This post will not be for everyone and I do apologize. Not every post can be. For those who are set in their ways and only wish to see absolute perfect exposure in every single shot, ever, then you can skip this post. I’m going to talk about messing up and getting things wrong, on purpose.

In this post I want to encourage those of you starting out in photography. I want to encourage you to try for two things; 1) Learn the basics. Understand the basics. Become well versed in the basics of how light is captured and presented in the digital realm and in print. Knowledge of the basics will allow you to create art you enjoy seeing. 2) Experiment with abandon. Don’t be afraid to mess up. Don’t bother asking others “What would happen if I forced a higher shutter speed?” Just do it and learn from it.

The joy of experimenting with digital photography is instant feedback (via a camera’s display and histogram) and hopefully instant understanding. “When I do this, this happens.” Photography, for all its glory as an art form, really isn’t all that exciting from a discovery standpoint. It follows certain laws of physics in regard to what light does. From experimentation I know just how much darker my exposure will be if I increase my shutter speed two stops. It’s not like I discovered a new species of plant in a rainforest or a new galaxy in the night sky.  But it is still just as valuable from a learning standpoint.

Experimentation is what you do after you get out of the classroom (as a photography instructor, I of course believe starting with guided explanation of the fundamentals is important). You will read about what you should and shouldn’t do and most people’s intent is in the right place. They are trying to help you learn without you having to spend the time and expense of doing it yourself. In the days of film this was very helpful indeed because experimenting always had an out-of-pocket expense for film and development.

In the age of digital photography, after the initial expense of a camera, lens and memory card, that barrier is gone. Reading websites and books can still be a shortcut to learning (and an eyeopener to ideas you never even thought about) and shouldn’t be totally dismissed. Alongside that learning, though, you will gain more from doing than from reading and this is where experimentation comes in.

Want to see what a scene looks like overexposed? Go for it. Think a picture needs far more blue saturation when viewed on a PC? No problem. Think you can make a great macro lens out of two extension tubes and a reverse mounting ring? More power to you.

Chances are most of your shots will not come out to your level of satisfaction. But some might. Some might look very, very cool to you. A shot might even ’speak’ to you. And that is the heart of art. Connection with an image. Emotion stirred. If it works for you, don’t worry too much what others, including me or any other fancy writer on a website, might thing. It doesn’t have to a literal rendition of a scene nor does it need to be tack sharp in all corners.

Chances are at some point in the future you will look back at shots you took 10, 20, 40 years ago and they will either still speak to you or you will think they are horrible. “What was I thinking?” is a phrase often spoken with regard to photography, fashion and haircuts. But without experimenting, without trying new things, without learning for yourself, you will not progress towards your own vision and creating art you enjoy.

You will read over and over about what you ’should’ do in photography. There is a great amount of learning to be had from those who have taken the time to learn and offer their wisdom. Alongside that learning, experiment. See for yourself what happens when you do X or Y. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. They are a great teacher.

And if others don’t have a strong interest in helping you learn, don’t pay much attention to what they have to say while you are experimenting. You’re not doing it for them, anyway.

Have fun and keep shooting.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips. Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips, Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras.

The Joy Of Photography Experimentation

This is the fourth  and last of 4 posts regarding the process of hand-coloring.

Here is the image as finished in the previous post. Overall, the image still needs a boost of color saturation and some final dodging and burning. 

One of the things I do is bring the file into Photomatix Pro where I perform a pseudo tone-mapping technique which I feel adds a nice finished contrast to the image. This image is saved as a 16 bit file and brought back into Photoshop.

If required, the image is further corrected with localized dodging, burning and saturation adjustments and saved as an 8 bit Photoshop file.

 12 Mile Church -  © John Neel

Here is the final version.

• Part - 1
• Part - 2
• Part - 3

THIS POSTING AS WELL AS ALL PHOTOGRAPHS AND GALLERY IMAGES ARE COPYRIGHT - © JOHN NEEL AND ARE NOT TO BE USED FOR ANY PUPOSE WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT FROM THE WRITER, THE PHOTOGRAPHER AND/OR PIXIQ. 

Please read more of my posts regarding digital and Analog Photography on Pixiq.

This is the third of 4 posts regarding the process of hand-coloring.

Hand-coloring in most cases needs to look hand-colored in the final. Detailing the coloring is a way to enhance the realism and to create additional interest. In most cases it should done in a manor suitable for the intended rsults.

In the above screen shot, I have zoomed in to the image to color some of the bricks using a smaller brush size. These details will give the image some interesting realism. The foreground grass will require additional saturation and local dodging and burning. The steps will require a small amount of detailing to reduce the blending into the grass.

The sky color has been stippled into the green tree  branches using a small soft edge brush. Remember, the idea is to make it appear as if colored with a transparent brush. There is no need to be precise. Having the colors slightly off and with oversprayed color will enhance the effect we are after. Notice the slight yellow color in the white painted building. This adds a bit of an aged look and a trace of afternoon light coloration.

Here the image has been cropped so that the black film edge is removed. The image has been modified further using a Hue Saturation Adjustment Layer. Each color was adjusted individually to increase or decrease the intensity and to balance the scene as a whole. Minor details in the distance have been detailed with a few brighter colors to add a slight realism and color to the headstones in the cemetery behind the building.

 © John Neel

Here is the image against black. It is always a good idea to work on and look at the image against a neutral background such as white, gray or black. i almost always have a look at the image against black. To temporarily turn off the palettes, press the tab key in Photoshop after changing to full screen mode. full screen mode produces a black screen background.

To me, this doesn't look too bad at this point.

But we are not finished yet. The image can use some additional tweaking.

The next step will be finishing the image. Finishing - Step - 4

• Part - 1
• Part - 2

THIS POSTING AS WELL AS ALL PHOTOGRAPHS AND GALLERY IMAGES ARE COPYRIGHT - © JOHN NEEL AND ARE NOT TO BE USED FOR ANY PUPOSE WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT FROM THE WRITER, THE PHOTOGRAPHER AND/OR PIXIQ.

Please read more of my posts regarding digital and Analog Photography on Pixiq.

This is the second of 4 posts regarding the process of hand-coloring.

There are many ways to create a hand colored look using filters and other software to create a similar effect. I prefer to do it by hand with a good Wacom tablet using the pen as an airbrush. I get much more satisfaction out of using my own skills throughout the entire process.

Basically, I begin to color the images using Photoshop layers. I tend to use a single color per layer or at least several layers at different opacities depending on the density of the blend required. Sometimes I can easily end up with eight to ten layers. For this reason, most of my coloring is minimal in that I use very few colors. I usually only want to suggest the color of an object. I like to use the simple techniques used by early pastoralists like Wallace Nutting and the post card colorists of the early 20th Century. Like them, most of my "painted photographs" rely on a small palette of colors that when airbrushed and blended produce all the color necessary to be convincing as a "colored" photograph.

This method may seem to some as a long process and a bit of work. However, I find that the work is personally rewarding and by maintaining a certain technique, I develop a look that is uniquely mine. The image becomes a child of my own labor rather than the creation of a plugin or a filter that was developed to produce a singular look by some software engineer. The work has my marks and my hand-print in that I was the one to make all of the decisions.

The first step is to produce a new layer above the toned image we created in the previous post. This new layer will be used to add the coloring and in this image provides a nice warm tone.

If you simply choose a color and begin to paint, you will get an opaque color which will obscure the underlying image. The layer needs to be converted from Normal blending to a Color blend layer.

Here, I have altered the layer blend method to Color. The colors now will be transparent as shown above. I pick a simple palette of colors from the swatches. Usually no more than six or seven colors are used for the entire process.

The proper selection of colors when skillfully blended together will give the feeling of a full color rendition. For the trees, I used only two basic greens. Another green was used for the grass. The sky is a mix of two very close blues. The building is a faint yellow while the stairs are a warm tone of yellow brown and a slight reddish color. all of the colors are reduced in saturation and density. There is a slight bluish color used in the shadows on the building to provide a bit of skylight reflection.

During the painting process, I usually create multiple layers. Each layer can be controlled as to opacity and blend method. Colors may be built up or toned down by variations in the layer densities. I use a Wacom tablet in order to control the amount of paint (color) in each layer.

I first rough in the colors that I think will look best using a low setting on the brush while building up the density with repeated strokes. For this kind of work, I set the brush to have a very soft edge. The eraser tool, also set to a very soft edge, can be used to erase away over spray or to reduce the density.

The opacity of the eraser or the brush may need to be adjusted to control the amount of color that is introduced or reduced into the coloring layers.

Once I get to a point where the color is beginning to work, I flatten the layers and make several copy layers.  These layers are then blended to darken or lighten the underlying image. I use combinations of multiply and screen blending and erase away or mask out the areas that I want to keep as rendered in the bottom layer. In other words, I might use a screen blend layer to open up certain areas and erase everything else in that layer that I do not want to go lighter. The same is done for the multiply layer which will increase the density in areas that I would like to make darker while erasing away the areas that I want to remain in the underlying layers. This is a great way to get more detail in a weak sky or to lighten an area such as the tree shadows that may be too dense. 

The next step will be detailing the color.    Coloring B/W - My Way - Part -3

Part - 1

Part - 4

THIS POSTING AS WELL AS ALL PHOTOGRAPHS AND GALLERY IMAGES ARE COPYRIGHT - © JOHN NEEL AND ARE NOT TO BE USED FOR ANY PUPOSE WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT FROM THE WRITER, THE PHOTOGRAPHER AND/OR PIXIQ. 

Please read more of my posts regarding digital and Analog Photography on Pixiq.

If you're interested in making tilt-shift photography, you have a couple of options. Sure, you can fake it with Photoshop, but if you want true tiltshift photography, it's going to cost you. However, there is an alternative, a simple point-and-shoot which has a lens that can help you get started. The NeinGrenze 5000T, a Japanese digital lomo camera. It has no optical zoom, only clocks in at five-megapixels, and will cost you $150 if you can even find one.

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The technique of hand-coloring is a long time tradition that may now be a dying art-form. During the period shortly before the end of the 19th Century, hand coloring was the only way to create a color photograph.

Long before color film was invented and a century before digital, the only way to create the effect of color was to use dyes, watercolors and brushes. Transparent color was added to the surface of a print, which allowed the black tones to show though as shades. In some cases where a glass plate produced a positive image, the back of the plate received the coloring, which was viewed from the front. The act of coloring a print or a transparency was laborious but could be very beautiful. From near the time of photography's invention until the middle of the 20th century hand coloring has been the dominant method for producing color photographs. Daguerreotypes, Tintypes, dry plates and most other images were often hand colored to produce the illusion of a color image.

The effect of a hand-colored image may be produced on a computer using a variety of techniques. I have developed my own approach which I feel gives the look of hand-coloring while utilizing a minimum of colors.

To begin the process, I will first want to create a file that has the appropriate tonal scale, contrast, finish and tone. All retouching and spotting as well as dodging and burning should be accomplished prior to the coloring.

The complete process will be shown in 4 parts using 4 different posts.

© John Neel

The image in this tutorial was shot on Ilford XP2 black and white film with a square format Zeiss Ikon Ikonta folder from the late 1940's.

I use a series of layer blending and masking techniques to achieve the desired dodging and burning of the preliminary image before adding any color. This is done by creating various layers that are blended using either a multiply or a screen blend to darken or lighten areas of the original each layer is selected and erased to reveal the underlying desired tones within the erased areas.

Once the image has the appropriate tonal values the image is flattened into a single layer. The image is further corrected by using the dodge and burn tools in order lighten or darken certain areas. Here, the area in the trees to the left have been opened up and the contrast has been flattened slightly. Color will add to the density and will be adjusted as we proceed through the process.

It is my preference that the original grayscale (black and white) image should receive a warm tone. The easiest way to perform this task is to use a black and white layer adjustment to produce a warm tint. 

A warm tone will give you a base to start the coloring process. In some cases it may be useful to alter the base tone to a cold tone rather than a warm tone. In most of my work a warm tone seems to be the most appropriate.

Once the image has been tinted, the coloring can begin. I usually layout my windows as shown. The tools should be available near the image along with the color swatches and the layers palette should be nearby. You will need these tools close-by throughout the coloring process.

The next step will be roughing in the colors. Coloring B/W - My Way - Part -2

• Part-3
• Part-4

THIS POSTING AS WELL AS ALL PHOTOGRAPHS AND GALLERY IMAGES ARE COPYRIGHT - © JOHN NEEL AND ARE NOT TO BE USED FOR ANY PUPOSE WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT FROM THE WRITER, THE PHOTOGRAPHER AND/OR PIXIQ. 

Please read more of my posts about Digital and Analog Photography on Pixiq.

© John Neel

Jill-e is a company that specializes in making camera bags that look nothing like the traditional, and often drab, satchels used for toting gear. Stylistically linked to large handbags, messenger bags and funky backpacks, they're great for shooters looking to switch up their style, but even better for travelers who don't want to advertise that they're lugging around thousands of dollars in gear.

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The Retrospective 5 by Think Tank Photo is designed with the street photographer in mind. As a soft sided messenger style bag you've got much more space to work with than meets the eye. I was able to fit my Canon 30D with attached 50mm lens, an iPad 2 in the front pocket, cables and other accessories. I could have squeezed in another lens while keeping the iPad 2 in place and easily a third by taking out the iPad letting the bag swell.

Here's what I took on this trip

1. Canon 30D with attached 50mm 1.8
2. iPad 2 with Smart Cover
3. Extra Battery
4. Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit
5. iPad Charger
6. Earbuds
7. Skull Candy Agent Carbon Headphones
8. USB Camera Cable
9. Lens cloths and cotton swabs
10. Extra CF cards
11. Rocket Blower
12. Didn't take the dog but I'm sure she would have loved the trip!

Here's a closer view of the stuff I took.

The bag is really nice to look at and, as all things Think Tank, is built to last. The shoulder strap is thick and well stitched, and made with enough grip and length you can wear the bag in messenger style or as shoulder bag.

Of course you get dividers to customize to your needs. Here's how all the stuff fit in the bag. You can see where I could have easily added a second lens and ditched the headphones but it wasn't necessary for this trip.

The Retrospective series has various sizes and the Retrospective 5 is the smallest camera bag in the series. While you could squeeze in a standard size DSLR with 3 lenses, as I've tested, this bag works much better for the smaller cameras.

This really is made for an urban or street photographer who isn't going into the sands and rain (the bag does come with a rain cover if needed).

While this bag isn't really designed for carrying the iPad it does work although you can see it does create a gap by not allowing the top to close all the way.

So one of the coolest features is the velcro straps on the inside of the back cover. You can close them off for silent access to the bag or leave them exposed for more security. In the picture below the strap to the left near my hand is in the closed and "silent" position while the strap on the right shows the velcro exposed and ready to grip.

This option came in pretty handy for me. I had the velcro exposed while traipsing through the airport for security reasons and put them in the silent position when I was shooting in the downtown areas for easy and quick access to the bag. Pretty slick if you ask me.

All in all I really enjoyed using the bag. It did two things for me; It made me think smaller and lighter which is a long-term goal for me and it worked at carrying my iPad while being stylish and conspicuous. If I were carrying more gear or a bigger camera I would have to opt for a bigger bag but as it is I'm very happy with this one.

It's sturdy, rugged, and versatile. This shoulder strap isn't going to wear out anytime soon and neither will the bag.

My one complaint is that the iPad doesn't fit "perfectly" in the front pouch. It's easy enough to dismiss because, arguably, this bag isn't designed for that but why wouldn't it be? If this bag is for the street photographer, and mobility and connectivity is the future of street photography, and an iPad or other tablet device will likely accompany many a street photographer, I find that Think Tank missed an opportunity to market for that growing section.

As it is, I'm giving the Retrospective 5 by Think Tank Photo a very enthusiastic

4 out of 5!

You can get a Think Tank Retrospective 5 Shoulder Bag - Black at Amzon today or check out their entire line of Retrospective bags as well.

The first thing to acknowledge here is that large people know that they’re large. As with any body type (skinny included) their body image may cause them to believe that their either larger or smaller than they are. You can tastefully discuss body image with them clients which is something I may be inclined to do with any type of person. Understanding how a client feels about their body is always a great thing to know. And if they’ve scheduled a photo session, they’re probably already pretty confident people.

As a society, we try to find ways to make people look smaller and we think that smaller = more attractive, but this doesn’t need to be our primary focus when shooting large people. Making them appear comfortable? Now that’s important. And I agree, laying on the ground is usually a no-go. Here are a few tips I’ve found helpful:

1. Use a telephoto lens or the longest zoom that you have. This will compress the shot and keep it from suffering from widening distortion. Experiment with the distortion correction in Photoshop to see if there’s any barreling that you don’t notice on first inspection.
2. Don’t shoot from a low angle.
3. You can shoot from higher up looking down, but beware that this is a way overused tactic for photographing larger people so throw in lots of other types of framing, not just this one.
4. You can use one subject’s body to shield another (if one is lighter than the other)
5. Obviously, you have the option of not photographing their whole body. Try different varieties of head-and-shoulders shots, but beware that they may feel that you’re saying that they’re unattractive if you don’t also provide them with body shots. Your job is to photograph them like you would anyone else so don’t think you’re doing them a favour by completely ignoring their entire body.
6. In a post of mine this week on posing families, try the ‘huddle’ and ’squeeze in’ poses which eliminates full body shots.

Thanks so much for reading and share your tips below!

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips. Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips, Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras.

6 Tips for Photographing Large People