“Your Camera Takes Nice Photos”.

Awhile back I was doing a practice session.  We were at a famous landmark:  The Falls in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  If you have ever been here you’ll know how large it is.  There are limitless locations to shoot at.  We shot at a lot of spots but then this spot caught my eye.. I loved how it was designed and how the lighting was so I veered us in that direction and this is one  image I got from there:

Senior Photography from Duluth MN photographer Christine Ann Photography taken near the railroad tracks in Sioux Falls South Dakota at The Falls.

Loving everything about the spot, I handed my camera off to him, and this is what  most of the images looked like (still makes me laugh 🙂 ):

 

Maternity photography of Duluth MN photographer in Sioux Falls SD at The Falls near the railroad tracks.

 

I will grant that there are better photos than this one 🙂 and ones where I am in focus but none that resembled what I was able to get.. but.. I wasn’t expecting it.
My point in all of this?  It’s not the camera.  It’s the person behind the camera.  It’s their vision.  If it were the camera, every time I give my camera to someone to take a photo of me with my family, it would turn out professional quality.  If it were the camera, I would be able to get the same shots as pros using the same gear as me that have been shooting for over 20 years.  If it were the camera, every shot I took on it would be perfection.  The camera is a tool.. a tool that you need to be able to utilize.  An experienced pro will get better photos on an iphone – such as these iphone photoshoots done to prove this very point – than an amateur will get on pro equipment.

Photographers pick the best location (this is much harder than you probably think.. and takes a developed eye to understand the best spot to take a photo and the worst spots – I did a brief blog post with image comparisons here illustrating how location affects an image).  We position the person where we want them and how we want them.  We decide how close or how far away to make the shot.  We determine which angles to shoot at.  We set our camera settings.. every situation is different an warrants different camera settings.  We invested time and money into learning about camera equipment and what to buy and why and when to use what.  We bought and learned editing software like photoshop we even have the job of trying to make people feel comfortable and relaxed in front of the camera.  It’s much more involved than most people realize to get consistently good shots (you can definitely  get lucky shots 🙂 but if you’re starting a business you need to be able to be consistent.

My next blog post plan is to post a bunch of bad photos that have come off of my lovely camera :).

-Christine Ann
www.christineannphotos.com
Christine Ann Photography Facebook Page

Telephoto Distortion and Perspective and How It Affects Your Images

Guest blog post from Christopher Fisher – my husband and occasional second shooter for large groups and weddings :).

Telephoto Distortion and zooming with your feet

Photographers often talk about “zooming with their feet”. If they are using a fixed lens or their telephoto lens and it cannot capture the size of subject they desire, they just move [with their feet] closer or further away from their subject.  To the new photographer, they may not realize that zooming with their feet might compromise the composition of their photo.  While the subject might be brought to size, the background will look significantly different.

This difference is due to an effect called telephoto distortion. A human eye (or a camera) is a small fixed point to which an image is projected. This can be visualized in the below diagram:

While a tree may be several times the size of a person, the image of a tree is focused into a single point:  the human eye or camera lens. If the person walks closer to the tree, the subject appears larger. If the human being walks away from the tree, the subject appears smaller.

Look at the different figures. In the first figure, only a small section of the tree is visible. In the second figure, the entire height of the tree and more can be seen. Let’s see what each figure will see from the eye’s perspective.

Now let’s add a second subject:

-Post by Christopher Fisher

-Christine Ann Photography
Duluth MN Photographer Website
Facebook

Why Your Photos Have An Orange, Red, Blue, or Purple Tint – White Balance and How to Set It (With Images)

Have you ever taken a photo that turned out extremely orange, red, or blue?  It seems inevitable, especially when you’re indoors.. however there is a very simple way to fix/prevent this!  You have fallen victim to auto white balance.  On auto white balance your camera is trying to guess your lighting situation.. sometimes it does a good job and sometimes it does not.  If you simply tell your camera what your lighting situation is instead of it guessing you can get much more accurate colors.
The times I most notice incorrect white balance is when I’m indoors and my photos turn out red/orange.  I remember a few years ago I took some Christmas photos and the coloring seemed off on all of them.. and I had no idea why or how to fix it (most of them were turned to black and white).  Put simply, the white balance is off.

All I need to do to fix this is go into my camera and tell it my white balance is “tungsten” or “fluorescent” (depending on what type of lighting is in the room).
This is the easiest way to try to get it right in camera however there are a few other options:

1.  Use a grey card.  You take a photo with the grey card in the photo, then take the rest without it and later, in your editing software, you can use the “white balance dropper” tool to select the grey card and tell your program what your white balance truly was and it adjusts the photo based on that.
2.  Adjust it in an editing program.  Most editing programs have ability to “warm” the image or “cool” it down and these sliders help a lot to fix WB.
In the following image, the first one is straight out of the camera, unedited (VERY blue) and the second edit is my edit adjustment in Lightroom, adjusted only with the “WB slider”.. I moved the WB from “as shot” to “auto” (LR tries to predict what the auto wb should be) and then I slightly tweaked the slider from there.  Super easy.

3.  Adjust WB in camera based on the presets such as “daylight” “cloudy” tungsten” “shade” etc.

After seeing how blue the first shot came out I changed the WB to (I believe?) tungsten and this is how it affected the image.. this image is unedited.

4.  Custom set your WB by telling your camera which temperature to shoot at.  The range on my camera is from 2500 (cool) to 10000 (very warm) .. I can set it at any increment of 100 between those 2 numbers.

Most photographers use the presets (cloudy/flash/etc) or set the temperature manually and then tweak it by hand during editing if necessary.

White Balance presets (ie:  daylight, cloudy, shade, flash etc):

Auto White Balance:

Auto White Balance ^.

Daylight:

^ Daylight.

Tungsten:

^ Tungsten.

Fluorescent:

^ Fluorescent.

As you can see,  the presets are pretty useful and accurate.. they are also very simple and make a big difference in the image.

If you select “color temp” you can manually enter what temperature you want the image to be taken at.  The range on my camera is 2500-10000 and it is measured in Kelvin.

2500 Kelvin – very “cool”:

^  2500 Kelvin.

3500 Kelvin:

^3500 Kelvin.

4500 Kelvin:

^4500 Kelvin.

9500 Kelvin:

^9500 Kelvin.

So as you can see there are many options when choosing how to set your white balance.  I feel that auto white balance often does a pretty good job but I usually use a preset (daylight, shade, flash, tungsten etc) and tweak during editing.. but everyone needs to try out different options and find for themselves what works the best for them and their style.

Hope this helps everyone in understanding what white balance is and how to accommodate it in your images to reflect the look you want!

Here is an excellent chart to summarize everything and make it concrete:

–Christine Ann
Duluth MN Photographer
Facebook