New Years Resolutions for Photographers

Happy New Year to all my photography friends !  Can you believe it is 2019 already? Time flies huh?  

Are you one of those people who makes resolutions every January and then fights to keep them?  Even though I have a hard time sticking to some of the resolutions I make, I still find that the practice of making resolutions helps me to get myself motivated. It is also a chance to look back at the year and to see what I have learned from my experiences and what I need to work on.  For myself I find it very useful to set some clear (obtainable) goals. 

Just about every photographer I know says they’re going to try to shoot more in the coming year. Practice makes perfect right?  How about raising the bar a little and start sharing more of your work online or on social media platforms? This can be a great way to build up your business and network more at the same time.

In the winter months I try to update my portfolio (s) and get my backups in order. Depending on how thorough you are throughout the year, this can be a simple project or a major one. Another good resolution can be to get your gear lust under control and try to maintain your current gear instead.  Here's a great tip; stop comparing yourself to other photographers. 

Here are a few ideas for resolutions you might try in the coming year

• If you have a website (or websites) you could try updating it or maybe giving it a fresh new look with a much needed overhaul?

• We all have books in our libraries we have never gotten around to finishing yet. Break out some of your photography books and read or re-read them.

• Improve your skill set by either taking a class at your local community college or online. Classes in retouching or post processing techniques are always helpful. Face it; unless you’re an Adobe Certified Expert we can always improve our Photoshop and/or Lightroom skills.

•  Teaching a photography or lighting workshop.  Maybe you have some experience editing or taking photos with your iPhone. These days everyone has a cell phone that takes photos and videos and a lot of them would like to improve their photography.

• Improve your own lighting skills with off-camera flash or with studio lighting. Photography is all about light and the better we get at it, the easier our jobs become right? 

• Maybe you could organize a photo trip with fellow photographers.  I find these not only fun, but very educational at the same time.  

• Print more photos. There is nothing better than a beautiful print right?

These are just a few suggestions but the list can go on and on. Stick to your guns and make 2019 your best year yet. As always, remember to keep shooting and have some fun!

Advancements In Digital Photography

Every now and then I’ll be roaming around the Internet and randomly clicking on things that catch my attention and a few days ago something caught mine that I just had to check out. Like a lot of other photographers I use the Internet as a tool for all sorts of things, such as checking out new products or reviews or just looking for new creative photo ideas from various photographers. The video I came across was from The Camera Store TV website and originally aired back in October 2015. The reason it caught my eye was because the man doing the video was talking about my first DSLR camera, the original Canon 300D Digital Rebel. He was describing how far digital cameras have advanced and how far the prices have come down since they were first introduced to the general public. Think about it, these days some cell phones can shoot 4k video and shoot images over 15 MP. Isn’t it amazing how far the digital technology has come? 

When I purchased my Canon Digital Rebel in 2003 I had already been shooting digital for about three years and had been using Photoshop for two years (version 6.0). My first digital camera wasn’t the Rebel, it was actually a Panasonic PV-SD4090 SuperDisk PalmCam and shot at 1.3MP. It was released in 2000 and it actually recorded images on a 3 ¼ floppy disk that slid into the side of the camera and cost about $2000. Although it had an optical as well as a digital zoom lens, you couldn’t change lenses like the SLR’s camera I was used to. I probably would have kept shooting with it for a while longer but it could only hold about 12 shots on a disk (even at 1.3 MP) and you needed Windows ME to run it which was getting phased out by Microsoft for numerous reasons. Fortunately for me I was already converting all my files to DNG format or I would not even be able to open them these days. 

Panasonic SuperDisk

I remember there were sneak press releases in November 2002 announcing the soon to be released Digital Rebel. The Canon Rebel was going to be the first consumer priced digital camera designed to get people interested in DSLR cameras and it boasted a 6.3MP sensor and could shoot at a lightning fast 2.5 frames a second. That sounds like a joke now, but at that time it was fantastic. Before the Rebel would finally be released, Canon would first introduce the semi-pro EOS 10D in February of 2003. The EOS 10D was priced at $1999 (body only) but the Digital Rebel was scheduled going to be offered at $999 (body only) but would also be offered as a kit with an 18-55mm lens that featured Canon’s new EF-S lens system for around $1199. 

The 300D Digital Rebel was finally released in August of 2013 and because people were so anxious to get them Canon couldn't keep up with the demand. Believe it or not, you had to be put on a waiting list to get one for yourself. For me it was definitely worth the wait because now not only could I change lenses but I could record my images in Camera RAW.  It would be about two years before I was shooting totally in Camera RAW. It was pretty easy switching over to the Rebel because my main camera was a Canon AE1 film SLR and all the functions were the same except I now I was shooting on a CF card and I had a LCD to preview my shots. I kept photographing families and events, and actually shot a few weddings totally in JPEG mode and my customers were very happy with the images. To check out the video click  Canon 300D Digital Rebel.

I hope this post brought back memories of your first digital camera. As always, remember to keep shooting and have some fun!

Saving Time In Photoshop With Shortcut Keys

I’m just guessing this but if you’ve been using just about any Adobe product for a while, such as Photoshop or Lightroom, then you are probably using  (or at least know of) a few shortcut keys by now…. right? 

Shortcut keys are nice because they can save tons of time when you are working in the digital darkroom, but speed isn’t the only advantage. If you are making a selection and you use a shortcut, your pointer doesn’t move when you toggle between tools! Think about it, this alone could give you much more control when you’re working on your image.

Luckily, over 90% of these shortcuts haven’t changed in many years so we really don’t have to keep learning new ones over and over again.  Most Photoshop users know that if you float your mouse over any tool on the toolbar a pop-up box will tell you the tool’s name and the shortcut command, and if you pull down one of the drop-down menus, the ones that have shortcuts are listed there also. If you are a Cloud subscriber you’ve probably noticed that if you hover over a tool on the toolbar menu these days you not only get the shortcut key but you also get a little video of the tool in use in a pop-up box!  Nice huh?

I’ve been using Photoshop for over 18 years now so I’ve got most of my most frequently used shortcuts committed to memory, but I also have a list of other shortcuts I don’t use as frequently printed up and hanging up close to my PC so I can just glance at them when I need them. This is also the way I started learning shortcut keys, I printed up a list of the ones I used most and when I had them memorized I added new ones.  Easy right?

A lot of Photoshop users know that you are also able to reassign Shortcut keys if you’d like.  Just go up to Edit drop-down menu and scroll down to Keyboard Shortcuts or use the shortcut (Shift+ Alt+Cmd+K ).  Some of the Shortcut keys that Adobe assigns are for tools or menu items that most of us will never use, so if I want to add a shortcut that’s already pre-assigned to a tool or menu item, I can turn off that shortcut and use it for something else. If you use Photoshop quite a bit, shortcuts could save you a lot of time in your editing workflow.  I’ve included two links below where you can find more info on Shortcuts.  One is from Adobe and one is from Popular Photography magazine. I hope you find this article helpful.

  

As always, remember to keep shooting and have some fun!

Getting your prints to match your screen

Here’s a problem I see so many people having when they try to make prints from their home PC, maybe this has happened to you?

You go out shooting to an event or a nice location and you take a photo that you just have to print up. You bring it into Photoshop and make all your little changes to get it to look just right. But then you send it to your printer and it comes out of your printer way darker than you see it on your monitor?  

Don’t freak out, it isn’t your printers fault.  It’s actually because our monitor screens are backlit and our paper isn’t. So when you try to print photos, they will generally always look darker than they did on screen.

Here’s what I do to solve this problem. Right when you’re done tweaking your photo, make a duplicate of your background layer. Sometimes you might have a bunch of layers, if you do, make sure you top layer is selected and hit Ctrl+Alt+Shift keys and tap the letter E. This will put a flattened copy of all your layers on top of the layers stack. Now tap Ctrl + J to make a copy of that layer and change that layers blend mode from Normal to Screen. This will make the whole image way too bright. Next just lower the Opacity of the Screen layer to 20% and make a test print. I say 20% because that’s what works on my printer. Yours may vary,  so if yours is still too dark, try increasing it to 25% and so on until you find your printers sweet spot. To make things even easier, I created an Action to do this and assigned one of the F keys on top of my keyboard to do this with one button.

I hope this tip helps you out. Remember, as always, keep shooting and have some fun!

Quick Color Boost technique

Here’s a tip that is great for boosting colors quickly. I use this technique quite often to help give my landscape shots a Fall looking effect. But like most of my tips, you can use this on all sorts of photos. On the image here, I wanted to give my photo a quick color boost for Fall looking effect. You’ll notice this most in the grass and trees on the LAB Color shot. I’ve actually created an Action that gives me three levels of color boost to choose from. Maybe I’ll show you how to create a set for yourself in a future tutorial?  But for now, this tip is quick and simple. I think you’ll find that it can come in handy for sure. 

To do this, start off by creating a duplicate layer of your image. Name that layer LAB layer. We’ll work on our copy for now because we’ll need two copies for this in the end steps.  First you go under the Image menu, under Mode, choose LAB Color. Now go under the Image menu again and choose Apply Image. When that dialog opens, in the channel box, select b from the drop down menu and in the Blending box select Overlay. That will give your photo a nice Fall looking effect. But this might be a little too much for some images so this is where our LAB copy comes in handy. If the effect is a little too heavy, lower your Opacity on the LAB layer until it looks right to you. When you get it where you want it, go back up to the Image drop down menu and change your Mode back to RGB Color.

In my image I found that about 70 - 75% opacity looked pretty good to me but every photo is different. Play around on some of your own photos and see what you think. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and remember, keep shooting and have some fun!