Friday, 20 June 2014

25 Photography Cliches You Should Stop Doing Today (Video)

25 Photography Cliches You Should Stop Doing Today (Video)

Link to PictureCorrect Photography Tips

25 Photography Cliches You Should Stop Doing Today (Video)

Posted: 19 Jun 2014 08:40 PM PDT

Selfies, weird borders, and crappy sunset shots. We’ve all rolled our eyes at these clichés, but what’s worse is that we’ve all been guilty of them at some time or another. In this video, Kai exposes the 25 worst photo clichés that you should avoid doing if you hope to grow as a photographer:

(for those of you reading this by email, the video tutorial can be seen here)

25 Photography Cliches to Avoid (or Else)

  1. Taking selfies. Please stop?
  2. Bokeh, bokeh, and more bokeh. Bokeh is great—in small doses.
  3. Signing your photos. In Kai’s words: “Who do you think you are? Picasso?”
  4. Adding cheesy filters. Just… no.
  5. Putting text on your photos. A good picture already paints a thousand words.
  6. Taking the same-old sunset photos. “Red sky, red sky, red sky, red sky, red sky…”
  7. Using obnoxious watermarks. It’s good to protect your work, but if no one can see your photo behind your large opaque branding, then what’s the point of posting it online?
  8. Adding borders. Don’t be a noob.
  9. Light painting names. Just forget it—the writing would look juvenile anyway.
  10. Creating B&W photos with selective colors. Good for poignant tales. Not so good for random flowers.
  11. Making B&W artistic nudes. A nude is a nude no matter the color space, people.
  12. Blurring waterfalls. If shot incorrectly, blurred waterfalls look like “a load of old ladies’ hairs.”
  13. Capturing boring landscape panoramas. 90 percent of landscape panoramas are probably just green grass at the bottom and blue sky at the top.
  14. Taking lots of cloud photos. Take photos of cool cloud formations, sure—but don’t make clouds and sunsets your entire portfolio!
  15. Inserting fake sun lens flare. Get your own sun flare!
  16. Overdoing HDR. HDR is best done tastefully or not at all.
  17. Changing better-suited color photos to B&W. Just… why?
  18. Using the zoom burst technique. Okay, you can try it ONCE—but never again.
  19. Creating dutch angle shots. You’ll have to work hard to set your dutch angle shots apart.
  20. Making “postcard” images of tourist attractions. You know those touristy shots that you’ve seen a million times? We don’t need another one floating around out there. Try something new!
  21. Photographing people who are less fortunate than you. Everyone photographs homeless people. Make your images unique or don’t make them at all.
  22. Taking “I’m a Photographer” selfies. Don’t you do it!
  23. Every. Single. Stock. Photo. Ever. Made. Perhaps not every stock photo, but certainly most!
  24. Devising optical illusions. You might think you’re clever, but…
  25. Photographing people with trollies. Apparently, Kai does this far too often.
selective color black and white b&w cliche photography photo kai digitalrevtv

You really need to be able to justify using selective color in a black and white. Even then, it’s probably still cheesy.

This article has kicked off quite a discussion here. Let us know what you think! Are all of these techniques cliché or do they become cliché when executed poorly? What is the worst cliché on the list?


Go to full article: 25 Photography Cliches You Should Stop Doing Today (Video)

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Article from: PictureCorrect Photography Tips

Interesting Photo of the Day: Glow Sticks Dropped Down a Waterfall

Posted: 19 Jun 2014 06:34 PM PDT

There are no limitations when it comes to lighting a subject, or on what to light them with. Sean Lenz and Kristoffer Abildgaard dropped colorful high-powered Cyalume glow sticks into a waterfall and photographed it with a long exposure. The result is truly stunning:

A long exposure of glow sticks dropped into a waterfall.  (Via Imgur. Click to view full size.)

The duo photographed a series of waterfalls around Northern California, now part of a collection titled “Neon Luminance.” Lenz and Abildgaard would drop in individual glow sticks or string several together to create different patterns of light, with exposures lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to 7 minutes.

For those of you with the environment on your mind, the photographers say the glow sticks were left intact and fished out of the stream after every session.


Go to full article: Interesting Photo of the Day: Glow Sticks Dropped Down a Waterfall

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Article from: PictureCorrect Photography Tips

Autofocus Modes Explained (Video)

Posted: 19 Jun 2014 05:23 PM PDT

Sony recently released a new mirrorless camera that focuses faster than most of the best APS-C sensor equipped cameras on the market. The compact a6000 uses a Hybrid autofocus system which combines both Phase Detection and Contrast Detection autofocus. Now, you probably know that Phase Detection is faster than Contrast Detection, but be honest, do you know why? In this video, the different autofocus modes are explained:

There are two kinds of AF: Phase Detection (found on DSLRs) and Contrast Detection (found on point-and-shoot cameras and smartphones).

Phase Detection Autofocus

Phase Detection has been around for awhile, it is what film SLRs use. The system uses two tiny sensors and an array of lenses to measure the distance between your camera and your subject.

How Phase Detection Works:

  • The light goes through the lens and hits the mirror behind it
  • The mirror serves two purposes: it reflects the light up and to the viewfinder so you can see the image; and it is also semi-transparent, with another mirror behind it that reflects the light down to the bottom of the camera where there is a phase detection autofocus sensor
  • Depending on whether you’re focused in front of or behind the subject, the camera always knows which direction to move the focusing sensor in order to focus
  • The advantage is really fast focusing

phase detection autofocus

Contrast Detection Autofocus

Contrast Detection is a purely digital system. It uses the camera’s processor to analyze the image and determine at what point, when the focusing lens is moving, that image is at its sharpest, when it has the most contrast.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Contrast Detection

Disadvantages

  1. While it is reliant on the speed of the processor, it also needs to know when it is out of focus from the back direction, as well as the front direction. This means it generally has to overshoot to know that it was in focus beforehand.
  2. It’s not as fast as Phase Detection.

contrast detection autofocus

Advantage

The biggest advantage is that it’s very precise because it’s reading the data directly off the sensor. Once that data is in focus it knows the image you capture is going to be directly in focus as well.

Hybrid Autofocus

The Sony a6000 uses Hybrid AF which combines Phase Detection and Contrast Detection. On the sensor, you have lenses which is the Phase Detection part, giving it the ability to focus really quickly on your subject. Then it switches to Contrast Detection to get that nice, crisp quality.

hybrid autofocus system

The best parts of each system work together to give you a fast and precise AF. Have you tried out a camera with Hybrid Autofocus?


Go to full article: Autofocus Modes Explained (Video)

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Article from: PictureCorrect Photography Tips

Stepping Outside of Your Comfort Zone as a Photographer (Video)

Posted: 19 Jun 2014 02:55 PM PDT

New York-based photojournalist Amy Toensing is known for her amazing aptitude to tell people’s intimate stories through images. As a regular contributor to National Geographic, Toensing travels the world to meet people and experience their culture. In this video, she explains that as a photographer, you have to be able to humble yourself and step outside your comfort zone to fully experience a new culture, people, or place:

Toensing explains that, as a photographer, you have to immerse yourself in the setting and learn from the people in order to get natural, true-to-life images. People, including photographers, like familiarity. We want to shoot in familiar environments, or with people with whom we are comfortable. Forcing yourself out of this comfort zone makes you pay more attention to your subject, setting, communication and capturing the image naturally.

low angle

Here, Toensing uses a low angle to capture the entire family, but draws the focus to the young girl on the left.

Tips to Help You Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

  • Try a new location. Some photographers (myself included) tend to visit the same parks, beaches, or nature trails because they know which settings create good backgrounds. By visiting a new place, you are forced to expand your creativity to find new photo spots, which can give your photos new life.
  • Let your subjects play. If you are a portrait or family photographer who opts for posing your subjects, try taking more natural photographs for a different style. Step back from the action and let them interact as if the camera isn’t there. Snap pictures as the opportunities present themselves and let the shoot develop organically.
  • Shoot with a specific lens or angle. Sometimes we get comfortable shooting from a tripod or at eye level. Challenge yourself by selecting either a high or low angle or by shooting with a single lens (wide angle, fixed length, fisheye). Taking a new perspective on a common subject can create incredible or unusual images.
  • Interact with your subjects. Many people are simply uncomfortable in front of the camera. By setting your camera on a tripod and talking to them candidly off camera, you can use a shutter remote to capture images without forcing your subject to look directly at the lens.

“I have to be ready to go into a place where I’m like, ‘OK, I’m stupid. I don’t know anything. Teach me. Show me.’ And that’s not an easy position to be in, but it’s an important one for everybody to know.”


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Article from: PictureCorrect Photography Tips

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