How To: Shoot Silhouettes - And a Bit About Dynamic Range

Before I start, I want to take a few lines to apologize for my upcoming blog post sabbatical. As I mentioned in an earlier post, whenever I'm at home, my limited internet access prevents me from doing much blogging. I'm currently sitting in Savannah, GA. and will be catching a flight back home to Virginia tomorrow morning (Sat. Apr. 25th). Instead of being back at work on Monday for more blogging, I will be taking my vacation next week. I'm headed to the Wyndham Nassau Resort and Crystal Palace Casino in Nassau Bahamas! I've read that internet access isn't free at the hotel, which blows my mind. What year is this?....1998? Anyways, I'll likely be shooting photos, relaxing on the beach, scuba diving, or finding some nightlife. I'll be back to work Monday, May 4th. Expect a new post shortly after with photos from my trip, and oh!....I'm also attending the Langley AirPower over Hampton Roads air-show this upcoming Sunday! Expect a blog post about how to photograph an air-show sometime on my return week as well.

As for my upcoming posts, the majority of the basics have been covered and I'll now be posting more specific how-to type posts. We'll start today with how to shoot silhouettes.

What is a silhouette? - A silhouette is a view of an object or scene consisting of the outline and a featureless interior, with the silhouetted object usually being black. The term was initially applied in the 18th century to portraits or other pictorial representations cut from thin black card. The term has been extended to describe the sight or image of a person, object or scene that is backlit, and appears dark against a lighter background. Because a silhouette emphasises the outline, the word has also been used in the fields of fashion and fitness to describe the shape of a person's body or the shape created by wearing clothing of a particular style or period. - Source: Wikipedia

In terms of photography, the italicized bold text in the paragraph above describes a silhouette perfectly.

An important term when referring to a silhouette is dynamic range.

Dynamic range is the ratio of light to dark that the cameras "eye" can see. The greater the dynamic range, the more details you'll get in both the highlights and the shadows. Unfortunately the cameras dynamic range is nowhere near that of the human eye. The human eye can see a considerably larger amount of details in highlights and shadows of a scene. While this can cause a lot of problems with getting a photo to look the way you want it, it works very nicely for silhouette images.

All you really have to do for a silhouette is set your exposure for a bright light source behind your subject. The limited dynamic range of your camera will automatically lose all or most of the details in the shadows and retain all the details in the light source, or the highlights.

With that said, a great light source to use for silhouettes is a sunset or sunrise. This is because the colors are very dramatic, and if you have a lot of clouds in the sky, you'll get even more visual interest in your photo. A sunset or sunrise, however, is not required. You could stand your subject in front of a window on the inside of the building, expose for what is outside of the window, and your subject will be silhouetted against the background. (See the flip-flop photos below)

So let's break this down into steps:

1. Look for or create a subject with a strong visual interest. In other words, use something that will be very recognizable just by it's outline or shape alone.
2. Place your subject in front of a light source so that there is a lot of light behind the subject, and as little as possible falling on the camera side of the subject itself.
3. Ensure there isn't a lot of other items in the frame of your shot that will distract from the main subject or clutter the photo excessively.
4. Set your exposure so that the background (light source) is properly exposed and not blown out (a term for losing detail in the highlights) or underexposed (a term for losing detail in the shadows). With the proper exposure on the background and no light falling on the subject, the subject itself should be underexposed which will give you the silhouette you're trying to achieve. Remember...exposure is set by varying aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.
5. Once you're photo is properly exposed, focus the camera on your subject. This will ensure the subject has a nice crisp outline, and isn't blurry. On occasion, there may be times when you want the background to be in perfect focus and the silhouette to have a blurry outline. For example, I had a shot of my pug, Fez, looking out the window at a girl on the street. I exposed for the girl on the street as well as focused on the girl in the street. I wanted the focus on the girl so you could tell what Fez was looking at. I framed the shot so both the girl and Fez were in the viewfinder and snapped the photo.
6. Once you've achieved your desired focus, and have framed the subject nicely, press the shutter button to take the photo.
7. Thanks to the digital camera age, you now have instant results on your cameras LCD screen. Review your shot and make any adjustments to exposure, focus, and subject framing as necessary and continue shooting. With a few repetitions, you'll find that you can now confidently shoot a silhouette image.

A few tips:

• Try using a wide array of aperture settings to see the different results. First try a very small aperture (large F number) so that the subject has a crisp outline, and the background is in focus as well. Then try a large aperture (small F number) so that your subject is crisp and the background is a nice smooth blur of color. Thinking back to an earlier post, if you change your aperture, you'll need to change your shutter speed to compensate for the addition or subtraction of light. This will keep your photos exposure the same, but change the artistic effects associated with aperture.
• Angle the camera a considerable amount to give your photo an unusual perspective and add interest to the photo. (See the photo at the top of this post)
• Don't use flash. By using flash, you'll light the subject even if the background is properly exposed. This is obviously the exact opposite of what a silhouette is.

When I first started this blog, I mentioned that the posts would be geared towards shooting photos in full manual mode. If you happen to be using a point and shoot on automatic mode, you can still shoot silhouettes. Although I won't go into the extra details, I wanted to provide a link to a site that does describe how to create the effect on automatic mode: Easy Ways to Shoot a Silhouette

Below is an example pertaining to dynamic range:

You'll notice in the first photo, the shoes are properly exposed, but the details in the background are completely blown out. If it weren't for the second photo, you'd have no idea such a vibrant background existed. The second photo is exposed for the golf course and water in the background. You end up with a silhouetted image of the shoes, but you lose almost all detail in the subject. The reason for this is because of the cameras poor dynamic range. When I say poor, I mean in reference to the fact that as I looked at the shoes against the background with my eyes, I could see the detail in both the shoes and the golf course that lay behind. In comparison to what you can see with your eye, a camera has a poor dynamic range. Getting both the shoes and water properly exposed in the same image would require either adding a light source to the shoes so it is more closely matched with that of the background light source, or a number of post processing techniques such as exposure blending or HDR (high dynamic range). We'll get into these techniques at a later date.

I'll close this post with one more silhouette shot that I've taken. The photo below is of a PT6 turboprop airplane engine against a setting sun. I shot this photo en-route from Fayetteville, Arkansas to Indianapolis, Indiana back in December of 2008.

This has been how to shoot a silhouette "From the Ground Up!"

View the full post here...

Did You Get the Shot?

You're driving down the road and all of a sudden you see the Goodyear Blimp landing in a local shopping center parking lot. I dunno, maybe it was an emergency, or maybe it was a scheduled promotional visit, but whatever the case...did you get the shot?

Time after time, the answer to that question for me has been NO! When something amazing happens, I never seem to have my camera with me. I've got a quick fix to this problem. BRING YOUR CAMERA EVERYWHERE!!!

This topic might not seem very instructional, and granted it isn't. I do however feel it's an important topic to cover.

Some of the best photographs that are taken aren't planned. When something rare happens, it's nice to have a camera with you, at least giving you the chance to capture the event. Whether you do a good job of taking the photo goes back to your ability to adjust settings on the fly and quickly find a good compositional location. A photograph can lack in quality to some extent, if the event is rare enough. The rarity of a photo can cause it to become an iconic image that will be widely viewed and known.

I know it seems stupid and tedious to carry a camera to the grocery store, the bank, to work, to lunch, etc....however, it's often these times when something amazing happens on the way. To get the point across, let me list a few things big or small, that I've missed by not being prepared:

• Air Force One flying right over my head multiple times as it did touch and go's at the local airport
• Extreme sunsets and sunrises
• A field full of hot air balloons lifting off
• A local business on fire
• Interesting looking people - photojournalism
• Lightning storms

Some things I've managed to capture at odd times by having a camera available:

• Bald eagle perched on a stick in the middle of a lake beside my hotel
• Bridge opening with a battleship passing through at night
• My brother's deployment (ok perhaps most people have cameras at these things, but the images I got were more than just the standard family images)
• A lot of aerial photographs
• Interesting paint schemes on aircraft

I understand that lugging a heavy DSLR with all the equipment can be tiresome and nerve racking so at the least, buy yourself an inexpensive point and shoot that will fit in your pocket, purse, or wherever. A camera phone is better than no camera at all.

Here's a shot I got by using a camera phone. If it weren't for that, I would have missed this relatively rare photo:

Coleman Bridge opening during the day with a battleship passing through

So here is a good tip for travelling! Always bring your camera in your carry-on. This serves multiple purposes. For one, you have your camera available if something photo worthy happens during your flight. Secondly, it will prevent damage or loss from being in checked luggage. As a pilot, I have my camera on me all the time. I never know where my job will take me. I do find it annoying to carry an extra piece of luggage for my camera equipment, but I've had the opportunity to fly to some unique locations and was very glad I had it with me. I recommend a backpack style camera bag. This is one less thing you have to hold in your hands, and most backpacks fit in overhead bins or on the floor in front of your feet.

Might I add that the other 2 things I really find to be useful, but not nearly as practical are a tripod and at least one strobe type flash. I feel like I miss alot of things after dark because of my inability to lug the items around the country with me. When I'm home however, I always keep them in my car.

I hope everyone takes the extra time and effort to pack a camera of some sorts on their future ventures, near or far! I'll close this post with a few of the photos I took at my brother's deployment, mentioned above.

"Rucksacks & Body Armor"

"Please Come Home Safe" - That's my brother in the middle with the orange thing on his rucksack

"The Buses Await"

This has been, how to not miss the shot "From the Ground Up!"

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How I Shot This - "In the Drink"

Today's post is a "how I shot this" post.

You've likely seen shots very similar to this one from many other photographers. Originality was lacking to some extent on my part. The main purpose of this shoot was to practice different lighting techniques and see what type of results I could draw without the help of others. Instead of searching online for how to shoot this type of image, I looked on Flickr for other examples of this type of shot. From there I looked at where the light was coming from and decided to start a process of trial and error.

What you'll need:

• Camera
• Tripod
• 2 Strobe Flashes
• Flash trigger system (pocket wizards, synch cables, etc)
• Clear Glass Tank
• Black Non Reflective Backdrop (or other colors depending on desired artistic effect)
• Water (Seltzer water for extra bubbles)
• Object to drop in water
• Focusing Object (something to set your initial focus with)
• Remote Shutter (optional)
• Aluminum Foil (optional)
• Lightstands (optional)
• Towels (optional)

The setup:

1. Start by setting up your clear glass tank (fishtank, cookie jar, etc that is free of scratches, scuffs, or fingerprints) on a table or other flat surface. I used a chair to set the tank on allowing me to put a black shirt over the back part of the chair. If you use a reflective surface for the black backdrop you will get flash hotspots.
2. Next fill the tank with water. If you want alot of bubbles, you can use Seltzer water (carbonated water). I used a mixture of both.
3. Next set up a flash on either side of the tank pointing directly at the sides of the tank. I chose to put the flashes flush against the tank. After much trial and error, I realized that if the flashes were to far away, they illuminated the front and rear plane of glass giving me more of a flat or hazy look. If you have lightstands, you can use them to support the flashes. I found that a stack of books I had closely available worked just fine. The room I was working in limited my floor space preventing me from adding lightstands due to the wider base.
4. Hook up your triggering system. I have the AlienBees CyberSync remote triggers and receivers. You can also use flash sync cables as a cheaper option.
5. Set the flash power to a lower power setting. My flashes lowest setting was 1/16th power.
6. Setup your camera on a tripod pointing at the jar
7. Insert an object into the jar, approximately in the center. The idea is to use an object that when sitting in the jar, will give your camera something to focus on . It needs to stay stationary as you move to your camera to compose the shot. I used the handle of a flyswatter to stick in the center of the tank.
8. Compose your shot and set the camera to autofocus
9. Focus the camera on the object in the center of the tank using the autofocus. Once focused, switch the camera to manual focus. (If your camera continuously tries to focus on the glass or the bubbles formed on the glass, focus in manual from the get-go to get the object in focus. Leave the focus on manual.
10. Set the F/stop to a small aperture to get the largest depth of field. I chose F/16.
11. Set the shutter speed to the maximum flash synch speed according to your camera user manual. For the Canon EOS 50D, this would be 1/250th of a second. This will prevent ambient lighting from adding unplanned light to your shot.
12. Remove the object from the tank
13. Set your cameras timer to somewhere between 2 and 10 seconds.
14. Use either a remote shutter release cable or just push the shutter button (if you can reach it) to start the timer countdown. Many cameras beep, so you can tell approximately when the shutter will fire.
15. A split second before the camera fires, drop the object from 3-5 inches above the water level. The further the drop, the bigger the splash.
16. Review the shot.
17. If you manage to get the ball anywhere in the frame, adjust the f/stop or change the flash power settings to get the proper exposure.
18. Repeat until you get the timing on spot

Things to consider:

• smaller apertures will give you the greatest depth of field. I knew from the start I would need to use at least F/14.
• If you have flashes that are capable of firing rapidly in succession, instead of using the timer, you can use the remote shutter to rapidly fire shots from the camera as the object drops. This will wield a lot less trial and error drops, and a lot more good captures. My flashes are older (and cheaper) which prevents me from firing flashes in rapid succession.
• Change the background to a color to add more vibrance to the shot. Remember, reflective surfaces will cause flash hotspots in unintended areas
• Keep plenty of towels on hand. As you fish your object repeatedly from the tank, you'll likely drip water all over yourself and the floor.
• Wipe the glass free of droplets above the waterline to keep it clear and free of unneeded water spots
• Add aluminum foil to the bottom of the tank to reflect some light up from the bottom helping fill the shadows.
• If you change the background color, it won't absorb as much light as a black surface, therefore reflecting some light back to the object.

View the full post here...

I'll Take My Photos RAW Please!

This entry is about how your camera saves a file to the memory card when you take a photo.

I'll try to keep this at the most basic level possible. This blog is intended to help new comers to photography, and I don't want to scare you away from the post with a load of technical jargon and somewhat unpractical information.

There are 3 basic options for saving your image to the card in most modern DSLR cameras. These options are:

JPG

RAW

RAW + JPG

What is a JPG(JPEG), and what is a RAW?

For starters, the image sensor in the average DSLR is gathering information in either 12 or 14 bits of data. Basically this allows the camera to save between 4,096 and 16,384 brightness levels depending on whether it's a 12 or 14 bit camera.

A JPG file is a standard image format that saves the file with lossy image compression. What this means is that of the 4,096 - 16,384 brightness levels available from your cameras sensor, the image is compressed to reduce the file size down to 8 bits of data which equivocate to 256 brightness levels. Additionally, all the saturation, contrast, white balance data, sharpening levels, and other camera settings are permanently assigned to the file.

The photo at the top of this post is a side by side comparison of what happens as a photo becomes compressed. The photo on the left is a JPEG file with some compression. As the photo is edited multiple times and re-saved multiple times, the compression becomes more and more apparent by artifacting (image quality loss due to compression) as seen in the right hand photo. Both versions of the photo show some compression artifacts upon careful examination, but the one on the right is far more degraded. It's easiest to notice the artifacts in the sky area of the photo.

A RAW file is an image format that saves the file with no compression or lossless compression (compression with no quality loss). RAW files save all the data originally taken from the sensor so that in the final file, one has the full 12-14 bits of data to play with. This allows you to change the exposure to a further degree after the image is already taken because instead of only having 256 brightness levels, you have up to 16,384 levels to play with. The settings you have in the camera at the time the photo is taken is saved to the file as well, but it doesn't save ONLY that information like JPG's. It saves all the other information available as if you had shot the photo with different settings.

For example, if you had shot a photo in JPG and the Shade white balance setting was chosen, you would be essentially stuck with that choice forever in the JPG file. If you shot the photo in RAW, you can go back and choose any of the white balance settings that were originally available to you at the time the photo was taken.

Let me interject that I'm not advocating using RAW as an excuse to not set the correct setting from the get go. I am saying, however, that if you do make a mistake, you have the chance to save the photo by changing the original settings slightly to salvage what would have been unsalvageable before RAW came along.

The more you get right on camera, the less work you have to do in post processing. When you shoot a wedding with 100-200 keepable photos, you don't want to have to edit every setting in post processing. This will add a lot of time to your processing work, whereas you could have saved loads of time by taking a few extra seconds at the time of the shoot to get the settings right.

The above options for saving a file are pretty self explanatory. If you choose JPG in your camera menu, the photo will be written as a JPG. If you choose RAW, the image will be saved as a RAW. The third option is to shoot in RAW & JPG, essentially saving 2 copies of each photo to the memory card, 1 in each file format.

Additionally, when you convert the RAW file into a TIFF file or a PSD file in photoshop or other image editing program, it is able to spread the 12-14 bits into 16 bits of information, or 65,536 brightness levels to work with.

A JPG file will often look just as nice in print as a RAW file converted to TIFF or PSD would have. The difference comes with the pros and cons listed below.

PROS & CONS

JPG PROS

• Smaller file size aka fit more files on memory card
• Shoot photos faster on camera because the small file size allows the images to be written to the card much faster
• If you don't like to do a lot of post processing to your images, the JPG file will eliminate much of the post processing work

JPG CONS

• Smaller file size from compression causes JPG artifacts (a noticeable image quality loss)
• Every time you re-save your JPG after editing it, the file is further compressed and the image quality gets worse and worse due to increasing compression artifacts.
• Lose most of the ability to recover under or over exposed photos.
• Can't change white balance after the fact, which can make a photo very unusable if you had a very wrong setting in camera.

RAW PROS

• Ability to bring change white balance after the fact
• Ability to recover detail from blown highlights and underexposed shadow areas
• No quality loss due to compression (no artifacts)
• Larger range of color data available to you in the 12 or 14 bit RAW file.

RAW CONS

• Larger file size
• Slower writing to memory card, therefore reducing how rapidly the camera can fire shots
• More post processing work

Different camera companies use different file extensions for RAW formats. For example, the Canon brand uses .CR2 file format in many of its cameras, whereas Sony uses .ARW. The RAW format has not been standardized into one file extension yet. The downside to this is that, one RAW converter (a program that converts your RAW to .JPG, .TIFF, .PSD, etc) won't necessarily be able to open up and edit all RAW file types. The good news is that your camera likely came with a converter for its associated file format. Additionally, Adobes latest Photoshop products like Photoshop CS4, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2, etc, have the ability to read and edit most RAW formats from across the board. The program built into these products is called Adobe Camera RAW. It is even downloadable for many of the older versions of Photoshop that didn't originally include the feature. It is also worth mentioning that even though there isn't one file format directly from the manufacturers, Adobe Camera RAW lets you optionally convert the original RAW file to a .DNG raw file(Adobe's RAW file format). This file format, similar to the .PNG file will likely maintain support by Adobe for many many years to come, whereas your native file format may lose support as new formats come out in the future.

To wrap this up, I just want to add that shooting RAW may not be the right choice for everybody. It sure can save your butt when you have a paid photo-shoot, and for whatever unexpected and unexplained reason, you botched the shoot and under exposed all the photos or had a terrible white balance setting. You'll likely be able to fix your mistakes and your customer will have a nice series of photos in there photo album for years to come.

I hope you have a better understanding of the common file formats as this has been RAW files "From The Ground Up!"

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Patterns and Colors

QUICK TIP!

Look around. Look for patterns, shapes, colors, angles, etc. In this example, I noticed a pattern and a wide array of bright colors. To add a bit to the shot, I angled the camera.

Btw, this was a dog collar booth at the 2009 Daffodil Festival in Gloucester, Va. I should have bought one for my dog Fez.

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