Quick Digital Imaging Tip 15/101: Love Live View

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This is #15 of 101 digital imaging tips I plan to post here over the next few months. Stay tuned.

Today's tip (from Laos): Love Live View

Live View is totally cool when you need to shoot very low to the ground... as well as way above your head. As always, practice makes perfect.

Info: Canon EOS 7D and Canon 17- 40mm lens.

Explore the light,
Rick

P.S. These novice monks are making lanterns for the light festival next week!

Quick Digital Imaging Tip 14/101: Set Your Camera's LCD Monitor to Display the Image and the Historgram

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This is #14 of 101 digital imaging tips I plan to post here over the next few months. Stay tuned.

Today's tip (from Laos): Set Your Camera's LCD Monitor to Display the Image and the Historgram.

The histogram is the best (only) way to check your exposure. If you are not checking your histogram, you are not checking to see if you have the best possible in-camera exposure.

The image on your display only gives you an approximate idea of the exposure. It's a JPEG of your RAW file.

Explore the light,
Rick

P.S. Bonus tip: Keep your radar on all the time. The opening picture for this post is one of my favorite images from today. I got the idea after seeing the scene in a remote village: a young woman hanging several weaving on a line. I noticed the opening in the weavings and thought that it made a perfect frame for the woman. I simply asked her to walk into position and took a few shots.

Actually, I asked my guide, Vong a thit, the best guide in Laos, to ask the woman to pose for the photograph. Vong's email address: vongla@yahoo.com.

Hey, I know the image below is just a snapshot. I just wanted to give you a behind-the-scenes look at the village.


I also shot the image vertically. It's usually a good idea shoot a scene both horizontally and vertically – because you may prefer one over the other at a later date. Which version do you prefer?


If you like digital imaging tips like this one, as well as general photography tips, check out my 24/7 Photo Buffet app.

Quick Digital Imaging Tip 13/101: Include a Person In the Scene

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Update 11/12/10: I originally posted this post from Laos. See the last three images. Then read this, which was in the NY Times yesterday.

This is #13 of 101 digital imaging tips I plan to post here over the next few months. Stay tuned.

No matter how small, a person can add interest to a scene – as illustrated by this photograph that I took this morning in Laos.

Bonus tip: You snooze, you lose! Get up early to capture the beauty dawn light.

On another note, what do the three snapshots (taken in a very remote village in Laos) below have in common? Let me know here on the blog, which is easier for me to track than facebook and twitter. Try to be as detailed as possible with your answer. I will respond when a reader gets it right.

Peace, love and joy,
Rick




Quick Digital Imaging Tip 12/101: RAW Rules, But HDR Rocks

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Today is day 1 in Laos, but I took today's blog post image a few days ago in Thailand. More than a few bugs are crawling over my laptop's screen. Hot as heck, even at 8:05 AM.

This is #12 of 101 digital imaging tips I plan to post here over the next few months. Stay tuned.

Today's tip: RAW Rules, but HDR rocks when it comes to high-contrast scenes.

My workshops students know me as Rick "RAW Rules" Sammon – because I use Adobe Camera RAW as my main image-editing program.

Adobe Camera RAW is, indeed, a very powerful tool. Among other features, you can rescue areas of an image that are up to an f/stop overexposed by using Recovery and Curves. Plus, you can pull out detail from shadow areas using Exposure, and then pull out even more details by using the Shadow/Highlight control (among other adjustments) in Photoshop.

However, when you try to pull out too much detail from deep shadow areas, those areas can look very grainy. That's why when the contrast range in a scene is more than three stops, I recommend shooting a series HDR images.

I took three photographs and merged them together in Nik Software's HDR Efex Pro to create this image.

Camera info: Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 17-40mm lens.

It's getting hotter by the minute.

Explore the light,
Rick

P.S. Click here for discount on HDR Efex Pro and other plug-ins.