Add Voiceovers for That Professional Touch

A picture is worth a thousand words. But sometimes, you need 1,020 words to communicate what's going on. That's when it's time to step up to the mic and create a voiceover track.

A voiceover is simply an additional audio track for your digital slideshow or movie, in which the narrator speaks directly to the audience. If you've ever watched a nature show on public television, you know what a voiceover is.

Creating the Voiceover

Voiceovers can add a professional touch to your presentations and, believe it or not, they're not that difficult to create. The first step is to find a way to record your monologue. One route is to use digital recording software for your computer. All you do is talk into your computer's microphone, and the software records your voice and saves it to the hard drive as an audio file.

You don't have to spend much money for this software. For Windows, take a look at Easy Recorder (http://www.sell-shareware.com/easyrecorder/). I like Quick Voice (http://www.quick-voice.com/quickvoice/) for Mac OS X users. Each application sells for US$20. Save the files in either QuickTime or MP3 format which will enable you to assemble the presentation in QuickTime Pro.

You can also use a standalone voice recorder, which I like a little better, actually. I have the best luck creating accurate voiceovers that synchronize with the presentation when I can play the slideshow or movie on the computer (with the audio turned off) and simultaneously talk into the microphone of the digital voice recorder to describe what's going on. Then, simply upload the digital audio file to the computer, add it to the presentation, and everything is in sync.

If you have a powerful enough computer, you can use this same technique by having the presentation play in one window with the voice recorder software turned on in another. Or you can use two computers. I've had good luck using an Apple iPod (not the mini version) with a Belkin iPod Voice Recorder. I just talk into the iPod while in the field or while watching the presentation on the computer, and then add the digital audio file to the pictures.

Adding the Voiceover to the Presentation

Once you've captured your monologue, adding it is easy. If you've read the other hacks o building slideshows, editing movies , and adding music tracks , you know that I'm using QuickTime Pro for these projects. QuickTime also makes quick work of adding voiceovers.

 

Adding voiceover to a digital slideshow

Open your slideshow or movie and drag the insertion pointer on the scrubber bar to the point in the presentation where you want the voiceover to begin. For this example, I want to describe a series of shots inside Grand Central Station in New York City. I drag the insertion point to the first slide in that series. I then open my voiceover track and move the two bottom triangles on the scrubber bar to select the portion that talks about Grand Central Station, as shown in Figure.

 

Source: O'Reilley | Portfolio Website | Online Portfolio

Digicam Movie Editing Made Easy

Almost all point-and-shoot digicams capture video footage in addition to still photos. But how do you turn those short snippets into your own personal movie?

If it comes down to a choice between bringing along a camcorder or a digital camera, I'm going to choose the camera. Even though I enjoy shooting video, I like still photos even more. Plus, digital cameras are smaller, and managing pictures is easier than dealing with hours of video.

But there are times when I also want to capture a few snippets of video. Certain special events such as a speech at a wedding, a greeting from an old friend, or a child's first steps are communicated better with moving pictures and sound. Fortunately for us, most digital cameras have a respectable Movie mode, and some even have great ones. The problem is, once you have captured the footage in your camera, what do you do with it? Before I answer that question outright? and I will? let me explain the difference between the video your digicam captures and the footage from a digital camcorder.

These days, most people shoot video with a digital video (DV) camcorder. DV is becoming the format of choice. Once you record your movie clips, you can plug the camcorder into your personal computer and an application on your computer launches, ready to download and edit your footage. On the Windows platform, you might use Microsoft's MovieMaker; on the Mac, you could use Apple's iMovie or Final Cut Express.

But when you plug in your digital still camera, these applications don't seem to recognize it, even when it's full of video. One of the reasons for this is that you're probably plugging your still camera into a USB port, while your camcorder uses the FireWire port. Most video-editing applications look for devices connected via FireWire. But that's not the only difference.

Digital camcorders typically record in the DV format. Your digital still camera is using a completely different format, such as Motion JPEG OpenDML, which is an extension of the AVI file format. You can play these files on your computer by using QuickTime Player; in fact, this format is part of the QuickTime media layer. That's why almost every digicam under the sun provides you with QuickTime on its bundled CD.

Playing the files is one thing, but hooking them together and editing them is another altogether. If you can't use the DV-editing software that came with your computer, then what do you do? The answer is QuickTime? the Pro version, that is. Sure, the free QuickTime Player you download from Apple lets you watch the movies. But the Pro version you buy online lets you edit them too, plus do a lot more. QuickTime Pro is an extremely versatile digital-media application. But for the moment, we'll focus on editing, stitching, and trimming.

The first thing you need to do is transfer the movie files from your camera to your computer. If you don't know how to do this already, you'll have to crack open your owner's manual. Every camera/computer combination is a little different. If you're lucky, your camera has what is referred to as Mass Storage Device connectivity. That means it appears on your computer like a regular hard drive. Nikon, Olympus, and Kyocera cameras usually have this feature. In those cases, you simply open the "hard drive," drag the movie files out, and save them on your computer. In case you don't know which ones are the movie files, they will usually have an .AVI extension.

Now you need to purchase the Pro version of QuickTime. Go to http://www.apple.com/quicktime and click Upgrade to QuickTime Pro. You'll receive a software key that unlocks the Pro features in the Player version of QuickTime. Now you're in business. You need to learn only three commands in QuickTime Pro to edit your movies:

 1.    Trim

This command enables you to snip off the yucky stuff on either end of your movie. Simply move the bottom triangles on the scrubber bar to the endpoints of the content you want to keep, as shown in Figure 5-15. When you then go to the Edit drop-down menu and select Trim, the gray area will be kept and the white area will be trimmed away. You've successfully snipped off the content you didn't want to keep.

 2.    Add

Most digital cameras allow you to shoot only a few minutes of video at a time. So, to construct your movie, you have to combine these short clips into a longer presentation. Use the Add command for this purpose. The procedure is similar to copying and pasting in a text document. First, move the bottom triangles to select the section of the video you want to copy. Then, go to the Edit drop-down menu and select Copy. That will put the snippet on the clipboard.

Now, open the snippet to which you want to add the copied content. Move the top triangle on the scrubber bar to the end of that clip; then, go to the Edit menu and select Add. The video you copied to the clipboard is now added to the second snippet, including the sound that was recorded with it.

 3.    Make Movie Self-Contained

Once you've built your movie from the snippets you captured with your camera, choose the Save As command from the File drop-down menu. Give your movie a name, and be sure to click on the Make Movie Self-Contained button. This will flatten all the layers you've added into one movie, without any dependencies.

Congratulations! You've now made your first feature from short clips captured with your digital still camera. Regardless of the platform on which you created the movie, you can play the movie on both Mac and Windows. If you want, you can even burn it to CD and share with friends.

Source: O'Reilley | Online Portfolio | Portfolio Websites

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Create a Web Photo Gallery

A great way to share your pictures is to post them on the Web. Here's an easy way for photographers to leverage the greatest publishing tool of all: the Internet.

 

Creating a web site is a cumbersome task, even for people with quite a bit of web design experience. So, what if you just want to get some images up for friends, family, or a client to review and comment on? This idea will get you on your way quickly, using a built-in feature of Adobe Photoshop. That's right, by using a powerful tool called Web Photo Gallery; you will have a professional-looking site up in no time.

 

All you need for this idea is a copy of Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Before I go further, let me clarify the difference between the two applications. The professional offering from Adobe is called Photoshop CS (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop). It costs about US$650, runs on both Windows and Mac, and has many high-level tools, such as advanced batch processing that working designer’s need. Adobe also offers Photoshop Elements (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopel), which is available for about US$85 and has most of the tools that CS offers. Elements also run on both Windows and Mac. For this idea, you can use either Photoshop CS or Elements. I refer to them both simply as Photoshop. The screenshots are from Photoshop CS.

 

When you have all your software together, you'll need access to web space for hosting your photo album. Check with your Internet service provider (ISP) to see if you have free web space (you almost always do!) and find out how to upload your files.

 

Most likely, your ISP will tell you to use an FTP application to move your files from your computer to their web servers. There are a number of good freeware or shareware FTP applications out there, and Mac OS X users have FTP built right into the operating system.

 

Okay, enough networks stuff; let's start building a great-looking photo web site! Open Photoshop and figure out which digital images you want to publish. They can be in any format Photoshop can open, and they can be as large as you want; Photoshop will take care of resizing them for the Web. You do need to make sure they are large enough to display in the larger size on your web page. A 200 KB JPEG is a good guide for a minimum size.

 

Go to the File menu and select Automate Web Photo Gallery. This will open a Web Photo Gallery dialog box, as shown in Figure.

The first thing you'll need to do is select the style of web page you want from the drop-down Styles menu. There are many styles available, and each will load a preview thumbnail in the dialog box, choose the one you like & get going.

Web Photo Gallery dialog box

 

Additional Tips:

1.    Photoshop creates an index.htm file and individual folders for images, pages, and thumbnails and places them in the destination directory.

2.    The destination folder can be uploaded to your Web server as-is, or opened in an HTML editor for further editing. The UserSelections.txt file is not required and can be deleted.

3.    You can replace the home.gif, next.gif, and previous.gif icons with your own images. If you use custom icons of a different size, however, you'll need to change the height and width attributes in your HTML files.

4.    You may want to rename all your photos with a informative file name before creating your photo gallery. See the links below for more information.

5.    Photoshop creates an individual page for each picture rather than linking directly to the image. This provides easier navigation and allows you to customize the page.

 

 Source: O Reilley | Portfolio Website | Online Portfolio

 

 

 

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Name Folders to Organize Your Images

You have many digital-shoebox applications to choose from to help you organize your photos. Or, you could simply use the built-in tools that come with your operating system.

 

Of all the places I've been the most amazing one I've seen remains my grandfather's basement. It was organized. He had, perhaps, an unfair advantage over the rest of us. As a pharmacist in the days when all pills were white, being disorganized could have been fatal.

 

The discipline of being organized was part of his daily routine. But he also enjoyed the advantage of organizing things, which is simply being able to find just what you need without the frustration of looking for it. The screws were on these shelves, the nails there, the adhesives right here, the rubber bands (sorted by size) over there, and on and on. His basement was as neatly organized as Noah's ark. Fortunately, he passed that gene on to me, so when I started collecting digital images, I quickly established a scheme so that I'd never have to look for them or remember where they were on my Portfolio Website.

 

This was long before asset-management programs such as Adobe Photoshop Album (Windows), Canto Cumulus (Mac/Win), Extensis Portfolio (Mac/Win), iPhoto (Mac), iView Media Pro (Mac/Win), Kodak Easy Share (Mac/Win), Picasa (Windows), QPict (Mac), and others were available. I had to rely on the only thing available: the file system.

 

Filenames

 When I was the computer guy at the office, I used to have a standing offer of US$100 to anyone whose problem could not be resolved by a clear understanding of the four parts of a filename. In the days of MS-DOS business systems, I never had to pay out.

 

Here are the four parts of a filename:

 

· The volume name (e.g., C:\ or Macintosh HD)

· The directory and subdirectories, if any (e.g., DOS\ or Documents

· The root name (e.g., AUTOEXEC or Read Me)

· The extension (e.g., .BAT or .txt)

 

As you can see from the examples, this tends to be true for all operating systems. In

Windows, you might see C:\DOS\AUTOEXEC.BAT, and on the Mac you might see Macintosh

HD: Documents: Read Me.txt, but all four parts are there in each filename.

 

Each part does a different job:

 

Volume name

Tells us where the file can be found. The volume can be the internal hard drive (as in our previous example), an external storage device, a CD, or a floppy.

 

Directory and subdirectories

Together with the volume, these give us the pathname of the file. The pathname in our example is C:\DOS\ or Macintosh HD: Documents

Root name

Pretty much what we call a filename, period, it’s the basic name of the file. Without the root name, we don't have anything.

 

Source: O’Reilley | Online Portfolio Website

Awesome Photography Trick: Un-erase the Lost

Nothing wrenches the heart like accidentally erasing a memory card full of images.But all is not necessarily lost.

A few years ago, a buddy of mine's mother was approaching her 100th birthday. She didn't get out much anymore, but she'd been to the hairdresser and had her hair Cool Whipped to perfection. She even went to the dry cleaner to get her Queen Bee formal gown pressed.

 

The tiara she always kept gleaming. She enlisted her friend to pick her up at her summer residence to drive her to her son's newly remodeled home. His dinky two-bedroom gardener's shack had been magically rebuilt into a four-bedroom palace with closets the size of shoe stores. And her son even got a haircut. She'd been begging him to do that for 32 years. "Danny, why don't you get a haircut? Take the money from my purse. Go on."

 

I'd recently been out to shoot the new baseball stadium in town, so I brought along the shots on the Compact Flash I'd used. While we were waiting for the Queen Mum, I plugged my digicam into their television and wowed the kids with delusions of a World Series to come.

 

Naturally, I also brought a blank card to shoot the festivities. And, as luck would have it, I got a once-in-a-lifetime shot of mother and son? yep, a rare simultaneous smiling. The next morning, before any cup of anything could clear the cobwebs from my head, I deleted the wrong card. "No," I said. "I didn't." Oh, yeah, I did. But I was confident I could recover the data from the card. I'd done it with floppies, why not with a card? So, I spent the next few weeks trying every trick in the book to undelete the files on the card. But they were lost.

 

I consoled myself with the thought that I'd get that portrait again one day, but the dear matriarch never lived to see her 101st birthday. And her son was so distraught; he let his hair grow out again.

 

It's a sad story. But there's no reason it should ever happen again. These days, even one of the kids could salvage that image while waiting for a World Series. All the little gotchas that defeated me years ago have themselves been defeated by modern utilities designed especially for just this sort of thing.

 

How They Don't Work

 

The first thing to know is that? Whether you are using a Macintosh or a Windows PC? Your storage device is formatted for MS-DOS. Macintoshes have no trouble reading and writing MS-DOS media (and PCs can handle Macintosh media with third-party software). But neither of them is any good at running disk utilities on the other's media. Norton knows your native file system, period. So, recovery of a DOS-formatted card is a generally a Windows task.

 

Unfortunately, Windows might see your card only as a network drive (where, as with floppies, deletions are not safely buffered in the Recycle Bin). And it's rude to reorganize the directories of network drives, so your usually reliable un-erase utility might not go there.

The size of your card is also a factor. The file allocation table for a 16 MB card is not quite the same beast as for a 256 MB card, which is also why some larger-capacity cards don't work in some cameras.

The complications build from there. You might have success using freeware to un-erase your card.

 

Source: O’Reilley | Portfolio Website   | Online Portfolio

Eliminate Glare in Reflective Surfaces

You've probably felt the frustration of trying to take a picture of a reflective object, such as a framed painting, and getting glare. The secret is to add another flash.

 

Using two external flashes instead of your camera's built-in unit offers all sorts of new photographic possibilities. You can produce great-looking portraiture with just a couple electronic flashes and light stands. Here's another use for this capability: photographing reflective surfaces without producing glare.

 

As you know, when you try to use your camera's built-in flash to take a flash picture of, let's say, a painting on the wall, you always get a hot spot somewhere in the image. You could turn off the flash, lug everything outside, and then use natural light, but that's not always convenient either, such as when it's night. Plus, if you're shooting a lot of different objects to sell on eBay, do you really want to be standing outside with your equipment all day?

Try this method instead and work comfortably indoors. Hang your artwork on the wall and get your flashes and light stands together. For this assignment, you won't need the photo umbrella, but you will need both the flashes mounted on their light stands.

 

Raise the light stands so that the flashes are the same height as the painting, Now position one on the left and one on the right, each at 45° angles from the painting. The flashes and painting should form a triangle.

 

Mount your camera on a tripod and extend the legs so that the camera is the same height as the center of the painting. Make sure the camera is level and centered between the two flashes. Now, focus and take a picture.

 

Both flashes will go off, but amazingly, there's no light reflection in the picture! Magically, each flash cancels out the reflection from the other. You get an evenly illuminated image with no hot spots.

 

 

Place your camera so that the camera is the same height as the center of the subject and centered between the two flashes. Focus and take a picture. There’s no light reflection because each flash cancels out the reflection from the other.

 

You can also apply this technique to tabletop photography for items such as flower vases and glassware. The main thing to remember is to keep your light sources at strict 45° angles from the subject, and keep the camera centered between them.

 

 

Source: O’Reilley | Online Portfolio | Website for Photographers

 

Pro Portraits with Just Two Flashes

You don't need to spend thousands of dollars on expensive lighting to get professional-looking portraits.

Many amateur photographers are intimidated by studio portraiture, and for good reason. A trip to a working pro's studio reveals thousands of dollars of lighting equipment, specialized backdrops, and various posing accessories. Who can afford that?

You have to remember that working pros need all that stuff because they're required to meet the needs of a various clients. Pros often don't know who's going to walk in the door and what that person is going to want. You don't have that problem. Your mortgage isn't dependent on your ability to meet every customer's whim.

So, then, how much stuff do you need to shoot a professional-looking portrait? Your setup can be as simple as two flashes, two light stands, one photo umbrella, and a nontextured backdrop, such as butcher's paper. All of these goodies fit easily in the trunk of your car, enabling you to shoot great-looking portraits just about anywhere.

Get Your Lighting Together

For this assignment, I'm going to start by showing you what I consider the easiest way to go. Even though the investment in this equipment is far less than what pros spend, the bottom line might still be more than your budget allows (figure about US$600). If this is the case for you, I'll present some low-cost alternatives at the end of this hack. But let's start with the most desirable and go from there.

 

First, I strongly recommend a camera that has Manual Exposure control and accepts external flashes. A camera that has lots of flash accessories available from the manufacturer is even better. At the moment, Nikon and Canon provide the most options.When you're shopping for external flashes, look for models that can be triggered wirelessly by the camera. These units are perfect for the photographer on the go. The transmitter mounts in the camera's hot shoe and wirelessly triggers all the flashes when you trip the shutter.

 

Not only does this configuration save you from the tangle of wires, but the flash units and camera also communicate during the exposure, so you get perfectly exposed shots without having to calculate guide numbers and f-stops. It's truly amazing. Nikon's offering is equally fantastic.

Canon 420EX flashes in slave mode

Now, all you need are a couple of light stands (with brackets) on which to mount your flashes and a photo umbrella to serve as a diffuser for the main light. I've had good luck with Bogen light stands, such as model 3097, because they provide good height but fold down to a compact size and are lightweight. I add a Bogen 028 flash bracket to the top of each stand so that I can position the light at any angle. Plus, I use these brackets to hold the umbrella. Just about any type of photo umbrella will serve you well, so shop for price.

 

Source: O’Reilley | Website for Photographers | Online Portfolio

Bounce Flash for Softer Light

One of the best techniques for using (and reasons for purchasing) an external flash is to bounce its light off the ceiling. This creates softer skin tones and a journalistic look.

 

Photographer Bill Harvey was awarded the lifetime achievement award in 1997 by the Press Photographers Association of Greater Los Angeles. He showed me the setup that I still use with unfailingly excellent results, as everyone always agrees.

 

Bill used a Vivitar 283, still available today, mounted on a pistol grip. With the 283, you just set the ISO, switch the removable sensor to one of several distance settings, and look up the color-coded distance setting on the illuminated dial to find the correct f-stop. But Bill never shot the flash directly at his subject. Instead, he pointed it upward, toward a small plastic reflector like. Sto-Fen makes several accessories for the 283, as well as Canon and Sunpak strobes.

 

The Sto-Fen reflector for bounce-flash photography

 

Bill used Sto-Fen's Twin Panel Bounce. Its compact, clever design eliminates hot spots and covers 24mm lenses and larger. Digicam zooms generally aren't wider than 28mm (speaking in 35mm equivalents). I also like their Omni Bounce, which is a white plastic dome with a black panel on the back that sits right on top of the 283 lens. It gives an even softer shadow than the Twin Panel but doesn't have quite the range. Both bounces come with a black plastic mount that just snaps over the 283? very simple, elegant, portable, and reliable.

 

If the head of your flash pivots upward, you can also bounce the light from your flash with a rubber band and the back of a business card. This disperses the illumination. Some flashes even include a bounce card built into the head.

 

Using bounce flash to produce more natural results

 

The 283's removable light sensor is an important feature. You can mount the removable sensor on the camera's hot shoe but move the light around to other positions and still get good exposures. I've rigged up a Vivitar 283 to a Nikon CoolPix 990. This isn't sophisticated dedicated flash circuitry precision, but it keeps the sensor with the camera; after all, that's where the exposure is made.

Bill would add an external battery pack to power his Vivitar, but I find that today's NiMH AA rechargeables handle the job with power to spare.

I like to move the flash an arm's length away, up high or even to the other side of the camera, depending on the subject. I know the sensor will adjust to whatever I want to do, rather than force me to do something the flash expects. I can comfortably wave the flash around, because it's mounted on a nice, molded Vivitar grip. The grip pops on and off a bracket that attaches to the camera via its tripod mount. It couldn't be simpler.

The whole rig is a bit ostentatious—it makes me look like I actually know what I'm doing—but it's actually easy and natural to use. And it's a lot of fun to be able to paint the picture with the light of the flash.

 

Source: O’Reilley | Online Portfolio | Websites for Photographers

 

 

 

 

 

 

Add External Flash to Point and Shoots

Just because your digital point and shoot has a built-in flash, that doesn't mean you're stuck with using it exclusively.

 

"When two people in an organization always agree, one of them is unnecessary." You might expect to find that quote cross-stitched on a sign in the Complaint Department. But it hung prominently behind my father's desk as the editor and publisher of a weekly trade publication. Dad's lesson is universally applicable, I've found over the years; a different perspective often provides an improvement? in life and in flash photography. I used this lesson to some effect on Mom, with more success on my siblings, and with mixed results on various employers. One place it has never failed me, though, is flash photography.

 

The big problem with most flash photography is that it uses the flash on the camera. That flash takes the same angle on the subject as the camera's lens, so it throws harsh shadows, creates red eye, and generally makes The Night of the Living Dead look like the end result from Extreme Makeover. As if that isn't enough, it also eats camera battery power alive.

 

Flash really needs to take a different point of view than your lens. An external flash can make the single biggest improvement to the quality of your flash images. And you don't need a hot shoe or sync socket to use an external flash. Nor do you need a personal trainer to heft the gear around. All you need is a flash on your camera, although hot shoes and sync sockets are also nice to have.In fact, there are many ways to put an external flash system together. Let's look at two variations: a simple wireless system you can use with any digicam and a professional bounce flash system.

 

A Simple Wireless Setup

 

If your digicam has only the flash it was born with, your external flash should be a slave flash: a flash that fires when it gets its cue (through infrared energy) from your digicam's flash.The digicam flash becomes a trigger now. It goes off and tells the external flash that it is now time to fire. To ensure that this works properly, use Fill Flash or Manual Flash mode and mask your digicam flash with a piece of exposed slide film so it won't illuminate the scene.

 

The slide film acts as an infrared filter, triggering the external slave flash. The good news with this rig is that you now have an independent flash, triggered by the camera, that you can position anywhere you want. The bad news is that you've disabled your camera's dedicated-flash exposure system. The way dedicated flash works is that the camera initiates the sequence by firing the flash. As the light is reflected off the subject back to the camera, a sensor measures the reflected light. When the amount of light matches the camera's auto-exposure setting, the camera stops the flash.

 

I know this sounds truly amazing, but it works. And it all happens in a fraction of a second. The challenge is that when you add an external unit without maintaining this communication system between camera and flash, the camera can no longer control the duration of the external flash. It is either on or off. So, you'll need to experiment a bit with this setup to get good exposures. I recommend you actually take notes, marking down the distance of the flash from your subject and all of your camera settings, so you can repeat your successes.

 

If your camera has a Manual Exposure mode, set the shutter speed to 1/30 of a second and set the f-stop to match the flash's power (according to its documentation). You can fiddle with the shutter speed to capture as much of the background light as you want. A faster shutter speed (say, 1/60 or 1/125 of a second) records less background in low-light conditions. Then, aim the slave at your subject and fire away.

 

You can use an old flash from your 35mm gear as a slave if you add an IR trigger, such as the $25 Wein Peanut slave .Or, you can buy a slave with a built-in IR trigger, such as the Zenon MagneFlash flat panel.

 

Source: O’Reilley | Portfolio Website | Online Portfolio for Photography

 

 

Photography tricks: Prevent Red Eye

The plague of point-and-shoot flash photography, red eye, can turn your children into demons and your pets into monsters. Here's how to exorcise this curse from your life.

 

Red eye is caused by one of those laws of physics that's difficult for point-and-shoot cameras to overcome. When the flash is located close to the camera lens and the subject's iris is dilated in low, ambient room light, the flash sends a beam of light into the eye that's reflected off the retina and beamed right back into the camera lens. Presto! You now have red eye.

 

Wedding photographers figured out a long time ago that if you move the flash away from the camera lens, preferably above it, you change the angle of reflection off the retina, so your camera lens doesn't notice it. But adding an external flash isn't always practical for many digicam-toting amateurs. So what are the alternatives?

 

I can tell you what the first alternative isn't: the Red Eye Reduction mode on your camera.

Most of these controls are based on the theory that if they can somehow constrict the irises of the subject's eyes, red eye will be eliminated. As you know from your own experience, this doesn't work very well. And you usually end up annoying your subjects by pelting them with strobes of light before the actual exposure.

 

But the concept of constricting the irises is viable. Instead of using Red Eye Reduction mode, however, try turning up the room lights. Also, if a lamp or other bright source is nearby, have the subject stare at that for a few seconds, then turn back to you for the picture. Both of these methods better achieve what Red Eye Reduction mode is trying to do, and with far less aggravation for everyone concerned.

 

Brightening room lights can help prevent red eye

 

Another trick is to have the subject look off to the side slightly and not gaze directly into the camera lens. This changes the angle of reflection and works most of the time.

If your camera accepts an external flash, then consider getting a dedicated flash cord so that you can raise the flash above the lens. This is far and away the most effective method for preventing red eye. You can simply hold the flash above the camera and shoot, but over the course of the evening, you will be much more comfortable by mounting the flash on a bracket.

 

Hot shoe and dedicated flash cord

 

 

Source: O’Reilley | Portfolio Website for Photographers | Online Portfolio

 

 

 

Photography: Outdoor Fill Flash

It might seem crazy at first, but one of the best times to turn on your flash is when you're taking outdoor portraits on a bright, sunny day.

 

Working with your camera's flash can be counterintuitive. Often, you'll capture more compelling indoor pictures when you turn off the flash, and get great shots when you activate it outdoors? Quite the opposite of what you'd expect.

 

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the one killer tip that will improve your pictures more than any other is to turn on your flash for outdoor portraits. The flash helps balance the lighting of the subjects with the ambient light outdoors.

 

While there's a lot of light available when you're shooting portraits outdoors, it isn't always coming from the angle you want. Here's a little lighting tip to keep in your back pocket: light coming from the side accentuates texture, and light coming from the front flattens it.

So, keeping this in mind, what type of light do you think your mother would like you to use when taking her portrait? Side lighting with lots of texture? Most likely not, How about some front lighting that softens the appearance of wrinkles and pores, please?

 

For outdoor portraits, many photographers take this pearl of wisdom and position the model so that the sun is shining directly in her face. Mom's not going to like that much, is she? So, how do you get around this apparent photographic paradox? The answer is to find a comfortable spot for her to stand in the open shade? Under a tree is lovely? with a complementary background that doesn't include any distracting elements. Now, turn on your flash. With most cameras, you do this by looking for the button with a little lightning bolt on it. As you press the button, you will cycle through all the available flash settings. Use the setting called Fill Flash or Manual On.

 

Make sure you're standing within eight feet of Mom. That distance is the range for those convenient, yet somewhat wimpy built-in camera flashes. If you stand too far away, the light will peter out before it ever reaches your beloved, and you won't reap the benefits of this technique.

 

Your camera will balance the background lighting with that of the flash, rendering a perfectly exposed portrait. And what direction is the main light coming from? You got it: the front. Dear Mom will immediately designate you as her favorite child (but please don't tell the others).

 

If you want to fiddle with this technique, here are a few more hot tips:

· Extend the range of your built-in camera flash another few feet by increasing your ISO setting from 100 to 200.

 

Source: O’Reilley | Online Portfolio | Website for Photographers

 

Photography : Colorful Star Trails

For most people, stars are decorative points of light that decorate the night sky. But for you, they can also be fascinating streaks of light that add dazzle to your compositions.

 

Stars might appear as twinkling points of light to the naked eye, but when you point a camera at them and leave the shutter open for a while, they transform into colorful streaks across the sky. Photographing star trails is not only an artistic endeavor; it can also provide insight into the nature of stars themselves.

 

Stars are basically composed of hydrogen and helium, and they burn intensely. The hotter the star is, the more bluish its color, and cooler stars tend to be reddish orange. Based on this information, scientists have formed theories about the age of the stars we observe. A bright blue star, for example, is considered at the peak of its life. A duller red star, on the other hand, is much older.

 

Thinking about the age of a particular star on a chilly night probably demands more commitment than the average person cares to allocate to such matters. But if you point your digital camera upward and let it record trails of those stars, their colors are much easier to distinguish in the comfort of your home, gazing at your computer screen, than they are when you gaze upward into the frigid night.

 

Take a look at the picture of Orion's belt and sword (the constellation Orion the Hunter dominates the winter sky in the Northern Hemisphere). This image is a four-second exposure (f-1.8 at ISO 800, taken with a Canon 10D) and is an enlargement of what you'd observe with your eyes in the sky. You can see some differences in star colors, but they are subtle.

Stars without trailing effect

Stars with trails

 

Capturing fireworks, evening landscapes, colorful night scenes and star trails can produce awe-inspiring photographs. However, to properly expose for these low-light pictures, it is necessary to keep the shutter open from a few seconds to many minutes or hours. The bulb shutter speed setting on the Canon XSi camera allows for long exposure times under the direct control of the photographer. With this setting, you can decide how long the shutter stays open and capture as little or as much light as you need.

Press and hold the "Aperture/Exposure compensation" button and turn the main dial left or right to set the desired aperture. The "Aperture/Exposure compensation" button, denoted as "AV +/-", is located at the top right corner of the LCD monitor. Press the "shutter" button halfway to activate automatic focusing and exposure metering. Press the "shutter" button completely and hold down for as long as you want to keep the shutter open. The elapsed exposure time will appear in the lower right corner of the LCD monitor. Release the "shutter" button when you want to close the shutter and end the exposure.

 

Source: Portfolio Website for Photographers | Online Portfolio