Asters of any kind provide such potential in photography: the colours and the gentle curve of their tiny thin petals combines with their close-growing nature to give the impression either of flowers fighting each other for space and light or of a mass of colour, huddled together for comfort. The clump of asters shown in this shot are a soft, luscious purply-cerulean-cornflowery-blue. Light seems to dance off the petals. Or it would, had there been much light when I took this. Instead, it was a fairly overcast day and I pondered whether it was worth the damp knees necessary to get down low enough to grab this shot. Turned out it was.

Equipment: one 5D Mk II; one 135mm f/2 L (traditionally employed by people for portraits or street photography, pulled into service by me for flora and fauna); one copy of Lightroom; one set of damp knees; and one hoodie covered with burrs from stalking what should have been a small deer through a clump of bushes five minutes earlier (turned out to be, well, a large blackbird).

Getting the Shot

I tend to take most nature shots wide open (at f/2 here, as wide as the 135mm goes). On a full frame this can lead to difficulties getting the precise area you want in focus. I usually take two or three shots once I’ve isolated the right composition from slightly different angles, ensuring that the filaments of the flower or, in this case, the petals, are perfectly sharp. The focal plane in this photo also catches the shaded bud in the lower right, adding a little more substance to the shot. But it’s a little dull, rather flat, and a bit busy. It needs light. Some movement. Some definition. It needs to become other than dull-shot-of-asters-with-no-light.

Luckily, there is a lot of potential here. Shooting the asters wide open means that the purply-cerulean-cornflowery-blue can become this beautiful, hazy, light bokeh, gently punctuated by the yellowy centres of the out of focus asters. The particular shade of these aster petals offers great possibilities in post-processing (for me, that’s Lightroom).

I’m going to do three main things to this photo: crop it; add light; and play with the colours. If anyone would like to follow along, I’ve made the original RAW file available to download.

Don’t Be Afraid to Crop

I find people often fear cropping. Perhaps there’s a worry about cutting down a photo to something smaller, about losing what was in their viewfinder – but often, this is what can make a shot. By cropping this photo square, coming in tight to the central flower, I can turn it from a bank of asters into something a little more dramatic, reducing the elements in the photo to the main flower, the bud in shadow, the out of focus flower bottom right. In the Develop module in LR, I chose the crop icon under the histogram and picked ’1×1′ from the drop-down.

Because of LR’s non-destructive editing, you can crop, re-crop, re-re-crop, and… you get the idea. The original file stays untouched so you can always revert back to where you were or choose a different crop even after all your other editing changes have been made.

The square crop also allows the purple bokeh to become the dominant background rather than the green of the original shot but still provides some contrast. I tried a landscape crop but the various elements of the shot just didn’t seem to fit, so square it was.

Light

So now to tackle the flat and fairly dull image. First stop is the Tone Curve panel. Some people like to drag the curve into position. I prefer the sliders. I know I want to give this image some light, so I increase the ‘Lights’ fairly significantly. I up the ‘Highlights’ a little, though this doesn’t make too much difference. I also lighten the ‘Darks’ (slider to the right). This lost a little contrast so the Shadows were increased a little to compensate. The screenshots below show the before and after in the Tone Curve panel:

Here’s what the photo looks like after the change (hover your mouse over it to compare):

Now this is a bit more interesting. It feels like there’s some movement there now. I make two further changes. Contrast goes up, in this image all the way to +100; brightness is lowered a little, both of which make the image a little more dramatic. Both are found in the Basic panel.

Here’s what the photo looks like after the change (hover your mouse over it to compare):

Colour Play

When I first started experimenting with LR, this may have been where I stopped. But this is now where much of the fun begins. Lightroom offers a range of tools to adjust the colour and general feel of the photograph. I have few general rules with nature shots and will often simply play around in different areas until the photo feels right. There are certain colours in this photos which offer obvious possibilities: blues and purples, greens, yellow and oranges. So these are the areas where I’ll start to tweak. I had no finished product in mind at this point. I just wanted to see what was possible. It’s important to note that what I describe here isn’t necessarily the exact order in which I actually process. I’m often jumping from one panel to another, sliding something here, tweaking another bit there, going back and reverting to a previous change. The word to remember: play.

In Lightroom, I use the HSL / Color panel, the Camera Calibration panel, the Split Toning panel, and make some global changes with the Temperature and Tint sliders in the Basic panel. I will use some of these more than others depending on the photo. Again: I have no guidelines other than “play with the sliders” but I’m concentrating on the colours which are most obvious in the photo.

Below are the changes I ended up with. As you start to learn Lightroom or some other sofrware, it’s worth experimenting with these one at a time to see how they change the photo. Slide it one way, slide it the other, watch how the colours and the feel of the photo change. The Blue Primary alterations in Camera Calibration can have a big effect, for instance. Upping the saturation of the orange and yellow in the HSL panel make the centres of the asters brighter and more vibrant.

And this is where it brought the photo (hover your mouse over it to compare). All together now: ewwwwww…

But three small changes in the Presence panel will now magically transform this photo from an over-saturated mess into (almost) the finished product. I’m going to reduce the saturation (which will get rid of the currently overbearing purples and orange), increase the vibrance (which gives a little more depth), and then lower the clarity (which adds a nice glow).

Much better – but it’s still not quite there. I’m going to add in a little more light by upping the Exposure a tiny bit on the Basic panel (very small changes only to the Exposure slider) and brightening the corners slightly in the Effects panel.

Et voilà. We’re done. One dull and flat bank of asters now cropped, glowing, and dancing in the light (hover to compare).

Hover over this link to compare it to the original crop.

Much of the post work broadly follows a free preset I have available for RAW files in Lightroom and ACR / Photoshop called ‘When the hurly-burly’s done’. Similar examples can be found here and here and the preset itself can be downloaded (along with a few others of mine) with a single click right here.

If there is a lesson to learn here, it’s not how to make an aster look different. It’s not to be scared. Lightroom (and almost every other image editing software) offers enormous power to make changes to your photos. Play with it. Use it. The more you understand it, the more power it provides.

About the author: Harold Lloyd loves bokeh, coffee, and the battery grip for his 5D Mk II and can be found tweaking his portfolio site or playing around on Flickr.

Here’s an easy to follow video tutorial by photographer Lucas Ridley teaching you how to create custom bokeh shapes using a construction paper cap placed over your lens. Ridley’s design is flexible, allowing you to swap shapes easily by sliding them in and out of the cap.

(via Digital Photography School)

When we featured Strobox back in 2009, it was a simple idea: provide an easy way for photographers to create lighting diagrams and share them with others. Since then, they’ve upgraded their website to include a gallery where you can browse photographs done by others, view their lighting diagrams, and comment on them.

If you don’t have a full arsenal of lightning equipment, you can filter the photos by what kind of lighting equipment was used to browse photos that are more relevant to you.

Here’s what an individual photograph page looks like with its diagram and comments:

If you’re looking to learn more about lighting, this would be a good site to bookmark.

Portrait photographer Gregory Heisler has done quite a few portraits for Time Magazine covers, including a few for their Person of the Year issues. This is an informative video where he steps through how he went about photographing Rudy Giuliani at the top of Rockefeller Center with the Empire State Building in the background. If you’re interested at all in portraiture and/or lighting, you’ll find this video quite educational.

Here’s what the photograph and cover ended up looking like:

(via Strobist)

Editor’s note: This walkthrough was originally published on Clint Decker’s Flickr account. We found it pretty informative and asked him to share it here.

Here is a little video on how I did the photography with Canon Speedlites while dropping items into a tank of water.

With a white background, I used a Canon Speedlite 580ex II on the left and right of the fish tank with water. They were set to manual 1/128sec.

I had a Canon Speedlite 430ex II on a chair behind the fish tank pointing towards the white background so it would come out pure white. This was set to manual 1/64th of a second (I would of done 1/128 but the 430ex II can only go down to 1/64). You want to go 1/128 so it freezes the splash mid air.

I also used another Canon Speedlite 430ex II in front of the tank at a 45 degree angle to fill the shadows on the front of the object your dropping. This one isn’t totally necessary cause you can angle the side flashes a little to help hit the front of the object, but I had the flash available and I liked the results better when using it.

I only had to squeegee the tank splashes once every 10 or so drops when using white cause its really easy to remove the spots in Lightroom with the exposure brush. But on the black background, it was a totally different story. I had to squeegee every single time or the spots on the side of the tank would appear as bright as day in your photo, making it much harder to remove them in post. I bought a squeegee from WalMart for $1.50, and cut the handle off (since otherwise the handle would hit the end of the tank before I was done wiping it off).

With a black background, you don’t need to flash the backdrop. But I found that the top of the splash (above the waterline) was not bright enough in the photo, so I used the flash that used to be for the backdrop, and put it on a light stand pointing down into the tank to flash the water splashing up. Pretty much, in both cases (white and black), I used 4 flashes. You could really get away with less, but I had the flashes so why not use em.

I used simple wireless triggers for the flashes since Canon’s infrared tends to have issues. (especially since one of the flashes is not in the line of sight with the camera). I used PT-04 Wireless Flash Triggers found on eBay, they’re pretty cheap, I got 5 receivers and a transmitter for $79 (I bought the dual hot shoe triggers). I also like using the wireless triggers so I don’t have to waste using a 580ex II to trigger the other flashes. I also have a Canon 7D which I could of used to trigger the flashes, but like I said, the flash behind the tank is not in the line of sight with the camera so infrared isn’t really a great option.

The only disadvantage of buying the cheaper flash triggers on eBay is that you lose ETTL functions from the camera. Using Canons built in wireless functions is great when you need to constantly change the flash ratios and exposures like in a portrait studio setup, but to keep ETTL while going with radio wireless triggers, you’ll have to spend $220 each for a PocketWizard or Radio Popper. The ones on eBay that don’t support TTL is just fine when you are running everything manual.

I had the camera tethered to Lightroom 3 (Beta 2) so I could see if the shot was perfect. I used the Lilliput 7″ HDMI monitor (you can buy these on eBay for a little more than $200) tethered to the 5D Mark II with an HDMI to Mini HDMI cable. The reason I have both a computer and a monitor is because it tends to take too long for the image to appear on the computer before I’m ready to take the next photo. Sometimes I’ll even shoot over and over without using the squeegee just to see if I get a good shot in those takes, the problem is when I do that, it takes a long time for the computer to catch up. With the LCD monitor, I can preview the shot to see if its acceptable or not, if it isn’t, immediately take another photo. If it looks good, then I check the computer (after the couple more seconds it takes to catch up) to see if the photo is perfect.

Make sure the camera is set to manual focus, and focus it to the dead center of the tank (you’ll probably need 2 people to focus, one person to stick their hand in the middle of the tank, and the other person sets the focus. I had the 5D Mark II set to 100mm, f/10, ISO 125, 200/sec.

About the author: Clint Decker is a web developer by day and creative photographer by night. You can find him on Flickr as Louish Pixel.

This photograph, titled “Easy Rider“, was shot by photographer Chris McVeigh (AKA powerpig on Flickr). The photograph seems so unbelievable that many people asked whether it was faked using Photoshop.

In response, McVeigh posted the following video showing his technique.

As this video will show, it’s all happening right there in front of the camera. I get no satisfaction out of a composited photo—the challenge for me is to capture the chipmunk engaged in a real and rather extraordinary situation. And keep in mind that this is a wild chipmunk, not my pet. (Color correction and the lightsaber effect were applied in post-production.)

Amazing! Now please do the same thing with a deer and a life sized Vader.

(via Gizmodo)

Image credit: Easy Rider by powerpig and used with permission

Here are a couple videos that are relevant to photographers:

How can a photographer’s image-focused site gain PageRank?

Takeaway points: include text relevant to the image(s) inside the img tag and around the image to help the search engine understand what the page is about. For example, you could include a description of the photo in the name or title tag of the image.

Secondly, allow visitors to comment on the image. This often leads to users describing some aspect of the image for you (i.e. “I love the light falling on the barn door”), which helps search engines understand what’s happening on the page.

Should I expect increased traffic if I optimize my images?

Giving your images descriptive filenames can help attract more traffic through image searches. For example, instead of uploading a photo of a tree with the filename given by the camera (i.e. DSC_00395.jpg), you can name it tree.jpg. This helps search engines understand which keywords in image searches the image should be returned for, and appearing in those results can boost your traffic.

Tilt-shift lenses are usually pretty pricey, so many people fake the effect during post-processing by selectively blurring sections of their photographs. There’s even simple web-apps that can add such blur to give your photographs a miniature scale model effect.

If faking the effect isn’t legit enough to satisfy your photo-geekiness — and you’d rather not drop big bucks on it either — there’s a nifty do-it-yourself solution you need to check out: Bhautik Joshi over at cow.mooh.org has a new DIY Tilt-Shift project that teaches you how to convert an old lens into various kinds of tilt-shift lenses.

The lenses can be built using ordinary materials found at your local hardware store and cheap lenses you can buy off eBay (i.e. a $10 28mm Minolta). One of the lenses uses a bicycle inner tube as one of the crucial ingredients.

Ready to get started? You can head on over to the tutorial with the following link. Good luck!

Tilt-shift: A DIY guide

Image credits: Photographs by Bhautik Joshi and used with permission

Freddy Wong’s YouTube channel is a must-subscribe if you’re interested in video editing and home-brewed CGI. A couple months ago we featured an amazing video they made where an entire action scene was done using light-painting techniques. What’s neat about their channel is that they also create behind-the-scenes clips explaining how each one was made.

The above video shows Freddy skydiving by jumping out his front door. It only runs a minute long, just like the behind-the-scenes video below. If you’ve got a couple minutes to spare, check out how they accomplished the effect, and be sure to check out their other videos as well!

“Flower Warfare” is another video of theirs that went viral recently.

(via Fstoppers)

If you’re a digital photography buff, here’s some required trivia knowledge: what you see above is a photograph of the first digital camera ever built. It was created in December 1975 by an engineer at Eastman Kodak named Steve Sasson, now regarded as the inventor of the digital camera. In a Kodak blog post written in 2007, Sasson explains how it was constructed:

It had a lens that we took from a used parts bin from the Super 8 movie camera production line downstairs from our little lab on the second floor in Bldg 4. On the side of our portable contraption, we shoehorned in a portable digital cassette instrumentation recorder. Add to that 16 nickel cadmium batteries, a highly temperamental new type of CCD imaging area array, an a/d converter implementation stolen from a digital voltmeter application, several dozen digital and analog circuits all wired together on approximately half a dozen circuit boards, and you have our interpretation of what a portable all electronic still camera might look like.

Here are some specs: The 8 pound camera recorded 0.01 megapixel black and white photos to a cassette tape. The first photograph took 23 seconds to create.

To play back images, data was read from the tape and then displayed on a television set:

We’re sure come a long way since then, eh?

Image credits: Photograph by Eastman Kodak