There's no App for that!

So it's no secret that I'll be flying to Japan in May. One of the things that I have to think about is what to pack. When I originally decided to go on the trip, my first thought was: camera...check, lenses...check, iPad...check. But wait a minute, I had a nagging problem on my trip to San Diego when editing images. I had no way to add my logo as a watermark through the iPad alone. After several months of trying to figure out how to do this, I threw my hands in the air with frustration and after many conversations with the boss, decided to sell the iPad and take the laptop to Japan instead. Not a big deal unless you figure how much the backpack is going to weigh with professional camera gear and a full sized laptop.

I'm not sure how the idea came to me but earlier this week it dawned on me that Smugmug, my photo-sharing site will automatically add a custom watermark to an image uploaded to certain galleries. After some watermark tweaking and a lot of thought, I came up with a system to upload an image to Smugmug, download the properly sized watermarked image ready to post on either Facebook or the blog. Long story short, I'm posting this from my brand new iPad 2!

Take THAT App Store without a properly functioning watermarking app that doesn't do exactly what I need it to do! :)

Please, make yourself comfortable.

Have you ever seen a picture of someone that obviously didn't want their picture taken or gave a forced smile? That never happens, right? Well I believe that people that are most "photogenic" are the ones that relax and are natural in front of the camera and don't just act it.

Want better images? Relax, have fun. The camera looks both ways so if you as the photographer are stressed and anxious, the images are going to suffer for it.

Should I let you in on my little secret? Shhh, let's keep this between us. Ok, well my big secret is... I love to make people laugh. Phew, that's a relief. I've been known to make jokes even at inappropriate times but that's just who I am and how I deal with stress, even if the joke is at my own expense. Laughing is healthy and it also makes for a great natural image.

Laugh, and the world laughs with you:

-Ella Wheeler Wilcox

So brush up on your jokes and put on a happy face! I'll get you started:

• The quickest way to make money at photography is to sell your camera!
• How does Santa Claus take pictures?
  With his North Polearoid.
• A fellow bought a Labrador puppy from the pet store and named him Kodak.
  That way he could say he owned a Kodak lab.

Take a hike!

I know how difficult it can be to take beautiful images while on vacation at a location you've never been to before and may never visit again. These "once in a lifetime" opportunities can be pressure to get  a good shot once and forever. I had the great fortune of visiting Greece a couple of years ago when I was really starting to get into photography and learning the fundamentals of a good image. I've read that the first time you visit a location, it's alright to leave the camera behind or to take the standard tourist snapshots. But what if your first time is your only time? Well, the best tip I can give you is to have patience.

We visited the Parthenon towards the end of our trip. There are three words that I can use to describe the visit: magnificent, hot, crowded. I stood before one of the seven wonders of the world and it's almost incomprehensible to think that this structure was built in 432 BC and is still standing. Everyone, and I mean everyone is taking the same exact picture with hundreds of tourists in the foreground. How do I create an image where it looks like I'm the only one there? I wait. Even heavy traffic gets a break at some point. This was probably the only 1/2000th of a moment that no one was standing between me and the ancient temple and I'm glad I remembered to take the lens cap off! :)

The next site we visited was King Leonidas' memorial site at Thermopylae. I had recently seen the movie 300 so I was particularly interested in visiting the ancient battle ground. Again, there were quite a few tourists there so I might have to wait again to get the shot. But wait, what's this? There are quite a few power lines running right behind the monument! Boy do those stand out and look ugly.

Trying to photoshop them out later would be a nightmare since they run the length of the image, not to mention the gradiation of the sky would make it near impossible to make it look natural. So what do I do? I walk around to see if there's another angle. I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to go behind the monument because there are shrubs lining the back of it. Oh well, I decided to take a gander anyway and lo and behold I found a great angle where there weren't any unsightly objects. Turns out that this image of King Leonidas' monument is one of my favorite travel photographs to this day.

The next time you're in Greece or any other exotic location remember these two tips at any popular tourist attraction:

1. Be patient and wait for your shot. People will eventually move out of the way.
2. Walk around and don't take the same shot everyone else is taking. You may end up being the one that knows something that no one else knows.

Back to the basics

So I pestered my father-in-law to bring down his old camera from storage because I love to look at them and figure out how they work. He has a Canon FTb 35mm SLR with a "standard" 50mm f/1.8 lens and a couple of other accessories. After tinkering with it for some time, he discovered that there was still film inside! Who knows what could be stored there and when the last time the camera was used?

Ah, yes, the point of this post. What I've come to realize is that as far as we've come with the technology inside cameras, the foundation of capturing an image remains the same. It all comes down to capturing light. You really had to know what you were doing 20 years ago or else you may have ended up with no pictures on the film because all of the images are white from overexposure or black from underexposure.

Manual settings!!?!?! What's that? You're afraid to use the manual setting on your camera? Well, with this particular camera, everything is manual, literally. Aperture? Set manually on the lens. Shutter speed? Set manually with a dial. ISO/ASA? Also set manually with a dial so you'd better hope you remembered what type of film you put in.

So I took a few test shots to see if I could appropriately guess the exposure because the built in meter had run out of battery 15 years ago. I'm going to get the film processed today so hopefully some of my shots came out.

My lens has a sweet WHAT?!?

So the discussion came up in my photography class this past weekend about the "sweet spot" of a lens. I guess I take for granted sometimes that aperture and depth of field are photography concepts that take a while to fully understand. It wasn't that long ago that I didn't know my aperture from a hole in the wall (bad pun intended).

An aperture is literally "a hole or an opening through which light travels." Nothing more, nothing less. The amount of light let through the opening in a lens is defined by aperture stops or f/stops. Each f/stop down allows exactly 50% less light to pass through the lens onto the camera film or sensor.

A basic understanding of aperture is required to understand why a lens has a sweet spot. Basically all lenses are different in terms of quality and build but a good rule of thumb is that the sweet spot, or sharpest aperture, of any lens is typically one to two f/stops down from the lens's maximum aperture. This doesn't mean that you can't shoot at the maximum aperture but the image will be noticeably sharper stopped down. The more expensive a lens is, the closer the sweet spot is to its maximum aperture.

Here are some resources on the subject:
B&H Insights
Digital Photography School
Digital Shot