Digital Photography. 39 Methods to Quick Mastering of Digital Photography with Creative Photo Ideas

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2 Digital Photography 39 Methods to Quick Mastering of Digital Photography with Creative Photo Ideas

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4 Table of Contents Introduction BONUS: Your FREE Gift Chapter 1 Know your tools Chapter 2 Shooting Formats Chapter 3 Exposure Chapter 4 Composition Chapter 5 Editing Chapter 6 Crazy Tips Conclusion FREE Bonus Reminder BONUS #2: More Free Books

5 Copyright Notice Copyright 2015 by Steven Davis- All rights reserved. This document is geared towards providing exact and reliable information in regards to the topic and issue covered. The publication is sold with the idea that the publisher is not required to render accounting, officially permitted, or otherwise, qualified services. If advice is necessary, legal or professional, a practiced individual in the profession should be ordered. - From a Declaration of Principles which was accepted and approved equally by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations. In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved. The information provided herein is stated to be truthful and consistent, in that any liability, in terms of inattention or otherwise, by any usage or abuse of any policies, processes, or directions contained within is the solitary and utter responsibility of the recipient reader. Under no circumstances will any legal responsibility or blame be held against the publisher for any reparation, damages, or monetary loss due to the information herein, either directly or indirectly. Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher. The information herein is offered for informational purposes solely, and is universal as so. The presentation of the information is without contract or any type of guarantee assurance.

6 The trademarks that are used are without any consent, and the publication of the trademark is without permission or backing by the trademark owner. All trademarks and brands within this book are for clarifying purposes only and are the owned by the owners themselves, not affiliated with this document.

7 Disclaimer While all attempts have been made to verify the information provided in this book, the author does not assume any responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretations of the subject matter contained within. The information provided in this book is for educational and entertainment purposes only. The reader is responsible for his or her own actions and the author does not accept any responsibilities for any liabilities or damages, real or perceived, resulting from the use of this information.

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9 Introduction Maybe you ve always loved photography, or maybe you just got a DSLR and don t know what all those buttons do. Whats a DSLR anyway? When you start looking at photography as an artistic medium there are things to consider you may never have encountered before. It s an expensive hobby for many people as good equipment doesn t come cheap. Often the first thing you buy isn t the right camera for you, there s also the big Nikon/Canon debate if you re going for big brand items. Digital photography is a fairly new medium, but it s allowing artists and enthusiasts to do more with their camera s and pictures than ever before. Where once overexposed images were lamented now digital editing can save even the most blown out pictures. That and being able to use overlays and layering different image gives rise to the amazing composites that many people love. Skilled editors often make you unable to realize the difference!

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16 Chapter 1 Know your tools Buying a DSLR is more about what you intend to take pictures of than about the camera itself. When you re starting out it s often tempting to buy the latest consumer model out there, especially if it s a kit package. The honest truth is you don t need it. Good photographers can take a picture with a camera phone and still get a beautiful picture. What makes a good image is the photographer behind the lens. This is why things like composition are as important as what you re using. If you re trying to upgrade from a standard point and shoot websites like KenRockwell are ideal. His site contains reviews of every body and lens around, including the ones that are outdated. This can often allow you to start building equipment that might not be the latest but still has great performance, and stops you getting scammed by fancy equipment that performs poorly. This is a great example as to why you should stay away from beginner kits. Nikon consumer level bodies often come packaged with their AF 18-55mm, which sounds awfully tempting until you either get something to compare it to or see the reviews. Many people ditch that lens fast it s plasticky and performs poorly. Reviews are your best friend when looking for the right starter equipment in digital. Personally I m a Nikon shooter, I got my first D80 for free at a swap and it was ideal. Being a few years old meant that it was cheap, but being a mid-grade body it was very sturdy and solid. I saw a D3200 on a deal later, hated it and even gone back to my D80. There are several different levels of camera, and accordingly they go up in price. Kit cameras like the D3200 are meant for consumers, people who just want a fancy looking camera, and occasional shooters. They aren t intended for pros. The reason or this is that they are entirely plastic and aren t expected to hold up for hard use case in point mine went back to Nikon within the 90 days for a broken mirror. These are ideal if you are starting out on a budget, especially since you can find the bodies

17 factory refurbished for very little online. Lenses however are another matter, and the lens can make or break a photo. Ideally if you re starting out you won t need to look into things like wide angle or fish eye though they are so much fun to play with when you have a little more experience. Cheap lenses do their job, but often they also come with issues like color fringing, hazing, and edge distortion. The reason for this is the quality of glass used in the lens, and that is what makes lenses cost money. As mentioned before the Nikkor 18-55mm kit lens is a beginner lens if you have no clue how to use a lens you can pick one up cheap, but it s also a throwaway lens for that reason and isn t built to last. Getting a Zoom lens that has automatic focusing is a good choice this will be very similar to your point and shoot. So if you haven t already bought or been gifted a digital camera do your research first and decide how much you want to put in. Quality equipment will last you longer than consumer grade, and can sometimes take a better beating too.

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21 Chapter 2 Shooting Formats When you used your point and shoot you probably didn t really think about the digital image file being created. DSLR s allow you to adjust the type of image being saved in the camera and not all files are created equal. The most common for consumer grade cameras is JPG or JPEG. These are the most compact image files and take less memory space because they are compressed, but they are also miserable if you want to do any post editing. JPG files are called lossy this means that every time you save a little bit of the original information becomes lost and the quality of the picture degrades. Over time if you save your images repeatedly this means the image can become fuzzy, or have severe chromatic aberration to it because of the data that is being lost as it is repeatedly compressed. If you re looking to create images you can re-size and expand you want something that is lossless rather than lossy. Another reason JPG isn t ideal is that if you do decide to edit and want to make a composite or layer you will lose those in saving as JPG when the image flattens. TIFF format isn t a very popular one, and it s probably one you ve never heard of. TIFF is a great format to save in if you plan on printing as it is not lossy and is the highest quality. The downside however is that your files will be extremely large. These are not suitable for web uploading and you will need an editor program like Adobe Photoshop to work with these. PNG files are a little more common, they re very similar to JPG but are lossless. These are smaller than TIFF files but you can maintain layers and transparency unlike JPG. It s more used for graphics than photography though. GIF is the same way, it s not suited to photography at all since it limits your colors. We mentioned Photoshop above, it s one of the most popular editing programs out there. The current Adobe Creative suite is used by many professional photographers for editing, but at a professional price it is often unnecessary when there are free/cheap versions

22 available. Look into editors and decide what you want to work with your pictures, and even what will work with your camera. PSD refers to photoshop files. These are often the conversion file name for imported images taken directly from the camera and then saved in photoshop. These aren t image files from your camera, you won t be able to set your camera to save automatically as PSD so until you re editing ignore this file extension. The best file you can save digital images from your camera is called RAW. All brands, like Nikon, have their own version of RAW so you will have to have some form of editing software to get the image processed. Nikon uses NEF files. RAW files are good because they are exact records of what your camera sees. Some cameras process the image as they are being saved but these files have no processing, something that none of the other formats allows. There is also no corrections being made by the camera which is ideal if you want to do editing yourself. This is especially noticeable with exposure some photos can be over/underexposed for atmosphere that way. However, because of all the data contained in each image RAW files are huge, and they take time for saving. When choosing the best file format for saving you want to decide if you re planning on editing or if you want to try and get it right in the camera and ho big you really want your file to be. There s no shame in editing and you can t always get it perfect in the camera.

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26 Chapter 3 Exposure Exposure is about how bright or dark a picture is, taking a picture in extreme light such as bright sun or dark at night can affect how it comes out. Exposure relates to three things shutter speed, aperture and ISO. Photos are underexposed when there isn t enough light on the subject for the camera to see properly. The aperture relates to how wide the eye of the camera can see the larger the number the smaller the view the camera gets and the less light the camera can see. This means for focusing at a high aperture your subject needs to be close so that enough light gets in. Similarly night and low light photography use very low aperture settings so the camera can record the most light. Aperture settings are known as F stops as the number is preceded by an F, and most DSLR s have sensors to detect if your F stops won t work for the image if you re shooting in auto. When dealing with creative photography however your aperture can be used to change the depth of field this means that though you may stand in one spot you can change what your camera focuses on without zooming simply by adjusting the aperture. The wider your camera s aperture is the more shallow (closer) the depth of field that it focuses on. You can set this manually in most DSLR cameras in Aperture Priority mode. This means your camera will change the depth of field (focus) without relying on the aperture for exposure purposes. An aperture of f/22 for example will focus on something very close while leaving a blurred or bokeh background. Try this with anything around you. Focus on a thing or item and then adjust the f stops and nothing else. To see how the pictures change. You will be able to see the light/brightness changing with the image as more of the background becomes exposed. As well as aperture you will also need to understand shutter speed. Anyone who has worked with film before should remember the different speeds of film for taking different pictures. This is very similar. Many DSLR s will adjust this for you, but there are often

27 times when you will need to tell he camera manually to get the shot you want. For example if it s a little dark your camera might try and automatically engage the flash which you want to maintain the atmosphere. Shutter speed is expressed in seconds and fractions of second. The longest nighttime exposures can be hours! A long shutter speed is a great way to get a dark scene with atmosphere, it s also a way of getting a blurry mess. If your focus is on something that is moving you will want a shutter speed that can keep up so setting to a fast number like 1/1600 is better. This stays true no matter what the lighting situation. A great way to test this is with candlelight. Candles give off a lovely warm glow that is lost with camera flash. Turn your flash off and take a picture of a lit candle you will probably have a lot of darkness. Your shutter speed is how long your camera can see for. The longer this time is the more data it can capture. Incorrect shutter speed is what will keep your images being under/over exposed. Exposure also relies on ISO. ISO is a bit like the shutter speed but it s more important in low light situations, consider it a special boost just for low light photography. The ISO determines the sensitivity of your camera to light but as you increase the ISO you also affect other things in your camera. Many high ISO images are noisy this means there is color and fuzzing within the pixels which cause the image to be unclear and poorer in quality. Some new cameras have ISO compensation or High ISO modes but they are no infallible. You can t make noise go away, all the software does is add a smoothing effect almost like airbrushing. This is more noticeable in consumer grade cameras. ISO is about an average for the everyday photograph outside, is for inside but well lit and when using a flash indoors is most used by event photographers for low lights where no flash is available like concerts but only if they can t avoid it tends to be for atmospheric or dark images like fireworks where you haven t got a tripod is almost always grainy to some extent and really only used

28 for atmospheric shots. To test this out find an object around twilight enough light for the camera to see without a flash but not enough that some creative settings can t compensate. With the flash off take a picture of any object at ISO 100, repeat the action increasing the ISO each time. You ll see your images change in exposure and quality as you do. Lighting is hugely important in photography, and if you can t get it naturally you will have to fake it. Many of the professional photographers have complex lighting arrangements that cost thousands. You can replicate this by using Craft spotlights or good indoor lighting and a flash sometimes but you ll also need to understand light direction. Light travels in a straight line and your camera will pick up on the areas that are brightest. If this is behind your subject you can either have a great silhouette or a poorly lit underexposed subject. To compensate you can either light the subject yourself with the flash or consider things like bounce screens. Bounce screens bounce the incoming light from behind subjects onto them from in front making them better lit and less contrasted from the background. You can also cheat with your exposure and lighting conditions by fooling the camera. If you re working with bright daylight everything tends to be well exposed or over exposed. To compensate for this light your subject artificially as well as using the natural light. This can be as simple as a bounce screen and your flash or it can mean setting up additional lighting sources. Once the subject becomes brighter lit than the background the camera will underexpose the background making it fade away while the subject remains well lit. Exposure and lighting is one of the few things that can somewhat be corrected in post processing but it s much easier to have the frame properly lit than to try and fake it out or brighten up the image later and risk having something that is noisy and lacking.

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32 Chapter 4 Composition Composition refers to the elements that make up a photo. Often you don t think about anything more than the subject or object you are photographing which can mean that your photos are either cluttered or poor. Many photographers when they start out don t know the basic rules of composition things as simple as it s better to stand the tallest people in the group in the middle. Here are many rules to composition and some people are sticklers for more but there are simple things you can do to make your photos better. Regarding composition simple is always best. The camera eye captures everything in the frame yet your eye is drawn to the subject. You can also use the elements of the image to draw the eye. If you look at any image you ll find there are lines that draw you towards the subject. Try and avoid lines that go away to nothing or draw you away to make your photos more interesting. These leading lines are important they can be anything from tree lines and fences to the people staggered towards the subject at the front. These invisible lines show the viewer where they should be looking in your picture. By simplifying the clutter around the subject the photo is more pleasing to the eye. Silhouettes make striking and simple compositions. However you can t always avoid having people in the background or walking past which means you ll need to employ some creative post editing tricks to get rid of them or make them less noticeable. When film was the only media it was important to fill the frame since there was no way to post edit. Though this isn t as necessary today it s still a good idea to try and fill the frame. What this means is that every part of the image you create is important. Leaving a huge amount of space around a subject is one of the more common mistakes in composition and can leave people unsure about what is the subject of your photo. The easiest way to get around this is to simply zoom in or to move in closer to your subject. It might seem rather superfluous to point out but simply turning your camera can make a

33 huge difference on a shot. Your camera can t tell if it s being held horizontal or vertical, but your image will show. Simple turning the camera can change the style and feel of a picture. You can always crop it later if you don t like it to a wide-screen shape or a square even. Even tilting your camera so the subject is on a diagonal can have a profound impact on how it looks. Probably one of the most common things that starting photographers do is stick to the middle. The middle of a photo is boring and the sooner you realize that the better, it s been done. The easiest way to think about where to place your subject is the rule of thirds. This divides your frame into three pieces horizontally and vertically like a tic tac toe grid. Try and place your subject onto one of these lines rather than into the middle. There aren t set rules regarding this so try moving the subject around in the frame and see if you find any area that perhaps has contrasting or complimentary colors and light. The idea is to find somewhere in the frame where the subject becomes both interesting and balanced with everything around it. Know your color wheel. Bright colors are attractive, but they can also pop more when placed next to complimentary or contrasting colors. The color wheel can show you what these are. For example blue and orange will emphasize both colors while blue and purple will compliment without contrast. This can also be true if you have one particularly bright color that stands out on a bland background. Using contrast makes images stand out, and if you can do this before you edit your pictures won t seem forced. Upping the contrast and saturation in post processing is important in a high contrast image but it can also ruin it if the contrast wasn t strong enough in the first place. Ironically it s often the fact that breaking the rules creates great photographs. Following these simple rules can make images more interesting but it s in capturing a moment that just looks right that a great image is made. Once you understand how composition works you can break the rules and create these images. Accidentally doesn t count unless

34 you re able to look at it after and understand what you did.

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38 Chapter 5 Editing When you start using your photography for artistic purposes you will get a lot wrong, it s a given. Fortunately with digital media you can use your computer to fix many common beginner mistakes. However, there s no fixing a blurry photo. If your focus isn t perfect then you can t do much about it. Intentionally blurry backgrounds are obviously excluded but even today you can t fix poor focus. You ll need some kind of editing software like Apple Aperture, Lightroom or Photoshop. There are also freebie versions like Corel and GIMP out there so experiment with different programs and see which one works for you or that you re most comfortable with but we ll focus on Photoshop and Lightroom since they are the most popular. Probably the biggest trade secret in editing is presets and actions. In Photoshop actions are a series of things that change your image. You can do these individually yourself but when pre-made they are rather like an instant make over that can save you time. Presets are the same in Lightroom but you have a lot more control over how the final product looks. Editing can adjust many thing like contrast, exposure, make an image black and white, and even change someone s eye color. Post processing editing is what gives supermodels their flawless skin there are plenty of tutorials about blemish removal. You ll want to take this time to do just this remove blemishes, sharpen eyes, whiten teeth, adjust the sky or background and remove things that cause confusion. At first your editing is just to get the hang of it, you can create composites and just play around, but be sure to keep your original files saved separate. The idea is to get used to things like blending and layers. In any editing program you can create layers in your image. These basically keep aspects of the image that you have changed separate and allow you

39 to adjust only that portion. For example if you want the sky from one photo to fit into another you can layer the sky under your chosen image and then delete the sky from the original. Layers are key to successful editing and allow you to focus on one area and not have to worry about making a mess of the rest of the image.

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43 Chapter 6 Crazy Tips Digital media has it s perks, there all sorts of random things you can do that you couldn t do with a film camera, but there are also some things that you can carry over with even better effect. Try some of these random things and get some interesting pictures and cut down on your editing time. Bokeh is a photographer s friend. The bokeh is a perfect blur of the background image so that the subject stays focused but the background fades pleasantly. This occurs when your aperture is focused just right, however you can also fake it! Photographer s often position people in front of pre-made bokeh backgrounds. You can also do this with objects. You will need a flat one color surface like a cutting board or a piece of card. Place this on top of your laptop keyboard. Find a bokeh or abstract background you like and make it full screen then frame your object so you can only see the screen and not the outside of the laptop. When you shoot that image will now be the background for a perfect bokeh! If you re just starting out you probably don t have a lot of equipment, so fake it! If you take the shade off of a lap the screw is the same size as the one in your camera, allowing you to position and balance it easily. You can also use tables, books, or anything that increases the height but sometimes the low angle that not having a tripod will give you can add interest to pictures. Those fancy light diffusers? A paper towel taped over your flash can create a similar effect. Bounce umbrellas? Use a regular black umbrella and line it with aluminum foil. Those impressive sized large reflectors? Go and buy some insulation board at a hardware store and line the edges with white tape and you ll have a large reflector cheap and lightweight enough to use anywhere. There are so many ways of creating your own equipment until you can buy your own if you decide you really need something.

44 Probably the most lamented thing everyday photographers deal with is people walking in and out of shots or in the background. There s a really cool way of getting around this. Rather than telling people to clear a space set your camera onto a tripod with the exact frame you want to capture and take about 10 photos in succession. Be sure to take enough that the image you want is visible at all times (ie make sure no one is sitting in the same place the entire time if you want them gone). Open all the images in Photoshop together by going to File>scripts>Statistics if you have Creative Cloud. Use the median option. If you have Photoshop elements you can do this by Enhance>Photomerge>Scene Cleaner. We ve mentioned bokeh a lot. If you want to create your own bokeh images to use as backgrounds simply take a piece of black paper that will fit over the front of your lens and then cut a shape out of the middle. If you cut a recognizable shape like a heart that it what you will see. The size should be about a nickel, you will need a lens with 50mm or more aperture. Take pictures facing light or strong colors and you ll have instant bokeh. Many images have an almost ethereal hazy quality about them, this is often done through post processing but can also be achieved by putting either a little Vaseline around the outside of the front of the lens (better to use a filter rather than the lens itself) or by wrapping a plastic sandwich bag around the outside so that it just enters the frame. Cut the bottom of a bag open so that it fits easily around and allow it to overhang a little for best effect. A really neat trick is using colored bags as these create pops of color similar to sun flares. Light-painting is probably one of the coolest photography tricks that anyone can do. You can make hem simple or really complicated. It takes a bit of practice to get right but you can create stunning images using this technique. You will need a long exposure and nighttime setting for best results. Ideally you re going to underexpose the photo a little so that the light is better seen in the final outcome. Set your shutter for about 30 seconds or so and then take the picture. Using a glow stick, sparkler or other light source draw something within the frame using light. If you move around quickly you won t be visible but the light will. The technique of freelensing takes practice but you can get a variety of effects that would

45 otherwise require multiple lenses. These include tilt-shift and macro. This method relies on manual mode so you will need to be familiar with exposure etc. Take your lens and focus it on the subject then move it from the camera body. Hold the lens a little away from the camera and manually release the shutter (small plastic or metal part that will slide on the bracket that joins to the camera) then take the picture. You ll probably need to take several pictures to get the exposure just right. This is best used with fast lenses and is mostly a trial and error process so don t be surprised if you get a lot of wasted shots. You can also tilt the lens slightly to get the tilt-lens effect.

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48 Conclusion Digital photography has plenty of perks compared to the old film methods where it was imperative to get it right in the camera. There are a variety of different tricks for creating effects without post processing but there s no excuse for poor focus and framing. If you can t frame an image then digital media might not be for you. Even if you can t afford the most expensive equipment there are plenty of budget solutions once you get the hang of things and understand how the elements come together to make a good photo. Post processing and editing can do wonders for your images and can fix many things that weren t possible before, but it still can t fix a blurry image. Getting a good composition that s properly exposed and focused is what will make your photos great quality but it s the extra little tips that mean they will stand out. Going outside the rules is sometimes just what the image needs to make it work so don t be afraid to try things and see. We ourselves are the most critical of our images and often what we see as faults others won t even notice. The photographer is the most critical eye that will view your image so don t look at your results too harshly as others might see them as being more beautiful than you imagine.

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