Mistakes To Avoid

• Over-editing

Post-processing can be a great way to touch up and fix your images to be the best possible, but only if used properly. The example above is a little extreme, and there are many other ways to process and edit the image too much. Things like contrast, color saturation, and strange effects are all things that can be done to an extreme, ruining your image.

• Placing the subject too close to the edge

While this is not always a problem, many times in photos putting the subject too close to the edge of the frame can cause a lazy and awkward composition. Placing the subject in the middle is also not always the best idea, however, if you know what you're doing you can create amazing photographs with the subject in the center. 

Following the rule of thirds is a great way to keep the subject far enough away from the edge and not too much in the center.

• Getting the focus wrong

This can happen when you're using auto-focus or manual focus. With auto-focus, the camera may find a certain element in the frame to be the anchor for the focus while you see that the focus should be somewhere else. There are ways to stop this, such as moving the camera a bit to position the subject where the camera will focus. It takes a bit of practice and getting to know your camera, but after you get the hang of it, it's easy and you'll barely notice you're doing it.

Using manual focus, it's very easy to have the subject blurry and out of focus, especially when using a view finder. A simple way to help you get the focus right using manual is to use the LCD screen and zoom in on the screen, but not with the actual camera lens. this doesn't effect the composition of your image (unless you move the camera), but it does allow for you to get closer and see how focused you actually are on the subject.

• Too many distracting elements

The image above is very busy with tons of things screaming for attention. The subject blends into the background and the viewer's eyes are not drawn there. Rather the attention is spread throughout the whole image with so many elements distracting from the actual subject. This can sometimes be fixed with a shallower depth of field, but the best option is often to find a way to eliminate the distracting elements from the frame completely.

Old Film Lenses on a New Nikon?! Lens Adapter: Yes or No?

When I first got my Nikon, the only lens I had was a standard 18-55mm kit lens. I soon found that my dad had an old film camera and two lenses: a Sigma 70-300mm and a Phoenix 22-105mm. The lenses were both Minolta AF-mounts. They went with a Minolta camera, but after Sony bought Minolta, Sony A-Mount cameras fit the Minolta lenses. I was curious to see if the lenses could work with my Nikon, so I started looking for an adapter that would fit.

At first I found nothing, but with a little more searching, I came across this product: 

http://www.amazon.com/Fotodiox-Adapter-Aperture-Sony-Minolta/dp/B008BBI4FI/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

I decided to give it a try and when it arrived I was exited to try it out. The first lens I tried was the 70-300mm. It fit perfectly and worked just as I had expected. I started taking pictures at 300mm, exited to finally have a lens that zoomed further than 55mm; but I immediately noticed a problem. The photos were blurry and of bad quality.

I thought it may be a problem with how I was focusing it, but the focus looked fine in the viewfinder and LCD screen. Eventually, (thanks to the help of a good friend) I discovered that it wasn't the focus, it was the shutter speed. I learned a very useful thing that I should have already known: the longer your focal length, the faster your shutter needs to be. I began shooting with the shutter speed at 1/400 or 1/640 of a second when I was anywhere between 200-300mm. This helped solve most of the issue. You can also shoot on a tripod to help with the camera shake, but even with a good tripod, because the lens is so long it can still shake, you will still need a fast shutter unless you have something else supporting the lens.

The next problem I noticed was grain and noise in the images. Even with a low ISO, any post-processing used on the images would bring out noise in the image.

There isn't much that can be done about this. The lenses are older than the camera, and so they interact with each other differently than if the lens was around the same age as the camera. This can cause image quality to suffer at times. It can be fixed by using a low ISO and then using noise reduction in post to erase some of the noise caused.

The adapter I got comes with an aperture ring so you can adjust the aperture since all the controls will be manual with the adapter. This aperture ring is very useful as the lenses themselves don't have one. I've had the lens adapter for a while now and there have been no other issues that came up with it. It functions perfectly.

Even with the few problems that arise, you can still get some great results with older lenses. You just have to learn how to use them. So, if you have any old lenses laying around gathering dust, you might think about getting an adapter so you can use them again. It can be a lot of fun to try out some old lenses on a newer camera and if you don't need to print your photos in big prints, it can be a great alternative to buying expensive lenses.

An Evening Fishing Trip

I'm not one that gets particularly exited about fishing, however the spots that are around for fishing can be some great places for photography, especially at sunset. So when my brother mentioned that he was going fishing, I decided to tag along with my camera. I'd been trying to get down to a good spot to take some sunset pictures for a while and my brother's fishing spot served well for this purpose.
We decided to walk since it was warm outside and not far from the house. Fifteen minutes after leaving, we arrived at a nature park that had tons of people gathered at picnic tables and the lake with fishing gear. We took quite a long walk around until we found a place to settle at: a long deck that sat on the lake with some benches along the edge.
My brother set out to fishing and I pulled out my tripod and got to setting up my camera.

The sun was beginning to set by this point, so I adjusted my camera settings and went to shooting. The park was relatively quiet besides the chirping of birds and occasional shout from someone near the bait shop.
We were sharing the dock with a couple who were also fishing, although we mostly ignored each other. The sky was taking its time to bring out the colors I knew were coming, and I was beginning to wonder if I'd be able to capture the best part as we had to be home by eight. Fifteen minutes to eight and the sunset was just starting to turn the brightest hues of orange and pink. We left the dock just as the sky was lighting up with a beautiful sunset. I couldn't pass up the chance, even if we would be late, so I pulled out my camera again and snapped a few more photographs.

Back in our neighborhood, I decided to start recording a random video. I'm not sure why, it was just something to do while we walked. So a guy came driving down the road in his car and I caught the car on my camera. My brother was joking about how the guy was going to yell at us now, but when he turned around and started heading back toward us we realized he might actually do just that. He was driving straight toward us so we quickly crossed the street, unsure if he intended to stop. Luckily, he wasn't trying to kill us; he parked the car and got out.
"Hey, what are you guys doing?" He asked.
We told him we were only filming a video and he was chill from there. "Okay cool!" He replied. "Well, dig it!"
Relieved, we walked away, trying to contain the urge to laugh.
By now we were out of time, so we rushed home and made it back ten minutes past eight. We had failed our goal, but at least I'd come back with some nice sunset photos.

Shooting The Moon and Focusing Manually

The moon can be a difficult subject for a photograph. It's bright, so the shutter speed needs to be fast and the ISO low. It's near impossible to catch a good picture of the moon shooting in auto mode because the camera tries to expose for the darkness of the sky, which causes the moon to be over exposed.

With the darkness of the sky, it can sometimes be hard to focus your camera correctly as well. Many times the camera will do a pretty good job of focusing, since the moon is bright, however, sometimes it may be necessary to use manual focus.

Using manual focus can cause some difficulties in the sharpness of your image if your focus isn't just right. As shown in the above picture, the details of the moon are blurred and out of focus.

The focus can be even harder to get right if there are things like branches in front of the moon.

To help get the focus sharp, put your camera on a tripod and set the camera to live-view mode. You should have an option to zoom in on the LCD screen without effecting the composition of your image; do this and zoom as close to the moon as possible.

Set your focus while you're zoomed and then don't touch it again. (unless you move your camera)

Now you can zoom back out and make a few tweaks to the composition as needed before you take your shot.

This method can be used on anything else that requires manual focus as well.

RAW vs JPG

Many point and shoot cameras only shoot .JPG files, however, if you have a DSLR you likely have the option to shoot RAW. What is RAW? It's a type of image file that saves much more information from the photograph than other file types. This is because the information of a RAW file has not been compressed or processed in any way. JPG files compress the information of the photograph into a smaller storage space; this causes many editing opportunities to be lost. For example, if you shoot a photo and that picture comes out underexposed, How do you fix this? With a JPG file it's very hard to fix it and still be left with good quality. But with a RAW file all the information is still there, untouched. You can literally edit more light into the image to fix the problem and still have that good quality photograph.

The picture to the left is quite underexposed. I shot it using RAW and JPG and we're going to see which one can bring back some of that lost detail better.

My camera has a setting that allows me to shoot an image and capture both the RAW and JPG formats, so I used that option for this photo. There was a single light source that was placed slightly behind me; this is was part of why the image is under-exposed. The lighting was more back-lit than evenly lit in the front.

So let's see if we can bring back some of that detail that was lost in the shadows.

Check out the two versions. They are the exact same photo besides the format. I edited both images mostly the same to bring back the detail in the shadows.

    RAW                                                         JPG                    

As you can see, the JPG quality degrades much faster than the RAW with the post-processing. When the shadows are brought back in the JPG, a ring of light appears around the subject; the shirt also has more noise that appeared only after the shadows were brought up.

Shooting RAW can save your images many, many times. RAW files do take up a bit more space on your SD card, but it can do wonders for your photographs.

Floating Photo Manipulation: Behind the Scenes

Photo manipulations can be really a lot of fun to create. You can do almost anything in Photoshop, which is why it's such a great creative tool. The image above was created by combining two images. Because I have no professional studio equipment,  I did the first image, of myself, in my room. I had three light sources: two lamps and a window.

This whole thing was set up with things I already had around me; you don't need fancy equipment to get good quality images.

 I tipped the smaller lamp in the corner on its side to direct the light where I wanted, using the lamp shade to help with this. The background was a blanket I found in a closet and I used hair clips to hold it to the curtain rod. I needed it to block the light from the window so the image wouldn't be back-lit, as well as for an aid for the editing that I will be doing later in Photoshop. It may look cheap, but it does the job.

To take the picture, I used a small chair and the wooden stool to create the pose I needed for the image. Later, I used Photoshop to cut out the background completely. Because the only lights I had were rather warm, I had to do a bit of color correction for it to fit into the new background.

After adding the image to one Photoshop document, I began adding extra details like the reflection and tiny floating lights. Finally, I pulled everything together with some more color correction, and I was finished. It took somewhere around three to four hours to complete. 

Four Types of Photographers

Note: Most of these are exaggerated for the purpose of emphases. 

1. The Tourist

This is the person that walks around with an iPhone snapping pictures of everything they see. They will probably be seen taking several selfies as well and may ask someone passing by to take a photo for them. They may not have the most artful and amazing photographs, but the memories they capture are beautiful to them.

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2. The Wanna-Be

The wanna-be photographer is anyone who has a camera and calls their pictures photography, yet knows nothing about photography. They may even have an expensive camera, but they don't know what ISO, aperture, or even shutter speed are. They make no effort to learn about photography and simply want to take pictures and feel good about themselves with the assurance that they're a 'photographer'. With a little work, effort, and thirst for knowledge, they could become good photographers.

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3. The Newcomer 

Almost all photographers start out as this person. They're just starting to scratch the surface of photography and are trying out many different styles. You can usually spot a newcomer if they're lugging around 30 pounds of camera gear for a simple photo shoot. Because they aren't quite sure what they're doing, many times they will bring extra gear that they will never actually use for that shoot. They may also try shooting pictures using only one hand on the camera or using the built-in flash. The newcomers will soon learn from their mistakes and blossom into better photographers.

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 4. The Professional

 As the name suggests, this is the professional photographer. The one that has a few $1,000,000 cameras and lots of expensive lenses. They have their own studio, a Facebook page for their business, and spend all day doing photography and keeping up their business. 

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(Some images from this post are the property of wix.com and I claim no rights to them)

Goodbye Winter

Up 'till a week ago the weather has been ridiculously cold and rainy. Now the weather has recently become much warmer. So much so that there have been several nights that my bedroom was too warm for comfort since the air conditioning hasn't been turned on yet.

With the warm weather have come flowers and lots of activity from insects like ants, bees, and beetles.

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 Naturally, this is a wonderful time of year for photography. With all the new plants and insects around, I find that this is the time I enjoy doing close-up shots most. 

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Senior Portrait Session

My first session taking professional senior portraits was at a forest preserve park. I was shooting my brother for his high school graduation pictures. Most of the time I shot at 55mm with an aperture of F5.6. Because it was so bright outside, I shot with a low ISO and a high shutter speed. This allowed for low noise in the images and totally frozen motion in the photographs.

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 For senior portraits, the student you're photographing is going to want a photo that reflects their personality in some way. In this case my brother loves coming to this park to fish by the lake and river. He also has a particular love for a spot a little ways off a path through the woods. To reflect this, we took the photos by some of his favorite fishing spots and the places that he loved most in the park.

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Because his childhood was filled with time spent in the forests of New York climbing trees, my brother really wanted to have a photo that included lots of trees. The forest preserve was the perfect place.

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From Afternoon to Sunset/Sunrise: How To

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 Taking landscape pictures in the afternoon can many times result in boring skies. Usually the sky is a simple blue with some white clouds here and there, nothing too interesting. Sunset and sunrise are the two times during the day when the sky becomes painted with all sorts of beautiful colors. These times are often the best times for shooting landscapes, although it's not always possible to shoot during those times. Maybe bad weather is coming, you have prior commitments, or anything else is taking up this small slot of time where the sky is the most interesting. So do you have a photo that has a boring sky, causing the rest of the image to be boring and flat as well? Don't fear! Photoshop is here! You can also use this method to enhance skies that are already taken at sunset/sunrise.

What You'll Need:

• Photoshop
• An image that you would like to enhance
• A basic knowledge of Photoshop

That's it! Let's get started!

1. Open your image in Photoshop and create a new layer above the background (the image you're going to be editing)
2. Select the brush tool and a warm color such as yellow or red. ​​
3. Paint on the sky; keep the color mostly on the clouds, but don't forget to warm up the blue sky too. Change the colors you paint with frequently to get a colorful sky with more interest. This is where you get creative! 
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4. Set the layer mode to 'overlay'.
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5. On the top menu, select filters>blur>Gaussian blur. Set the blur to an amount that you like.
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6. Erase any areas that are too saturated or look unnatural. For this part it's best to use a soft eraser with a low opacity.
    
   
   
7. Add any other colors you want to the sky by adding a new layer, setting the mode to overlay or soft light and drawing in the color just like before. Then simple use Gaussian blur to blur the layer to your liking. You can also play with the opacity on the layers to fit your image.
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8. At this point, the sky is starting to look better, but the image is totally off balance. The only thing with that warm tone is the sky. For this image, the biggest concern with this issue is the water. To fix that we're going to add some filters and more color layers. Create an adjustment layer for 'photo filter'. 
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9. Choose one of the warm filter options and adjust it to fit your liking. To decide if you like it, don't look at the sky that you've already edited. The parts of the filter touching the sky will be erased later. Look at the lower parts of the image that you are looking to warm.
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10. Erase the top parts of the sky on the filter layer. You can either use the eraser tool or use the brush tool with the color black. Don't erase too far down on the horizon line or you may end up with a blueish line where your previous sky editing didn't quite reach. If you are able to erase further down without this blue line across the horizon, feel free to do so.
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11. Now that the color tones are closer to the correct colors, we're nearing the end. If your image doesn't have water or a reflective surface, this next step may not be necessary. Create a new layer and set the mode to soft light. Pick a color that fits the tone of your sky and draw over any parts of the reflective surface that should have a brighter color to them.
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12. The next step for the reflective surface is the give the whole body of water (in this case) a glow with similar colors to the sky. Create a new layer with the blending mode 'overlay'. Paint over the entire reflective surface with a color that is similar to the colors in the sky.
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13. Set the opacity of that same layer to somewhere around 20-30. If you need to add more colors to the reflective surface for it to look more realistic and interesting, go ahead and add those colors and then use Gaussian blur to mix them together. You can also add more layers for this if you want. Erase any parts that may have spread to other parts of the image.
14. Now it's time to pull everything together. Create an adjustment layer> photo filter. Select a violet filter and set the density to around 17. 
15. Now add another adjustment layer, but this time one for brightness/contrast. Set the contrast to +45 and the brightness to +9.
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16. Congrats! You're done! You can make any other tweaks you think may be needed for your particular image and then all you have to do is save it.

The Golden Hour

 The golden hour, a 'sacred' time for photographing, casts beautiful golden light on everything it touches. The golden hour is shortly before the sun sets and shortly after it rises. 

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For this shoot, I went out with my little sister when the sun was low in the sky, but not quite setting. For me, this was about at 7:00pm. It was cold outside so I decided to find a blanket to use both for my sister's comfort and as an interesting touch to the photo. I found a blanket that suited my needs and we headed to the front of our house where there was a tall bush. Because the sun was directly shining on my sister's face, she was constantly squinting into the camera. To fix this, I focused the camera and then instructed her to close her eyes and open them only when I told her to. This gave her the ability to have her eyes open in a normal fashion just long enough to snap the picture. Another effective method was using her hand to block the sun; however, this would only work for one pose.

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When photographing during the golden hour, it's important to think about what kind of light you want to use in your images.

If you're looking for a silhouette effect, shooting toward the sun is how you would want to approach it.

If you are going for a more front-lit photo with the subject showing more detail, you would want to shoot away from the sun.

Also, watch for shadows. It can be fun to play around with the shadows you can create, but be sure that you're aware of them. Don't forget that where you set the camera will effect what shadows are cast on your subject.

Nikon D5200 Review

 I'm not going to talk much about the video settings and options for this camera because the main purpose of this is for photography. With that said, let's get this thing started:

The Nikon D5200 is a great camera for beginner to intermediate photographers. It has the basic features that anyone would need to get started in photography. 

This camera has nine automatic shooting modes as well as four manual shooting modes.

Automatic modes include:

-Auto (The camera controls all the options and works as a regual point and shoot)

-Auto with no flash (Acts exactly like the normal auto mode, however it does not fire the flash. Useful for places like museums and zoos that don't want people using flashes.)

-Scene (You choose a scene from the menu and the camera uses default settings for that scene)

-Portrait

-Landscape

-Children

-Action

-Macro

-Effects (You choose an effect from the menu and the camera shoots with that effect. Some effects include night vision, selective color, and miniature effect.)

The four manual modes are M, A, S, and P: Manual, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and Programmed Auto. Manual allows you to control all the options on the camera, Aperture Priority gives you control over aperture and adjusts the rest automatically, and Shutter Priority does the same for the shutter speed.

Programmed Auto allows you to control the ISO while automatically adjusting everything else to fit your chooses ISO.

Personally, I shoot in manual almost all the time; I enjoy having control over all the settings so that I don't end up with a crazy high ISO or a super long shutter speed when I'm looking for a different effect. Although the other settings do come in handy if you're in a rush and don't have time to set up all the settings to fit the scene you're in.

There is also a function button on the side of the body; it is set to control ISO as the default, however, you can change this in the menu if you prefer it to control something else.

Now that we have the settings out of the way, I'll start with talking about what I like about this camera.

1) The articulating screen. The articulating LCD screen is extremely useful when you need to take a shot at an awkward angle. I've used it many times when I needed to have the camera low to the ground, but wanted to avoid laying down in the mud to use the viewfinder. The screen displays bright and clear images and it shows the settings you're at on the bottom where they are easy to read and yet out of the way. While in live view, you have the option to zoom in on the screen. This does not effect your final image, but it is extremely helpful if you are using manual focus and need to be sure your subject is sharp.

2) The menu. The D5200 has a very user-friendly menu. Although it has many options, they are organized in a way that is easy to understand and find what you're looking for. I have used cameras where the menus were extremely difficult to navigate and I spent a lot of time trying to find settings... time that could have been used shooting pictures. This camera's menu set-up has ensured that I don't spend half an hour looking for one setting, causing me to miss that perfect photographic moment.

3) The in camera editing tools. These editing tools aren't full out, complicated tools. There is no built in Photoshop. But this camera has plenty of in camera editing options that can be used to improve your image without ever bringing it to the computer. While these options are not always enough for every image, many times they are. The in camera RAW editing is especially helpful.

4) The simplified menu on the bottom of the LCD screen. This menu doesn't have all the settings, but it does have many of the ones I find myself using most often. It's very helpful to be able to click one button and have what I need right there.

Now for the stuff I don't like so much...

1) The flash. Okay guys, come on. If you're a photographer, you probably know that the majority of on camera flashes suck. So I guess this might be something that I don't need to put here, but here it is anyway. The on camera flash casts rather disgusting shadows onto most of the images. Because it's so close to the camera body, the light is blocked by the lens, causing part of the image to be bright while the rest of the image has a dark shadow. Not the nicest effect...

2) Live view shutter speed options. The D5200 doesn't let you set the shutter speed any slower than 1/60 of a second when you're in live view. I've found this to be a slight problem on several occasions, but it isn't too big of a deal since you can just switch off live view. Although, live view lets you see how you're image will look after you take it, unlike using the view finder. When I take long exposures, I find it sometimes difficult to get the exposure perfect the first two or three times; having the option to use the live view for longer exposures would be extremely helpful in this matter. 

3) No command option for the flash. The flash menu has not command option for using an off camera flash. This has been rather annoying on several occasions. You can connect the external flash to the hot-shoe and it will work fine; however, as soon as you try to find a way to connect the flash off camera, things become increasingly more complicated. To this day, I have not found a way to use an off camera (slave) flash with the D5200.

A Bitter Cold Sunset

I'd spent all day indoors when the evening drew near and I decided I wanted to go outside and actually do something.

I had recently gotten an adapter that allowed me to use two of my dad's old film lenses on my Nikon, and I hadn't yet had a chance to go try them out anywhere than around my house. So, naturally I decided to go try out the lenses for some sunset pictures. 

At this point, I hadn't seen the temperature outside and the sun was casting such a warm glow on everything that I thought it had to be warm out. So I asked my mom if she wanted to go down the park with me. I could have walked, but with my heavy camera bag and a tripod, walking down a highway for twenty minutes seemed like a bad idea.

I took one step outside and immediate came back to change into warmer clothes.

After collecting my camera and lenses, putting on an embarrassingly huge jacket, and grabbing a tripod, me and my mom headed for the park.

When we got there, the sun was just starting to set behind the trees and I set up by the lake to get some pictures. I was already freezing and it had only been five minutes so I decided this would probably be a short shoot. 

After taking a few landscape shots, some Canadian geese decided to take a swim and I immediately saw my chance to try out my dad's telephoto lens. I grabbed the lens and started shooting pictures of the geese. If you've ever photographed birds, you'll know that they can move very fast, making it difficult to photograph them. Now add the crippling fact that I only had the ability to use manual focus because of the older lens. 

I shot hundreds of photos of those birds and still there were very few that I was even slightly happy with. In the end, out of hundreds of images, there was only one that I felt was actual worth keeping. Which is actually how photography works much of the time. You spend hours shooting hundreds or thousands of pictures and choose only one or two in the end.

After about an hour and a half, my mom was freezing, I was freezing, and the sun had set completely.

We finally decided to leave, and as I was packing up my stuff and heading for the car, a man approached us. He was apparently the owner of the bait shop that was literally right next to where I was shooting.

"Hey! I saw you were shooting some pictures of the sunset here," he started.

Being the anti-social person I am, I just nodded.

"Yeah, lots of people come here to do photography at sunset. They usually set up on that little dock over there," he said while pointing at a dock a few yards away.

I nodded again. I'd shot on that dock several times myself.

He pulled out his phone and swiped onto a Facebook page before holding it up. "This was yesterdays sunset," he explained. "A photographer shot it right on that dock."

My eyes nearly fell out when I saw the image. Yesterday had been a stormy, cloudy, cold, rainy day and I hadn't seen anything near as colorful a sunset through my window. "Wow, that's amazing," I said.

My mom was looking too at this point. "Oh wow! That's so beautiful."

"Yeah." He put his phone in his pocket. "Anyway, I just thought I'd show it to you. But yeah, that dock is a great place to shoot."

"Okay thanks!"

We headed home after that, thus ending the trip and beginning about an hour's time of sorting through and editing images.