Category Archives: Tips & Tricks
Sep 28 2011

Philly – Scott Kelby

CATEGORY:

Personal, Tips & Tricks, Workshop Add a Comment »

Yesterday I spent the day down in Philly at Scott Kelby’s Light it, Shoot it, Retouch it! seminar.

It was a fantastic day down in Philly.

There were several sessions throughout the day of complete shoots. Scott walked everyone through the process of setting up the lights to create different looks. After setting up the lights, he would begin to shoot the models throwing in lots of fun and humor along the way. He had a way of making the models feel very comfortable and gave everyone a good time! After getting a good number of shots, Scott would walk everyone through his process of selecting a good image in Lightroom, then proceed to teach different post processing techniques. Each session focused on a different lighting setup and Scott introduced a different post-processing technique to add to the previous for each session.

Lunch came quickly, I looked down at my watch when we were told it was time for lunch and it was already 12:30pm! So Debbie Horst and I ran across the street to the Reading Terminal Market. We chose Carmen’s Cheesesteaks and waited a half hour in line, but it was worth the wait! We finished our lunch with some delicious chocolate chip cookies. I’m not sure where Debbie found them, but they were sooooo good!

Throughout the workshop, Scott had his camera tethered to his computer, which was then projected onto two large projectors. This was really nice to see everything Scott shot. He allowed us to see his entire process, mistakes and all! My biggest complaint about the workshop, was that I came away wanting to shoot more photography and buy some more gear!

Benefits of Scott Kelby’s Light it. Shoot it. Retouch it. LIVE!. I feel that Scott’s seminars are so well built that they provide information and benefits for photographers at all levels of skill and experience. I broke down a few thoughts for beginner and more experienced photographers.

For Beginners:

  • Learn basic lighting fundamentals
  • Tips on camera settings to work with off camera lighting
  • How to develop a workflow to optimize your output
  • Basic -> Intermediate retouching techniques in Lightroom and Photoshop
  • Hang out with other regional photographres

For More Experienced:

  • Energize and refuel a passion for photography
  • Receive a glimpse into another photographers workflow
  • Pick up little tips and tricks from an expert in the industry

I came home from this seminar recharged and ready to shoot. I didn’t really learn anything new as far as lighting or shooting, but I did come home with some functions built into Photoshop that I didn’t know about. My intention for attending this seminar was to study and watch Scott’s workflow and techniques, and I feel like I gained some more confidence in what I was doing. Scott hired local models for the day which was a nice touch. The first time he had met a couple of the models was when they walked on stage. This was great to watch Scott have to create and work with the model in a new and fresh shoot. It wasn’t like there was a cookie cutter | robotic walk through the shoot. Even though Scott had general guidelines to follow or main subjects he wanted to focus on, the shoots where very real. One comment I left for Scott and the crew at KelbyTraining was to have one of the sessions with a ‘non-model’. I would say more than 85% of the attendants at the workshop don’t have access to professional models. It was nice that Scott didn’t have to worry about the model and the sessions could focus on proper technique and lighting. It would have been nice to have seen how Scott would work with an ordinary person: share tips on how to loosen a person up and produce great images from ordinary people.

Scott was sharing how incorporating the model’s taste in music into your session will help the process go smoother. However, when Scott turned on the music the model picked, Scott decided to show off his dancing moves!

Scott’s assistant’s name was Brad, and Scott said at one point during the session that ‘Every photographer needs a Brad.’ So…here I am, how can I be of service?

One final thought from the day, came at the very end of the session. All of the lights, cameras and computers where put away and Scott took a minute to share from his heart about photography and photoshop. With the distaste for Photoshop amongst the misinformed, Scott shared some great advice. He shared a story of a beautiful bride he photographed and everyone just couldn’t stop saying how beautiful this bride was. He was so excited to get home and look at some of the images as he thought they were going to be killer. When he opened up the first image, he just gasped. There was a blemish on the girls shoulder that stood out in every image. Scott shared that when we look at a person our image of that person is made up of our 3D perspective, their personality, the environment, the conversation; but when you put that person in 2D space on a print their flaws and blemishes are enhanced. Scott said our goal as photographers to is produce images that ‘make people look as good as if they were standing in front of you’. He went on to share that what you do to an images is ‘the secret between you and Photoshop’. Scott had an eloquent way of saying it, I can’t even begin to do his words justice. So I would suggest you attend one of his workshops. Lucky for most of you, Scott is coming to Washington DC in December!

Scott Kelby, if for some random reason you every come across my blog by mistake, Thank you! Thanks for taking the time away from your family to share with use your workflow and excellent photography and retouching knowledge. You made the workshop very fun and enjoyable; I would recommend any photographer to attend at least 1 of your workshops.

CATEGORY:

Personal, Tips & Tricks, Workshop Add a Comment »
Aug 24 2011

Do buildings have rights?

CATEGORY:

Commercial, Tips & Tricks Add a Comment »

I have a nice relationship with a central PA building and restoration company. Over the past few years I’ve had the opportunity to photograph some great restoration projects. I always enjoy photographing a good building. They never complain or tire out, you can take your time and get the shot right. This building was difficult to capture. There were several factors that made it tough:

  • Tight space – it was downtown West Chester and there were building and telephone polls surrounding it.
  • The building was on a hill – Now you have a tight space requiring a wide-angle lens (17mm), but on a slant. This will really play tricks on your line perspective.

I like to read Ken Rockwell’s reviews when I’m looking for a new lens as he does a nice study of camera equipment. If you’ve never run across Ken visit http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/reviews.htm. His website design is lacking, but his information is great! Anyway, one time I was reading a review on a super-wide angle lens from Nikon and he was sharing that to create a pleasing perspective when using a wide angle lens with distortion to have your lines come out of the corners. If you don’t know anything about wide angle lenses, no need to get too detailed, but they create a distortion that can appear curvy.

So by now you’re probably wondering why this post is titled ‘Do buildings have rights?’ Most photographers think about getting model releases or permission to photograph people, but rarely think about buildings. Since 9/11, law enforcement has been on a higher alert for ‘terroristic’ activity. This now supposedly includes photography. In the past year I’ve probably read about several accounts where a photographer was arrested for photographing a public building. While my case over the weekend wasn’t that extreme, I was approached by a law enforcement officer while shooting this building. It was a friendly conversation, as I had all the documentation in hand showing I had permission to shoot the building. But it was just a reminder that as photographers we need to remember to cover our tracks.

Additional Info: I used my ExpoDisc to get the proper white balance for this shot. The brick was a nice red brick, and auto white balance tried to make it appear more brown.

CATEGORY:

Commercial, Tips & Tricks Add a Comment »
Aug 01 2011

ExpoDisc Neutral

CATEGORY:

Lighting, Tips & Tricks Add a Comment (1) »

The ExpoDisc by ExpoImaging is a white-balance tool for photographers. View ExpoDisc Details.

I’ve seen several photographers that have used this tool in the near past, and have been fascinated. I love a new gadget or accessory but before I buy, I do an incredible amount of research. I squeeze every drop of ‘searchability’ out of Google, reading forums and reviews. Once a product makes it through my initial review process, I then add it to my B&H Wishlist. Once it comes time to purchase the accessory I go back and do a quick review again. My quick review often consists of two things: visit B&H and check out the reviews and check my Google Reader, just to confirm my initial thoughts. I use Google Reader to manage all the blogs I follow! What’s really nice, is I can type in ‘ExpoDisc’ into Google Reader, and it brings up all the blog posts where a photographer has used or talked about the product.

(Left: Auto-White Balance, Right: ExpoDisc Neutral)

The above image has no post-processing done, and to the naked eye, the chair is blue not purple. Straight out of camera, resized and posted to the web. For the first image (left), I set the camera’s white-balance to ‘Auto’. For the second image (right), the camera’s white-balance was set to custom and calibrated using the ExpoDisc. There are a lot of white-balance tools our there: gray cards, white cards and calibration targets. All of these tools have the same thing in common, they both have to be placed somewhere in the frame and need to be adjusted in post-production. The ExpoDisc is different, it snaps on to the end of your lens, you set the custom white-balance and you’re done. You don’t have to ask your model to hold your gray card for you, it only takes 15 seconds or so to set the white-balance. For NIKON users: Set your white-balance to ‘PRE’, then hold down the ‘WB’ button until ‘PRE’ starts blinking on your screen. At this point place the ExpoDisc over your lens, press the shutter button. If the white balance was properly calibrated your screen will display ‘GOOD’. Pop the ExpoDisc off and start shooting. The ExpoDisc can be used in natural light or even mixed lighting situations. I wish I would have had this tool when I was doing a lot of shooting in poorly lit gyms and football fields.

I chose the ExpoDisc Neutral, because I wanted to have a tool that created a consistent white-balance across all shots. When you have a proper white-balance set, your exposure and noise levels are cleaner and your images appear more crisp (sharp). ExpoDisc makes a ‘Portrait’ version, which warms the white-balance slightly. If you have extra money to throw away, feel free to buy both. But I would recommend buying the largest ExpoDisc neutral for your biggest lens, and using that as your base. If you want to ‘warm’ up your images in post-production, you can easily do that in Camera Raw. Since you have a base white-balance established, you can simple adjust the first image in Camera Raw and then apply the white-balance adjustment to all images. This will give you consistent results across all your images in a set.

I leave you with a pic of my son, being so patient with me as I tested out some things. I got some more ‘toys’ last week that I plan to share with you all. So stick around for more stuff. I bought mine here.

CATEGORY:

Lighting, Tips & Tricks Add a Comment (1) »
Jul 22 2011

Code: Dynamic Image Resize w/ jQuery

CATEGORY:

Code, Tips & Tricks Add a Comment (2) »

Something new for everyone, programming and code examples. Since I do a lot of programming during the day, sometimes writing 1,000+ lines of code a week, I thought I would start sharing some code that could be helpful for photographers. If you have any questions in regards to your website, post a question over in our discussion section on our Facebook page! Halladay Photography – Programming Questions

If you follow us frequently you will have noticed that we’ve made some improvements to our website. One of our upgrades included adding a sidebar. As a result of this, all of my images for all of my posts are now too big and will overlap the sidebar. Most people’s first reaction might be to go back and resize all of your images. Check out this code to do that on the fly, so you don’t have to waste a whole day watching Photoshop run an action on your hundreds of images.

First you have to start by using jQuery. You can easily add the jQuery API by using Google’s API server. Add the following code in your <head></head> section.

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.5.2/jquery.min.js"
type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
function resizeImages(image_id, max_size)
{
	$(image_id).each(function(i) {
		if ($(this).height() < max_size && $(this).width() < max_size)
		  	return;

		if ($(this).height() > $(this).width()) {
		    var h = max_size;
		    var w = Math.ceil($(this).width() / $(this).height() * max_size);
		} else {
		    var w = max_size;
		    var h = Math.ceil($(this).height() / $(this).width() * max_size);
		}
		$(this).css({ height: h, width: w });
	});
}
</script>

You can then just call the resizeImages() function from anywhere within javascript code. I would recommend calling this function in the $(document).ready function, as this will cause the images to be resized once they have been loaded. For example, all of my post entries have a class assigned to the containing DIV called ‘entry’. Therefore my code to find all the images that are contained within one of my entries and resize them to a max size of 650px is…

$(document).ready(function() {	resizeImages(".entry img", 650); });

I hope you’ve found this helpful. If you need anymore help with jQuery syntax you can visit http://jquery.com/ or leave a comment below.

CATEGORY:

Code, Tips & Tricks Add a Comment (2) »
May 02 2011

IE9 – Photographer’s Enemy

CATEGORY:

Tips & Tricks Add a Comment »

I rarely ever use Internet Explorer, but as a developer and programmer I have to if I want my applications to be compatible across all platforms and browsers. I’m a huge fan of using keyboard shortcuts in every task I perform. One of the shortcuts I use is CTRL (or CMD on MAC) + ‘+’ for zoom in, or CTRL + ‘-’ for zoom out. Then to reset the zoom to 100% you press CTRL+0. I do all of my development on my laptop that has a 15.6″ screen, but has a resolution of 1920×1080. This produces a lot of realestate to work with on my screen, but everything appears smaller than it may be for other monitors. So often when I’m developing a cloud application, I’m in need of a closer examination, so I zoom in. When you zoom in, the browser can re-draw the text, but the images will be re-drawn in relation to the original. This results in a stretched out image.

So how does this relate to IE9? Well I discovered the other day while in IE9, that when I pressed CTRL+0 to reset the zoom, it defaulted to 125%! The result was distorted images, that I worked so hard to provide in a true and accurate form to the viewer. So your a good photographer that follows the good practices I discussed in a previous post (How to display images online), and you are trying to display your images in the best possible way to your clients, but then IE messes everything up. So what can we do as photographers? I’m afraid, the only option we have is to educate our clients and friends. Anyone have any ideas?

CATEGORY:

Tips & Tricks Add a Comment »
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »