Author: SiobhanKyle

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Live Show Recap: Storytelling

Hey there! This show was fun, although the topic proved to be a bit tough to meet. Although every photo may be a piece of a story, we were looking for photos that conveyed a full story in one shot. You can see my attempt at it here. Next week we’ll look at your black and white photos.

First off, photo news:

  • Canon announced three new cameras: EOS M6, T7i and the 77D. Meh.

Let’s look at some pictures:

  • “this is the story of a child born from the sea”
  • “I’ve always wanted to be someplace where monkeys are a pest” “You’re gonna be patient zero of something with that attitude”
  • street kid
  • “this is principle buzzkill” “ten kids a year die from graduation hat related injuries”
  • firefighter practice
  • eeek
  • win
  • protest
  • “oh my gosh you darling dandy”
  • BLM <3
  • “when you’re cruising on your bike and you need to stop and grab a banana”
  • basket carrying
  • “I lived that life, I’m gonna give it a pick”
  • “is this for real or is this like Plymouth Rock?”
  • “oh my god, what is she gonna do with that rock? This is a terrifying story.”
  • ghost dancer
  • “oooh, they’re mole people“
  • “he caught a dog! My dream come true.”
  • dog envy
  • Tony has limited Spanish understanding
  • this is how you lose her

Time for chit-chat! You know the deal.

  • this is a real slang roller coaster
  • Tony sees dead people
  • omg you guys actually learn things from us sometimes
  • “if it’s never happened to me, it doesn’t happen!” You’ve obviously never heard of the Craigslist killer.
  • couples counseling
  • don’t listen to torque of the devil
  • “slightly less-chill Tony”

Let’s go over to me for your questions:

  • where are you travelling next? Charleston for fun, Thailand for work.
  • stop spot metering.
  • we are totally in control of how our cameras make us look
  • Flashpoint strobes? “I like things that are the same but slightly different” “You must be a big fan of Canon” “And pop music!”
  • where to order from and ship a print? Congrats on a sale! Get a pro account from Mpix.

Time to review some portfolios! We do a few this week, quickly.

  • Bryce: lovely portfolio, not too many pictures, varied subjects. Just unify your layouts.
  • Infinite Photography: interesting, surreal work. Pare down your portraits a bit, lead with your marketable work. Put a shot of yourself on your contact page and add a pricing page.
  • Kyle Medina: great cover page, maybe simplify the layout. Your work is beautiful! 
  • Capture Candy: great shots, edit your about me page so it doesn’t pop out, simplify your categories and pare down photos. Great, diverse work though!
  • Maya Rose Bird: you’re the best! Lovely work, great layout. You’re a pro! 
  • Jordan Brown: nice, simple layout. Just pare down a bit, maybe make just one portfolio page not separated into categories. Great shots!
  • Chris Reddy: hi friend! Nice full screen layout. Pare down some shots, make your sub-menus your main menus. Good work!
  • Mordini Photo: beautiful work, nice full screen layout, take out the projects menu and just put up your subjects. Add your name and a photo and some personal info.
  • Sebastian Le Calvez: good layout, wonderful shots. You have a great eye.

Some more questions:

  • Fyn is Flynn now. Kyle is Lyle. Up is down. Cats are dogs.
  • what’s the deal with flying drones near heliports? 
  • what’s your favorite animal? Tony’s are red pandas, baby rhinos, and dogs. Chelsea’s is Alex the African Grey Parrot. He’s ded tho.

Back to your photos:

  • Miss America
  • hike
  • hockey
  • “he has to wear that skirt for medical purposes”
  • drone selfie
  • Chelsea forgot that picks were a thing
  • “this is Westworld. He’s gonna go do awful things to a robot.”
  • soccer death
  • invisible
  • whistling at the woods
  • the set up
  • “is this also Westworld?”

More questions:

  • hiiii Roxy!
  • any tips on product photography? Lighting is key. It’s really difficult, avoid reflections and dust.
  • add your location to our Stunner map! sdp.io/stunnermap

More photos, speed round:

And that’s our show! Next week is black and white photos. Have a great long weekend!

Chickens in pants.

 

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Beginner Photography: Storytelling

This week’s subject is storytelling, in other words, being able to convey a story in a single image. I’m gonna call this project a big ole failure for me, right off the bat. I mean, I had a few concepts and I executed them, but not particularly well. 

I enlisted my husband to model for me, and although he’s easy on the eyes, he’s not much of an actor 🙂 My idea, knowing this post would go up on Valentine’s Day, was to have him proposing. The focus would be on him and the ring, with me out of focus in the foreground. I set the camera up on a tripod, positioned Eric where I wanted him holding up the ring and focused on that. I set the timer to a 12 second delay so I could get into the shot. I had the camera on aperture priority, then set my aperture to f/3.5, the lowest I could. I knew the room was a bit dim, but I didn’t have any more light to turn on! So the exposure wound up being 1/10th of a second and the ISO was 1600. It wound up being an incredibly noisy shot, and the focus missed. 

I think the story still conveys, even if it technically isn’t great

We gave that a few tries, but that one turned out the best. Next I thought we could stage a fight. We only tried this one once, because Eric couldn’t keep from smiling, which was adorable, but unhelpful.

 

f/4.3, 1/4 second, ISO 1600

 

After I gave up on our acting abilities, I decided to shoot our dog doing what he does best, vigilantly staring out our front window. He does look to be waiting for something, but I could have used an additional element like someone outside the window for context.

 

f/4.7, 1/10th, ISO 1600

I did a bit of post processing on these, just cropping and converting to black and white, then playing with the contrast. I tried some noise reduction, but it didn’t do a whole lot of good. 

So overall, not my best. This camera’s low-light capabilities are killing me! The noise is so distracting. I would have shot in a different location, but it was wet outside and there is nowhere in our house with better light. I’ve got a better example of storytelling in my shadows post here. If you want to see some incredibly technical and conceptual photography, check out Erkki’s project here that was featured in our book, Stunning Digital Photography.

I love more conceptual projects, even if I didn’t get the most creative this time around. I can’t wait to see what you all come up with this week! 

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Live Show Recap: Sports

SPORTZ! This show was pretty fun. Justin was snowed out of the office, so he was controlling cameras remotely which is insane. His presence was notably missed in the office, but we prevailed.

You guys really showed up this week, there were a lot of great shots. Next week is storytelling, which I’m looking forward to.

Our Photoshop book is on sale! Get it here with coupon code PS10.

We start off with some photo news:

  • ENHANCE! Google AI let’s you add detail to low-res images, but it’s just guessing.
  • we got in the Olympus E-M1 Mark II and we’ll put out a review of it soon
  • Tamron announced a new 70-200 f/2.8 as a budget alternative to the Canon and Nikon. Tony mathed it.
  • Sony 100 f/2.8 GM very expensive, but it has awesome bokeh
  • Sony 85mm f/1.8 as a cheaper alternative to their G-Master

Time to look at your pictures! I’ll highlight our picks and notable quotes below:

  • beautiful foggy running shot
  • “old person joke“
  • poor goalie
  • “mini FedEx truck racing is a popular sport”
  • there’s that motion!
  • surfer
  • horse racing
  • “we got two crotch touchers, two face touchers, a face licker, and a judgy kid. There’s something for everyone in this picture.”
  • extreme kiting?
  • “tiger rappelling, that seems inhumane”
  • motorsports

Over to me for some questions:

  • clean, low ISO or slower shutter speed for sports? You want some movement, you gotta split the difference. Depends on what you’re shooting.
  • 16×9 prints? Only for TV. That’s a weird format.

Time for a portfolio review. Our talented friend Iris Epping! Dogs and sports. You might want to get rid of the sub-menus, most people won’t bother with them. Your work is beautiful! Great pricing page.

 

Time for chit-chat! Our favorite part of the show where we dissect your YouTube comments:

  • generic rich villains? Thank you.
  • rascal !!!
  • wow, that’s a lot of hate for our Chrome love
  • passion lost.
  • Tony wrote the wrong word and he will never live it down

Turns out we have a lot to say about product reviews.

Back to your photos:

  • “we always like to see the ball in any ball sport”
  • motor bike
  • good motion
  • “you are not the father!”
  • Tony does some ball sorcery on this shot
  • “you always lift the youngest man to catch the ball, and that’s called a wifflepuff…”
  • handsome snow puppers (it’s called heterochromia)
  • sportrait
  • bike tricks
  • great crop
  • Tokyo drift
  • fish with an incidental diver

Over to me for some questions:

  • Matt Granger, come over
  • Tony, what’s your beer? Dogfish Head 60 minute IPA, always.
  • G5 for review? Never, seemingly. Tell Panasonic to lend us gear. Nah, we ordered it, so we’ll have it eventually.
  • why do you hate Sony? Oh dear, are we sponsored by them or do we hate them? Make up your minds.
  • any future plans for the live show? The live show is for you, it doesn’t change much. We have other shows that we are working on, Wanderlust right now. And another book in the works!

Back to photos:

Back to me for some questions:

  • good sports cameras that aren’t Canon or Nikon? Not really.  You need a good DSLR, mirrorless have lag.
  • “I’d like if we zoomed back and he just had a bunch of sea gulls on a string”
  • all time favorite iconic photo? Both from this podcast episode we did on Arnold Newman!

Tony and Chelsea were here for this shot. Who would have guessed that the tattooed beefcake didn’t win?!

A few more questions as we speed through the end:

  • if you wanted to show your undying love for Sony, where would you get the Alpha logo tattooed on you? Neck, lower back.

More photos:

  • I blush when they show mine
  • “are they fighting with corn dogs?”
  • golden hour surf
  • “all those big football players look like little babies” “the brain is so dumb”
  • back light
  • full contact basketball
  • spartan

“…I don’t need all that. You’re just proving that you can be electrocuted at any point in time and be fine.”

Back to me for your last question:

  • set up a remote camera behind a goal, how to keep it from getting stolen? “You could use a Sony, no one will want to steal that piece of crap.” Why would you need to be that far from your camera? You should be fine. 

And that’s our show. Join us next week for storytelling!

 

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Beginner Photography: Sports

Hey y’all! This week’s topic was sports, which, ugh. Not my interest, not my topic. I did watch the Super Bowl though, but I was told photographing the screen wouldn’t count.

Being that it’s winter, I didn’t have a ton of options for shooting sports outdoors, which is what I wanted to do. Indoor sports are incredibly difficult to shoot with it’s weird lighting conditions (read some tips on it here,) and I would have felt strange just showing up to some random event. As it turned out, I was even weirder. I decided to go shoot at Kelly Drive, which is a trail along the Wissahickon River in Philly where people go to run and bike year round. There’s a section of it called Boathouse Row where the colleges keep their boats for crew, so I attempted to shoot a few boats on the water as well. Turns out people who are exercising don’t like being photographed. I was as stealthy as I could be, using my little Olympus with the back screen flipped out, but they always noticed me. No one said anything though.

I have very little experience shooting action, so this was a bit rough. I used the focus trap technique Tony demonstrates here:

I shot in shutter priority at 1/160th for runners, and a bit higher for bicyclists. I wanted to show a bit of motion, but freeze most of the subject. Here’s what I came up with:

They spotted me.

f/5, 1/160th, ISO 250

 

I wish they were facing me, but I couldn’t capture them once they passed.

f/6.3, 1/160th, ISO 200

 

I had a really hard time with the crop for this one. I shot wider than this, but the women got lost. Not sure if I did well by cropping into the bicyclist.

f/4.5, 1/160th, ISO 200

 

Three in a row.

f/5.6, 1/160th, ISO 200

 

 I obviously did some editing to these shots, as they’re all in black and white. The weather was grey and most workout gear is bright, plus all the background made the shots very busy. Going black and white eliminates some of that and draws focus to the subjects. I did a bit of dodging and burning in Lightroom and sloppily cloned out a car or two in Photoshop (follow those links to see tutorials on each.)

So these aren’t the most compelling images. I would have liked to shoot some contact sports, but hopefully I can try that once it’s warm out again. Let me know how I did and what I could have done to improve! 

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Live Show Recap: Animals & Wildlife

Animals, you guys! What could be a better topic? Nothing, that’s what. Animals are great. We had SO MANY submissions this week, so I’m very sorry that statistically, you did not get yours seen. But you got to see cute animals, so no one lost.

We have a few topics up for the next two weeks live shows, next week is Sports and the week after is Storytelling. You can see the upcoming topics here.

Photo News:

  • Our friend Chris Gampat, the Phoblographer, has an analog zine coming out! You can fund it and get a copy at sdp.io/zine.
  • “Here’s a story I personally related to as an astronaut and a dog lover.” Leland Melvin is an American hero.
  • Beyonce is having twins and got some real weird pictures taken by Awol Erizku. All hail Queen Bey.

Here’s Justin entertaining you while Tony imports pictures.

Ok, let’s get into your photos:

  • this sweet angel pibble
  • “Justin, I love you cause you think I’m funny even if I’m not”
  • Buffalo goes viral
  • damn, Kyle. This is a great sea lion.
  • “some of my closest friends are groundhogs”
  • backlit moth
  • and a backlit monkey
  • dragonfly
  • “bokeh balls”

Time for chit-chat! The part of the show where… ah you know what it is:

  • let’s celebrate Tony getting his drone certification! 
  • how bow dah?
  • pantsuit Chelsea
  • “I HATE GEAR NERD AND TEACHER”
  • nobody cares about digital anymore?
  • did radiation make Tony’s hair grey?
  • listening fatigue victims

Comment tips!

Now over to me for your questions:

  • Roxy!
  • food photography lighting?
  • how do you keep wildlife shooting interesting? Shoot new species, try to get your best shot of each.
  • when you first started shooting, how did you get outside your comfort zone? Have man confidence. “If someone else deserves to be mediocre, I do to!” Take classes to expand your focus, shoot for contests like DPReview. Shoot with groups.
  • culling process for your shots? Weed out the worst shots based on focus or framing, depends on the subject. Use star ratings to keep just the best.

Let’s look at a portfolio! Peter Bartlett. Great macros! Pare down the wildlife shots, one per species. “I wanna know about you. You’re a flower.” Most people don’t leave the first page, so maybe have one main page of your best shots. Great work!

 

Back to your photos!

Back to me for some questions:

  • YouTube paid comments? Oh good, people with money can be heard.
  • Tony, why you no do astrophotography? Because NASA is doing what we need.
  • You can see Eric feeding my dog
  • classic camera posters from Etsy

This dog is my favorite.

Tony hates ostriches and had a dog growing up named Willie Nelson.

And that’s our show! We love your animals. Join us next week for sports.

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Beginner Photography: Animals

Hey folks! This might feel like deja vu for some of you, as I photographed my dog a few months back here. But who gets sick of seeing dogs? A monster, that’s who.

It’s winter, so my backdrop wasn’t quite as vibrant as last time I shot in our back yard, but we still have green ivy back there. Hungry is a mostly terrible model, because if I try and get down to his level he climbs into my lap. Then when I stand up, he puts his ears back and looks guilty, so that’s mostly what he looks like in these shots. I kind of love shooting him from above, though. The perspective makes him look so tiny.

I use the lowest aperture (f/3.5 on my micro 4/3 Olympus, which isn’t really low, see video below) on aperture priority, so the camera chooses the shutter speed and ISO for me.

Pretty sure that has to do with crop factor, which you can learn about here:

So here’s what I wound up with:

Look at that seal pup

f/3.5, 1/160th, ISO 200

 

I got his eye in focus!

f/3.5, 1/200th, ISO 200

 

This shot isn’t technically as good, but I love the mood with the backlighting and urban backdrop.

f/3.5, 1/1000th (why?!) ISO 200

 

I also attempted to photograph my cat, Frank. He is old and barely opens his eyes. He was in the windowsill while it was snowing, so I wanted to capture all that, but was not successful. It was too bright out to capture the snow while also exposing properly for him. When he was sitting still he didn’t give me much of an expression, and when he was moving he was frantically trying to get me to pet him, and was just pacing back and forth (don’t worry, I gave him many pats). I even shot manual to try to get the exposure and shutter speed I wanted, but just couldn’t nail it.

 

Refusing to make eye contact

f/3.5, 1/60th, ISO 200

 

Giving himself head rubs.

f/3.5, 1/60th, ISO 200

 

I honestly don’t have much to teach you here, except that animals are uncooperative models. What did you shoot this week? What could I do to make my pets better models? Let me know in the comments, and I look forward to seeing your fur-children this week!

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Live Show Recap: Fashion with Roxy Rodriguez

This show was so fun! Roxy is an absolute delight and was such a wonderful guest. If you aren’t familiar with Roxy’s work, you can see her portfolio here. She was a contestant on Top Photographer and was a fan favorite. Roxy reviewed your fashion photos with us this week.

You may have heard rumors of Tony and Chelsea being the cheese couple, you can see why here.

Next week’s topic is animals! And Cowboy was in the studio with T&C.

We start the show off with some photo news:

Now to your pictures, here are our favorites and some fashion photography tips:

  • pay attention to details! Hair ties, nails, etc.
  • coat
  • “I think her arms are looking great, but her knees need work.”
  • great tips on styling here
  • a big theme this show seems to be mismatching the clothes and the setting

Time for a portfolio! Daniel Skog, you get a man card. Maybe combine your categories and pare down photos. Your architecture is a stand out.

They get real weird with the Squarespace ad here.

Now over to me for your questions:

  • how do you define fashion vs lifestyle or boudoir? Attitude. Tell a story in an image that fashion is just an element of.
  • what percentage of your shots are planned vs incidental? Roll with the punches, it can go either way.

Back to photos:

  • glamour, frokeh
  • “fashion is so boring”
  • cloning out stray hair is hard
  • lots of people shooting with the 50mm f/1.8
  • Roxy has shot with a 60D almost her whole career with a manual lens! Then Adorama gave her a 5D Mark IV.
  • Chelsea sings some Journey
  • bored dude
  • howbouda?

Back to me for some questions:

  • my dog tries to break into my house
  • how do you style, shoot and model yourself? Don’t! Get a team.
  • what do you do when you shoot a model but it doesn’t come out well and you don’t want to share the photos? Tell the model they can share it without your name! 
  • is it harder to do a creative shoot when you don’t like the fashion? Yes.

Back to some last photos:

A few more questions from you before we head out:

  • how to get paid shoots as an experienced photog? Act like you have clients! Do test shoots to fill out your portfolio, shoot what you’re looking to get hired for.
  • Roxy, the colors in your photos? Use color to tell the story you want for that shoot.

And that’s our show! Check out Roxy and follow her on Instagram. It was great to meet her and we look forward to working with her in the future!

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Beginner Photography: Fashion

I am SO NERVOUS about this post. This week’s topic was fashion, and I’m sorry to say, but it’s just not something you can shoot and be successful at without proper resources. But it was certainly good practice, and I would love to attempt it again.

In this case I was lacking: 

  • a studio
  • clothing worth modeling
  • lights
  • a model

But I had one day that it didn’t rain, an urban setting, my dumb face, and some old coats! If you want some great tips on shooting portraits, there’s a whole page of videos here, starting with this one on outdoor lighting:

And this great video on shooting fashion and glamour (watch Chelsea’s outtakes at the end!)

So here’s what I did:

  • set up my camera on a tripod, a bit below my eye level and as far away from the background as I could
  • I chose a rolling metal garage door as my backdrop, I wanted something gritty to match my styling
  • I chose two coats to model, as it was cold out. I wore jeans, a crop top and heeled boots, items which were neutral and wouldn’t overwhelm the item I was focusing on. I wore a hat because I was having a bad hair day, and red lipstick for some pop.
  • The day I shot was overcast, so the lighting was pretty even, but it was a bit dark. I shot in aperture priority with my aperture as wide as it would go, in this case f/4.4. This means the camera was choosing the shutter speed, which wound up being 1/200th to 1/250th, which is was faster than it needed to be. My ISO was at 200, but these pictures still wound up noisy.
  • I set my camera on a 5 second delay, shooting 5 images with 5 seconds in between so I had time to pose and change positions between each shot.
  • I chose a focusing point where I though my head would be, and then just crossed my fingers for facial recognition to take over. I don’t think it worked. This is where it would have helped to have a model, or at least a stand in for myself to focus.

I think I achieved the look I was going for, but my focusing is for sure off. This shoot made me want to start working on my Photoshop skills, because I would have loved to edit my skin, change the color of my hat, and maybe blur the background a bit. (All things I can learn from our Photoshop book!)

Without those skills, though, I simply used Lightroom to adjust the exposure, straighten, and crop the photos.

 

I could’ve used some fill flash for my face here

 

 Ahhh I just noticed the shoulder piece is not through the loop on the right side. Styling, people!

 

Hands up

 

So that’s what I got. I tried some more shots with a different background, against the green ivy on our back wall, but it didn’t work quite as well. I sure wish I’d noticed that shoulder bit before I posted these. 

So how’d I do? What could I have done better? This felt very much like a test shoot, so I’d love to find ways to improve on it. 

I think I’ll use this tutorial of Chelsea’s to tool around with the editing this week:

 

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Live Show Recap: Natural Framing

Happy Friday! This week we’re looking at your “natural framing” photos and we were really amazed at the submissions we got. Usually our more artistic topics narrow down the submissions, but you all really showed up! It was a great show.

So if you somehow haven’t heard about or seen it yet, our first 4 episodes of our new travel photography show, Wanderlust, are up now! And we’re taking video submissions to choose who we go visit next. So submit a 30 second clip telling us about yourself and your little area of the world to sdp.io/travel.

Next week we’ll have Roxy Rodriguez on the show to review your fashion photography! I’m really excited for that one.

Sandy the dog (and Chelsea) got on the cover of a magazine! Our friend Erkki is a great dog photographer who got his shot picked up.

Some photo news at the top of the show:

Ok, let’s get into your photos! I’ll link to all our picks and 5 stars below:

  • great black and white
  • Chelsea talks about buttering up a baby
  • guys on a cliff “hey you, look better!”
  • “a baby in its natural habitat”

Over to me for your questions:

  • what does Tony think of hydrogen for an alternative fuel for cars? Seems very complicated.
  • a video series or book on the business of photography? They’re conflicted about it.
  • buy our shirts! sdp.io/tshirt Who wore it better? Also, get t-shirts made by jmackstudios.com

Now to chit-chat, the part of the show where you say mean things and we laugh at you even though our souls are deeply wounded.

  • Chelsea’s
  • crumbling infrastructure
  • Tony is Brian Moser from Dexter? Or Jamie Foxx? 
  • more is less? That’s not a thing.
  • “what a load of waffle” “why does science have to infect art with it’s dogma?” That sentence is for sure not a thing. In fact, it’s antithetical.

Back to your photos:

  • bride
  • “I believe this is a boat“
  • “that’s Matthew McConaughey”

Time to look at a portfolio! Friend of the show Louis Chan. “You know, you’re kissing up a little bit and I do not hate it.” Stunning portfolio, think about adding your time lapse to the background, also get rid of the menu that links to your Flickr, just link it somewhere else with your social media accounts.

More questions from you:

  • Tony and Chelsea got scared of how many viewers we had
  • special requirements for Wanderlust hosts? You need to be familiar with the area you’re showing us. It could only be a few days. Running water is a requirement. Justin used the outhouses a lot. “I’ve never seen it.” Preferably not a screamy person.

Back to photos:

  • look at this cute chinstrap penguin, Chelsea undid Tony’s crop
  • look how gorgeous this gets after the exposure is brought up
  • beautiful light frame
  • “this is a human baby” “yes, and it’s in some sort of confine, some sort of prison”
  • oh hey, it me. You can see my husband in a bathtub here.

Now back to me for some questions:

  • Chelsea has oddly specific fears
  • what do you do in your downtime? Play trombone? Chelsea plays guitar and piano and sings karaoke online. Tony plays video games, they got a VR setup, they fly drones.
  • would you give up auto focus or raw format if you had to choose? Raw for both of them.
  • Tony as a bond villain. Which Bond would you kill? Daniel Craig for Chelsea, all of them for Tony.

Back to photos:

  • interacting with art
  • sunny window
  • “cherry blossoms? Overrated. Sad.” Nice dig, Chels.
  • lonely house
  • we speed through for a while at the end here
  • happy harvest, six stars!
  • texture

Tony and Chelsea talk over each other, then over to me for your last few questions:

  • what to do for photography projects in the winter? Everything’s grey. Grab a go bag and travel. Try new projects indoors like still lifes and product photography, self portraits. Try astrophotography.
  • Tony just called Star Trek fans “trekkers”
  • pros and cons of putting work on social media? Cons are that it’s a time suck, people could steal your work, you probably won’t get money from it. But it’s good for feedback and networking.

They gave some picks while they were answering that question, I’ll note them here:

This was a great show! The work shown was really impressive, Chelsea was super punchy, it was fun all around.

Also a touching moment for our friend Jerry Johnson who passed away this week. He was with us since the beginning and was a wonderful man and an impressive photographer, especially with such a huge physical disability. 

Join us next week for fashion with Roxy Rodriguez.

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Beginner Photography: Natural Framing

Phew, this project was a lot harder than I expected. So natural framing is shooting through an object or structure to frame your subject. I had an idea of where I wanted to shoot, and one day to wrangle my family to get outside and do it. The whole day was clear and blue, but I wanted to wait until right before sunset to go out and shoot. So, naturally, it suddenly got very cloudy and my plans were dashed, but we went out anyway. We went hiking to a spot I knew had a cave I could shoot out of, and then to a spot with rows of overpasses covered in graffiti.

Most of these shots wound up noisy and I missed focus most of the time. While I like these shots because my family is in them, they certainly aren’t my best.

I use an Olympus E-M10 with a Lumix 14-42mm f/3.5-f/5.6, which has proven to be pretty terrible in low-light. I shot, as usual, in aperture priority with auto-ISO.

Here’s what I came up with:

 1/80th, f/3.5, ISO 250

 

1/60th, f/3.5, ISO 640 

 

1/13th, f/3.9, ISO 1600

 

 1/80th, f/3.5, ISO 500

 

I chose to go black and white with all of these shots because the framing was the most important element. I edited following the “top tip” of course:

It was particularly difficult to adjust the exposure on these shots since I was shooting from a dark place into a bright place or vice-versa. I used an adjustment brush to edit the bright areas separate from the darker areas. If you haven’t gotten it already, our Lightroom book is super helpful for all of these editing tips.

So did any of these work for you? What ideas have you come up with for natural framing? I’m excited to see everyone’s attempts this week!