Discussion: Workflow - What to do with 1400 pictures from one parade.

Sorting through all the parade photos has really made me look at my workflow.  I mean, I took 1400 photos during the three hours of the parade.  I'm pretty sure no one wants to see all 1400 of them.  And even once I bring it down to something that approaches a manageable number, I'd have to break them into groups for posting.

Some I knew were crap when I took them.  Others I knew were 'markers' of sorts for me.  Pictures of the signs and things so that I could reference groups by names later.  But they weren't pictures that I needed to worry about cropping and editing to show anyone.

So the first pass in my particular workflow, is on my iPad.  Once I take a card full of pictures, I put all the shots on my iPad and delete the ones that are absolutely garbage.  After I'm down to the shots that bear a good look, I move them onto my computer.

Once I'd done all that, I was down from 1400 to a little over 1000.  So the good news is, my shooting is getting better.  There was a time where 'getting rid of the total garbage' meant throwing out at *least* half of my shots.  This wasn't quite a third.

Then I started sorting them out by topic.  I tend not to like to blog an event simply chronologically.  If people wanted to see the parade in order, they could, you know, go to the parade.

So I broke the 1000 pictures down into 16 folders.  While I was sorting them out I was trying to winnow down the shots actually worth sharing, so I also had another folder of 'unsorted' shots, that were either the marker shots or duplicates or 'I thought this would be a good shot to share, but maybe not in comparison to a million other things.'

That folder was a little over 600 shots.  So Now I'm at 400 that are reasonably useful in 16 folders.

But some of the folders like, "Outfits or the lack thereof" still end up with about 110 photos.  I mean, this is Chicago's Gay Pride Parade.  It's *all* about what people are (or aren't) wearing!   Which means breaking them down into even further folders.  In this case there were six, with anywhere from 5 to 30 shots on a given theme.

Which means some of those folders of 30 will either need to be broken down into multiple posts or just plain thinned out.

Which all just goes to show that any given event can contain a really ridiculous amount of work before you even get to the cropping, correcting and posting part!

So what does your workflow look like?  How do you manage the ridiculous number of pictures we can now take for 'free' (compared to the days of film and developing on paper)?  When you have 1000 pictures (literally), how do you manage, store and share them all?

Okay, tomorrow... more actual pictures of outfits or the lack thereof.

Someone Needs to Move the Sun - about your subject being backlit

Okay, I'm interrupting the fun shots of zombies to illustrate a photography point.

You may have heard about a subject being 'backlit' and how bad it is without knowing what it is.  Basically it means that the only source of light in the shot is behind whatever it is you're taking a picture of.

Most of the time when I'm shooting, I'm stuck with whatever it is being where it wants to be and it not caring much if that means I'm shooting directly into the sun.  Butterflies won't move to the flowers on the other side of the path for you just because it would mean keeping the sun behind you.  Birds won't come down out of the tree so that you don't have to aim up into the bright summer sky.

People, on the other hand, will typically be gracious enough to let you stage the shot better.

To wit, these two crossdressing zombies...

The first shot I got of them:

 

Let me show you the set up for this shot.  (And at the same time show you why I'm a photographer, not a sketch artist! :)

 Okay, the big gray blob on the left is The Bean.  I was standing almost under it, the Zombies were facing it, the sun was right behind them.

Look where the rays of the sun hit.  They hit me, they hit The Bean and they hit the BACK of the Zombies' heads.  This makes the whole shot turn dark because the subject of the photo is actually blocking the light from getting to the lens.

So I asked the zombies to move.  We basically switched places - the Zombies in front of The Bean, and me with my back to the light source (sun).  Now I have this configuration:

Look where the light is now.  Hitting the Zombie on the face and in the scope of my lens.

Which gives me this shot:

Pretty amazing difference, isn't it?

So, the short version is, don't shoot with the brightest spot of light BEHIND the subject when you can avoid it.  Don't stand people indoors in front of windows.  Or if you do, shoot from the side if you can.

But you don't always have a choice about where your subject is and where the light source is.  In those cases you have a few options.

1.) Try a fill flash.  Even most point and shoots give you the option of forcing the camera to use the flash even when the internal sensor says the room is bright enough.  This will throw light onto the front of your subject to fight the shadows.

2.) Some cameras have a setting called "Spot Metering" and/or "Partial Metering".  In these settings you line up a particular focus point with the subject you're shooting and the camera will read that item as the part of the frame to try to keep the light as true to the real conditions as possible.  This often has the consequence of overexposing and washing out the background.  The camera basically says, "We need to keep *this* part as bright as we can, but everything has to be relative, so we'll brighten the heck out of the bright area back there."  I occasionally do this on purpose when I'm shooting products for my Etsy, because I *want* the background to be bright white and washed out while my product is the right colors.

Partial metering weighs a lot more of the frame than spot metering.  Partial metering is typically what's used in backlit portraits where you want the whole face to be accounted for.  Spot metering works well when you really want one small area to be well-defined.

So that's my quick and dirty lesson on backlighting and why it's typically bad.  I mean, sure, some people do it for effect.  A creepy silhouette or mood piece can benefit from backlighting.  But most of us want the light on our subject.


Speaking of my Etsy... looking for some fun soap?  Recycled crayons?  Lotion bars?  Some of my photos?

How to Shoot Fireworks in Five(ish) Easy Steps.

So we're coming up on Independence Day here in the United States.  And for many of us, one of the best parts of this summer celebration is the fireworks!  Fireworks paint the night sky with light, which can make for amazing photos if you know how to take the best advantage of your camera.

So here are some steps for getting the best fireworks pictures you can get...

Physical Set-up:

1.) Use a tripod.  I'll talk about the specific shutter times in a bit, but the short version is, you'll mostly want to let them go for about 8 or 10 seconds each.

Last year when I went to the fireworks, I forgot the foot to my tripod, so I was trying to balance the unsecured camera on the tripod body.  It was better than *nothing*, but it wasn't good.

Because I knew I would have stability problems, I ended up shooting a lot of 3.2 second shots in the hopes that I could be still that long, but it makes the fireworks look pretty anemic.  And there's still a lot of wiggle in the shot.  So absolutely have a tripod, even if it's a point-and-shoot camera you're using.  Some P-a-Ss have a fireworks setting and one of the things it's doing on that setting is running a longer than normal shutter.  So get the camera somewhere stable.

2.) Use a cable release, a remote control or the timer to activate the shutter.

For being hand-held and short shuttered (for fireworks), this shot could have been pretty decent if I didn't have that little wiggle that happened right at the beginning of the shot.  See where the blue arrows are pointing?  That's where the firework trails were starting when the shutter opened.  Odds are good the little wiggles right there are from nothing more than the action of me pressing the shutter button.  If you don't have a cable release or remote, you can do what I do - use a two-second timer.  It's a little harder to get that sudden "oh that looks cool!" shot, because you need a little lead time.  But the results are so much cleaner.

Here's a shot done on a tripod, with a timer-released shutter:

Because the camera was on the tripod I could run a 13 second shutter which gives that great depth of field with so much going on in the shot.




3.) Give some context.  If you can, if there's something interesting on the ground below the fireworks, try to include that in the shot.  A skyline, a treeline, some boats...

So while this is a nice shot of the finale...

The shot becomes more interesting when you see Navy Pier below it.  It gives the fireworks scale and it adds and element of "I was in this particular place for this" to your pictures.










Camera Settings:

Shutter speed:  You'll want to experiment with this as you go, but if there's not a lot of background light noise in your area, 8 to 10 seconds tends to give you nice shots with long trails and several shells in a shot. 


When I forgot my tripod, I was only running roughly 3-second shutters.  Which can leave the shots looking kind of thin and uninteresting.

Here's a shot done a 2.5 seconds - which is ridiculously long for anything shot in the daylight, or even indoor lighting, but for fireworks, it's pretty short.

Here's a similar shot at 6 seconds.  Just by doubling the time you can see how much more happens in the picture.

When you get up to 10 seconds, you get an even more full picture. 










On the flipside, you can leave the shutter open *too* long.  Twenty seconds, especially during the finale, can let in too much light, and the fireworks just pile up on top of each other.












ISO and F-stop:

Both ISO and F-stop determine how much light is hitting the camera sensor at any given time.  The shutter determines how long light is hitting the shutter.

Obviously when you're taking pictures of light, you don't want to narrow down your aperture so much that light can't get in reasonably quickly.  I shot most of these better shots at F-11.  It let the firework light in, but blocked out most of the streetlamp noise.

Using a very wide aperture lets in light you may not want - like if there's just a bit of daylight still behind the fireworks.  Then you get a shot like this:

You can see the clouds behind the fireworks because the shutter was open so long, the moonlight was actually making it through even though we really couldn't *see* that it wasn't pitch black there.  This was done at F-4.5, as low as my camera will go.




A lower ISO keeps the trails nice clean and the black of night a nice solid black sheet.  As with any shooting, a higher ISO makes for grainy pictures, which can be particularly noticeable on the black sky. 

So when you add all these tips up, you can get some really fun fireworks shots.

And of course, Happy 4th of July to everyone for whom it is relevant!

Flash On the Glass

So as a nature photographer I can encounter birds and mammals and even amphibians in their natural habitats without having to account for their environment any more or less than I would any other subject, like a plant or a person.  But marine life if a whole different issue.  Unless you're a certified SCUBA diver and you have an underwater set up for your camera, your opportunities for shooting animals that spend 100% of their life underwater will involve shooting through glass.

As a child one of the first pieces of advice I got regarding shooting through glass was "You absolutely cannot use a flash to shoot through glass."  That was probably oversimplified for my six or seven year old self at the time, but the fact does remain, it's hard to get a good shot through glass.

So of course it figures that some of the most colorful animals in the world are fish and various invertebrates that live underwater.

Who said plaid went out in the '70s?

Like this guy.  Seriously, a plaid fish.  It's a plaid fish!

If Key West could design its own fish

Or this guy.  Who looks like the result of letting an eight-year-old little girl color in the fish. Dotted lines?  In aqua and bright yellow?  (And I have to love that the ring around the eye is also aqua and yellow - though you may have to enlarge the shot to see that.  It makes the false eye on the tail even more awesome.)


Now, if you look at these shots, you can see that it is possible to get good shots through glass.  I wasn't jumping in their aquariums with my Canon or anything!

The first thing you have to establish is whether or not flash photography is allowed.  Most public aquariums are no flash zones.  This is for the health and safety of the animals, not to mention the people you're going to blind if you keep firing that thing.  Many aquatic life-forms prefer dark environments to help them avoid predators and in order to keep from stressing the animals, the aquariums will set up a dark viewing area and dim light in the tank so that you can see what's in there.  If you keep firing your flash and then it bounces off the glass, you're going to really annoy the other guests.  And the staff, who will probably have a few things to say to you.  I know that I always cringe when I forget to change my settings after moving from a flash-allowed area into a no-flash area and the thing goes off.

So, basically, if it's not allowed, don't be dumb and do it anyway.

But when it is allowed - it's your fish tank, or it's an area where they aren't worried that the animals are going to be harassed all day, every day by flashes - you can get some good shots.

I was at this absolutely massive tropical fish store called The Living Seas Aquarium last weekend for a tour and they allowed me to take photographs, flash and all.  Most people heading in there are there to actually buy fish and fish paraphinalia, not just stand around and stare the fish like they would be at, say the Shedd Aquarium, so they didn't mind a few flash shots.

So, what happens when you do shoot against glass and do it wrong?

First of all you can see the flash reflected in the glass.  You can even tell that my on-camera flash is rectangular.

You can also see any fingerprints and smudges on the glass.  If you're the one in control of the environment, a quick swipe with some Windex will solve that problem.  But most of the time we're not in charge of the glass and we'd look a bit silly whipping out a spray bottle and paper towel at the local zoo.  Though, they'd probably thank you for it. :)

If your subject is right in front of you when you fire directly at the glass you get the above two problems as well as obscuring your subject.

Additionally, as you can see well in this last shot, when the light is bouncing back at you, it's not going into the tank and the shot remains dark anyway.


So what can you do?

First, shift to a 45 degree angle or less to the glass.  Shooting at a 90 degree angle to the glass (straight at it), is what gives you the bounce-back.  So try something like this:

I've found that this can create a few different problems, but it solves the biggest problem of flash-bounce.  However, most aquariums are set up to be seen from right in front of it and if there are pumps or hoses or things that have to be visible they're often put on the sides or in the corners and many times these are now in your shot.

The pipe behind this fish drives me buggy, but it was the best angle I could get to see the fish clearly.  This isn't a shot I'd enter into an art show or anything, but if someone said to me, "What does an Emperor Angelfish look like" this picture would work just fine.

The other thing you can do is try to avoid using the flash.  Try turning up your ISO or widening your iris and see if you can get away with out it.  If you're shooting a crustacean like a lobster or shrimp or something else that sits still, pop your camera on a tripod (again, if it's allowed where you're shooting) and just go with a long exposure.

The one place I absolutely cannot shoot is the shark tank at the Shedd.  It's dark in the tank and since they're open water animals there's not even coral or rocks to give contrast.  And since they're sharks, they never. stop. moving.  So it's impossible to shoot down there since flashes aren't allowed.  So if you have a moving target, you may just be out of luck if they didn't give you enough light in the habitat to get good, quick shots.

If you've got good equipment, a flash diffuser would obviously help.  I've made a poor-person's diffuser out folding up a piece of wax paper and holding it in front of my on-camera flash.  It helps when shooting shiny things like some of my ceramic work, but it's not a huge help when trying to shoot into an aquarium full of water.

So, while not the most advisable thing ever, you can shoot through glass using your flash if you're careful with how you do it.

What Does This Button Do? - ISO So What?

So this is the one I paid attention to when I shooting on film and stopped being aware of when I went to digital.

What is ISO?  ISO is the sensitivity of your film or sensor.  When you shot film you were stuck with one setting on each roll of film.  So if you put in a roll of 100 ISO film for shooting outdoors, but didn't use it all before needing to shoot indoors or in low light, you were kind of hosed.  The great thing about digital cameras is the ability to change settings on a shot-by-shot basis.

A low sensitivity, like 100 or 200 is great for outdoors, in bright sunny circumstances.  You can still shoot handheld with a quick shutter and narrow(ish) aperture and get a nice clear shot.  Low ISO produces cleaner, clearer pictures.

High ISO lets you shoot with a quick shutter and/or narrow aperture, but has the unfortunate effect of dark areas becoming 'grainy' or 'speckled', especially when viewed at full size.

Here's an example:
This is a piece of the tulip photo from the first Navy Pier Flower and Garden Show post.  This shot was done at 100 ISO so that even the dark spot at the tip of the anther looks smooth, color-wise.

In contrast, this a piece of a shot of a rose done at 800 ISO.

You can see that, especially in the background where it's dark, the colors don't blend seamlessly into each other or have nice, stark delineating lines.  There's a grainy look to the photo.

ISO is a balancing act.  If you're shooting outdoors, say on a nature hike, or indoors while your three-year-old runs around at his birthday party, you may not have the luxury of being able to stay at 100 because when your ISO is that low the camera will compensate by leaving the shutter open longer and opening the iris more, exposing the camera to more shake or to movement of the subject.  Ideally you want to keep your ISO as low as your lighting will tolerate. If you're using a tripod and a still subject, go all the way down.  If your subject is moving or your light is low you may have to creep it up to 400 or 800.  Once you get higher than that you can almost be certain there will be a fair amount of grain.  Now, if you're shooting urban, 'gritty' scenes, you can make the grain work for you and have it be part of your style choice, but if you want clean, sharp images, go as low as you can.

Most cameras only allow you to chose your ISO in Av, Tv or Manual mode.  Many of the presets will automatically chose a higher ISO to keep your shutter time down.  I use what I call "Stuff's-moving" mode (otherwise known as 'sports mode') a lot when shooting wild animals and unless it's very, very bright out my camera tends to default to 800 on that setting, but sometimes when I'm trying to get squirrels playing or wildflowers blowing in the breeze, it's a compromise I have to make since running a longer shutter would give me an unacceptable amount of blur.

One time I use 800 ISO is when shooting fireworks.  You can Google the settings that will work best for your particular camera - some even have a fireworks preset - but when you want to get the little details like the trails of light in the finale, a high ISO is good thing.

What Does This Button Do? - White Balance

Many people want photographs that are, in essence, memory aids.  "Hey, there's a shot of Little Jack's first birthday!  Remember that?"  For things like that a camera that does most of the thinking for you is perfectly fine.

But when you start thinking about doing photography as art, you need to start taking control of your camera.  I haven't met a dSLR yet that doesn't let you control the features I'm going to highlight.  I haven't met a pocket camera that really does let you control all those same features.  But I do see that that is changing.  For example, about two weeks ago I got a new cell phone and the built in camera lets me adjust the ISO and the white balance.  I can't, however, set the shutter speed or aperture. 

Many of the topics I'll be covering are interconnected.  For example, the faster the shutter, the wider your aperture will need to be (especially when you're shooting hand-held - without a tripod).  But this one is independent of everything else in your camera and one of the last ones I got any kind of real understanding of.  (Okay, not *completely* independent - on most cameras you can only select what you want when in Av, Tv or Manual.  When you use a preset, it also presets this one.)

White Balance.

I remember as a kid, my dad had these cards that were various shades of white - some were grayer, some were more tan.  When I asked what they were for he'd say they were for setting the white balance.  I, being a wise-acre, wondered how the white got off-balance - white was white after all, right?  Otherwise it was gray or tan or something not white.  So never really paid attention to that when I was shooting on film.  I'm also pretty sure I never owned a camera good enough account for the light temperature anyway.

So what is white balance? Basically, it's this: the light in different environments has different temperatures, which has nothing to do with the air temperature.  Your camera needs to know what white should look like in different situations.

Most cameras have a range of presets that will cover most shooting locations.  Outside you get Sunny, Cloudy or Shade.  Inside you get Incandescent Lights (old-style 'regular' lightbulbs), Florescent Lights or Camera Flash.

Most have a custom setting, but I've never needed to use it.

There's also an AWB - Automatic White Balance.  That means that camera checks out the lighting and takes it's best guess.  Sometimes this works fabulously, other times less so.

Here's the short version:  When your white balance is off your shot skews towards one color or another.  White is no longer white. Your picture may have bluish cast in shadows or a yellow cast or a red cast under certain lights.

Like this:
Believe it or not, these flowers are white.  Plain white.  Like that paper you use in your printer white.  Like the background of this blog, white.  But I was shooting with the wrong white balance.  Unfortunately, for as much meta-data as my camera captures and my post-production program will show me, all it says is "Manual White Balance Selection."  So I'm not 100% sure what I was set on, but I think it was set for "Sunlight" when, in fact, I was under incandescent lights.  Bad, dim incandescent lights.

The good news is, this is pretty apparent when you look at your picture in your LCD screen.  I could see right away that these were awfully yellow and adjust the white balance.

Once I did, I got the same shot with accurately white flowers.

Our eyes adjust the 'white balance' naturally, but our cameras can't.  I found that with the abysmal lighting conditions of this particular show, some of my shots actually looked better when I told the white balance I was outside shooting in cloudy weather.  When you have odd lighting, the best thing to do is to experiment.  If you really are outside in bright sunlight, the camera should be able accurately adjust under the "Bright Sunlight" setting.

The AWB setting is very helpful if you're going in and out of various lighting conditions, but if you know you'll be shooting in a given setting, taking control of your white balance can save you a ton of time correcting it in post-production when you realize nothing in your shot is actually white.


Comments?  Questions?  Corrections?  I'd love to hear what people think of posts like this instead of just, "Hey look, I took a picture of a thing!"