Official Photography Thread

[RobinFinderson]

My wife is just starting to get into taking pics with her new camera, a Canon T1i. She has been busy taking pics of her favorite subject...our lovely children. She will kill me if she found out I was posting some of her pics but what are husbands for? Here are a few of her first pics of our baby boy:

That is pretty sweet, FN PHat. Right now it looks like you are generating B&W's by simply converting to gray scale, right? The result is an image where there isn't much dynamic range. Although it really isn't a hard and fast rule, I once had a photog friend of mine suggest that most B&W images should have some solid black, some solid white, and a mix of the middle, depending on subject. You can't get that kind of range with a program like GIMP (free) Photoshop Elements (inexpensive) Lightroom (not cheap) or Photoshop (expensive). If you are on a Mac, iPHoto will do the trick... or Picasso (Google's free photo organization and editing tool). There are lots of good options! Look into them, and if you have any questions, I'm sure that there are a number of us that can help you figure out how to use the software (if you don't know how to use it already).

Beautiful baby!

[FN Phat]

That is pretty sweet, FN PHat. Right now it looks like you are generating B&W's by simply converting to gray scale, right? The result is an image where there isn't much dynamic range. Although it really isn't a hard and fast rule, I once had a photog friend of mine suggest that most B&W images should have some solid black, some solid white, and a mix of the middle, depending on subject. You can't get that kind of range with a program like GIMP (free) Photoshop Elements (inexpensive) Lightroom (not cheap) or Photoshop (expensive). If you are on a Mac, iPHoto will do the trick... or Picasso (Google's free photo organization and editing tool). There are lots of good options! Look into them, and if you have any questions, I'm sure that there are a number of us that can help you figure out how to use the software (if you don't know how to use it already).

Beautiful baby!

Thanks. Yeah she is suppose to be getting some Photoshop software from a neighbor. I am assuming it is the free one I really do not know. I know that she wants to get into the editing but I am not sure she knows where to start. She may join CUF, if only for this thread. She is very raw but is excited to learn. I am hoping she sticks with it.

[Katy Lied]

WAY better than most HDR images, which come off as surreal and cartoonish. Smart move to keep the levels of the houses low enough to see some detail, but not high enough to confuse the time when the photo was taken. The cut of the treeline across the image is gorgeous.

Nice photo, and nice comment. I also like the treeline.

I assume at f/5.6 you were taking the picture through an open window?

[Katy Lied]

FN Phat: Your wife's photos have great composition, and also Robin's comments are spot on. I think you can buy Photoshop Elements from Costco for about $70. You can do a lot with it, and it doesn't intimidate the way Photoshop does.

I like the third photo the best. It's a nice study of soft textures, from the softness of the thick blanket, to the baby's soft head, to his flannel sleepwear. Like Robin said, introducing more blacks and whites into the picture makes the photo more interesting and the contrast between black colors alongside whites introduces more tension and excitement to the composition.

I'm glad your wife is taking pictures now, while she has a captive model. Before they get old enough to complain that she's lame for taking their pictures all the time.

[Katy Lied]

Speaking of sunset photos, this is one that I took last summer from my front patio. I don't remember the exposure or focal length.

You mean the one you took from your paid-off front patio?

A lot of digital picture software will preserve basic info like exposure or focal length. You can try right clicking on the photo and checking properties. You'll be surprised what info is saved along with the photo.

[RobinFinderson]

You mean the one you took from your paid-off front patio?

A lot of digital picture software will preserve basic info like exposure or focal length. You can try right clicking on the photo and checking properties. You'll be surprised what info is saved along with the photo.

Exactly. I brought the photo into Lightroom and discovered the following metadata:

Exposure: 1/80 sec at f/5.3
ISO setting 400
Focal length 45mm (67mm equivalent on a 35mm camera)
Shot on a Nikon D50

Edit: And shot on 7/5/2007 at 5:50pm

[Katy Lied]

Exactly. I brought the photo into Lightroom and discovered the following metadata:

Exposure: 1/80 sec at f/5.3
ISO setting 400
Focal length 45mm (67mm equivalent on a 35mm camera)
Shot on a Nikon D50

Edit: And shot on 7/5/2007 at 5:50pm

Yikes! Il Pad, watch out what information you're giving people about your camera movements! I guess "last summer" means 3 summers ago!

[mtnbiker]

Yikes! Il Pad, watch out what information you're giving people about your camera movements! I guess "last summer" means 3 summers ago!

I'd say he didn't set the clock on the camera. A sunset shot at 5:50pm in July??? Keep 'em guessing, Il Pad!

[RobinFinderson]

I'd say he didn't set the clock on the camera. A sunset shot at 5:50pm in July??? Keep 'em guessing, Il Pad!

I posted the wrong time. I saw the number 17:50 and assumed it was set to a 24 hour clock. I missed the 8. The photo was take at 8:17pm (10 seconds before 8:18pm). This is according to the camera's internal clock, which might be wrong, but would probably only reflect a timezone shift, and not some random date and time. A sunrise/sunset calender shows that the SLC sunset on July 5, 2007 was 9:01pm, so the quality of light depicted in the image seems about right for the 8:17pm shoot time.

Anyhow, il Pad's photo is nice. The bigger point here is that there is a lot of metadata that gets preserved in our photos, even after they are processed for the web.

[Katy Lied]

I was rummaging through some photo accessories on Amazon and came across this blow up soft box. In reading the comments, I've found that people using it say they feel like a:

Moron
Dufus
Fool
Weird
Dork
Disgrace
Goofy

Other than that, most people love it, and love the way it works despite being less than $10.

[FN Phat]

That is pretty sweet, FN PHat. Right now it looks like you are generating B&W's by simply converting to gray scale, right? The result is an image where there isn't much dynamic range. Although it really isn't a hard and fast rule, I once had a photog friend of mine suggest that most B&W images should have some solid black, some solid white, and a mix of the middle, depending on subject. You can't get that kind of range with a program like GIMP (free) Photoshop Elements (inexpensive) Lightroom (not cheap) or Photoshop (expensive). If you are on a Mac, iPHoto will do the trick... or Picasso (Google's free photo organization and editing tool). There are lots of good options! Look into them, and if you have any questions, I'm sure that there are a number of us that can help you figure out how to use the software (if you don't know how to use it already).

Beautiful baby!

FN Phat: Your wife's photos have great composition, and also Robin's comments are spot on. I think you can buy Photoshop Elements from Costco for about $70. You can do a lot with it, and it doesn't intimidate the way Photoshop does.

I like the third photo the best. It's a nice study of soft textures, from the softness of the thick blanket, to the baby's soft head, to his flannel sleepwear. Like Robin said, introducing more blacks and whites into the picture makes the photo more interesting and the contrast between black colors alongside whites introduces more tension and excitement to the composition.

I'm glad your wife is taking pictures now, while she has a captive model. Before they get old enough to complain that she's lame for taking their pictures all the time.

Thank you both for your comments and suggestions. She has been taking more and more pics and has been absorbing a lot of information in a short amount of time. She reads the comments here and has enjoyed the contributions of many (I think she actually read this entire thread ). I still haven't ponied up the cash flow to get her the editing software. However, she did take some more pics and I would like some more feed back on her photo-taking skillz (not the editing but the actual shot. I know there is a technical word for what I am trying to say but I am a photog idiot). Please feel free to critique.









and my personal favorite:

[Katy Lied]

Is there an incandescent light bulb right over where the baby is laying?

[FN Phat]

Is there an incandescent light bulb right over where the baby is laying?

Yup

[RobinFinderson]

Yup

KL asks because of the strong yellow cast in the images. Incandescent lights are yellow. This is what "white balancing" is all about. The camera takes into account the light source and corrects the colors so that what you see in the photograph is the same color range that you see with the naked eye.

Different light sources have different colors. Your eye & brain are very good at removing color tints, even though they are there. For example, the sky is blue, and casts a blue tint over everything. Do you notice that? Thank your brain.

Your camera is probably capable of shooting RAW images. This used to be considered the professional file setting, but any aspiring shutterbug ought to shoot her photos in RAW. One of the greatest advantages of RAW images is that you can set your white balance in the computer after the the shoot without affecting the image quality. When you shoot in any other file type (jpg is most common) the white balance is 'baked' into the photo. This means that correcting the color cast after the fact will degrade the image. These days even free software is able to develop and handle RAW files, so have your wife start shooting RAW and learn about this.

Still a cute baby!

[Katy Lied]

I dont think FN's wife has the software to process RAW, although SPace Ghost would know if there's any open source software around. I've found it sort of hard to use the free stuff.

What I would recommend is just natural light, and a tripod. I love the cast of low levels of natural light. Open that aperture up and slow down the f/stops to 10. (Of course, as your baby gets faster and faster, this wont be an option unless he's asleep)

Then I would use something like:
Sto-Fen Green and Gold Colored Omni-Bounce Set for Canon 430EX Flashe
$16 from Amazon or Adorama.