Photography techniques – focus stacking
This articles looks at a lengthy and complicated procedure to render every part of a scene with perfect focus. the aim is to achieve a high depth of field (DOF) whilst maintaining the high quality of your lens’ sweet-spot. The main challenge is, maybe, deciding what situations exactly would require this sort of treatment. This technique is popular for macro work, where the DOF is usually too shallow to capture all the sharp detail in a subject. Landscape could benefit as there is a requirement for sharpness throughout the scene. Usually an f/16 and careful hyper-focal calculations will...
Read MorePhotography techniques – playing with water
We have all seen the photographs of waterfalls or beaches where the water has turned to milk. You either love it or your hate it, but regardless of that, it is a good way to come to understand shutter speed. this article looks at ways to give water that milky effect. First you need a camera and a source of flowing water. Not all of us are lucky enough to be living in Iceland. Next it is best to have a tripod or another way of keeping the camera perfectly still. To create the milky effect, you will need to have the shutter open for a while. The shot of Óxárafoss was 30 seconds, but you...
Read MorePhotoshop Basics – noise reduction
No camera is perfect. If we push it to the limits of iso and low-light scenes, we are going to experience the number one weakness of a digital camera – NOISE. In camera noise control When you use the long exposure noise reduction setting on a D-SLR, it takes the same shot with the shutter closed and then takes the information away from the original exposure. This is why you will have to wait the same amount of time again after taking the shot this can be an inconvenience if you want to keep shooting. You can save this time and do this yourself with photoshop or similar photo editor. If...
Read MoreComposition – following and breaking the rules
The rules of composition are guidelines for producing a well designed image. ‘Guidelines’ are probably a better description than ‘rules’ as they just help us as a kind of starting point. Do not break the rules until you are an expert at following them. You need to understand how they work and how they help you create great compositions. Learn the rules and then break them only if it will create a better image than if you followed them. Rule of thirds Divide your frame into 9 equal parts and the lines and intersection become powerful places to place areas of...
Read MorePhotoshop Basics – cropping techniques1 – cropping for composition.
There are many reasons why you might want to crop an image. You might want to make a smaller file size, you might have straightened an image and you need to correct it,or maybe you want to improve the composition. Let’s first look at cropping to improve composition. You may have a good picture but you want to get the composition perfect in terms of compositional rules such as the golden mean or the rule of thirds. Rule of thirds Open photoshop and go to Edit=>Preferences=>Guides, Grids, slices and Count… Open the dialogue box. In the ‘grid’ section, enter the...
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