ON-LINE PHOTO INSTRUCTION-- with detailed critiques of your work
My new 4-week and 8-week courses begin again at Betterphoto.com on January 4, 2012.
To improve your compositional skills, for example, click HERE to check out the outline of the Developing Your Creative Artistic Vision course to see if you feel this subject matter is exactly what you need.
I have a new photoshop course called Photoshop: Thinking Outside the Box.
You can click HERE to see the outline of this unique course that will introduce some intriguing techniques that you've probably not tried before -- like 3D, making a sketch, and more. It is very different from my other Photoshop courses, and it's a lot of fun.
Do you want to make money in photography? Want to feel more confident in using natural light outdoors? Interested in learning more about Photoshop (like putting fireworks in the sky or removing lens flare). Are you insecure about your exposure skills?
The way the courses work is this. Every Wednesday you receive a lesson that consists of text and photos, explaining various principles in photography, marketing your work, digital manipulation, or whatever subject you are studying. At the end of each lesson there is an assignment, and you have plenty of time to take pictures and upload them for my critique. You can use photos you did specifically for the assignment or images that you have taken previously.
On-line photo courses are like virtual classrooms but not in real time. Other students can see your pictures, read my critiques, and comment on your work. Similarly, you can comment on the pictures of other students. It is a unique and wonderful learning experience.
One of the great things about these on-line courses is that students participate from all over the world. In a single lesson's uploads, you may see pictures from Bryce Canyon or Brazil, or from Singapore or South Carolina. It's a very stimulating environment, and it will help you become the photographer or digital artist that you would like to be.
|
|
|
|
LOW LIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY and DIGITAL NOISEWhen you shoot in the RAW format, you must process the picture files in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom before they can be opened directly into Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. There is a tool in these RAW converters that I consider one of the great advances in photographic technology. It is the fill light slider, and it allows you to open up the shadows in a picture, thus revealing detail that was either very dark and muted or simply invisible because it was so underexposed. Sometimes black shadows contribute to the graphic nature of a picture, but most of the time the ideal is to reveal as much detail as possible throughout an image. How far can you go in lightening shadows? Don't you increase digital noise when you do this? The answers are you can go quite far, and yes, you do increase noise. However, you can mitigate the noise so it is basically irrelevant, allowing you to do amazing things as I demonstrate with the pictures below. 
I took the picture of the ship I was sailing on in the Falkland Islands, above, as I was on my way down to Antarctica a year ago. My group had gone ashore to photograph rockhopper penguins, and we stayed until dusk. On the way back to the ship, I thought the vessel looked beautiful in the late twilight illuminated against the dark, cobalt sky. To say the situation was dark, though, is an understatement. I could hardly see anything except the lights on the ship and their reflection in the surface of the ocean. I was in a dinghy bobbing up and down in the waves, and this meant that I was in an impossible photographic situation -- too much movement in a very dark situation. I had nothing to lose by taking some shots, however, so I went out of my comfort zone and bumped the ISO to 6400 just to see what would happen. To be honest, I had never used an ISO setting this high before because I hate digital noise, and I thought the images would be totally useless. Even with 6400 ISO, my shutter speed was only 1/5th of a second with my f/4 lens wide open. I thought there was no way this could turn out to be a sharp picture, and at the same time I was certain the noise would be so large and offensive that I'd trash the images when I got home - or sooner. 
I was both right and wrong. The pictures all had horrible noise as you can see in a small portion of the image captured at 100% magnification on my monitor, above. For my own sense of aesthetics, this makes the picture unacceptable. I wouldn't want a print of it, and I couldn't sell it. However, I was shocked that out of the dozen images I took, this one was surprisingly sharp. This was luck, not skill, because a 1/5th of a second exposure from a bobbing dinghy is a guaranteed formula for a blurred picture. Image stabilization would be of no help at all in a situation like this. I took the shots of the ship when we crested on a wave or when we were in a trough in an attempt to shoot with minimum motion. Still, I was really lucky to get an image that turned out to be fairly sharp. Ok, so I had an underexposed picture of the ship with little detail, and the noise ruined the image even if I accepted the underexposure, which I didn't. When I opened the image in Adobe Camera Raw, I used the fill light slider to open up the shadows (knowing the results would be terrible), and you can see in the screen capture, below, how far I moved the slider to the right. 
This provided incredible detail in the ship and in the water - much more than I could see with my eyes from the dinghy -- but the digital noise became even more pronounced. In another screen capture, below, you can see that the price I had to pay for the additional detail was giant noise in the shadows, and the night sky, which now has great color and exposure, is so noisy that to make a print of this would be ridiculous. If I had a choice between showing a print of this to a client or eating worms, I'd take the worms! 
Ok, here is where the plot thickens. To save this image, I opened up Nik Software's Dfine 2.0 and I let the program loose on this shot. I used the automatic function, letting Dfine 2.0 do its magic. When it was finished, I applied it a second time, and look at the results in the below image. The picture is amazing. The noise is gone, the colors look great, and there is 
unexpected detail in shadows that were so dark one would assume there was no way to salvage those areas of the image. To drive home my point, study the screen capture of a closeup of the sky and the ship taken at 100%, below. You see no noise. While the picture isn't razor sharp like it would have been with a fast shutter speed and a low ISO, it's quite acceptable, especially under the circumstances. The fact that it's not tack sharp has nothing to do with using the Nik Software. That was caused because of the extremely slow shutter. Having said that, it is definitely sharp enough to be reproduced in a magazine. What a great time it is to be a photographer! If you buy Dfine 2.0 by Nik Software or any of their products, use the discount code JZUCKERMAN and you'll save 15%. 
|
FLOOD FLIPPED
One of my favorite plug-in filters for Photoshop is Flood made by flamingpear.com. It makes the most realistic reflections possible, and the filter is very inexpensive.
 For a variation on a theme, I tried something different with the Venetian mask shown here. I applied Flood as I normally do, and this puts the reflection on the bottom of the picture as if the subject were reflecting in a pool of water. Then, I flipped the picture vertically with this Photoshop command: Edit > transform > flip vertical. I then applied Flood again, this time reflecting the top portion of the image.
Finally, I flipped the image back to its original orientation. That's how I created this image.
|
|
DEPTH OF FIELD and MACRO
Why do we take closeup pictures of small subjects? Isn't it to reveal the exquisite detail that make up these subjects? Isn't it to create visual impact, to show people things they haven't seen before? I think this is our motivation when we put on a macro lens or use extension tubes. If that's the case, then why have shallow depth of field? Why render most of the subject out of focus?
I never understood what's so good about out of focus, anyway. Anybody can blur a picture by design or by poor photo technique, but then what? Doesn't it get old to see image after image too soft? Don't you really want to see the image clearly? I do.
 Sure, once in a while when a macro subject has shallow depth of field the image can be interesting or artistic, such as the water drops on a rose petal surrounded by an abstraction of color, below.
In my opinion, though, 98% of the time we want to see macro subjects with tack sharp clarity throughout the composition. To do this, though, technical discipline is required.
There are only two ways to have complete depth of field in macro work (without using any post-processing). (1) If the subject isn't moving, use a tripod and f/32. This is what I used for the photo of the maple leaf and the chain. (2) For a subject that is moving (or might move), such as a small animal like the snake, above, use a flash, such as a ring flash, and this can stop a moving subject as well as allow you to use f/32 for maximum depth of field.
Notice in the picture of the blue eyed tree frog, below, that the lips are soft. I didn't use enough depth of field here, and I've always disliked this image because the lack of critical focus throughout the subject is visually annoying.
 |
| Self-critique
As our photographic vision matures, we often begin to dislike pictures we took years ago. This is growth. Sometimes, though, a picture stands the test of time and years or decades later, we still like it.
Such is the case with the picture of a boatman I shot in Guilin, China. I liked it when I shot it in 1983, and I still do. There are several things about this image that still look good to me.
 First, I've always liked the lighting. This was taken about 20 minutes after sunrise, and the color of the light is golden. The angle of the light, also, is perfect. The musculature in the boatman's back stands out due to the sidelighting, and the texture and definition in the wooden craft is pronounced for the same reason.
I also like the unique perspective. This was taken from a bridge looking straight down. I saw him coming from the other side of the bridge across the road, and I raced to the opposite side and prefocused not on the water but a few feet above it where I assumed the man would be in focus. When he came into view, I had only one shot to get it right. I was shooting medium format film at the time, and the camera was completely manual which made it quite slow to operate. The diagonal angle of the boat also works for me. Diagonals add a strong design component to a picture. Finally, the graphic design of the image is pleasing to me. I like the round shape of the net and how it frames the boatman in a unique way. The stance of the man adds to the graphic quality of the image, and his extended arm also looks good. I got lucky in this regard because the window of opportunity was very narrow -- only about one second -- and in that moment everything came together nicely.
|
| eBOOKS
Click HERE to read about the contents and to see sample pages.
eBooks are great because they are much less expensive than conventional books, and you can carry them with you on an iPad, iPhone, or laptop. In addition, trees don't have to be cut down to make the paper for the books. The colors in the images are dazzling, too -- much more so than in a conventional print book because the photographs seen on a computer or iPad are illuminated from behind. What a great time it is to be a photographer!
|
PHOTOSHOP WORKSHOP in my
HOME Sat. & Sun., May 19, 20, 2012.
Photoshop is a photographer's best friend, and the creative possibilities are absolutely endless. In a personal and 'homey' environment (I have a very cool classroom setup in my home), I start at the beginning -- assuming you know nothing -- but I quickly get into layers, cutting and pasting, plug-ins, using 'grunge' textures, modifying lighting, and a lot more. I promise to fill your head with so many cool techniques that you won't believe what you'll be able to do.
Photoshop instructors approach teaching this program from different points of view. My approach is to be as expansive in my thinking as possible in creating unique, artistic, and compelling images. In addition to showing you how to use the various tools, pull down menus, layers, and so on, I spend a lot of time giving you creative ideas that will inspire you to produce amazing images with the pictures you've already taken.
A lot of people, once they learn what the tools and commands do, still need help in deciding what images to work with, what composites look good, and how to be artistic within Photoshop. This is one of the main things I address in this workshop.
I live in the Nashville, Tennessee area, and if you fly into the airport (BNA) I will pick you up. If you drive, I'll give you my address and you can find it on Mapquest. For the $450 fee, I include one dinner in my home (prepared by my wife who is an amazing cook and hostess) and two lunches, plus shuttling you back and forth from my home to your nearby hotel.
Contact me if you would like to participate in the workshop and I will tell you how to sign up (photos@jimzuckerman.com).
I will do my best to inspire you with all the great things Photoshop can do. All you need is a laptop. If you don't have one, I have two laptops (they are Macs) I can loan out.
|
|
|
