Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category
Playing with strobes – el cheapo style
I’ve been reading the Strobist blog lately and going through the heaps of strobist groups on flickr. The quality and creativity of some of these images is pretty astounding.
So I decided to play around with off-camera flash. Lack of equipment was an issue to start off with. I had to get the speedlite off the camera. There are many ways to do that, and I won’t go into that here (the Strobist blog is where to look that up). I decided to go with the el-cheapo solution (hotshoe adapter and pc cable) since I’m still learning, I’ll eventually upgrade to radio triggers. For about 300SEK/30€ I managed to get an adapter and 5m of cable… yeah…that’s a lot of cable when you’re trying to work and not tripping over it was a bit of a challenge. Right there I began to see the advantages of radio triggers. You can run multiple strobes with this setup using splitter-cables but that involves even more mess.
The flash was run in manual mode and correct exposure was achieved through a now pretty much standard trial and error method. To go with the whole water theme used a blue gel. I tried several positions for the strobe. What worked best for the shots of drops was to lay the flash down almost parallel to the table but point it up just a little bit to give more light to the contours of the glass. The fill light was provided by the on-camera flash dialed 2 stops down. I’ve also tried reflecting the light off the sheet of glass that my subject was on with some pretty decent results. The wine glass was shot with the strobe dialed down to 1/32 and placed right of the glass, directly under it and looking up. The setup is in the video. On a sidenote, I really need a better video camera, the LG Viewty, even though it shoots 120fps video just isn’t enough.
Here are some images:
Things to think about:
A smooth non-reflective background is key. The cardboard I used had too much of a texture and I had to pull the blacks all the way town in LR for the black background to look smooth and black. Next time I’m gonna try a black sheet, sure it has a texture but I don’t think it’ll reflect as much.
Timing, at least for water drops, is everything. Maybe I’m just uncoordinated but using a straw as a way to drip water into a glass is tedious and inaccurate. Next time I’ll try a pipette.
This is a trivial one…wash the glass properly. The clone/heal tools work wonders but not using them saves time.
As I was failing to time my shots properly I began to think about some kind of sound trigger, where the camera would be left in complete darkness with the shutter open and the flash would only trigger when say a drop hit the water. That however is a story for another post, when I’ve had time to figure out how to build one of these triggers.
Adding a photoblog
The latest addition to milnikphoto.com is a photoblog! Its purpose is not to replace the gallery page but to give people a chance to comment on my photography. I want to hear what you all think, so head over here and leave a comment!
Never force an image
There’s a lot of talk about ”creating an image”, however the ingredients that make a good image have to be there. There is no replacement for good lighting, good composition, good exposure and in some cases good timing. A lot of people rely way too much on the pixel-pushing power of Photoshop. Sure you can create stunning non-destructive edits, but the chances of that image simply looking fake to an experienced eye are pretty big.
Just to make it clear I’m not against Photoshop. Without diverting into the whole ”Ethics in photography” argument, my view is that an image is a collection of pixels, that can be altered by the photographer as much or as little as he chooses. This of course does not apply to certain branches of photography.
Regardless of if your brain’s just bubbling over with ideas for photographic masterpieces or you didn’t produce a good image in weeks it is important not to take snapshots – they’ll just reduce your will to do photography to nothing. They rarely end up looking even half decent and are in no way inspiring. Just because you have a camera with you doesn’t mean that everything in your path should be photographed.
Stop for a moment and think about what compositional factors you can include in each image you take. Can you use repeating patterns? Can you accentuate perspective? Do you need to separate the subject from the background by using a longer lens or a lower aperture number?
Light is important too, and it’s not just the amount of light that affects an image, it’s the quality as well. Diffuse, soft light makes the lighting more even and is standard in portraits. It makes textures look smoother and reduces contrasts. Hard light can be used to create a specific mood or character. Hard light will emphasize angles, textures, pattern and contrasts. If you’re using flash think about the surroundings you’re in. Do you just need fill light? Maybe a strategically placed lamp would provide a warmer light source. Where can you bounce the flash off? If you’re shooting portraits, it’s a proven fact that lighting the subject from above and from the left makes for an appealing image.
Shutter speed is kind of self-explanatory. Decide if you want to freeze motion or not. Sometimes only a part of the subject will move (say, an bird’s wings) and you’d want to get the subject in sharp focus while you’ll show motion in your image by allowing a little motion blur over the wings. Use motion blur creatively. If you’re shooting with a flash think about what effects you can create using 1st and 2nd curtain sync.
Lastly, use the power of the internet. Nothing I know about photography is something that someone hasn’t already tried. Not to say that innovation is dead, but there is just a whole load of very inspirational sources out there, so use them. Read photography blogs, listen to podcasts about photography, scour flickr for ideas, and search twitter and follow your favorite photographers. Do not copy ideas; add something of your own to each idea you use and see what you come up with.
Nowadays there’s really no excuse not to.
New flashy toy…. (see the funny in it?)
Ever since I started reading the strobist blog I’ve been amazed at what cool effects you can achieve with strobes. The latest addition to my gear is a Canon Speedlite 430EX II flash, again from Japanfoto in Stockholm. They seem to be offering decent prices and a great customer experience (again…not getting paid to say this). I’m pretty new to using strobes creatively, I’ve mostly been using them as head-on fill light so far, so I have loads to learn. The plan is to get a Speedlite 580EX II when I become more familiar with strobes and to use the 580 as a master and the 430 as a slave. I think I’m gonna stop at 2 strobes, since most things really don’t require more than that. I had a look around for wireless triggers too and I think this is the way to go, sync cables are fine but wireless just seems to provide so many more possibilities. Pocketwizards are way out of my budget so I’m probably gonna go with no-name radio triggers that have both a hotshoe and pc connector. This enables me to get whatever strobe as long as it has a hotshoe connection. There’s really no end to getting photo gear is there??
I’ve only tested this strobe for one afternoon, but it’s proven to be pretty neat. The fully flexible head gives room for creativity and the foot construction makes it easy to just attach it to the hotshoe and shoot. I’ll post some results from todays photowalk later on.
Here’s what the 430EX II looks like:
Control group delay
Oh well.. had to happen, huh? I guess the approval process for images on different stock sites is completely different. I’ve submitted the same images to Shutterstock as I already have up on Istock and they were promptly rejected, well 4 were, which meant that they didn’t actually go through the rest of the images I submitted. So now there’s a month long waiting period before I can submit a new set. I’m gonna change my strategy here. The next set I submit is going to be the 10 images with the most sales/most views. End of rant.
On a different note while I wait I decided to try out another stock agency, Dreamstime. I haven’t really had the time to experience every aspect of this service but I do have to say that their approval time is pretty long. On the other hand they have no entry requirements, and allow ftp uploads. As far as selling images goes I don’t have much of a portfolio on Dreamsitime so I can’t expect much in the way of sales yet.
The control group
When I decided to sign up for Istockphoto I also signed up for an account on Shuttertock. Shutterstock is a stock photography provider much like Istockphoto and the point of signing up there was to have a control group for this little experiment of mine to see which experience is better.
Signing up to Shutterstock was simple and fast but the acceptance process seems to be a little harsher than on Istockphoto. After signing up for an account on Shutterstock, a contributor must submit 10 images for review. The images have to be properly keyworded and i assume that like on Istock there are restrictions as to what these keywords may be. If at least 7 of these images are ok’d by the Shutterstock crew the contributor can then begin submiting images for sale. Otherwise there is a waiting period of a month (a month??) before a new batch of 10 photos can be submitted for review.
What i did notice however is that Shutterstock doesn’t really compete with Istockphoto when it comes to training new contributors. Istockphoto has a very comprehensive series of illustrated articles describing what they are looking for. They state specific things and give examples of images that would and would not be approved. They have also started a new series of articles entitled ”Istock Photography Standards” that gives tips on techniques and camera setting as well as what makes a photograph suitable for stock.
Shutterstock does not have all of this – or at least i haven’t been able to find it yet. All they provide is a list of do’s and dont’s which mostly list obvious things such as ” don’t submit 10 pictures of your family pet”. It just seems like Istock is a more tightly knit community and apart from the constant stream of rejection emails a contributor feels pretty welcome.
There is a point to stock agencies making contributors jump through hoops to get accepted and sell images. They have to be able to make money off those images. In a way it’s really frustrating to not have an image accepted, but it has made me more selective, more aware of what is ”stock” and ultimately way pickier when it comes to what I shoot.
My Istock portfolio is now up to 9 images so as soon as i get one more accepted i’ll submit the same set with the same keywords to Shutterstock to see how they perform there.
First sale on Istock and thinking like a designer
My Istock portfolio currently contains 6 images, some of which I actually put a lot of effort in. My first sale though is the fruit of boredom combined with a very strong aversion to whatever I happened to be doing and about 20 minutes of free time. The coffee cup sold first after bout 30 views and about a week of sitting in my portfolio. I’m not surprised though, that’s what people use in articles. However uneventful the story of how I shot that image is it’s still a thrill to see that someone valued my work enough to purchase it.
More and more i’ve been realizing just what kind of photography Istock is looking for. It’s not gallery grade images, it’s not things that you would hang on a wall and never want to take down, it’s images used to illustrate articles, advertisements and product packaging. I’ve always photographed things that meant something to me, either for their aesthetic value or just to remember them. I’ve always edited images so that they’ll be appealing to me. Istock introduced a new way of thinking to my photography. To be successful at microstock photography you have to think primarily as a designer, then as a photographer. Browse through magazines, sunday newspapers, informational pamphlets, brochures, whatever piece of printed work you can find and analyze the images and remember the themes. Ask yourself what kind of image you’d use if you were writing a similar article. You’d probably go for a not too processed (but just enough to pop) image that can go well with your story. You wouldn’t be looking for a work of art, you’d be looking for an illustration. Now in no way do I mean to belittle the images contributors put up on Istock. I have seen stunning work there, and such a collection of knowledgeable, talented and creative people is hard to find.
It took me a while to understand the role of microstock photography, and I think I’ve finally done it. To be successful at it you have to broaden your way of thinking and understand it.
Not so selective after all…
Istock surprised me yesterday. They actually accepted an image shot at ISO 800, not treated for noise. All I did in post was slight color correction. To me this was a test to see how far they’re willing to bend when it comes to the use of high ISO setting. Granted my Canon 50 D does not output too much noise at ISO 800, to my untrained eye this was an image where i think you’d start seeing unacceptable amounts of grain if you were to make a 30X40 (cm) print. I guess they went for the composition rather than the technical aspects of the image. Just goes to show that the there is a little leeway in the acceptance process, something i didn’t think was the case.
Here’s the latest accepted image:
You can view or purchase this image at www.istockphoto.com/milnikoletic
microStockU – a podcast about contributing to Istock
A google search will most probably give you a host of sites where you can learn all about submitting to Istock. However it won’t give you an honest, detailed picture by picture account of what a contributor goes through on his way to Istock stardom. James from jamesb.com has done something new… he started a podcast about his experience with Istock. He’s already done 4 episodes of this well produced podcast and had the honor of interviewing Nicolesy (an Istock contributor and great photographer also featured on Twip). If you’re new to Istock this is the podcast for you, I found it very informative and helpful and I strongly recommend it.
Here’s the link to James’ podcast on Itunes.
Happy listening!
Rejections and my thoughts on avoiding them
The two main reasons some of my submissions to Istockphoto got rejected are purple fringing and artifacting.
To purple fringing there is a straightforward solution, a combination of a saturation/hue adjustment layer and masking in PS will get rid of that. With time the eye learns where to look for fringing and the editing process becomes easier. There’s no real in-camera solution to purple fringing short of not shooting high contrast images or getting insanely expensive lenses…and even then it’ll creep up on you from time to time.
Artifacting is a lot harder to avoid. For a long while now I thought I knew what artifacting was. Granted I don’t work with a calibrated screen, I can tell when there are jaggies in an image… or can I? Until I understand Istockphoto’s definition of artifacting I’ve decided to perpetually disagree with the scouts.
In the meantime here are a few thoughts on how to avoid those ”this image is not good enough for us” emails:
Get the image right, straight out of the camera. Think it through. Try and use whatever available light (natural or strobes) to make the image pop on its own, without PS. Post processing can do a lot but Istockphoto pays you to provide an image, not to tinker with it, that’s the buyers job.
Shoot raw, you’ll have way more leeway when editing. Raw saves all the information your sensor captures. It won’t give you sharper images but it will give you peace of mind.
Turn off auto enhancements. If for some reason you’re still shooting jpg turn off all in-camera sharpening, noise reduction and contrast and color boosts. This lets you control all of this later on when you’re processing the image.
Steady your camera. A good tripod will go a long way in making your shots sharper. Shoot with a remote (wired or wireless) and in some cases flip the mirror up before you take the shot to further reduce camera shake. When using an IS (or VR for you Nikon fans out there) lens with a tripod, shut the IS off.
Low ISO is key to getting an image past the gates. Use the lowest possible ISO for the desired combination of shutter speed and apperture to get the least noise in your image. When working with studio lighting use ISO 100 if you can’t go lower than that.
Do not overprocess. Sliders are something to be gentle with. Never introduce colors or contrasts into an image that could have not been there naturally. Overprocessing leads directly to artifacting. Check your images for artifacting and purple fringing at different zoom levels, all the way up to 200-300%.
Know your lenses. Good lenses produce good images. Unfortunately when it comes to lenses you get what you pay for. Invest in good lenses rather than an expensive camera body. All lenses have a sweet-spot, an aperture where they’re at their sharpest. Use that to your advantage when being creative with aperture.
