tech Archives - TimeLine Media Blog

October 14, 2014

Event, Personal, Photography, Technology, Travel | 0 comment

Morning Moons | Tech Tuesday

Fairfax, Virginia

I feel like I have been so lazy with the blog! Sorry if you have just been anxiously hitting refresh to see if I get inspired today J Well, I am really getting caught up with all my assignments, and getting things back on track after going on a short vacation. Last week some excitement happened in the early morning skies that I almost missed! There was a lunar eclipse that would be viewable in our part of the world right at the time that I would be getting up to start my day – a perfect chance to make some photos without too much effort! And with the backlog of things I had to do, this was what I needed.

Early-morning-lunar-eclipse-©TimeLine-Media

Lunar Eclipse

A lunar eclipse is an awesome practice for your camera. Trying to get good photos of a bright moon can teach you a lot about metering, or “how a camera views and image”. Left on automatic, a camera has a difficult time getting a good photo of the face of the moon. This is due to the construction of the light meter in every camera system. They do not see composition, nor can they read the photographer’s mind to know exactly the goals for the image.

A meter measures all the light coming into the sensor, and it calculates the aperture and shutter speed that will give a middle gray image. It does not know that you want the bright light of the moon to be lowered to see the details of the surface. Lowering the amount of light will also make the rest of the photo darker – which is the compromise when making these photos. You will lose detail around the bright moon. During an eclipse that is happening right outside my front door– that is fine by me! I do not care about any of the other surrounding details.

Early-morning-lunar-eclipse-©TimeLine-Media

Once I figured an exposure that gave me the detail that I was looking for, I played with all kinds of settings. Sometimes I changed the aperture, sometimes the ISO. The exposure values were very similar, but I wanted to see how the camera responds when pushed in such a dark scene.

It only lasted a few minutes before the moon ducked too low in the horizon. I was very lucky! No need to go to extra lengths to get these photos, but so many that I’ll keep in the collection.

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September 23, 2014

Photography, Sports, Technology | 0 comment

Content Aware Photoshop | Tech Tuesday

Outdoor Photos

It has been a busy week for putting in print orders – Thank you!! Some were talking to us about photos at the last ballroom dance event and had questions about dimensions of photos. This is an old discussion that photographers have been having for years. The cameras that most consumers use create images that have dimensions that are 2 x 3 natively. That means that to get the entire images onto a piece of paper without any borders or cropping, the size of the photos has to be 4” x 6”, 6” x 9” or 8” x 12”. Notice that the popular 5” x 7” or 8’ X 10” dimensions are not listed!

Initial-image-prior-to-editing-©TimeLine-Media

Photoshop Editing

In order to create those, some cropping is needed for these sizes. For the most part it means that something will get cut off in the frame. Please do not worry about this! As part of the editing process (that week where I am off social media and blogging after a big event) I am looking at each photo. With this in mind, I am cropping them down from their original state out of the camera to make sure the subjects are more prominent in the frame, and that they are placed better in the frame. This means that there are lots of cases where there is extra room where if you need an 8×10 print, I can redo the cropping to ensure nothing gets cut off, and all the important parts of the frame will still be in your photo before you receive it in the mail.

New Functionality

For extreme examples, I may have to do some Photoshop tricks to get things to work. At this point, this is where “Content Aware” functions do their magic. Using this example of my nephew riding a motorbike, you can see that the composition is not quite right. In fact, he is too far on the left of the frame riding out. A better composition would be for him to be more on the right with “room” to go through the frame. To move him back, I select an area around him with the Lasso tool: Select-subject-with-Lasso-tool

Then I click the “Content Aware Move” tool from the toolbar:

Then I just click the selected area, and move it down the frame – Photoshop will fill in the space that I cut him out with surrounding content.

In that way, I can move subjects around a frame, and put them in a place that is easier for cropping images. Not every case is as easy as this one, but if you have a specific request, please know that there are lots of options to get the final photo that you need in a specific frame dimension.

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
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August 19, 2014

Event, Music, Photography, Technology | 2 Comments

Concert Lighting White Balance | Tech Tuesday

Theatrical lighting for stage performances adds to the spectacle of musical performances. In the times I have covered musical groups as they performed, I have enjoyed using the additional lights around the stage as cool props that can add to the images. The lights at SingStrong were especially timed with the performance which enhanced the mood of the performances. They can be challenge to get good focus as the darkened arena against the strong point light sources is not ideal for auto focus systems in cameras. There are a lot of missed shots in the collection!

The other challenge comes in post processing the images after the concert. The lighting can be very strong in color casts. Whether that comes from gels over lights, or LEDs that can be any color, they will cast strong color. Of course, this color will be over their faces and skin tones which is always a challenge to balance afterwards. For this shoot, I had the white balance set to auto. Because I was shooting raw files, I planned to adjust the settings later in post.

Original-balance-out-of-camera-©TimeLine-Media

The lighting in the photo was a strong blue backlight that you can see on the left of the frame. From the front house lights, there was a red light on the front of the performers which is a common combination in stage lighting. To balance the color in Lightroom, I went into the Develop module, selected the White Balance tool, and then placed a point on the gray head of the microphone. I always look for gray colors for balancing as a starting point, and it worked well in this case toning down the pink skin tones.

I have much better luck going for gray tones in the frame. Sometimes there is not enough data in white or black areas to get an accurate white balance setting. The software may tell you, however, it will not change anything in your photo depending on the image. Of course, it is always important to have a calibrated monitor to ensure consistency in printing images. If the color cast is too strong, removing all color from the photo is also an option, and one I go to frequently!

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Posts Tagged ‘tech’

Fairfax, Virginia

Lunar Eclipse

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Outdoor Photos

Photoshop Editing

New Functionality

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