Just shoot it! Five reasons to go outside right now with your camera.

So I had a busy week and I'm feeling a little burnt out, right? Who hasn't felt like that? It's Friday, Friday and I get home and I need to unwind. After hugs and kisses from the family, I need a fix. Here's why I go out to shoot even if it's just around your house :

1. Therapy - Photography for me is very theraputic. Whenever I get a great shot, I get a rush of endorphins from a sense of accomplishment. I literally feel happy. (Yes, I know the difference between literal and figurative) 
2. Practice - Like any skill, photography is something that you need to work at to get better. Having trouble nailing that focus while at that event? How about getting the right exposure at that picnic? No? Then why don't you take the time to develop those skills when you don't have to annoy people trying to figure out why the image came out so dark when they're back lit.
3. Experimentation - For me, one of the more daunting things to remember is how to gauge how far my minimum focusing distance for each of my lenses. This is the time where I can try to push each lens to the limit and develop some depth perception memory so I can take better shots more quickly. Most SLRs will not fire when autofocus is on if it can't get focus so knowing how far is just far enough can make the difference between getting the shot or cursing.
4. Learn how your camera sees - Depending on the focal length you choose, your image can look entirely different. Try shooting something at 200mm and then try shooting the same object at 18mm. Is there a difference? Neither is right or wrong, they are artistic choices that you need to make when creating an image.
5. Think different - I try shooting objects and subjects that others would probably walk right by on a photo walk. One of the challenges that I'll give myself is "how do I make this ordinary object interesting?" I'm always amazed at the creativity that I come across on other photographers' pages. They make Legos come alive and the real seem surreal. Each one of us sees the world in our own unique way. How can I show you what I see?

In summary, these are a few of the things that I try to do on a regular basis to try to improve. What are you doing?

Issues with Transparent PNG in iOS 4 devices such as iPad 2 and iPhones

If you've followed my blog at all, you already know that I came up with a work around solution for watermarking images on Apple iOS devices using the photo sharing site smugmug.   You can imagine my frustration when you follow the directions to a "t" and the darn thing doesn't do what it's supposed to do. The easiest and, from my experience, most efficient app at watermarking images on the iPad 2 and iPhone is an app called iWatermark. This app works absolutely well when creating a generic text watermark using built in fonts. The problem was in creating a custom image watermark with a transparent background.

According to Plum Amazing, the creators of iWatermark, the way to create a transparent graphic watermark is as follows:

For Graphic Watermarks you can use any graphic. Graphics are either photos that you have taken or graphics that you have created on the iPhone or imported. The signatures we include are .png files. PNG is a format that allows the background to be transparent. Check out the FAQ (below) or Google 'png' and 'transparence' to learn more about making these files. You can make a .png file of your signature and import it to use on your photos.

Once you have imported your graphic watermark you can act on it with any of the items in the edit menu on the left/bottom side of the screen. Change the angle, scale, opacity, etc. To move the watermark just touch it with your finger and drag it wherever you want.

 

Great! This sounds exactly like what I want to do and I should have no problem since I do A LOT of graphic design for my day job. So, I create the PNG files according to their specifications, alpha channel turned on, and add it to both my dropbox folder and iPhoto in order to sync the file onto the device. You can see the files in the images above  and that there is now an album in the Photos app on the iPad named TL Photography Logo that contains seven PNG files.

The first thing I noticed about the individual PNG files is that they all have black backgrounds. How could this be? After some pretty extensive research, I was unable to find a definitive answer but my assumption is that iOS is converting any PNG image processed through iTunes or transferred from any app into a jpeg. When I tried to use one of these as a watermark in both  iWatermark and Photogene, the black background remained. After many hours of trial and error and several emails to iWatermark technical support I found that I had discovered a fairly unique flaw in the way that iOS handles PNG images. I wasn't the only one who had experienced this issue. I came across some forums where a similar question was posed but I never found the issue resolved for anyone else.

This bothered me so much because part of the reason I even owned an iPad was to use as a photography tool while traveling. Since I watermark my images before posting to Facebook and my blog, not being able to do so was too big of an issue for me to keep the device and I ended up selling it.

Fast forward a couple of months, and with the ugly breakup of my first iPad behind me, I was able to reconcile the issue because I figured out how to use smugmug's watermarking service as a way around the lack of transparency support in the Photos app in iOS 4.  Well, I've owned the iPad 2 for a little over a week now and thought I would revisit the issue to see if anyone had come up with a solution. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Well, on a hunch, and probably based on my extensive trouble shooting background I wondered if downloading a transparent PNG through the Safari app would make any difference since I couldn't recall trying that approach. So I navigated to my blog and downloaded the header, which btw is one of the same PNGs in the Photos app. Next step is to take a look at the PNG in the Camera Roll and... WHAT THE?!?

If you take a closer look at the Camera Roll you can see that there is something definitely wrong with the PNGs downloaded via Safari. There seems to be an overlay of other images instead of my logo watermark. Since this was a different result from anything I'd seen before, I figured I'd give it a shot in one of the watermarking apps to see if it worked. GUESS WHAT!! I'm not exactly sure why or how but I do know that FINALLY it works the way it's supposed to. You can see the final watermarked image edited entirely using iOS and iPad apps without needing to be connected to the internet.

In this case, persistence paid off. I'm guessing that so few people actually need this type of functionality that Apple would never give it any attention. In my case, this made re-purchasing the iPad a bit more gratifying and allowed me to put another feather in my cap.

Fish are friends, not food.

"Well, you never really know, but when they know, you know, y'know?" - Crush


So it's time for a new tip and today's tip boys and girls is how to get a good image at an aquarium or zoo or any other location that has glass between you and the subject. You know the funny thing about glass? It reflects light! Especially when the other side of the glass is darker than your side. Ever seen those one way mirrors at the police station? You have?!? For shame.

So back to photography. At all costs, try not to use your flash. The flash will just about always bounce right off the glass and right into your lens. The same principles apply as shooting in a dark location. As far as camera settings go, you should choose a large aperture and high iso in order to get the fastest shutter speed with the given light. This would be a situation that you might want to use the shutter priority setting on your camera if you have it. That's the Tv setting for Canon shooters. Pick a shutter speed that allows you to stop motion and let the camera do the rest of the work.

So now your saying, "Tony, I took your advice and did all that but my images are STILL blurry!" Well, you're in luck. If you absolutely have to use flash, here's a little trick I learned. You ready for it? Here it goes. Press your lens right up against the glass. That's it! Basically, if the lens is right up against the glass, it might as well be part of the glass and thus no way for the flash to bounce back into your lens. Don't believe me? Try it out. Go to the nearest window of your house, take one picture a couple of feet away from the window with the flash and another one with the lens against the glass. Try it out and let me know how it goes.

Tony