Balancing Act

Here's the unedited image, found on google:



Here's the same picture, after using the levels adjustment on photoshop:

White Balance

Color temperature is a term sometimes used to describe white balance.
White balance is basically how white objects are tinted- "warm" blue, or "cool" red, which is opposite of what we typically think about those colors. Sunlight typically leans more towards red on the black body spectrum, and tungsten lighting is typically shifted more towards blue (it can also be yellow, depending on the light). Flourescent lighting is normally some sort of green.

All this really means is if theoretically you take a picture of someone wearing a white shirt, outside on a sunny day it will be slightly tinted blue, inside it will be tinted slightly red or yellow, and under flourescent light slightly green. This applies to everything in the shot, not just perfectly white objects.

To correct white balance before shooting, many cameras have adjustable white balance settings (example, mine has tungsten, overcast, sunny, flourescent, etc, and a custom setting). With film, because you don't have these options, and also with digital if you don't want to use all the buttons, a colored filter can be added to the lense or a gel can be stretched over the flash.

To shoot inside you would use a blue gel/filter, outside you would use a red/yellow filter, and in flourescent lighting a magenta filter. These take some playing around with, but you can easily change the white balance to whatever you want.
Of coruse thanks to Photoshop, we can also quickly adjust white balance levels after taking a shot.

Say Cheese

Three things to remember when taking portraits are:
~ Typically, the camera should be positioned at eye level of the subject, ESPECIALLY with children.
~ Use a simple background that won't distract the viewer, unless the background is relevant (like an environmental portrait).
~ Fill the frame with the subject. They ARE the subject, after all.


There are a few main types of portraits:

Environmental: In an environmental portrait, the picture tells the story of the subject. How they're dressed, what they're doing, or where they are are all factors in creating a portrait that shows the subject's personality.



Here's an example of an environmental portrait. It's a bit comical too.

Candid: In candid portraits, the subject is typically unaware and in an uncontrolled setting. Sometimes the subject can also be aware of the presence of the photographer, but they are not posed.

Posed: All this means is that the photographer has communicated to the subject, and the subject acts or poses a certain way to create the desired shot.

Formal: A formal portrait is planned out; the clothing, location, style, mood, etc is all controlled by the photographer.

Group: Obviously, a portrait taken of a larger group of people.

Couple: The object of the photo is to portray the connection between the two subjects, whether it be motherly affection, attraction, or teamwork.

Sporting: A portrait of an athlete. Their uniform and surroundings tells you what sport they participate in, and the mood of the subject can tell you their attitude at the time of the shot.

Children: Portraits of children can be candid or posed. Typically parents like to have portraits of their children when they're very young.

to 'shop, or not to 'shop!

This was the original picture, borrowed from Flickr (not my photo).



I played with the hue (made it more green/cyan instead of magenta/yellow) then desaturated it. Plain black and white just doesn't suit my mood today!





Here's a picture of musicians Tegan and Sara. I borrowed it from Google to play around with.
This is the original.



I found a "retro color" tutorial, and I played around and made it look liiiiiike this!



This one, I cut Sara out using the pen tool.



This was a picture I found on flickr (the background), and I used the quick mask tool to cut a bug out of one of my own pictures, and paste it in!

A Few of My Africa Pictures

This summer, my dad, my uncle, my aunt, and I hopped on a plane and went to Namibia. My dad was going on his 3rd (or was it 4th?!) African safari, and decided to bring my uncle along for his first big game hunt. Michelle and I tagged along as the "team photographers". Official, right?

Here's my dad, trying to convince my Aunt Michelle not to go home when the going got tough at Sea-Tac. Our flight was delayed by 6 hours and we had to rebook every step of the way from there on out. :(



The horrible flights were worth it though, because here's the bed I slept in every night! King sized beds with heated blankets were in everyone's tents to keep us warm during African winter nights.



Ostriches, running from our jeep as we went out in the afternoon to look for a trophy Kudu. They're much bigger in real life!



Here is (foreground to background) my uncle Howard, our tracker Jonas, my dad Scott, and our PH (professional hunter) Jamie Trautt. The guys went out to look for blesbuck, leaving the women-folk in the jeep to twiddle their thumbs.



Giraffes at sunset- how could you get a more typical "Africa picture"? Keep looking. (This was edited to up the brightness in the foreground because driving around in an open jeep isn't the greatest place to take a good long exposure shot.)



Acacia trees at sunset! This has been edited to bring back out the color of the sky, because it was taken my last night out in the jeep, going much too fast over too many bumps for a long exposure.



These last two were taken the second night in Eden at the waterhole outside the dining hut (which really shouldn't be called a hut, it's more of a dining hall!). I was fiddling around with different settings trying to get cool effects!



This shot, believe it or not, probably took about 35 seconds. The Waterbuck in the foreground stood completely still, staring me down through the lens of my camera for the entire shot!




These are only a smaaaall percentage of the pictures I took, but they're some of the highlights of the trip. If my dad's new article gets published though, you can look forward to seeing more of my pictures IN PRINT! My dad writes articles for various and sundry gun magazines (EEP no guns in school :S) so a few of the pictures I took are being shipped out with his article about Africa.

My DOF photos

Here the toy plane is in focus, while the rest of the scene (the coral and dinosaur) is blurred. An f.5 was used on this shot to make the depth of field very narrow.


In this shot, only the dinosaur in the background is in focus. This also used an f.5, focusing instead on the dinosaur.


Sorry about the subject switch, but here's a shot with 3 items in focus (the keyboard, the left computer screen, and the water bottle.) This picture was taken with a large aperture; I think about an f.20. That made for a little motion blur though, as conditions didn't lend themselves to a good long exposure. :(

The Field is Pretty Deep

What is Depth of Field?

Depth of field is the distance in front of and beyond the subject that is in focus. The main influences on depth of field are camera type, aperture, and focusing distance. Depth of field is a gradual transition- things further from the focus point get more and more out of focus. To understand this transition from in-focus to out of focus, you have to understand the "circle of confusion". This term is used to define how much a point needs to be blurred to be perceived as out of focus. When the circle of confusion is perceptable to human eyes, the point is no longer "acceptably sharp." Larger apertures/smaller f-numbers give you a shallower depth of field, meaning a more select portion of the frame is in focus. The opposite is also true.


This picture has a fairly shallow depth of field, so only one pool ball is in focus.



This picture has a much larger depth of field, so almost everything in the frame is in sharp focus.


Besides changing aperture to change your depth of field, you can also use the hyperfocal distance to make your pictures sharper. The hyperfocal distance is the point where the image is sharp (anything in front of it is out of focus) when your aperture is set to infinity. To make up for this you can aim at the hyperfocal distance, which will make everything in front of the point sharp too.


This is an example of how to use hyperfocal distance to create a sharper image.

How Can I Control Depth of Field?

1. Adjusting The Aperture.
Like I mentioned, having a smaller f-number means you have a shallower depth of field- less of your photo will be in focus. Also, the larger the f-number you use, the greater depth of field, and the more of the image will be sharp. When stopping down, if you use too small of an f-number, you can lose quality, so make sure you only stop down as far as is necessary. Also, the smaller the aperture, the longer exposure you'll need, so a tripod is helpful for this type of shot.

These three pictures show the same photo with a wide aperture, a medium aperture, and a narrow aperture, resp.



2. Focal Length.
The longer the focal length of your lens is, the shallower depth of field you'll get. If you use a 30 mm lens, everything will probably be fairly sharp. If you were to use a zoom lens of 135 mm, your depth of field is cut, and the background will be much more out of focus. And if you use an even more powerful telephoto lens, say 300 mm, the background will be almost completely blurred. The longer the focal length of your lens, the more dramatically the background will be blurred.

Here is the same photo, taken with a 35 mm lens, a 135 mm lens, and a 300 mm lens, resp.

3. Focus Distance.
The easiest way to control depth of field-- where you are in relation to your subject. The closer you are to the subject, the narrower depth of field any lens or aperture will give you. This is especially dramatic when shooting macro, when subjects are greatly magnified and also very close to the lens. So if you want to get a sharp picture of a landscape, you'll have greater depth of field the further away you are. If you want to take a picture of someone's eye, blurring out everything else, your best bet will to get up close and personal with your model!


Here is the same image, focusing on the background, the middle ground, and the foreground, resp.

(4.) Camera Sensor Size
When you're choosing sensor size, your major choices are 35mm, medium format, and large format sensors. (Camera sensors, as we learned about earlier, are grids with millions of pixels that catch light to create an image.) As sensor size increases, depth of field for a givin aperture will decrease. This happens because larger sensors require you to get closer to your subject, or use a longer focal length (zoom in) to fill the frame. Because of this, you have to use smaller aperture sizes to maintain the same depth of field on a larger sensor.