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Taking HDR Bracketed Photos – Post 4
It has been a busy past few weeks, I haven’t been able to update my blog. Work has been very busy and my son got married last weekend. I thought I would share some tips on taking bracketed photos for use with HDR. HDR stands for “High Dynamic Range”, if you do a search for HDR or even look on my blog for “HDR” you can see some amazing photos that use this Photo technique. I’m not going to go into how you apply these techniques to create these photos. I’m going to discuss how you take the...
read moreFlash photography – Guide to better photos – Post 3
So I almost forgot to write something today as I continue to write about my journey to taking better photo’s and sharing them with you. So it is 11:55 at night, it was a long day at work, so I really didn’t want to write anything, but felt I needed to write something, since it is my goal to write something every day. So the topic is Flash Photography. I will probably write a future article about Flash Photography, as this can take volumes. So there are a couple of tips on flash photography. I will update a future entry...
read moreWhite Balance – Guide to better photos – Part 2
White Balance, what is that? If you haven’t heard of White Balance, it means you probably haven’t read your Manual. If you read in my last post, we discussed using Manual Mode to set the correct Exposure Level through the ISO, Aperture, and Shutter settings. Well White Balance (WB) is something that is very important when you take a photo with a Digital Camera. Have you ever taken a photo and the picture had a blue tint too it or it looked yellow or Red, and you don’t remember it looking that yellow or red or even blue...
read moreHow to take better photos with your DSLR Camera
I’ve been asked, “Dave, How did you learn photography?” or “Dave, How did you learn to take such great pictures?” It is such a difficult question to answer, because it isn’t something you learn over night or even in a few days. To be honest with you, I learned photography by trial and error. I tried a lot of things and made a lot of errors. I even put the camera down and said “I quit!” Then I came back and tried some more and made some more errors. Then I started read books, watch...
read moreManual Mode – Guide to better photos – Part 1a
The most important thing I have learned when taking photos is learning how to use your camera. By this I mean, learning to using the Manual Mode, usually there is a dial on the camera that has an M on it, this is manual Mode. You will probably see additional letters and pictures on this, stuff like P – Program, A – Aperture Priority, Auto – Automatic, S – Shutter Priority (also known as speed – the shutter speed). There could be pictures of a Track star, Mountain Top, and a few other types of pictures. This...
read moreManual Mode – Guide to better photos – Part 1b
In the previous post, we discussed ISO, Aperture, and ISO. We had just taken a photo with a fast shutter speed and everything was perfect! Well not so fast. Remember when I mentioned that the key to a perfect photo was getting the correct Exposure Level or the correct amount of light into the camera Sensor? Well just because you set the Shutter Speed to 1/150 sec, doesn’t mean you allowed enough light into the camera Sensor. It is actually possible that the photo may be to dark, especially if the photo was taken late in the...
read moreFixing a WB mistake while replacing a background
A gallery: Round Rock – Background Blending This week, I took the wife and did some searching for Locations for an upcoming Photoshoot. I brought along my new Nikon SB-700 Flash. Before we left I noticed that the sky was very blue and the sun was going to set in the next hour. I figured I would be able to take a few pictures and use the new Flash as a fill flash with a sunset in the background. As I was scouting on top of a Parking Garage, in Round Rock, TX it was very bright, I asked my wife to pose for a few test shots. I...
read moreDigital Makeup
This post is not going to be a step by step guide to adding Digital Make-up. I’m really not that good at writing step by step guides, but I will give some highlights on what I did to this photo. Over the weekend (4th of July weekend), I bought a new book by Scott Kelby, Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers Using Photoshop (Voices That Matter). This book started teaching me how to retouch my Studio Photos. This book is “amazing”! I have learned so much about how to use photoshop to fix my photos and...
read moreSailing through Pugent Sound from Seattle – Stop Motion Video
We recently traveled to Seattle, WA and boarded the Norwegian Pearl Cruise Ship en-route to Alaska. I mounted my Nikon D90 DSLR Camera to the front of the boat and took a photo every 5 seconds. I then used iMovie to render this into a stop motion video that took 3 hours of 5 second photos and created a 3 1/3 minute video. Using iMovie I could only do 10 frames per second. I will render a 30 fames per second video with different Movie software and upload soon. Seattle through Pugent Sound – Stop Motion...
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