Owner: Epic Edits Weblog URL:http://blog.epicedits.com Join Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2007 09:53:46 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: A roundup of interesting and informative news, tips, and tricks for photographers of all levels. Each post also includes a photo from my personal archives. Site statistics:Click here
Build a Photography Business in 24 Hours 2007-03-21 01:04:38 Ever consider setting up shop and selling your photos? What’s holding you back? Maybe you think it will take too much time, too much effort, too much money, or maybe you just don’t know where to start. Well, I’m here to tell you, it’s not hard, or expensive – and I’ll show you how. I’m talking about establishing yourself as a real business, ready to sell photos and take money through an online storefront.
I’ve been putting it off for some time now, but I finally bit the bullet and did it. You can see my new photo gallery at Auer PhotoWorks. It took me more than one day to do it, but if you were determined it wouldn’t be impossible. Most of your time spent will be doing research on the various aspects of the business. The actual establishment of your business is pretty straight forward and a lot of things can be done in parallel.
I’ll give you the recipe for starting your own photography business, and here are Read more:Build
, Business
, Hours
Roundup of Sharp Photography 2007-03-20 03:10:03 In two previous posts, I wrote “6 Tips for Controlling Sharpness” and “Photo Sharpening Techniques” which described how to ensure sharp photos straight out of the camera and how to sharpen photos using Photoshop, respectively. As a finishing touch for my two part mini-series, I’ve gathered up a few other resources when it comes to sharp photos.
If you like video tutorials, here are a few from YouTube:
Photoshop Tutorial - Basic Sharpening shows how each of the sharpening filters affect the image. It also contains a pretty good section on just the Unsharp Mask and how to use it.
Advanced Sharpening gives a good tip on how to split the Unsharp Mask layer into light and dark pixels using blends. This is a great idea for those times when the highlights and halos are just a bit too extreme. I’ll definitely be using this one from now on.
Lab Sharpening in Photoshop is a good visual representation of the method I described in my previous post, whe
Camera Finders, Photo Flip-Books, and Lens Distortion 2007-03-14 02:34:38 How Popular is Your Camera
?
Photo
doto poses the question “Is It Time For A New Camera?“ The question is followed up by a discussion around what’s popular with Flickr users. Flickr has a tool called the Camera Finder that shows you the popularity of a particular camera over time. So here’s the result for my Maxxum 7D with a whopping 58 users yesterday:
And here’s the Maxxum 5D with a big 90 users yesterday:
And, finally, here’s the Sony A-100 (the replacement for the Maxxum 5D) with 193 users yesterday:
Popularity is overrated.
People Shots: Flip-Book Style
Photojojo has a link to A Healthy Dose of Photo Inspiration in the form of a digital flip-book by George Lange. The photos are all people shots, and the flip-book moves very fast. You almost have to watch it a couple of times to catch it all. People photography is not my strong point, and I envy anybody that can do it well. George Lange has done it well, and I worship him for t Read more:Books
, Distortion
, Finders
More Photography Business Tips 2007-03-29 00:29:42 While I’ve been writing my own tips on starting a photo sales business, several other writers have been handing out tips too. Here are 3 of the articles I’ve come across in the last week. Tomorrow I’ll talk about something else — I promise.
The Mindset of a Photographer
Peter Marshall at About: Photography wrote about Thinking Like a Photographer, and he used one of his shoots to tell the story. My favorite line from the article was “Photography isn’t a mathematical exercise but one that depends very much on the ideas and aims of the photographer.” That’s very well put in my opinion. I support the view that you should be technically competent with a camera, but that’s just a tool. Figuring out how to capture the moment, idea, mood, feeling, concept, etc. is the part that takes some effort.
Offline Photo Marketing Techniques
The Photopreneur gives us 5 Ways To Show Off Your Pictures… Offline. Great tips for Read more:Business
Comics, Alternative Sharpening, and Online Editors 2007-03-31 01:44:00 The Photoshop Controversy
I read two comic strips: Dilbert by Scott Adams and What The Duck by Aaron Johnson (I’m an engineer who likes photography, so these are all I need). Most people have heard of Dilbert, but What The Duck is at bit more of a niche comic and fewer people have probably seen it. What a shame. The comic is about a photographer who happens to be a duck — actually, all the photographers seem to be ducks. Aaron tackles many of the issues faced by photographers, and it’s stinkin’ funny — but probably just to photographers. Today’s strip pokes at one of the more heated topics among photographers and photo editors.
This is funny on many levels, but it also surfaces a few Photoshop topics of choice. It seems like everybody knows how to use Photoshop on some level, and it’s interesting to hear inexperienced users talk it down like it’s no big deal. Let me just say that I’m no Photoshop expert, but I know e Read more:Alternative
, Comics
, Editors
HDR, Shoe Mount Flash, and Digital Camera Haters 2007-03-30 01:47:36 High Dynamic Range (HDR) Tutorial
Photoshop Support has a High Dynamic Range Tutorial using Photoshop CS3, but not using the HDR tool. HDR requires 3 images and this only requires 2 — one for the highlights and one for the shadows. The technique outlined is also supposed to give better mid-tone ranges than the Merge to HDR command. Sometimes I’ll use a method similar to this, but with one photo. I’ll just process the same RAW file twice — once for highlights and once for shadows. Then I’ll merge the two of them for better results than I would have had just processing the one image.
Mounting Your Flash
IN a Shoe
The Strobist has a good DIY-type of post for making a Light Stand in a Pinch: Your Shoe. You kind of laugh at first, but then you realize that it’s super smart. My flash has a little stand that clips into the bottom so it can stand up on its own, but I don’t always carry it with me. So I may actually end up using this on Read more:Camera
, Digital
, Haters
Happy Birthday To ME! 2007-03-31 18:16:55 It’s my birthday today and I’m 25. So in light of that, I’m taking the day off blogging — this is all you get.
I did however get outside to do a little photography this morning. We have a couple of Miniature Daffodil plants in the backyard, and they’re starting to bloom with spring coming. So I threw on the macro lens, a miniature tripod, and I went out there to get some photos.
The weather was very overcast (almost raining) and the wind was calm. Perfect. No harsh shadows or subject movement to deal with. The only downside to the overcast skies is that I new I’d be using a longer shutter speed.
So I’m out there laying on the ground with my camera 2 inches from these little clumps of yellow flowers — the neighbors probably think I’m nuts. I only snapped about 30 shots, but I got a couple of good ones out of them. I have a hard time taking too many macros because my eyes start to play tricks on me and I start takin Read more:Birthday
, Happy
, Happy Birthday
Indoor Macro Photography Project For Rainy Days 2007-04-02 04:38:34 I mentioned yesterday that I got outside with my macro lens and shot some photos of the miniature daffodils in the backyard. Today I wanted to do some more, but it was raining outside and I didn’t feel like dealing with the water. So instead of going outside to take photos, I brought outside in with me.
I remembered an article a while ago at the Digital Photography School called Photographing Autumn Leaves - DIY Studio. I hadn’t tried it yet, so I thought today was a good opportunity. But instead of autumn leaves, I used spring blooms. I grabbed a few specimens of blooms from various sources and headed back inside to get my studio set up.
After cleaning both sides of a window, I taped my subjects to the glass and set up the tripod. I left the tripod legs at their shortest so I could get close to the window with my macro lens — actually, it was a sliding glass door so I could use the glass all the way down to the floor. We have some pine trees about 20 f Read more:Macro
, Project
A Digg-Style Site Just For Photography 2007-04-04 15:19:07 Digg is and interesting thing, but it’s not very friendly to photographers. There’s not even a category for photography despite it being asked for over and over again. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were at Digg-style site just for photographers?
THERE IS! I noticed a few visitors coming from DiggPhotography this morning, so my curiosity forced me to check it out. What I found was basically a brand new site for photographers that was modeled after Digg. The site looks to be in its infancy with just a handful of submitted articles and only 4 users (including me now). But this shouldn’t deter you from joining in, or even just reading the materials submitted.
There are some pretty good articles so far, and many of them are from places I’m familiar with. The site also has an RSS feed, so you can get the new article submissions sent straight to your reader. You don’t need to sign up to read the articles or get the feed, but you’ll hav Read more:Digg
, Style
Miniature Daffodil on Blue 2007-04-04 00:56:32 This photo was taken using the method I’ve outlined in my post titled Indoor Macro Photography Project for Rainy Days. It’s a miniature daffodil I took from my backyard and brought inside to photograph using my macro lens.
I didn’t do any major editing with this one, just some color correction and curves adjustments – 4 curves adjustments to be exact. One for an initial adjustment, one for the highlights, one for the shadows, and one for a final adjustment. The two curves adjustments were coupled with layer masks and blacked out to start. Then I “painted” in the extra highlights and shadows by brushing onto the masks — kind of like a non-destructive dodging and burning, except I could go back and modify the intensity by editing the curves adjustment layer. The final step was a slight sharpening using the LAB method I outlined in my post titled Photo Sharpening Techniques.
Photo by Brian Auer
04/01/07Â Flemington, NJ
Miniature Daffod Read more:Daffodil
How To Get Your Blog Shut Down in 3 Easy Steps 2007-04-03 19:03:12 Have you ever visited a blog or other site expecting to find content, but instead are confronted with an error page of some sort? Isn’t that cool? The first thought that runs through your head is “Wow, this must be a really popular site if they crashed their server” — c’mon, you know it is.
If you have your own site, I’ll bet you’ve also thought to yourself “I wish I could do that so other people will think I’m cool too.” LOOK NO FURTHER! I’ll let you in on the secret of how to accomplish the appearance of a crashed site. All you need are three things:
An super-great web host (like HostGator)
A database taxing stats plugin (like FireStats)
A spike of traffic
Allow me to elaborate.
The foundation for getting your blog shut down lies with your web host. You need to find a host that will shut you down first, and ask questions later. This is important, so don’t brush it off. Do your research on web ho
The Anatomy of a Camera Lens 2007-04-06 01:21:49 Ever wonder how they make your camera lenses? Want to see what the guts look like? I ran across a neat video posted on YouTube that shows how TV camera lenses are made, from glass cutting, to grinding, to coating, to assembly. The video is a clip from the Science Channel’s How It’s Made show — a favorite among engineers and other curios folks such as myself.
SLR camera lenses are probably a bit different in anatomy and construction, but the basic concept is the same. Most of the higher-end lens makers are also probably a bit more automated in their process, but again, the concept is the same.
The Sigma site also has a good lens overview page that details various lens constructions. They explain things like aspherical lenses, APO lenses, optical stabilizers, inner focus versus rear focus, floating elements, dual focus systems, and zoom macros. There are some good pictures to go along with the descriptions, so it’s pretty easy to follow.
If you wa Read more:Camera
US Copyright Office to Offer Online Registration 2007-04-05 19:18:49 Michael Brown over at Macro Art In Nature reported a tasty little tidbit the other day. The US Copyright Office will be offering the option to file a copyright registration online. This means several things for photographers who wish to copyright their photos:
Lower Fee ($35 rather than $45)
Faster Processing Time
Earlier Date of Registration
Track Status Online
Online Payments
Copyrighting your photos is generally a good idea if you’re planning on selling your work in one fashion or another. In truth, you own the copyright to a photo as soon as you capture it. But by formally registering the copyright of your photos with the government, you essentially give yourself a better chance at proving that you do indeed own that copyright. This makes life easier if you ever need to take somebody to court for using your work without permission — in fact, you must have registration of copyright prior to filing an infringement suit.
Another note on copyrights: Just becaus Read more:Offer
Glowing Daffodil 2007-04-05 06:11:52 This was another photo taken using the method I talked about in my post Indoor Macro Photography Project for Rainy Days. It’s the same miniature daffodil as some of my other photos, but I decided to go black and white with this one. I also decided prior to editing that I wanted the photo to be a bit high-key and soft. The image below shows each step in the editing process — click for a larger view.
I started this one off by converting to black and white using the Photoshop CS3 Black & White adjustment layer. I applied 220% red, 100% yellow, 85% green, 175% cyan, 50% blue, and 0% magenta. This brightened up the petals quite a bit while brightening the trumpet even more. Then I adjusted the levels by bringing the graypoint to 1.14, which lessened the contrast a bit. After this, I applied four curves adjustments for both brightening and darkening, and I used masks to target certain areas and give the trumpet more contrasting tones to help create depth. The Read more:Daffodil
, Glowing
Purple Hyacinth 2007-04-07 00:00:11 Here’s another flower from my backyard: a purple hyacinth (somebody correct me if I’m wrong). I just got out and shot by hand because it’s a short plant — so I got on my stomach and rested my hands on the ground. Once again, we’re overcast today so no harsh shadows. With spring coming so quickly, I wanted to get some shots of these flowers before they opened up all the way. I took most of my shots with a fairly wide aperture because I wanted to try for a blurred shot that was a little more abstract. Plus it wasn’t that light out and I didn’t have much of a choice.
I did my basic editing in Adobe Camera RAW to get the exposures and colors pretty close. Then I applied a curves adjustment layer to the entire image (no mask) to brighten it up a little bit. Then I created two duplicate layers of the merged image. The first layer (2nd down on the stack) I blurred using a Gaussian blur at 25 pixels to completely soften the image. Read more:Hyacinth
, Purple
March Roundup 2007-04-06 20:19:45 I meant to do this last weekend at the end of March
, but it slipped my mind. Here are a few of the more popular posts from the month of March, in case you’re new to the site or if you missed any.
12 Ways to Make a Black & White Photo: A discussion of 12 different techniques for creating black & white photos.
My Trip to Belgium: Some humorous insights from my recent business trip to Europe.
Graffiti Photography: Photoshop Technique: See how I turn my regular old graffiti shots into bright and striking artwork.
How to Fix Photo White Balance Using Photoshop: Learn four different ways to adjust the white balance of your photos.
6 Tips for Controlling Sharpness: How to improve sharpness before you release the shutter.
Build a Photography Business in 24 Hours: See how easy it can be to build your own photo sales business.
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