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04/10/2006 11:01:07 AM · #1 |
Webmonkey is running an article excerpting the book The Future of Memories: Sharing Moments with Photoshop Elements and Digital Cameras by Dane Howard. I haven't read the book, just the article, but I wanted to share some of the...rather interesting...quotes from it.
Originally posted by book:
Plan for post. You can do everything from adjusting color contrast and temperature to general cleanup later. In Hollywood, they call this "fixing it in post" (postproduction). If you plan on it, you can free yourself from trying to get the perfect image ΓΆ€” you can construct it later!
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Originally posted by book:
Free yourself from the viewfinder. I find this very liberating. Your images will be authentic and you'll begin to shoot differently. |
Originally posted by book:
Get the pieces and fix it in post. If you're planning to work on your pictures later, shoot multiple shots of the same thing over time. Use these "pieces" to assemble your shot. |
Originally posted by book:
Shoot in black and white mode whenever possible. It forces you to see (and think) differently about your composition. You'll start to see the world in contrast and gray values. If your camcorder or digital camera has a black and white mode, use it. Removing color is sometimes the most effective way to remove additional complexity. It's also a great way to deal with a color temperature problem that might be distracting. |
Originally posted by book:
In his movies, George Lucas employs digital photo manipulation techniques by capturing a shot in pieces, then later assembling the individual picture elements so that the result appears to be a single image. This cinematic approach to making a finished product includes compositing and editing. You can do the same. The finished composite image is better than a keeper; it's perfect. |
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04/10/2006 11:47:31 AM · #2 |
| Collage is an age-old art. Reinventing the wheel again... |
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04/10/2006 11:49:51 AM · #3 |
I don't have time to do all of that.
Why advocate taking up insane amounts of time when getting the shot right the first time and then midly tweaking to finish will end up being far less time consuming? |
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04/10/2006 11:52:25 AM · #4 |
Originally posted by mk:
Originally posted by book:
Free yourself from the viewfinder. I find this very liberating. Your images will be authentic and you'll begin to shoot differently. |
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OK, all the quotes were a bit ludricrous, but this one makes me say "WTF?"
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04/10/2006 12:01:47 PM · #5 |
The thread title is a bit disingenuous, given that the quotes are all about compositing, rather then creating the base materials in PS.
It is certainly a way to go about things but to do it effectively takes a whole set of different skills from taking a picture correctly in the first place.
1/ effective extraction (chroma keying, fringe lighting for target location etc, masking)
2/ effective lighting (keeping it consistant across pieces, making it look real)
3/ good compositing skills (putting it all together, seamless blending, scaling, etc)
Sure you can make something that looks like a 2 year old did it with some round ended scissors and paste but it hardly needs an expensive camera, an expensive computer and expensive software + a lot of time to do. |
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04/10/2006 12:05:03 PM · #6 |
Originally posted by fotomann_forever:
Originally posted by mk:
Originally posted by book:
Free yourself from the viewfinder. I find this very liberating. Your images will be authentic and you'll begin to shoot differently. |
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OK, all the quotes were a bit ludricrous, but this one makes me say "WTF?" |
I'm not quite sure if this is what they're talking about, but I find some of my "shot from the hip" pictures to have a very satisfying off-kilter and "real" feel to them.
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04/10/2006 12:07:18 PM · #7 |
Haha, with my Olympus peashooter that's basically what I ended up doing (not so much making composite pictures, but the insane amount of color adjustment and post-processing involved. oh, and i still haven't used the viewfinder).
When I use SLRs and dSLRs it's a different story, but as far as point and shoots go...that's basically the only way I could make things work.
The 'names' he comes up with for all the different 'angles' to shoot at, though... XDD
I dunno, though, the guy sounds so full of himself that I'm having a hard time taking this seriously.
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04/10/2006 12:10:36 PM · #8 |
Originally posted by wavelength:
I'm not quite sure if this is what they're talking about, but I find some of my "shot from the hip" pictures to have a very satisfying off-kilter and "real" feel to them. |
I experimented with that in college....LOL...
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04/10/2006 12:13:19 PM · #9 |
Originally posted by wavelength:
Originally posted by fotomann_forever:
Originally posted by mk:
Originally posted by book:
Free yourself from the viewfinder. I find this very liberating. Your images will be authentic and you'll begin to shoot differently. |
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OK, all the quotes were a bit ludricrous, but this one makes me say "WTF?" |
I'm not quite sure if this is what they're talking about, but I find some of my "shot from the hip" pictures to have a very satisfying off-kilter and "real" feel to them. |
Absolutely. When I was teaching photography at UCSD one of our basic lessons was just that: "Shoot from the Hip". It's remarkable what you can accomplish when you free yourself from the tyranny of the viewfinder, the tyranny of the "defined frame". Most photographers spend their time shooting from a severely restricted POV, a fixed height above the ground and zeroed-in on things, but there's a whole world of ways of seeing they often miss.
Robt.
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04/10/2006 12:17:57 PM · #10 |
My son shoots only for composites, he's mostly looking for textures and shapes to put together for his art work as you can see here, all of his work was put together in Photoshop. He has a huge library of digital images that he took himself, pretty amazing to watch him work. He also scans in some sketchs for his work.
Frank |
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04/10/2006 12:24:15 PM · #11 |
Originally posted by Gordon:
The thread title is a bit disingenuous, given that the quotes are all about compositing, rather then creating the base materials in PS. |
Sorry if it was misleading but the whole "don't bother now, construct it later" thing, in my mind, is what leads to the people (some of whom are in my camera club) that believe that anything digital must have been a Photoshop creation rather than a depiction of an actual scene. Sure, you can do a lot in PS, but to teach people to start out with the mindset that you really don't need to make any effort with your photos and that some magical software (a condensed version of the software, even) will automatically generate you a masterpiece seems...well...wrong.
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04/10/2006 12:38:48 PM · #12 |
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04/10/2006 12:51:38 PM · #13 |
So is this shot...
more authentic than this one?
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04/10/2006 12:52:13 PM · #14 |
Originally posted by caba:
My son shoots only for composites, he's mostly looking for textures and shapes to put together for his art work as you can see here, all of his work was put together in Photoshop. He has a huge library of digital images that he took himself, pretty amazing to watch him work. He also scans in some sketchs for his work.
Frank |
I love the freedom of expression in your son's work. So many times as we learn 'how' to do things, we stop experimenting. He has a unique way of seeing things. I hope he continues to explore. |
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04/10/2006 01:01:40 PM · #15 |
Originally posted by mk:
So is this shot...
more authentic than this one?
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I'm not sure authentic is the right word, but less posed, yes. They're both authentic pictures taken by Gordon, and stand on their own. But I think they have a different feel to them.
Many times though, hip-shot pics come out like crap, but unless you want to do a crabwalk or get kneepads, sometimes it's the best way to get kids. I've also been experimenting with candids this way, people are less suspicious when you don't have a big black (or white) protrusion held up to your face.
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04/10/2006 01:14:05 PM · #16 |
I shoot a lot of shots without using either viewfinder or LCD (some might say ALL of them!), though not that many are literally "from the hip" -- mostly with my arm extended in one direction or another.
  
 
Sometimes a lot of work in Photoshop is just necessary ...
Before:  After:  |
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04/10/2006 01:21:51 PM · #17 |
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
Absolutely. When I was teaching photography at UCSD one of our basic lessons was just that: "Shoot from the Hip". It's remarkable what you can accomplish when you free yourself from the tyranny of the viewfinder, the tyranny of the "defined frame". Most photographers spend their time shooting from a severely restricted POV, a fixed height above the ground and zeroed-in on things, but there's a whole world of ways of seeing they often miss.
Robt. |
And here I am thinking I'm nuts as I have been playing with talking pics of the kids from a few inches off the ground pointing up with an slr (it's actually pretty comfortable in portrait mode, just put in close/on the ground and point the lens where you think). I was surprise how good you can get after a while (ok, so you get a good number of half heads, mis-focused and stuff but....). Been to a few car races where the pros held the thing at arms length above their head for the podium thing and I assume they got something - I tried a bit and never managed to get anything particularly good.
I also played around with getting the kids close to the corners of a 17mm - it's as wide as I have and it's 27mm to me due to the crop; but I think that would be a cool effect if you went wider [a 10/12-22/24 is in my future somewhere].
So Bear, what other basic stuff do you suggest to shake out old habbits/assumptions and get something different from a snap-shot? |
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04/10/2006 02:07:09 PM · #18 |
Originally posted by robs:
Been to a few car races where the pros held the thing at arms length above their head for the podium thing and I assume they got something - I tried a bit and never managed to get anything particularly good. |
Playing around with different camera positions is always a good idea
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04/10/2006 02:13:54 PM · #19 |
Originally posted by Gordon:
Playing around with different camera positions is always a good idea
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Cool idea of using the tripod as a boom of sorts. See that is the sort of stuff I was talking about - here I am thinking a tripod should be bolted securely to the ground :-) Kinda a cowards version of the camera throw :-) |
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04/10/2006 02:28:45 PM · #20 |
| when I was a teenager and got out and about more with my friends I had a little pocket 35mm fixed focus camera. It was great because you could easily sneak it out, point it at the subject before they even knew what was going on and BAM! instant candid. Some of my best pictures were taken that way. |
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04/10/2006 02:43:09 PM · #21 |
Originally posted by robs:
So Bear, what other basic stuff do you suggest to shake out old habbits/assumptions and get something different from a snap-shot? |
One good habit to train yourself into is to shoot with both eyes open. You will learn to track peripheral action witht he "free" eye while composing more-or-less subliminally with the viewfinder eye.
Like in Gordon's shot, get a long cable release and extend your camera with the tripod to places you can't otherwise get to. For shots like these it helps to use a wider lens than you think you need so you have some roate/crop room available to you.
This shot was taken by placing the camera on the ground and angling it upwards while kneeling behind it, no viewfinder... 10mm lens...
You can wear the camera around your neck and use a long, stretchy bungee cord to anchor it by making a loop over the lens and fastening the whole around your waist. This is a good way to hike with a camera at the ready, BTW, but in this case mount a cable release to it and keep the cable release in your hand. Use your widest angle lens, and autofocus of course, and you can walk around doing stealth pictures all day long :-)
That's about it for my bag of weird tricks, I'm a pretty conservative bear...
R.
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04/10/2006 03:08:44 PM · #22 |
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
...One good habit to train yourself into is to shoot with both eyes open. You will learn to track peripheral action witht he "free" eye while composing more-or-less subliminally with the viewfinder eye.... |
Thanx and I think that is a great idea, but I mostly keep both eyes open and get to see the back of the camera and my hand - that left eye in the viewfinder issue :-)) I see a bit of what is coming from the right and while I have tried to swap to the right eye it ain't going to happen - maybe I should just hold the camera upside down or stand on my head :->. I do like that effect of seeing basically an overlay of the viewfinder but I just go loopy trying to use my right eye for too long. |
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04/10/2006 03:12:30 PM · #23 |
Originally posted by robs:
Kinda a cowards version of the camera throw :-) |
If you want to call standing ankle deep in a soup of weird salts and other goop cowardly, with a $3k+ camera hanging off a bit of carbon fiber 6 feet above your head, have at it ;) Most of the parts of my gear that touched that liquid had corroded an hour later when I was washing it off (tripod bolts, rivets in my boots etc)
Message edited by author 2006-04-10 15:13:05. |
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04/10/2006 03:14:47 PM · #24 |
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
You can wear the camera around your neck and use a long, stretchy bungee cord to anchor it by making a loop over the lens and fastening the whole around your waist. This is a good way to hike with a camera at the ready, BTW, but in this case mount a cable release to it and keep the cable release in your hand. Use your widest angle lens, and autofocus of course, and you can walk around doing stealth pictures all day long :-)
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I've done that one too - I have quite a few 'surprised' looking portraits that way. Though I just used the neckstrap and breathed in and out for vertical angling :) |
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04/10/2006 03:58:30 PM · #25 |
Originally posted by book:
Shoot in black and white mode whenever possible. ... |
Yeah, right.
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