Calibrating Is King If You Want Great Color

in
Pros who are serious about color take the time to calibrate their desktop monitor, laptop, printer and digital projector - on a regular basis. No calibration, no good color.

If you are new to color calibration, check out the ColorMunki. It's accurate, fast, easy and actually fun to use. Hey, with a name like ColorMunki, what do you expect?

Check out the ColorMunki site, and don't miss the Training Videos.

And . . . don't miss their cool contest, Show Us Your Munki, and win up to $2,500! Some funny videos are posted already!

Explore the Light,
Rick

Sing Up Now For Future Photo Learning and Fun

Hi All

Juan Pons and I are getting our new site - Digital Photo Experience - together. Lots of photo info, lots of contributors, and lots of fun.

The site is about you! We want to help you make better pictures. Send us your questions at rick@digitalphotoexperience.com.

Sing up now and get notified of our launch on December 15th.

Explore the Light,
Rick

Only The Shadow Knows in ScanCafe Photo Contest

in
Hey All!

If you have not entered my ScanCafe Photo Contest, shoot a photo this weekend and enter on Monday. Info here.

The challenge: Make a picture of a person that takes advantage of a shadow on a subject's face. Cool prizes from ScanCafe. If you live in the U.S., I'll add a copy of my Complete Guide to Digital Photography.

Come on! What ya waiting for? You can do this! It's fun making pictures. :-)

Good luck!

Explore the light - and shadows,
Rick

With a Little Help From My Friend, Scott Kelby

in
In my latest book (co-authored with Vered Koshlano), Studio and On-Location Lighting Secrets, Scott Kelby contributed this tip for the chapter, With A Little Help From My Friends. Thanks, good friend!

Take it away, Scott. . . and if I don't see you before Photoshop World in Orlando, keep playing playing your "ax."

Here’s a shot I took while wrapping up the writing for my Photoshop CS4 Down & Dirty Tricks book. I needed a shot of a football player for one of the techniques I was demonstrating, so I set up a studio shoot with middle linebacker Blake Johnson from a local (Tampa, Florida) high school team.

I wanted to make a dramatic portrait, so I shot Blake against a black background. I used three lights: The main light, an Elinchrom RX-600 strobe, was mounted on a boom stand and positioned in front of Blake. It was placed up high, directly in front of him and angled down toward him at a 45° angle.

I placed two lights off to the side of Blake (the light on the right is not shown in the behind-the-scenes photo, which, by the way, was taken by Brad Moore).

I controlled the spill of the three-light set-up by using three large black flags (the main flag and the left flag are outlined in white in the behind-the-scenes image). These flags, and the light/flag off to camera right, were simple 24 x36 -inch rectangles of black fabric that block the spread of light.

The flags were an important element in creating this dramatic portrait – and I highly suggest you experiment with them.

That’s me on the left, and my tethered computer on the right. When I’m in the studio, tethered shooting is the norm for me.

One more thing: I post-processed the living daylights out of the image, using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Photoshop CS4. Hey, whatdaya expect?

Scott Kelby
Photographer, editor and publisher of Photoshop User magazine, co-founder of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP)
www.scottkelby.com

P.S.
Thanks to the other lighting experts who helped out with my "Help" chapter:
Eddie Tapp
Judy Host
Doug Kirkland
John D. Williamson
David Guy Maynard
David Mecey
Bob Davis
Ken Sklute
Ed Pierce
Eric Eggly
And.... some of the instructors and students at the Hallmark Institute of Photography.

Pre-Visualize The End Result in HDR

in
Here is something pretty amazing and very cool to consider about HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography. Once you become serious about your HDR explorations, you’ll start to pre-visualize the end-result photograph in your mind’s eye.

Your imaginary photograph will have all the details in the shadows and highlights that you see with your eyes – and more. It will look realistic or artistic - depending on which HDR option you choose. I chose artistic here, exaggerating the colors and details in the scene.

After a HDR photo session in an abandoned house with my friend Chandler (bottom photo here), I kept thinking about (envisioning) other HDR photo opportunities and possibilities.

I knew I had to so something with the piano in the house. So, I brought over one of my guitars (Yamaha 12) to the house, moved the piano, set my guitar on the floor and opened the case . . . and created a HDR image (Photomatix plus Topaz Adjust) that I envisioned.

Ansel Adams, one of the greatest photographers of all time, was big on pre-visualization. I first read about this concept in 1978, when I was the editor of Studio Photography magazine. I have been big of it ever since then.

See this video on Ansel Adams: First Pre-visualization.

As an HDR photographer, you will be big on seeing the end-result, too. The more you shoot and process your HDR images, the clearer the pre-visualized image. How cool is that!

Oh yeah, pre-visualizing works for straight photographs, too.

For more on Photomatix and Topaz Adjust, see the Plugin Experience.

Learn HDR on my workshops.

Explore the Light,
Rick

P.S. Hey, whatta you guys think about this pre-visualizing concept: I get Scott Kelby to jam with me in this cool setting? He'd pretty darn good on keyboards, ya know.