[Photography] 6 Tips for Protecting Your Gear from Any Hazard and Being Prepared

There is no such thing as a magic camera, lens, filter, flash, or tripod that does it all – hence the variety of brands, focal lengths, composite materials, etc., that are available is endless. Actually, part of the fun is not just having what you need, but sometimes what you want. Like something different, even though it doesn’t have the best reviews and specs by others, or something to experiment with, to broaden your creative horizons.

By Tiffany Joyce

But, there is one thing we all must consider when going out for a shoot, and that is what to bring, or even more importantly, what NOT to bring. Oh that agonizing decision of going through the pros and cons of each widget you could bring. There countless variables depending on personal tastes, what you will be shooting, and how long you will be on your photo shoot, just to mention a few.

There is one constant though, stuff goes wrong, things break, bags get lost, and it is not always easy to get a replacement in time, or even at all. Most of us don’t have sponsors who pay for our gear, and that last lens you just picked up was a financial hardship (that you were happy to endure). So, there are some simple pieces of advice that I have picked up from my own stupid mistakes, and from others, professionals and avid amateurs alike, which might save you and your gear in a pinch.

There are many articles on, what’s in my bag, and while it is fun to see what others are doing, the real question is what should you be doing? How much of everything do you want, and what specifics are you really going for? Do you want to bring your best gear, or will something more average do just fine with much less worry? Here are some tips for protecting your gear and being prepared for anything.

In the far NE of China this longing village was cutting down full trees, and making them into dowels to be shipped to the US to make hammers. With all the flying wood chips and dust, a UV filter was added protection.

1 – UV Filters

Better than me telling you the answer here, you can google, “Should I Use a UV Filter on my lens?”. You will find results galore, and many varying opinions. But, let me show you a picture and it may just persuade you to use one.

My lens hood was on, but I had just turned it backwards to save space while I was going to eat. My lens cap was also on. Sitting down on a street market bench to indulge, I brushed the lens cap pinching the hinges just enough that the cap popped off. Then, as momentum carried me down, a steel bench post smashed into my camera and I heard glass break. My heart sank, as horrible thoughts of my lens dying raced through my head.

It could have been my front lens element, but it wasn’t! It was my $35 UV filter, not my $900 dollar lens. For casual use, keep a UV filter on! If it breaks like mine did, a circular polarized filter can be a great backup too. Just don’t forget to turn it, to make sure you are getting the best out of your filter.

This is the glass that broke and saved my front lens element. I was in a small mountain town in central Guatemala with no possibility of replacing the lens.

2 – Lens Hoods

When I generally think of my lens hoods, image quality is what first comes to mind. Less glare, less flair, better saturation and contrast, etc. Sometimes the tulip hoods look nice on a lens, so cosmetically it can be pleasing as well. But they do add significant length, and even when screwed on backwards, not protruding outwards, they increase the diameter, especially on larger lenses, making it tough to cram into your travel bag.

Recently, in Cuba I ran across another amateur photographer, and one of his first comments after exchanging pleasantries was, where is the hood for your lens? The 70-200mm f2.8 IS is a big lens, and making it 25% longer while trying to not impose on subjects, was my deciding factor for leaving the hood at the hotel. I replied, “I have my UV filter on.” He quietly said to me that he was a glass engineer, and he politely suggested, with total altruistic intention, to keep my lens hood on. It has been on ever since.

Protection value is even better than a UV filter and image quality improvements are worth it!

In a seafood market in a coastal city in NE China, squirming fish, spitting clams and twitching shrimp will definitely get salt water on your lens. Only a UV filter would leave you with water spots, but a lens hood helps keep the salt water off of the front element.

In New York State during the 2015 super snow year, following this plow, that lays gravel and salt, with my camera out the window is dangerous for a front lens element. Having all the protection of a lens hood and a UV filter is important to protect your gear.

3 – Lens Cap (front and rear)

The little lens cap: This one goes out to amateurs more than the enthusiast. If you are not shooting, keep your lens cap on. This is a very good line of defence for your front lens element. A doctor doesn’t examine a patient without protective gloves, nor should a photographer leave his lens exposed, while enjoying carnival rides or waterfalls. Keeping your lens protected is most important, but clean is essential as well.

Also, if you are switching lenses, keep an extra cap for the back of your lens in your bag. They are all the same size, unlike the front lens cap, so if you lose one it is no big deal as one size fits all. Cleaning dust, dirt, hair or oil from the inside of the lens is a nightmare.

4 – Extra things to think about when travelling

Access to your camera shop or online retailer is not possible when you’re away from home. Maybe your favorite online shop could overnight you something in any developed country, but outside the US, Canada, and some parts of Western Europe, you are out of luck.

UV filters can be found at many small electronic stores at a 20% markup or so, but the sizes available may be limited. Kit lenses these days usually have a 58m or 67mm thread size, and maybe you might get lucky if they have a 72mm filter. Anything in the 77mm or higher range will be near impossible to find. Underdeveloped nations don’t have the ability to hold stock for the occasional guy who smashed his fancy gear, (that which could feed a whole village for a week). Thus, don’t bring more, simplify. Think how you can adapt if something breaks? Like using a polarized filter or an ND filter if your UV filter bites the dust. Using an ND filter and bringing your tripod might just help you broaden your portfolio for the trip; a little blessing in disguise.

5 – CF cards

It used to be no film, no picture. Now it is no memory, no picture. Recently, I was in Central America and one trip got cancelled, and another one came up. It was a photographer’s delight, Cuba! I didn’t have my computer, and didn’t want to plug my gear into a sketchy internet bar computer. The solution in a developed country is to just stock up on a few more CF cards.

The reality is that in developing markets CF cards are not available. Finding a name brand CF card that will have 30mb/second or more, is near impossible. Developing nations are still using basic point and shoot cameras, if they have any at all, and even more popular are mobile phones with mini SD’s in them. SD cards are abundant, along with mini SD cards with adapters, but that does you no good for the higher end DSLRs. CF cards are relatively cheap and tiny compared to lenses, camera bodies and flashes. Stuff a couple extra in your bag.

In northern Ethiopia this was the one of two stores that carried electronic goods. Most items are mobile phone related.

Getting into other parts of the world, like SE Asia and China, both of which are still in the developing stage, you will find much better luck. CF cards are available, and SD cards are going to be much cheaper. UV filters will also be available for any size. If they don’t have them in that store, ask them to get you one by the end of the day, and they will call up partner stores and send them over on the back of a moped. But you know the catch, it might not be real despite how legit it looks. In a bind, strike a deal, and you will have solved your solution at least temporarily.

This was my second option for electronics. A desktop computer which was used for burning pirated movies and music. No possibility of finding higher end camera supplies.

6 – The Lens Pen

A final item that is a must is the lens pen. These are so compact, and convenient, to keep your front and rear lens elements clean. Make sure you use the brush first, then the moistened concave end for smudges. Ideally you would have air to blow off the lens first, but don’t use your mouth. No matter how careful you are particles of your saliva will appear on the lens giving you double duty. The lens pens are tiny and do wonders. Keep one in your bag, and one in your pocket, so you can get up close and personal to the crashing waves, market activity, or the big sports event. By the way, these lens pens can be found all over the world now. Grab a couple before you go, but if you lose one, or give one away to a local photographer, you may be able to find another.

Bottom line

So, when you are off on your next photo shoot, be prepared. You can’t anticipate everything, but even combined, all of the items on this list could easily fit in your pant’s pocket. Put all of them in a sturdy Ziploc bag, and you just added another element of protection. Wrap your camera or lens in the bag in really treacherous situations.

These tips provide a pretty good insurance policy for keeping your gear safe, and in proper working condition. Keeping your gear protected in harsh environments lets you focus on your creative ability to see and capture your favorite photographic styles, and do it with confidence too. Now, you still need to decide what major pieces of gear you want: super wide angle lens, telephotos, primes, single flash or multiple flashes, tripod, and the list goes on.

But be sure you have your UV filters screwed on, your hoods attached, your front and rear lens caps, and some extra memory, along with the most portable and simple cleaning lens pens.

What essentials do you have in your bag when you leave for a long photo shoot out of your home range?

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[Photography] 7 Benefits of Doing Microstock Photography

I have to confess, it took me a while to get myself to do the exercise of actually sitting down and filtering through my old photos, to find those suitable to submit to a microstock agency to start selling. Finally, I did it, but boy how I wished I did it much earlier, back when I heard about microstock photography, the very first time.

But wait a minute, what’s microstock?

Unlike large stock photo agencies like Getty, microstock agencies are where photographers can license their photos to be sold as royalty-free images. This means buyers can use the photos they bought, without having to pay a royalty (or licensing fee) every time they use them. I won’t get into much detail on this, as you’ve probably heard of thing called “Google” by now, go ahead and read more about it.

For us as photographers, what are the real benefits to selling our work as microstock? Below are seven benefits from my own experience. However, you may find even more benefits yourself. So here we go:

1. It improves the overall quality of your photography

The reason for this is simple: Microstock agencies have strict guidelines for accepting submitted photos, in order to maintain quality. Guess what that means? Yep, you will have to actually put some efforts into taking those photos.

Every microstock agency is different, but generally speaking, things like noise, bad composition, bad lighting, weird color cast (wrong White Balance), out of focus, and blurry are pretty common reasons of rejection. This will definitely keep you on your toes as a photographer, and will force you to pixel peep your images carefully before submitting them. If that’s what the reviewers do, why waste time submitting a photo that won’t get approved? I can’t tell you how much it improved me as a photographer.

2. It pushes your creativity to new levels

There comes a point as you go through a microstock website, searching for similar photos when you think, “oh man, is there any idea that’s not thought about already?” This will make force you to actually brainstorm more creative ideas, to come up with images that no other contributor has submitted yet. Do I have to tell you how drastically this will improve your overall photography thinking process? Forget stock, this trains your eyes to see differently, and your brain cells to sprint a little harder.

3. It makes use of unused photos

While some shots you will need to purposely take for stock, others are just what you can find in your archives. If you are anything like me, you probably have hundreds, if not thousands, of unused photos laying around, taking up more disk space, let alone backup drives and cloud services. While these extra hard drives and backup services are becoming cheaper every day, the cost still adds up with time. It won’t be long before you realize you have terabytes of RAW and JPEG files, not to mention the hassle of fiddling with many hard disks.

Have you ever thought about putting your unused photos to a good use? Well, you know the saying, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. You won’t believe how many of those photos can be used by others. They could save someone’s day somewhere on this planet. So, instead of keeping them buried down in the hard drives, dust them off, polish them a little, and if you think they meet the criteria, put them to a good use. Who knows, they might end up paying for their own recurring cloud backup expenses.

4. It gives your hobby a purpose

Hobbyist or not, you are likely into photography because it’s what you love to do. If you are not a pro who is getting paid to do photography, justifying staying up late editing your photos to your non-photographer spouse, or explaining slowing down on that family dream vacation to your kids, can be a little too difficult to do.

Let’s be honest, this is an expensive hobby, so selling your photos to microstock agencies is probably the easiest way to not only make a few extra bucks on the side, but to add a goal and purpose to your photography. On the other hand, if you are a pro, I’m sure those extras shots that you couldn’t sell and don’t need anyone’s approval to use, will hold some commercial value, so why not?

5. It is as demanding as you want it to be

Selling your photos as microstock is, well, almost like running your own mini-business, minus all the struggles that come with a full-blown business, while keeping some of the advantages. As is the case with running your own business, it’s up to you how much time and effort you want to pour into it, and subsequently, how much return you will get. The good news is, you can speed up or slow down as conveniently as you want. You are in complete control of the process, especially when this is not your main income. What’s not to like about it?

6. It can bring you satisfaction and fame

Have you heard of Google Images search? Once you started selling your photos, go ahead and search on Google using one of your images and see for yourself where, and how many times those photos of yours are being used. Your mind will be blown away by the places that your photo might end up. Don’t be surprised if a friend one day sends you a snap of a famous magazine with your photo beautifully used in it. Go ahead and brag about that to your heart’s content, use it to your advantage, and show the world that you have published work.

7. It gives you a little bit of extra cash on the side, almost indefinitely!

I kept this for last for two reasons:

1. I didn’t want you to just focus on the money part and miss the other amazing benefits.
2. I wanted to keep the best for last! Not only will selling your photos as microstock make you a better photographer and bring you satisfaction, it will also give you a few extra bucks on the side.

Did you notice how I bolded and underlined the word “few”? Unless you have a big team of professional models, makeup artists, wardrobe artists, and are doing this as your main job, you will probably not make that much money, because after-all, microstock agencies in general don’t pay very much. For instance, as a contributor to shutterstock.com, I only get paid 25 cents per download. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, in fact, if you think about it, this is only per download per image. If you have enough high quality images, with high commercial value, you will soon witness the numbers add up.

To put things in perspective, if those few extra bucks at least pay the cloud backup charges instead of draining you, or give you some extra cash to buy some accessories online, then this whole thing is very much worth it. Here’s the good news, your portfolio will continue to grow over time and with that, your photos will continue to bring you cash during your sleep almost indefinitely.

Why almost, you ask? Well, because some photos may go out of style, or will be overused by so many designers, blogs, and publications, so you will need to keep updating and adding more photos to your portfolio to keep it fresh. This should keep the income flow somewhat steady, if not improve it over time, especially when you start to analyze and learn the ins and outs and what sells more than others.

Conclusion

I wish I had someone open my eyes to these benefits a long time ago – so here you go, I hope I’m opening yours. If you are already a microstock photographer, or can think of other benefits, I would love to hear and discuss them with you in the comments section below, maybe you will open my eyes to something I’ve not seen before myself.

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[Photography] How to Create a Surreal Look in Photoshop Using Hue Adjustment

When you start learning photoshop it is scary to see all those different tools you can choose from. It is often said there are seven ways to achieve the same results, using different tools in photoshop. So, it means you have to find the one that suits you perfect, in order to give to your pictures the look that you want.

In this article I want to show you how you can change colors in your pictures using Photoshop. This is a very easy method that you can use, either you are a beginner or you are a more advanced user.

You could add a surreal twist to your images, or remove colors you do not feel like comfortable working with (I am sure we can all relate to this, because as artists we have our favorite and least favorite colors- the ones we struggle to work with!). You can use this technique for anything from changing the color of a dress or any other prop, to changing the forest tones to enhance the autumn feeling, or creating it if you want to create an autumn picture even though it is still spring.

This is the before and after color change:

Create a color adjustment with Hue/Saturation

You can get to the Curves dialog in two ways:

1. Image adjustment: By choosing Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation or Click the Hue/Saturation icon in the Adjustments panel.
2. As an adjustment layer: Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation, or in your layers panel use the shortcut: New adjustment layer> Hue/Saturation.

I strongly recommend working with layers. It allows you to come back to the adjustment and to erase it, or modify it, as many times as needed. Especially when you make big changes, you may want to be able to have full control. Layers can be scary at the beginning, but trust me, they will become your best friend once you overcome this fear.

Creating a new layer you will have the following Hue/Saturation dialog box:

Select the color you want to change.

The more different you want your original color to be, the more important this selection is so that the color change does not affect areas do not want to shift. Removing a general color cast is usually a very light change. But, a total different color requires you to be more careful when selecting, and sometimes require several color adjustments.

When your object has a very clear color – as to say all red, one red tone – it is easy. When your object has different color shades it is tricky but not impossible.

In this case we are changing the color of ivy leaves, with different tones of green, blue, and even yellow.

First step: Make the color selection:

You can choose Master to adjust all colors at once, or one of the other preset color ranges listed for the color you want to adjust (reds, yellows, greens, cyans, etc.).

Or you can also choose the Targeted Adjustment Tool (the little white hand) – this is the easy way to select color if the area/object you want to change is a mix of several color tones.

Click on the Targeted Adjustment Tool and put your cursor on your image, the eyedropper tool appears. Drag it on your image, and click on the color tone you want to select.

Four color values appear in degrees in your properties panel. If you click again, you change the selected colors.

Second step: Refine your selection

To check your selection, grab the saturation slider and move it to the right to increase saturation. The idea here is to see what you have selected, and make sure you have the right colors, therefore helping you adjust the selection. For example, when editing a portrait, you want to make sure it doesn’t affect the skin tones of your subject. If editing a forest you want to make sure you have selected the leaves, but not the tree trunks (or anything in the background).

As you can see there is still a lot of blue of the leaves, that is not included in the selection. To add those blue tones you will drag the adjustment sliders to expend your selected colors, and change the color value (appearing in degrees in your properties panel).

There are four sliders. The ones in the middle allow you to expend or shorten the selected color ranges. The two sliders on both sides are to adjust the range of color and fall-off. Play with those sliders until you find a good selection. Don’t worry if it’s not perfect, you can still make a second hue/saturation adjustment layer, or mask this layer.

Third step: Change the color

In your properties window, drag the hue slider to the left or right depending on the new color tone you want to give to your selection. Then you can play with adding or removing saturation by dragging that slider either way.

Learning to use hue/saturation will give you more creative options when editing your images in Photoshop. Share any images that you’ve changed the color on, or any other methods you use for doing this technique.

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[Photography] 5 Good Reasons You Should Get the Latest Lightroom Upgrade

If you’re a photo-fanatic, there is a lot to keep up with. New camera models are being announced way too often, firmware updates, fancy new lenses keep popping up, and on and on.

I didn’t even mention software yet but now that I have, let’s see what’s new with our old pal Lightroom (LR) and its latest upgrade.

Since this is the default program that you’re likely to find running on almost every photographer’s computer, it’s worth discussing what you might be missing (or not if you’re a minimalist post-processor) if you haven’t upgraded to the latest version – LR 6 or the Adobe Creative Cloud (CC).

If you are like me, you will be happy to hear that the general interface has survived untouched in the latest versions. That is to say, in many respects the program has retained the same look and features, and the tasks which you are accustomed to doing, are the same.

So what do you get for your $79 (that’s the price of upgrading from an earlier version) or what more do you get for your $149 if you haven’t yet jumped on the LR bandwagon? Let’s take a peek at some of the added features that may prove most useful.

If you are still clicking away on LR 4, the long list of reasons to upgrade is even more compelling than the jump from LR 5 to LR 6 – here are some good reasons to get the latest Lightroom upgrade.

Radial Filter

The Radial Filter reveals a new level of editing control.

Probably one of the most welcome features that LR users are grateful for (I know I am), is the Radial Filter (shift+m). This filter allows you a higher degree of flexibility in masking for dodging, burning, and the other adjustments available within the Adjustment Brush.

One handy way to increase the effectiveness of the Radial Filter is after making your initial adjustments, right click on the pin and duplicate the filter. Once it is duplicated you can then choose Invert Mask from the adjustment panel and make another set of changes – perhaps making opposing changes to further the effects you applied with the first filter (this invert selection feature is lusted after for LR’s adjustment brush).

Visualize Spots

The Visualize Spots filter helps you catch dust spots and other blemishes that you may otherwise overlook.

If you are a user of the Spot Removal tool, you are going to be psyched for a handy little addition called Visualize Spots. This little check box toggles between the normal view and an inverted black and white image which clearly highlights sensor dust or skin blemishes which you may want to eliminate (if you don’t see that option hit the T key to show the toolbar).

I find this feature quite handy when editing on my laptop, as it can be easy to overlook spots on the small screen, or because of glare. It may save you the hassle of having to toss out a big print because you overlooked spots.

Facial Recognition

LR’s new Facial Recognition feature can locate people throughout your entire collection.

Facial recognition has also been added to LR’s suite of updates. This is a feature that has existed in other software for some time (such as Picasa all the way back to 2009) so LR was a little behind the curve on this one – better late than never though.

Certainly this addition made many people happy, as it means one less keyword to have to enter into metadata. When activating this mode (keyboard shortcut O) LR searches selected photos for all recognizable faces and compiles a list. You can then plug in names for the different faces which LR can then use to search for in your entire catalog.

Furthermore, LR adds these names as a keyword in metadata and has created a new sub-menu for people within the Keywords panel.

Overlay Guide

The Overlay Guide is more flexible and less cluttered than the grid overlay.

A simple addition that I find handy is a new movable overlay guide.

All it does is give you a vertical and horizontal line, that create a sort of crosshairs, which you can move around for composition and alignment purposes. It is useful as a less cluttered guide, used in conjunction with transform lens corrections.

It would have been nice to just have this nested in with the crop overlays, instead you have to access it through: View>Loupe Overlay>Guides.

Smart Previews

Smart Previews allow you to make edits to offline photos.

Smart Previews are one of those features that I always wished LR had, and my wish finally came true.

This feature enables you to create compressed copies of images which can then be used to make offline edits. This works great if, like me, you store your original images on an external drive but want to be able to make edits on the go.

If edits are made to Smart Previews in LR, your original image will be updated with those new changes when it comes back online (when the external hard drive is reconnected).

You can set LR to automatically create Smart Previews for images upon import, otherwise you can create them manually for any images, folders or collections that you wish. To create Smart Previews, go to: Library>Preview>Build Smart Previews.

Conclusion

Naturally, this is not an exhaustive list of all of LR’s newer features. There are quite a few other sensational new additions such as HDR and Panorama Merge, Cure Pet Eye Effect, Slideshow improvements, new auto-cropping features, not to mention increased performance.

Have you recently upgraded? What are your favorite new features?

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[Photography] How to Create a Hollywood Film Noir Portrait

I have always had a soft spot for 1940s and 50s Film Noir, where there is always a gorgeous Femme Fatale, whose charms are most likely going to get you killed. The light in those movies is the key to the ambience of mystery and danger, and I love the way the scenes are composed with smoke, shadows, and the black and white high drama with dim light aesthetic.

These movies were mostly low-budget productions shot on location in city streets, with an abundance of night scenes, where crime is the main plot. Low-key lighting is the common thread of Film Noir, with harsh light that create deep shadows, resulting in a high contrast black and white.

As a photographer the actresses’ portraits that were used by the studios for promotion really fascinate me, and I guess it influences a lot of my portraiture work.

In this article I am going to follow the steps to create this image that is a recreation of a Hollywood Film Noir portrait, done with modern equipment, and digital post-production techniques.

Research

As for every photography work, it is always a good idea to do some research, and look for inspiration. Here I used references from one of my favorite movies of all time, “Touch of Evil”, directed by the great Orson Welles in 1958.

Camera and lens

The choice of equipment is an important starting point. In this particular case I used a Canon 5D III body with a Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM lens. This is my favorite lens when it comes to portrait work, it offers the perfect combination of good sharpness and awesome bokeh.

Lighting equipment

These images were originally lit, in most cases, with incandescent high-power bulbs, and the quality and direction of the light was mostly controlled with barn doors and Fresnel spotlights.

I decided to use two Canon 600EX-RT Speedlites, controlled by a Canon ST-E3-RT Speedlite transmitter. This created a simple setup with a gridded softbox working as a hard key light on the model’s face, and a 20º grid as a hair light to separate the model from the background.

Exposure

Usually in studio portrait images, I try to decide the exposure based on the depth of field I want to create on the image. In this particular case, I chose to use f/8.0, as it gave me enough depth of field in the face area, with the 85mm focal length.

The shutter speed is the second important factor and I chose to use 1/125, as it blocked any possible ambient light, and only register the light from the flash.

The ISO 100 is enough for the flash power available, and offers me a clean and noiseless image.

Lighting diagram

Every time I have an idea for an image I try to put it on paper. Most of the time it is just doodles in my little black book, but it helps me to visualize the setup, and the light ambiance that I want to create. Here is the quick sketch I did for this image, which represents the lighting diagram and technical information for the photo shoot.

Light metering

After setting the starting point values for the camera, it’s time to calculate the light position and power, to create the desired effect.

The background was white so a distance to subject of seven feet was enough to turn it black, which works much better with a blonde model.

The idea was to have light on half of the model’s face, and a quick fall-off to the other side, creating a mysterious mood in the image. The gridded softbox was ideal for this effect. The 20º grid created a rim light on the hair and a ratio of 2:1 to the main light, so metering was f/8.0 for the main light and f/11 for the hair light.

The click time

Now that everything is set, it’s time to click. Even tough the final image was meant to be black and white, I captured it in color mode as it gives me better choices for conversion in post-production.

Post-production

There are many tools and plugins for black and white image conversion. In this case I used the Photoshop’s black and white tool which is a simple but effective solution.

Image > Adjustments > Black & White

A few adjustments to the red and yellow channel gave me the right contrast on the skin and overall image, creating the dramatic mood.

So, here is my approach to the Film Noir portrait. It sure was fun. If you give this technique a try, please share your results and images in the comments below.

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