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October 2018 – Hyperfocal Distance, Depth of Field, Landscape, Focus Mode, Gear, Vanishing Point

One of the things we do in landscape photography is to try to get everything we can in focus.  We want it sharp in the foreground, at the midpoint and all the way out to infinity.  One of the ways to guarantee this is to calculate the hyperfocal point for each of your lenses.  Once you know that distance and focus on it, everything from half the distance from the camera to the hyperfocal point to infinity will be in focus.  It takes a little time to get your head around it but this article by Jeremy Myers on Picture Correct does a good job of making it as simple as possible.  The article is titled “Hyperfocal Distance Photography: Calculations & Focus.  There are also lots of apps available that you can put on your smart phone that will let you calculate it in the field.  I just checked on the Google Play Store and there were 10 of them.  Several were free.

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/digital-slr-cameras-hyperfocal-distance-focus/

 

After you’ve mastered hyperfocal distance and can get everything in focus, now you need to be able to get only a little bit in focus.  Here’s an article on Creative Raw titled “Eight Ways to be Creative with a Shallow Depth of Field”

https://creativeraw.com/create-shallow-depth-field-landscape/

 

As long as we’re talking about focus, let’s talk about how you should choose the right focus mode on your camera.  There’s lots of options, One Shot or AF-Single mode, AI Servo or AF-Continuous Mode or AI Focus or AF-Auto Mode. Here’s a short article on Picture Correct by Paul Summers that explains it all.  It’s titled “How to Choose the Right Focus Mode on Your Camera”

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/how-to-choose-the-right-focus-mode-on-your-camera/

 

Here’s an article that Jim Pierson brought to my attention that’s helpful to new photographers and is something that even the most experienced of us needs to remember.  It’s by Stacey Hill on the Digital Photography School and Titled “Why Your Camera Gear Doesn’t Matter”.  It’s the Photographer.  Nobody ever says to a great cook, “That was a fantastic meal, you must have great pots”.

https://digital-photography-school.com/why-your-camera-gear-doesnt-matter/

 

Have you ever wanted to add something to a photograph but the perspective of the two images doesn’t match?  Here’s a great article by Colin Smith in the Photoshop Café that makes the whole process almost idiot proof.  It’s titled “How to Combine Layers in Perspective Using Photoshop with Vanishing Point”

https://photoshopcafe.com/combine-layers-perspective-using-photoshop-vanishing-point/

September 2018 – Sky Replacement, Repetition, Patterns, Long Exposure, Warp, Sports

Here’s a trick we all do (or wish we could do) occasionally.  We have to replace a sky.  There’s several techniques for doing that but here’s one I hadn’t seen before from Blake Rudis of f.64 Academy titled “Replacing a Sky With the Soft Light Blend Mode”, 

https://f64academy.com/replacing-sky-soft-light-blend-mode-video/

 

One of the things we seem to naturally gravitate toward in our photographs is the use of repeating patterns.  Some of us do it consciously and compose specifically for repeating patterns while others seem to just naturally pick a composition with repeating patterns.  Whichever one you are, knowing when they enhance our photographs and knowing when they don’t add anything to the image will help us improve our photography.  Here’s an article published on Picture Correct by Tedric Garrison titled “Repetition and Patterns In Photography”.

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/repetition-and-patterns-in-photography/

 

We can use long exposure photography for a lot of different things like blurring the water in a waterfall, calming the waves in ocean image and even removing people from walking through a picture.  More and more manufacturers are making Neutral Density filters and they’re making them darker than ever before.  A 15 stop ND filter isn’t a bit unusual these days.  Here’s an article published on Peta Pixel by Antony Zacharias titled “A Beginner’s Step-by-Step Guide to Shooting Long Exposure Photos”.

https://petapixel.com/2018/08/17/a-beginners-step-by-step-guide-to-shooting-long-exposure-photos/

 

One of the, what I would consider, more advanced features in Photoshop is the Puppet Warp Tool.  That’s a strange name so what does it do?  One description says “Puppet Warp provides a visual mesh that lets you drastically distort specific image areas, while leaving other areas intact”.  Sounds scary doesn’t it.  Here’s an article by Greg Benz that uses it in a small area of a photograph that should give you an idea of what it can do and show you it’s not that difficult of a tool to learn.  Greg’s article and video are titled “How to Use Puppet Warp in Photoshop to Change the Flow of Water”. 

https://gregbenzphotography.com/photography-tips/how-to-use-puppet-warp-in-photoshop-to-change-the-flow-of-water?

 

Sooner or later, we’ll all be trying our hands at sports photography.  Weather it’s for a local road race, bicycle race, Head of the Hooch, grandchildren’s sporting events or you really have an obsession with the Chattanooga Roller Girls; our local roller derby team.  The best sports photos seem to capture the action without blurring the photograph.  Here’s an article posted on Picture Correct by Amy Renfrey titled “Capturing the Motion of Sports Photography”.

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/capturing-the-motion-of-sports-photography/

August 2018 – Sunrise, Sunset, Floating effect, Impact, Landscapes

It’s Summer.  The days are long and hot.  So what do we do if we don’t want to be stuck inside with nothing to shoot?  That’s right, we get up early and go out and shoot sunrises.  Then come home and take a nap.  We’ll start out our tutorials this month with an article on Picture Correct by Jonathan Chan titled “Sunrise Photography Tips for Beginners”

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/sunrise-photography-tips-for-beginners/

 

Since we covered Sunrise, it wouldn’t be fair to ignore Sunset so here’s a Lightroom editing tutorial by our favorite French photographer, Serge Ramelli titled “How to Create Stunning Sunset Photos”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLI-qAlrYT0

 

Here’s a fun tutorial if you’ve got the patience to preplan and stage the shot,  My granddaughters love when I use this on them.  Its By Colin Smith and appears in Photoshop Café and is titled “Levitation Floating Effect in Photoshop” or “How to Make People Float/Hover in Photoshop”.

https://photoshopcafe.com/levitation-floating-effect-photoshop/?mc_cid=f93f94efc9&mc_eid=34dca0478d

 

Personally, I’m partial to color photographs, they effect me much more stronger than Black and White images.  It’s easy to over do it with color though.  Here’s a great article by Tedric Garrison From Picture Correct titled “Color in Photography for Emotional Impact.

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/dominant-color-in-photography-for-emotional-impact/

 

Remember our friend Aaron Nace, our friend with the man bun from Phlearn?  Well Aaron has gotten rid of the man bun (good) but had gone to a subscription basis for most of his teaching videos.  Probably good for Aaron but bad for us.  He does, periodically, release one of his subscription videos for public viewing and we’re fortunate to grab this one.  It’s titled “Make Your Landscapes POP: Adobe Camera RAW”.  While Aaron does this in Photoshop, it works exactly the same in Lightroom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uad5tNDdx00

July 2018 – Natural Light, Layer Masks, Blend Mode, Backups, Photo Manipulation

There’s a photography joke that’s been around for a long time about photographers that say, “I only use natural light for my photography”.  The real interpretation of that statement is “I really have absolutely no idea how to use my flash”.    Joking aside, there are a lot of benefits in learning to use natural light in your photographs.  Here’s an article by Tim Kainu that was published on the Picture Correct web site titled “Natural Light Photography Tips”.

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/natural-light-photography-tips/

 

Anyone who works with photoshop knows that one of the major strengths of the program is the ability to use Layer masks.  On the Photoshop Café website, Colin Smith posted this tutorial titled “The Ultimate Guide on How to Use Photoshop Layer Masks”.  I’ve also included a link to Collin’s free eBook on Photoshop Blend Modes.  Thanks to Mickey Rountree for sending me this link.

https://photoshopcafe.com/use-layer-masks-photoshop-7-layer-masking-tips/

https://photoshopcafe.com/blendmodeebook

 

Now that you’ve got some exposure on Photoshop Blend Modes, let’s hammer it in with another tutorial from my favorite French Photographer, Serge Ramelli.  Serge calls this one “Photoshop Blending Modes for Photographers”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7Ci9PoO_Zw

 

I owe this next article to Richard Smith who sent me the link.  The importance of backing up our photos is something we’re all aware of but somehow always gets put on the back burner.  I finally solved my avoidance of backing up’s by subscribing to an online backup site.  Now it just happens automagically.  But if you don’t want to do that. here’s an article from the New Your Times by Terry Sullivan titled “A Beginner’s Guide to Backing Up Photos”.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/smarter-living/backing-up-your-photos.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

 

This next one is a little fun exercise in photo manipulation. The tutorial will take you from this

to this

This tutorial is put together by the PSD Box.  There website is http://www.psdbox.com.  The tutorial is over on YouTube and titled “Deer Creative Manipulation for Beginners”.  Fortunately, the tutorial is much more creative than the title they came up with.  The even have a link where you can download the image files they used in the tutorial for free.   Here’s the link to the tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__RZl_qbeBI

June 2018 – Lightroom, Infrared, Perspective Crop Tool, Light Painting, Real Estate, Contrast

One of the new sources for Lightroom tutorials I’ve discovered lately is something called Lightroom Coffee Break by a member of Adobe’s Lightroom team, Benjamin Warde.  He’s got a bunch of YouTube videos out there.  There all about 1 minute long and cover a single aspect of Lightroom.  The one I’m linking to today is “Using the Auto Settings in Lightroom Classic CC”.  Adobe has really improved the Auto button in it’s latest release.  It doesn’t do everything, but it gives you a great starting point for your image.  Here’s Benjamin. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPwah13f0Co&index=57&list=PLmXfFxjdp3CFWa1egQmUNo10XtJdNHoa2&t=0s

 

Have you ever thought about shooting infrared images?  It’s much easier in digital than it was with film.

Here’s your chance to get white or pink leaves or a green sky.  Tommy Coffler has this article on Picture Correct titled “How to do Infrared Photography”

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/how-to-do-infrared-photography/

 

Blake Rudis from f.64 Academy takes on one of the lesser known Crop tools in Photoshop, the Perspective Crop Tool.  This is a simple way to get the distortion out of an interior shot created by using a wide-angle lens.

https://f64academy.com/perspective-crop-tool-photoshop/

 

Have you ever tried Light Painting?  Typically, you’re shooting a long exposure at night and using an external light source to “paint” your subject with light to create the image.  There’s a ton of creative things you can do with light painting.  Here’s an article on Picture Correct by Graham Wadden titled “Light Painting Photography Tools”.

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/light-painting-photography-tools/

 

My favorite French photographer, Serge Ramelli, is back with a new video titled “My best tips to improve your Real Estate Photography”.  Not only is Serge a good instructor, he’s got more enthusiasm than a late night infomercial pitch man. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P1pZvkpxp0

 

One of comments we hear frequently from our club contest judges is that a good percentage of our members images are lacking in contrast.  I found this article by Joaquin Duenas on Picture Correct that tries too address how to use contrast.  It’s titled of all things, “Contrast In Photography”.

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/contrast-in-photography/

May 2018 – Lightroom, Color Range Masking, HDR vs Luminosity Mask, Lighting, Beginner Don’ts

We’ll follow up Richard Smith’s two well received Lightroom Bootcamps with a couple of tutorials focused on using Lightroom.  The first is from Scott Kelby’s blog, Lightroom Killer Tips.  Here Scott will go through the entire process of taking an image from start to finish in Lightroom.  Scott titles it of all things, “Intermediate Level “Start to Finish” Lightroom Tutorial”.  You can find it here:

https://lightroomkillertips.com/intermediate-level-start-finish-lightroom-tutorial/

 

Here’s another tutorial from Lightroom Killer Tips On using the new Color Range Masking feature in Lightroom.  This new feature is great, easy to use and eliminates a lot of trips into photoshop.  Benjamin Warde does a spot called Lightroom Coffee Break where he does 1-minute Lightroom Tutorials.  This one is titled “Make Precise Selections with Color Range Masking”.

https://lightroomkillertips.com/use-awesome-color-range-masking-60-seconds-less/

 

Back in May of 2008 I got my first DSLR, I discovered HDR early on and my June I was shooting everything in HDR.  I liked to say saw in HDR.  Over time, I drifted away from what has affectionally called the Harry Potter look to a kinder and gentler treatment of my images.  This new approach to Achieving High Dynamic Range is done by Luminosity Masking.  Here’s a video by Greg Benz that explains the difference between HDR and Luminosity Masks.

https://gregbenzphotography.com/photography-tips/hdr-vs-luminosity-masks?__s=7br3zmx7cqfqjbxzf5vw&utm_source=drip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=HDR+vs+Luminosity+Masking%3A+7+Major+Differences

 

We’ll close this month with a couple of articles that go back to the basics.  The both have Beginner in their titles, but I think even advanced photographers need to remind themselves of these things occasionally.

The first article is posted on Picture Correct and is by Simon James.  It’s titled “A Beginning Photographer’s Guide to Light”.  All we’re doing in taking a photograph is capturing light, so it’s definitely in our best interest to understand it as best we can.

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/lighting-for-photography/

 

The Next article by Jack Hailman, also on Picture Correct, is titled “The 8 Worst Habits of Beginning Photographers”.  We should all go over this list regularly to make sure we haven’t slipped into any bad habits.

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/the-8-worst-habits-of-beginning-photographers/

April 2018 – Get it Right in the Camera, Blend Modes, Add Rainbow, Blur Background, Lightroom Tips

We hear this a lot.  “I can fix that in post.”  White balance, composition, exposure: with our current software we have marvelous capabilities to correct the things we messed up while taking the picture.  But why?  Some of us spend a lot of time on our images, editing them to create the art we see in our minds.  Why waste time fixing stuff when you could have Got It Right In Camera.  Here’s a good article from Mike Watson, posted on Picture Correct titled, “Getting It Right In The Camera”.

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/getting-it-right-in-the-camera/

 

One of the often-overlooked features of Photoshop is the blending modes.  You can apply the various blending modes to your adjustment layers to change the way the adjustments appear on your image.  Here’s my favorite French photographer, Serge Ramelli, with a video explaining the various blend modes.  It appeared on Shutterbug in an article by Ron Leach titled “Photoshop Tips” Blend Modes Made Simple”.  The video is at the bottom of the article.

https://www.shutterbug.com/content/photoshop-tips-blend-modes-made-simple-video

 

Alright, summer is coming and we’re going to be outside a lot taking pictures.  Sometimes though, nature doesn’t cooperate, and something is missing from the scene we have in front of us.  Think of all the images that could be improved if you had a rainbow in your picture.  One of the more interesting images I’ve seen was a picture of a portapotty.   Now what could make a picture of a portapotty interesting you say.  Well, this portapotty was sitting right at the end of a beautiful rainbow.  It made a boring picture interesting.  Here’s an article on Scottkelby.com by David Williams titled: “Add a Cheeky Little Rainbow With Photoshop”.  Now I just need to find a portapotty.

https://scottkelby.com/add-a-cheeky-little-rainbow-with-photoshop/

 

One way we add separation of the subject in our pictures is to shoot so the background is blurred.  We do this by using a low number f-stop.  Sometimes you need more blur or sometimes you thought you wanted everything sharp while you were taking the picture but decided in post that parts of the image needed to attract less attention.  Here’s an article on Digital Trends by Hillary Grigonis titled: Bokeh for beginners: How to blur a background in Photoshop in mere minutes.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/how-to-blur-a-background-in-photoshop/

 

Richard Smith has just taken us through two months of Lightroom in the February and March Boot Camps.  This next article should supplement his training.   Lightroom is one of my favorite programs and I can’t imagine working without it.  One of my favorite Scott Kelby quotes is “There are two types of photographers, those who use Lightroom and those who should”.  Here’s an article on Picture Correct by Andrew Gibson titled “The 6 Most Important Things You Need To Know In Lightroom”.  I might cross out the word Most, but they are important.

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/the-6-most-important-things-you-need-to-know-in-lightroom/

March 2018 – Crop Tool, Add Clouds, Double Exposure, Split Toning, File Formats

We’ve all heard numerous times about using the rule of thirds when composing your images, but have you heard about the Golden Ratio or the Golden Triangle?  Here’s our old friend Aaron Nace from Phlearn to explain how these things work and how to use them to enhance the composition of your photographs.  Aaron uses overlays in the Photoshop crop tool to display the three guides, but the same things are available in Lightroom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqGM0TKeRDc&feature=youtu.be

 

Bill Fortney was once asked how he got so many iconic photographs of our national parks.  His answer was simple: Go back 20 times.  I don’t know about you, but I consider myself lucky if I can get to an exotic place once.  20 times just isn’t going to happen.  So, what do you do if Mother Nature doesn’t cooperate?  You get shots of beautiful scenery, but she gives you a plain white sky.  We have the skill and technology.  We fix It in Photoshop.  Here’s an article and video on Shutterbug.  The article is by Ron Leach and the video is by Unmesh Dinda.  It’s titled: Here’s How to Add Clouds & Enhance Colors for More Dramatic Landscape Photos.

https://www.shutterbug.com/content/photoshop-tips-here’s-how-add-clouds-enhance-colors-more-dramatic-landscape-photos-video

 

One of the tricks that we’ve been seeing a lot of over the past few years is double exposure photography.  The most popular seems to be a silhouette of a person with a landscape shot inside the silhouette.  Here’s an article in Light Stalking by Taissia Iv titled: How to Make Double Exposures in Photoshop. 

https://www.lightstalking.com/how-to-make-double-exposures-photoshop/

 

One interesting little trick that we can use to give our images a consistent style across a group of images is something called split toning.  Evan Ranft uses Lightroom for this tutorial.  It’s a little more complicated to do in Photoshop.  At least I haven’t found an easy way to do it.  The article is titled: How to Use Split Toning in Lightroom to Accentuate Your Colors.

https://www.pdnonline.com/gear/software/how-to-use-split-toning-in-lightroom-to-accentuate-your-colors/

 

One thing we have a lot of in photography is file formats.  From each camera manufacturer’s proprietary raw format to DNG to PSD to tiff to jpeg.  Here’s tutorial from George Benz that sorts everything out to what to use for what purpose.  It’s titled:  The Photographers Guide to File Formats in Lightroom and Photoshop.

https://gregbenzphotography.com/photography-tips/the-photographers-guide-to-file-formats-in-lightroom-and-photoshop

February 2018 – Cloning, Heat Map, Focus, Hyperfocal Distance, Lightroom, Beginner Tips

Well it’s still cold outside.  It’s the time to stay in and work on your post processing skills so we’ll feature a few Photoshop techniques this month.  Blake Rudis from f.64 Academy is a guy that loves post processing more than photography and he puts out an incredible amount of useful information for free.  We’ve got a few from him in this article.

 

The Clone Stamp Tool isn’t one of the sexier tools in Photoshop but it’s really useful once you learn to use it properly.  Here’s Blake’s tutorial titled “5 Very Practical Tips for the Clone Stamp Tool”.

https://f64academy.com/5-practical-tip-clone-stamp-tool/

 

Another one of Blake’s creations that I’ve been playing with recently that seems to have some promise of working its way into my post processing workflow is the use of a heat map to help bring out and balance the colors in your images.  The example Blake uses for this tutorial is an image of the Milky Way, but the technique will work equally well for landscape images.  Blake also makes available an action package for you to download to make this easier.  Here’s his tutorial titled “The 5 Tone Heat in Photoshop”

https://f64academy.com/5-tone-heat-map-photoshop/

 

Taking sharp images has been a popular discussion around club events recently so I’ve added a few articles tutorials about taking pictures that are in focus and sharpening them in post. 

 

The first is an article from the Picture Correct website by Rajib Mukherjee titled: My Camera Won’t Focus:  The 8 Most Common Problems”.  There is a possibility that the problem is not you.  Here’s a link to that article and video.

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/my-camera-wont-focus-the-8-most-common-problems/

 

Up next is a YouTube tutorial by Dave Morrow titled My Sharp Focus Technique – Back Button Focus & Hyperfocal Distance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQDhOWcy6f0

 

And to finish it off, a tutorial from Blake Rudis again, (I told you he puts out a lot of info) titled “Sharpening in Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom”.

https://f64academy.com/sharpening-adobe-camera-raw-lightroom/

 

To wrap it up for this month we’ll go back to basics for the beginner and as a refresher for all you advanced shooters.  Here’s an article from Picture Correct titled “10 DSLR Camera Features You Should Know” (Really Well, my italics) It’s written by Graham Wadden.

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/10-features-of-a-dslr-camera-that-you-should-know/

January 2018 – Create Snow, Composition, Sunset, HSL, Flash, Lightroom

December was a tough month for new photography tutorials, most of the sources spent more time trying to sell stuff rather than teach stuff.  That’s OK because they have to make some money to keep teaching us stuff for free.  I still managed to put together some interesting stuff searching new releases on YouTube so here we go.

 

The first article was drawn to my attention by our award-winning newsletter editor herself, Rosemary Jardine.  Some of you may know that Rosemary has moved to someplace where they have beautiful fall colors and snow the rest of the year.  Berrrrrrrrrr!  Rosemary used this tutorial from our old friend at Phlearn titled How to Create Snow in Photoshop to create this Stunning Christmas card.

You can find the article here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP7qiZIuTA0

 

 

We’ll change climate a little bit and move over to another of my favorite guys, Serge Ramelli.  In this tutorial Serge is tackling composition.  He does his post processing in Lightroom, but his composition instruction works for everybody and his post processing will work in Adobe Camera Raw as well as in Lightroom.  Here’s his tutorial titled Understanding Composition: Imperial Dunes Lightroom Tutorial.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF-CBOlIyu4

 

Here’s a new instructor I don’t think I’ve referenced in the past.  Greg Benz is best known for his use of Luminosity Masks and the Photoshop Panel he created to make luminosity masking easy called Lumenzia.  Here Greg is just focusing on Sunsets in his article How to Use HSL for Beautiful Sunsets without Color Banding.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0S2DTWzdPc

 

Here’s one from our Phlearn buddy, Aaron Nace on using Flash.  I wish I had found this before Christmas when I had to take a bunch of family pictures and doing it by trial and error.  Here Aaron tells how to Create Beautiful, Natural Lighting with Flash & the Ideal ISO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78eKWIfEltc

 

For Those of you who use Photoshop and Lightroom, you probably realize that Adobe put out a recent update to Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw.  One of the big changes was to enhance the results of the lowly Auto Button.  Now you ask, “Who uses the Auto button anyway”?  I’m not sure, but apparently Adobe thinks we ought to be using it a lot more then we do.  Here’s how Adobe describes it”

  Using an advanced neural network powered by Adobe Sensei, our artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning platform, the new Auto Settings creates a better photo by analyzing your photo and comparing to tens of thousands of professionally edited photos to create a beautiful, pleasing image.

Sounds impressive doesn’t it.  Blake Rudis of f.64 Academy has devoted 14 minutes to explain to us just how awesome (his word) it is.

https://f64academy.com/auto-button-acr-lightroom/

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