BetterPhoto Instructor Insights

Create Artistic Photos by Visualizing Your Options

By Deborah Sandidge

photo copyright by Deborah Sandidge

In my courses at BetterPhoto.com's online photography school, one of the things I hope to communicate is to visualize creative options. You can do this with your photography before you make the picture, by thinking about how you wish the end result to be portrayed. My vision was for something sparkly and romantic, a far cry from the "before" photo below taken in downtown Orlando, Florida.

The first decision for visualizing creative options was to wait until twilight. This window of opportunity is short! For me, this is the most magical time of day to take pictures.

The second decision was to use a different lens and point of view than with the original image. To create a dramatic photograph, I used a fish-eye lens. To make it more fun, I positioned my tripod partially underneath the tower. This may require some limbo with the tripod and upward-facing fisheye lens.

The third decision was to make several exposures for HDR (High Dynamic Range). This allows you to retain detail in the highlight and shadow areas of the image. I made three exposures (-2, 0, +2) and merged the photos to create a single HDR image.

Last, but not least, a few finishing touches in Photoshop helped enhance the end result I had in mind when I made the picture. My vision - for gold, blue, sparkly and romantic - materialized through visualizing creative options! Make great pictures...

Notes from the Editor: Deborah Sandidge teaches two photo workshops online - Photoshop - Enhancing Digital Images and Creating Works of Art and Digital Infrared Photography - BetterPhoto's digital photography school.

Learn to Create Works of Art in Photoshop

Discover how to turn your photographs into creative works of art in Jim Zuckerman's interactive online Photoshop course.

A top stock photographer, Jim shares many of the exciting artistic Photoshop techniques that he uses in his own work. As Jim says:

"Understanding the commands in Photoshop is the easy part. The hard part is knowing what to do next. In other words, how can you be artistic with this knowledge? For example, how do you turn a portrait into a stunning sketch? How do you create a 3D cube in a two dimensional photo? How do you simulate a traditional double exposure?"

In this class - Photoshop: Thinking Outside the Box - you'll explore many very cool effects that you will want to try with pictures you've already taken, or with new images.

Additional notes: BetterPhoto.com's digital photography school online features a number of courses on the fundamentals of Photoshop and Elements, along with Photoshop CS4 creative techniques. See the school listings: online Photoshop classes.

Online Class Covers Photoshop Layers and Layer Masks

In this BetterPhoto.com online course, you'll learn how to use one of Photoshop's most powerful tools!

Masks and selections allow you to work on a particular area of an image and make changes only to that area - a major benefit of digital photography.

Taught by Doug Steakley, a professional photographer and author, this 4-week online photo workshop - Basic Masks In Photoshop - covers the basic selection tools. You'll discover how to add to, or subtract from, a selection so it is perfect. Then using a mask layer, you will make changes to the area or areas that were selected.

Once you get a good working grasp of layers and masks, Photoshop becomes much less intimidating and more powerful and fun to use.

Note: BetterPhoto.com's digital photography school also offers a number of other online Photoshop courses.

Online Course on Canon EOS 7D

Learn how to get eye-catching photos and the best performance from your Canon EOS 7D in BetterPhoto.com's online photography course.

Taught by author and pro photographer Charlotte Lowrie, this 4-week online class - Learning the Canon EOS 7D - is packed full with tips, techniques and insights related to this awesome DSLR camera. In short, you'll learn how to get great exposures with stunning color, while also discovering how to customize the camera to suit your shooting style.

Charlotte is a popular instructor at BetterPhoto's online photography school, and she is the author of the Canon EOS 7D Digital Field Guide and a dozen other books on photography.

Along with easy-to-read and easy-to-understand lessons, BetterPhoto courses feature personal feedback from master photographers and a flexible method of instruction. Also check out the other excellent online photo courses at BetterPhoto's digital school of photography.

Night Photography Techniques with a Fisheye Lens

By Deborah Sandidge

photo copyright by Deborah Sandidge

"Paris by Night", one of my favorite books, was photographed by Brassai in the 1930s. I love his dramatic black and white photographs, how he took his time to get to know Paris before taking his first pictures, and how he timed the length of his exposures by using cigarettes.

I have been thinking about this statue for a while, and I wanted to create my own version of Orlando, Florida, at night in color (sans the cigarette). Somehow I don't think Brassai would mind.

Here are details on my night photography techniques for this image, along with my digital photography workflow:

- This image was shot during twilight at the Plaza in downtown Orlando using an 8mm circular fisheye lens. I like how the fish eye lens enveloped the city in a circle, and everything seems pulled together in a unified way.

- I used Adobe Camera Raw to optimize the image, followed up with Lucis Pro and the new Nik Viveza 2.

Do something innovative and fun with your photography, and please join me for my online Photoshop course - Photoshop - Enhancing Digital Images and Creating Works of Art - that I teach at BetterPhoto.com's digital photography school.

Digital Noise Reduction: Reviewing the Options

By Rob Sheppard

I have often mentioned that Adobe products only do an adequate job with noise. Lightroom 3 has some promising improvements, but from what I have seen so far, I still find Nik Software Dfine to be superior.

There are other good noise reduction programs on the market, including Noise Ninja and Imagenomics Noiseware, but I find Dfine is easier to use and offers one thing that no one else does, the ability to control where and how much noise reduction is applied based on color and tone. Often noise is stronger in certain colors and tones, plus sometimes you don’t want to reduce noise in a color or tone because that can help hold sharpness better.

Now I have said these things before and once received a comment from a photographer who felt that the program wasn’t that good and the only reason I said it so was because I must be paid by Nik. I am not paid by Nik, although I admit that I think so highly of their products that I would never feel bad about doing any work for them. From what I have seen of Dfine on my images, I have to think this critic either had not used Dfine or did not know how to use it. But to be fair, I should show you real results rather than just talking about it.

I took my Canon G11 to a banquet and decided to shoot a cheese cake sitting in front of me at ISO 3200. That ISO is really not usable straight from the camera, which is why I used it for this test. The resulting photo is not all that great (it has had some basic adjustments). Small, it will look OK here, but look at the magnified portion of the image. This would be good if you like special effects!

original image (above) - noise present but not visible due to small size

image (above) enlarged to show presence of noise

enlarged image but with Dfine noise reduction applied (above)

Editor notes: Rob Sheppard teaches many online photo courses at BetterPhoto's online digital photography school, including The Magic of F-stops: Choosing the Right Aperture, Guaranteed Better Photography and Impact in Your Photographs: The Wow Factor .

Photographing Art in Nature: Icebergs

By Jim Zuckerman

photo copyright by Jim Zuckerman

To me, the most exciting forms to photograph in nature are icebergs. The combination of aquamarine and deep blue along with the snow and ice is incredible, and the forms are out of this world. I have never seen icebergs as beautiful as the ones I shot in Antarctica. I was breathless in shooting them.

These pictures don't show how cold it was, or how the wind-driven rain made the experience less than comfortable. Once a wave washed over the bow of the zodiac, and I was in the front and received the brunt of the water. Not only did I get wet, but saltwater is certain death for any kind of electronics. I was mortified, fearing the worst and that my camera would stop functioning. Fortunately, though, everything was fine and I continued shooting.

Note that all of these pictures were taken with a 14mm ultra-wide-angle lens. I was very close to the icebergs - just a few feet away. That's the secret in using a wide angle. Using the ice as a dominant foreground element made it disportionately large, and that gave the scene added drama. I was very glad that the weather was overcast, because the blue colors of the compressed ice and the amazing colors in the water were more intense in the soft light.

This is the opposite of what you might think. Had the sun been out, the contrast would have been too harsh. Shadows would have been very dark and the highlights on the ice might have blown out ... meaning complete overexposure with no texture or detail. That's the last thing you want in a picture.

Editor's notes: Photographer and author Jim Zuckerman teaches many excellent online photography courses, including Developing Your Creative Artistic Vision and Eight Steps to More Dramatic Photography. BetterPhoto's online digital photography school offers several courses in photographing art in nature.

photos copyright by Jim Zuckerman

Creative Images with Photoshop Plugin: Snap Art

By Deborah Sandidge

photo copyright by Deborah Sandidge

If I could be a painter, I'd paint like this, dreamy, abstract, colorful ... until then, it's Alien Skin Snap Art!

This Photoshop plugin has an impressive collection of filters that create painterly and artistic effects for your photographs. The Cuban drummer (photo above) and the couple (photo below) were enhanced using the Watercolor filter. Within Snap Art, there are 10 filters, Color Pencil, Comics, Impasto, Oil Paint, Pastel, Pen and Ink, Pencil Sketch, Pointillism, Stylize and Watercolor.

photo copyright by Deborah Sandidge

Create a "rainy day" look with Color Pencil. Take a look at the photo below...

photo copyright by Deborah Sandidge

One of my favorite filters in Snap Art is Stylize. You can create a poster effect like the photo below of Trinidad, Cuba. I painted the car pink just because!

photo copyright by Deborah Sandidge

Some of the students in my online Photoshop course - Photoshop - Enhancing Digital Images and Creating Works of Art at BetterPhoto.com's online digital photography school - have made stunning images using the various features in the Photoshop plug-in Snap Art. It's a lot of fun to see how each person interprets working with the filters and their photos, and how creative everyone is!

Icebergs in Antarctica - Photo Exposure Challenge

By Jim Zuckerman

photo copyright by Jim Zuckerman

One of my primary objectives in recently going to Antarctica was to photograph ice. The abstract forms of icebergs in Antarctica are captivating and beautiful, and it seems like I can't shoot enough pictures of them.

The way I am handling the digital camera settings is that I underexpose the images by 2/3 f/stop. I do this with the exposure compensation feature on my DSLR camera - the Canon 5D Mark II. The reason is to protect the highlights from blowing out - i.e., becoming overexposed with no texture or detail. This is the worst thing you can do to a photo besides making it out of focus.

When I process the Raw files in Adobe Camera Raw, I can adjust the exposure slightly to my taste. As I do that, I watch carefully that the vulnerable highlights retain their detail. It is crucial that I shoot in Raw and not JPEG mode. JPEGs don't hold detail in highlights (or shadows) very well at all.

While many pros disagree with my underexposure approach, it works for me. In the 5 years I've been shooting digital images, I never get any overexposures because I use this method of exposure.

Notes from the editor: Author/photographer Jim Zuckerman teaches many terrific online photo courses, including
Perfect Digital Exposure. Also, the BetterPhoto.com online digital photography school offers many other classes on natural light photography and camera exposure.

Antarctica icebergs - photos copyright by Jim Zuckerman

Aerial Photography with a Fisheye Lens

By Deborah Sandidge

photo copyright by Deborah Sandidge

My favorite place on a airplane for aerial photography is the window seat. I like to see the ever-changing sights, landscapes, cityscapes, and the most beautiful skyscapes. I feel a little trapped at times, but it's always worth the view.

This photo was photographed using an 8mm circular fisheye lens, which captured the surrounding window and gives the image a sense of place. The image was optimized in Photoshop using Lucis Pro.

Note: Deborah Sandidge teaches at BetterPhoto.com digital photography school online photo course: Photoshop - Enhancing Digital Images and Creating Works of Art