[Photography] Canon Explorers of Light – Q&A with Photographers Bob and Dawn Davis

The post Canon Explorers of Light – Q&A with Photographers Bob and Dawn Davis appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

In this Canon Explorers of Light Q&A series, we interview several professional photographers who are a part of Canon’s Explorers of Light program.

The Explorers of Light Program, running since 1995, boasts some incredibly talented photographers. These photographers have spent years honing their craft, and influence and educate other photographers of all levels – something, we at dPS, can respect and relate to.

In this Canon Explorers of Light Q&A series, we interview photographers Bob and Dawn Davis. They share their experiences and give tips to upcoming photographers.

Photo: © Bob & Dawn Davis Photography

Photographers Bob and Dawn Davis

How did you get into photography?

I was inspired by my father, who always had a camera or movie camera within arms-reach. Growing up, I played with Polaroid, where you had to coat the photographs and mount them onto the cardboard included with the pack of instant film. Also, all kinds of Kodak cameras, 126, 110, and Disc cameras.

I became addicted to captured moments and anything that caught my eye, and I was on a first-name basis with the one-hour lab in the Jewel near my home. 

Once I got into high school, I took my first photography class. Mrs. Morrison encouraged my passion for documenting everyday moments. She said to me, “you can make a living in photography as a photojournalist!” 

That was it; I knew my life’s calling. 

I joined the school newspaper and yearbook, had a front-row seat to current events, and in my senior year, I won the National Honor Society Scholarship in Photojournalism and subsequently attended Columbia College in Chicago. 

Simultaneously, a small newspaper, The Daily Southtown Economist, hired me. Eventually, work took up all my time. I decided to leave college and work full time, setting my sights on a position at the Chicago Sun-Times, working alongside John H. White, Pulitzer Prize winner in feature photography. I realized my dreams in 1989 when I was hired full time at the Chicago Sun-Times, where I was a staff photographer covering daily news until 2004.

Photo: © Bob & Dawn Davis Photography

What was your first camera setup?

My first camera purchase was a Canon AT1 with a 50mm 1.4 lens, 28mm 2.8, and a 200mm 2.8 lens, which fueled my passion for photography in high school. 

Eventually, I had the Canon AT1 modified to accept the highspeed motor drive that would allow for five frames per second. I was pursuing sports photography, and the local weekly newspaper, The Star, hired me as a freelancer to photograph the local football team who were heading to State. Score!

What camera gear do you use now and why?

I am a lifelong Canon user, and I’m blessed to be a part of The Canon Explorers of Light Educational Program. I purchased my own Canon EOS 1D digital camera. I love Canon color and glass period!

My current Canon kit is the EOS 1DX MkIII and EOS R for bodies; lenses to photographers are like brushes to fine art painters. 

I use the RF 28-70 f2.0, RF 50mm f1.2, EF 16-35 f2.8 vIII, EF 24-70 f2.8 vII, EF 70-200 f2.8 IS vII, 100-400 f4.5 5.6 vII, 300 f2.8 vII, 1.4x vIII, 2x vIII and 10-600EX RT Speedlites. I love the speed and low light focus capability of both the EOS 1DX MIII and EOS R full-frame mirrorless bodies. There’s no situation I cannot cover with these cameras.

Photo: © Bob & Dawn Davis Photography

What area of photography do you specialize in, and why did you move into that field?

I love capturing real authentic moments and fashion-inspired portraits. I would call our style timeless and classic with an editorial twist. Currently, I practice in wedding, portraits, and wildlife photography. 

Honestly, being a lifelong photojournalist, there isn’t much I haven’t covered in my career, so I’m prepared for anything. 

Photo: © Bob & Dawn Davis Photography

I’ve photographed every president since Ronald Reagan and captured the most exclusive events for A-list celebrities. I love photographing the once-in-a-lifetime moments that unfold at weddings and special events.

Photo: © Bob & Dawn Davis Photography

Are you working on any exciting projects you’d like to share?

I love weddings and events, but I’m transitioning into destination wildlife, travel photography, and workshops. Photography is a powerful medium to tell stories and share a message. I want our wildlife and destination work to inspire people to think and be grateful for the abundance of beauty that surrounds us and that we need to be stewards of our planet and environment!

2019-04-17 – Mashatu Game Reserve, Tuli, Botswana, Africa – Photo Safari. Photo by Bob Davis © Bob & Dawn Davis Photography & Design

If you could share any photography tips with our readers, what would they be?

Practice, practice, practice! I learned from Michael Jordan while covering his many NBA championships that before every game, he would be on the floor before anyone else and practice the basics. He was ready and confident, so when the moment came for the big shots, he was prepared. I still practice and push myself to be green and growing, and always be prepared no matter the assignment.

Photo: © Bob & Dawn Davis Photography

Bob’s personal biography

My cameras have always been a passport, allowing me a front seat to history. While at the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper for 14 years, I covered countless historic events, such as presidential elections, Michael Jordan’s entire career with the Chicago Bulls, many faiths, celebrations, and rituals. I’ve traveled around the world for weddings and human-interest stories for nonprofit organizations.

I have since moved on from the newspaper industry. Now, I have created an endeavor with my wife, Dawn Davis – Bob & Dawn Davis Photography & Design. 

Photo: © Bob & Dawn Davis Photography

Our client list reads like a “Who’s Who” of entertainment’s elite. We had the honor of photographing A-list weddings such as Eva Longoria & Tony Parker’s wedding in Paris, Salma Hayek & François-Henri Pinault’s wedding in Italy, La La Vazquez & Carmelo Anthony’s TV wedding in New York, Tracey Edmonds & Eddie Murphy’s wedding in Bora Bora, ABC’s TV show The Bachelorette Ashley’s wedding to J.P. in California, along with many other fabulous events with Oprah Winfrey. 

I was commissioned to work on the book America 24/7, which was featured on the Oprah Winfrey show and was a New York Times Best Seller.

Our work has been featured in publications such as People, OK, O Magazine, InStyle,  Inside Weddings, Town & Country, Munaluchi, Grace Ormonde, Modern Luxury Brides, and dozens of others.

I am honored to be a member of the Canon Explorers of Light, Westcott Top Pro Elite, and SanDisk Extreme Team. Dawn and I are the authors of two books, Lights Camera Capture, and We’re Engaged!

I am happily married to my wife, Dawn, and together we have two beautiful children, Bobby and Alli.

Photo: © Bob & Dawn Davis Photography

The post Canon Explorers of Light – Q&A with Photographers Bob and Dawn Davis appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

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[Photography] Take Time to Practice These Three Composition Skills Around Your Home

The post Take Time to Practice These Three Composition Skills Around Your Home appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kevin Landwer-Johan.

Now is a good time to practice composition skills. With many people having to self-isolate, it means you may not be able to enjoy regular life. This will include being able to get out and photograph the subjects you typically take pictures of.

Make good use of the time to practice. This is not something photographers do as much as other artists. You can imagine that to play a song on a guitar or the piano, you must first practice it. It’s easy for a photographer to pick up a camera and get a pretty well-exposed photo without the need to practice. This can make you lazy, and not make time to work on aspects of your photography that need improving.

© Kevin Landwer-Johan Nikon D800, Lens 105mm, 1/400 sec., f/10, ISO 400

In this article, I want to encourage you to think outside the subject. Consider taking photos only to work on improving one aspect of your craft – composition.

Find subject material in your environment. Things you would not normally consider taking pictures of. Aim to make interesting and varied compositions by exploring and experimenting.

Practice composition skills

When you practice anything at all, you will get better at it. When was the last time you engaged in improving your composition skills through practice? Have you ever picked up your camera with the sole aim of getting better at using the rule of thirds or any other aspect of composition?

Focus on using negative space for a day, or a week, and you’ll find you incorporate more of it into your photographs.

By repeating what you are doing, you can learn a skill so well that you don’t have to consciously think about it. It will take time and practice to reach this level, but it is quite natural. Whatever you set yourself to practice, in time, you will be able to use that skill without having to think much about it. This is one great way to build your intuition.

Pick two or three composition rules to work on. I’m writing about the rule of thirds, negative space and filling the frame. But you can work on any you like. The key is to not be so concerned about your subject or creating masterpiece photos, it is to practice and learn.

Consider yourself doing this to be like a musician practicing scales. Their aim is not to go out on stage and play scales, but they know that practicing them will help them play better when they do perform.

© Kevin Landwer-Johan Nikon D800, Lens 105mm, 1/320 sec., f/7.1, ISO 800

Practice the Rule of Thirds

Let’s start with the most well-known rule of composition in photography, the rule of thirds. This is one many people know and use. To put into practice composition skills, you need to concentrate on the rule, not the subject so much.

Don’t worry if you are not producing great photos. This exercise is designed to help you better understand when to use the rule of thirds.

You might like to use a single subject or various things around you to practice composition skills. For this exercise, I walked around my garden and in my house to create compositions using the rule of thirds.

© Kevin Landwer-Johan Nikon D800, Lens 105mm, 1/400 sec., f/10, ISO 400

Experiment with each subject you photograph. Compose it in different ways, but make sure to have it somewhere on one of the ‘thirds’. Don’t only take the first composition you think of. If you place your subject on the left for your first picture, place it on the right hand third for the second one. Then rotate your camera 90 degrees and place your subject on a lower third intersection.

The Rule of Thirds grid

Push yourself to try out compositions you normally wouldn’t. Don’t think about your results as right or wrong. Or even good or bad. The point of practice is to improve, so if you’re taking photos you don’t particularly like, think about them. Why don’t you like them? What can you do to improve?

Practice using the rule of thirds until you feel you’ve made some good progress with it. Do you have a better understanding of how to use it well?

© Kevin Landwer-Johan Nikon D800, Lens 105mm, 1/400 sec., f/10, ISO 400

Using negative space to practice composition skills

Negative space is not a bad thing – at least not when it’s included in compositions intentionally. Negative space is the area of a photograph that is not the main center of attention.

Often there will be nothing at all in these areas – no shapes, lines, or texture.

At other times there will be some detail, but it will not draw attention away from the main subject at all.

© Kevin Landwer-Johan Nikon D800, Lens 105mm, 1/320 sec., f/7.1, ISO 800

During our photography workshops, one of the most common mistakes I see people make is to leave too much empty space above a person’s head. This is not usually well-composed negative space. It’s there because the photographer was not paying enough attention to what surrounded their subject.

Practice composition skills by creating photos with strong negative space. Use blank areas to help your main subject stand out. Use a blank wall, a shallow depth of field, or a light subject with a dark background.

There are many ways you can include negative space positively in your pictures.

Again, don’t aim to make masterpieces. Making ‘mistakes’ is healthy when you are practicing.

Experiment and try out various compositions, both horizontal and vertical. Leave space on the left, right, below and above the same subject. Study them together on your computer. Which one do you like the most?

© Kevin Landwer-Johan Nikon D800, Lens 105mm, 1/200 sec., f/4.5, ISO 800

Aim to fill the frame

Filling the frame is something I aim to do every time I take a photo. Sometimes this can mean much of my frame is filled with negative space. So long as it’s intentional and adds to the photo, that’s fine.

To fill the frame well it’s as much about what you leave out as to what you include. Most important is to be aware of what’s within the four edges of your composition and make sure that it’s relevant to the photo you’re taking.

Sometimes filling the frame can mean coming in ultra-close to your subject so you don’t include all of it. Other times you may choose to move back or zoom out to include some of the surroundings because they are relevant.

Always look around the edges of your frame. What’s in the corners? Are the background elements supporting your main subject? If not, move it, move yourself, or use another technique to eliminate the unwanted element.

Moving even a little can alter the perspective of how elements within your frame relate to each other. As an example of this, I photographed the same objects on my table. The plastic bottle behind my main setting is distracting.

To eliminate it from my composition, I moved lower and to the right a little. In this situation, I could have also moved the bottle.

© Kevin Landwer-Johan Nikon D800, Lens 105mm, 1/80 sec., f/5, ISO 800

© Kevin Landwer-Johan Nikon D800, Lens 105mm, 1/80 sec., f/5, ISO 800

Conclusion

Taking time to practice composition skills may sound a bit boring – just as someone learning the piano might get bored practicing scales.

Try it and see. You may find you enjoy it after a while. Like anything, it takes time for the practice to pay off, so don’t give up easily.

Do you have any other tips you’d like to add? Please share them with us in the comments.

The post Take Time to Practice These Three Composition Skills Around Your Home appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kevin Landwer-Johan.

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[Photography] The dPS At-Home 7-Day Photography Challenge – Week Three

The post The dPS At-Home 7-Day Photography Challenge – Week Three appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

As many of us around the world are continuing self-isolation, and social distancing (whoever thought that would be a thing?) due to the C-word, we thought we’d make it a little less boring and stressful and give you (and us) an “At-Home, 7-Day Photography Challenge.”

This is week three of the challenge (see week one here, and week two here. You can still do those challenges, as there are no deadlines on any of these).

These are all things you can try in and around your home.

As always, we would love to see your results in the comments section. That way, we can connect and share, and keep ourselves occupied with something positive and creative!

At-Home, 7-Day Photography Challenge – Week Three

Day 1

Go through some of your photos on your computer or hard drive, and give this post-processing challenge a try: Simulating False-Color Infrared Photography in Photoshop. You can get some fantastic results.

Day 2

This one uses the open-source editing program, GIMP. Download it and give this a try: Creative Uses for the GIMP Jigsaw Pattern.

Day 3

This one requires some close-up filters, but if you don’t have those, try macro lenses or even try putting a magnifying glass in front of your lens! Just experiment. Exploring Your Home with Close-Up Filters

Day 4

This one can be fun too. DIY: How to Create a Coffee-Stained Texture for Aging Images in Photoshop. If you aren’t a coffee drinker, use tea

Day 5

Look for patterns and repetition around your home or garden. Photograph them and then play with them in edit to make them black and white, or bold and bright! How to Use Pattern and Repetition in Photography Effectively

Day 6

Take photos (or use ones you already have), and turn them into monochromatic images in your favorite post-processing application: How to use Monochromatic Color to Convey more Emotion in your Photography

Day 7

This is another color-focussed one. How to Create Abstract Photos with Colored Paper. Find some colored bits of paper (or material) around your home and try this one out.

I can’t wait to see your images!

The post The dPS At-Home 7-Day Photography Challenge – Week Three appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

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[Photography] Create Light Beams in GIMP that Glow Without Any Plug-ins

The post Create Light Beams in GIMP that Glow Without Any Plug-ins appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ana Mireles.

Do you want to create light beams with GIMP? While previous versions of GIMP used a process called Alpha to Logo, it’s not available in the latest version. Not to worry, you don’t have to download any plug-in or script-fu, as I’ll show you a step-by-step example to do them manually.

GIMP’s open-source nature can be the most attractive thing for some people and the most off-putting for others. Create light beams used to be a one-click operation, but the script-fu was removed since version 2.10.4. There’s a way to get it back and install it separately, but you can also create them using GIMP’s basic functions.

How to Create Light Beams in GIMP

1. Design the shape

Open the image or canvas where you want to create light beams.

Now create a new layer, I strongly recommend you to name them as you go because you will need a few of them.

Do this in the designated space on the top. Then choose Fill With Transparency and click OK.

In this new layer, draw the shape of your light beam using the Path Tool. Make sure the Edit Mode is set to Design and start drawing.

If you want to create curves, just hold the mouse button and drag the anchor point.

Once you have the shape you want, choose the color by clicking in the patches you find on the left panel.

Then right-click in any anchor point of your shape and choose Edit > Stroke Path from the menu.

This will open a pop-up window.

Select Paintbrush and Emulate Paintbrush.

This will apply the effect using the settings you have in your Paintbrush tool as if you had painted the shape.

2. Create the beam

Now, the stroke needs to start looking like a light beam. For this, you need to draw a lighter outline to it. The easiest way is to right-click on the layer and choose Alpha to Selection.

Go back to the color swatches and choose a lighter hue, or even white.

Create another transparency layer, then go to Edit > Stroke Selection. In the pop-up window choose Stroke Line and set the value that will determine how thick you want it.

Here I disabled the visibility of the first stroke. You don’t have to do this, it was only to show you how the second stroke does an outline.

Deselect everything and click on the Layer Mask button.

Set it to black (full transparency). This will cover the entire outline you created before, but that’s OK, you’ll make it visible in the next step.

Pick the Paint Brush tool and set the color to white.

Then lower the opacity of the brush and paint over your light beam to slowly make the outline visible. After that, with full opacity, paint over some parts to create highlights.

I used full opacity only in the curves because that’s where I want the highlights to be.

3. Make it glow

Duplicate this layer and delete the mask. Lower its opacity and then go to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur. The value is up to you, I started with 22. Repeat this process a second time, this time changing the values in the Opacity and the Blur filter.

This is how you can create light beams that appear to glow. If you feel like adding a neon effect, keep on reading to learn how.

4. Add some color for a neon effect

With the top layer selected, add a new transparency layer.

Then set the color you want in the swatches.

Since you’re going for a neon effect, I recommend you choose something ‘electric’.

Use the Paint Brush tool to add some colored splats on your design.

Change this layer to Soft Light blending mode at the top of the Layers panel.

Then create another one and do the same with another color. Change this one to HSL Color.

That’s it! Your neon glowing light beam is ready.

Feel free to skip any step or add some more to make it your own.

Remember, the good thing about doing them manually is that you have full control over the outcome.

Extra tip:

If you want it to swirl around something, like mine, just erase or cover with a layer mask the parts that should go behind the subject.

Conclusion

Scripts and plug-ins can save some time, but they aren’t necessarily available or easy to install. Granted, you don’t always know the individual commands that were automated and that makes it difficult.

This process, however, is meant as a starting point to make it less daunting and allow you to get creative. I hope you liked this technique to create light beams in GIMP without any plug-ins.

Want to learn more GIMP Tutorials? You may like:

• A Brief introduction to GIMP Software
• Creative Uses for the GIMP Jigsaw Pattern
• How to Use Gimp for Basic Photo Re-Touching
• Make your Photos Sparkle with GIMP
• 5 Top Tips for Working with Gimp

The post Create Light Beams in GIMP that Glow Without Any Plug-ins appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ana Mireles.

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