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
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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
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Instantly Improve Your Editing With Layer Masks

There are about 5 million different things you can do to edit a photo in Photoshop.  Some of the things you learn will be totally pointless and some will be invaluable.  I am going to brush up on one of the most valuable editing techniques (in my opinion):  how to add a layer mask to your layers and why they are important.  This will benefit you in so many ways!  And it is SO EASY! Learning new things in Photoshop is always intimidating but this is literally something you can do in a couple clicks.  (To summarize:  you layer 2 photos on top of each other, click the layer mask button, select a black or white paintbrush to hide/reveal the bottom image and that’s it!). Directions for adding a layer mask: Open up a photo in Photoshop.  Pick another photo to layer on top of it (you can just copy and paste it on top).  Click on the top layer so it is highlighted and then click the square with a circle inside it at the bottom of the layer palette (The layer palette is where you see all your layers towards the right side of Photoshop).  The icon I am referencing, if you hover your mouse over the top of it it will say “add layer mask”.  It looks like this: Click on the white box that appears next to your top layer. That’s it! You are done, you’ve applied a layer mask! Now how do you use it?  Also very easy.  Select the paintbrush icon and make the color that it paints white.  (Image below shows where to select the paintbrush and where to change the color of it at). Paint wherever you’d like to reveal the image below and you will reveal the image beneath it!  If you make a mistake simply change the “white” color of the brush to black and it brings back the original image. ^ Example Photos: Color photo on bottom, black and white photo on top, layer mask selected (you select it by just clicking on it), select the paintbrush and make it black and just start painting.. it will reveal the photo beneath it.  If you make a mistake and want to bring the black and white image back, simply turn it white, like in the second photo.  :). Boom.  Done :). This method is perfect for head swaps (place the new face underneath the one you want to change and reveal the photo below it).  It is also perfect for doing selective coloring (adding color to black and white images).  You can change the background of your photo by adding a nice background behind the image and masking the original background off.  You can edit things out like power lines by moving the bottom image a few centimeters to the right and masking  them out.  There are so many possibilities! TIPS: 1.  You can change the opacity of your brush.. so if you only want to kind of reveal the background but not entirely, just set the opacity of your brush 50% (vs 100% and it will only bring 50% of the background in and leave 50% of the original intact.  You can also build on it by changing it to 10% and doing another round, bringing it to 60% revealed).  It looks much  more natural if you build up in that way vs just doing it at 100%! 2.  If you right click on the “background” (the bottom) layer and select “layer from background” you “unlock” the layer and can now move it around.  You need to be sure to highlight (click on) this layer when you want to apply changes to it (such as moving it.  You can move it using the move tool).. and then when you want to apply the layer mask with the white and black brush, be sure to click the white box next to the top photo :).  Any changes you make will occur on whatever is highlighted in the layer’s palette. 3.  There is a learning curve to using layer masks in a realistic way.. such as when you get to the edges you need to make the brush smaller and that it really  helps to lower the opacity of the brush to blend it better.  But after a few rounds of practicing you’ll start learning how to do it better and better. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask! -Christine Ann [website] Duluth Photographer Christine Ann Photography Facebook Maternity, newborn, senior, wedding, family, children, portrait photography.