Ready in 60 Seconds: After you choose the subject but before before you release the shutter, try taking a full minute to think about your scene and how you’re about to capture it. Really. Don’t just look at it. SEE IT. Sometimes we feel pressured to click. But even with a portrait, learn to take a little time and you’re images WILL improve. With some scenes you can even spend longer. Check out the 111 Project.
Sparks: I stood outside well before the exit. Experimenting, considering the scene, trying to predict the light. The effort paid off with a great candid from a challenging scene.
Cut The Trash: I know, you’ve already taken 60 seconds, you have a plan. But look again. Maybe even take a test frame. Controlling tone, removing clutter and distracting elements is one of the most neglected elements in art making. If something is not adding to the image, it should not be in the frame. Either you move, move it, or it will move the quality of your final image down to LOW.
by Jason Eldridge: Have you ever thought, ‘if I could just travel to exotic locations I could produce great images’? Has that ever stopped you from getting off the couch to go shoot? It is a way of thinking that will stagnate your growth as a photographer. This haunted me for over two years.
I moved from the majestic mountains of East Tennessee to the flat swampland of the Florida Everglades (specifically just south of Miami, FL) and at this time I considered myself a nature/landscape photographer. My photography suffered as I spent a couple of years complaining about the lack of shooting locations and about how I lost the mountains. The next trip back to Tennessee is all that would spark my photographic interest. One day I was sitting on the couch next to my wife who looked at me and simply said “why don’t you just go photograph where we live? After all we may not be here forever”. I stuttered a bit trying to find a good counter but to no avail. The following week I took a trip to Miami for some nighttime photos.
I started doing real research about photographic opportunities in my area. I was shocked at all the viable locations in my own back yard. I discovered the right times of year to go into the Everglades and what weather conditions worked for both city and nature photography. I began expanding my focus (no pun intended). Portraiture and wedding photography became an interest. Before I knew it I was fully engaged into photography again.
It’s Gavin Seim here and I’m in on site in New Orleans for the next three days at Imaging USA 2012. I’ll be checking out the latest in the photography world and imaging education.
Also if you’re at the conference, shout out. Send an email to prophotoshow@gmail.com to get on the list because we’re working on planning a photo walk into the French Quarter tomorrow night. Good times coming up.
If your at the con and trying to find me you’re also welcome to email or text me, 509-951-4860.
A photo of Tanguy's motion control rig. More below.
by Gavin Seim: As an HDR nerd and teacher I’m not easy to impress. But this did it. Tanguy Louvigny. did this really stunning sequence of HDR time lapses and really nailed it on various levels. First, as an dynamic range guy, I really admire how the process he used in Photomatix is balanced and didn’t go for that way over the top tonemap process.
His result for all this was a really stunning body of time lapse work. I hope to look closer at the system that he used for his rig. It seems there’s some possibilities there. You can also read a bit more on picturecorrect as they did a little interview asking Tanguy some detail questions.
All in all it’s quite impressive. Watch the video below and check out his site. And since we’re on the HDR topic, I’ll throw in a shameless plug and add that if you want to learn more about capturing and processing HDR, check out my HDR Magic video training series... Gav
Here’s a forest series he did using the same setup.
by Gavin Seim: With the new LR4 beta now out, I’ve of course been poking around inside. One great feature for us that capture video, is the ability to play and do light edits via Quick Develop and build video clips into our LR workflow.
But there’s something more that you may have noticed. Initially just basic settings are shown available for video, as we can see on the left. Exposure, contrast and the like. Others get greyed out. Also when you attempt to go into the Develop module for more advanced edits, it simply says “Video is not supported in Develop.”
And yet, it seems we can use some Develop settings via presets. I decided to just run a few from Seim Effects presets and see what happened. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the dialog below and that while not all, many of the develop settings are actually available using presets. Settings I was able to apply and export on my clip.
Needless to say I was pretty excited. I didn’t see this shown at the Adobe press conference a few weeks back and as far as I know Adobe has announced no official develop module support for video. But it stands to reason it may be coming.
The Technique for right now is to make Develop presets on a still frame and then apply those settings to video. We can tweak color channels, curves and the like and really gain a great deal of control over video clips in very short order. It’s not perfect: There’s still some settings missing that would be valuable, but we’re off to a good start.
I’m rather excited at the workflow potential. And that I’ll be able to offer presets that can be used for video editing. We’ll see what happens. I plan to experiment further and post some free video presets soon on my blog.. G
LR tells me that not all settings from the preset are being used and lists what's available before applying the effect. Still a pretty effective lineup of tools.Copy Settings showed all available tools currently available on video. Not all, but all these, plus B&W adjustments (not shown in this dialogue) are some of the most important ones. With these we can do some serious effects.
