of HDR images produced recently as the technique has gained popularity and ease of access (the necessary software is becoming better and cheaper). However, most people go crazy with it when they first start, resulting in overly saturated poorly tone mapped halo ridden surreal cartoonish images. (Go to flickr and search for HDR to see what I mean.) However, when done correctly, HDR can really bring a lot of detail into your photography, and the tutorial linked above does a good job of not overdoing it.

It's a fun technique, and with a lot of patience and practice can produce some beautiful images. I encourage you to give it a try!

~S

AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com

We all have been part of an awkward photo. Awkward Family Photos is a blog dedicated to bringing some of the most uncomfortable, creepy, and downright hilarious pictures to the public eye. Photos are submitted by people like you, and run the gamut from poorly staged professional portraits (like the one above) to candid photos capturing awkward moments to hilarious prom pictures, and much more. Definitely worth a read. Subscribe to the RSS feed here

Edited for grammar. Way to proofread...

~S

Representing a 3D world in 2D

© 2009 Simon Hucko

Have you ever been really excited about a shot, only to open it up on your computer and discover that it didn't turn out at all how you expected? Sweeping landscapes become flat and boring. Objects in the foreground suddenly become a lot more intrusive than you remember them being. Some dynamic element suddenly seems static and uninteresting. Why does this happen?

The answer, simply, is that your brain is too smart for its own good. When you are looking at a scene, your perception of what's going on is influenced by your brain's representation of everything involved. Your eyes may not be able to see the entire stage at a concert at a given moment, but your brain knows what is there and completes the image in your mind, so that you barely notice the head that's blocking a part of your view. Your depth perception influences your interpretation of a countryside view, making it seem vast and engaging rather than the flat 2D image that your camera will capture. It's very easy to overlook flaws or distractions in the scene because that's what your brain does automatically.

The key to representing your vision in a 2D medium is to overcome your mental representation of a scene and actually see what is present in your viewfinder. You may perceive a landscape as having great depth, but if you close one eye and really look at what's in front of you, it may fall flat. There are ways to restore this feeling of depth, like making sure you have 3 planes in your photos - a foreground, middle, and background. Giving the viewer a reference to the distances involved can add depth back to your photo.

In the case of obstructions, something like a fence or a small building may not even register when you look at a scene because you have a working knowledge of what else is present. Not only does photography compress everything to two dimensions, it also removes the time element from a scene. This can greatly reduce the context of a given image, and it needs to be able to stand on its own without relying on prior knowledge of the subject. This is what is meant by saying "tell a story with your photo" - provide context to what's going on in that instantaneous capture, and the subject will take on much more meaning.

Try this exercise - grab your tripod and go out with the intention of shooting just one great shot. When you see a potential image, set up your tripod and spend a minute looking through the viewfinder. (If you don't have a tripod, you can do the same thing hand held. The tripod is there to force you to slow down and think before taking a picture, not just pointing the lens and shooting away.) Imagine that you are seeing this as a print hanging on someone's wall. Are you really seeing the same image that you had in mind when you set the tripod down? What has changed? Can you find a way to add important elements back into a scene? Is there something in the frame that will distract you or prevent you from seeing the subject? Is there a story being told in that one little slice of time? If you are satisfied with these answers, take one photo, and head back to your computer.

Open your shot in your favorite photo editor and see how well you did at predicting what the image will look like. It may take some practice, but being able to shut off your brain and really see what is there in front of you will dramatically improve your photography.

There are certainly times to "spray and pray" (ie shoot a lot of frames in the hope that at least one of them will be decent), but you shouldn't rely on it every time. Learn how to slow down and really make an image.

~S