To improve the aesthetic quality of your images takes a different approach. Many books and courses suggests to go out and shoot a lot of images. Over time you may or may not develop your own style. If you are seriously interested in improving the quality of your images consider the following approach. Go to a well-stocked library, select a few good over-sized coffee-table books. Choose different topics and styles. Identify a handful images that inspire and touch you. Can you imagine how these images were created? Can you describe the qualities of these images in words?

Why do I suggest books? Photographic books are expensive. Editors are selective and critical. Therefore higher quality images are usually found in print.

As with aperture there are creative and deliberate uses of shutter speed. First, in action photography most of the time you will choose a short exposure time in order to freeze the action. If the motion is too fast, the subject will move substantially while the shutter is open, resulting in motion blur. Sometimes this is a desired effect, especially if you pan the camera during the exposure. This can result in stunning effects. The subject seems frozen, but the background is blurry. Hence the subject stands out.

In this image a shutter speed of 1/500 s was chosen, which was fast enough to freeze the player's facial expression, but slow enough to blur the club in full swing. The resulting effect creates the impression of motion in a still image, neat!

Second, for table top, still life, and landscape photography you usually will choose a long exposure time, because the objects are not moving, but more importantly, because you may want to use a large depth of focus, which requires a small aperture, which results in a slow shutter speed.

There comes a point where your breathing and your shaky hands lead to blurry images. In this case, the motion comes from the photographer, not necessarily the subject. This can only be solved in two ways:

1. Reduce the shutter speed, or
2. use a device (monopod, tripod, gorillapod…) to limit camera motion during the exposure.

In case you missed the write-up on aperture: Read here…

fall 9: the last leaf of 2009

Why is macro photography so exciting? I believe, because it makes us stop and marvel details, that we don’t see from the distance. It also does not take necessarily expensive equipment to produce a decent shot, although a good macro lens does help getting close to the action.

As a result of getting close to an object we have to deal with the beloved depth of field. The closer we get, the less depth of field we have to work with. Sometimes this is good, because it helps to abstract and focus the attention to a particular part of the image. This is what this example shot demonstrates. In this case I did not use a macro lens, but the longest lens in the bag: 600mm on a DX sensor! Why in the world would you do that? Well, first because you can, and second because it helps eliminating background “noise”.

Macro photography is an excellent exercise to play with the background. Next time you are out there, pay attention to what’s around your main subject and choose the right angle, aperture and lens to show the subject in the most favorable way, meaning without clutter in the background.

PS: Technically, “fall 9″ is not a macro, as the leaf was not captured 1:1 on the sensor, so it is a close-up at best, hence the title.

the aperture concept

Every still camera has essentially two control mechanisms that allow to limit the amount of light hitting your sensor. One of these controls is the shutter in front of the sensor. The other one is the aperture, usually a set of blades in your lens, similar to the iris in your eye. When there is little light, your eyes (the aperture) are wide open. The opposite is true when it is very bright. You are squinting, trying to close your eyes to reduce the amount of incoming light.

How do you adjust your aperture? If you are lucky your (old-fashioned) lens has an aperture ring, next to the manual focus ring, with a bunch of weird-looking numbers on it, that read like 2.8 – 4 -5.6 -8 -11 – 16. This is no math quiz, although it looks like one. I am not going into the theory behind these numbers (the f-stop), rather have you remember two things:

1. The larger the number, the smaller the aperture and vice versa.
2. With every full step, or full stop (e.g. from 4 to 5.6), you decrease the amount of light hitting your sensor two-fold!

If you have a “modern” lens you may not have an aperture ring, but your lens still has an aperture that you can adjust through a dial on your camera. If you have been using the threaded “P” or “Auto-everything” mode, you may never have touched that dial, but the computer in your camera has adjusted the aperture for you. Remember, one reason for the aperture’s existence is to control light. To obtain well-exposed images your camera’s brain measures the incoming light and adjusts one or two (or more) of the available controls.

But wait, there is more! Besides the ability to control the light amount, the aperture has also an effect on the overall “sharpness” of your image, technically speaking it is the depth of field (DoF). You may have noticed that it is next to impossible too take a macro picture of a tiny bug, with the rest of flowers, the meadow and the sky in the background being in focus at the same time. On the other hand, you may have seen landscape photographs, where everything seemed to be in focus at the same time. DoF is determined by several factors, focal length, focal distance, and you guessed it, the aperture.

Again, if you have an old-fashioned lens, you may have some indicators next to the focus ring, showing the depth of field. You’ll notice a rather complex relationship between focal length and aperture, but that’s ok. When you are using the aperture for aesthetic purposes, you don’t care about the laws of physics. The image just has to look good. So what do you need to remember?

1. Large aperture means shallow depth of field.

A shallow DoF is good to separate an object from the background; a large DoF is sometimes desirable to show an object completely in focus.

If this was not cut and dry enough for you, please read Matt Cole’s excellent explanation of the f/stop.

Aperture and shutter speed go hand-in-hand. Here is how…

On a recent drive back from the Bay Area, I picked highway 25 to escape the 101 boredom. Great scenic drive from Hollister to Bradley through some of California’s remote country side. Scenic, did I say that?

Didn’t have my camera with me, just the iPhone. It was chilly, about 30F, when I hit San Miguel, a historic mission, that has been nicely restored. It was a Monday, no traffic, no visitors, so I had the mission all to myself. I parked the car, got out, walked around the mission once, took 51 pictures, and when I came back I noticed the fallen leaves, wet asphalt, and that red Porsche in the parking lot. Think “Car Commercial”!

Up the historic wall, to get a higher view, and click, click, click…
some quick color adjustments in Lightroom (more about that later, digital workflow is the buzz word) and you end up with something like this:

Not bad. Slowly we are getting there, to the main topic: Channels. I tried a couple of things to improve the picture, maybe a motion blur or a radial filter in Photoshop. Most of these manipulations require to separate the car from the background, which is straightforward in this case. Looking at the color channels the red channel is really contrast rich and looks great as a grayscale image.

This is what I got so far: to be continued…

Well, you have arrived at my photo blog. I have the good intention to share some tips and tricks about photography on this blog.

I plan on writing about some essential photography skills, life as a freelance photographer, and other topics that cross my mind.

This is what I got so far: to be continued…