William Manning's "Photo Connection" Blog

Over the years leading photo workshops I get a question that pops up often from my participants, How do I handle my shooting assignments? This questions however comes up when participants are struggling creatively and many times this is due more to the conditions than the subject. The truth is, we all come across situations out of our control such as Mother Nature, therefore I tell people not to focus on the situations out of our control but on those that we do have control. But even this advice only partially answers the question. I decided to focus this “Creative Thoughts” post on a recent trip I took that might best answer this question and I’ll do it with more photos than usual. I think the photos will illustrate better than words what can be achieved in challenging conditions.

I recently returned from a photo shoot in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains. A location I have never shot before, therefore I knew little about the location other than it was beautiful. After a busy spring and early summer of shooting assignments I was ready to shoot something different. This opportunity came about and I was off.

July probably isn’t the best time of year to photograph in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountain region but when opportunities arise to photograph in a great location it’s tough to turn it down. Mid summer brings long hot days with short windows of opportunity to shoot in good light, matter-of-fact, as I recall I believe a couple of hours at sunrise and about the same for the last light of the day. Knowing the challenges that lie before me I decided as I often do, this would be just another test of my skills and knowledge.

Bishop, California was my home base where my very good friend and colleague calls home, Dennis Flaherty. Dennis has lived in Bishop for 30 years and knows this area better than most. Not knowing the area myself and knowing I had very short windows for shooting each day there was no way I could be productive for my 9 days in the region. This solved one of the most problematic issues I would have to deal with, knowing where to shoot and knowing how to get on location on time. Dennis would take care of these problems for me and simply let me be creative and put my mind on the task at hand, photographing the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Rule #1: if you don’t know an area or subject, hire a guide or an expert on the subject so you can maximize your shooting time. Photo workshops and tours are perfect for this situation.

Harsh light is a reality and knowing how to deal with it takes a little know how in the processing stage but first how to capture it in camera. Regardless of what I photographed during my stay I had incredibly hard light with cloudless days and a sun that found its way in every little crevice of the earth. There was no escaping the sun

and when this happens you can count on shooting for HDR on almost every image. I really dislike this term (HDR) because when HDR is mentioned people think of that illustrative look that everyone seems to be doing. I’m talking about HDR the photograph look.

Wind was also an issue and flowers were very much an important part of my photo shoot. You can pretty much count on wind as soon as the sun come over the horizon therefore I knew I would have to employ other processing techniques that would allow me to merge photos that would give me the depth of field I wanted in some of my landscapes. This is a fairly easy task with Helicon Focus software and also within Photoshop itself. This software allows you to combine multiple frames of the same composition (subject) but focused at different points within that composition. The advantage of this technique is it will allow you to shoot with a higher ISO and smaller aperture to increase your shutter speed but of course decreasing your depth of field. I might warn this technique won’t work in heavy winds as it becomes difficult to align moving flowers. Therefore, it’s not a solution for every situation but one to consider.

Rule #2: know what is available to you in the photo processing stage. I highly recommend learning some simple Photoshop techniques and using some Photoshop plug-ins to help manage those creative challenges you encounter in the field.

Another way of dealing with wind is to go abstract. Intentionally use long shutter speeds and hand hold your camera with intentional movements, back and forth, circular movements, zoom in and out, etc… Blue cloudless skies also become boring when they are in every picture you create, shoot a few images you might consider replacing the sky. I’ve written about this in, Easy Fix for Bad Conditions. Overcast conditions are great for a lot of situations but can also be a problem for others. If you really like the subject but the light isn’t right go ahead and shoot it and see if punching up the saturation later helps the situation, read my recent post “From Dull to Saturated Magic”.

Rule #3: Be creative and think outside the box. This falls a bit into rule #2.

Lets face it, sometimes things just don’t come together. When you have your heart on shooting beautiful landscapes and things just aren’t working out you have to either walk around in a bad mood or you find other things to shoot. I realize some photographers just plain don’t like shooting anything outside their interests. Fortunately for me I have a lot of interests. I was getting a bit frustrated later in my trip when I was sitting around from 8 am til 7 pm waiting for the harsh light to give way to better shooting conditions. I was a long way from a city to turn to for photo opportunities but what I did have was a couple historic locations that provided subject matter, Bodie Ghost Town and the Laws Railroad Museum. Both locations were perfect subjects when the light was to harsh for nature. An open mind can be a blessing when your a long way from home for photography and you’re struggling with your subject.

Rule #4: Be open minded and have an back-up plan. I typically always have a contingency plan for when things don’t work out. This is also a good reason to apply Rule #1, Having a local guide helps when you run into these situations and don’t know the area.

Have a great photo shoot and I hope we cross paths in the near future. The following photos round out an incredible photo shoot in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I am planning on a workshop in this area in 2011. Look for future postings on my workshops page and I hope you can join me.

Exploit your subject or location when you don’t have time to move on or when you have no idea what lies ahead. I really like to maximize the opportunities that I know I have at hand.

To find more information on the Lens Baby visit their web site at Lensbaby.com

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Note: If you enjoy my posts and think your photo friends might find my blog of interest, please pass the link on to them. Any help you can provide feeding traffic to this blog is much appreciated. Always feel free to leave a comment.

© William Manning: all material on this blog is the copyright of William Manning. No reproduction on this material is allowed without written permission from the author/photographer.

I have written in the past about shooting and collecting topics such as sky’s, lawns, trees, etc… I use many of these extra parts for my architectural projects when things don’t work out as I hope, but here is another example of why collecting such material is helpful. I recently visited the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains. Needless to say, Mt. Whitney is an obvious choice of subjects when visiting this mountain range. I have never photographed in the area, so as many photographers might do, I planned a visit to this incredible landmark. Unfortunately, the time of year and weather conditions weren’t exactly the best. At the time I was shooting the mountain, I knew it wasn’t going to be anything breathtaking but never-the-less, it was worth having in my files.

Upon my arrival back home and going through the editing process, I came across that Mt. Whitney photograph. After adding some contrast and running it through Nik Viveza I still wasn’t thrilled with the photo but decided to see if I might have a better sky in my files and improve the photo, even if only slightly. After going through my handy dandy “Photoshop Parts” folder, I found some possibilities. A whole series of cloud pictures I had collected over time was there waiting to be used. To my delight, I was on my way to creating an image that was far better than the original. The two photos below illustrate the starting image and the finished photo. The following is my step by step process and one that might work for you the future.

Step by Step: Creating Cloud Cover

• Duplicate the background layer. After the background layer has been duplicated then this layer will become your working layer.

• The second step is to bring in your sky or clouds. Simply open the sky you want to bring into the the mountain scene. Hold down the shift key and drag the sky layer from the layers palette onto the window showing your mountain layer.

The reason for holding down the shift key when dragging a layer is to line up your layers perfectly. In this demonstration a perfect alignment may not be important but rather a good habit to form.

• After you drag your sky layer onto the working image you will need to place this layer in-between your original background layer and the background copy. Once the layer order is in place, select your magic wand from the tools palette. Click the sky with the magic wand and you should see your selection indicated by a blinking line (better known in Photoshop circles as marching ants).

• You should have a photo that looks much like the photo above. Now, select the eraser from your tool palette and set the opacity at 100%. You can now start erasing away within the marching ants and you should see your new sky appear. The marching ants will protect anything and everything outside of its borders from being erased.

• Once you have the new sky in place you can hold down the command and D keys to deselect your marching ants or go under Select and scroll down to Deselect.

• Now for the fun part. Select your eraser tool once again and set the opacity anywhere from 15% to 20%. Very carefully, start erasing in small increments from the mid-section of the mountain. What you are looking for is a very light transition between the clouds and the mountains. You want the mountains to faintly appear from heavy cloud cover. Once this is done you can now change your opacity to about 80% and start making bolder moves with your eraser. Start from the bottom and move upwards and hopefully find a nice blend from your earlier use of the eraser tool.

You may decide to start over with the eraser process after getting the feel for these important step. You can do this in two ways. One, step back via your history palette, or two, you can simply move back one step by holding down your command and Z keys on your keyboard to undo the previous step. Once you get your blend looking natural you can now change the opacity to 100% and again start erasing to finish up the foreground clouds.

NOTE: Once I got the clouds blended with my mountain, I decided the background created a problem. After giving it some thought, I felt the clouds behind the mountain didn’t look like distant clouds but rather very much apart of the foreground cluster in which they truly were. I looked through my files and found a pattern of clouds as viewed from a distance and decided to place them behind the mountain.

• Drag the second cloud pattern into the working file. Again, make sure you hold down the shift key when you make this transition. Once this layer is transfered over then place it between the background copy and your previous cloud layer.

Make sure the cloud layer you just placed is active and erase the bottom portion on the clouds with the opacity set at 100%. Now activate the background copy and gradually blend the two cloud layers together by erasing the right and left edges of the mountain with the opacity set at around 40%. Erase until it looks natural.

NOTE: Your photo should be looking pretty good at this point. You could call this finished but I decided I wanted to soften the clouds and the edges of the mountains just slightly. This works best if you have some of the popular Photoshop Plug-ins, and in this case Topaz Labs software and the program called Adjust 4.

• Flatten your photo. Go to the Layers pull down menu and scroll to the bottom and select Flatten Image. Again duplicate the background layer just for insurance incase we screw up or simply don’t like the look of our next step. Go to Filters and go to Topaz Labs and select Adjust and then to the Smooth and Flat action. Move the sliders to your liking and then hit the OK button.

• Flatten your photo once again and you have a finished photo.

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Note: If you enjoy my posts and think your photo friends might find my blog of interest, please pass the link on to them. Any help you can provide feeding traffic to this blog is much appreciated. Always feel free to leave a comment.

© William Manning: all material on this blog is the copyright of William Manning. No reproduction on this material is allowed without written permission from the author/photographer.

Mother Nature rules and when she decides to work against your plans, you might as well accept her terms and go shoot. Last month I shared with you how to replace a sky when Mother Nature goes against your needs. Although replacing the sky works in many situations, its not the solution for all. Here is another tip that helps in some cases but can completely destroy others. Therefore, I’m going to forewarn you, this tip is worth trying but don’t think of it as a solution for all problem photos.

From Dull to Saturated Magic

I often run up against conditions opposite of my needs but can’t let it get me down. With today’s digital technology there is more than likely something I can do to turn bad into something worth while. Here’s a trick I use when I get flat light with little or no color in my subject. I flood it with Hue and Saturation. This isn’t a fix all solution but with some situations it is magical.

• Open your photo into Photoshop and duplicate the background layer.
• Go to your Layer pull down menu, then go to Adjustment Layer, then Hue/Saturation.
• A new Layer box appears. You can rename this layer or leave it at its default title, Hue/Saturation 1. Click OK.
• You will see an Adjustment layer on your Layers Palette and also an Adjustment window with a pull down menu. This pull down menu has several options beginning with Master then followed by Red, Yellow, Green, etc… I typically just go for it all set on Master. If you want you can do each individual color to see what you come up with.

• Once you select the color palette you want to work, you now have three sliders, Hue, Saturation and Lightness. In most cases I work only the Saturation slider, sometimes the Lightness slider and rarely the Hue slider. Play with the sliders until you’re somewhat happy with the results. You may find yourself happy with some areas within the photo but others maybe a little to saturated.
• You can now pull back on the areas you feel are over saturated by selecting the paint brush and set the opacity at a desired setting. I typically set my opacity somewhere in the 20% to 30% range and start painting over the area I want to tone down the saturation. (If your paint brush is to small or to large you can change the size with the bracket keys on your keyboard. The left bracket key will make the paintbrush smaller and the right bracket key will make it larger).

• You are now pretty much finished putting some life into your picture. At this point I will sometimes work a color or two if I find them over bearing. I do this by selecting the background copy and then go to the Image pull down menu, then to Adjustments and then select Selective Color. I will select the color I want to work and play with the sliders until I find a hue that finishes off on photo. Now flatten your image and you’re finished (Go to layer pull down menu and select Flatten Image).

I hope this little tip helps with one of your problem photos at some point. Good Luck and send me one of your before and after shots, and see how you’re doing.

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© William Manning: all material on this blog is the copyright of William Manning. No reproduction on this material is allowed without written permission from the author/photographer.

Oh no, I agreed to shoot an assignment a couple hundred miles away on a tight deadline and the weather turned out differently than the forecast predicted. This has happened to me more than once and I’ve learned how to work around problem conditions in many cases. But, to make it work requires planning ahead before you run into the problem. I had an assignment a couple hundred miles from my home and had to get the photos done within a couple days. William Manning’s “Events from Unfortunate Conditions” had an uprising on this assignment and I had to make something good happen. Thankfully, I have a folder on my computer that I call, “Photoshop Parts”. These files are nothing more than a bunch of full size 16 bit images comprised of sky’s, beautiful lawns and urban landscaping.

Before I discuss how I fix these problems let me first address what you need to collect for your own Photoshop parts. When the conditions or opportunities allow itself, you should be shooting full frame sky’s on those beautiful days when the sky is bluer than blue and when white puffing clouds (cumulus) appear overhead. I suggest you shoot these conditions in the morning, mid afternoon and late afternoon and into early evening. You want to make sure you have the right sky for what ever need you come across. You want your finished product to look plausible. I also try to get onto a golf course at least once every spring to collect photos of beautiful grass for those problem lawns I run into often. I shoot on a fairway in several directions with a wide angle zoom lens and change the height of my camera position at a couple different levels. The reason I shoot in different directions and at different heights is to make sure I have the right condition for the direction of light on my subject. In other words you don’t want your grass to look back lit when your subject is front lit. The finished product needs to look natural.

Replace Overcast with Beautiful Blue

The photo on the right shows my problem areas of which I will need to fix. These are easy fixes if you have extra parts in your library and a little skill in Photoshop. Lets fix the sky first. Important: always duplicate your background layer before you do any adjustments or fixes, or for that matter, anything. In most cases I use the pen tool in Photoshop to make my selections. I use the Pen Tool because I personally feel I can be more accurate in my selection. I’m a perfectionist and being nearly perfect in the selection I believe is critical when your working for a paying client. You can also use the Quick Selection Tool, it works fairly well, especially in situations similar to the image at right.

Once your selection is made you can now bring in your sky. This image must be the same size file as the one you are working on. In other words, if you are working on a 16 bit file the image you are transporting into this file must also be 16 bit. Open your file that contains the sky you want to import. Hold down your shift key and drag the background layer of the sky over into the working file. By holding the shift key, it allows your images to line up perfectly. In this particular case it may not be so important because we will probably move the sky around later anyway, but I believe it is a good habit to develop. Now your sky layer is placed into your working file, it is probably the top layer of the three. You now need to drag the sky layer and place it between your background layer and the duplicate background layer.

Make sure your top layer is selected as your active layer. You should have marching ants indicating your selection. Take your eraser and make sure the opacity is at 100% and select a large eraser. You can change the size of the eraser with the bracket kets on your keyboard. The left bracket key will make your eraser smaller and the right bracket key will enlarge the eraser. Start erasing inside the marching ants, (everything outside the selection is protected so no worry). You should see your new sky appear before you. After you have erased the old sky and have the new sky in place you can deselect the marching ants by going under the Select pull down menu and go to Deselect or you can do this via the keyboard shortcut of command and the D key. Now you can perfect the placement of the sky, providing you have clouds or variations in the sky that you want to place in a particle position. Simply select the Move Tool in the Photoshop tool menu and select the sky layer making it your active layer and move the sky around until you like what you see. Now you should have a beautiful sky in place of the ugly overcast sky.

Before I fix the grass, I typically merge the top two layers but before doing this, if one of the layers need a little contrast adjustment to blend the two together a little more perfectly I will select the layer that I want to adjust. Once you select the layer now pull up the curves by either hitting the command and M keys or go to the Image pull down menu and go to adjustments then to curves (Image – Adjustment – Curve). Make the adjustments as needed. Now you can merge your two layers together. You can do this by selecting the top layer and then go your Layer pull down menu at the top of your screen. At the bottom of your pull down menu you will see Merge Layers. Select this and now your top two layers become one.

Replace the Beat-Up Grass

For the sake of possibly making a dumb move, lets go ahead and duplicate the layer with our new sky. This should now give us three layers, the original background layer and the two layers with the new sky. Open the photo that has what will be our beautiful new lawn on it. As before, we need to bring this image over to our working file. Hold down the shift key and drag the background layer with the new grass over to our working file. Again, drag this new layer beneath the layer that exposes the sky and building we want to keep. In the case of replacing the sky, we created a selection where we wanted to place the new sky, but this time we are not going to make a selection. Why? Because in most cases where there might be a sidewalk or a building there will be grass overlapping those elements. We want to maintain a natural look therefore we are going to leave grass overlapping and gradually erase the old grass as close as possible up to the building or sidewalk with effecting them. Select the eraser tool and set the opacity to about 50 percent and in most cases my flow is almost always set between 60 and 80. This gives me a nice gradual blend. Now start erasing the old grass and let up on your mouse or Wacom pen and start erasing again until you see what you like. It is possible that your perspective of your grass looks a little odd. In other words the grass looks to large for the scene. That is why I shoot my photoshop parts (grass in this case) with a wide angle lens. Select the grass layer from your layers palette and your move tool from the tools menu. Take the move tool and move the grass layer around until the perspective look correct. Once again, if the contrast looks a little off, I keep my grass layer active and then select the curves tool and adjust until the blend matches up with your other layer.

The Finished Photo

One last thing and your finished. From the Layer pull down menu you can now Flatten your image and you have a beautiful finished photo that no one will ever know it was taken on an overcast white sky day. I wish you the very best on your creative journey.

New 2010 – 2011 Workshop Page is now On-Line – Architectural Workshop in Cincinnati Ohio, October 13-17

© William Manning: all material on this blog is the copyright of William Manning. No reproduction on this material is allowed without written permission from the author/photographer.

I get this question often, How do I fix my vertical (perpendicular) lines when they lean inwards? This is an easy fix in Photoshop. There are some subjects you can get away with when vertical lines lean inwards (or outwards), such as most nature subjects, trees, flowers, etc… When it comes to buildings or other manmade subjects you expect to see perpendicular lines in most cases, unless you’re intentionally using the exaggerated angle for a creative effect. So let’s get a fixin’.

As I said, this is an easy fix. Just follow these steps:

• Open your photo in Photoshop

• Duplicate the background layer (it is important to duplicate this layer, otherwise the skew tool won’t work.

• I typically like to place guides on my photo to help in the straightening process. (Make sure your rulers are active, if not hit the command and R key this will bring up the rulers). Simply drag with your curser a guide line from the ruler into your photo and place as needed. When you are finished with the guide lines simply drag them back to the ruler.

• Go to the Edit menu at top and a pull down window will open and go to Transform and another window opens and then go to the Skew tool (Edit – Transform – Skew)

• Make sure your window is larger than your photo, if not you can enlarge your window by going to the bottom right hand corner and pull to your desired size.

• You will see a outline around your photo with a small box at each corner and one each in the middle of each line. Grab one of the corners and pull until your line is straight or in desired position. This will throw the other side off and you simply grab the corner box on opposite side and pull once again. You will more than likely have to go back and forth a couple of times until you get your lines as needed.

• Depending on how much of an adjustment you had to make with the skew tool you may notice your picture looks a little squashed. If this happens go to Edit – Transform – Scale and use the scale tool to raise the photo. I typically take some from both the top and bottom. Scale until your subject looks correct. After using the scale tool you may have to go back and make some adjustments with the skew tool once again.

• Now you’re finished.

• TIP: When I know that I’m going to have to use the Skew Tool in Photoshop I will intentionally shoot my subject a little wider than I need, otherwise after using the scale tool my subject will more than likely be hugging the edges of the picture frame.

To Sum up this tip: 1. Duplicate layer 2. Place guide lines if needed 3. Go to Edit – Transform – Skew 4. Play with Skew tool on both sides as needed 5. If needed use the Scale tool, Edit – Transform – Scale 6. If needed fine tune with the Skew Tool one last time 7. Finished.

New 2010 – 2011 Workshop Page is now On-Line – Architectural Workshop in Cincinnati, Ohio, October 13-17

Note: If you enjoy my posts and think your photo friends might find my blog of interest, please pass the link on to them. Any help you can provide feeding traffic to this blog is much appreciated. Always feel free to leave a comment.

© William Manning: all material on this blog is the copyright of William Manning. No reproduction on this material is allowed without written permission from the author/photographer.

OK, I admit, when I first started shooting digital I was lazy and shot everything on auto white balance. My thought at the time was, the color will be close enough or I’ll fix it in Photoshop. Both excuses were acceptable for a while, until I found myself spending tons of time fixing those colors in front of a computer screen and most of the time they seldom looked real. That’s when I decided to invest in whatever was needed to get it right in the camera. The good news is, it’s easier than you might think, it takes very little time and it improves your photos instantly.

There are several tools or methods one can use to white balance in the field but I’m going to talk about a tool that I believe is easy, quick, effective and universal (can be used in most all situations), the  Expodisc. The Expodisc is a simple snap on filter that attaches to the front of your camera lense. I use it for all the situations I encounter from architecture to landscapes. Getting my white balance correct for my  architectural clients is critical therefore I need a method that is dependable and if it is reliable in these difficult situations then I know it will serve me well in other situations I regularly encounter.

Use of the Expodisc is quite simple. Once I determine my composition I place the Expodisc on the front of my camera lens and if possible walk to my subject, point the camera towards my shooting position and take a shot. What you will find on your viewer on the back of your camera is a solid white screen more than likely with a slight color cast, a slightly blue cast indicating you’re shooting in blue light, or maybe a slight yellow cast indicating a warmer light. Your histogram should lie somewhere near the middle. I then set the white balance setting on my camera body to custom white balance. (Every camera system is different and learning how to set custom white balance on your particular camera can be found in your camera manual.) Once this is set your ready to photograph.

If you’re shooting a landscape and if it is impossible to get the white balance reading by walking into the scene then I will walk into the same light as my scene and get my reading in this manner. Probably the most difficult situation on getting a proper white balance reading is photographing interiors. This is a situation where it is quite possible to have multiple light sources and the need to get a white balance reading from each of these light sources is important. Shooting architectural interiors is a speciality that requires careful attention to detail, especially getting proper white balance, and a subject I’ll discuss in another post.

I recommend every photographer to make the attempt to get their colors correct while on location. This is, as I point out often, a part of developing “good shooting technique”. I wish you the best with your shooting. I’m always interested in hearing comments from readers, is this tip helpful, have you used ExpoDisc, etc…?

The ExpoDisc varies in prices based on your filter size ($70. – $170.). I recommend purchasing the filter size for the lens with the largest filter need therefore you can simply hold it in front of the lenses with smaller filter needs. To order your Expodisc visit the ExpoImaging web site at http://www.expoimaging.com/index.php.

New 2010 – 2011 Workshop Page is now On-Line

Note: If you enjoy my posts and think your photo friends might find my blog of interest, please pass the link on to them. Any help you can provide feeding traffic to this blog is much appreciated. Always feel free to leave a comment.

© William Manning: all material on this blog is the copyright of William Manning. No reproduction on this material is allowed without written permission from the author/photographer.

Over the last few years I have noticed, at least it seems, fewer photographers spend time in the field capturing images. The emphasis has been on creating the image in the computer, in other words a computer generated image. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It depends. Neither is wrong, it comes down to what you’re trying to achieve. Photographers have always had the freedom to modify an image, whether it be in the dark room using the chemical process, lens setting on the enlarger or dodge and burning, etc… or today’s digital darkroom. The advancement of computer technology and the overwhelming assortment of software programs have opened the door to an endless array of creative options.

I think a good question to ask is, What is the goal for the finished product?  Is it a photograph or illustration. Both have their places and one might want to decide early on in the creative process what that place or use is. The reason is simple, a good photograph still needs good data in the early stages, in other words at the time of capturing the image in the camera. Good technique, light, exposure, composition and subject matter are still as important today as in the days of film.  If an illustration is the intent for the finished product then we might get away with the lack of one or the other when it comes to technique, light, or exposure. Composition and subject will always be important in the early stages of any artistic endeavor. In other words image capture for an illustration is about gathering raw material for the finished product. A photograph is about getting as much raw information in the best possible way on the front end or at the time of capture and fine-tune it in the computer with minimal manipulation or adjustments. Some photos require more work than others but I make it my goal when I want to produce a photograph to do most of the work in the camera not the computer.

There is a point between a photograph and an illustration that we need to avoid; in most cases I call it a bad photograph. Maybe a better way to say this is, when is a photograph no longer a photograph? I believe it is when it starts to take on characteristics beyond reality. This typically happens when a photograph is overworked. I see all to often over saturated hues giving subjects an unrealistic look. A common problem I see are really bad blue tones in the sky and foliage with green tones that I would run from. I understand the desire to have an image pop off the screen but the understanding and need to be plausible is important in a photograph. When employing good photographic technique in the early stages of capturing the image in camera often there is little that needs to be done in the computer. I’m amazed at how often photographers think they need to be experts in Photoshop to be a photographer today. There really is little or no need to know much of anything in Photoshop to achieve great photographs. If good technique is employed in the field then little is needed from the computer. I can finish most all photographs with two tools in Photoshop, typically the shadow and highlights tools to open shadows and/or tone down highlights and a little curve to give my picture a little pop.

Creating an illustration is something completely different and certainly a working knowledge of Photoshop is helpful for this purpose. There are numerous stand alone programs and Photoshop plug-ins that are equally beneficial in creating great looking illustrations. This is another subject and one I’ll write about throughout time on my blog.

Master Your Field Techniques

To sum things up for this discussion, if standing behind a camera and creating great pictures on location or in the studio is what got you into photography in the first place then that’s where you should spend your time. I still find standing behind my camera watching a beautiful sunrise, witnessing a thundering herd of elephant pounding the earth or walking the cobblestone streets of a medieval city much more exciting than sitting behind a computer. Continue perfecting your field techniques and you’ll do just fine as a photographer.

New 2010 – 2011 Workshop Page is now On-Line

Note: If you enjoy my posts and think your photo friends might find my blog of interest, please pass the link on to them. Any help you can provide feeding traffic to this blog is much appreciated. Always feel free to leave a comment.

© William Manning: all material on this blog is the copyright of William Manning. No reproduction on this material is allowed without written permission from the author/photographer.