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How to Take Portaits to the Next Level

This is pretty close to how the original, unprocessed Raw image looked. I just reduced the clarity (microcontrast) and color saturation a bit. Most of his expressions looked like this one. He's actually a very amiable and thoughtful young man who was trying to look "hard" for the camera. Canon EOS 60D with 85mm f/1.8 EF at f/11.

Portraits are the sort of thing that, once you've mastered the basic technique--which isn't particularly difficult as techniques go--the challenge becomes less about getting a portrait that's in focus and well lit and more about producing a portrait that has staying power. By "staying power" I mean an image's ability to maintain a viewer's interest over repeated viewings.

It's harder to do than you might think. The average portrait looks like the ones we see in countless school and college yearbooks: competent but generic and unimaginative. A great portait, on the other hand, offers insight into the subject's personality and state of mind even if you've never met them and don't know who they are.

I can't claim to have any exclusive secrets to achieving great portraits every time. I can, however, offer a few tips you may find helpful:

1. Pay attention to your subject.

Many photographers focus far too much on their lighting and not enough on their subject. A subject who senses this will naturally tend to withdraw or become bored or annoyed. Keep your lighting simple and flexible enough that your subject is the center of attention.

2. Connect

There's more to paying attention than simply staring at someone. You should try to observe and intuit how they feel. Are they nervous, insecure, distracted, fearful? Are they trying to project a certain image? Think about what you actually see in front you rather than what you or your subject might like to see. It could make for a far better portrait than what you originally had in mind.

3. Lure rather than chase.

Rather than try to manipulate and coax your subject into making a particular type of expression or pose, try to opposite approach: Calmly wait for them to let their guard down and make an expression or gesture that is characteristically their own. It may be the subtle shift of an eyebrow or a tilt of the head. If you're paying attention you'll know it when you see it and you'll release the shutter the instant you do.

4. Post-process to enhance, not exaggerate.

Chances are that even if you have your lighting and camera set up perfectly, you'll have to post-process your final picks to adjust their clarity, sharpness, color, and tonality. With portraits of females you'll generally want to "take the edge off" by muting the contrast and color saturation and smoothing out skin blemishes. You'll want to do the opposite with men. Take it easy though: If you go too far in either direction your subjects will either look plastic or as if they were hewn out of granite.

Here's a whole 'nother look, this time with Lightroom's "Old Polaroid" preset. I think it over-emphasizes contrast and imperfections in his skin.

Whole books have been written on the subject of portraiture, so the list above is by no means all you need to know. It will make your portraits better though; that, and needless to say, plenty of practice.

  Here's my personal favorite. Black and white adds a richness without over-emphasizing blemishes and blotchiness.

 

What Is the Right Way to Render RAW?

Here's how Adobe Lightroom 4 renders this Canon EOS 60D image when the Camera Calibration is set to Process: 2012 (Current) and Profile: Adobe Standard. These are the default settings, but they are not your only options.

Anyone who shoots RAW images rather than JPEGs should know that RAW is exactly that: It’s the raw image data recorded as it comes off of the image sensor. Because it’s data, you can never actually see a RAW image. It first has to be interpreted, converted, and rendered as a screen image based on what the designer of the RAW converter thinks is the most useful starting point based on the characteristics of your image sensor.

If you set your camera to JPEG, the RAW converter in your camera will interpret the data, render it a certain way, and save the results as a JPEG. There are countless ways raw data can be rendered, which is why today’s digital cameras offer choices that begin with “faithful,” “standard,” and “vivid,” and extend into so-called art filters that produce effects such as sepia tone, cross-processing, toy camera, etc.

Here's how the same image would look if I changed the Lightroom default to Profile: Camera Portrait. Notice the improvement in the warm tones of the violin and the violinist?

And here's how it would look if I used the same Portrait profile but with Canon's RAW converter, Digital Photo Professional, instead. It's close, but not the same. Which do you prefer?

 You can do all this and more with a RAW converter, presets, and plugins that produce specialized renderings of their own. Regardless, the basic question you should ask yourself is whether your RAW converter’s default rendering is right for you and, if not, what you should change it to. (Jeep in mind that I’m referring to default renderings here, not presets that give your images a film look, a weathered look, heightened vignetting, or whatever.)

This is important enough to some photographers that they choose their RAW conversion software as carefully, if not more, as they do their cameras, lenses, and computers. Just as electric guitarists sample various amplifiers and tweak the knobs until they find a tone that’s most pleasing to their ear, the best digital photographers play around with their software’s basic rendering options until they find the one that’s initially most pleasing to their eye.

This is the final image after I adjusted the tone curve, clarity, and sharpening to my liking. It's a lot closer to the Portrait default renderings and therefore would have been more time consuming to achieve if I had started with the Adobe Standard default at the top of the page.

You should do the same. It can be the difference between a default rendering that’s flat and dull and one that gets you off to a good start. A visually appealing default rendering can also save you the time of performing the same tweaks to individual images after every import.

In case you're wondering what menu I'm referring to, here's a screen capture. You'll find it under Develop > Camera Calibration in the right-hand toolbar.

As you can see from my examples, the defaults I use are relatively subtle. That doesn’t mean yours have to be. You’re free to use more punchy defaults or even flatter ones if you prefer. Just remember that your default rendering is your starting point, not your ultimate destination. The more image detail you begin with, the better you can decide what to change and where.

 

Your Sliders Move Both Ways

This is an unaltered version of the scene. You might like it just the way it is. Then again, you might prefer one of the versions below.

I don't know why, but there's a tendency among some photographers (I won't name names) to overdo their image processing. More often than not, the options they choose show a bias towards more: more saturation, more sharpening, more clarity (microcontrast), more shadow detail... You get the idea.

If this particular shoe fits better than you'd like, just remember that your sliders move both ways. There are some subjects and images actually that look better if you decrease the saturation, sharpening, and so on. Take portraits and people pictures, for example: Not everyone needs or wants to look like a freeze-dried Bedouin. You don't have to reduce the clarity and contrast to the point where everything looks as if it's been shot with a soft-focus filter, but taking the edge off can make the difference between a flattering photo and one that elicits gasps of horror.

This is about as far as I'd be willing to increase the saturation. Some photographers would just be getting started.

The same applies to saturation. Not all colors need to "pop." In fact, if you move the saturation slider too far to the right you actually reduce tonal subtleties. Images take on that overheated, overcooked look we know all too well. Subjects worn by time and use, as well as subjects that consist of pastel shades, often benefit from your moving your slider in the direction of less rather than more.

In this version I reduced the saturation to the same degree I increased the saturation in the version above. In many ways it's more true to how the scene looked to my naked eye than the unaltered version.

While you're easing up on the saturation, you might also try dropping the contrast a bit too. Although high contrast is an effective tool for emphasizing bold, geometric compositions, reduced contrast is a way to emphasize softer, gentler, more contemplative moods.

The benefit of digital imaging, especially if you shoot Raw, is that if you don't like the result you can always revert back to the original or go the opposite direction. If you're habitually moving those sliders in the same direction though, why not trying switching things up, if only for the sake of variety? You just might like what you see.

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Self-Portraiture for Dummies

If you felt as good as I do at sixty you'd be laughing too.

I turned 60 a few days ago and thought it might be as good a time as any to take a commemorative self-portrait. In these days of  handheld devices with built-in cameras, not to mention actual pocket cameras, taking a self-portrait is no harder than pointing a lens in your general direction and pushing a button. Producing a good self-portrait is another matter entirely. That's what I was shooting for. Here's how I did it.

1. I set up a backdrop of white background paper, the type that comes in rolls 52-inches wide. Although I have other backdrops, they are fairly dark and I would have had to light them separately. I wanted to use only one light, so I went with white paper.
2. I placed a 36 x 48-inch softbox on a light stand and positioned the softbox so that it would be horizontal rather than vertical. That way some of the light could spill onto the background and evenly illuminate it. I controlled the brightness of the background by moving the light just far enough to create a medium gray. (If you don't have access to studio lights and backdrops, you can get a similar effect by positioning yourself next to a north-facing window, which is what I was trying to simulate with studio lighting.)
3. I positioned myself on a chair placed roughly two feet away from the softbox. The softbox was angled approximately 45 degrees relative to the background and my face. I could control the positioning of the highlights and shadows by turning my face and body relative to the light source.
4. I placed the camera on a tripod, pointed at where I would be sitting and set the ISO, aperture, and shutter speed to produce a correct exposure. I knew from experience that this would be approximately 1/125 second at f/11 and ISO 100.
5. Here comes the tricky part: I had to frame and focus. That's not easy if you're the photographer and the subject. I prefer to focus first, then frame.
   You might think that to focus all you'd have to do is set the self-timer, press the shutter button, sit down and wait for the shutter to click. The problem is that the camera will attempt to autofocus as soon as you press the shutter or AF button, and since you aren't where you need to be when you do this, the focus will be off. This means you will either need to a) pre-focus using someone or something in your place; or b) use an electronic release with a 10-feet (3 meter) cable. I used the pre-focus approach with my manual lenses and the electronic release with my AF lenses because it has the same two-step focus and release action as the shutter button.
6. Once the image was in focus, I used trial-and-error to adjust the framing. "Loose" framing is better if you have enough room to do so, because it's faster and more convenient to crop later. Those of you who have cameras with a hinged LED display on the back might be able to use that for framing, though many aren't that flexible.

I like this one more for the quality of the lighting and the skin texture than how I look. It's hard to be objective about a self-portrait. Which of these two do you prefer?

Once everything is set up to your liking, it becomes a matter of taking a few dozen pictures with various poses until you come up with a few you like. Unless you've been blessed with extraordinary handsomeness and beauty, this is not something to take for granted. It can be horrifying to see how you look in a photograph, even one you took yourself. This experience can deepen your empathy for your subjects, if nothing else.

It helps to smile rather than scowl. It's also helps to wear subdued clothing. Busy patterns and loud colors are a distraction.

If you're shooting RAW, the final step is tweak the sliders and click the buttons in your software of choice until you get the color and tone you're looking for. Judicious tonal adjustments can make the difference between a strong portrait and a mug shot. I can all but guarantee you that if you master the skill of self-portraiture you'll find producing flattering portraits of someone else a breeze.

Four Tips for Great Portraits

You can tell I used a large softbox to light this by the highlights in her eyes. The reflector opposite the softbox is less obvious. I placed it just close enough to keep the keep the shadows open but not so close that I would lose the three-dimensionality of the lighting.

Even though the bulk of the photos I shoot these days are candids and street photography, I can shoot a professional quality portrait when the need arises. In the even that you get called upon to shoot one yourself--for a friend's LinkedIn page or website for example--or you'd simply like to improve your portrait skills, here are a few tips that should come in handy.

1. Think about the background first.

In a classic headshot your subject is in the foreground while the background is, well, somewhere in back. It's generally best to choose a background that has neutral color, tone, or pattern; one that won't visually merge with your subject, yet not so bright and colorful that it becomes a distraction. A pure white background can work as long as it's not so bright that it causes lens flare.

Also think about the distance between your subject and the background. The greater the separation between the subject and background the greater your ability to use depth-of-field to control how in focus the background will be. A telephoto lens and a wide aperture can do wonders to blur away a distracting background. Separation between the subject and background also allows you the option of lighting or shading the background separate from the subject and thereby prevent tonal mergers.

2. Start with one light, preferably large and close.

A common mistake portait beginners make is to overlight the subject. There are too many lights coming from too many different directions and most of them wrong. I find it's a lot easier to get the light right when you start with one light and then move either the light or the subject until the highlights and shadows look good to the eye. This obviously takes some judgement and the best position with vary with the subject. Generally speaking, you want the light off to one side or the other, otherwise the lighting will look flat and one-dimensional. You also want to raise it a bit, so there's a slight shadow under the nose.

The size of the light and how close it is to the subject will determine how soft and diffuse the light will appear. If I'm using a 42-inch diameter umbrella or a 48-inch wide softbox  I generally place it no further away than 36-inches from the subject. If I'm a large, north-facing window, I place the subject as close as possible without getting the window into the photo.

Here the light source is smaller and the shadows darker. There is still some light filling in the shadows though, as you can see from the detail in her black shirt. As with the first photo, the background was a simple roll of white backdrop paper, lit to reproduce as a shade brighter than her skin.

3. Fill in the shadows to taste.

If you use one light you will have one shadow area. How dark it is will depend on the general reflectivity of the room or the area you're in. If you're shooting digital you have the luxury of being able to tell right away just how dark the shadows appear in a photograph. If the shadows are too dark, place a large white reflector, such as a piece of foamcore or matteboard, opposite your light source. The closer and/or brighter the reflector, the lighter the shadows will be. If you're looking for darker shadows, try a sheet of black foamcore or matteboard.

4. Be relaxed and relax your subject.

Remember that you're dealing with a human being, not an inanimate object with no insecurities and limitless patience. The more attention you pay to making your subject feel relaxed and confident, the more these feelings will show in their expressions. Even the most beautiful and "perfect" lighting will be wasted if your subject looks tense, confused, apprehensive, or annoyed. So keep the mood light. A few compliments, a few jokes, a few clear directions ("Turn your face toward the light a bit. Ah! That's it. Perfect.") and frequent clicks of the shutter when everything falls into place will do wonders for their confidence and yours.

Dozens of photographers have written entire books on the subject of how to light and pose portraits, so there's obviously more to learn than just these four tips. Nevertheless, if I were to boil what I've learned down to just four tips, these would be them. The rest is just practice, experience, knowing what you're look for, and paying close attention to what you see happening in front of you. If any of you have anything of value to add, either advisory or precautionary, feel free to add a short comment. None of us, myself included, knows so much that we can't learn a thing or two.

How Low Can You Go?

 

Is this photo perfectly sharp? No, but to my eyes it's acceptably sharp--especially since I shot it with a 10omm Series E Nikkor lens at f/2.8 and 1/50 second at ISO 800. That's about as low as I'm willing to go. How about you?

These days practically anybody can get a nice, sharp, well-exposed photograph in broad daylight. Set the camera to auto-everything and the algorithms will take care of the rest. It's when the light gets dim that mastery, skill, and yes, sheer luck come to the fore. 

Consider this: In low light--and by "low" I mean light that requires you to shoot at or near maximum aperture AND at a shutter speed below 1/60 second AND at an ISO above 400--you are dancing on the razor's edge of technical quality.

Let's start with the optical challenges. Most lenses are least sharp and contrasty when shot at maximum aperture, especially at the corners of the frame. Another issue is that you have less depth-of-field at maximum aperture, so your focus needs to be spot-on, yet low light is exactly the point at which most AF systems begin to struggle.

Next are the challenges related to camera and subject motion. If you're using a camera or lens that has image-stabilization you have the luxury of being able to shoot at a shutter speed at least two or three stops slower than otherwise. Unfortunately, many of such cameras and lenses have a maximum aperture of f/3.5 at best and f/5.6 at worst, so you're often forced to shoot at slower shutter speeds than you might otherwise. Slow maximum apertures reduce your depth-of-field problems while increasing problems with subject motion. It doesn't do much good if you can hold your camera steady at 1/8-second if your subject is in constant motion.

"No problem," you say, "I'll just crank up the ISO." Your success with the approach will, of course, depend on what type of camera you're using. If you're using a camera of recent vintage with a full-frame sensor you can use ISOs as high as 3200 and 6400 with relative impunity. If you're using a camera with a small sensor, the increase in image noise and loss of resolution can get grim even at ISO 800.

Just for comparision, here's a photo shot at the same ISO (800), but with a 35mm lens at f/2.8 and the shutter at 1/100 second. It's significantly sharper than the photo above. Does this make it a better photograph? I'll let you be the judge.

The final factor is this equation is you, hence the title of this post. How low a shutter speed can you shoot at hand-held and still get results you considerable acceptable with reasonable consistency? In my case it's 1/30 second with no image stabilization, two stops slower with it, and only as long as the lens has a focal length no more than 50mm. I'll shoot at maximum aperture if I have to, but even in low light I prefer to stop down a bit, especially if the maximum aperture is a generous f/1.4. As for ISO, 1600 is generally my upper limit. I find that once I go past that the image gets "fragile," with a lot less tolerance for color and contrast curve adjustments.

All of these self-imposed limits are towards the goal of producing what I would consider to be an acceptable 8x10-inch print--not truly and completely sharp, mind you, just acceptably sharp. Your standards might well be higher if you want larger prints or lower if you only need small JPEGs for screen display. Whatever your standards, don't assume thatbecause you've got great technique in bright light that it will automatically transfer to shooting handheld in low light. The only way to get good at it is to do it and see for yourself just how low you can go before you either have to use a tripod, add supplementary lighting, or give up.

So, just out of curiosity, my question for today is, how low can you go? How low a shutter speed? How high an ISO? How long a lens? And how reliably sharp are your results?

 

Simple Themes Are Often the Best

 

 

Photo courtesy of Adrian Fisk - iSpeak Global

I was surfing the web a few days ago, looking for photography-related topics to amuse and educate myself, when I came across this. If you want to know what you'll see before you click the link, it regards Adrian Fisk, a UK-based photojournalist who has created a project called iSpeak, which he began in China and has expanded into India.

The iSpeak concept is simple: Fisk finds young people from different walks of life, gives them a blank sheet of paper, tells them to print whatever they would like to express on it, then photographs them holding their words up to the camera. Some write in English, others in their native language. For those who are illiterate, Fisk photographs them holding a blank sheet of paper and provides a caption that expresses what it is they want to say. Even though his motif is the same from one photo to the next, his subjects and their words provide an extraordinary and insightful variety.

Fisk's project reminded me of a project I saw years ago in Los Angeles. It was produced by Ed Rusha, a fine artist and photographer. Rusha mounted a motor-driven camera to the front passenger window of his car, lens pointed outward, attached a cable release, and photographed other drivers throughout Los Angeles. The result was as literal an expression of L.A. street photography as you can imagine. It was also one of the best possible ways to approach street photography in Los Angeles, where drivers outnumber pedestrians ten to one. In a later project Rusha photographed every building on both sides of the famous Sunset Strip, in sequence, from one end to the other.

Anyone who has browsed the art photography section in a large bookstore can see similar examples: mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, sisters, the elderly, nudes with freckles... The list goes on.

If you want to come up with a simple idea of your own, look for something that has enough scope that you'll find plenty of subjects to photograph, yet not so much that your project lacks a clear and obvious focus. Also look for something that allows you to use the resources you already have at hand. Although it's nice to travel to distant lands and to use specialized equipment, it's certainly not necessary.

Most importantly, your project should be something you care deeply about or for which you have an intense interest. You'll need that energy to motivate you to keep at it from one day to the next, until you sense the project is done and you're ready to move on to something else. I promise you, you'll not only learn a lot about your subject, you'll learn even more about yourself.

Simplify

One of the challenges of street photography is to reduce the visual clutter and confusion you see all around you. You've got all types of people wearing all types of clothing, often crowded next to each other, surrounded by buildings, signs, billboards, utility poles, and more. Objects are in constant motion. Add color to the mix and the result is, more often than not, a visual mess. This is one of the main reasons why so many street photographers prefer to display their work in black and white: It takes color out of the equation, reduces visual distractions, and helps simplify the image.

That's fine if you're a fan of black and white and know how to avoid tonal mergers (a subject for a later discussion). If you prefer to shoot in color, there's another option, exemplified in the photo above. Instead of trying to simplify an image that has too many different elements competing for attention, try looking for compositions where the elements are already simplified. In the photo above, there are only three predominant colors: orange, blue, and black, with a touch of gray and brown. The shapes are large and bold. The patterns are simple and repetitive. These elements don't necessarily make this photo a masterpiece, but they do simplify the composition.

Here's another, slightly more complex example. The photo above has five colors: white, black, red, blue, and "flesh tone." (Yeah, I know. It doesn't match my flesh tone either. But can you think of a better name for it?) Although there's still a lot going on here, particularly with the spotted blouse and the map in the background with the dotted legend, it's a lot less than if dozens of competing colors had been in the frame.

These are by no means the only ways to simplify a composition. Other tools at your disposal include aperture setting for controlled depth-of-field, subject placement relative to the background, and focal length (wider vs. narrower). You're not obligated to use any of them--but if you do, your viewers will likely thank you for it.

 

 

 

Shooting In the Dark

Despite the bright lights from the neon, I wanted shadow detail, so I shot this handheld with a Pentax K-7, ISO 800, 1/10 second at f/2.8. This works out to approximately EV 3.5. Although the vibration reduction feature was on, this image is not perfectly sharp. The focus was on the lighthouse but should have been on the foreground. Still, it's not bad for handheld at 1/10 second and with a camera that's not reknowned for it's low-light abilities.

These days any reasonably alert person with an automatic camera can get a sharp, well-exposed photo outdoors in bright daylight. Take the same camera indoors under low light and things can get ugly. It will struggle to focus quickly and accurately, especially if it’s equipped with an f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens. Even if you do manage to focus you’ll discover that the limited maximum aperture forces you to use slow shutter speeds, high ISOs, or both, and even then subject motion can be a problem. Anyone who’s ever tried to photograph an active child indoors at night with normal room lighting knows exactly what I mean.

Those of you who own fast primes needn’t feel smug. True, you can use faster shutter speeds and/or lower ISOs, but fast apertures often result in narrower depth-of-field, increased aberrations, and reduced image contrast, not to mention the possibility of focus-shift. Perfect focus can be elusive at best.

And then there’s the issue of white balance. Mixed lighting is the norm in most interior spaces these days. You’ll find tungsten lights in some fixtures and fluorescent lights in others. Even the flourescent lights may have different color balances, with some being greenish, some yellow, and others more cyan. Shooting raw or attempting a custom white balance won’t necessarily solve this problem because correcting for one light source often exaggerates the effects of the other.

Here's a classic example of mixed lighting. I corrected the white balance for the sign in the foreground and the server's flesh tones and decided not to worry about the sickly yellow background. This was shot at ISO 800, 1/90 second at f/2.0, which is roughly EV 5.5. The guitar pick shaped highlights in the upper-right corner are the result of light entering the lens at an oblique angle.

Electronic flash can come to your rescue. It’s bright and its daylight balanced. Then again, direct flash can result in photos that have that “mug shot” lighting effect we know so well. If you’re lucky there will be a white or neutral-colored surface nearby that you can bounce the flash off of for softer, more indirect light. If you’re not, the walls will be green or magenta or some other color cast that’s hard to remove even if you’re shooting raw.

Tripods? They’re great if you don’t mind carrying one around, have the time and space to set it up, and you’re shooting a relatively stationary subject. On the other hand, if any one of these things isn’t true, your tripod is likely to stay at home, in the car, or in the studio—anywhere other than attached to your camera.

The situation isn’t quite as hopeless as it seems. In fact, if you can master the art of shooting in the dark, shooting in broad daylight becomes a breeze. Here are a few practical tips for improving your keeper-to-delete ratio.

1. Go for slow and steady.

You’re going to need to pay close attention to your technique and camera settings. Make sure your shutter speed is one at which you’re capable of holding your camera steady, with or without image stabilization. If there’s anything nearby that you can use to help brace your camera, by all means use it. You should also wait for your subject to be either at rest or at the peak of action. Maintain a relaxed state of alert preparedness, let the picture come to you, and you might be surprised what you can catch.

2. Observe the direction and quality of light.

Unless there's literally no light—in which case you’ll have to add your own—there’s a continuous light source somewhere that’s creating highlights and shadows that clearly visible to the naked eye. So take a good look at them. Are the highlights where you want them? Is the background free of bright areas that compete for attention with your subject? Remember that highlights are where most viewers will look first, so try to make them count for something, even if you have to move yourself, your subject, or the light source to do it.

3. Know your camera’s capabilities and limitations.

For example, a camera that focuses perfectly in bright daylight may back-focus when the light level drops to EV 4 or lower—unless you’re using a lens with a maximum aperture of f/2.8 or faster and use the center AF sensor, in which case everything is fine. Similarly, your camera may produce great ISO 1600 images when you shoot raw but look horrible if you shoot JPEGs. The best way to discover a camera’s limitations to push it to the edge—low light, dark subject, high ISO—until you discover the point at which it falls off. Back off from there and you’ll know the just how far you can go. By the way, I suggest you base “acceptability” on a print that’s as large as you’re likely to produce. For some this will be 4x6 inches. For others it will be 11x17. In either case, an image that looks horrible at 100% on your display can look surprisingly good in a print.

4. Use the fastest lens you’ve got.

Even if you have to sacrifice image-stabilization to do it, the faster aperture will give your camera a lot more light to work with than a kit zoom that maxes out at f/5.6. You may also see a substantial improvement in focusing accuracy: many cameras have higher-precision sensors in the center of the screen that produce more accurate results with lenses of f/2.8 or faster.

5. Try manual focusing.

You may discover that you can focus more reliably in low light than your camera’s AF system can. If your camera is mounted on a tripod and you’re using an intermediate aperture, you don’t even have to look through the viewfinder. You can use the distance scale on the focusing ring (assuming your lens has both), guesstimate, and let depth-of-field mask any slight inaccuracies.

6. Be willing to tolerate less than perfect results.

It's extremely difficult to capture low light photos that are perfectly in focus and have perfect white balance, high resolution from center to edge, and all the other attributes of technical perfection. You'll have a lot more fun if you aim instead for emotional perfection. Capture the mood. Let motion blur work to your advantage. Emphasize the often fantastic colors of artificial lights. Focus on the process instead of the goal and you may discover you've taken some fantastic photos.

You can thank me later.

What a Difference a Curve Makes

This is what you get when you photograph a relatively low contrast subject under low contrast lighting, which in this case was open shade on a cloudy fall morning. Not very inspiring is it? Still, it has potential.

It's no secret among faithful readers of Shutterfinger that when it comes to image manipulations in Photoshop and Lightroom, I fall firmly into the "less is more" camp. That's not to say I never manipulate my images. I do. I just try not to make it obvious. I try to do it in a way that enhances the subject without drawing undue attention to the enhancements themselves. (But that's just me. There are other equally valid approaches to photography and Photoshop. I've picked mine, you're free to pick yours.)

That said, it occurred to me this morning that providing you with a comparison between one of my originals and how it would look post-manipulation might be enlightening. Aside from some minor cropping, sharpening, and white balance adjustment, the only significant change I made was to apply a classic "right-tilted S"  contrast curve. This curve darkens the shadows, lightens the highlights, and increases separation in the mid-tones. The result is presented below.

This is the same photo as the one above, but with more "snap" and tone separation. Notice how colors and tones that weren't apparent in the first photo are easy to see in the second?

You may or may not care for the photo itself, but there's little doubt that the second is more eye-catching than the first. It also serves as a reminder that first impressions can be deceiving. The difference between a dull photo and one you'd mount on your wall may be only a few minor adjustments away. The first trick is to know which ones are worth a little extra effort and which aren't; the second is to know what type of adjustment. That's what makes good photography an art and, in my humble opinion, so much fun.