BetterPhoto Instructor Insights

Shooting Concepts for Stock Agencies

In the ‘Making Money with your Photography’ course that I teach at Betterphoto, I encourage students to think outside the box and to shoot pictures that represent concepts. Stock photo agencies, especially, look for photographers who can do this. The competition to get into a stock agency is significant now, and even when you get accepted, the in-house competition between your images and those of other shooters is also an important factor to consider.

The question is, of course, how do you come up with ideas that will be competitive and that will sell, and sell often. The best way I know is to do research: study the advertisements in many, many magazines, analyze television commercials, and follow photographic trends in the industry that are relevant to your kind of photography – fashion, food, automotive, sports, and so on. Keep a file of tear sheets that provide you with great ideas and then use those visuals for your own inspiration to produce saleable photos.

The photo below evolved in the way I am suggesting. I saw a cute idea in a food magazine where food was arranged in a unique design, and I thought how interesting it would be to use fruits and vegetables to make people. With my wife’s help, we made this face and then I sent it off via email to my photo editor at my stock agency. She accepted it into their files on the spot.

Capturing Moments means Paying Attention

I’ve finally been getting to my backlog of digital files to process and have found a few of them fun to work with in Photoshop!

After reading Jim Zuckerman’s posts about Italy, I’m salivating over the the thought of cappuccino's and morning light spilling across the wonderful stone walls of authentic villages, of sunrise through the lamps of Piazza San Marco in Venice. There’s one space left on my tour for May, if anyone’s interested!

I don’t consider myself a photojournalist by career, yet I had training to be one many years ago, and that training has been so useful in other areas of photography. Studying, through workshops and classes, to become an expert at observation meant I had to be present while walking around town, in a village, on a boat, bus or subway train. It meant I couldn’t “zone” out and ignore the world around me. If I had any hope of capturing life’s funny or poignant moments, I learned I had better pay attention. That means not walking around with a Walkman, Ipod or cell phone attached to my ears all the time, too.

Today, as a travel photographer, that skill of learning to be observant has helped me photograph many interesting moments - moments that tell a story, that make you wonder, laugh, cry or smile.

That same training has helped me observe animal behavior and to be ready to capture moments with them, too. They don't have to be high-action moments, either. Sometimes just coming upon a simple scene of a cat perfectly positioned between the railings is enough to make a nice picture.

So if I learned only one thing from that early training, (and I really learned more) it was to pay attention - to everything around me; to watch the light, the action amongst people, the gestures of individuals, of animals. All of these things will provide a plethora of pictures if you're watching for them.

Travel Photography and Photoshop

In many places in the world, photographers are faced with famous monuments and ancient ruins that have been visually trashed with all kinds of junk: scaffolding used for renovation, garbage cans, netting used to keep pigeons and bats out, steel supports, wires and cables of every description, and litter. We are very lucky to have Photoshop to handle many of these problems, but even that isn’t a guaranteed solution.

In my recent trip to Italy, I was constantly frustrated by all this stuff, but at least I knew I could do something about it. I’ve uploaded two pairs of pictures to show you the challenges I faced in the actual scene, and then I show what I did with it. Photoshop isn’t magic; it has to replace the clutter and the junk with something taken from another place in the picture or, possibly, something from another picture.

I first visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa in 1968 before I knew anything about photography. I was looking forward to going back, but the dramatic structure known for leaning at a precarious angle was uncluttered when I first saw it. Now there are structural supports, railings, netting, and steel bands around columns to hold it together and to prevent it from eventually falling over. It’s nice to know that scientists have done this, but artistically it was almost not worth shooting. I studied the structure, seeing in my mind how I might repair the visual damage when I got home, and then I took pictures of it from every angle I could think of.

Photoshop Elements: 1 Fine Program, 2 Terrific Courses, 3 Fine Articles

© Robin Nichols

Hi Everyone,
In photography, everything seems to involve a good news/bad news situation. For instance, digital cameras come with free software to get you started - definitely a good thing. But that software is usually good only for getting you started - not so good if you want to fully optimize your images.

Thus, a third-party program is required to help produce the best quality photographs possible. One solution is Photoshop CS2 ... it's big, expensive and does just about anything you would ever want an editing program to do. But for many photographers, Photoshop's "little sibling" - Elements - is the best choice.

Says BetterPhoto instructor Robin Nichols: "Adobe Photoshop Elements is good because the tools it contains are incredibly sophisticated - yet, for the most part, it's (relatively) easy to use. Elements is now in its fourth edition, is quite inexpensive (at around US$99), but has the capability for creating or achieving almost anything you want with your digital picture files!"

© Richard Lynch

Online Courses at BetterPhoto.com:

Photoshop Elements Workflow - A new instructor - digital imaging specialist and author Richard Lynch - heads up this brand-new course for spring. In this class, Richard will cover the process of editing your images to achieve the results you have always wanted, using simple proven techniques for color correction and adjustment.

Adobe Photoshop Elements - If you're a beginning photographer, this class is for you. Taught by professional photographer and author Robin Nichols, it covers all of the essential fundamentals of this powerful program.

Articles by Robin Nichols:

Photoshop Elements Tip: Creating a Stroke Keyline/Border - Add a keyline to an image to hold the tones in the frame.

Photoshop Elements Retouching Cheat Sheet - Hot tips for making a complex retouch job appear easier!.

Photoshop Elements Cheat Sheet - Basic Navigation

That's it for now. Enjoy your photography!
Kerry Drager

The Office or The Outdoors? That is the Dilemma!

We've been having so much rain in northern California lately! I wish I could send it to places in the country that need it desperately, like Oklahoma and Nebraska and Texas, to name a few. With all this rain, it's kept me focused on getting office chores done - like editing my digital files, prepping them for stock submissions, scanning older slides and archiving things. In short, getting my act together!

As I sit watching the downpour hit my office window, though, I have cabin fever. There's so much to do here, but there's so much beauty outside. Yikes! So, when the breaks in the storms come, I take a break from the office and head for the outdoors to capture what all this water has created: lush green forests of oaks, bay laurels and madrone trees, dripping with lichens, covered in mosses. Water cascading down mossy rocks Overcast skies are great for that type of photography, and with everything wet, there is a rich saturation to the colors.

It's the season of mustard between the grapevine rows in wine country, too, and when the sun shines on a freshly washed landscape, there is a clean crispness to the light that I love. We get incredible cumulus clouds and wispy "mare's tails" in the skies, above the saturated yellow mustard rows, and it screams to be photographed! I used a polarizer to make the clouds pop a little more in the sky, and in the process, it actually helped to saturate the yellow - not that yellow needs it very often - but there was just enough wetness on the mustard plants that it cut some of the glare from that. All in all, it improved a picture that celebrates the great skies of spring in the wine country.

My challenge is not unlike what many of you face, working full-time jobs and having little time to get out there and photograph. But if you carry your camera system with you, and plan a little extra time getting to and from the office, you can make the time to create pictures - and be ready for the days when the weather makes photography that much more exciting.

In the long run, I'll hopefully get both the work done in the office and some great photographs, too, during this wild month of March!

Have a great day, everyone.

Photoshop: A Photographer's Best Friend

By Jim Zuckerman

In going over my images from Italy, I am overwhelmed by how many wonderful shots I was able to get. The experience of being in Venice during Carnival was very special.

In the past, when a subject or its environment wasn’t perfect, there was not much that could be done other than shooting something else. Now, thanks to Photoshop, we can do almost anything. For the next few weeks on this blog site, I want to show you how I’ve made a number of photos better or, to be more correct, perfect. In the two Photoshop courses I teach at Betterphoto, I delve into many creative techniques that expand your creativity and allow you to make good photos outstanding. In the examples I’ll demonstrate here, you’ll see how I think as I approach different kinds of photographic problems.

The photo here was taken a couple of weeks ago on Burano Island, a small island near Venice. It is known for it’s very colorful houses and it attracts photographers from all over the world. The photo workshop I conducted was organized by the Venice School of Photography, and the owner of the company arranged for us to shoot a model in this wonderful environment. But like so many places in Europe, power lines, clotheslines, antennas, satellite dishes, and drain pipes make an otherwise quaint and lovely village look terrible. Before Photoshop, these things were a nightmare; now it’s not that big a deal to get rid of them.

You can see the before and after versions of this striking composition. I used two tools to eliminate all the unwanted junk: the clone tool and the healing brush. I blew the original up to 100% so I could be precise in my work. Look closely at all the things I eliminated. When that was done, I used the burn tool to darken the patchwork of stones on the ground to prevent it from competing for attention and detracting from the subject. Even though the model and the houses were brilliantly colored, a light pattern can pull our eyes away from the real subject and I wanted to make sure this didn’t happen.

Finally, I wanted to eliminate the white sky. Our eyes go to the lightest part of a photograph first and return again and again. The attention should be on the subject, not the bright sky. So I searched my files for a gray, cloudy sky -- appropriate for the soft light on the model -- and then pasted it into the sky. Note how this improves the photo and prevents your eyes from leaving the subject.

Variety is the Spice of Photography

© Brenda Tharp

I spent last week in the Delray-Palm Beach area of Florida, teaching a field workshop. By the end of the week, the group had visited a Wetlands reserve, the beach for sunrise, a private rainforest, Butterfly World, an orchid garden, and more. As I was flying home on Friday night, I was thinking about the wonderful challenge that the week had provided them. They had opportunities to photograph wildlife, macro subjects, and landscapes, and to incorporate motion, and create abstracts. That’s a pretty packed week! This meant they had to practice all there skills and apply all their knowledge and newly learned techniques. In each situation, I wanted them to make the most creative, best picture they could.

© Brenda Tharp

As an outdoor and travel photographer, that is what I have to do every trip. I may be required to photograph the morning light on the land, the local village faces, the food specialties of the place, the architecture, and any key spots of interest. I may not love doing the food photography, but being willing to do that means getting the assignment, and that means getting to travel someplace interesting!

© Brenda Tharp

This experience actually helped me see more creatively, to see the potential in everything around me. So this is what I challenged my students with last week - on a daily basis, to make the best image they could make in the places we were visiting. In all, it was a successful week for them - and fun for me. I managed to get a few quick images to share with you the variety of subjects we had.

It really doesn’t matter what you photograph, what’s important is the way you use the light you have, the way you create your compositions, and just how expressive you get with your techniques.

© Brenda Tharp

Have a great week!

Additional Italy Photos

Now that I have Internet access again, I wanted to post additional pictures from the last couple of days. I was very moved by the exquisite artwork, the form of paintings and mosaics, that was preserved for almost 2000 years beneath the ash from the Mt. Vesuvius eruption of 79 A. D. that buried Pompei and Herculaneum. It humanizes the people who lived here and gives faces to the ancient Romans. In history books, people who lived long ago almost seem theoretical, but when we see what they looked like as reflected in their art, history suddenly seems like we are looking at ourselves but with different clothes and hairstyles.

I also loved photographing the Amalfi Coast, especially the picturesque town of Positano. Notice the two twilight shots and how different they look. The only difference was in the precise time I took the shots. One was about 10 minutes earlier than the other.

The snow shot is of the castle in San Marino, and the abstraction of the Coliseum was done this evening. A bus passed my camera during the 20 second exposure, and this created the wild lights streaking across the ancient structure.

Jim

More Carnival Images

I'm in Rome now, and just tonight I photographed the Coliseum at twilight. I've wanted to do that for 20 years, even though pretty much every else has done it before me.

Getting Internet access in Italy isn't easy, I've discovered. One would think that being in Europe, Internet connections are available for travelers everywhere. Not so. In many hotels, even 3 and 4 star establishments, modern phone systems and wiring have not be installed. Thus, I've been unable to upload shots from the past many days.

I wanted to share some additional images I took at Carnival. Even though I've visited other wonderful places here in Italy, Carnival remains the most exciting aspect of the trip and probably the most exciting photography I've done ever, anywhere. In addition, there are a couple of shots from the tiny Republic of San Marino, an independent country within Italy. The next morning after I took these shots we got an unexpected snowfall, and the castle atop San Marino and the surrounding mountain was all white.

The ornate gold ceiling is a detail shot in St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice.

Jim

BetterPhoto.com™ Celebration: 10 Tips Leads to 10 Years!

Hi Everyone,
It's really amazing, when you think of it, but 10 very excellent photography tips - written by BetterPhoto.com President and founder Jim Miotke - led to the very exciting site that it is today.

For all of 2006, we'll be rolling out all sorts of celebratory events and promotions. Check things out the 10-Year Anniversary page.

The BetterPhoto school of photography has developed into the leader in online photo education. Besides more than 50 courses and more than 20 highly-qualified instructors, our school has been a popular one ... check out the new student testimonials page.

But to those of us at BetterPhoto.com, photographic education consists of even more than its wonderful classes. If you haven't already, check out all of the excellent free stuff, including the four newsletters, the Photography Forum, the articles by instructors, the BetterPhoto Digital Photography Show, the monthly photography contest, and the digital camera reviews.

That's it for now. Enjoy your photography!
Kerry Drager