Beyond The Basics
Taught by Professional Photographer and member of OC Photography Center, Michael Sweeney.
Have you ever wondered why the background of pictures are pleasantly blurred? How about that cool image of the child blowing out the candles on the birthday cake but they are not the typical white faced blasted look? Have you ever wanted to make art for your walls but none of your pictures look like those you see for sale? Have you wondered why so many of your snapshots look like everyone elses?
If the anwser is yes to any or all of these questions, then this is the class for you.
This class is for those that have either completed our beginning photography class or have been working on their own and would like to take their photography to a new level. This class is where we will review the basics and then take things forward so you can start to be the artist you want to be.
The class will cover the following topics.
- Basic camera operation refresh
Shutter
Aperture
ISO - Light
What is light, really?
Small lights vs. large lights – your pop up flash vs. the sun for example
Why is any of this important?
Shoot to the right
Sunny Rule of 16 - Design Principles – How do I get the pictures to just grab you?
The rule of thirds
The golden ratio
Shoot high/shoot low
Don’t be a bullseye
Why the subject doesnt have to always look at you
A bit of blur can be a good thing - Flash is your friend at any time of the day or night
Why use a flash
Shootout at high noon or how I learned to love the sun
How to use flash as an accent
How to avoid that lovely white blasted vampire look - Capturing Pixels
What is all this about megapixals and what do I really need?
Why are over exposing highlights really bad?
The great war, JPEG vs RAW files
Does the lens really matter? - OK, I have pictures, now what do I do with them?
- Anyone can print now, using online labs
- Resolution and what it really means to you
- Color space and no, it’s not something from Home Depot
- Editing on the cheap, options for the non-pro but enthusiastic user
- Putting pictures up on the web
- How can I make a book or calendar?
Class Time
Evenings: Tuesday evenings
Dates: February 28th & March 6th, 2012
Time: 7:00 pm- 9:00 pm.
Fee: $90
Where: At the OC Photography Center
714-529-3686
Remember to bring your camera, something to take notes and smiles!
Please reserve your spot a least a week before first class. Thank you. Look forward to a great class!
Image via Wikipedia
Do you remember the view master with the wheel of pictures? You know the ones, pictures of national monuments, theme parks, cartoons and the like. You would insert the wheel of pictures, hold it up to the light and, klunk, wheel rotates, klunk, wheel rotates and on and on.
You can still buy one of these machines today and look at Hot Wheels or any of the old wheels so long as you have a bright light handy.
So why am I bringing this up? Because I was trying to work out in my head the other day how to show off some pictures from my 4th of July party and I was inspired to make and fake a View Master picture wheel as a prop of sorts.
A bit of googling and I found the perfect template created by ScrappinCop in the form of a Photoshop PSD file ready to go. So one template download later and we are off and running.
I did make each image a clipping mask to ease the adjustments and cropping. I used the transform tool to resize images to the dinky openings. And I make each “image” a smart object so I can go back and swap out the image pretty easily.
After I put my images in the openings, I added a used paper texture to the wheel so it had the used and aged look to it.I selected all the openings and outside edge and added a brownish stroke of 1 pixel to set it off against whatever background I have on.
Here is what I ended up with as my vintage prop to show off my images in a unique way. Go ahead and give it a try.. it was a lot of fun to do and everyone liked the results as a fun way to show off a collection of images.
Related articles
- Vintage View-Master: Germany (Nations of the World series), reel 3 (grayflannelsuit.net)
I saw a very interesting blog posting on how to shoot flowers using a light box. I took a different approach since I did not want to build a cardboard box so anything else. I took my large softbox and flipped it upside down. I could do this because I use C stands with boom arms and it becomes very easy to change the orientation of a modifier. I just made sure that the legs were in the right position to take up the low weight and added a few sand bags for good measure.
I then put a piece of clear plexiglass on top of the softbox or now light table and put my subject on top of that. I have a Photogenics 1250 strobe but now I would pull it and put in the 600 instead. The 1250 is too strong even turned down as low as it can go. I plan to try it with white plexiglass whereas I’m shooting with clear right now. The white should be worth a couple of stops.
I had a second mini softbox using an SB800 in SU mode on a monopod that I held over the subject. I manually set the SB800 to something around 1/8 power and about 3 feet high. I tried straight on, sideways and all kinds of angles. The best results seemed to be feathering the small soft box slightly to pick up some edge shadows.
I used a pair of Atlas pocket wizard clones on this shoot only because they were handy and my real PWs were packed away. I shot with:
- Nikon D300
- 50mm 1.4 at F16
- ISO 100
- Shutter at 1/250
Next time I will put the small light box on a second C stand instead of holding it. That was just too much trouble but I was in a real hurry to try this and get back to the family outside. The ladder was the only way I could get enough hight to shoot down on my subject, anywhere else and I was shooting across it and it did not work nearly as well.
Related articles
- Cream-of-the-crop DIY Softbox Designs (makezine.com)
- DIY Photography Softbox from a Styrofoam Cooler [Video] (lifehacker.com)
- DIY lightbox repurposes useless scanner (hackaday.com)
- DIY softboxes light your photos on the cheap (hackaday.com)
