Hi everybody! Thanks for stopping by the blog today. So we're coming to the end of 2010. Boy, what a year it's been. Even the weather has been weird. It's after midnight, and it's still almost 60°.
I hope the Christmas Holiday has been good to you. As I write this it's New Year's Eve morning. Of course, it's always in the morning when I'm writing this blog. I hope that you have safe plans for this evening but I hope those plans are fun as well. With the coming of the New Year, I hope that you have a better, more prosperous year. 2010 seems to be a year that most of us would rather forget. While there were many things to be happy for during the year, there were still many others that was not good at all. The economy has taken a downturn, the tourism industry has taken a hit in the nose, and our government to some degree seems to be out of control. Unemployment is still at all-time high, a lot of businesses have gone out of business, and a lot of people, both business owners and employees, are worried about future. And now with the coming of the New Year, there are still people that are claiming gloom and doom statements, both on TV and radio. But with the coming of the New Year, we need to keep hope and faith alive. We must continue to look to our God for guidance and strength. Sometimes that's not an easy thing to do especially with things that are going on in the news and on the world stage. Maybe a good New Year's resolution would be to find time to pray on a regular basis every day. For now, my prayer is that God will bless you and your family throughout the upcoming year.
Pro Pix Tips: For the last Pro Pix Tips of the year. I thought we would continue our discussion on composition. This should be especially fun as I am using a new computer program that is a voice-activated dictation system. The instructions say that this system and I need to learn each other and learn how we talk to each other. For the most part we seem to be speaking the same language, even though we have had some problems over this section of the blog we’ve been typing. So in the interest of keeping the party going, especially on New Year's Eve, let's get to it.
Part of composition is the use of shadows to the advantage of the picture to show 3-D definition in the subject of which we are taking a picture. Without the light shining shadows onto our subject, our pictures can take a two-dimensional or flattened appearance. As we spoke about in earlier blogs, shadows can also be used to create a certain emotion or feeling in the picture. But sometimes we're using shadows in order for us to have a more natural appearance for our photograph. An example of this is when we take a picture of a subject who is outside. With the sun obviously shining in the background, having no shadows projected on the subject face doesn't show a natural effect. Our picture will look obviously staged, and it will look flat as well. The lighting on our subject's face would not be very flattering to our subject. Don't get me wrong. That doesn't suggest that we never use a fill light, schrim, or reflector. It's just that when you choose to use any one of these tools you need to make sure that the light that you're introducing into your picture matches the ambient light that's around your subject. Sometimes it can be quite a trick, especially on a bright sunny day. Therefore, you have to use all three of photography's dirtiest little secrets. You remember them, right? If you don't, I'll list them here. The first one is never allow the lack of equipment or the type of equipment keep you from getting the shot that you need or want. Don't ever go around saying if only I had this or if only I had that. Sometimes photographers need to turn into MacGyver's and use whatever's around them to make things work. You might be surprised of all of the things just laying within arms reach that you can use to make a difference in your shot. From experience I can tell you that you can use a number of things around you that you wouldn't normally find in a normal photography bag. The second dirty secret is making sure that you balance all of your artificial light with the ambient light. In other words, your pictures should look like there is no artificial light being introduced into the picture. This dirty little secret requires some practice. Adjusting the power on your light, or putting the light closer or further away from your subject, introducing a schrim, or using a reflector board all require experience in learning how to use them properly. And just for something I'll throw in for free, when using a reflector you have to remember what type a reflector you want to use, whether it be a whiteboard, silver sided board, or gold sided board. All take experience to learn which kind gives you the feeling you want in your picture. That leads us to the third dirty secret, which is to take a lot of pictures. So many young photographers stop at taking just one picture of the subject. This is probably one of the most common mistakes that any new photographer makes. This is the digital age! You can take and delete as many pictures as you want off your memory card. I hope that doesn't come as a shock to many of you. The second part of that dirty secret is to only show the good pictures. And for you who need a little extra help, you always delete the bad ones. The only possible drawback to this is if you're paying your model by the hour. There are ways to get around this as well. As an amateur photographer just starting out you want to find people who will get their pictures taken and not charge you anything for doing it. But let's get real, professional photographers don't just have the subject walked into the set and take one picture and have it automatically turn out great. They have to adjust their lighting and the positions for their subjects to stand in just like anybody else does. But because they have the experience and they know how to set things up as well as how their lights are going to react to certain situations, they can do it fast and not waste money by taking a lot of time to adjust those lights when they're paying their models $100 per hour. And that's just for the cheap models. Trial and error as well as indecisions are very expensive during times like this.
So with all of that said, shadows are our friends. One of the pro photographers that I've studied under, David Ziser, has made some bumper stickers and given out to people who attend his class. The bumper sticker says, "Save the Shadows". You'll want to keep this thing in mind the next time you want to use an onboard flash. They don't call these types of flashes "ugly lights" for nothing. Shadows are an extremely important part of composition. I know that we have talked about them in this blog several times in the past, but they are what gives character and feelings to our pictures. So if you ever see the bumper sticker "Save the Shadows" you know two things. One is that this person is a photographer and, two, this person knows David Ziser. But it should also serve as a reminder to you to remember that when you take pictures, the shadows are important. Not paying attention to the shadows when it pertains to composition is much like not paying attention to breathing to your health. Breathe in, breathe out.
Well, you may not be able to notice it but this new voice-activated dictation system does work pretty well. I can't tell you how much fun it is to speak into a microphone and see your words pop up on the computer screen. It's kind of like talking in a cave and saying "echo, echo", and having it echo back at you. It kind of reminds me of the movie "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" starring Jim Carrey. I want to say "I'm an idiot!", but I'm afraid that instead of the computer calling it’s self an idiot what I will see on the screen is "You're an idiot!" I will say that the instructions are correct. It will take some time to get use to it. But I can tell you that it's a whole lot easier than typing all of this. And in time with a little practice I'm sure that I'll even get faster at it. I will say it saves me a lot of time not having to look up words in the dictionary to know how to spell them. But at least I can say for now, my fingers don't hurt as bad.
An old New Years Toast: "Here's to the New Year. May she be a damn sight better than the last one, and may we all be home before she's over." Henry Potter, M.A.S.H. 4077
Well I guess it's time to give this thing a rest. Happy New Year and have a great day everybody!
Richard
