1. 較大的光圈及較慢的快門速度
2. 一般用 1/60秒的快門速度拍攝雨景，就能顯現出空間中還沒落地的雨條
3. 應該站在較高的位置拍攝
4. 選擇大雨
5. 較深色調的背景作襯托

After some consideration – I thought I might post a small series on better habits for better photos.  Why?  Well – folks often ask me for input – and I don’t have a single place to point them.

Now saying that – I’m not offering any guarantees or “get-better-images” schemes.  Instead – I’m just offering 10 habits that I use consistently – and I hope that you find them useful, too.

Just one more thing – these are simply my habits that I’ve picked up over the years.  Use them, pass them along, or ignore them – it’s your choice.  I realize that unlike the sign below – there’s more than one way to take a photo – and that these posts are not one-size-fits-all.

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Habit #1: Exposure. So, let’s kick off those training wheels and lose the auto modes.  Let’s talk shutter speed, aperture, and ISO – the three keys to properly exposed images.  Many folks will represent them in a triangle – showing that they’re all connected.  This is a useful model – but it doesn’t quite show us how to roll up our sleeves and take a photo.

Q: But auto mode does fine – why is this important?

A: Taking control of your exposure will allow you more control of depth of field, low light situations, and creative possibilities.

So – let me tell you how I approach it.

I generally use two modes: aperture priority (95%) or full manual (5%).  I will occasionally use shutter priority (0.1%) – but typically on situations where I want to drag the shutter for a creative effect – such as panning (example below).  And regardless of my mode – the ISO is at the lowest setting possible to get the correct exposure and a sharp image. Aperture Priority: In this mode you set the aperture – and the shutter will automatically compensate – giving you a good chance for a properly exposed photo.  And within the Aperture Setting – I typically use two values – the widest setting the lens will go to isolate the subject (often used used in action / sports photography to increase shutter speed and to reduce background clutter) and to give little depth of field (e.g. f/1.8 or f/2.8 or f/4 – depends on the lens) – or a setting that I know will give me lots of depth of field (e.g. f/8 or f/11) – often used in landscape photography – as used in the samples below.  Rarely will I leave this comfy range. 

And one more example of f/8 – with lots of depth of field:

Q: So – what is aperture?

A: It controls the amount of light that your sensor “sees”.

Note: At first – aperture settings will likely require memorization and practice.  But – eventually – it will just become habit.

Bottom line: The small values (e.g. f/1.8 or 2.8 or 4) – will throw more light on the sensor – but give less depth of field.  And the large values (e.g. f/8 or 11 or 22) – will allow less light on the sensor – but will give greater depth of field.

Example 1: Gig.  Dimly lit – no flash allowed.  You want lots of light on that sensor – and, in turn, you go with a small aperture value (e.g. f/1.8) – but you know that you’re only going to get the lead singer in focus – while the drummer behind will be out of focus.

Example 2: Outdoor music festival in August.  Noon.  Lots of light.  f/11 from 50 ft back with a wide lens.  Pretty much everyone on stage is in focus.

Manual Mode: Used mostly when lighting is tricky or there’s little light.  Here – I start with aperture (or depth of field) and then adjust my shutter speed until the light meter indicates I have a properly exposed image.

Now – I typically handhold the camera – very seldom do I use a tripod – making this a good place to insert the rule of 1/fl.  What is 1/fl – you ask?  Well – it’s simply “1 over focal length” – a good approximation to use for handheld photography.  In other words – your shutter speed should be faster than 1 over the focal length of the lens that you’re shooting.

Example 3: Gig in a dimly lit venue – and you’ve got your trusty 50mm.  You’ve set your aperture to f/1.8 – but to get a properly exposed image – the camera wants a shutter speed of 1/10 – which is likely not going to be all that sharp.  So – you adjust the ISO up… up… and up… until you’re now sitting at a shutter speed of 1/50.  Now – with a firm, relaxed hold – your image ought to be tack sharp.

This image – shot at f/1.8, 1/50 sec, ISO 1600 with the 50D and the 50mm.

And this leads us to ISO.  The last knob to be adjusted (in my scheme).  I like to leave this at the lowest possibly setting to get a properly exposed sharp image (hopefully between 100 and 400).  Moving to higher ISO’s will increase sensor sensitivity – but will likely introduce noise artifacts and a reduced dynamic range.  Does this mean that you should never travel to higher ISO’s?  No.  In fact – just the opposite.  Often times it’s better to get the image – then to not get the image at all.

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OK – this is brief – and I understand that moving from Auto to any of these other settings may not seem important – but I think once you begin to experiment and make this a habit– you’ll likely be hooked.

Ruth Renner took a photo of her cow’s eye and couldn’t get the detail that she wanted because the eye was acting like a mirror and reflecting an image of the surrounding paddock. Also, the black cow looked partly white due to light reflecting off her hairs. A polarizing filter is the widget that will reduce these reflections: if you’ve ever had polarized sunglasses you’ll have a good idea of what a polarizing filter does.

Polarizing filters not only reduce obvious reflections, they also reduce the reflections that you’re not aware of. Things like foliage reflect light and desaturate (water down) the colours, so a polarizer will give a pleasing result that shows the “real” colours of the foliage. They work best in bright, high-contrast light (i.e. when the shadows are really dark), and are generally best avoided in low contrast situations such as a heavily overcast day.

When your polarizing filter is on your camera you rotate it until you get the desired effect: generally the full effect will look awful, and somewhere around half way between minimum and maximim effect is about right. It’s all a matter of taste and experimentation. Polarizing filters are good for the following situations (this is not an exhaustive list):

• taking photos at the beach, by a lake, or in the snow
• taking photos of water: you can stop the water looking like a sheet of white and see some details under the water
• taking close up photos of cows, as we all do
• taking photos of foliage
• taking photos of people wearing shiny nylon jackets: with a polarizer you can see the true colour and greatly reduce distracting reflections
• photographing blue skies, with or without clouds. Clouds look superb when a polarizing filter is used
• taking photos of things inside glass cases (without flash)
• taking photos of people who are outdoors
• generally if the sun is visible or it’s a bright overcast day your photos will benefit from some degree of polarization. Just experiment with different lighting conditions and different rotations of the filter, but avoid the temptation to leave the filter on all the time.

How do you attach a polarizing filter to your camera?

If you’ve got a SLR just buy one of the right size and screw it on to the end of your lens.

I know that Ruth’s camera is a Canon compact zoom that will take an adapter tube (pictured). This is literally a tube: you attach one end to the camera and the polarizing filter screws into the other end. In this case it’s a good idea to get a lens cap (with lanyard/retaining cord) to protect the filter. The adapter tube will also protect the delicate zoom mechanism. The Canon adapter tube is made of flimsy plastic, but metal aftermarket versions are available.

Only a minority of cameras are made to take adapter tubes, so what do you do if yours isn’t one of them? You can just hold the filter in front of the lens, but in my experience this is very awkward, you’re likely to have blurred photos as a result of camera shake, and you’re likely to drop an expensive filter. The Cokin Filterfast might be the way to go for you: one advantage of this system is it will fit a wide range of cameras, so you can keep it when you get a new camera or share it with family members.

One thing I have done when I don’t have a polarizing filter with me is hold my high quality polarized sunglasses in front of the camera lens. I don’t recommend this because it’s awkward, camera shake is likely, sunglasses usually aren’t very clean, and it’s not as effective as using a proper polarizing filter. However, if done with care it does improve the photo and that’s what matters.

Conclusion

A polarizing filter is a simple device, and with a bit of practise you can use one to greatly improve your photos. I highly recommend getting one.

Click here to view some of my photos taken at the beach on a cloudless day using a polarizing filter. Without a polarizing filter the colours would have looked desaturated (washed out) due to all the reflections from sand, water and so. With the polarizing filter the colours are saturated and natural; the effect is most noticeable when you look at the sea, which has a nice colour instead of looking pale or like a sheet of white. Photos 1 and 2 show how a polarizing filter allows you to see what’s under the surface of the rock pool, while in photos 3-5 the rock pools look more like they would without a polarizing filter.

Experiment and enjoy – with a digital camera your only cost is time.

For cheap-but-decent polarizing filters I recommend John Thomson Photography. He also supplies lens adapter tubes.

Click here to go to my website and see more photos

(Click on the photo for a larger view, then click again)

I spotted (actually, I heard him before I spotted him) this bagpiper in downtown Auckland, New Zealand. I’m particularly keen on street/candid photography, and I could see a lot of photographic potential here.

This situation also has some educational potential for you. You’ll see that the photo above has sky which is close to white, but not quite there. Most cameras will give you a horrible sheet of white sky in this situation because the camera cannot accurately reproduce the huge range of tones (range of brightness) from the black wall to the bright sky. The person who made the camera figures that you’re only interested in the foreground so the camera is set to reproduce that accurately and let the sky be “burnt out”, i.e. be pure white. There is no simple way to overcome this problem without technical knowledge. On-camera flash is like a mad elephant – best avoided at all costs – but in this situation turning on fill flash or forced flash may help on a last-resort basis, and that is what I used but it is not a complete solution.

Now have a look at this photo:

(Click on the photo for a larger view, then click again)

This photo has a range of tones that a camera can cope with (apart from a few very small areas in the shop front) and is a much safer bet if you want a nice photo without technical skills. I’ve knelt down because that gives the viewer a point of view that he’s not used to and catches his attention: it also makes the donations box more noticeable than it would have been if I’d been standing when I took the photo. That donations box is a critical part of the story that this photo tells.

I chose this particular photo because the raised foot and the kilt lifting in the wind adds some movement to what would have otherwise have been a very static and dull photo.

Click here to view more photos taken on this occasion.

Do you have any questions or comments about what I’ve written?

(Click on the photo for a larger view, then click again)

I spotted this interesting Mercedes Z3 convertible just before Christmas: it’s the first time I’ve seen a car with a nose and antlers!

This was taken with a 24 mm (equivalent) lens approximately five feet away from the car and a foot off the ground. Doing this gives impact and helps to give the impression that the car is about to jump out of the frame. It also helps to give the small car more muscularity and power.

(Click on the photo for a larger view, then click again)

I spotted this pear pair in the shop and they were begging to be photographed .

Apart from the camera and tripod everything used to make this photo was a common household item: two lamps, two pieces of paper, and two or three books.

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Information for the photographically inclined:

• one piece of paper made an infinity curve (the background)
• one piece of baking paper diffused the main desk lamp on the right (this is a fire hazard)
• a second desk lamp on the left partially filled the shadows. This lamp was more distant than the other in order to make it weaker than the main lamp
• the books raised everything to a comfortable height above the table top
• the main lamp was halogen and the secondary was conventional incandescent, but a custom white balance fixed that. If either lamp is moved closer or farther away another white balance should be done
• the shot was done at night with all other lights off so that I had total control of the lighting
• obviously the two second self timer should be used if you don’t have a cable release

I was hired recently by a client to shoot a number of assisted living facilities for a new marketing campaign. Some of these facilities were out of town and we had some major time constraints, so I didn’t have the normal luxuries I might typically have on this type of shoot. Typically, I would start the process by going on a scouting mission to make aesthetic and compositional decisions. Then, I would decide on what time of day to schedule the shoot based on environmental conditions.

This shoot was scheduled a little late in the year and the time of day that we scheduled wasn’t perfect. When I arrived at the location, this is what I found waiting for me:

OK, we’ve got a few issues that need to be dealt with. The client wanted the shot to feel bright, Summery, and welcoming. Obviously, it’s not bright and Summery, but we’ve also got a few other obstacles to confront. Here’s a list (in no particular order):
1. Bleak and dreary sky.
2. We’re way past the magic hour typically associated with architectural photography.
3. Multiple trees WITH NO LEAVES in front of the building.
4. Dead ornamental grasses in the landscaping.
5. Water stains and excessive gravel in the parking lot.

In my line of work, I have to make it work- no excuses. The first decision I have to make is compositional, meaning at what angle can I make this building look the most attractive. After a series of test shots, I decided on this composition:

It’s a start. I decided to try to trick the magic hour look by manipulating the elements. I found the maintenance man and asked him to turn on the exterior lights. This gives the viewer the impression that it is either dusk or dawn (even thought it was around 9:45am). I then shot a series of images ranging from way underexposed to way overexposed. These shots will give me some good ammunition in post processing.

After a little work in post, here is another link in the chain:

The lighting, contrast, and composition all work together nicely, but we still have some issues to confront. The leaves are still bare, the landscaping is still tired, the parking lot is still messy and the sky still feels a little bleak. We decided to replace the sky altogether with one that is warmer and feels a little bit more welcoming. Instead of adding leafy trees, we opted to remove them all together. And Finally, the landscaping was refreshed and we got out the old digital broom and cleaned up the parking lot and curbs. Here is the final image:

Frozen in time

Although the age of digital cameras has made it easier than ever to get good photos, you still need good photographic techniques to get the best results. It is alright to just point, shoot, and hope for the best. You will often get some great shots this way. But you will get even better results with your digital SLR camera if you understand some photography techniques. This will help you go from getting just good shots to getting amazing shots. The added benefit is you are in control of the situation and can reproduce the results over and over again. With a digital SLR camera you can afford to experiment. If you don’t like the result, you can just delete it and start again.

See this review on Your Guide to Digital Photography or come back to it later when you’ve finished the article.

Photography Lighting Techniques

Lighting can be either your best friend or worst enemy. Photography lighting techniques can be as simple or as complex as you want. It will depend on what you are shooting. Maybe you want to take photos of cityscapes at night or photos in full sunlight – for good results you will need to understand good photography lighting techniques. Once you understand the basics of photography lighting techniques you will transform your photos into works of art.

Indoor Lighting Photography Techniques

There are different types of lighting you can use for indoor shots. Try using natural lighting that comes from windows, ceiling lights, candles, log fires, and any other indoor lighting. Many photographers use this to give a natural feel to their work. Often, though, there may not be enough natural light indoors. If this is the case, take a tip from portrait photography lighting techniques. Portrait photographers use big lights to flood their subject for the best results. Indoor lighting allows you to practice and experiment regularly.

Try taking a photo of your subject in different parts of the room using different types of lighting. This will give you an idea of what works. Experiment with the early morning sun streaming through the window then try backlighting the same subject and see the different effects. There is so much to learn about photography techniques for indoor lighting. It will become a natural instinct the more you play around with different effects.

Black and White Photography Techniques

Black and white photography techniques can produce some really nice results. You will almost always have the choice to take shots in black an white mode if you are carrying a digital SLR. Don’t use this mode. Use full colour so you get the full depth of light and shade. Use a photo manipulation program like Adobe Photoshop to transform your image into black and white. This gives you the flexibility to manipulate the output which you would not have if you took the photo in black and white.

Side lighting is a great way to include fabulous outcomes and effects to black and white photographs. Side lighting will create shadows on ordinary objects and give them a different perspective. When you have shots that are reasonably textured, this technique is exceptionally effective. Experiment by changing the camera angle and different lighting techniques. Use side lighting to enhance your black and white landscapes, people and buildings.

Street Photography Techniques

Street photography can produce some amazing results. These are photos of everyday life; outdoor shots taken as asnapshot in time. Standing still or squatting while you watch and listen is a good technique; be aware of what is occurring around you at all times. See the world differently. There is nothing more interesting than a candid shot of a moment in time. Here are some street photography techniques that may help you when out on the street:

- Tune into your surroundings. Learn to sense moments of climax such as laughter or loud voices.

- Be relaxed and enjoy your surroundings.

- Use crowded places you can walk in and out of to get your candid street shots.

- Don’t be invasive of people’s personal space, try using a zoom lens. This will not always work and you can lose some of the emotion you are trying to capture.

- Practice taking shots spontaneously or without raising the camera up to face. Practice taking photos from any position.

There is so much to learn about photography and, the more you learn the more addictive photography becomes. If you’re still hungry for information and tips on photography then read this review on one of the more reliable places to get quality photography tips and techniques.

I am a firm believer in keeping it simple in just about every aspect of life and living. Simple solutions are my preferred choice and photographic composition is no exception. It’s what you leave out that makes the difference.

Shooting landscapes with a wide angle lens it’s easy to get caught up in the emotion of a big sprawling beautiful landscape and attempt to include everything. I believe it is much better to leave almost everything out. Nature can be quite chaotic and messy and I find it makes for a much better photo if you can isolate just a few elements in a strong composition. You would be forgiven for thinking that simple isolated strong compositions are the easiest to shoot. They’re not. They demand an eye for simple composition, an eye you have to constantly train. It is much easier to point your wide angle lens at everything or shoot a stitched panorama with a huge viewing angle. Much harder to isolate and pick out the best composition from the chaos.

I will present 3 landscapes from my Australia 2007 trip as examples of keeping it simple. These are subtle and simple photos and I didn’t pay them much attention at first among the many thousands of RAW files from the trip. Obvious shots jump at you when sorting the RAW files but obvious quickly becomes boring. Simplicity has staying power. The magic revealed itself later and I now consider these among my very favourite and best shots. For me all 3 of them have a special quality that somehow defies definition.

Uluru and tree in the desert
Copyright Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

A few but key elements make up this composition. A dead tree in the hot dry arid red centre of Australia is the main subject, Uluru and a deep blue polarized sky serve as a powerful background and colourful contrast to the monochrome tree. Almost every element is placed on a “golden mean”, a “thirds” position. The sky and Uluru divide the photo and create a balance. Something about the photo feels otherworldly to the viewer.

Pandanus Palm and Termite Mounds at Hawk Dreaming
Copyright Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

A few Pandanus Palm trees and Termite Mounds are the subjects and are balanced by the view of wide open space at Hawk Dreaming. The soft light at dusk lends a tranquil quality to the emotional impact. Most people will also feel the exotic subjects of Pandanus and Termite mound creates an otherworldly alien feel.

Hawk Dreaming Savannah View
Copyright Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

The cleanest and simplest of compositions, only 3 elements. The sky, the trees, the foreground. To create the dramatic wide angle composition and have the trees line up on the horizontal dividing line, I simply lay down in the grass and almost had the camera on the ground. The clouds create a strong sense of movement balanced by the detailed motionless foreground.

Simplicity demands an effort

I have found that it takes practice and effort to shoot simple. It’s easy to slip and include too much meaning you loose having a simple single focus point in the picture. Next time you compose a photo think about every elements you choose to include. Do they add to the photo? Do they subtract? Study the scene in your viewfinder, try different compositions – and keep it simple!

One of the many reasons why I take photographs is because I can’t draw. Well, I can draw technical drawings, within limits, but it takes a while, and the human form isn’t amenable to being drawn that way. So I take photographs. But I like sketches, and I’d like to be able to sketch. Now I’ve found an interesting option.

PhotoShop has an array of filters that do strange things. I doubt I’ll even scratch the surface of the filters built into CS3, let alone indulge in the multitude of filters that are available for download, either for money or for free. That doesn’t mean I don’t play around sometimes. I had fun playing with the Emboss filter a while back. Doubt I’ll ever use it for real, but it does make some cute images. Maybe if I wanted to turn an image into a button for a windows interface of some kind.

 The one filter I use on every image is Sharpen – I generally use Smart Sharpen, because I prefer the results I get with it. Old-style PS users tend to stick to Unsharp Mask (never have understood why it’s called “un-sharp”, but that’s not important).

Anyway, I occasionally explore the Filters menu when I’m playing with PhotoShop. A few days ago I tried using the Find Edges filter on an image I’d converted to a semi-silhouette (I talked about semi-silhouettes a while back). The results surprised me. I got an image that looked to me exactly like it had been sketched using coloured pencils. Not necessarily the right coloured pencils, but coloured nonetheless. That is rather neat! If I converted the result to monochrome I could end up with a regular pencil sketch, but I like the coloured version. This is very exciting for someone who can’t sketch, but wants to. In the example semi-silhouette here I think it’s really interesting how the sketch shows the face as blank (because it was black in the original) – it looks as though the sketch is unfinished, as though the artist left off before sketching the face. That adds to the feeling of the image being a sketch, for me.

Having made this serendipitous discovery, I started trying it on other images. It rapidly became clear that my fondness for clean white (or black) backgrounds was a huge plus when using this technique, because it yielded a clean background – another thing that enhanced the feeling on this image being a sketch. Using the silhouette technique first isn’t a requirement (although it does produce strong edges, which doesn’t hurt). The next example isn’t a silhouette – it’s the same model, coated in olive oil (it’s good for the skin, apparently, as well as making her smell like Greek food – amusingly, we had treated ourselves to Greek tavern food before this shoot).

The background doesn’t have to be white – it can be black (I discussed the special features of white and black backgrounds another time). It is easy to make completely pure black and pure white backgrounds. That really helps when you want to produce these sketch-like images, because it means there are no edges in the background. If we use strong edge lighting we can get thick edges. This image was lit using two large slot softboxes, positioned left and right of the camera, at 90 degrees to the camera angle. This results in an image that looks like it was outlined with a blunt 6B pencil. I toned the edge down a little by using a large round brush painting pure white (another good reason to get a clean white background).

This is one of those effects you can over-use (although not as quickly as Emboss). I won’t process every image I take this way – that would be ridiculous. But it produces attractive results that mimic sketches. Suddenly I can make a kind of art I have never been able to make before, and that means a lot to me – hence this write-up.

 I think I’ll go play with some more of the filters in the PhotoShop menu…

Yesterday I discovered Myrmecos, a blog composed by Alex Wild discussing insects, photography, and life.  I was most excited about his post demonstrating how some kinds of ant nests are visible using the Google Earth tool.

Upon further exploration of his site I discovered great articles about photographic technique suitable for insects, including his piece On-Camera Flash Diffusion – talk about a creative solution!  Myrmecos also includes links to Wild’s stunning online galleries.  Crawl on over and see for yourself!

Implied nude is an important variation of nude photography. Implied nudes can be displayed in places that would be inappropriate for “real” nudes, so implied nude images can be more useful. That’s not the only reason to be interested in implied nudes. Sadly, they can be seen as a tacky alternative to real nude images. This is probably the legacy of decades of poor quality implied nude images on the front covers of cheap magazines, and the exploitation of implied nudes in advertising.

A good implied nude can be more erotic than a bad “full” nude. I think of images as expressing a statement. A bad nude image says something like “me girl – see my girly bits!” – a neanderthal lack of subtlety. A good implied image says something like “I seem to have mislaid my clothes. If I were to move a bit you might see more than you would normally. What a pity you can’t see it here” – it is a tease. It’s the difference between hitting the viewer over the head with naked breasts (an interesting image – I must consider shooting that some time), and making them imagine what is hidden. I think that’s fundamental to a good implied nude – the image must be teasing the viewer. A good implied nude stimulates the imagination; it can also be more erotically stimulating – that’s not a bad thing. Indeed, one might argue that implied nudes are more about eroticism than artistic nudes – a really good artistic nude can desexualise the image to allow the viewer to concentrate on the shapes – that doesn’t happen in an implied nude. Hiding something draws the viewer’s mind to it; exposing it removes the mystery. 

There are lots of bad implied nude images – these are the ones I was referring on the covers of cheap magazines. Images of a woman covering her breasts with her hands – what are these saying? If she didn’t want to be photographed topless, why did she pose that way? The coyness feels so fake. The same thing applies, to a lesser extent, to images where she is holding a towel or sheet to her breasts. These shots lack imagination. They taint the whole genre.

I like bold implied nude images. Images that are only barely implied (pun not intended, but I like it!). Images that look, at first glance, as though they are revealing everything; look more closely, and you realise that the crucial areas are covered (even in the original high resolution image, nothing shows). Look at the dining chair image – the young lady in question is clearly nude, and not sitting in a discreet way, yet she is showing less than she might in a bikini (well, a high-cut bikini…). This is not a subtle image. Some might take exception to it, despite the fact that it is not explicit, but then some take exception to the whole idea of taking photographs of unclothed people – makes me wonder if they are objecting to being reminded of their own sexual nature? 

Now compare that image to the classic implied nude with the heart-shaped cushion. This is more like the common idea of implied nude imagery. There is nothing wrong with this image, and I like it, but I think it lacks the impact of the dining chair image. That gave me cause to ponder for a while. Is it that the cushion is an extraneous element? Could it be that the chair is standing symbolically for a person, and the pose suggests her body wrapped around her lover – most emphatically a sexual image? Or could it be as simple as the image showing her legs apart; her legs are demurely together in the heart image? Exploring the ramifications of that question is a topic for another day. 

I think we can extend the idea of the implied nude to images that show breasts – I’m just not sure what to call them. The young lady sitting cross-legged is an example. One reason I consider this an implied nude is because the pose suggests that the viewer might see more if the point of view were swung around the left. You might argue that this is what some refer to as “tasteful” nudes – I don’t like that term, because I think it is possible for an explicit nude to be tasteful – consider Michangelo’s David. I don’t like calling this “implied nude with breasts”, either. Perhaps we need to invent a new term for it? Something like “discreet nude”? I don’t see this as a purely artistic nude, because of the implied sexual nature of the image. There are artistic elements, such as the strong curve to her spine, and the deliberate echo of the red of her lipstick and the stool, but it cannot escape the sexual insinuation. That is not a negative, it is just a distinction, of the kind that is involved in defining categories – defining categories is the splitting of increasingly fine hairs.

Perhaps I shoot implied nudes in an effort to liberate the implied nude from the tacky associations it has acquired? Nah, that’s not it. I think I shoot them because the models want them, because there’s skill involved in arranging a shot so that some things are hidden and others aren’t, and because I like the resulting images. Maybe I’m a tease at heart? I can think of much worse things to be…

When we are shooting outdoors, we have backgrounds provided for us. Oh, we pick and choose, asking the subject of the photo to move so that we can capture them against the better background, but generally speaking we have a limited choice. If we are shooting indoors, but on location, once again, our backgrounds are pretty much dictated by our environment.

Not so in the studio. Here we are in control. If we wanted a candy-striped background we can have it (I may regret saying that…). We can even shoot against a chromakey background, and swap in any background image we want. Despite that, you’ll see three colours of background in the vast majority of my studio shots: white, black, and grey. There are good reasons for this.

When I am in a studio, I want attention focussed on the beautiful woman I am shooting. Using a simple background helps – there is little to look at other than the model. I’ve heard some people refer to a white background as “catalogue shooting” – the same techniques are used when shooting items for inclusion in a catalogue.

Black and white backgrounds are easy, at least in principle. When we bring a RAW image into Photoshop, we get to specify the levels that are considered ”black” and “white”. To get a pure black background we ensure that all of the background falls below the “black” level. To get a pure white background we ensure that all of the background is above the “white” level. This only works for black and white – I can’t force a blue background buying having the background fall above or below a specific level. If the background falls between the “black” and “white” levels, it will come out as a shade of whatever colour or pattern it happens to be.

Black background

To get a pure black background, we want the background to reflect much less light than the subject. We start by moving the subject away from the background, and arranging our lights so we spill as little light onto the background as possible. The less light we get on the background, the easier it will be to make it pure black. (in the image, Phoenix is sitting on a satin finish surface, hence the reflection below her)

It helps to be using a dark (ideally black) backdrop. I’ve used a variety of offerings, including a synthetic velour, which worked well enough, but was a magnet for lint and dust. My current favourite is a fabric that can be obtained from a theatrical supplier – its technical name is black Molton, but it is known in the trade as “commando cloth” or “blackout curtaining”. It’s a black brushed cotton fabric, pre-treated with flame-retardant chemicals. It comes around 3m wide, which is plenty for my home studio, but it is easily made into any desired width – it is used for the black curtains that go behind the fancy one in a theatre, after all – and it soaks up light. It is possible to get this fabric to reflect light, but you have to work at it!

White background

A pure white background is a little more complicated. This time we want to pour the light onto the background, instead of keeping it away. I’ve found the easiest means is to dedicate two lights to illuminating the backdrop, positioning one each side, aimed about one third of the way in to the centre. Conventional wisdom has it that you light the backdrop 3 stops brighter than the subject to make it white. I have experimented, and I rather like the results I get when I run the back lights at full power (2 x 600Ws for my current lights) - the extra light wraps around the model, giving an attractive rim-lighting, and a form of silhouette, if I don’t put a light on the model directly. Tavia is demonstrating this effect.

It helps if the backdrop reflects light well (although you can get almost anything to look white with enough light – I have turned a dark brown surface into white with a LOT of light). A plain white backdrop is good – I have used white polyester, white velour, and white paper – they all work, although a smooth surface can show irritating highlights, and a patterned surface is a disaster if your background lights aren’t bright enough. I have not been able to get white Molton, even though I’m assured that it exists – there just isn’t enough call for it (unlike black Molton). I am currently using a fabric from the same theatrical fabric source – this one is intended for use as a reflective surface, and it works well – it appears to reflect about a half-stop more light than the white polyester I was using previously. The only drawback is that it has a textured surface – if it is not blasted through to white, there is a texture to deal with.

Bear in mind that having the background very bright will upset Camera Raw’s normally reasonable auto processing. That’s OK – we just need to do some unusual processing.

Camera RAW processing

Once we have the RAW image, we need to bring it into Photoshop appropriately. The instructions below refer to Adobe Camera RAW for Photoshop CS2. The instructions for CS3 are similar.

If we want a black background, we need to raise the Shadow slider until the background is completely clipped to black – hold down the Alt key (on Windows) or Command (on Mac) while moving the slider to see the clipping.

If we want a white background, we need to work with the Exposure slider. We will be clipping the background again, but this time to white.

If we are shooting a full-length shot, it can be quite difficult to get the floor under the model to clip – usually we need to compromise. I have had some success using a narrow slot box to illuminate the floor when shooting for a white background, but it’s a work-in-progress. This isn’t a problem for shots that don’t go down to the floor.

The art of photography is about light and shadow. The light is obvious – try to take a photograph without light, and you may have difficulty interesting people in your artfully posed black cat asleep on a black rug in a black room at midnight on a moonless night… However, shadow is at least as important as light.

I learned this lesson when I started taking photographs. I carefully lit my subject, producing a very even light (something I now know is called “flat lighting“), and an amazingly boring photograph; it was flat and lifeless. Thus began my adventure to learn about chiaroscuro (not that I knew that was what I was looking for). I hadn’t studied art, so I was oblivious to many centuries of learning on this subject.

You see, despite their complete lack of photographic equipment, painters of years past managed to produce images that were not boring, flat, and lifeless (well, some painters did…). They did this by painting not just light, but shadow too. We can learn from this.

A photograph or a painting is a two-dimensional object, but we are trying to capture three-dimensional space. In flat lighting we get a two-dimensional image that looks completely two-dimensional (one day I will shoot that deliberately, but I need to compose the idea carefully). There is no depth to the image. Such an image is often emotionally unsatisfying to the viewer. We expect to see depth, and we see it in the shadows. We can tell that an object has three dimensions because of the shadows cast on one part by shadows from another. A flat lighting setup eliminates those shadows, and eliminates the sense of depth that they conjure.

The way we achieve our necessary shadows is to use unbalanced lighting – if we use a bright light to one side of our victim (er, subject), it will cast shadows on the other side. If we place a bright light above, it will cast shadows below, and vice versa. Using a single bright light, we may get shadows which are too intense. We can reduce the intensity of the shadows by placing a second light to throw light into them. If that second light is as bright as the first, and placed at the same distance, it will completely destroy our shadows. That’s no good. So we make the second light dimmer, and/or further away. One ratio of brightness that has been shown to be effective over years of photography is having 3 stops of difference between the bright light and the dimmer one. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t try other ratios, just that 3 stops is a good place to start.

Photographers who still use meters will trigger one of the lights and measure the result, then trigger the other, measure the result, then adjust the lights accordingly. I don’t. I position the two lights at the same distance from the model, and at the same angle (typically at about 45 degrees from the line between the model and the camera), and set them about 3 stops different – the lights display their intensity in (sort-of) f-stops. The Elinchrom 300RX ranges from 0.5 to 5.5, and setting 1.5 on one and 4.5 on the other yields a difference of 3 f-stops.

I wonder if anyone has analysed the great masters of portrait painting, and determined what the effective f-stop difference is between the two sides of the faces they painted?

Any time we use a lens that has a focal length different from 50mm (on a 35mm SLR) we produce images with a different perspective from the human eye. A lot of the time, perhaps most of the time, we want to avoid making that obvious. There are exceptions – when we play with a fisheye lens, it is rather obvious that we’re not seeing the image that we’d see if we placed where the camera was placed to take the shot.

When we use a telephoto lens (one with a focal length greater than 50mm), we compress perspective. Things that would look further apart to the human eye look closer together viewed with the telephoto lens. When we use a wide-angle lens, we exaggerate perspective – we make things look further apart than they would to the human eye. We can play with that effect.

If you’ve done any reading about photography you may have read warnings against using a wide-angle lens to shoot portraits. “Don’t do it!” the books warn, “It will distort features, it will make people look like they have huge noses. The results will be horrible!“. Some books will even show you examples, and they do look distorted.

However, that’s not all of the truth. Sometimes it can be very effective to use a distorted perspective. After all, we’re not making a documentary – we’re making art. Art can distort things to raise questions about them. Or to throw something into relief – to make it stand out from the background – to draw attention to it. Or we may just be trying to flatter our model: we may be trying to make her look as though her legs are longer.

In anime (Japanese animation) there is a technique called “super-deformed” characters, sometimes also called “chibi”. To indicate that a character is having a tantrum (or is very emotional), the animator may draw the character with a very large head and small body and limbs. This makes the character look cute, and generally suggests that we shouldn’t be taking the tantrum too seriously.

I wanted to get a similar effect with a model. I struck a problem, in that I can’t rub out a model’s head and redraw it – I’m just not that good an artist. So I switched to a wide-angle lens and did all the things the book tell us not to do. I zoomed to the most wide-angle setting (24mm on a 24-70mm f2.8L), then I got close to the model to maximise the ratio between distance from lens to face, and distance from lens to feet. That’s how we exaggerate proportions.

You can see the results in these images. I don’t think it’s perfect, but it worked surprisingly well for a first try. I’d be interested to hear what you think of this technique.

When I moved from using continuous lights to using studio strobes, I followed conventional wisdom and bought a flash meter. I should have saved the money. With a modern digital camera (one that displays a histogram of the image values, like all of the Canon DSLRs), I don’t need a flash meter.

When shooting with studio strobes, I use a sync cable (at the moment…) from the camera’s PC socket to one of the strobes, and I have the rest of the strobes set on optical slave, so the first strobe triggers all the others. My camera cannot meter studio strobes the way it can with a flash unit mounted on the camera (and there are good reasons why it can’t) – I have to use manual mode with studio strobes. My camera’s sync speed is 1/200 second. Because there might be some tiny delay between the first strobe and the triggering of the others, I generally put my camera on 1/160 second. The two things that control the exposure that results are the ISO setting (I tend to use ISO 100 with studio strobes, to minimise noise in the image, and because I like using intense light – I could use ISO 400 and work the strobes less hard), and the aperture.

Conventional wisdom has it that you set up your lights, meter the result, which yields an f-number, you dial that f-number into your camera, and take the shot. Set up for the next shot, meter it, dial the result into the camera, and take the shot.

If I was using a camera loaded with really expensive chemical film, that conventional wisdom could make sense. My camera, however, contains no film at all, and a single exposure costs me a miniscule amount (wear and tear on the camera, wear and tear on the lights – I’m guessing some fraction of a cent per shot). So I’m not inclined to worry about taking a few shots in preparation – I can afford it.

What I do is simple. I guess at the aperture I’ll need, and I take a shot. I bring up the histogram for the shot (I generally use the RGB histogram, but a total histogram would work equally well), and see what the exposure looks like. If the shot looks underexposed (most of the peaks of the histogram to the left), then I’ll use a larger aperture (smaller f-number), and try again. If it looks overexposed (most of the peaks of the histogram to the right), then I’ll use a smaller aperture (larger f-number) and try again. If the exposure looks a long way from correct, I may adjust the ISO, or the lights. I generally take no more than three or four shots to get the exposure right.

Given that I like extreme lighting, using a flash meter would be an exercise in approximation, anyway, and I’d probably end up doing the shoot-and-change method for the fine-tuning.

Anyone want to buy a flash meter?

I like making dramatic images. Images that make viewers pause. It’s not easy, and I don’t claim a high success rate. I have found one element that helps, however, and that’s extreme lighting, whether it’s real, or created in Photoshop.

I have been experimenting with a lighting setup I call “girl sandwich” over the past month or so. OK, it’s a silly name, but it gets a laugh from most models. This lighting setup uses two moderately powerful studio strobes (I’m using Elinchrom 300RX strobes – 300Ws each) set to full power, in slot softboxes (130×50cm), oriented vertically, facing one another, about 3m apart. Place the model in between the two strobes, and use no other lights. Depending on whether the model is slightly in front of the line of the lights, slightly behind, or directly in between, you will get different results – it’s well worth taking a series of images, with the model moving a short distance between each. If you process the images with a relatively high setting for Shadows in Camera Raw, you will get some dramatic results, most especially for the images with the model slightly in front of the line between the two strobes.

There are (lots of) other forms of dramatic lighting. Another one I have been toying with recently is the single high-powered strobe at 90 degrees to camera. This is always going to produce strong shadows, and it is cruel to skin, showing every imperfection. Choose your model carefully if you want to try this. It helps if she has excellent skin and a superb figure.

Let’s look at two versions of an image shot with a single strobe positioned at 90 degrees to camera. On the left you can see the image with normal processing. I like this image, but I wanted to make it more dramatic. Compare the image on the right, where the light and dark have been accentuated. It’s a striking difference. It may not be to your taste, but it probably made you pause. That was what I was trying to achieve. The difference between these two versions of the same image lies in how they made the transition from RAW camera image to Adobe Photoshop. 

I use Adobe Camera Raw to bring images into Photoshop – there are other tools, such as RAW Shooter, and Capture One, but I got Adobe Camera Raw with Photoshop, and I learned how to use it, so that’s what I use. When I’m processing an image normally, I set the Exposure slider so I’m not clipping anything to white (unless I’m deliberately clipping a white background, but that’s another post), and the Shadows slider so I’m not clipping anything to black (unless I’m creating a silhouette, but that’s yet another post). That sort of processing yields an image like the one on the left above. If we want something more dramatic, we break some rules… For the image on the right, I raised the Exposure slider enough to burn out the highlights on her arm and neck, then I raised the Shadows a lot, to clip significant portions of her body to black. These adjustments stretched out those tones which fell between the two extremes – the result is more obvious in the background, which looks patchy or grainy.

There are lots of rules about how we are supposed to light a model, and how we are supposed to process the images. If we break those rules, and go for extreme lighting, and unusual processing to make it even more extreme, we can produce dramatic images. After all, we’re not shooting a documentary!