The Graphic Mac » Photography

All you need to know about macro photography

James — Tue, 07 Jul 2015 11:30:59 +0000

Digital Photography School has put together a fantastic collection of links for their best articles on macro photography. If you’re a photography hobbiest, it’s well worth browsing through the articles.

Photo credit: Macro look of the Green frog by Rosan Nepal.

Stocksy: A better stock photography resource

James — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:00:09 +0000

Photo by Micky Wiswedel

I’m always on the lookout for stock photography resources, and I tend to bookmark any stock photo site that shows any potential. But let’s be honest, client budgets aren’t what they used to be. Sites like Getty and Masterfile are just too expensive. At the other end, ThinkStock, Shutterstock and iStockPhoto are affordable but have a rather poor selection of images for high-end advertising use; they’re overloaded with cliché images with poor cropping and mediocre subject matter.

Enter Stocksy, a curated royalty free stock photo site run by the photographers themselves. By curated I mean that you can’t simply submit photos for inclusion on the site like you can at other sites. You have to be invited by the photographers that run the site. This ensures high-quality images, not high volume.

Photo by Brandon Alms

In browsing through the site, I found numerous images that could easily be dropped into a national ad campaign without having to search through hundreds of pages of search results or spend an hour correcting/changing colors, focus or figuring out how to clone out frivolous background matter.

Photo by Lumina

There are plenty of high-concept images, as well as everyday subject matter. I particularly like the site because the images appear to have been shot for a reason—with the color saturation, focus and cropping kept in mind.

The image pricing at Stocksy is reasonable and on par with other sites like iStockPhoto. Single image prices range from $10 for a 12×18 72dpi web size, to $100 for an extra large 10×14 300dpi size.

Tips for controlling your DSLR autofocus

James — Tue, 31 May 2011 13:00:05 +0000

Digital Photography School offers a few tips for a better autofocus

Sometimes the autofocus on your DSLR camera can be really annoying. For some shots it’ll focus on the right part of your subject, but then the very next shot it may choose to focus on something far and away into the background.

Steve Berardi from PhotoNaturalist talks about three ways to get better control of autofocus in his guest-post at Digital Photography School.

Photographing the perfect landscape

James — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 13:00:59 +0000

Rolling hills and vales, enchanting areas of woodland, rugged shorelines and a dappled spring meadow can all become the most obvious of subjects for the landscape shooter, often yielding strongly emotive and awe-inspiring results.

Shooting landscapes is all about the setup (a little HDR treatment works sometimes, too!)

The recipe for success however is less obvious. Unless of course you read this great article at Digital Photography School on photographing the perfect landscape.

Night photography tips

James — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:18:12 +0000

Photo by inoc @ Flickr

Robin Ryan shares some fantastic tips over at Digital Photography School for digital photography enthusiasts who want to try their hand at night shooting. The same composition rules that apply to day apply to night, except with night we have our long exposures to take advantage of, but in this article, Robin shares some great advice to help you get started.… Read the rest

Tips for photographing pets

James — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:11:17 +0000

Pets fill very quickly their place in our hearts and families and we enjoy having their pictures framed on our desk or wall! However taking pictures of your best friend is not always easy. Pets, unlike humans, do not understand what we are trying to do and won’t just pose for the camera!

Photo by José Luna @ Flickr

Digital Photography School has 9 tips for photographing pets that will help you help you get the most of your photo session.… Read the rest

Latest issue of PhotographyBB available for download

James — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:10:23 +0000

Digital photography fans can download the latest issue of PhotographyBB e-magazine in PDF format. PhotographyBB is a free online magazine composed by a hardworking team of volunteer contributing authors whose goal is to teach beginners all about digital photography and image processing. The June 2009 edition features articles on photography techniques and issues facing today’s digital photographer. Readers will learn tips on composition and how keeping things simple can lead to great photography. The issue also examines how to overcome “photographer’s block” when lack of inspiration occurs. Included is also a Photoshop® tutorial on creating an urban “grunge” type effect for dramatic impact.

Tilt-Shift photos on the cheap

James — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:51:43 +0000

A short while back, I reviewed Bokeh from Alien Skin Software, an excellent Photoshop filter perfect for simulating tilt-shift photography. The filter offers the maximum amount of flexibility and features available to simulate tilt-shift photography with your existing images, as well as much more in the way of adding the bokeh effect to your photos. But if your need for simulated tilt-shift photography is limited, the $199 price tag might be too much. A friend of mine recently informed me about a new tool to simulate tilt-shift on your images, and it’s absolutely free. TiltShift Generator from Art&Mobile is available online, or as a downloadable Adobe AIR application. Both versions are identical, but the downloadable version is obviously going to be better because there’s no image uploading and downloading involved. While the control you get with this Air app pales in comparison to Alien Skin Bokeh, the tools you get are more than adequate for simple tilt-shift simulation. You have control over radial or linear plane blurring, strength of blur, color saturation and contrast, and vignetting. Simply drag your image into the preview area and click where you want the focus area to be in the image. The rest is just playing around to get the effect you want. The results are fairly decent for most needs, especially images destined for the Web (as seen in the image above). High resolution print images slow the app down quite a bit, though I found it to still work at acceptable speeds. TiltShift Generator works admirably for a free application. I’m not a huge fan of Adobe AIR applications, but in this case, it’s really all that is necessary.

Understanding camera lens terminology on your digital camera

James — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:08:15 +0000

If you’re not heavily into photography, the controls on your digital camera are probably a mystery to you, and the terms used in photography are likely a foreign language. One such confusing term is aperture. Here’s a helpful tip on what aperture settings mean, and how it affects your photos. Note: This assumes that you have a DSLR camera, not a fixed-lens point & shoot camera. The aperture of a lens refers to the amount of light a lens lets in when you take a photo. The aperture size is commonly referred to as the F-Stop or F-#. Confusingly enough, a smaller F-# means a larger aperture size, which allows more light in, and creates a narrower depth of field. This means that when taking a portrait photo, the subject will be in focus, and the background will remain out of focus, or blurry. A higher F-# will keep the entire frame in focus.

F-#	Aperture Size	Shutter Speed	Depth of Field
Higher #	Smaller	Slower	Wider
Lower #	Larger	Faster	Narrower

Lens aperture settings are displayed as 1:X or f/X.X. So a lens with the largest aperture would be 1:1.0 or f/1.0. Because these larger aperture lenses are so desirable, they typically cost much more than a lens with a smaller aperture. Why are they desirable? Because they let more light in! That means if you typically do a lot of indoor photography and rely on your flash, these lenses will produce a much more evenly-lit image, rather than your subject being brightly lit and the background nearly blacked-out completely. For more information about camera lenses, I recommend taking a look at this excellent article at Cambridgeincolour.

Introduction to High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDR) photography

James — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:52:50 +0000

HDR, or High Dynamic Range Imaging seems to be all the rage these days. HDRI is described as:

In image processing and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of exposures (the range of values between light and dark areas) than normal digital imaging techniques.

Digital Photography School has a fantastic Introduction to HDR Imaging, covering the methods used to achieve the effect.… Read the rest