Jim Zuckerman’s
PH OTO I N S I G HTS October 2013
Out of focus foliage How to light a face Humidity Self-critiques Student showcase Photo tours
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Table of Contents
4. Lighting faces 14. Humidity 16. Out of focus foliage 16. How to self-critique 24. What’s wrong with this picture? 26. Short and sweet 28. Ask Jim 31. Student showcase 34. Back issues 2
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ometimes I think what I do for a living -- taking pictures -- is pretty inconsequential in the overall scheme of things. After all, people in the medical profession save lives, our military personnel protect our freedoms, teachers impart knowledge to a young generation, and captions of industry provide jobs and technology which fuels our economy. But everyone knows that if your house is on fire, the one thing you want to save is your photographs. Family pictures, childhood images, travel photos -- these document your life, your time on Earth, like nothing else can. All we really have at the end is our memories, and photographs record these in living color (or black and white if you prefer). When you take the time to compose a picture, that memory is imprinted with greater clarity than if you had simply seen something and walked away. Memories fade; photographs exist to relive those special moments for the rest of your life and beyond. I know that when I look at my own pictures from various trips, vacations, and family gatherings, I not only see the images and remember the event, I can feel the feelings I had at the time. This is the great gift of photography to all of us. Sure, we like to create artistic images and share them with our friends, but it is the crystal clear memories that these images keep alive that is one of the reasons we love photography so much. photos@jimzuckerman.com www.jimzuckerman.com 3
How to Light a Face
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ne of the first things I learned in photography was how to light a face based on time-tested techniques of master photographers. This applies to studio lighting as well as photographing people outdoors. In a studio, you have total control over the direction of the light, the light ratio between highlights and shadows, and how shadows fall. When taking pictures of a person outside, you can choose the time of day, the angle at which the sun illuminates the subject, and whether you are shooting in direct sunlight or shade. If time is not of the essence, you can then choose the weather conditions in which you make the portrait.
shaded subject with a sunny background, for example, is virtually always bad and it should be avoided. In the example below left, you can see that even a sliver of the background that’s sunlit is quite distracting. This is one of my nieces, I know that the sunny background doesn’t bother her. As a young mother, all she cares about is how she looks and how cute her infant daughter looks. The soft light on her face is excellent, but from the perspective of what makes professional looking portraits, the background is not good. You can see the huge difference when I corrected it in Photoshop, lower right? Now nothing is detracting
Traditionally accepted methods of lighting a face are used over and over again because they are considered to be attractive and complimentary to the subject. You can certainly deviate from these and do something unorthodox for creative purposes, but before you do that it’s good to know what has been considered correct for hundreds of years (in paintings and then in photographs).
In the studio, a solid white background is an exception to this. It works for head shots and full length portraits. To be honest, though, a more muted background is better in most cases.
Diffused light Soft and diffused lighting always looks good. If in doubt about what kind of light to use for a portrait, diffused light will never disappoint you -- providing that the background is not so bright that it takes attention away from the subject. A
If you are shooting in a studio, a large softbox or white umbrellas produces diffused light. It simulates a cloudy sky. For outdoor portraits, bring your subjects into the shade if the sun is bright or shoot on an overcast day. Alternatively, wait until the sun drops below the western horizon. The light is ultra soft at that point. For the portrait of the Indian man on the previous page, I used the shade of a building on a
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bright sunny day. For the portrait of the young girl I took in the Falkland Islands, below, I was lucky to have an overcast sky which provided the ultra diffused light on her face. You can see how attractive this type of light is. Direct front light Light emanating from directly in front of a person is attractive, too, if it is not so bright that it makes them squint. At three o’clock in a July afternoon, natural outdoor front lighting isn’t terrible but it’s not great. Your subject’s eyes will hurt from the sun, and he or she will be forced to squint. Much better would be direct sunlight after five o’clock. When I shot the portrait of a banana seller in Burma, for example, it was about a half hour before sunset. On the next page, the young Himba girl in Namibia posed for a picture 10 minutes before sunset when the direct lighting was largely diffused by dust in
the air.
Sidelighting
You can do the same with flash. I lit the young redhead, upper right, with a single softbox. The light was softened, and its direction was right in front of my model’s face.
Light striking a face from a 90 degree angle to the axis of the lens is the classic sidelighting. Half of the face is lit while the side opposite the light source is dark. The shadow side of the face can be completely black with no detail revealed at all, such as the picture on page 9, upper right (this is a self-portrait taken in 1971) or the light can be so diffused that the light ratio between
What you don’t want is seen in the picture of the young boy, lower right. Notice the shadow of his nose. It is extending into his cheek opposite the light source. I was going for side lighting, which is one of the effective ways of lighting a face, but where the nose shadow falls is extremely important. If it forms a shape like this, it’s distracting and unattractive. To fix this problem, I could have done one of two things. First, I could have asked the boy to face the sun, or second, I could have asked him to face away from the sun so half of his face was lit and the other half was in shadow.
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UPCOMING PHOTO WORKSHOPS Winter Wildlife Workshop Hinckley, Minnesota Jan. 31 - Feb. 2, 2014
Baby WildlifeWorkshop Hinckley, Minnesota June 13 - 15, 2014
Frog & Reptile Workshop St. Louis, Missouri Jan. 25-26, 2014
Two back-to-back Carnival Workshops, Venice, Italy Feb. 21 - 27 - 23, 2014 Feb. 27 - March 5, 2014
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the highlights and the shadows shows just a little difference as in the portrait of an Indian musician, lower right. Notice that there is no defined nose shadow at all. For the black and white self-portrait, I used a single photoflood and a household light bulb. Because I used a single light source placed close to my face (it was about five feet away), the light was very harsh, and therefore the ratio between the highlights and shadows was extreme. For the portrait of the Indian man, the sun was almost touching the horizon and the atmospheric dust diffused the light, hence the lack of contrast. Both types of sidelighting are effective and complementary to a subject. When shooting in a studio or in any indoor environment, you can control the light. You create the light ratio, the exposure, and the type of shadows. For outdoor portraiture, you have to angle your subject to the sun in such a way that the contrast and shadow pattern on their face gives you what you want. For example, if you like the subtle type of sidelighting you see in the portrait of the Indian man, then you’ll know the sun must be very close to the horizon in the morning or in the late afternoon to capture this type of lighting. You can create this ultra subtle sidelighting in the studio, too. With a main light on one side, all you have to do is add a fill light on the opposite side of the face. The fill light can be nothing more than a white reflector such as white piece of foam core, a piece of white fabric or a commerically available reflector. Or, you can 9
use another light source powered down so the fill light adds one half or one full f/stop less light than the main light. For the photo of the young boy above, I used a white reflector to bounce light into the side of his face opposite the light source. Had I held the reflector closer to him, there would be even more light in the shadow portion of his face. You have tremendous control in lighting a face simply by changing the distance between the reflector and the face. Rembrandt lighting The famous Renaissance painter Rembrandt used a style of light for many of his portraits that has been emulated by photographers since the beginning of the medium in the 1830s because it’s a beautiful way to light a face. We call 10
it Rembrandt Lighting for obvious reasons, and it is characterized by the nose shadow crossing the corner of the mouth, and at the same time, an inverted triangle of light is seen on the cheek furthest from the light source. In a Rembrandt painting above, you can see these two aspects clearly. Compare the Renaissance painting to the portrait of a girl I took in my studio on the following page (upper left) and you’ll notice that the light is almost identical. The nose shadow in the photograph is wider than the same shadow in the painting, but in essence the two subjects were lit with the light coming from the same angle. To create a portrait with this kind of lighting, the light source -- whether it be a flash, a photoflood, or the sun -- must be positioned such that it is coming from a 45 degree angle to the lens axis and three to four feet above the subject’s face. In the case of the sun, obviously I’m not referring to the distance above the subject; rather, the sun has to be illuminating the subject from
the same angle as a studio light placed three or four feet above the face and 45 degrees to the lens axis. The photo of the tribal woman from India, upper right, is an example of how you can get Rembrandt lighting from the sun. This was taken in late morning and the sun was fairly high in the sky, yet the angle of the woman’s head was perfect such that the nose shadow crosses the corner of her mouth and the inverted triangle of light is clearly visible. Butterfly lighting A style of light that was very popular in the 40s and 50s, especially in Hollywood, is called ‘butterfly light’, lower right. Notice the butterflylike shadow beneath my young model’s nose.
This happens when you place a light source above a person’s head and slighting in front of it. The light should be directional and somewhat harsh, such as from a single flash or photoflood. Backlighting Backlighting has several dimensions It can look quite different depending on the angle of the light to the subject and how you expose the image. In the picture below, I placed my lovely young model up against a softbox in the studio. No light came from the front at all; this portrait is entirely backlit with a single light source. Notice how I allowed the background to completely blow out. Usually I try to avoid a very light background, but I wanted something different in this semi-high key lighting setup.
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For the portrait of a Hamar girl from Ethiopia on the previous page, I shot from a low angle. I positioned myself so her head blocked the sun, and I exposed for her face. Again I allowed the background -- in this case the sky -- to become completely overexposed with a total loss of texture and detail. This is a good technique to use in some circumstances when you are shooting portraits outdoors and the sun is high in the sky. To circumvent the problem of harsh light and too much contrast (and black shadows), ask the subject to turn his or her back to the sun and face the camera. Their face will be in shadow -- i.e. diffused light -- and by exposing for the shadowed face you can capture a very acceptable type of backlighting. In addition, the person won’t squint from the bright sun because it will be behind them. For the portrait of a Navajo indian boy in Ari-
zona, instead of exposing correctly for the boy I exposed for the sky. This turned the subject into a silhoutte. This was shot with transparency film several years ago which accounts for the loss of detail in the feathers, but notice how I retained a little detail in the boy’s face. How do you expose for the face versus the background? Use the AE lock feature. Fill the frame with the face such that the meter doesn’t see any of the bright background, hold down the AE lock button to lock that exposure in place, and then recompose the image as you wish and shoot. To expose for the sky, do the same thing in reverse -- expose for the background first, then lock that exposure in place and take the picture. This gives you complete control over dramatic backlighting. §
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Humidity
hen you are in a tropical climate with high humidity, plan ahead. Protect your lenses from fogging. If you don’t, you won’t be able to shoot for at least 15 minutes. The picture below of a pier in Florida illustrates what an image looks like when taken with a fogged lens. Photographers find themselves in this kind of predicament when traveling to hot climates, especially when they are not used to this problem. Going from an air conditioned hotel room, for example, to the outdoors with humidity in the 80 to 90 percent, every lens in your photo backpack, plus the mirror inside the camera, the viewfinder, and the LCD monitor, will all fog up making photography impossible.
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What is the solution? You have to put the photo equipment outside 20 minutes before you intend to shoot. However, it’s important to unzip the backpack or camera bag so the warm, humid air can engulf the lenses and camera bodies. If you keep the gear insulated from the moist environment by zipping the backpack closed, your equipment will remain cold for quite a while. Thus, when you think enough time has passed and you start shooting, you’ll be disappointed and frustrated to discover that the pictures are still fogged. If for some reason it’s not feasible to open the backpack, then leave it outside for an hour. This should be enough time for the glass and the metal to acclimate to the warm temperature and high humidity.§
E-books to help you take better pictures Click on any ebook to see inside
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Out of focus foliage backgrounds
oliage backgrounds solve a lot problems in photography, and this is particularly true when the background images are so out of focus that there is no definition at all. That’s important for three reasons. 1. It forces all of the attention on the subject. 2. Nothing in the background is distracting. 3. It eliminates uncomplementary and unattractive elements behind the subject. A case in point is the picture of the tropical birds (they are sun connures), right. I photographed them in a bird park in Bali, and I really wanted to get a beautiful and natural looking picture but the cage made that impossible. The only way to make this work was to replace the background with something natural. Had I used a long telephoto lens, tyical of almost all bird photography done in the wild, the background would mostly likely be completely out of focus. Therefore, I went into my folder of out of focus foliage backgrounds (which you should have, too) and chose one that had no defintion in the greenery at all. I also made sure that the foliage had been illuminated by diffused daylight and not direct sunlight. The birds were in shade, and the background had to have the same kind of lighting to make this look believable. To create the picture on the next page, I didn’t
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meticulously cut out the birds with the pen tool. Not this time. Instead, I opened both images on my desktop -- the birds and the soft background -- and then I cloned from the foliage image to the bird image. Here is the procedure I used: -- With the clone tool selected, I pushed the option key (alt key for a PC) and clicked on the foliage picture to establish the point from which Photoshop would clone the green
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background.
background to detract from it.
-- I now activated the bird picture and started cloning the background. I covered all of the wire mesh but didn’t clone to the edge of the birds or the branch on which they were perched.
In the case of the young girl I photographed at the Pushkar Fair in India, the original background was messy with other people, camels, and a distant mountain. Those elements weren’t sharp, but they were not out of focus enough. The resulting composite made all the difference.
-- I enlarged the image to 200% with the magnifier tool and made the size of the clone tool smaller using the left bracket key on the keyboard. --I carefully cloned up to the edge of the feathers. Some of the feathers had minute detail, so to blend the edge of the feathers with the new background, I lowered the opacity of the clone tool to 60%. I find that this is a good technique to use only when the original background is fairly close in tone and color with the new background. You can see in the photographs below and below right that this technique can be used with many subjects. Out of focus foliage significantly improved the flower because it was growing so close to the ground that it was impossible to blur the background. Even a lens aperture of f/1.4 wasn’t enough to make an artistic blur (and I wouldn’t use that aperture anyway because parts of the flower would be blurred). Now, the flower is isolated with nothing in the
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With a sharp edge of the fabric framing the girl, you could easily select just the orange color and then use Select > inverse to grab the background. Then the soft background could be inserted. In Photoshop, there are often several techniques to accomplish the same thing. Because the feathers of the birds on the previous page didn’t have a hard edge, I cloned the greenery from another image and lowered the opacity of the clone tool when working up against the edge. §
Photo Tour to Burma April 20 - May 4, 2014 Ancient ruins
Monasteries
Culture
Temples
People photography
The fast track
to improving your photography
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he most direct route to seeing a quantum leap to improve your photography is to be able to self-critique your work. Sure, a professional critique by a wellknown photographer can guide you, open your eyes, and give you important tips on learning to see and handling your equipment. I’ve critiqued the work of litterally thousands of photo students and tens of thousands of pictures. But you can’t have a professional at your side all the time. Ultimately, you need to learn to assess your work honestly and with a critical eye. Here is a list of the most important aspects of a photo that you need to examine when you selfcritique your work. If you can keep these in mind when you shoot, you’ll see a definite improvement in your picture taking. I know it’s a lot to think about, especially with fast changing subjects, but over time this ability to see what is good and what is not good in a picture will become automatic for you. 1. Is the subject visually compelling, beautiful, emotionally charged, or artistic in some way? Never forget that boring subjects make boring pictures, and conversely great subjects make great pictures. 2. Is the background busy, messy, or distracting? Are there unwanted highlights, bold and unsightly lines, background color that overpowers the subject, etc. If your eye wanders away from the subject to unimportant elements in the background, they are distracting. 20
3. Is the lighting excellent? Are there unattractive and/or distracting shadows (for example, long hair on a girl casting bad shadows on her face). 4. Is the composition good? Have you used one of the traditional compositional principles such as leading lines, the Rule of Thirds, framing, negative space, and balance? Not all pictures have to subscribe to these principles, but most should. As an example, the meerkat on page 22 is looking out of the frame, and this goes against
classic compositional guidelines. However, sometimes this can create a sense of interest, mystery, and tension. 5. Is there too much contrast? In other words, are the shadows too dark (or black) and the highlights too light (or solid white)? Or have you addressed that issue by shooting in soft light or by using the HDR technique? In the photo taken at the Louvre in Paris on the previous page, this twilight picture would have had too much contrast had I not used HDR. 6. Does the image have a strong graphic design? S-curves, C-curves, diagonal lines, and spiral shapes introduce dynamic elements in a picture. For example, a curved coastline, a spiral staircase, the sensual curves of a model, and the angle of a branch all add beautiful lines to a composition.
7. Does the image have dramatic color (or very subtle color)? Color has a remarkable impact on people, and it can contribute to the success of many different kinds of pictures, from fashion to nature, and from architecture to food imagery. One of the reasons people find my frog and reptile workshop so fascinating is because of the wonderful colors of the subjects, as in the lemon hourglass frog, below. Did you use the correct white balance for good color? I recommend using daylight white balance for all your outdoor shooting, tungsten (or incandescent) WB for traditional light bulbs, and AWB only for florescent or mixed light. 8. Is the image tack sharp, and does it have minimal noise? In order to determine this, you need to study the photograph at 100% magnification on your computer monitor. This is the standard enlargement used by stock photo agencies in their quality control department. ยง
New OnLine Course: LEARNING TO SEE by Jim Zuckerman The ability to ‘see photographically’, to really grasp how your camera and lenses capture a subject or scene (which is different than how we see with our eyes) underlies successful picture taking. It is the bottom line that you’ve been looking for to take that quantum leap forward in your photography. When you register for this new course, you will be given download links to eight easyto-understand lessons that look like beautiful mini ebooks. At your convenience, you can study the material and then upload your photos for a professional critique by Jim. Included in the course is a phone call once a week to discuss your submissions or any other aspect of photography you want -- what new equipment to buy, advice about airline travel, problems with flash, or anything else. This course can be purchased directly from Jim’s website by clicking here. The great thing about online courses is that they can fit into any schedule. Life gets in the way at times, and Jim puts no limit on the time you can submit your work for his critiques.
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LEARNING TO SEE online course The 8 lessons that comprise this course are: Graphic design, Backgrounds, Depth of field, Patterns, Natural light, Color, Composition, and Motion. These lessons are beautifully illustrated and full of concrete steps to dramatically improve your photography.
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What’s wrong with this picture?
Just as bright highlights can be distracting behind a subject, dark areas and shadows can likewise detract from a subject. In the case of the floral landscape I shot at Keukenhof Gardens in Holland, above, the shadow of a tree crossing the foreground is so graphic and so much darker than the surrounding areas that it is distracting. In fact, I would say it ruins an otherwise beautiful picture. What is the solution to rectify this? There are two choices. Either I had to come back at another time of day, or when there was a cloud cover, so the shadow would have disappeared. Or I could use Photoshop to clone it away. The picture on the next page shows the difference, and for this image I used Photoshop. Are the shadows in the upper middle part of the picture distracting. In my opinion, 24
they aren’t. The leading line of the purple, red, and white flowers is so bold, so visually arresting, that the small shadows don’t interfere with the impact of this image. The shadow in the foreground, though, is a different story. Foregrounds are so prominent that when you look at any photograph they are virtually in your face. You must pay special attention for what is in the foreground of any image to make sure it is not: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Distracting Out of focus Overexposed Boring 25
SHORT AND SWEET 1.
When shooting snow and ice (which is coming soon), don’t feel compelled to remove the bluish tones you’ll get when your subjects are in deep shade. For winter photography, a blue tonality is appropriate. It makes the scene look cold -- which it is.
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4. Wide angle lenses have extensive depth of field, but when you compose a picture such that foreground elements are very close to the camera position, a small aperture is needed just to make sure you have complete depth of field. In this shot of the Roman ruins at Merida, Spain, I used f/16 with a 14mm lens. §
Almost without exception, floral photography requires soft and diffused light. This always produces the best imagery because there are no black shadows or blown out highlights to detract from the subtle tones in the flower petals.
When you photograph people, they don’t always have to look at the camera. Sometimes a person’s expression is especially interesting when they are lost in thought, thinking about something else. If they look at the camera, the candidness is gone. I captured this little girl in Bali.
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Photography Tours 2013 - 2015 COSTA RICA December, 2013
BURMA (Myanmar) April, 2014
TIGERS, PANDAS, ICE FESTIVAL in CHINA. Jan. 2014
CARNIVAL IN VENICE February, 2014
WHITE HORSES April, 2014
SOUTH INDIA May, 2014
GREENLAND June, 2014
KENYA August, 2014
INDONESIA August 2014
POLAR BEARS October 2014
JAPAN February, 2015
MOROCCO March, 2015
Check out the itineraries and photo galleries from these and other tours: www.jimzuckerman.com.
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ASK JIM
Every month Jim will answer a question from his online students, from people who participate in his tours and workshops, or from subscribers to this magazine. If you have a question you’d like Jim to answer, please drop him a note at photos@jimzuckerman.com.
Q:
Jim ... do you flatten your images before saving them as jpeg’s? I just read somewhere that one should do that. If so, what is the reason to flatten before saving? Dan Charnitsky, Glassboro, New Jersey
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: Yes, I do. Jpegs are designed to be low res images; layers add to their size. Use jpegs for emailing, uploading to the Internet, placing images on your website and social media, etc. For the hi res versions, you can save your layers only if you think you might need them in the future. In other words, if you might make changes to the image in any way, then layers should be saved with the digital file. In my own work, when I know for sure that I’m finished with post-processing and I won’t need to change it in the future (because I like it exactly as it is), then I flatten the layers to save hard drive space. By the way, the image you sent me of Niagara Falls is stunning!
© Dan Charnitsky
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China Photo Tour January 4 - 16, 2014
Siberian tigers
giant pandas Harbin ice festival Shanghai
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Get professional critiques of your work Get professional critiques ofcourses your work with Jim’s online with Jim’s online courses Betterphoto.com
betterphoto.com
Learn composition, exposure, Photoshop, beginning fundamentals, techniques in low light photography, flash, making money in photography, and more at your convenience and on your schedule.
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Student Showcase
Each month, Jim features one student who took beautiful and inspiring images on one of his photography tours or workshops. It’s really fascinating how photographers see and compose such different images even though we may go to the same place. Everyone gets great images on my trips.
Dave and Marketa Ebert, Hyattsville, Maryland Indonesia photo tour
Š Dave Ebert
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Dave Ebert, Hyattsville, Maryland
Š Dave Ebert
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Marketa Ebert, Hyattsville, Maryland
Š Marketa Ebert
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PHOTO INSIGHTS®
published by Jim Zuckerman, all rights reserved © Jim Zuckerman 2013 email: photos@jimzuckerman.com physical address: P.O. Box 7, Arrington, TN 37014
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