Calibrating For Color / Black and White Photography Challenge

Hello everyone,

I have thoroughly enjoyed taking photographs and displaying them or giving them as gifts. As long as I have used my PC and my Dell 19" LCD monitor, however, the pictures have for the most part matched what I see on screen. Occasionally I will find they are a bit darker than expected. With such a small difference, I never worried about calibrating my monitor.

I recently purchased a 13" Macbook to use while on the go. My daughter, who is two and a half, runs around taking pictures with an old Coolpix camera that I used to use. She loves taking photos of everything she can find. I looked at her camera the other day just to see what photographs she had taken and I was amazed at how good some of them were. I decided to get them printed for her and put them in a small album that she could carry with her and show others.

I uploaded the pictures to the new Macbook and uploaded them to a local photo department. When I picked up the pictures, I immediately noticed that the color was off. Nothing too obvious, but definitely noticeable. My daughter was thrilled, however. I decided then that I needed to look into a way to calibrate my monitor.

I found a very affordable solution at www.bhphotovideo.com called the "Pantone Huey". It is the standard version but promises to not only correct my color problem, but also continually read the ambient lighting in the room so the monitor automatically adjusts. While this might not matter in most cases, but if you do your work, say, next to a window, it automatically adjusts as the sun rises, through the day, and as the sun sets. Pretty cool feature.

It arrives tomorrow, and I'm going to try it out with the HP 20" 2009m monitor I just ordered as well. I'm going to use it as an external monitor, so I'll be sure to post how well it is working.

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CHALLENGE #2

We haven't had a challenge opportunity to improve our creativity in awhile, so I figured now was a perfect time.

Black and white photographs have always interested me. They really force you to look at the actual photo in terms of lines, shapes, tone and so on. Take a bland looking color photo and convert it to black and white and you may find that you have a wonderful photo. Color can hide the intricate parts that make a photo.

I encourage you to see your surroundings as if you were looking at a black and white picture. Look for differences in contrast and tone.

As always, the Flickr group is located at http://www.flickr.com/groups/1225211@N22/.

Have a great day!

Using Manual Mode

From when you take your first photo to now, your goal was, more than likely, to have a "properly exposed" photograph. This photo was by the textbook. While being technically correct, this did not create very many opportunities to be more creative.

I have to admit that when I first started using my camera that using manual mode was out of the question. I restricted myself to either Aperture Priority mode, where the camera chooses the shutter speed for you based on what aperture you have selected to program mode, which is basically an automatic mode that allows you to set things such as ISO.

With Aperture Priority mode, it did a decent job of getting the correct exposure on most photographs. However, there are times that you need creative control and need to be able to choose the shutter speed and the aperture. By choosing the shutter speed, I can make sure that motion is conveyed by blurring whatever I am taking a photo of, but what if I want good depth of field too? Thats where being able to choose your aperture as well comes in handy.

In the photo above, I knew that I wanted the motion to be shown. I wanted the lines to blend together. I needed a very slow shutter speed to be able to capture that motion, but to be able to get that lower shutter speed, I had to have a very small aperture.

Most newer cameras come with a built in exposure meter. This invaluable tool is what makes using manual mode so easy and intuitive. If you look in your viewfinder, you will see a small area that has a plus and minus sign, and several bars in between with a larger vertical bar in the middle. When you point your camera at various subjects, you will notice that the bar either fills up toward the minus or the plus sign. If you adjust your shutter speed and aperture until neither side is being filled up, you will have a "correctly exposed" photograph.

I pointed my camera at the ferris wheel, and with a low shutter speed, I had the entire area toward the plus sign filled. This told me that my photograph would be very overexposed. I knew that the shutter speed had to stay slow enough to convey the motion, so I began to adjust the aperture until the built in exposure meter indicated that I was just slightly underexposed. It had slightly filled the area toward the minus sign. The picture above is the one that I achieved by taking those steps.

Mnual mode offers many creative opportunities. If I had wanted to adjust that picture even more, such as make the sky a bit darker, I could have used a slightly higher shutter speed, which would have resulted in an even more underexposed photograph, or used a much smaller aperture.

Now, you may have noticed that your camera has numerous options for evaluating the light in a scene. My Nikon uses Matrix metering, Center Weighted metering and Spot metering. This is what tells your exposure meter it should do. Depending on the situation, you will select one of the above. Lets say that I used Spot metering. Using the ferris wheel as an example, I knew that I wanted the ferris wheel to be exposed correctly. I pointed the center autofocus point toward the ferris wheel and adjusted my settings until the built in exposure meter told me that I was just slightly underexposed. When I moved the camera to compose my photograph, the center autofocus point landed on something else in the scene. The exposure meter immediately began to tell me I was under or over exposed more than the ferris wheel. Because I was able to set my aperture and shutter speed using manual mode, I knew that the camera wouldn't automatically adjust to compensate when I moved the camera.

Give manual mode a try. I am positive that it will result in you becoming for comfortable with your camera and as a result seeing more photographs that you will enjoy.

Reflections

I’ve been trying to become more creative over the past few weeks. I had started to notice that my photographs were starting to look the same, so I decided that it was time to open my eyes and renew my photos.

While at a carnival on our vacation, I noticed that a puddle from a recent rain shower provided a great view of the ferris wheel.

How many times do we catch ourselves trying to take as many

photos as we can, only to miss a great one

because we didn’t take our time. This photo is a perfect example. As I took this one, a large group of people were walking by on their way to the next ride. This small unnoticeable puddle provided an awesome opportunity to take a great photo.

If I could share one helpful tip that I have learned, it is to slow down and notice what is around you. Normally we would walk by puddles like this, but creative photos abound if we are willing to look for them.

The Right Photography Equipment Encourages Creativity

Last February I sold my Nikon D40 and purchased a Nikon D70 with 18-70mm lens. I did this so that I could do more creative things with my photography such as HDR, or High Dynamic Range photography. I also wanted to be able to use my Nikon SB-600 off camera with the help of Nikon's Creative Lighting System.

The D70 is an awesome camera, but I always found myself fighting with the controls. My D40 was very easy to use, even though it didn't have dedicated buttons for most of the settings that I often changed. I received my D80 yesterday, and after using it, it occured to me that having a camera that is easy to use really encourages creativity. Being creative takes practice, and if you are constantly fighting with your camera you are not going to use it. My Nikon D80 reminds me of my D40's layout, but includes the dedicated buttons that I use most often. Not only does it feel great, it has quite a few upgrades over the D70, such as a higher mexapixel count which will allow for more cropping, a bigger LCD for reviewing photos, and an easier to navigate menu.

Of course, having the right lens to achieve the photo that you want is just as important. In the past, the biggest block to my creativity was not being able to focus as close as I wanted to. Most of my lenses had a twelve inch plus minimum focusing distance, so getting close ups of flowers and other plants was not an option. The Sigma 17-70mm that I ordered to go with my D80, however, solves that by giving me a minimum focusing distance of seven inches! This is from the sensor, though, and not the end of the lens, so I am able to focus very close!

I have been reading up on panoramic photography as well as HDR. I believe photomatix is the best software for HDR, and also happens to be much cheaper than Adobe photoshop. As far as panoramas go, I found a program called Microsoft I.C.E., or Image Composite Editor. This is a free program from Microsoft that allows you to stitch your panorama photos together. It does a great job with the test photos that I used. It did seem to take a bit longer than photoshop elements, but the results were top notch. For a free program, it really does a great job. If you are looking to get started with panoramic photography, I recommend downloading Microsoft's I.C.E. and trying it out.

Have a great week!

Zac

Stuck In A Rut - Challenge 1 - Summary

Well it has certainly been an interesting week. I have been trying my best to look for things that I have not noticed before.

If I have learned anything this week, it is that there are some things that may not look like very photographic subjects, but when you view them from a new angle or get in close, they really stand out.

Since I started my photography hobby, I have always drawn inspiration from other photographers photos. I believe there is a great deal that we can learn from other photographers, but it is also important that we develop our own style. If we only try to imitate the work of others rather than branch out and create our own work, we are setting limits on our skills and talents.

I discovered that if I focused more on taking photos from my point of view rather than trying to get a similar result from another picture that I had seen, that I enjoyed myself more and became more creative at the same time.

I have read that photographers are artists, and rather than brushes and paints, the camera is our tool of choice. We compose the image in our minds and then capture our point of view. So many things can influence our photography. If you take two photographers who photograph the same subject at the same time, you are likely to get two sets of very different photographs.

Take what you learned from the last challenge and continue to develop your ability to see creative photos around you. We will start a new challenge next week!

Have a great week,

Zac

Stuck In A Rut - Challenge 1

Challenge 1 - Your Own Backyard

You do not have to go far to be able to find beautiful, creative images. Most of these photographs can be found right in your own backyard if you are patient enough to look.

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Challenge Rules:

Subjects:

No limitations. If it is in your backyard, it is free to be photographed.

Photos can be either in black and white or color.

Only three (3) photos can be uploaded per challenge.

Photos must be taken on your own property.

Please put the following information in the description:

Camera Used

Lens Used

Why did you take that picture?

Any photoshop editing? If so, what?

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I encourage you to take a fresh look at your surroundings. Look for creative lines and shapes. Get a new perspective. Look for something that you have never seen before. It is so easy to see the same thing over and over again. By taking the time to study our surroundings, we can begin to see our creative side grow.

I have created a flickr group under "One Creative Photo" to post the assignment pictures to. I believe that having this group will help us grow collectively. Posting your photos to the group will allow you to inspire others and get constructive criticism from fellow photographers.

Here is the link to the new Flickr group: One Creative Photo