Splatter/Dispersion effect

A Splatter/Dispersion effect is a simple and easy way to display a persons photoshop skills. The effect can cause an object to look like it is falling apart, disappearing, liquefying and more. I first saw this technique during a NBA basketball commercial, with one of the leading stars of that era dunking a ball. Ever since then I always wanted to know how to make someone look like that. I believe this technique can help a person create interesting ads for companies if they are into creating flyers and business cards. Below the pics is an Youtube video that explains how to do it.

-John Wilson

Macro shooting

Russian photographer Andrew Osokin is a master of winter macro photography. His photo collection is chock full of gorgeous super-close-up photographs of insects, flowers, snow, and frost. Among his most impressive shots are photographs of individual snowflakes that have fallen upon the ground and are in the process of melting away. The shots are so detailed and so perfectly framed that you might suspect them of being computer-generated fabrications.

They’re not though. The images were all captured using a Nikon D80 or Nikon D90 DSLR and a 60mm or 90mm macro lens.

Read more at http://petapixel.com/2012/1Ma2/07/ethereal-macro-photos-of-snowflakes-in-the-moments-before-they-disappear/#ttEyC8h2KG7ck4IH.99

 

I thought the detail he could get in the snowflakes was amazing and the fact that his camera isnt that much better then ours inspired me to thinking that pictures like this are possible to take ourselves.

 

Rkoletar

 

 

 

Nighttime long exposure Photography

By Raven Neubert

 

The exposure of your night time image will vary depending on certain factors. If there is a lot of ambient light then the shutter speed will be shorter. If you are shooting somewhere very dark, then the shutter speed will need to be longer. To capture the effects of light trails you need a shutter speed of at least 1/15th of a second, which means you must use a tripod. The image of the Houses of Parliament required a 6 second shutter speed, which is slow

 

In addition to your digital camera, you need a sturdy tripod to take good night photographs. This will ensure you stabilize your camera firmly, thereby avoiding blurriness in your pictures. In order to practice night photography, your camera must have the option for manually setting the shutter speed and aperture

 

Taking long exposure images at night can be perfected with practice and by learning to recognize the lighting conditions and how to adjust the camera to meet those conditions. Depending of what you have to work with, your shutter speed can be anything from 1/60th of a second to several minutes. What makes long exposure images special is that each image is unique, since light trails move in unusual ways, and with practice you should have a collection of photos that are one of a kind. The unique images available using long exposures night is a whole realm of photography that many people do not attempt. Stunning images can be your reward for trying this technique.

 

 

I personally find it easier to take pictures with long exposures at night.  Taking a picture of a waterfall during the day is difficult because it is easy to let in too much light and it will look washed out.  There is a point about knowing how long your shutter speed would be because if you take too long you won’t be able to see details regarding what you are taking a picture of and how much or little detail there is.

 

f/64

     f/64 was an ultra-exclusive photography group that was founded in the early 1930’s by Ansel Adams and Willard van Dyke. It consisted of 7 members: Ansel Adams , Willard Van Dyke, Imogen Cunningham, John Paul Edwards, Sonya Noskowiak, Henry Swift, and Edward Weston.

     Many of the members were related in some way; either by friendship or apprenticeship, or in the case of Sonya Noskowiak and Edward Weston, romance. They came together by way of a shared philosophy on the composition photographic images. They group as a whole believed that photography should show as much detail and as great a depth of field as possible for the subject matter at hand.

In 1933 Adams wrote the following for Camera Craft magazine:

“My conception of Group f/64 is this: it is an organization of serious photographers without formal ritual of procedure, incorporation, or any of the restrictions of artistic secret societies, Salons, clubs or cliques…The Group was formed as an expression of our desire to define the trend of photography as we conceive it…Our motive is not to impose a school with rigid limitations, or to present our work with belligerent scorn of other view-points, but to indicate what we consider to be reasonable statements of straight photography. Our individual tendencies are encouraged; the Group Exhibits suggest distinctive individual view-points, technical and emotional, achieved without departure from the simplest aspects of straight photographic procedure.”

Here is a link to f/64’s Manifesto:

http://kcbx.net/~mhd/1intro/f64.htm

Ansel Adams

Sonya Noskowiak

Edward Weston

Imogen Cunningham

Willard Van Dyke

How to Take Good Landscape Photographs

Taking landscape pictures is a skill that seems easy to learn, but is actually very difficult. Millions of people take landscape pictures every day, but few of them are any good. Here are some tips to take good landscape photographs.

1. Find a point of interest. If you don’t have something for the viewer to focus on, the photograph is too confusing to look at. There has to be something that the viewer’s eye is drawn to. This is difficult in landscapes, but necessary. Below is a photograph taken by Ansel Adams that demonstrates how you can create a focal point in a busy photo that helps calm the mind of the viewer so that they can focus on the object the artist wants them to focus on. Ansel Adams said about landscape photography in refernce to his group call F-64, “
The idea was that these microscopic revelations of the lens had an esthetic of their own. Instead of contriving and putting things together to set them apart, we tried to organize what was out there in nature, to create forms out of the random shapes.”

2. Have lighting that emphasizes what you want to viewer to look at. This is difficult because it might require you to wait for the right time or come back at a better time, but bad lighting will make your landscape bland.

3. Look for patterns. Using patterns in nature is a good way to create a point of interest or lead your viewer to the point of interest.

Using these techniques is a good start to improving your landscape photos, but like like every kind of photography, practice and trying new things is what will really make your pictures shine.

 

-Wayne Biggs

Ansel Adams – Monument Valley Utah

Smoke Art by Raven Neubert

Smoke Art

By Raven Neubert

Start by fixing the black back drop to the wall. Place the incense stick a foot away from the back drop. Do not light it yet.

 

Now position the table lamp such that it points at the tip of the incense stick. It can be placed either to the left or right side (at either the 3′o clock or the 9′o clock angle) of the incense stick.

 

Now place the strobe on the opposite side (of the table lamp) at half a foot distance from the incense stick. Adjust the flash to 1/16th of the power and depending on the output image, you can reduce or increase it.

 

Now you can place the black cards on either side of the strobe so that light from the strobe does not spill out to the back drop.

 

Now light the incense stick and start the smoke. If possible place the entire setup in a place where you have good ventilation so that your room is not smoked out.

 

Switch on the table lamp.

 

Set your camera to manual focus and start the aperture at f8.0 and shutter speed at 1/200th of a second (below your sync speed).

 

Shoot in RAW format. Start clicking and get some great smoke pictures.

 

Gently blow the smoke to get different forms and shapes. Once you are done with this, you can let your imagination run wild by placing 2 or 3 incense sticks that in turn should produce smoke of completely different shapes.

 

Once you are done with shooting the smoke pictures, it is time to proceed to the post-processing part of this fun exercise.

Open the image in photoshop and make a duplicate layer. Select paintbrush and set your foreground to black and paint out the unwanted smoke in the picture.

 

That’s it. You have a smoke picture. If you want to color it try Hue & Saturation adjustment layer.

 

Also try to play with colorize option under the same adjustment layer.

 

If you want to make the background white, Go to Image > Adjustments > Inverse. This will make the background white.

 

Again like any other photography, you can always break the rules and still come up with extraordinary pictures. Play around until you are satisfied.

 

I hope this post has been helpful and good luck with your smoke photography.

Instagram

Instagram is an online social digital photo sharing service. It was conceived in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Michel ‘Mike’ Kreiger. As of January 2013 it has over 100 million registered users, of whom approximately 90 million are active.
Instagram touts that users of the service have now uploaded over 1 billion photos! It has gone through several iterations since its inception, and is now currently in version 2.0. It is most famous for its variety of different filter effects (there are 19 as of now) that users can very easily apply to their digital photos. It allows users to either take a photo with the Instagram app, or to upload a previously captured image and edit it. One thing that stands out about photos made or edited using Instagram is that they are not in the traditional 16:9 ratio format that most digital pictures are found it, but rather square; mimicking the style of a polaroid. Aside from the various filters, Instagram allows users to add such effects as adding a touch of extra light, a “picture frame”, and several different types of tilt-shift effects; centralized round or horizontal.
After editing, photos may then be uploaded to any number of social media sites such as Facebook or Flickr. Many users also choose to label their photos with #hashtags or location tags. Hashtags allow users to search for certain keywords and find photos of those keywords easier.
Last but certainly not least there are also several very innovative add-ons that users can use to enhance their Instagram experience. Instamap is an app that allows users to search for Instagram photos by location or hashtag and there are also several sevices allowing users to print their Instagram photos.
TL;DNR Instagram is a really cool photo app for your mobile device. It can do neat things to your pics.

-dkittell