Lighting Matters
I often get asked how much altering I do to my photos within Photoshop due to the high contrast and saturated colors in my photos. I’m somewhat of a purist when it comes to the editing of photos so I do very little to my photos in Photoshop aside from slight adjustments to contrast, saturation and sharpening – all things that were commonly done within film darkrooms. The keys to the nice colors and contrast within photos really boil down to two things: lighting and the use of a polarizing filter to reduce glare. I’m not going to address polarizing filters in this post but wanted to leave a quick note about lighting. Landscape lighting is best in the soft light of morning or evening. Light at those times has a warmer glow to it (technically it is a cooler temperature light but I’ll save that for a future post) and lights objects from the side, exposing textures and increasing meaningful contrast. As I have worked to improve my photography I have become somewhat of a lighting bigot and don’t even think it worth shooting if I can’t get good lighting and dramatic skies in my photos. Of course, that means I take fewer photos [...]
Canon AF-On Button
January 5, 2010 by Cody · Leave a Comment
Up until recently I had been a recomposing monkey when taking portraits or family photos. See, when using auto focus (AF), I like to use the center focus point, focus on what I’d like to be sharp, and then recompose the shot. The problem that crops up though, is that once I recompose and press the shutter button halfway down, the AF locks on something else (the new spot where the center focus point is), ruining my previous focus setting. To compensate for the problem I had been pressing the shutter button down halfway and holding it while I recomposed the shot, but that leads to a problem where I have to redo all those steps every time I press the shutter. What a pain in the neck, especially if my camera’s on a tripod. So, as a result, I had been searching for a solution to this problem and ran across the AF-On button, which allows me to separate the AF functionality from exposure and thus allows me to lock the AF so I am free to recompose the shot. I’ve been experimenting with using the button and am very pleased with the freedom it’s offering me. Here’s what I now do: Zoom to [...]
Difference Between Pretty Scenes and Good Photographs
June 4, 2009 by Cody · Leave a Comment
Good photographs are difficult to come by. Pretty scenery, at least in Utah, is much easier to find. What’s the difference, you might ask? In my opinion, it boils down to a few items: Good composition Excellent lighting Vibrant colors Strong contrast My family and I recently took a trip down to the Provo River area to play in the river and scout some photo locations. I’ll use a couple of photographs I took while down there (pretty scenery but not good photos) to illustrate the difference between a pretty scene and a good photograph. Here are the photos. This first photograph of the mountains near the Sundance Ski Resort has some elements of a successful composition but is missing some key elements that would make it a good photograph. It has nice lines running from right to left in the contours of the grass and has a dramatic sky, something that is often times difficult to capture, but, due to the angle at which I took this photo, as well as the wide angle lens used, the mountains are far less imposing than they are in real life. In real life, they are rugged and imposing but this photo doesn’t do them justice. Another [...]
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