Format - Landscape vs. Portrait vs. ?

Ok. Back to composition this week. Once you've thought about what you want to capture (Think before you shoot) and you've picked where you're going to take your picture from (Perspective), one of the next things you can do is decide if you're going to take a Horizontal (landscape) or Vertical (portrait) format picture. (In other words, are you going to hold your camera sideways when taking the picture or not.)

Compositional use of different Formats

Changing the format really helps in your story telling with your pictures. There are many reasons to choose one over the other, and often they seem conflicting. But no matter how you look at it, exploring different formats will liven up your pictures and your photo album.

Filling the Frame: One of the reasons to change format is to help you fill the frame with your subject. If your subject is vertical, take a vertical shot. If your subject is horizontal, take a horizontal shot. Simple enough.

Cropping: You can change format in order to help you eliminate unsightly backgrounds or background noise that doesn't help tell your story.

Using the Format to emphasize your subject: Ok, lots of different reasons to use Horizontal vs. Vertical. I'll just list some below . . .


Horizontal (Landscape) Format


Horizontal Format goes really well with calm, tranquil scenes.
(Click on image to view large.)

Calming Effect: The horizontal format is suppose to be more tranquil than the vertical format. Of course, this is subject to how you use it and what your subject is, but it is something to keep in mind. Something about our minds thinking the horizontal format is more stable shape and thus less tension.

Can also emphasize horizontal movement: When taking pictures of moving cars, kids on bikes and other horizontal motion, using a horizontal format helps to keep the story moving. Its shape helps the viewer move along with the horizontal movement of what is happening in the picture and gives the viewer's eye (and imagination) a place to go.

Entering or exiting the frame: When taking pictures of people, and you don't have them looking at the camera, they'll either be looking / facing into the picture or out of the picture. When they are looking into the picture, it leads the viewer to look into the picture as well, emphasizing something within the picture. When they are looking out of the picture, it draws the attention of the viewer out of the picture, creating tension and the question, what are they looking at? Both are effective! (This works equally well with any format, but I thought I'd slip this in here. <grin>)

Vertical Format can emphasize height
and create tension.
(Click on picture to view large)

Vertical (Portrait) Format

Add Tension: The vertical format is suppose to create more tension than the horizontal format. Something about it making our mind think the picture is going to fall over or something. And when taking pictures from the ground of tall things, the perspective makes tall objects slant inwards, which does make them look like they are falling, like these trees.

Emphasize Height: The vertical format can also emphasize the height / size of your subject. This, in combination with changing your perspective, can be really effective.

Something Different: Also, if you're used to taking most of your shots horizontal, a vertical shot will stand out in your photo album. It can be a fresh new look at the same subject.






Other types of Formats

But why stop there? Why not take a picture and crop it square, round or diagonal for that matter?
 

Why not square format?
Old film cameras used to produce square pictures.
In this age of digital cameras with their rectangle images
seeing a square image can be a refreshing change.
(Click on image to view large)

Why not panorama (or extreme panorama)?
Panoramic pictures lets you tell your story in a slightly
different way. Something that can be really fun to explore.
I'll probably write a post on panoramas and link it here.
(Click on image to view larger)

Why not diagonal (or circle or diamond for that matter)?
Let your imagination go wild!
(Click on image to view larger)

How to do it! Read through the different reasons to choose Horizontal vs. Vertical below, and the next time you're out shooting, either stop before you pull the trigger and make a conscious decision on which format to use. Or try and shoot the same shot both horizontal and vertical (or some other format) and see what you like.

NOTE: Now-a-days it is so easy to share your pictures via. computer, digital picture frames or in picture shows on your television. But when you do this, you will quickly realize that vertical pictures don't display well on these digital devices. The solution: Whenever you take a vertical shot, try to sneak in a corresponding horizontal shot to use when you want to put together a digital slide show.

(C) 2011 -- Glen Fujino

Slow Sync Flash (a.k.a. Night Portrait Mode)

Here's a picture I took at Universal Studios in Florida on our vacation. It was dark, I popped the flash up on my dSLR and took the shot. My daughter, posing with the "heros" of the show came out great, but what happened to the background? That fantastic stage that they performed on is lost in the darkness. Dope! That didn't turn out!

Using Flash on Normal Mode -- The people turn out, but the background is lost in darkness.

Ok. The reason the background was so dark is that the flash on my camera isn't powerful enough to reach the stage. The stage is just too far away. The flash on most cameras can only reach out a few meters. So I get properly exposed people, but the background is completely lost!

What I should have done was used the "Slow Sync Flash" mode on my camera (A.K.A. Night Portrait Mode on many cameras such as point-and-shoot cameras). [I'll explain how it works below.]

So, when I got a chance to take a picture with the villans, I made sure my flash was on "Slow Sync Flash" mode and low and behold the background turned out.

Using Flash on "Slow Sync Mode" -- The people turn out, and you get some detail in the background. On some cameras, such as point-and-shoot cameras, this mode is called "Night Portrait Mode".

What to do
So, just remember, if the background is too dark, try "Slow Sync Flash" or "Night Portrait Mode" on your camera. It doesn't always work. Sometimes it makes the people turn out a little blurry because of motion blur. But its worth a shot in order to capture the background.

Why it works
In the first picture, the camera fired and the flash was able to light up everything within its 3 meter range. But since the stage was much farther away, the flash wasn't able to light it up. And since the camera didn't know I wanted that to turn out as well, it just closed its shutter after its standard 1/200 sec. shutter time. Now, on the second picture, with the camera on Slow Sync Flash mode, the camera did almost the same thing. The difference is that rather than closing the shutter after only 1/200 sec, it left it open slightly longer. By doing this, it lets the sensor capture a little more of the light being reflected off the background, letting it turn out with a little more detail in the final image.

More What to do
Now, I was just using slow sync flash in order to try to get the background to have a little more detail in my pictures. But, there are tons of creative ways to use this mode, as seen here. In the above picture, I tried to hold my camera still in order to not get any motion blur, but there's no reason why you shouldn't pan your camera around and intentionally introduce motion blur into your pictures. I'll probably write a follow-up posting on some fun ways to use Slow Sync Flash and link it here.

Take care and happy shooting!
Glen - DigicamJunkie.com


SIDE NOTE: Using flash is like taking two separate pictures at the same time super imposed into the same picture. There is the flash picture and there is the ambient light picture. Its a strange concept, but once I got my head around this concept, using flash and playing around with how it works got really fun! I'll write up a separate posting on this concept and post it here.



(C) 2011 - Glen Fujino

Perspective -- ie. Get up and move around!

An easy way to improve your pictures is to get up and move around as you're shooting. This changes your (and your camera's) perspective.

As you move around, watch what becomes the foreground vs. background and what ends up being captured in your picture. This is how you tell a story with your picture. Decide what is going to be in your picture and what you are going to leave out. Decide whether you want to include your background as a pretty backdrop, to help establish the environment for your subject, or if you are going to eliminate it because it is too distracting.

Fill the frame with your subject
Of course, you've read "Think before you shoot", so you've already decided what your subject is <grin>, so now move around in order to fill the frame with your subject for maximum impact. Decide what to include and what to exclude. Focusing in on what captured your attention and excluding elements that distract away from this idea will help to make your picture more impactful.

Check the background
When taking your picture, you may want to include the background as a nice backdrop or to explain where you are, or you may want to try to eliminate the background if its too distracting. If there is something distracting in the background, such as a tree or post sticking out of someone's head, a bunch of people you don't really need in the shot, move around to get rid of them. It can be as simple as moving one or two steps to one side, or holding your camera higher (or lower) in order to use the ground (or sky) as the background, rather than what you currently see. In this shot, I really didn't want to see all the parked cars around us. I just wanted to capture my two daughters all snuggled up ready for their trek through the zoo. So I shot from above and tried to fill the frame with them as much as possible.

Shoot from down low

Shooting from a low angle makes whatever you shoot seem bigger. You can use this to emphasis the size of a building or tower, or even just to isolate a building from surrounding buildings by shooting it against a nice blue sky. When shooting kids from down low it makes them seem larger than their surroundings, making it obvious that this is a picture of the child in their environment -- not a landscape that happens to have a kid in it.

Shoot from above
Of course, don't forget to shoot from above. Kids seem smaller and more cute (as if they need to be any more cute than they already are). Put to extremes it offers a fresh look (or perspective) on things.

Look for that "unique" angle
Getting that unique perspective on a subject will make for a picture that can really stand out.

Shoot from different angles!
Even after you've taken a few pictures, don't stop. Get up, move around and see if there is an even better angle to take the picture from. That's one of the great things about shooting digital is that you can take lots of shots and just delete the ones that don't turn out. And reviewing the pictures as you go will give you additional ideas of how to shoot the scene.

Take care and happy shooting!
Glen -- DigicamJunkie.com

Think before you shoot!

With cameras now-a-days its so easy to simply pick one up, and point it and shoot. After all, that's what compact cameras are called -- point-and-shoot cameras. But, if you slow down and "Think before you shoot", the great pictures you are taking will become even better!

Here's why . . .

Photography is a way to communicate an idea visually.

Whether it is how cute some kids are, or how big and vast the Grand Canyon is, these are ideas to communicate and the trick is how to capture that idea with your camera.

Most of the time, before I shoot, I try to ask myself, "What is the subject and how do I want to communicate it?" Only after I have asked myself this do I start to explore the different possible ways to capture the scene.

For instance, when my daughter decided to run around the house, I instinctively grabbed my camera, but before I started shooting, I thought to myself, what do I want to try to capture? What do I want to communicate? And I thought to myself, "speed and motion". In order to do this, I decided to use a technique called "panning" (Which I'll eventually write an entry and post it here.). So I set-up my camera by turning off my flash, using a slightly slower shutter speed than usual and moving the camera along with Emma while I pulled the trigger. The picture is more blurry than if I had used flash, but its this blur (or motion blur) that gives this static image its sense of movement and motion.

Using a technique called "Panning" made the picture more blurry than if I had used flash, but it's this motion blur that gives this static image its sense of movement and motion which is what I wanted to capture. [Click on image to view larger.]

Or, as another example, while camping I decided to walk around one morning to take some photos. I noticed the morning mist on the lake beside our campsite and wanted to try to capture it, but before I starting shooting, I looked around and started to think about how the surroundings might be worked into the composition. I found this old abandoned dock which adds an interesting element that helps to lead the viewer into the picture and I composed the shot to make a natural frame around the picture with the leaves and branches of the surrounding trees. Both of these ideas are common "composition" elements, or what I call "photography tools".

Common "composition" elements, such as the natural border made by framing the picture with the leaves and branches of the surrounding trees, and the old abandoned dock used to add interest and help pull the viewer into the scene add interest to this scene capturing the morning mist on the lake beside our campsite. [Click on image to view larger.]

Now, don't worry if you don't know many "photography tools". That's what my blog is about. Each week I'll introduce one of these "photography tools", explain why it works and how to incorporate it into your shooting.

Spend 5-10 minutes a week reading my weekly blog entry and your pictures will get better!

Now, my entries are pretty much random ramblings of whatever is on my mind that week, but I'm going to try to tie it together in a more logical order on this page called "How to take better pictures."

Shooting in low-light without flash.

Ok. Here's a picture I shot last year of Helen and Madelyn during "Earth Hour" ( http://www.earthhour.org/ ), the global event where we turn out the lights to show our commitment of changing our ways to help save our resources, our planet and our children's future world.

Of course you can use Flash to get around many low-light situations like this (and I'll eventually write an entry for that and link it here.), but since this was Earth Hour, the whole point was to turn out the lights and thus be in the "dark". So, if I wanted to capture the "mood" of the event, I'd have to do it with nothing more than the light provided by two candles.

Here's how I did it.

1) Pump up the ISO.
The first line of attack in situations like this is to turn up the ISO setting on your camera, which in essence is the setting that controls the "sensitivity" of the sensor in your camera. Instead of having the camera set to ISO 200 or 400, try turning it up to ISO 800, 1600 or even higher. By turning up the ISO in your camera, the camera can get an adequately exposed picture faster than at lower ISO settings and thus helps to reduce the chance of a blurry picture caused by your subject moving or camera shake. Now, the images will get a little noisy / grainy as you turn up the ISO, but often capturing an intimate picture in dark moody lighting with less "motion blur" is worth it. And to me, the noise / grain is not unlike the feel of high speed film and gives the picture a very "artistic" look. In the picture above, I had my Pentax K100D camera set to ISO 3200, it's maximum ISO setting. If you zoom into the picture, you will noticed that the image is pretty grainy, but in this case I prefer that then having a blurry image. Now-a-days, cameras can go up to ISO 6400, 12800 or even higher, so their ability to capture amazing images in "low-light" is drastically improved over models released even just a few years ago.

2) Open up the Aperture.
The next thing to look at is making your camera use the biggest aperture size (or close to it) that it can. Check to see if your camera allows you to control the aperture setting on your camera. By opening up the aperture, you are setting the lens to allow the most amount of light through, which allows the sensor in your camera to capture the image as fast as it can. To control the aperture on dSLR (and some point-and-shoot) cameras select the Aperture Priority mode and change the aperture to the lowest number (such as f2.8 or f3.5 -- These will be the biggest aperture sizes). If your camera doesn't have an "Aperture Priority" mode, see if it has some sort of night mode, which will probably tell the camera to use the biggest aperture it can.

3) Go wide.
Standard Zoom lenses, such as the ones that come as kit lenses with dSLR cameras, or the lenses built into most point-and-shoot cameras are actually "faster" at their widest setting rather than their longest setting. As an example the standard 18-55 mm lens that comes with many dSLR cameras will let in more light at 18 mm (and let the camera capture an adequately exposed image faster) than at 55 mm (where less light gets through the lens and thus the camera takes longer to get an adequately exposed image.) In the image up top I used my Pentax 28-80 mm lens at a focal length of 28 mm (it's widest setting) so that the maximum aperture would be f3.5 (which is fairly good for a standard lens) rather than being f5.6 which it would have been if I had been zoomed in at a focal length of 80 mm.

4) Get a fast lens
Now, you could also get a "faster" lens for your camera which will let in more light, allowing your camera to capture the image faster, but this is quite an expensive option since "fast" lenses sell for many times more than their "standard" (aka slower) counter parts. For example, this Sigma 24-70 f2.8 lens ( http://www.sigmaphoto.com/shop/24-70mm-f28-if-ex-dg-hsm-sigma ) or this Sigma 70-200 f2.8 lens ( http://www.sigmaphoto.com/shop/70-200mm-f28-ex-dg-os-hsm-sigma ). Many professionals will have these type of lenses since it offers better quality and more flexibility in how they capture an image. If you have the budget, definitely take a look at these lenses. It will allow you to maximize your available light photography as well as open up creative possibilities galore. Now, if you don't want to spend this much on fast lenses, be happy that the newer cameras coming out have really fast ISO levels now, so you're able to take great pictures in low light with the cheaper "standard" lenses!

5) Maximize available light
If you have some control over the environment and your subject, look for available light sources that you can use. This may be a window that has a nice stream of light coming through, a lamp that your subject can be moved closer to (or the lamp moved closer to your subject). In the picture above, I simply asked Helen and Madelyn to move closer (but not too close) to the candles so that the only available light (the two candles) provided the most light possible on their faces. Now, you may not have control over the situation so that is when you use all the above tricks as much as possible.

6) Under expose slightly (and fix it up in post production)
Now, I don't use this trick much. But if I don't mention it, someone will probably point out that I didn't mention it. Basically this trick entails slightly underexposing the picture (which you can easily do by setting the exposure compensation on your camera to -0.7 (or so), if your camera has exposure compensation.) What happens is the camera slightly "under exposes" your picture which will help to reduce blur. But since it's under exposed, it will appear too dark. That is when you have to load it up into a photo editing software (such as Google's Picasa -- see my post here.) and brighten it up again. I've personally found that I haven't really been happy with how the images turn out after this trick, so I only use this as a really last resort. And with cameras coming out with ever increasing ISO sensitivity, I believe there will be even less need to resort to this trick as time goes on.

7) Do none of the above
On the other extreme, if blur is not a concern (because your subject or scene is relatively motionless, or blur is ok) you can use a lower ISO setting and a smaller aperture. The benefits to this is that A) You get better image quality at a lower ISO setting because the signal to noise ratio of your sensor is better and B) You will get a sharper picture with a smaller aperture because the depth of field is greater, thus more of the scene is in focus. But in order to be able to use a lower ISO setting and smaller aperture, you will need to give the camera a long time to get the exposure which can lead to a blurry picture. To reduce camera shake, use a tripod.

As an example, here's a picture I took one evening. Since everything in the scene was relatively still, I set-up my camera on a tripod, lowered the sensitivity of my camera down to ISO 200 and used a really small aperture size of F11. With these settings, the camera needed 15 (long) seconds to capture the image. If there was anyone in this scene, they would have been reduced to a blurry blob.

This last point shows that there can be different ways to approach taking pictures in low-light. So, if I'm putting my camera on one of those smart auto modes like "night mode", which approach is it taking? For the most part, it will probably take the high ISO approach. My philosophy is that if you learn a bit about how the camera's settings affect the end picture and picture quality, you can take more control over your camera and have more creative power over it.

Now, there are many situations where you will want to take pictures in low-light situations without flash. This may range from sporting events where flash is not allowed (such as the gymnastic meets my daughter attends) to school plays where sometimes the constant blast of a flash in a dark room might interfere with the enjoyment of the play to times where you just want to capture the intimate feeling of the environment and not completely replace it with the over powering effect of flash. Regardless of why you want to take low-light pictures without flash, now you have a frame work to explore these available light opportunities.

Take care,
Glen -- DigicamJunkie.com

Recover accidentally deleted pictures!

What not to do!
Ok. Last night I decided to empty out my daughter's camera. I went into the menu and then selected "delete all" and pressed "OK". In about a second, the camera was empty. Then I got a sinking feeling. Had I copied the files off the SD memory card before erasing it? I quickly ran to my computer and realized that I hadn't! Oh, noooooo! I had just deleted the only copies of the pictures she had taken on the last day of school before Christmas Break!

A Solution
Well, I had heard about software that can recover accidentally deleted files (such as pictures) from memory cards, so I did a browse of the Internet and found many ( such as CardRecovery http://www.cardrecovery.com/ ) or Recuva ( http://www.piriform.com/recuva ) that would find the pictures for you, let you see previews of the pictures, but then required you to buy the program (anywhere between $40-70) to actually recover the files for you. That's a small price to pay for irreplaceable memories.

Helpful Tip!
The trick to recovering the files is not to use the memory card after deleting the pictures. As soon as I realized what I had done, I turned off the camera and took the memory card out of the camera. If I had left the memory card in the camera and started taking pictures, the new pictures would probably over-write the old pictures, making their recovery impossible.

Take care,
Glen -- DigicamJunkie.com