Outside the Frame

Reticulation - my article on Lomography.com

2012-02-15T23:15:00.001-08:00

I've been writing articles lately for submission to Lomography.com. So far they have published 4, some of which are based on posts from this blog. Check out this article I wrote about how to reticulate black and white film, which makes the silver in film bunch up for unique grain patterns.

Experiments with Film: Reticulation - Lomography

-Kelly

Analogue Inventory

2012-01-22T02:51:00.001-08:00

In addition to being a functional art display, the wall in my bedroom helps me track how many silly toy cameras my collection has grown to.
I have also managed to amass more than 10 rolls of film. I once again have access to the COS darkroom for spring, so expect updates soon.
Excuse me while I check my ebay watch list and try to take apart a thrift store find...
Updates abound soon
Kelly

How to take photos in the snow - Q&A with a student

2012-01-19T12:45:00.000-08:00

One of my photography students wanted to know more about taking photos in the snow, so here is a Q&A with Hannah about photography in the snow.

Q: Do I use flash when I take snow photos?
A: Try not to, especially when the snow is still falling. The flash will typically make your camera and flash focus on the snowflakes, not the background. Here’s an example of why this doesn’t work:

Q: How do you keep your camera dry?
A: Take pictures from under an umbrella or out of your car window or under the eaves of your house.

Q: What are good things to take pictures of?
A: Portraits are perfect for snow. Snow reflects light and creates a great lighting situation for taking pictures of people. They're faces are well lit from above, below and all around. Landscapes are always good, but remember, the heavier it is snowing, the more that snow will obscure your photo - making it a little blurry (even without flash).

Good Luck!

Kelly

Teaching Photography

2012-01-17T14:35:00.001-08:00

Today I started my photography and digital imaging class at the school where I work. I found this today on Facebook as well. It seems fitting. Enjoy.

Ten lessons the arts teach

January 12th, 2012 by Kim Hermanson, Ph.D.

The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.
The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.
The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.
The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving, purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.
The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.
The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.
The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.
The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.
The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.
The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.

* Excerpted from Elliot Eisner, The Arts and the Creation of Mind, 2002, published by NAEA Publications.

-Kelly

Rollei Redbird

2012-01-16T17:46:00.001-08:00

I stumbled upon this film at Freestyle. It’s wound into the film canister backwards, so you shoot photos through the anti-halogen coating layer. Results: Even the bluest of skies turns red. Great silhouettes too.

Get some!

Kelly

Love updates?

2012-01-04T00:02:00.001-08:00

I have a Tumblr account for uploading and sharing experimental photos. Tutorials will still live here, but Tumblr is dedicated to alt photo eye candy.
KellySamuelson.Tumblr.com
Enjoy!
KS

Edit Out Breast Cancer

2011-10-17T13:11:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the first installment of Edit out Breast Cancer. This week’s photo was submitted by Heidi. She can view, download and use the web sized photo free, or contribute $25 to Passionately Pink for the Cure to get the full resolution file.

Original Photo:

Boosted colors, sharpness:

A moody black and white. Burned down the right side and lightened up the left side to provide even tones.

So, there you have it. Please email your sharp, well exposed photos to authenticallybeautifulphotography@hotmail.com

Kelly

Edit Out Breast Cancer

2011-09-19T22:27:00.001-07:00

If you follow my work, you may have noticed that breast cancer is my cause of choice. I have a sister, mother, and a large group of close girl friends I love so much. I want to find a cure before breast cancer effects any more of the women in my life or the lives of others.

I’ve been donating 5% of proceeds from photo shoots to breast cancer through Passionately Pink for the Cure. I also have organized a number of fundraisers. In addition to running another event this upcoming October and a special photo fundraiser for Passionately Pink (more on that soon!), I’m going to start a regular feature here and on my photography business's blog where I will edit viewer photos to raise awareness and funds for Passionately Pink for the Cure.

Here’s how it works - send your sharp, high resolution photos to authenticallybeautifulphotography@hotmail.com. I will edit them (for FREE), then post a 500px wide copy on this blog.

I will retouch the photo using all the fun tools and actions available to me in Photoshop and post the before and after shots.

If you sent the photo in, you will be free to download the blog sized file and use it online to your content. If you love the photo, I will sell the high-resolution version of the file for $25, all of which I will donate to Passionately Pink for the Cure. The high res file is great for websites and printing spectacular photos to display in your home.

Here’s an example of a fan photo sent in by Melanie that I retouched recently.

Now she has an amazing photo of her and her daughter to print and display in her home.

To participate, send your photos to authenticallybeautifulphotography@hotmail.com. I’ll be posting a new edit every Monday for your viewing and fundraising pleasure.

Thanks,

Kelly

Backlighting - Photo Challenge and a Peek at Post-Processing

2011-09-09T08:45:00.001-07:00

Over at Rock the Shot (www.rocktheshotforum.com), they’re having their September Photo Challenge - Backlighting. One of the sponsors is also Oh So Posh Photography who makes amazing actions. So, I thought I’d share a photo I processed using Moonlight from the Bohemian Symphony Collection by Oh So Posh.

This was from a maternity shoot I shot a long time ago. The light coming into this covered bridge was so pretty and the way it backlit her hair looked so angelic.
I didn’t do a whole lot to this in Photoshop. As always, I do some clone stamping to smooth skin imperfections and sharpened the eyes just slightly so they would pop against the haziness of the photo. I used a little dodging on this one to lighten her face. Finally, I ran moonlight from the Bohemian Symphony collection to warm up the photo a little.
I love how hazy, glowy and warm she looks in the final photo. What do you think?
Kelly

More Night Photography

2011-09-06T23:00:00.001-07:00

There are so many interesting things to photograph at night. Stars, lightening, and a multitude of interesting things that can be seen during the day, but have an entirely different look at night. Here are a series of shots I took in the backyard the other night during a lightening storm, along with the how to and some exposure guides.

First things first, I took nearly all the landscape shots at ISO 400, F4.5 for 30 seconds. The timing worked well with both the city lights and the lightening strikes (which were far away). Some shots are brighter than others because there were more strikes, some are darker. Lightening has changing lighting conditions, so it’s hit or miss.

You can take 2 approaches to this. Shoot on bulb and leave the shutter open until the lightening strikes, then close it again - OR - expose for the ambient light and take enough shots to get a few well lit stormy scenes. I used the second technique. If your sky-scape will be entirely filled with lightening (example, you’re closer to the storm or have a really cool telephoto lens), I suggest the first technique.

The moon was a different story. Still at ISO 400, but at f36 for 1/2 second. The moon is very bright, so to catch details and not a large starburst-flare-light blur, use a small aperture and shorter exposure.

However, if you want to blur out the moon and take night shots that simulate daylight, open the aperture back up and go back to a longer exposure. ISO 400, f3.5 for 30 seconds. The shadows and window light have an interesting almost creepy effect. You could take this shot in the day, but it wouldn’t be half as fun.

This last strange shot is of me walking around with my cell phone using a flashing lights app on my droid. Walk around for 30 seconds with any light to get this cool trail effect in long exposures.

So, that’s about it. Grab a tripod and a cable release for your DSLR and experiment. There are so many neat things lurking in the dark for you.

Kelly

Product Photography for Artists

2011-05-30T14:50:00.001-07:00

If you missed my SAC Business of Art Class, or even better - if you were in the class and were looking for more information, I’m uploading a copy of the PowerPoint from the class for your reference.

Also, please check out the “Photography Basics” tag for more tutorials.

View PDF file here:

http://www.klsphotography.com/files/11227/productphotography.pdf

-Kelly

Is that a camera?

2011-05-05T16:55:00.001-07:00

Is it digital? Is that made by Fisher Price? Wait, it shoots film?

Or my personal favorite…

What are you doing?

There is something special and fun about shooting toy cameras. First, nobody gets them. And the people who do, LOVE IT. I’ve been working on a toy camera exclusive project and I’ve heard so many “OMG, is that a Diana? Can I hold it. I have to get one of these!”

Or, there are the people who are around when I’m taking a pinhole photo that are generally confused (and a little nosy) and want to know what you’re doing – only to be confused further when you say, “I’m taking a picture. That’s a camera.” I know what they’re thinking… “that box/paint can/lifesavers tin/insert random object is a camera? Okay, I’m just going to walk away slow.”

But my best advice is to take it all in stride. Or educate people. I found a lot of people were fairly astonished to know that I spent $70 on a multi-colored Holga. “But, why, isn’t it just plastic?” Well, yeah, but it’s the most amazing plastic I can possibly get my hands on.

I love it. If you see me on the street with a toy camera, feel free to ask “Is that a camera?” I’ll tell you all about it!

Kelly

Cyanotypes

2011-04-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

Cyanotypes are an interesting, very very old photographic process. They’re super accessible for people who don’t have a darkroom. All you need is a UV light source (PS, the sun counts), a negative and water.

Step one, take a nifty looking photo with fairly high contrast and convert it to black and white in a photo editing program. Then invert the image to create a negative. Or you could use a real negative. Or you could do a Rayogram, which I’ll save for another time.

Print it out. Normal printer paper works fine. Printable overhead transparency paper works better. Cut out your negative.

Obtain a light source. The sun is a great one, but when it’s cloudy (or night) or rainy, sometimes it’s nice to move the process inside. I found out that CFL light bulbs leak UV light (in safe amounts, according to various websites). The less coated or covered the bulb, the better. I went with the raw spiral kind (packaging shown below).

Finally, obtain some cyanotype sensitized material. You can go the easy route and by a Sunprint Kit like I did. They come in 4” and 12” size squares and include a piece of plexiglass.

While you are not under a UV light source, take a piece of paper out and layer as follows:

Flat surface, cyanotype paper (blue side up), negative, plexiglass.

Expose to your light source. With the CFL bulb, it was between 15-30 min. The nice thing about these is as they expose, the white parts of the negative turn white on the paper. When your exposure is done, you will have a negative image on your paper.

Wash it under normal tap water, and a positive print will magically appear. Lay it flat to dry.

As each print dries, the blue color will darken.

All done. Now I’ve converted an Instragram style cell phone pic to an age old analog print. Plus, it’s a picture of film which just sweetens the whole thing for me.

That was simple, and addictive. I’m out of transparency paper or I’d still be making prints.

Kelly

Instant Analog

2011-04-24T08:01:00.000-07:00

There are some tough techniques to pull of well in analog photography. Long exposures, double exposures, double flashes with gels. You can sometimes test these with a digital camera, but to be 100% honest, your Holga or Diana will never act like your DSLR. They are super unpredictable and weird. My trick for taking less shots and getting the outcome I want? I test with my Diana’s instant film back.

Long exposure:

Double exposure:

Instant results. So, each pack has 10 frames of instant film. Sometimes I just like to take neat little photos. But sometimes, I use it to test an idea before I put in 120 film. For example:

Instant film test image:

Film printed image from negative:

It’s my analog answer to instant gratification.

For more info on the Diana Instant Back, check out an older post here.

Kelly

Choosing Film

2011-04-20T01:35:00.001-07:00

Buying film can be intimidating if you’re not familiar with the process. C-41, black and white, C-41 black and white, infrared, 35mm or 120…

Whatever your film needs, the first step is to buy from Freestyle Photo. They are trying to support analog photography and will continue to make film products until they go broke! Support Freestyle who supports keeping film alive!

Whether you buy 120 or 35 will depend on your camera - that should be pretty straight forward. Picking a film processing type will be a different thing.

Black and white professional films (I heart Kodak Tri-X, which isn’t shown here because I shot all of it) need to either be processed by hand using black and white developing chemicals or taken to/sent to a lab that has the chemicals. In Siskiyou County, you have a couple places in Medford, Crown Camera in Redding or you can send away to Photoworks in SF, who doesn’t charge very much to process film.

Black and white film also varies in price, just like black and white darkroom paper. It has to do with the amount of silver in it. Images are created using silver halide, and since silver is spendy, more silver = better film = more money.

On a totally unrelated note, this is why I love Ilford Warmtone paper even though it’s more than a dollar a sheet.

Next, we have C41 process film. This is basic color film processing. They happen to make black and white film that can be processed in C41 chemicals, but most of the prints will have a tint and you can’t hand print from them in a black and white darkroom. C41 processing is simple. Drop it off at Rite Aid, Crown Camera or (if you have time) send it away to Photoworks. Rite Aid sometimes abuses my film, so a professional lab is preferable.

Infrared film works just like black and white film, only you pre-soak it in water. Oh, and it records a totally different spectrum of light, has to be loaded and unloaded in total darkness and requires an R72 filter to get those neat IR effects.

Weird film is weird. So weird, I couldn’t get a clear shot of it. Rollei, Holga and Lomography make some great stuff. Just follow the directions.

Finally, if you’re not cross processing, slide film is processed in E6 chemicals and gives you a positive slide (instead of a negative). This is one to send to Photoworks as well.

That’s about it. Finding a film you love has a lot to do with personal taste. I like Tri-X because I like grain, but it’s not for everyone. The reason I have all these film types is because I intend to shoot all of them and compare and understand them all. Look for more on that in… a long time… there’s a lot of film there!

Why Printing is Greater Than Scanning

2011-04-17T17:02:00.001-07:00

I have a film scanner. It’s high tech and fancy. It digitizes my film, but we’re still at a point in technology where I don’t think anything replicates film the way I’d like it to… yet.

Just for comparison, here is the same photo,

Scanned as film:

Printed by Hand and Photographed:

The saturation, details and vignetting I could pull out in the print lab, my lovely scanner knows not these things. If you ignore the artifacts from the picture of the print (foggy in the black area up top), it’s just a better rendering of a picture. Nailed the contrast, added the tone I wanted to the greens.

Yay for hand printing.

Kelly

Cross Processing

2011-03-27T13:36:00.001-07:00

Everyone with an iphone or a Droid with a funky camera phone app has probably heard of Cross Processing (aka X-Pro) and knows the photos come out greenish/yellowish/bluish depending on the app. But did you know there is a whole film developing process behind cross processing that created the inspiration behind the apps?

Cross Processing is when you take color slide film (usually a positive film that is developed in E6 chemicals) and develop it in color negative developers (your normal negative film is developed in C41 chemicals) or visa versa. I recently bought slide film with this specific intention.

First, I want to point out that whatever chemicals you use to develop will dictate whether the film comes back as negatives or positives.

Second, the X-pro slide film comes back a weird color. I knew even before I got this in the darkroom that things were going to be interesting… Left, normal negative. Right, X-pro slide film.

I processed these by adding a lot of yellow to the color filter pack (which removes yellow from the print), but you can see how green these are.

Just for comparison, I took a “cross processed” photo with the Vignette app on my phone.

Hmmm… well, that’s neat. It’s missing the grain and texture of the film. But I still don’t think digital is anywhere close to being on the same level as film as far as printing and effects. I love the cell phone apps, and they’re plenty cute, but if you like the look I highly suggest shooting a roll of film and having it cross processed at your local photo lab. There is nothing like it.

Kelly

Something to play with

2011-03-16T23:45:00.001-07:00

So, this is entirely random and experimental, but I think there is somewhere interesting to go with this. I like to play with slow sync flash, it has interesting results - especially with motion or crazy background lights. I’m still planning on writing a whole tutorial about this, first curtain, second curtain, etc. For now, here’s an odd result I found and wasn’t expecting from slow sync flash…

I really want to write about exactly why I think this happened, but this isn’t that kind of post. This is about asking YOU to help me figure out the effect and use some of the theories to play with this effect. I think what makes an effect efficient is when you can replicate it, so it’s time to figure out the mechanism behind this happy accident!

Note: All of these are SOOC, straight out of camera, no editing, nothing.

Okay, manual settings… all of these shots are f14, 1/2, ISO 800, on camera flash, tungsten lighting, auto WB (which I’m now wishing I had been specific about).

Shot 1. I held really still. This is a fairly typical slow sync flash shot. Just putting it up for comparison.

Shot 2 and 3, after the flash fired, I violently shook and swirled the camera all over the place for the remainder of the exposure. The backdrops for both shots were mostly blank walls, minimal tungsten lighting from behind me.

So, everything came out a little vintage looking. Faded colors, yellowish tone.

Theories:

- The faded colors are because of the transparency of having the extra exposure.
- The clearness of the effect was because the background was fairly blank (white walls).
- The yellow tone is because of the blending light temperatures in the Auto WB (it could have been reading for only the flash)
- The short exposure only allowed in a small amount of weirdness…
- My camera was jealous of my using the Retro Camera app for most of my 365 project lately and decided it could be vintage too.

Well, maybe not that last one.

Alright, photography community, please weigh in with your thoughts or expertise! I plan on playing with this in more scenarios and with different subjects to see how it plays out. Happy shooting!

Kelly

Side lighting

2011-03-09T00:56:00.001-08:00

I wrote a post about this about a year ago, but I decided to take down the original post so I could go back and tackle this subject again.

I really love side lighting. It’s really wonderful for shooting indoors in black and white and creating a wonderful, moody photo.

So much of how your photo’s mood is seen has to do with lighting. I think side lighting can be somber, pensive, quiet and deeply emotional.

This shot takes an interesting turn on child portraiture. She’s cute as a doll, but it’s a sweet, quiet, pensive shot - which I feel comes from the shadows and contrast.

Same idea, different day. I shot with the light of a glass door between her and I, then bumped the contrast even more in post processing.

The moodiness the light lends puts her deep in thought.

This also reads as a somber mood to me, even though the light is more behind him than to the side.

So, what do we take out of all this? First, use natural light. Second, break all the rules for using light! Put the light behind your subject, next to it. Experiment. Photography isn’t a science, it’s an art and you will need to break rules and experiment to find your personal style.

Kelly

A quick color printing guide

2011-03-03T14:47:00.001-08:00

James Gilmore sometimes calls me the Queen of the Color Darkroom. It’s a smelly, bleachy kingdom, but I’m happy to rule over it because I LOVE color photo printing. There are plenty of photographers out there with black and white darkrooms, but for not a lot more effort, you could be creating color prints. Think about what you could do with a Holga and a little cross processing or expired film!

First, make your life easy and have your color film developed by someone else. This is a hard one for me since I sit in the pitch black reeling film and stand at a sink agitating tanks for days on end with my black and white. I know to push Tri-X and to pre-wet my film. So if I can let go and drop my film off at a lab, so can you.

Recommended:

-Crown Camera in Redding for 120 if you’re local. Ask for process only and make sure they do it in house and you can get it back in a day or two.

-Any Rite Aid or 1 hour photo for 35mm. It’s fast, it’s cheap. Process only!

-Mail your film to Photoworks in SF. If you call, they’ll even send you the padded mailing envelopes to send it in, prepaid postage and all. http://www.photoworkssf.com/services-and-rates/mail-us-your-film

Now, let’s head to a color darkroom!

You really only need a couple things in addition to your black and white darkroom setup.

-A color enlarger (if you’re clever, you can turn off the filter packs on these and print black and white with it as well, great multi-use piece of equipment).
-A color print processor (this can be tricky, but some hobby processors sell for relatively cheap and they keep the chemicals at the right temperature – which is what makes color about 20% more difficult that black and white as far as darkroom setup)
-Color print safelights. I’d like to point out that these don’t actually provide a lot of light, so also grab some glow in the dark tape to keep yourself from running into stuff.

Don’t want to hassle all that? Take Art 11b from James Gilmore at College of the Siskiyous, it’s all set up for you.

Here we go… put your negative into an enlarger. Fun fact: I have a similar Omega color enlarger at my house. It’s in the garage until summer when it’s warm enough to put a darkroom in our work shed.

Set up an easel. Turn off the lights and focus your print and all that fancy stuff. I’m printing something square here, thus the square setup on the easel.

Now we need to set our exposure time and color filter packs. You’ll be adjusting your dye packs to achieve color balance while also adjusting exposure. It’s super fun.

If you have a nice printing paper, like Kodak Supra Endura, they list some starting points for color balance – as each type of paper is slightly different.

Okay, now run a test print and put it in the processor. Isn’t that the cutest little processor? Don’t bump it though!!!

Here’s a print. Wait til it’s dry. Using the color correction filters from the last post, see what color adjustments you need to make. This print is too yellow, so I’m going to ADD 10 yellow to my color filter pack. It’s backwards, but that’s how it works.

Finally, you have a print. This is one of my Diana with gel flash and expired film weird prints. I love ‘em. I’m going to run off about 10 more and sell them at the Dunsmuir Co-Op Gallery opening March 26th!

Here are 2 more that I’m in love with – but they got thrown in a display case at the COS art department before I could photograph them.

And that’s all there is to it. It’s pretty easy, give it a try. If you’re at COS, I’ll even come help you – since I’m the queen and all. *winks*

Kelly

Using Color Print Filters for Digital Editing

2011-02-24T12:17:00.001-08:00

In my years of shooting film, I’ve stumbled across some great gadgets built for film photography that can be used in digital photography. My color correction filter pack is one of them.

They come in a whole pack with both CMY and RGB filters, each with their own gradient. The purpose of these was originally to help with color correction in a darkroom (color darkroom printing post coming soon, so you’ll see what I mean).

Example, here’s a color print I hand processed in my color darkroom. I love it, and if you follow my color film photography you know I often add a color cast to photos. In this case, I added a hint of blue.

These are simple enough to use. Pick the color that is opposite to the color you think you’ve made a mistake with (so for blue cast, I’d grab yellow). Look through the various viewing windows until the colors look right to you, then read the box below to see how to correct this in a darkroom enlarger.

Here’s when we view the photo through a yellow filter. The blue cast is corrected.

Here’s when we look through a magenta filter. It’s pretty easy to tell that we don’t need any additional magenta in this photo.

So, that’s pretty much it for film. Just keep looking through squares until it looks right, make the suggested adjustments and run your next print through.

Now, how can we apply this to digital? Here’s a SOOC shot I took at a wedding. It has a cyan/blue cast that I don’t like. Let’s use the filters and see what could work better.

I held the yellow filter card up to the screen and we can see that the middle filter is the closest to correcting the color. The left is too yellow, and the right is too blue.

So, how is this more useful that just using Photoshop tools? Sometimes it’s not. The white balance auto-correct in camera raw works well a lot of the time, and you can eye your colors using a lot of the color correction tools built in. Why this is handy is because camera raw doesn’t always get a perfect white balance. Also, this gives you a starting guide with color correction without having to wait for actions to process or having to use the history button.

The only drawback I’ve found is that color correction units (which the cards use) don’t currently translate to Photoshop CS4. While doing a quick Google search, I found there are plug-ins you can get which will translate color correction units to Photoshop. In the meantime, I think this at least provides us with a shortcut and an idea of where we’re going.

Happy editing!

Kelly

Want to master your exposure?

2011-02-18T01:52:00.001-08:00

Here's a touch of reality for people who are just learning photography. I apologize if I sound strict, but give it some consideration and don't be discouraged. I've written a great beginner photography guide and I'm available to answer questions via email or in the comments section of any post.

The digital age has many advantages, but also a lot of technology that makes for lazy photographers. I hear so, so often how someone would prefer to do something because it’s easier or faster. How can you expect to master any art by doing what is easiest and fastest? You can’t.

One reason I’m handy with a TTL light meter and can nail exposure and focus most of the time is because I started shooting film on old manual cameras. I don’t like digging out photos in Photoshop, I’d rather be outside with a camera than inside with the computer!

Imagine this for a minute, put your camera in Manual mode, turn off the auto focus and the LCD screen. Oh, and also, put in a really small memory card and shoot in raw so you only have about 30 shots. All of a sudden, you’re really thinking for every shot. You’re looking at the light meter, you’re double checking your focus, you’re being careful with composition.

In film, you’re limited to the number of exposures on a strip of film. Want to shoot 35mm? You have 24-36 shots. Switch to medium format, and you’re stuck with 12-15 shots. Get any larger than that and you could have only 1 or 2 frames to shoot. Oh, and did I mention that a roll of film costs upwards of $4-5 for those 12 shots. Or that sheet film is up to $1 a shot? I bet you’re not firing off anything without some thought at $1 a shot.

Now, stop imagining and actual try some of this. Grab a film camera. Change all those settings on your DSLR and forget the delete button exists.

Pushing yourself to get the right shot on the first try will make you a more efficient, intuitive and eventually, successful photographer.

To purchase film, I recommend Freestyle Photo. Film is a dying art, and Freestyle is dedicated to keeping it in production - often creating product lines to replace discontinued lines from Kodak or Polaroid. Please support them!

Kelly

Feel Like Dissecting a Holga?

2011-02-08T04:31:00.001-08:00

Me too. So I did. Then I tinkered. Then I spent a half hour trying to fix what my tinkering damaged…

Some details:

Remember when I told you Holga really only had one aperture, around f13. Well, I made my Holga have 2 apertures. Around f7 and f12.

Step 1: Remove the lens. Use that great tutorial I posted here a while back. See that black ring on the desk, I popped it off the lens with a pen. It was giving me a small aperture, so we took it off.

I went one step further and shaved some of the plastic down. Don’t take it too far! See that square in the shutter assembly in the back on the camera? Don’t make your aperture any bigger than that.

Oooh, lots of light now.

Measure it. Divide the focal length (60mm for Holga) by the diameter of the circle. That’s how you find your f-stop. Write it on the camera with a sharpie once you know it, it’s handy.

Next, I decided that I wanted 2 f-stops. So I took the thing apart. So, in a nutshell – here’s why Holga only has one aperture. It’s because the swing arm that comes over the shutter when you set it to sunny is just a big square hole that is bigger than your existing aperture. It’s not blocking any more light. So, all we need to do is attach something that is smaller than the aperture on the lens.

My solution was to glue on the ring I just took off the lens in step 1.

So, take that aperture swing bar out, and glue on your new aperture ring. I painted around the corners with black nail polish to cut down on light leaks. Then I sanded the thing to make it fairly flat.

Put the camera back together.

Tips:

If you don’t mutilate the ring when you remove it in step 1, it’s far easier to put back on.

Try to get the new aperture as flat as possible. It wasn’t meant to take up more room in the shutter mechanism and it will stick sometimes.

Another way to avoid sticking is to not screw the shutter assembly together quite as tight. Having a little slack lets the arm swing freely.

If you’ve set up your lens so it screws on and off, you should be able to free a stuck arm by removing the lens and pushing the arm with a pen.

Be really diligent about keeping those yellow wires attached unless you don’t care if your hot shoe works. I taped my wires in and still had to re-do it 12 times.

Good luck!

Shasta Betty

Panoramic Printing

2011-01-30T02:27:00.001-08:00

I love big photographic prints. LOVE them. I also happen to love really small photographic prints. So, either 4x5 and under or 11x14 and over.

I’ve also learned from a photographer friend and mentor of mine, that every photo has ONE size. So, you see that great photo of yours that you want to offer 8x10 or 11x14 prints of? Pick one. You can’t have both! Well, technically you can, but you shouldn’t. I printed a beautiful 8x8 print from my Diana mini… looked at it, held it way back and said “Yep, this need to be a 6x6… or even a 4x4”. That’s just life. I’ve also printed shots done on 35mm from my Holga on 8x10 paper, and liked them. Then after said photographer friend and mentor looked at them, he said “Make them huge.” Once they were 11x14, there was no going back. Sorry for the tangent, long story short: Each photo has ONE size it should be printed in. Try a couple versions and figure it out.

Currently, I want to print this:

Click on the photo, it’ll open in a new window so you can see the whole thing.

I took this panorama North of Weed and stitched it all together, ran some other photo enhancing things in Photoshop (it’s not cheating if you can do all the same stuff in a darkroom), and gave it a size. This happens to be a 12x60” photo. That’s right, a foot tall and five feet wide. That’s it’s size.

Now, I have to figure out where to print it! I want a canvas wrap, because I wouldn’t even know where to get a 12x60 frame. I’m going to attempt to go local if I can, but I’m still doing the starving artist thing – so if someone can suggest some great and not too expensive print labs for canvas, I would appreciate it.

Shasta Betty

Want a Fisheye Lens?

2011-01-26T02:08:00.001-08:00

But don’t want to pay a lot for it? Try a fisheye adaptor. I have one for my Holga, and I wanted to see what else it could do.

Hmmm…

What if I hold it up to my DSLR lens?

That’s kind neat… but I think the lens is too big and the attachment is too small. The fall off of the focus is rather nifty, and it all looks nice and low tech. Maybe I’d rather make an adapter using one of those door peep holes… Or make this a permanent adapter… I’m just not falling in love yet.

What else?

We might be on to something here. The fisheye lens fits right up close with the lens of the camera without the attachment sleeve getting in the way.

There we go!

Now lets see if I can hold this thing without putting my fingers in the frame.

Maybe we should use a piece or two of electrical tape instead.

This is fun. Let’s see if we can buy more of these.

Between Freestyle, Urban Outfitters, Photojojo and the Lomography Store, I’ll never be bored again.

Shasta Betty

Stereo Pinhole

2011-01-21T02:17:00.001-08:00

Though not technically stereo, because it’s not lined up to shoot 3D, I did make a pinhole camera that has 2 holes… meaning 2 overlapping images.

You can start with almost anything that is light tight. Paint can, wood box, old soda can, matchbox… or this lovely Life Savers tin we got for Christmas.

I started by using E6000 to glue a tripod nut onto the bottom. If you haul your tripod into any hardware store and go to the loose nut aisle, they’ll help you find the right size.

I used a clear ruler to line up where I wanted the holes to be.

Then I drew it out and placed blue marks where each drill hole would go.

I made 2 matching pinholes, using this method, and taped them in.

Then made 2 shutters using the lining material from darkroom photo paper.

Okay, this is the cutest camera ever. Just sayin’.

I went outside with it and set it on the spare tire on the back of my Wrangler and took a shot using darkroom paper. With this specific camera, it was about 20 seconds shooting into the setting sun.

Here’s my negative, straight out of the darkroom print lab.

And the corresponding positive after inverting it digitally.

The distortion with this camera is insane. I have the paper curved all the way around the back so you can see in this shot some of the neatest things about pinholes.

1 – they are really wide angle. In this shot you see both the tread from my tire and the trees above my car.

2 – infinite depth of field. The tread is in focus. The trees way off are in focus.

3 – If your camera has a curved back – such as with a paintcan – you get interesting distortion toward the edges.

Finally, With this particular camera, there is a double image. You see the cars, tread, trees all appear twice, overlapping in the middle.

Are you doing this yet? You should be doing this. Pinhole is the camera at it’s most basic! For more pinhole resources, please visit www.jamesgilmore.net – both his galleries of pinholes and his blog which links to more pinhole resources.

Shasta Betty

Night Photography–Using Flash

2011-01-20T03:19:00.001-08:00

There are a couple different fun ways to use flash or lighting in night photography. First, there is light painting. Then, there there is slow sync flash. Finally, there is the creativity of multiple flash.

Slow sync flash, which is easiest to shoot in Aperture Priority mode, leaves the shutter open long enough to expose for a dimly lit background while using the flash to illuminate your subject in the foreground. Depending on how light or dim the background is, use a tripod.

f1.8, 1/15th of a second. This I was able to shoot handheld.

Here’s an example of what NOT to do. I should have used a tripod and didn’t.

f1.8, 1/2 second. If I had used a tripod, my lovely friend Amber would be sharp and without blur in this shot. Live and learn. And, occasionally, if you’re really lucky – you’ll meet someone who will do the living just so you can learn. Aren’t I nice?

Another way to use a flash is to fire it multiple times in one exposure. I did that back here to get the double exposure of the sewing machine. Another option is to put the camera on Bulb on a tripod and fire your flash manually multiple times.

What you get is a ghost of your subject. Here’s my sister being a creeper while I played with this a couple years ago.

21 seconds at f9. The entire scene is lit by multiple flashes. Moving her makes her all ghost-y.

29 seconds at f10. We learned that the closer she was to the flash, the less transparent she was. What you set your f-stop to will depend on how many times you want to flash in a particular shot. Around f10 I could get in about 5 flashes and have the right exposure.

There’s no great formula for this. Everything will depend on your flash output, the space you’re using, f-stop, aperture, how many ghost people you want per shot… the key here is to experiment. A lot. This is a project I recommend testing on digital. Or bracketing on film. Like, major bracketing. I mean, shoot a whole roll playing around.

So, I hope that I gave you some good information, but this really just scratches the surface on the creative things you can do and how different flash settings will affect things – such as motion. I'd really like to revisit this as soon as I have some good test shots. No promises on when, just know it will happen!

Next, a couple alternative photographic tutorials. Get ready to explore your inner Holga and Pinhole lover. It will be fun!

Shasta Betty

Night Photography–Part 2–Star Trails

2011-01-17T23:04:00.001-08:00

Star trails are my absolute, without a doubt, favorite part of night photography. They look pretty stationary when you stare up at them, but they actually move in a huge swirl across the sky over time. Take a peek:

The guide I have says 2 hours in no moonlight at f5.6, ISO 100.

Here’s my two cents, which you can ignore or not. Stars are constantly moving. It’s not like you’re going to overexpose them, because even within 30 seconds they’re in another part of the sky. Throw your aperture wide open so your star trails are as bright as possible and either A) expose for whatever your foreground subject is or B) Expose all night… or until you get too cold to stand out there.

Here’s why – the longer exposure the more star trails. If you want to have longer star trails, but your foreground is blown out, then you can turn your aperture down. Or your ISO. You’ll have slightly dimmer, longer star trails. But they’ll still be pretty.

Some examples (I want to point out that it was partly cloudy that night, but because the clouds moved quickly, the photo ends up with an interesting haze).

ISO 400, f4, 5 minutes

ISO 200, f4, 10 minutes

The exposures are exactly the same, but the star trails are longer.

ISO 400, f4, 11 minutes. Another hazy sky, which reflects brown instead of blue.

ISO 200, f16, 36 minutes. I do this with Mt. Shasta a lot… sorry.

So, there’s another way to do star trails that I just started using and kind of like. You need a camera with 30 second exposures and continuous shooting mode. You very definitely need a tripod. You also need a free exe file called Star Trails. It’s available for download on the creator’s website.

You take a series of 30 second exposures continuously, using a remote, for as long as you want. Then the program stitches the results together.

The main reason I love this is because you get the same results are a 2 hour exposure, but if you accidentally shoot for 4 hours and your photo is too light, you just take out enough photos until the exposure looks good. It’s stacking each photo as a layer (which would take you 400 hours in photoshop), then giving you the output.

Here’s one I shot the other night of star trails through the trees in our back yard.

I let it go for about 2 hours before my camera battery died. Oops. There’s another tip – fresh batteries and empty memory cards. Especially if you’re doing the star trails program. 30sec exposures for 2 hours equals 240 pictures!

About 3 minutes of letting the program run, and I have this shot. Lovely.

Tomorrow: How to use a flash in your night photography to capture people!

Shasta Betty

Night Photography–Part 1

2011-01-16T17:36:00.001-08:00

I love night photography. Not so much during winter months, because it’s awfully cold out there, but still. There are some weird pretty things you can do at night that you just can’t do during the day.

For example, photograph star trails.

Or see how blue the sky can be at night.

Or… okay, there are a lot of ORs, let’s learn how to do this.

You’re going to need some equipment. First, a tripod is highly recommended. Not that I haven’t set my camera on my car or the sidewalk or a railing at one point in my life because I had to, but it’s limiting.

Here’s a shot I took sitting on the top of my husband’s car. It was an impromptu thing, and it’s with my point and shoot. That big bright thing is the moon. That black stuff all across the bottom is a Yaris. Those streaky things are stars and that is Mt Shasta.

Things to look for in a tripod – a screw or hook on the bottom that you can use to hook weighted bags too. This keeps your tripod much much steadier, especially if there is any wind. A little breeze can seriously ruin a photo.

Second, unless you want to stand around for an hour holding your shutter button without moving the camera at all, you’re going to want a cable release. There are different kinds for different cameras and even some that work via remote control. I will say, though, the more electronics you shove into a cable release, the more likely the batteries will get too cold and render the thing entirely useless.

You might also want a flash for certain types of night photography. Try to get one with a manual trigger.

Finally, you need a camera that lets you adjust the shutter speed and preferably has Bulb. Most cameras will go up to 30 seconds, but some of these photos can last hours and hours.

First, some notes on night photography in general:

Your auto focus almost always isn’t going to work. Unless your subject is close. Sorry ya’ll.

There is a huge amount of experimentation in night photography. You should bracket your shots. If you shoot film, you should double bracket your shots. Then do it again. And once more. With digital, zoom in on your LCD to check shots. Then bracket as well.

Don’t get frustrated. It takes a lot of really great photographers a lot of effort to get great night shots. There are so many things that can go wrong. Just keep at it and you’ll end up with something cool one day. Promise.

Night photography can be noisy. Try to shoot at your lowest ISO. Turn on noise reduction, but turn off your Image Stabilization or VR.

Different cameras handle night photography better than others. Not that you shouldn’t do it, just be warned and be ready to use Photoshop.

I took these with my Canon Powershot because I wasn’t expecting to take them… they just happened and that’s what I had. They’re nice and all, just noisy.

Again, both of these are no tripod. Above was shot from a car dashboard, below off the top of the Yaris again.

My Canon 50D does much better in low light. It does 100x better than my Powershot and 50x better than my old Rebel. You always wondered why that camera was so much more expensive even though there are Rebels that have similar megapixels and blah blah blah. It’s because the sensor is better.

Not that you can’t do this with a Rebel, just expect it to be noisier. I’ll say it again, STILL TRY THIS! If you’re handy with Photoshop, you can fix some noise.

Alright, let’s look at some lighting scenarios. I have a guide cheat sheet from photography class back in the day, so here’s what it says and how it translates to these photos. All the guides assume you are shooting ISO 100 at f5.6. If you read my post the other day about stops, you know how to calculate shifts…

City Lights – Try 1/4 second

ISO 100, f3.5, 1/2 second.

ISO 100, f3.5, 1 second

You’ll notice both of these are slower than the recommendation. That’s why you have to bracket!

ISO 100, f4.5, 30 seconds

You can also control the light by over-exposing to get bigger light streaks and even lens flare.

ISO 100, f4.5, 30 seconds

Freeway Lights – Try 4 seconds

This also depends a lot of how much traffic there is on the freeway. More cars = more light = less time.

ISO 100, f4.5, 30 seconds

Subject Lit by Full Moon – 8 minutes

ISO 200, f16, 30 minutes

I closed my aperture on this full moon lit shot of Mt. Shasta so I could catch longer star trails without overexposing the mountain.

Here’s another version shot at ISO 200, f8 for 10 minutes. You’ll notice the open aperture made the star trails and sky brighter, but the mountain is still exposed the same amount.

So, there are some starting points for you to try. Tomorrow we’ll talk about a couple ways to photograph star trails! Then later… using your flash to get ghost images.

Shasta Betty

Your Lomo Settings

2011-01-15T18:03:00.001-08:00

Note: This is the third post today, please don’t forget to scroll down and see what else is new.

Sunny and Cloudy. N and B. Pictures of little people on your Holga?

Now that we know something about metering, wouldn’t it be nice to tie that in when using a Holga or Diana?

First, Holgas. Here’s what the pictures on your focusing ring mean.

Now, forget your cloudy or sunny settings. Seriously, unless you’ve modified the camera or had someone do it, you have ONE F-STOP that is approximately f/13.

You do, however, usually have 2 shutter speeds. B and N. N is around 1/100th of a second. B stands for Bulb and will stay open as long as you want.

It’s okay, put in the film with an ISO that will work for you. Film speed is your friend.

Dianas.

These are a little more precise. First, your focusing ring has distances listed instead of pictures.

On your aperture ring for the Diana F+, the cloudy aperture is f11, partly cloudy is f16 and sunny is f22. The pinhole is approximately f150. For the Diana Mini, the cloudy aperture is f8, sunny is f11.

Just remember, all the apertures on these are approximate and vary. If you are really curious, tear the thing open and measure the diameter to calculate your f-stop. Having opened my Holga twice and accidentally disconnected the wiring that controls the flash twice and having to go back in and rewire twice, I won’t be doing this anytime soon.

The shutter speed is approximately 1/60th of a second on N, and Bulb on B.

How to Use Bulb

Remember, Bulb will stay open as long as you press the shutter. So here are some handy lomo tools to go with your bulb settings.

The Diana F+ has a little plastic piece attached to the strap. Once you’ve pressed the shutter, you put the end of this into the slit where the shutter button is, above the button. This should lock the button down. It’s a little clumsy, but they sell a cable release collar that can make it less clumsy.

Holga also has a cable release collar.

The Diana Mini reigns supreme in my eyes, by having a built in cable release attachment. Just screw a traditional cable release cord in.

Alright… that was educational. I meant to start my night photography series today and got sidetracked… Oops. I just wanted to make sure you had all the relevant background information. I fully plan on doing some night photography with my Holga or Dianas! Hope you will too!

See you tomorrow

Shasta Betty

Sunny 16 rule

2011-01-15T17:28:00.001-08:00

As a follow-up to my series on the Basics of Manual settings, here’s a quick and awesome tool for reading light without a meter. On a sunny day, in direct sunlight, at f16: Your shutter speed will be the reciprocal of your film speed.

ISO 100 = f16 at 1/100th. ISO 400 = f16 at /400th.

You can easily extrapolate on the Sunny 16 rule. If you’re using a pinhole or a Holga with a fixed aperture, just work from Sunny 16 out. Here’s other apertures that use the film speed/ISO rule of Sunny 16.

f/22
Snow/Sand
f/16
Sunny
f/11
Slight Overcast
f/8
Overcast
f/5.6
Heavy Overcast
f/4
Open Shade/Sunset

Pretty useful for analog photography. Next… a Lomography post!

Shasta Betty

Film Masks

2011-01-15T16:54:00.001-08:00

A mask in film photography is simply the piece of plastic, cardboard, whatever… that defines how much of a piece of film will be exposed during each frame. In some 120 cameras, you have a 6x6 mask and a 6x4.5 mask. If you have a Diana mini, you may notice each frame is not the same size as normal 35mm, some are tall and skinny and some are square.

While there are standard sizes used in film photography, you can really use whatever size, or shape you want. All you have to do is create the frame and put it between your lens and your film.

I decided I wanted to shoot a roll of Holga film using a Heart shaped mask. It’s cutesy and a little silly, but you might like it. Here’s what I did:

I grabbed the 6x6 mask that came with my Holga. You don’t need to do this on an existing mask, it just made it easier.

Cut out a shape. It doesn’t have to be a heart, it could be anything actually. Cut it out of cardstock or a magazine cover. Something thick and dark enough that you can’t see light through it. Use electrical tape and attach it to the mask or the inside of the camera right next to where the film will be.

Put your shape upside-down! The images projected on your film are actually upside-down. Trust me on this, you’ll see why in a second.

Put the mask back in and load film, then shoot away.

Here’s the result from my first roll. I forgot to put my mask in upside-down. So the heart is straight, but the picture is upside down. Duh.

Or, the picture is straight, but the heart is upside-down. Double Duh.

There ya go, easy and fun. You can frame your pictures in just about any shape you can cut out.

Alternate ideas I’ve heard…. Making 2 masks that are opposite of each other (one blocks out the center, the second blocks out the sides – for example). Put in one, run the film through. Switch and run the film through again. Split frame photos…. strange! I’m going to try this one soon…

Shasta Betty

Rayko Toy Camera Show

2011-01-12T22:08:00.001-08:00

Update: I will be submitting 5 total prints, I added 2 more and could use some input, although I have a pretty good idea of what direction I’ll go…. the submission deadline is today (1/13), nothing like doing it at the last minute. Thanks!

Every year, the Rayko photographic center in San Francisco hosts a toy camera show. This is the first year I actually knew about the deadline in time to submit work. I am submitting at least 3 pieces (maybe more but additional entries cost $$$) and the deadline is tomorrow. Since, I’m sending digital files and prints don’t have to be ready for a couple weeks, I’m developing a couple more rolls of film tomorrow before I make a final decision, but here are my top contenders at the moment.

Feedback greatly appreciated. Ignore the dust, my film scanner is dirty.

Shot with Holga

Shot with a Diana Mini, and I have zero intention of correcting the contrast, I like it washed out.

35mm film in Holga.

Shot with Anscoflex.

Any favorites?

Thanks!

Shasta Betty

Double exposure and flash gels

2011-01-12T19:18:00.001-08:00

Finally, a Holga post. A fun Holga post, at that.

There are a number of cool flashes out there for Holga and Diana cameras. The most fun ones have gels, little clear cards you can put over the bulb to make the flash come out a certain color.

This means you can have pictures that flash with blue or pink. Or both.

Simple to do. Grab a camera that will allow you to expose the same frame twice without winding. Holgas, Dianas, etc. Put on your flash with the first color gel. Set your Holga to the “Sunny” setting instead of “Cloudy/Flash”, the goal is to have it be underexposed because you’re exposing twice. Handhold your shot, find something fun and take a picture. Put in the other color gel and sit in roughly the same area looking at roughly the same scene. Take another shot. Repeat as necessary. It’s very experimental, but the idea is not to use a tripod and not to be perfect.

Tips:

The darker the room, the less the chance of blowing out the shot with the flash. I did this in the pitch black.

If you have another Holga or Diana with a Polaroid back (or even maybe a camera set to Bulb if your space is dark enough and you can manually trigger the flash), play with this with Polaroids for a while before switching to film. You’ll get a slew of instant results and a better idea of what settings to use.

Try color gels that contrast each other more than they compliment each other. Also use gels that are about equal on the brightness scale. I tried a dark blue with yellow, and the yellow was drowned out.

Other Ideas:

Use a tripod and move the subject within the frame during each exposure.

If you must go digital, find a really dark space (no light at all), put your camera on Bulb, open the shutter and fire the flash with the manual trigger.

Good luck!

Shasta Betty

Basics of Manual Camera Settings–Part 4–Stops and Metering

2011-01-11T23:30:00.001-08:00

So, now that you know what all the things do, it’s good to know how they relate to what you see and how that helps you take good photos.

In camera metering is fairly easy. I’ve seen a couple different types of meters. Here are some drawings that illustrate both what they look like and how bad I am at drawing.

Some meters have a scale where the middle line indicates what the camera thinks will be a properly exposed scene (cameras base exposure on a percentage of gray, so they usually won’t expose all black or all white scenes well, I’ll explain how to compensate in a minute). An alternative to the scale is example 3, where there will be a needle that bobs around. Finally, some meters will tell you what f-stop you should be exposing for based on the film speed setting you are using. These can have both meters, or numbers that light up.

The idea is to change settings until the needle is in the middle/the lit number corresponds with what you have set.

There are a couple ways to do this. Example 1 and 3 show over exposure (your settings will make the photo too bright). Either close your aperture (bigger f-stop number), increase your shutter speed or lower your ISO – in this case, 1 stop in example 3 and 1/3 stop in example 1.

So, what are stops exactly? Stops are full measurements of ISO, aperture or shutter speed. They are an equal distance from each other as far as exposure is concerned. In ISO and shutter speed, each stop is twice as much as the one before it. 1/4 second to 1/2. 100 ISO to 200. In aperture, it’s pretty much the same thing, except there’s a lot of math involved. Square roots of 2 or something. I don’t think it’s something we need to know, so here’s the short version. Full aperture stops are: 1, 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22 and 32. There are others, but these are most common.

How do stops relate to each other? If you move your shutter speed one full stop faster, you can move your aperture one stop wider and have the same exposure. How is this useful? If you have a light meter or your camera meter says to expose at f4 for 1/1000th of a second, you can increase depth of field by exposing at f5.6 for 1/500th or f8 for 1/250th.

To make this easy, here’s a craft tutorial for a stop slider!

Step 1, draw lines to separate out 15 equal spaces. Now do it the other way so you have rows of squares the length of the paper. I know these pictures don’t follow what I’m saying, but trust me and do it this way instead.

Leave the far left spaces blank (I didn’t and had to re-do it.) Start writing in your f-stops (see above) starting with f32 and ending with f1 (which is backwards from this picture. This craft was an epic fail last night, I redid so so much…). In the second row, write your shutter speeds starting with 4 seconds, up to 1/1000th. (4”, 2”, 1”, 1/2 OR 2, 1/4 OR 4, 8, 15, 30, 60, 125, 250, 500, 1000). Now skip a row. Write your ISOs, left to right, 25, 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200.

Cut the top 2 strips out. Leave 1 blank space on each side of each row, then cut the excess off.

Cut out 2 windows below the ISO row.

Fold the back around, then staple (or glue or whatever) the back shut and along the edges of each window to create little holes.

Insert your 2 strips from before. Now you’ll have a handy slider. Using ISO as your starting point, slide the 2 rows to match with settings from camera or a light meter. Now you can move any 2 rows to the left or right and have the same exposure.

In this photo. 1/15th, f4 at 400 equals 1/30th f2.8 at 400. 1/4, f8 at 100 equals 1/8, f8 at 200. And so on…

So, now that we know what metering and stops are, we can look at ways to use them.

Remember when I mentioned your light meter works with a certain percentage of gray? That means if it sees something black, it will try to make it look gray and over exposed. This is where you can shift a couple stops to over or underexpose a photo so that it works for your subject.

Another genius thing to do is bracket. Take one shot normal, one shot 1 or 2 stops over and another 1 or 2 stops under. Some cameras even have auto bracketing (with 3 clicks of the shutter, it will automatically shoot one normal, one under and one over).

I hope all that has helped your use of manual camera settings. You should be well on your way to getting out of auto mode and into manual mode. At least try using Tv or Av if you don’t feel like metering. That way you can set the shutter speed or aperture and the camera will do the rest.

Finally, always ALWAYS set your ISO in digital!!! Use the lowest ISO your photo will allow!

Happy shooting,

Shasta Betty

The Basics of Manual Settings–Part 3–Aperture

2011-01-10T23:38:00.001-08:00

Now that we know ISO and Shutter Speed, it’s ready to move on to Aperture. Aperture can be confusing, but let me let you in on a secret, it’s only the jargon that is confusing. When you come right down to it, aperture is the size of the hole in your lens that is letting light through during a photo.

You know how your pupils get bigger or smaller depending on the ambient light? The aperture basically does the same thing. Only, instead of having your own super smart brain to do it automatically, you have to tell it what to do. We do this by setting F-stops.

What’s an F-stop. Well, it’s a mathematical calculation of the focal length divided by the diameter of the aperture opening, but you don’t need to know that right now. All you need to know, is the smaller the f-stop number, the bigger the hole and visa versa. F1.4 is a very big hole. F22 is a small hole. If you get into pinholes, sometimes those are F300, but that’s a whole other story.

So, what is the point of aperture? Well, obviously a bigger aperture (f1.4) will let in more light. This means you can shoot at a higher shutter speed and/or lower ISO than at f22. Example: if you are shooting at 200 ISO at f4 and your shutter speed is at 1/30th, but you need it at 1/60th, change to f2.8.

Now for the fun part of aperture, it controls your depth of field. Depth of field refers to the amount of stuff in a scene in front of or behind your focal point that will be in focus. When you shoot at a wide aperture, your depth of field will be really short.

In this photo, my dog’s eyes are in focus, her ears are sorta in focus, but the focus drops off at her nose and in the background.

This can be a nice feature because you can use depth of field to focus on a subject and blur out the background.

Or, on the other hand, you can shoot at a smaller aperture, such as f22 and get more depth of field. Or take it one step further and use a pinhole and achieve almost infinite depth of field.

This is my mailbox and street at f22.

Some other things of note about depth of field, the closer your subject, the shorter your depth of field.

Some of the older cameras even had depth of field guides on the focusing ring.

In this photo, the top 2 lines of numbers are focal distances, the 3rd line down shows where the focus is (orange line). It also shows, with the mirrored f-stop numbers, what distances would be in focus at that particular setting.

If the above settings were used at f22, everything from 1.5 to 10 meters would be in focus. At f 11, everything from 2 to 4.5 meters would be in focus and so on.

This can be handy for having complete control over depth of field. Do you want more in focus in front of your subject than behind it? Using the guide numbers, you might not actually focus on your subject to control where the depth of field lies.

Finally, depth of field is controlled by how much your focal subject fills the frame. If you zoom in (or get close), you will have a shorter depth of field than if you shoot at a wider angle.

Those are the basics of aperture! Now we can see how the 3 settings come together… tomorrow we’ll talk about stops… and there will be a handy craft project!!

Shasta Betty

The Basics of Manual Settings–Part 2–Shutter Speed

2011-01-09T23:44:00.001-08:00

So, yesterday we learned ISO. Now, lets talk about shutter speed.

Your shutter speed dictates how long your camera takes to take a photo. Depending on your camera, you can take photos that are only 1/1000th of a second long, or photos that are hours long.

The way shutter speeds are typically notated is either as a fraction (1/30), as just the denominator for shutter speeds under 1/2 a second (30), as the number of seconds (2'” or 2.5” or 2-5”… just look for the second symbol – a quotation mark “) or as B aka Bulb. Bulb is when the shutter will stay open as long as you hold down the button. More on that later.

There are a bunch of reasons you could want control over your shutter speed.

Let’s tackle shutter speed in hand held photography. When you hand hold a photo, being human and all, you can only take a photo for so long before you start to introduce shake into the photo from your movement. The general rule is, whatever your focal length is, that as the denominator should be your slowest hand held shutter speed. For example, if you are shooting a 50mm lens, you shouldn’t shoot hand held any slower that 1/50th. With a 300mm zoom lens, you shouldn’t shoot hand held any slower than 1/300th of a second. Now, some of us are steadier. If you take a breath, let it halfway out, hold it and squeeze the shutter it helps. When shooting digital, if you really have no other option, just try to steady yourself and take a bunch of shots and hope one is sharp.

The second reason to control shutter speed is to capture motion. A fast shutter speed will freeze a moving object in a photo.

A slower shutter speed will show movement in the photo (this is a good time to use a tripod so your background is steady). This is especially fun with any type of moving lights.

So, now you know the main reasons to use certain shutter speeds, hopefully you understand a little more about the usefulness of ISO settings from yesterday’s post.

For example. If you are set at ISO 400 and can’t get your shutter speed faster than 1/30th, and want it at 1/60th, you would move your ISO to 800.

Tomorrow – Aperture

And to completely kill any mystery and let you know what to anticipate, here’s how it’s going to go:

Aperture
Stops – Hopefully with a Crafty tutorial that will help with your metering!
In Camera Metering

Then I’ll be going into a series on Night Photography!!

It’s getting really exciting around here, people! Okay, well, I’m excited at least.

Shasta Betty

The Basics of Manual Settings–Part 1–ISO

2011-01-08T22:34:00.001-08:00

I was going to call the post “In Camera Metering for Dummies”, based on a suggestion. However, you are not dummies!!! You are all eager to learn and trying to figure out something new and I think that makes you a SMARTIE! Also, I was originally only going to write about in camera metering. Instead, I am writing a whole series on the basics of manual settings.

Welcome to Part 1!

Parts 2, 3 and 4 will all be in sucession, so click on the "newer posts" link after each tutorial and you'll be directed to the next installment.

One of the hardest things for people new to photography to do is switch out of Auto Mode. Auto mode is nice, it’s comfortable, but it won’t always give you the best photo or the photo you want. Auto usually shoots around f8, with reasonably fast shutter speeds (1/100th) at ISO 400. They’re going for decent depth of field, a well exposed handheld shot and a mid range ISO.

We can do better!

Here’s a rundown of the basics for anyone who is brand new to all of this (or even people who aren’t brand new and may have forgotten or never learned).

Exposure (how bright or dark the subject of our picture is) depends on 3 things. ISO, aperture and shutter speed.

ISO (also know as ASA) refers to how fast your film is. In the digital world, it refers to how fast your sensor records light. ISO 100 is a slow film speed, ISO 1600 is a fast film speed. However, there’s a trade off. Faster film speeds produce grainier pictures (with digital, this is also called noise).

Here’s an example. 2 shots of the same scene on the same night at different ISO settings. Ignore composition and exposure – we’re just looking at noise.

Shot at ISO 200

Shot at ISO 3200

Although, sometimes grain can have a pleasing effect. Especially in black and white. This all depends on taste, but my favorite portrait film to shoot is Kodak Tri-X 400 because it’s grainy.

So how do you choose an ISO setting for a particular shot. Well, it depends on a couple things. First, if you’re shooting film, you put in a film whose speed will serve well for whatever you plan on shooting. You’re stuck with the same speed for the whole roll. For this reason, I personally stick with 400 speed film. It’s a good middle number for all around shots. If you’re going to be shooting outside in the sun, go with 100. Shooting indoors with no flash, pick 800 maybe.

With digital, we can change the ISO for every shot. My rule of thumb is to use the lowest ISO you possibly can for the aperture and shutter speed you need. For example, if it’s sunny and you’re shooting a landscape at f 16, 1/100th of a second (we’ll get to what those mean later) with ISO 100, you’re doing good. If you’re at f 1.4 and 1/8th of a second handheld on ISO 100, you need to turn the ISO up to get a faster shutter speed.

Don’t worry if you’re still confused, since ISO is only 1 of 3 things to consider for your exposure. Once we talk about aperture and shutter speed, I promise you’ll catch on. Until Part 2!

Shasta Betty

Free Action Set–Part 1

2011-01-07T10:38:00.001-08:00

I am still working on actions, but instead of waiting until I had some huge set put together, I decided I’ll be uploading them in small chunks.

This first set, which I call Glamazon, has 4 editing actions for retouching portraits and enhancing your photo’s subjects.

To use this set, you’ll be using layer masks. On each action, the layers describe that feature they will enhance, simply unmask that feature using the white brush on your layer mask. The “Soft Light” action is an overall enhancer and has no layer mask.

Finally, I set some opacity levels that make a good starting point, but be sure to tweak them so they work best for your photo. This is especially true of “Sharp Eyes” which should be turned down for darker eyes.

Enjoy and please leave feedback about the set. I’m new at this, and I know there will be room for improvement. I will post updates as I stumble across them.

You can download the set from Deviant Art at http://klsphotography.deviantart.com/#/d36mi9u

I need you!

2011-01-05T07:01:00.001-08:00

Before the neediness, I want to let you know that I am currently working on uploading some free Photoshop actions for you! I was thinking I wanted a bigger set, but I realize now that starting small is a good thing. I am working on figuring out where to host the files. Hopefully I can put them on my deviant art account, but it really needs to be updated, so I have some work ahead of me. Look for the action set in a day or two.

Okay, like the title says, I NEED YOU!

Yesterday, after P-Dub wrote a post about black and white photography, looking for some tips… I wrote a digital guide with some information that I hoped would be useful. I’ve received such nice comments and emails about it, and even some emails looking for more help – which I’m happy to give.

You may or may not know that I’m in grad school to become a teacher, so teaching photography to others has slowly developed into a huge passion of mine.

With all that in mind, I need ideas for tutorials. I want to write about what you want to know! It can be anything from Photoshop to film photography to camera settings to Lomography. I don’t know everything, but I will research and do my darnedest to help you!

If there’s a topic that has you stumped, or something you want to try, leave me a comment or send an email and I’ll try to post something informational here for you. Thanks in advance for all your help!

Shasta Betty

Black and White - A Digital Guide

2011-01-04T09:06:00.001-08:00

First, this is no way a complete guide about anything. Just throwin’ that out there. I happen to have a background in black and white film photography, and it’s helped me pick up some things here and there that can easily be applied to digital.

Second, Pioneer Woman is freaking awesome and inspires me constantly. As I sat here with major photo related writer’s block and no idea what could even remotely be useful to my readers, she wrote a post giving and asking for some black and white editing advice. Wah-la! Inspiration.

Ok, some basics. Ever seen color filters out there and thought “why would I want a red tinted photo?” You probably wouldn’t. (I would, but that’s a whole other story). Those filters are mostly made for black and white photography. Filters have the ability to lighten and darken certain colors as they translate to shades of grayscale. Red filters make blue skies darker, for example. Here’s a basic run down:

Whatever color filter you have, the filter will lighten things that are the color of the filter, and darken it’s opposing color. This is why color wheels can be so handy. See above.

Your most common filters are:

(before edits are on left, after applying filters are on the right)

Yellow and Orange - slightly darkens blue tones (increases contrast of cloudy sky)

Red - really darkens blue tones, dramatic skies and dark foliage

Green - lightens foliage. This is a great go-to for nicer skin in portraits as well.

If you’re lucky enough to own a Canon DSLR, these not only shoot in black and white, but have the filters built in digitally. Read the manual on how to play with your monochrome settings.

TIP: If you shoot in RAW, the RAW file will still be in color. Only the jpg has the monochrome information, so shoot RAW+JPG.

How to translate this in black and white with photoshop? After adding a black and white adjustment layer, just fuss around with the levels.

Another fun black and white trick I picked up from a commenter named Sarah K at Pioneer Woman… Gradient layers! You can use these on top of black and white adjustment layers, or by themselves.

This allows you to pick which color will be used as “black” and which will be used as “white”. You can make warm or cool toned “black and white” photos, or go weird and do a pink version.

How to: There are a couple ways to select what colors will be used in your gradient map. First off, set your foreground and background colors to what you’d like your new “black” and “white” to be before applying the gradient map. They’ll pop up automatically when you add the adjustment layer.

Way #2. Once you’ve added the layer, double click on the gradient on the right and it will bring up an option box. Here you can choose to use some of the preset gradients, or click on the color stop for the dark and light ends, then change the color.

Okay, that’s all I have in me this morning. I’m in my black and white phase, so I will probably come up with more ideas or inspiration to share with you. For now, I hope that was helpful.

Side note: I love teaching, especially photography. If you are ever stumped you can email me at klsphoto@hotmail.com with your questions and unless I suddenly become famous and have 1000 emails (yeah, right), I will answer you.

Shasta Betty

Photoshop Tip: Fixing Under Eye Circles

2011-01-02T04:11:00.001-08:00

I wanted to share this tip, because this was one aspect of editing that I struggled with. I had read advice elsewhere for removing under eye circles. Spot healing, dodging… nothing really worked well and looked natural.

So, here’s my tip for natural under eye circle removal.

Open your file.

Zoom in.

Bust out the clone tool. Select an area just below the dark eye circles (select using Alt-Click).

Turn your brush opacity down to somewhere in the 20’s. You want to work on this a little at a time and in layers. This makes it way easier to do without having to paint perfectly or overdo it.

Start painting below the eye in strokes. Here’s a tip, when you’re working with close tool (and brush for that matter), as long as you hold down the mouse button while you are painting, it will only add one layer at a time even if you overlap. That way you can paint without missing a spot or overdoing it with one brush stroke.

Do it just until it looks right. It works great on wrinkles too. Try it, play with it. Another nice thing, since you’re adding in layers, if you realize it looks funky, you can go back a couple steps in history.

The end.

Shasta Betty

Irony and Photoshop Actions

2010-12-30T05:10:00.001-08:00

I love photoshop actions. They make life easy sometimes, and they also open you to a world of downloadable artistry. I’ve made a few of my own actions, and I like to create more every day. However, I know when I’m naming them, they don’t always make sense to me. I have an action named “Roman” after Roman Loranc, whose moody black and white shot with red filter make me love cloudy days and intense skies.

I also find that while the actions usually in some way describe what the finished photo will look like, some of the combinations make me laugh.

Here’s my example of irony. I edited this shot of my niece using Pioneer Woman’s Lovely and Ethereal.

Not sure if I would describe this photo with those words…. but I did get a nice laugh out of it.

Shasta Betty

PS – I hope to be uploading my own action set soon, as a FREE download. Keep an eye out.

New Year Giveaway from KLS Photography

2010-12-20T22:10:00.001-08:00

Over at my Facebook page, I’ve finally reached 100 fans. I am so thankful for everyone’s support! Thanks to the wonderful people who do Facebook Page Stats, I also know that the majority of my fans are females 25-34 years old. Fun! I love statistics (little known fact). Speaking as a female between the ages of 25 and 34, I love photos. So, I thought my fans would love a giveaway!

To celebrate the launch of my Etsy shop, the end of 2010, the lunar eclipse tonight and whatever else anyone feels like celebrating, I’m giving away some things from KLS Photography.

Grand Prize:

1 photo shoot. Theme of your choice, up to an hour of shooting time. Watermark free disk of final images. (This is a $150 value, and fun!). Also, one free print of your choice from my Etsy shop.

For 2 Runner-Ups:

1 free print from my Etsy Shop (your choice).

How to Enter:

Entering is easy, I’ll be drawing the winner from my Facebook fans! If you’re already a fan, great, if not, please go to www.facebook.com/klsphoto and press “Like” to be entered.

Referral Bonus!! I want your referrals! However, I know you’re thinking “for everyone I refer I’m lessening your chances of winning,” so…

If you refer the winner to my page, I’ll give you a duplicate of their prize too. That means if you send your friend over and they win the grand prize, you win it too.

That means referring people actually increases your chance of winning!

Rules:

Due to travel restrictions, I’m limiting the grand prize to fans in Southern Oregon and Northern California. Runner up prizes are limited to residents of the United States, as I will ship your prints to you.

The contest will end on January 15th, winners announced shortly after.

BONUS GIVEAWAY!

One service I’d like to start offering is Photo Retouching. In order to help experiment with providing this service and build a portfolio, I’ll be giving away Photo Retouching Services to my Facebook fans. 100% free service, no contests, just “Like” KLS Photography on Facebook and contact me.

Each person can submit 5 photos for basic retouching, and I will add creative editing to at least 1 photo of my choice. Here’s an example of what basic retouching can do to your photos:

Brighter colors, clearer skin, brighter teeth and eyes, corrected white balance…
take your photos to a new level!

I’ll be doing this for anyone who submits between now and January 15th.

Rules: By submitting your photos for editing, you’re giving permission to me (KLS Photography) to use both before and after images in my portfolio. I reserve the right to not edit a photo if I decide it’s uneditable or offensive.

Email to klsphoto@hotmail.com to learn how to submit photos.

Thanks everyone and good luck!

A Nice Night Shot

2010-12-16T01:19:00.001-08:00

I love night photography, but in this weather, they are few and far between. For example, this shot was just under 40 minutes long, f16, 200 ISO. I zoomed out as wide as I could, because I really wanted to grab the sky as much as I could.

I love star trails, and I’m finally looking into a software program that can enhance star trails, but this is SOOC.

It was sooo cold out. I might have taken more shots, but my cable release remote froze. So did my tripod.

Shasta Betty

Show and Tell

2010-12-12T22:40:00.001-08:00

I took this a couple weeks ago when it snowed.

This is Will and Isaiah. Will loves Isaiah. He got me Isaiah for Valentines day, but the two of them are good buddies now. They hang out on the back porch a lot, they have little chats. Isaiah does most of the talking.

Shasta Betty

I heart this furry face

2010-12-12T22:16:00.001-08:00

She’s just so silly, and I think she was going for the sympathy vote in this one.

Yes, I’m still on my black and white tangent.

Shasta Betty

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

2010-12-12T00:38:00.001-08:00

This is all new to me, but I’m going for it. Please click through the buttons to find out about this lovely photo challenge.

1. Holiday Colors
I’m really on a black and white kick, so I thought I’d go with muted colors

2. Winter/Holiday Icon
Our tree top star.

3. A tree
Really had fun with the shaped Bokeh this week. Bokeh in general. I love Bokeh. Bokeh, Bokeh, Bokeh.

4. Quiet
There is something so wonderfully quiet about snow and fog and even the river, which technically makes noise, I guess.

5. Your favorite color
Pink. And bokeh.

Thanks for looking! Here’s where to go if you want to play along:

Shasta Betty

Holiday Bokeh

2010-12-10T02:37:00.001-08:00

I love Bokeh. Want to make it shaped? Read about that here.

I went black and white. It’s the mood I’m in….

Go see, go enter. This photo is at:

Shasta Betty

I’m officially on Etsy now

2010-12-08T23:38:00.001-08:00

I’ve held off for a while since I have such a hard time picking prints for anything, but I finally launched my KLS Photography Etsy Store. I’ve put up 14 prints that I like, but I’m really looking for suggestions as to what prints I should add. Leave me a comment and let me know…

In the meantime, please take a look at the shop and let me know what you think. I’ve featured a lot of local photography, but there are some shots of Santa Barbara thrown in there. Here are some of my favorites:

Thanks for Looking!

Shasta Betty

Ezra Zoomed

2010-12-06T18:58:00.001-08:00

This week’s theme for Shutter Love Tuesday (see button at the bottom) is “Zoom Zoom”. This could be interpreted a couple ways, but since we’re going with photography here, I interpreted it as referring to zoom lenses and zoomed in photos.

So, for this theme, I have both a photo and a small tutorial. Yay for tutorials!

First, the photo:

Now, some explanation. I don’t own a great macro lens. I wouldn’t use it very often if I did. I do, however, own a set of extension tubes. According to the Wiki page,

“An extension tube is an accessory for cameras with interchangeable lenses, used primarily for macro photography. The tube contains no optical elements; its sole purpose is to move the lens farther from the image plane. The farther away the lens is, the closer the focus, the greater the magnification.”

So, in a nutshell, it attaches and takes images that are very zoomed in and can focus very close to the subject.

How to work these? First, you buy a set. My set includes one ring that attaches to the body, another that attaches to the lens and 3 rings, 30mm, 16mm and 9mm that can be placed in between. My set is not electronic, meaning that the camera can’t control the aperture or auto focus. With my 50mm 1.8 lens, I shoot wide open always at 1.8. There are electronic tubes, but they cost more. A non-electronic set is less than $15.

Now, once you’ve assembled tubes and lens, the hardest thing to figure out is focus. Your focus ring with play almost no part in focusing, and your range of focus will no longer be infinite, it’ll be within a couple inches and only at a couple inches away from your subject. The easiest way to get used to focusing with these is to use a stationary object and move your camera closer and further from it.

Finally, the best advice I can give is to practice and play. Try different combination of tube lengths. Try different lenses. See what your zoom lenses do at different focal lengths.

Once you’re feeling comfortable, try moving on to less stationary objects, like cats. Well, actually, they should be a little stationary (like lying down). Try not to yell every time the cat turns his head. Take a lot of shots and you might like one!

Good Luck and enter this photo challenge if you get a chance!

Shasta Betty

A little bit of backup

2010-12-05T21:55:00.001-08:00

Backup is essential. It’s good for a scuffle, singing in a musical, lots of sports and… photography! I’m guessing most professional photographers already have a workflow in place that includes backup, but this is something everyone should have. Think of how you’d feel if you lost all the digital photos of your kid when she was a baby? Or all those photos of your dog’s tail?

The degree to which you take it depends on you.

I’m OCD about backing up my photography.

Step 1:

Obviously, capturing photos on your memory cards, but I take it one step further. I leave all photos on the memory card until I’m done with the whole backup process. The ultimate goal is to have all photos in at least 2 places at once.

Step 2:

Upload to computer. Organize into folders. Okay, if we lose the memory cards, we’ll be fine. But what if your computer crashes?

Step 3:

Copy files to external hard drive. Now, the photos are on the computer, memory cards and external hard drive. Sounds like a decent backup, right? Until your house burns down….

Step 4:

Upload to online database. Whether you throw your photos in a Flickr album, or use a full online backup service like Mozy, now your photo files are safe from anything I can currently think of.

I’d like to add that, as a normal person who has no sponsors and receives no incentive for recommending anything, that I love Mozy Home Backup. It will backup an unlimited amount of data from any one computer for $4.95 a month. I have over 100 gb on my Mozy and all I’d have to do is login and re download it if I lost everything. I’ve done it once when I got a new laptop, works awesome. 5 bucks. Awesome. 5.

I think you get it…

Another thing I am painfully drudging through is backing up all my film digitally. Backing up 5 years worth of negatives with a film scanner is extremely time consuming, so I’m trying to tackle it in pieces. The idea is the same, scan film, then onto steps 2, 3 and 4.

Another word of advice, don’t toss your negatives! I did this, I treated prints like gold. Then after 2 minutes of using the darkroom I realized with negatives, there is the possibility for infinite number of prints. Imagine how much of my work I could show from when I was 16 from the negatives. Before it was cut up and stuck into scrapbooks (because I didn’t think like an artist just yet). I could really go for some 16 year old B&W portrait reprints on silver gelatin right about now. Darnit, youth. Just sayin’.

Shasta Betty

I heart (self portrait) faces

2010-12-05T20:12:00.001-08:00

This week at I Heart Faces is the self portrait contest. This is for you profile photo snappers!!

I shot this hand held with a 50mm lens at arms length. My 50d is heavy. Just sayin’. It was windy that day and I had some crazy rock star hair, but I like my huge Jackie O glasses. I switched it to black and white because it felt right.

UPDATE:

I'm also adding this one to Happy Monday Photo Challenge

Shasta Betty

Show off your shot… and then she snapped

2010-12-04T10:04:00.001-08:00

Here’s my shot of the week, which I’m putting up at:

The sun was rising and casting a pinkish color on the mountains in the far background. I exposed to the sunrise, leaving our trees in silhouette, and just capturing the blue light through the icicle. I also had the contrast and saturation boosted in my camera settings.

Next… a tutorial on digital workflow.

Shasta Betty

A Black and White Edit

2010-11-28T19:42:00.001-08:00

Pretty Puppy Carissa Panting on Thanksgiving. Edited and in black and white. My favorite things!

Go check out these challenges, and vote for me if you are able and want to. ;)

Shasta Betty

Scenic Black and White

2010-11-28T13:55:00.001-08:00

I shot this with a Hasselblad on Kodak Tri-X 400 film (that I developed myself in a darkroom and everything. I developed prints too, but this isn’t one of those) and scanned it with my fancy new film scanner.

I think it’s rather scenic for a close portrait shot. It just goes to show that sometimes you have to lay in the grass with your (well, technically borrowed) Carl Zeiss glass and enjoy the hills.

I’m accepting donations now for the Kelly-needs-this-Hasselblad-to-expand-her-artistic-endeavors Charity (dis)Organization. Or something like that… onto the photo!

I think it’s rather moody and introspective and laid back at the same time. I loved this whole photo shoot in the parks of Yreka with that Hasselblad.

This is also an entry for the I Heart Faces weekly photo challenges, which I’m starting to enjoy on many levels. If you blog, enter photos; and if you enter photos, leave a link in the comments. I am interested to see what my readers do, and I don’t want to miss any of your entries.

Another thought… How do you feel about seeing some kind of linky-photography-contest here? I’d love to add another one of these contests to everyone’s weekly blog activities. Would you participate? Let me know!!

For now, go here to enter this contest from I heart Faces:

Love ya'all,

Shasta Betty

Eyes

2010-11-24T01:32:00.001-08:00

Upside to photo challenges, you readers get to see mini photo posts more often.

Here’s one for eyes. Chloe has the best puppy eyes.

I promise a tutorial soon. By the end of the week, at least. Most likely tomorrow, but don’t hold me to it!

Shasta Betty

Shutter Love Tuesday

2010-11-24T00:33:00.001-08:00

Mmmm, fall.

I Heart Faces

2010-11-22T05:55:00.001-08:00

I’ve entered once before, but I’m hoping to make this a weekly thing, so look forward to (hopefully) weekly photo posts that are short and sweet and feature a pretty photo. :)

Theme: Paper

Photoshop Action Sets

2010-11-19T05:15:00.001-08:00

One thing I’ve really loved lately has been finding and playing with Photoshop action sets that others have created. It inspired me to create a few of my own, automating things I use fairly frequently.

Here’s a sneak peak at a couple of the actions I’ve finished so far, which I’ve put to use on my work. I’m also looking for a few Beta testers who will get the actions for free. Email me at klsphoto@hotmail.com for more details.

Onto the actions:

Action Set 1 – Glamourize
This is a nice set with actions to optimize skin, teeth, eyes and overall photo look. It gives everything a little “bling.”

Before (this particular photo was shot by Melanie, the woman in the photo. She just gave me permission to play with it.)

After

This set smoothes the skin, brightens teeth and eyes and boosts eye color as well as overall color of the image.

Another one, before

After

I actually love the eye action so so so much, I don’t think I’ll edit another portrait without using it again. It’s magical.

Action Number 2, I call Try-Ex and it replicates the look of one of my favorite films.

Before

After

This is one of my favorite films because it really sucks up imperfections and gives everything a vintage look.

Another Before

After

Action 3 – Great for sky and cloud landscapes. I call it Roman

Before

After

Before

After

Action 4 - Finally, a nice vintage action.

Before. I also used some of the glamourize actions on this before using the Vintage action.

After

Before

After

So, that’s what I’ve been working on over the past week or so. I’ll post more actions as I come up with them. In the meantime, if you’d like to test these nice actions out for free as a beta tester, get in touch. Thanks!

Camera Presets

2010-11-18T05:16:00.001-08:00

As much as I love Photoshop, I also try to produce photos that look great straight out of the camera. It’s nice to be able to upload photos right away and skip the whole post processing rigmarole.

One of my favorite in camera enhancers is using the picture style presets. While I stick to Standard presets during most things, if I know I want colors to pop, or really sharp pictures, or photos with a lot of contrast, I can change this all in the picture style presets. To find these, I recommend looking in your manual. I’d love to throw in a menu tutorial, but my 50D varies so much from a Rebel and even more so from a Nikon, so I’ll leave this up to you.

First, some photos with the Sharpness and Saturation bumped all the way up. Fun. Bright. Yummy colors.

Then, these have the sharpness and contrast boosted, but in black and white. I love sharpness when shooting animals. It really brings out the fur.

Zero time spent in Photoshop…

Custom White Balance

2010-11-16T06:59:00.001-08:00

I know it sounds intimidating, but custom white balance is something that will drastically improve your photos, especially if you are shooting a set where the lighting is steady during your whole shoot (or even just a good chunk of it).

I’ll break this down step by step using my Canon DSLR, my Mr’s Nikon DSLR and my Canon point and shoot. Hopefully that will serve as a good jumping off point for most cameras, but feel free to email me if you need help. I’ve been known to delve into in depth photography lessons when people need help. Leave a comment, email me at klsphoto@hotmail.com or contact me through my website.

First, here’s an example of why you should use Custom WB (both shots are straight out of the camera):

On auto mode at the Brewery in Weed, which has horrific lighting. I mean, it’s really really bad.

After spending 30 seconds setting my WB using a napkin of all things.

That’s a huge difference. Sometimes Auto mode just doesn’t cut it.

How to set it:

Step 1 for most DSLRs is to take a close up picture of something white with minimal texture to it. A plain piece of printer paper works. Make sure the picture comes out completely “white,” however it will have a tint from the lighting where you are. Hints: turn off autofocus (if your camera allows it) and try exposing for a stop or two over what the camera recommends (try manual mode, or go to the exposure compensation in your menu.)

Step 2 (Canon DSLR) – Press menu. Go to WB and set it to Custom. You can do this after to, but eventually you have to set it to this or you’ll be creating a custom WB for nothing.

Now go down to the Custom WB item.

This will bring up all the images on your CF card.

Scroll through until you find the white sample image you just shot.

Hit the select button.

And confirm. Now your white balance is set. If you want a little more technical information, I’ll go into it at the end, but for now I’ll spare the people who aren’t strange and inquisitive like me.

Step 2 (Nikon DSLR) This setting is a little more compact, it’s all in one menu.

With Mr’s Nikon, I press the right button to go into a menu. So go right and scroll down to “preset."

Go right again and choose “Use Photo”

Hit the right button a couple more times to choose which folder the image you’re using is in, then you’ll bring up a menu of pictures.

Find your sample shot and hit Enter.

All done!

Finally, Canon point and shoot. I happen to have a 10D Waterproof camera. No sample shot required, just go into a normal screen in Program mode and hit the middle button to bring up settings. Note: Custom WB doesn’t work in all shooting modes. Some modes, such as underwater, have preset the white balance for you.

Scroll down to the white balance icon, then go left until you bring up the custom symbol. My camera asks that you point at something white and press Disp to set the custom WB. It’s pretty similar to using the color select feature.

Simple enough, you should be taking white photos now.

Warning: Technical Stuff!!

Okay, it’s not actually that technical. Setting your custom white balance is all a matter of telling the camera “This is White” – a decision it makes on its own in Auto WB mode. Much like in Photoshop’s camera raw, it reads what should be a white object and then adds or subtracts tints until white things are truly white.

There are other more complicated ways of setting white balance based on light temperature and Kelvins, which is what sets the white balance when you use other settings such as Tungsten, Florescent or Cloudy. This is more of a studio photography thing, and not something I want to learn at this point in my career. I’m pretty happy with custom and auto white balances.

Well, hope you learned something. Feel free to ask if you want to know more.

Thank you and Love you for sticking through that whole post.

Betty West aka KLS Photography

Scanning Film

2010-11-16T01:40:00.001-08:00

I got this little toy for my birthday, so I’m working on digitizing all my film. It’s going to take… forever. And ever.

Nice upside down shot. I assume you get it. Ha, I just have to stop and laugh at myself a little. Ha. Okay, I’m good now.

So far, I’ve only done a couple frames, all of which were from film of my Grandpa’s sometime during or after WWII. The scanner comes with software that restores photos and removes scratches. I opted not to use it because I like that this looks old, but I might apply it in the future. Enjoy!

Photoshop, a before and after

2010-11-11T05:40:00.001-08:00

I’m getting more and more into using Photoshop actions, as well as adding textures. Layer masks and I have become good, good friends… Here’s a couple quick before and afters of things I’ve been playing with.

Before

After playing with levels and adding a couple textures. Very important: using layer masks or the healing tool with textures. Not all textures look good on skin.

Before… flat.

I rendered spotlight to brighten the center of this photo and then amped up the saturation of the reds.

Most of my work is still straight out of the camera, but I’m starting to like Photoshop more and more. I’ve also been working on creating some of my own actions (In part because I can’t afford to buy some of the great sets out there, but also because I can achieve the effect on my own, but it’s nice to automate it).

Looking ahead: I got a film scanner for my birthday, so I’ll be working on digitizing my film work. :)

The Holga Mod that begins all Holga Mods

2010-09-29T03:01:00.001-07:00

Long story short, I was trying to do one modification to my Holga to enable for closer focusing by taking it apart and moving this plastic stop, but instead I just decided to make the lens removable. It just screws on and off whenever. This lets you do a lot of things.

1. Because the lens unscrews, you can turn it past the “one person” picture on the focus ring and it will focus on stuff closer than the typical 3 feet. You can turn it pretty much until it falls off. I shot a roll like this, we’ll see what happens, but it’s a pretty well known mod so I know it works.

2. Instead of waiting for the Holga to break or sawing it apart to make a Pinholga, you just unscrew the lens and carefully tape a pinhole over the shutter and set it on Bulb. Tada! Pinholga. Easy.

3. I can now take the Holga lens and tape it through various mechanisms to my DSLR. Although, there is no focusing, so stuff that is close will be in focus, but you’d have to do something fancier than what I did to control focus.

I’m sure the list goes on, but for now, let’s just look at how you do this:

Open the back and take out the mask. There are 2 screws in there, top right-ish and bottom left-ish, take those out. Then the whole lens/shutter assembly will come out. Be extra careful not to detach those yellow wires, they make the hotshoe work.

Now, I unscrewed the shutter mechanism thinking that I had to, but you don’t. See the deep screw hole on the bottom left side of these 2 pictures? That’s the screw that catches the stops on the back of the Holga lens so it won’t unscrew too far in either direction. Just loosen that screw until the lens will come off.

Put the front back together.

The end. Crazy easy.

So, here’s where I decided to start electrical taping toy camera lenses to my DSLR using extension tubes (although you could drill out a spare body cap instead).

On top, the Holga lens, on bottom, the lens from my Diana F+ (which conveniently detaches on it’s own)

Results from the Holga lens, which works best up close, and is surprisingly sharp:

Results from the Diana lens, which works best at mid distances and is really hazy:

I spent a lot of time playing with focal length on the Diana, since it has a focusing ring on the lens and I was hoping I could make it more functional, but this is the best I got. I think with more research and more playing, I’ll be able to find something ideal for both of these lenses to make them work a little better.

Bokeh

2010-09-23T01:39:00.001-07:00

I’ve been slacking on the camera mod tutorials, and until I have access to a darkroom again, I don’t have any wonderful toy camera updates (although I’ve been shooting, I even walked Mt. Shasta Blvd today with my Diana Mini).

So today I made a bokeh filter for my DSLR (although you can put it on just about any camera that accepts filters). Bokeh is a way of describing the shape of out of focus items in a photo. For a more in depth explanation, visit The Wiki Bokeh Page. Before I jump into making the filter, I’ll just show what it does. These are out of focus shots of string lights.

Without Filters

With Bokeh filter, which I cut into a heart shape.

So, the purpose of a bokeh filter is to change the shape of out of focus items. You want to block the lens with the exception of a anything-shaped hole that is about the size of your widest aperture. When you finish and look through the camera, none of the frame should be obstructed.

I built mine with a step ring that I bought in the wrong size. Big difference between 58-48 and 58-38. But it’s width did create a nice base. I then cut a heart into a piece of cardstock and electrical taped it on.

Make sure it’s centered.

Sample shots:

So, I found this works best with lights and you need a good distance between your subject and your background so it falls out of focus as much as possible. The more out of focus, the bigger the spread of the shape of the bokeh.

I also noticed this during editing and thought it was fun. The eye glimmer from the flash is heart shaped as well.

The fun thing about this, is you can use any shape you want. Starts, octagons, squares, whatever.

An alternative way to build this filter is to just create a sleeve that slips over the end of the lens. A Google search will bring up a lot of different methods for making filters, different examples and results and even bokeh filter kits.

The unexpected muses

2010-08-23T22:19:00.001-07:00

At a reggae concert last Friday I ask Zack and Billy if I can take their picture. They say “only if you shoot in black and white and make us look serious” Zack follows up with a shot where the brim of his hat has to block his eyes. They were both my unexpected muses for the night. I shot the entire concert in black and white, which I think gave it an underground vintage feel. Not to mention the shot of Zach hiding under his brim was bad-ass.

Don’t forget to take advice from strangers, anybody can be an unexpected muse…

Light Painting

2010-08-02T00:35:00.001-07:00

I just got a chance to play with this tonight, I think it’s something fun to try during night photography. If you have uneven lighting from artificial sources or a subject that is coming out too dark during a long exposure photo, you can paint it with light. Literally you take a flashlight and paint the area you want to lighten with the light beam.

I used this on the trees in the middle and right on the photo above (the light streaks are from a passing car). I liked being able to control the light, but the light on the trees in the foreground was a different temperature than the trees in the background which were lit by a street light.

This was a fun experiment tonight except for the fact that the neighbors might think we were nuts for shining flashlights at the trees across the street and our friendly local bear was in the trees as well… eeek, scary!

No light painting here, but this is my favorite shot from the night. 5 minute exposure with no moon, just streetlights at f5.6, ISO 400.

Large Format Pinholes

2010-07-30T18:33:00.001-07:00

Can’t afford a Large Format Camera? Me either. Even if I had the $4000+ to get one of these (or the hundreds you would spend used), there are other things, such as lenses, I would spend it on first.

However, there is something kinda fantastic about a negative that is 4 inches wide and 5 inches tall. Contact prints the size of snapshots, and you can enlarge the photos to… I don’t even know. So if you really want one, but don’t want to pay for it, I suggest building (or buying) a 4x5 pinhole camera.

If you have some basic carpentry skills, you can build one of these fairly easily. It’s essentially a double thick box, constructed to be light tight, with a pinhole lens in the front.

The film backs (which you can pick up on Ebay for a couple bucks each) are held tight to the back with mini bungee cords. The handle on top makes this thing easier to move around, plus it looks nice. On the bottom, there is a tripod mount that is as simple as inserting the right sized nut or threading to fit a tripod.

Now, if you don’t have great carpentry skills (which I don’t), you can go my route and buy a box pinhole. They vary in price range, and you may find yourself making some adjustments once it arrives, but it saves some time and makes it possible for people who don’t know what a circular saw is. I found mine on Ebay, but try Etsy, Santa Barbara camera or just use Google.

I loved this camera, but when it showed up I noticed that the film holders had some room to slide around in the back, and I didn’t trust how light tight the system actually was, so I got out some plain black mounting board and made some additions.

This is a pretty good view of the inside, which I only modified in 2 places. The black inner box of this camera is recessed from the wood, which is where the film holder sits. I added a small strip to the bottom of the wood to make the film holder sit highhigher, and a strip at the top that matches the recessed part of the top of a film holder. Film holders have a couple indentations and such that help hold them in place and serve as bevels to block out light.

To secure the film holder from the back, I added a flap. I cut and glued strips of mount board so that the flap fits in the indentations of the film holder and around the edges, creating (hopefully) a better seal to keep extra light out. It’s not the pretties thing ever, but I like having the extra security.

All together, it looks like this:

Next, just load film and shoot. There is no shutter and no lens cap. To expose a sheet of film you have to remove the dark slide from the film holder. I use my finger as a shutter, blocking the hole while I remove the dark slide, then put it back after the exposure to block the pinhole while I put the dark slide back.

Some helpful advice:

The dark slide tops are usually silver or white on one side and black on another. This is so you can keep track of which holders are exposed or unexposed. Most people use black for exposed film, but it’s really up to you. Just make sure you remember which is which! I know a lot of people who forget halfway through and then all your film is either double exposed, or not exposed at all.

It’s hard to know which was is up in the darkroom. 4x5 sheet film needs to be loaded in complete darkness, so you can’t see which side the emulsion is on. If you always load film so that the notches are on the upper right, then you’ll be ok.

Finally, the size of your pinhole, the focal length and the light in a photo will all determine your exposure length.

Here’s my one successful example (I forgot which color meant exposed). It’s a double exposure of a creek at COS and the grass in my front yard.

Hope someone has fun with this project. Let me know if you try it!

Update for some hardcore DIY-ers: This article gives a pretty good run down of how to construct one of these from scratch. It uses foam board instead of wood, but it’s a great jumping off point. There are also some helpful links for calculating optimum focal length if you look in the comments.

ISO – the third button of digital

2010-07-19T01:13:00.001-07:00

Back in the days of film, for each shot on an SLR your exposure depended on setting the aperture and the shutter speed. Yeah, ISO made a difference, but you were stuck with one setting for an entire roll of film.

Fast forward to the days of digital, and you can change your ISO for every shot. Personally, this was something I had to get used to. I always shot on ISO 400 until someone said “so you’re getting noisy shots during the day when you don’t have to and having to use a tripod in low light when you don’t have to?” Oh. I see your point.

So now, if light permits I can reduce noise (or add it) by picking my ISO. I can also use ISO to change my shutter speeds without having to give up depth of field or change my aperture.

Example: I shot Pyrate Technics at Carnivale in Weed this weekend. I never changed my aperture, but I had a wide variety of shutter speeds. When I wanted to capture the full motion of the fire, I switched to 100 or 200 and shot on bulb. When I wanted a crisp photo of the dancers, I cranked my ISO to 1600 and shot at 1/60th or faster.

It’s something pretty simple, but it can really change how your pictures turn out.

First shot, ISO 1600, 1/60 at 3.5. Second shot: ISO 100, 1 sec at f5.

Post process - Vignetting

2010-07-13T21:29:00.001-07:00

I like vignetting in my photography. Vignetting is where the edges of your photos are darker than the center. It’s something I’ve been especially drawn to after viewing Nick Brandt’s work.

In the darkroom, vignetting is creating by burning down corners before developing or using a circle to dodge the center.

However, far easier and more accessible, is vignetting in digital photography. If you have a pretty good grasp on Photoshop, you can create this effect with just a couple layer adjustments.

Most people create this effect by burning in the corners, but I learned a technique from photographer John Rickard that I love and I think most will prefer after trying it.

Original photo, no post processing:

Vignetting using the “burn” feature in Photoshop:

This photo illustrates the 3 reasons I don’t like to vignette with the burn feature.

The vignette isn’t circular. It’s possible to get a perfect circle this way, but much harder.

The darker areas are gray as opposed to dark (you’ll see more clearly in further examples) unless you take the time to burn highlights, midtones and shadows.

The edges aren’t well blended.

Now, vignetting using layers, levels and eraser:

Much better. The darkness in the top corners is much more progressive and the effect is less obvious. Although, if obvious is what you’re going for, it can also be done as seen in the first photo of this post with a little tweaking, though still keeping a natural looking fade.

I also like that the vignetting is circular. Plus, this method is faster than burning.

One more in black and white with some other editing. I think vignetting is always more intense in grayscale.

How to (click any image to see it larger):

In Photoshop, open your layers tab and duplicate the background layer.

If you’ve created other adjustments, pay attention to the order of your layers or flatten the image.

In the duplicate layer, create a levels adjustment layer then clip it to the duplicate layer. Adjust the photo so that it’s dark. Right now the whole photo will be dark, but just pay attention to the edges and see if they’re where you want them.

This is where you can decide how strong the effect will be. The shape of the vignette will depend on erasing in the next step.

Finally, take your eraser tool and adjust it to a HUGE circle almost the size of your photo.

Select your duplicate layer and erase the middle until it looks right. It’s quick, so be gentle.

For more obvious edges use a smaller radius on the eraser and loop it around the area you want brighter. You can also dial up the hardness of the eraser tool.

Final Product:

And one last example (and the image I learned this technique with after showing), in case you’re not convinced:

Burning vs Layer/Eraser Method

The first example shows the grayness of burning and how it’s less than ideal in some photos.

Sorry if that was long, but it’s worth learning. There’s a lot of advantages to having different ways to create effects in post processing. Another hint for vignetting using a 3rd technique, look into selections and refine selection. You can soften the edges of your selection in this menu. I might show some examples next post…

Happy editing!

And the Winner is…

2010-07-12T01:19:00.001-07:00

Thanks to everyone who entered my blog contest. Before I announce the winner, I want to give everyone who entered the contest 50% off any portrait package as a thank you for participating. I would have picked you all if I could!

And the Winner is…

Karen Martinez!

Just contact me via facebook and we’ll discuss when/where/how you’d like to use your free photo shoot.

And since this is my first blog post in over a month, here’s a couple Prints of the Week. I took these over the past month and all of them were taken at night. I’m having a lot of fun with night photography, so expect more.

From the hotel in Santa Barbara. Long exposure, so I decided to see what happens when you zoom during an exposure. Well, this happens:

Night shot on the wharf. That’s the moon, although it does look sunny.

Weird one, but I like it. My friend’s son trying to light the sidewalk on fire with sparklers on the 4th.

Well, thanks again to everyone for reading and posting comments. I really appreciate the feedback.

First Blog Contest

2010-06-02T02:20:00.001-07:00

And now, a contest…

Ok, the fun part! Inspired by Amber of Heart Escapes, I’ve decided to do a blog contest. The inspiration for this was that I really want to get to know my readers and my followers. I have fans on Facebook and readers on here who I’ve never met and I’d like to meet you! I also would love to hear from my friends!

So, this is a really simple contest. Post a comment either here and/or on my Facebook Photo Page and let me know something about why you’re a fan and who you are. It could be why you like my work, a friend of yours I’ve done a shoot with or a favorite photo. I’m allowing each person to enter twice – once via the blog and once via Facebook, but only if you post something different in each! I’ll also be doing a bonus deal for additional entries, but we’ll talk about that in a second.

Fabulous Prizes…

I will drawn a name at random out of all the entries and that person will receive a gift certificate for a FREE photo shoot and print package($100 value). You can use this yourself or give it to a friend. I’m open for family portraits, engagement photo sessions, maternity shoots, child portraits… and if you’d like to, you can use the prize for $100 off any wedding package.

Bonus entries…

As an incentive for fans to share my blog/page with their friends, I will also give each person an extra entry for every friend they refer who enters the contest. Just have your friend mention you in their post and you’ll earn another entry (that means up to 2 entries for every referral).

Good luck to everyone, I’ll be running this contest for the entire month of June so everyone has plenty of time to enter (and also because I am getting married and will be honeymooning until July 1st, yay!) If the contest turns out to be a big hit, I might add more prizes later, you never know!

Since it’s going to be a busy month, I won’t be posting on this blog again until after the contest, but be sure to look for updates on my Facebook Page.

Print of the Week

2010-06-02T02:14:00.001-07:00

For those who didn’t know, print of the week is almost always a new photo, so be sure to look on my website to see everything else I’m doing. I’ve been a busy girl!

Sometimes I think my favorite photos are the one that perfectly capture the mood and memory of a place and a time. This one will always remind me of the 4 of us sitting in Burney, thinking it was a crazy tiny town, trying to kill time, battling exhaustion and being all grimey from camping but having a blast.

Print of the Week

2010-05-26T18:23:00.001-07:00

Shot this on Monday, and it’s my favorite of the shoot. I wish all days could be slightly windy.

Matchbox Pinhole

2010-05-25T23:43:00.001-07:00

So, it’s fairly easy to build a pinhole camera that can shoot sheet film or photo paper, but this camera is made for a roll of 35mm film and just requires a pinhole, a matchbox, an extra film canister and a lot of black electrical tape.

So, first take out the inner tray and cut a hole in matchbox, this is where your pinhole will go. Tape that thing in, then tape the entire box outside to help with it’s light-tight-ness.

Cut a hole in the matchbox tray. This will be your photo frame (how much of the film is exposed at a time). With this, whatever shape you cut will be the shape of your pictures. The photos will even have interesting edges depending on how precisely you cut. In theory, you could make heart shaped photos.

Next, pull out a couple inches of the film you’re shooting and run it behind the tray, but inside the matchbox. This is how that frame you cut comes into play. Then you’ll be taping your film onto the remainder of film in your spare film spool, which will be your take-up mechanism when shooting.

Now, tape the heck outta everything. Use another piece of tape as a shutter over your pinhole.

To wind film, I attached a sawed off key on the take-up spool. It’s about one turn of the spool for each frame.

Finally, I used hot glue to attach a nut which can screw onto a tripod. I glued it to the side so that I could set the camera down and shoot on a flat surface instead of gluing it directly to the bottom.

Then shoot away. A well lit exposure on 400 speed film is around 1-3 seconds – so you need a steady surface. (Your exposure will also depend on the pinhole you make/buy!)

I developed a couple rolls of this and had photos that turned out, although I didn’t think they were very interesting except in the method I used. This is a good reminder to still think about your subject! Just using a weird camera won’t always make for a picture you love.

This picture I think is fun, and it shows how much detail the film picks up from the jaggedly cut film frame. It also has almost a fisheye effect either from the pinhole I made or the fact that I shot expired film. I can’t explain the distortion, but I would love to keep experimenting to figure it out.

Remember, if you try any of this stuff, post it in the comments or email me! I’d love to share reader’s experience on this blog as well.

Other Holgas and Attachments

2010-05-21T13:50:00.001-07:00

One nice thing about the toy camera fad is that there are a variety of weird attachments and specialized cameras you can buy that do weird things. Holga even makes a 3D camera (which I’ve never personally used, but sounds cool).

Two Holga varieties I have played with lately are the Holga Fisheye attachment and the Holga 35mm pinhole camera. (By the way, if the shutter spring ever breaks on a Holga, you can make it into a pinhole camera as well very easily. Google tutorials, there are a ton out there.)

The fisheye attachment.

One thing I learned about this guy was that it made everything more wide angle than it will look in your normal Holga viewfinder, so be prepared to have some extra stuff included in your shot. Not really a tragedy when shooting architecture or landscapes, but a shot of a skateboarder I took turned into a shot of a skatepark. I got some that I love, however, here they are.

The pictures are weird, circular and bent. As should be expected. With this thing, my favorite shots have these great straight lines that are bent and show the effect the most. If you Google Holga fisheyes, you can find some interesting shots of Times Square.

Next, Holga Pinhole. Of course they went there.

Now, I wasn’t entirely impressed with this camera, although it was fun, for a couple reasons. First, the Diana has a pinhole setting and removable lens, so it offers more functions in one toy camera. Second, I thought some of my shots were too sharp. I’ve built some pinholes that are beautifully hazy. I’ve also built large format pinholes that are remarkably clear (upcoming post). However, I figured the Holga would fall on the hazy side so I don’t like the shots as much. The first shot is an example of the sharpness I don’t like. The second is a longer exposure with a moving subject, which I do like.

One thing I will admit a pinhole is always fun for is the infinite depth of field, which you can really see in the first shot. I doubt most cameras would have picked up both the tree in the foreground and the entire landscape in the background as clearly.

Finally, Print of the Week!

I shot this with a friends Anscoflex II. No f-stop control, no shutter speeds. A mint green plastic TLR designed by the guy who made the Studebaker. The only way to “control” exposure in this scenario is with different film speeds. I love how this shot looks really old and has a distinct lack of contrast.

I also used an enlarger that isn’t exactly meant to print 120 film, so I could slide the negative holder around a little to control vignetting, which is arguably my favorite effect.

A mad dash!

2010-05-20T00:00:00.001-07:00

That’s what this past month has felt like and I think the trend will continue. I did get some quality time in the darkroom this week, so I’m now spending some quality time with my scanner and Photoshop. Which means I should have a new print of the week in a day or two.

In the meantime, another new resource I find myself stalking is www.lightstalking.com. It’s a photographic blog and newsletter with infinite tutorials and articles.

There is something so wonderfully awesome about the internet and photography. It can become a huge 24/7 free workshop if you let it!

Upcoming

2010-05-13T05:16:00.001-07:00

Holga fish-eyes, 4x5 sheet film pinhole cameras and Holga 35mm pinholes, oh my! Working on getting great prints and scanning them for a bunch of new updates. And as promised, I should have the matchbox pinhole tutorial up sometimes tomorrow. This week’s goal, take some great portraits with a great camera and then RETICULATION (with different pictures, of course). I’ve sooo been looking forward to abusing my film. ;)

Photo of the Week (2 weeks of catch-up)

2010-05-12T13:33:00.001-07:00

I’ve been so busy, I’ve forgotten to update my photo of the week for the past 2 weeks. So, this time, I found myself playing a lot with my position relative to my subject when using ambient light and using that to control the feel of photos. These were all shot in a bar mid day, so the light only comes in 1 front window. I think there can be a lot of darkness and mood using harsh light from 1 direction. Here are 3 examples, shot with light directly to the side of the subject, to the side at an angle to the subject, and directly behind the subject.

Remember, the only control regarding lighting you have sometimes is where you stand and where you place your subject. Start looking for where shadows lie in everyday life. Like paint to a painter, light is a photographers medium, be aware of it!

I just bought this…

2010-05-01T23:39:00.001-07:00

And I have no idea what I’m going to do with it. The film is pretty hard to find, and then I have no idea where to process 110 film cartridges. I don’t even think I have equipment for this in the darkroom. But for the $10 I spent, I had to have it…

The Holga 110 Mini Camera

If anyone knows a great source for buying and/or processing 110 micro film, let me know. Thanks!

My new favorite resource

2010-04-29T01:39:00.001-07:00

So, while I prepare for a 3rd art show and submission to a photographic journal (all within a 2 week span), and totally slack on all my alternative photography projects (there is literally piles of film sitting and waiting to develop)… Here’s a site I’ve stumbled across periodically that I know plan on being an avid reader of.

www.diyphotography.net

Check out the tutorial for battlefield pinhole cameras… 3 rolls of film at once!! Super excited to start doing weird stuff. Hopefully I’ll figure out some sort of darkroom situation when my class ends in May…

Siskiyou County Art

2010-04-24T12:40:00.001-07:00

Just a reminder and some more details about this event (copied from the WAC members email). I’ll be showing and selling work and also auctioning off a 1 hour portrait session! Check it out!

It's a BIG day for WEED tomorrow!

Sunday, April 25th

This is the first ever cooperative event with the Siskiyou and Weed Arts Councils !

~ SAC / WAC ART ATTACK ~

Come on out and support the ever growing ART community in Siskiyou County

ART WALK 2-4pm

in Historic Downtown Weed

All located on Main St.

Swanson Images,

River Run and

Turn of the Century ~

http://consciousnessissexy.blogspot.com/

Then trail over to the

Black Butte Saloon at 4pm

located at 259 Main St. in Weed, CA PHONE #: 530-938-3184

$7 at the door

Everyone receives a raffle ticket, with the option of course to buy more for $1 each or 6 for $5

~There is quite an assortment of raffle prizes~

~ART SHOW and SALE~

featuring

Weed Arts Council Members

Linda Vivas,

Kelly Samuelson,

Nickki Lee Hill,

Stephanie Shaver,

Kevin Citta,

Jacqueline Jenson,

Bob Swanson,

Anthony Corsini,

Erik and Nancy Ziller

along with portions from the

Wildflowers of Weed

portrait project by Brenda Woods and Nickkie Lee Hill

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

4pm- LINE DANCING LESSONS~electric slide, toosh push, watermelon crawl....

followed up by Christopher Prim,

Chic Music, also featuring

MOUNTAIN GYPSIES belly dance troup,

and Strange BRew

Come meet PoP ARtisT ~ Nickolas Allen ~ as he IS one of the MC's

LOCAL Celebrity Guest Bartenders will be making drinks :

Lauri Sturdivant and

Randy Lawerence @ 6pm

Banjo Billy and

Weed Mayor, Dave Pearce @ 6:30pm!

* tip 'em good *

See you tomorrow !!

~~~*Stephanie Shaver*~~~
Weed Arts Council President
weedarts@gmail.com

Upcoming Art Events and Print of the Week

2010-04-19T04:21:00.001-07:00

One thing I’ve always disliked about Siskiyou County was the lack of art and culture (compared to what was available to me when I lived in Santa Barbara/Isla Vista). However, I’m finding that art is out there, you just have to look for it!

For this post, I thought I’d share some upcoming art events that any Siskiyou County locals should take advantage of. They’re great for seeing local art and growing connections within your art community.

First: The Weed Arts Council Annual Member Show and meeting. This is this coming Tuesday, April 20th at the Black Butte Center for Railroad Culture at 6pm. I have 2 pieces that will be in this show, which is exciting for me. The show also takes place at a site where they are restoring old railroad cars. I have yet to see the location, but I’m excited to go. For directions to the location, visit bbcrc.org.

Next: SAC WAC Art Attack. This is a collaboration between the Weed Arts Council and the Siskiyou Arts Council starting at 4pm at the Black Butte Saloon in Weed. There will be live music, belly dancing, art and much more. This event is Sunday, April 25th.

Last: COS Advanced Photography Student Show. Every year James Gilmore and his Art 11B class get the opportunity to showcase their work at the COS Library gallery. The show will run from May 3rd to May 16th with an opening reception on May 5th from 4 to 6pm. This is a fun opportunity to see a collective of work from emerging photographers.

In the meantime, I strongly suggest checking out my links for other local art resources. Tangle Gallery and Press frequently holds workshops and owner John Rickard also teaches community ed classes at COS. If you’re a fan on my facebook page, I’ve added both SAC, WAC and Tangle as favorites. This is in the bar on the right side of the facebook page and I will be adding more as I find them so you can follow them for updates as well!

In other news, I’ll also be featuring a photo of the week to show my readers what I’ve been doing along with a description of the photographic processes behind the print (even if it’s not alternatively processed). My purpose here has always been to teach people about photography and open new doors, so every photo I share will come with some sort of how to.

This week’s print is from a maternity shoot I did recently. The print itself is made by sandwiching 2 negatives together before printing in the darkroom. I love the sentiment, this is one of my favorite recent prints by far. Enjoy!

Outside the photographer – Part I

2010-04-11T15:39:00.001-07:00

I recently decided that some of the most important parts of a photographer are outside of ourselves. Our tools and space play a roll in the work we accomplish. Obviously our biggest tool is our camera. Some people have accused me of having a “camera fetish”, but I like having a variety of tools, all of which do different jobs. I thought it would be fun to share my collection, but mostly this serves as a visual inventory for me. I recommend writing down everything you own along with sizes of lenses. This makes it easy to buy filters on a whim and can help you figure out a lot about your equipment.

First, Canon AE-1 Programs (one is on loan from a friend). I chose to have 2 so I could keep IR film in one. I have a macro and a telephoto lens for these. This was my very first camera setup and what I use the most when shooting film. I also have custom made bags for all my gear. The pink liner makes it super easy to find black camera gear.

Next, my EOS systems. I have a 50D with a fixed 50mm lens, an 18-55 lens and a 28-135 lens with image stabilization. I also have my old Rebel and an EOS film camera. I like that this is a versatile system. I have a backup DSLR in case something goes awry. I also have the option of shooting film or digital just by switching bodies. This is super useful for night photography since I can experiment quickly and easily with my DSLR and get instant results, then transfer those settings to my 35mm setup and leave a night shoot knowing I got results.

Plastic cameras! My fiancé's Diana F+ with flash and a poloroid back. My Diana Mini 35mm, standard Holga with a fisheye lens attachment and a Holga GTLR, which doesn’t really have any more functionality except that it has a glass lens.

My fiancé's Yashica Light Meter, which he graciously lets me use all the time. And a pinhole camera I made out of a matchbook and a lot of electrical tape.

My newest acquisition, a 4x5 film pinhole camera and a handful of film holders. This is going to be so fun!

Finally, tripods, flashes, extension tubes, wired and wireless cable releases, off flash cords, filters, step down rings, telephoto and wide angle lens attachments and a broken canon that was my grandma’s. I also have my paint can pinhole, which isn’t pictured here, but can be seen in a previous post.

Next time, I’ll talk about one of the more important things outside the photographer, your space.

An invaluable experience for a great value

2010-04-09T04:31:00.001-07:00

This week, College of the Siskiyous featured a community education photography class with noted photographer and Siskiyou County resident, John Rickard (owner of Tangle Gallery and Press and former owner of Rostel Photographic Gallery).

While typical photographic workshops can cost upwards of $600 and require Siskiyou photographers to travel outside of the region, anyone in the community can experience this workshop in their own backyard for only a $55 fee.

Art 339, photography fundamentals, which took place this week, covered the basic principals of photography and addressed all students questions regarding the use of their camera (film or digital, point and shoot or SLR), creating quality prints, composition and presentation of work. Rickard also offered one on one feedback for each student (with skill levels ranging from hobby photographer to emerging professionals), and valuable feedback of their work.

The second of these community education courses, Art 333 begins next week on April 16th in Weed featuring Rickard as the instructor once more. The second course will focus on Siskiyou landscapes as portraits, photographing rich scenes in the area so that they tell a story, convey emotion and embody the style of the photographer. This course will start with instruction on Friday the 16th from 5-8, then an entire day of photography on Saturday the 17th and a showcase of student work on April 23rd, the following Friday.

In addition to being shown a number of sites for beautiful photography in our region, every student will spend time one-on-one with Rickard who has an enlightening way of instructing and inspiring artists. The field trip day of shooting promises enriching opportunities and allows students flexibility regarding which times and locations they want to shoot at. Rickard researches locations intensely before the class and creates a map and timeline for all students to follow.

I encourage any photographers of all skill levels to participate. It’s not very often that such a meaningful experience is offered locally, much less at such a low cost. Working alongside a photographer of Rickard’s caliber is an invaluable experience, at a great value.

Art 333 is being offered through COS. Students can easily sign up for this class online or on either campus.

Molography – A parody and commentary

2010-03-22T01:39:00.001-07:00

Stole this from a fellow photographer on Suicide Girls named baudot. If you’ve ever read the 10 rules of lomography, you’ll get the parody. If not… well Google it or follow the pink link in the quote.

“So I've been around Eastern Europe recently, and you'd be amazed at all the old things you can pick up on the cheap. Even old camera and film companies! I've been thinking about buying this one called 'Molo', but I'm worried that it's on the ropes for good reason. I think with a slick enough marketing campaign, I could make it profitable, though.

Here's what we've come up with. We're going to make using our cameras a "movement" called "Molography" so that kids will buy into it. Tell me what you think of our "10 Commandments".

1. Take your camera everywhere you go. You should always be ready to use up our product, and ready to buy more.
2. Use it any time – day and night. Use, use, use! Every negative is like a lottery ticket, and if you just buy enough film, you're sure to hit gold eventually!
3. Molography is not an interference in your life, but part of it. Don't even think otherwise.
4. Try the shot from the hip. Don't worry about the negatives you're wasting. Consideration is the enemy of art. Be spontaneous. And keep shooting.
5. Approach the objects of your Molographic desire as close as possible. Big images swallow small defects in the lens.
6. Don’t think. Just shoot. Remember, the more you shoot, the better.
7. Be fast. Can we emphasize this enough? Keep shooting, hipster!
8. You don’t have to know beforehand what you captured on film. Remember, art is spontaneous and unplanned and raw and anyone who tells you otherwise is part of the Establishment.
9. Afterwards either. Just keep shooting. Keep getting more film. Remember, each negative is a lottery ticket!
10. Don’t worry about any commandments. Because you are such a rebel. Do you feel good about that? Because you should.You rebel you. Damn it's good you joined this movement. Rebel.

So what do you guys think? I think it can be tightened up a little, but it gets the message across, right? I'm a little worried I should put something in there about digital never being "molo" but maybe I can just make that its own point, bigger than the commandments. Just so long as people keep buying film from me, I'm cool.
Oh, and we're thinking about this for a banner:”

Highlight of the whole thing: Consideration is the enemy of art

High Dynamic Range

2010-03-15T03:20:00.001-07:00

So, this is a little different than the normal stuff I write about, but I still consider it part of alternative photographic processes, even though it’s something you do in post-processing. High Dynamic Range, or HDR, describes merging photos using Photoshop or a similar program to achieve photos with a higher range of luminance.

In standard photos, you can usually expose to highlights or shadows or midtones, but our eyes have the ability to see all those ranges is a more dynamic way than our camera can capture.

This is a really great thing to do for all those pictures of white Mt. Shasta and it’s dark tree line. If you want to give it a try, the first thing is to look into your camera’s settings and figure out how to take multiple exposures (2 or 3) at different exposures using the same aperture. For my Canon 50D, I set the mode to Aperture priority and go into the exposure settings in the menu and tell it to bracket to 1 stop above and below, so the camera will take a series of 3 photos.

Example of photos:

Standard exposure – this is a decent photo of the mountain and fairly typical for what is seen, but the mountain is actually blown out a little because of the difference in tones.

Over exposed by 1 stop

Under exposed 1 stop

Then, these are merged using different programs. In Photoshop, you use the File>Animate>Merge to HDR function (Google for more comprehensive tutorials).

The result:

You can see how the trees are properly exposed and the mountain is a rich white with dynamic shadows and dark ridges.

Anyway, sometime to play with if you feel like it. In the meantime, I’m working on a couple different film processes and use of different cameras, but film takes time to process and the COS darkroom is closed this week, so I promise an update soon-ish…

Paint can Pinhole

2010-02-19T01:32:00.001-08:00

I originally wanted to wait for this post so that I had a larger set of examples to share of what this “camera” can do, but after an interesting test at COS today, I think it’s too cool to wait.

As discussed earlier this week, you can make a pinhole camera out of just about anything that is light tight and can hold film/paper/etc – like I did with the body cap to my DSLR. One of the most widely used versions of this is putting a pinhole into a paint can. Most of them are matte gray or black on the inside, light tight, and the curved back provides interesting wide angles and distortion.

To make a paint can pinhole, simple drill a hole into the side of the can, tape in a brass shim pinhole and make a shutter out of something (I used the black plastic that holds darkroom printing paper and duct tape). Simply load the camera with film or paper in an appropriate light free or safety lit environment and shoot. The results will be a negative image that is upside down and backwards.

Here’s an example of a negative print and it’s corresponding positive:

However, another classmate and I played with putting color printing film into our paint cans and ended up with really amazing negatives (which I converted digitally to a positive because I was curious).

Negative

Positive

The sky should be blue and the trees green, but instead the camera created this interested color scheme. I love it and plan to do a lot more in the future. Look for updates!

Diana Mini

2010-02-19T01:16:00.000-08:00

Diana mini is a tiny version of the Diana that uses 35mm film either in square or half frame photos. It has all the advantages of the Diana, multiple exposures, panoramic photos and Diana-esque images. It also has a cable release for long exposures, as well as hookups for attaching a Diana F+ Flash.

Some examples (by the way, these are the cutest little negatives ever, I love them. Plus the camera can just about fit in your pocket.)

And since I’ve been back in the darkroom, here’s another Holga update. If you aren’t shooting one yet, or at least thinking about it… well, I don’t know.

Things that have pinholes already in them and a Holga update

2010-02-18T02:28:00.001-08:00

While you can build pinhole cameras using a variety of mediums (more on that in the future), you can also buy cameras that are already premade pinhole cameras or cameras that convert to pinholes. For example, there is a way to break a Holga to make it a pinhole. Also, if you buy a Diana F+, it has a pinhole setting and removable lens for genuine pinhole photos.

There are a lot of ways of recording pinhole photos, ranging from 35mm film to photographic paper. The Diana records images on 120 (medium format) film. Another fun thing about using the Diana to record pinhole photos, is that you can change the aperture setting, replace the lens and continue to take regular pictures.

As with any Diana shot, there is room for multiple exposures. Pinholes also allow for long exposures during daylight, which can be interesting as well. These are a couple prints I got off my first roll of film. Some advice from experience: pay attention to whether or not you advanced the film after each photo! I ended up with a lot of double exposures that weren’t intentional (although some I loved anyway, which is what makes Lomography so interesting at times).

Double exposure pinhole

A little motion blur…

Because of the longer exposure and my puppy’s movement, her head and tail are ghosted out of the photo.

Also, as promised, I have a couple new B&W photos from my Holga. Even if you’re not doing all the off the wall things I want to try with this blog, I hope these at least encourage or inspire you to spend $20 and take some interesting photos.