How I Learned Photography
I meet new photographers all the time at various photography meetings, gatherings, and shoots. We often look over each other's portfolios and they will often ask how long I've been shooting and are shocked with I say 18 months thinking it must have been years. They then ask how I got as good as I did in such a short time. I don't think I'm all that good, but I'm better than average and I have improved a great deal in a short time. I still have a long way to go and am constantly trying to improve. But since it keeps getting asked I thought I would share what I have done to get to were I am today. I'll leave that up to you to decide where I am. 
- Listen to photography podcasts. I like Tips From The Top Floor (TFTTF) but there are dozens of good ones out there. TFTTF is a short podcast and it gives a single tip every show. I also listen to This Week in Photography. They have some tips but it's more about news in the photo industry.
- The best thing I ever did was join DPChallenge.com, they hold weekly competitions where they put out a theme and you have a week to go shoot that theme. What was so great about it is they give good, critical feedback. They will tell you exactly what you did wrong and are more than willing to tell you how to fix it. I learned more in the first 8 weeks there than I had the previous 6 months.
- Critique other people's photos. It's OK that you don't know anything about critiquing just write down what you feel about it, or what catches your eye. You will very quickly learn what works and what doesn't in a photo and can then apply these to your photos. Photography-on-the-Net and DPChallenge are both excellent places to critique others work, because people are asking for good harsh critique.
- Take a workshop at a local camera store. Most stores have a class that will get you up to speed on the basics for a very low cost. My goal is to go to at least one photo workshop a year.
- Shoot with others. Go to Meetup.com and find photography groups in your area, or join the local camera club. Every time I shoot with someone else I learn something new.
So doing the above and applying myself to photography helped me to improve significantly over 18 months. As I said above I still have a long way to go and I'm looking forward to the journey.
60 Most Wanted Photoshop Tutorials, Brushes, Textures
Stumbled across this blog post today and it has some great information.
http://www.noupe.com/photoshop/60-most-wanted-photoshop-tutorials-brushes-psds-and-resources.html
Just browsing though it, there are way more than 60 tutorials. In fact what this is, is a list of 60 lists of tutorials. So this list represents 1000s of tutorials.
A lot of the tutorials cover the same topics (I counted 12 talking about HDR), but there are some real gems in there. I especially liked some of the tutorials in 50 Excellent Digital Photography Photoshop Tutorials
Eliminate That Backlog
I was talking recently with another photographer and he was showing me his portfolio, it was very nice and I asked him about his post-processing techniques. He explained his a very elaborate technique that produces incredibily sharp and colorful photos, and said he does it to every photo. I then asked what he was shooting these days and he explained he had not shot a new photo in 18 months. When I inquired why, he explained he had a huge backlog of photos to post-process and until he had processed all of them he couldn't afford to shoot any more.
While this is an extreme example, I know a lot of photographers, who have a large backlog of photos waiting to be post-processed. I often find myself in a similar situation, shooting 2 or 3 days a week, 1000+ photos and then not having the time to do all the processing I would like. If you are in the same boat, here are a few tips to reduce that backlog.
- Cull, cull, cull. After a shoot find the 3 to 10 "hero" shots (this is a term I picked up from Fredrick Johnson who does the TWIP podcast http://frederickvan.com/). These are the ones I work on. If I have time I can always go back and select more. (BTW this doesn't apply to family vacation shots, there I narrow it down to 50 to 75.)
- Reduce your post-processing steps. My full post-processing involves making adjustments in Lightroom for exposure, contrast, vibrance, etc. Then going to Photoshop for cloning, dodging/burning, skin smoothing etc, then back to Lightroom for cropping, adding vignettes, etc. Many photos can get by without doing the Photoshop steps. I try to determine when I import the photos if I intend to do the full Photoshop treatment and often determine that just a quick fix in Lightroom will be sufficient.
- Automate your post-processing steps. Create actions in Photoshop to do your common retouching steps. Create a Droplet for common tasks like resizing, or adding watermarks. If you find yourself repeating the same multiple steps on every photo, figure out if it can be automated into a single step. If you use Lightroom use presets. I setup presets for Lightroom that make the incoming photo look like the JPG preview coming out of the camera. On import I apply that preset to all of the photos and often don't have to do any other adjustment to the photo.
- Use Plug-ins. I used to remove noise and smooth skin manually in Photoshop. This was a tedious process and was taking the bulk of my post-processing time. I recently purchased NoiseNinja and Portraiture and reduced my post-processing time by 45 minutes.
- Know the intended Audience. Do you really need to do all that post-processing? Yes, it makes the photos look better, but perhaps they would be fine being "good enough". This often depends on the intended audience for the photos. If the photo is going go into your portfolio used to attract new customers/models then you should take the time to do the best possible, but if it just a bunch of shots from a party with friends, yes, you could make them look perfect, but your friends aren't going to care as much as you do. Let it go, often it's more important to get it out there quick than perfect.
I still have a backlog of photos to process but using the above techniques it's getting smaller and smaller. More importantly it doesn't grow significantly after each shoot.
My New Photography Web Site
My new photography web site is now ready. It is primarily to display my portfolio of photos in a little more organized fashion than flickr. Check it out at www.craigcolvinphotography.com
When to Crop?
Originally uploaded by Moose408
My post-processing work flow has been fairly stable for the past 6 months. This is actually a fairly long time for it to be stable as work flows should evolve over time. Well it's time for it to evolve because I recently discovered a flaw in the flow.
My normal process was to import into Lightroom, do the RAW adjustments, crop, rotate and then move into Photoshop for the final processing, then back to Lightroom for exporting. This has been working very well, but the past few weeks I have a couple of instances where I need a different aspect ratio for the photo. My original crop wouldn't work and the change involved a large crop. Since I had already done all my Photoshop post-processing on a smaller crop, this presented a problem.
My options for increasing the size of the photo where to either edit the Photoshop file, stretch the canvas and then paint/clone/etc the background to fill in the missing pieces. Or re-crop the photo in Lightroom, then redo all my edits in Photoshop. Neither of these were ideal.
So based on recent experience I am changing my work flow so that cropping is the last thing I do before exporting. I will do this in Lightroom on the final Photoshop .psd file, so that it can be changed easily. This should give me the maximum flexibility going forward.
We'll see how it works.
Helpful Hints When Shooting Models
1. Watch out for pointy things - like elbows, knees and armpits. Don't point them at the camera.
2. Don't cut off body parts if you show the calf or forearm show the whole limb.
3. Try not to shoot the model square to the camera.
4. Don't show underthings unless it is done on purpose, bras, bra straps, seams, and see through shirts are not appealing.
5. Match the underthings to the clothing.
6 . Use a professional photographic MUA, no counter bait from the local wallymart lol.
7. Give specific directions to the model and constant feed back for how it looks in camera.
Les Baldwin
Foto/SFX, San Jose, CA
http://www.aviationphotographers.org/, http://www.fencecheck.com
http://www.myspace.com/fotosfx,
http://www.portfolios.com/profile.ht...=14627.baldwin
More Alcatraz Photos
Originally uploaded by Moose408
I have uploaded new photos from the Keeble and Schuchat Alcatraz Workshop to my Flickr account.
I have been trying to pare down the number of photos I post to Flickr from a given event and was hoping to get it down to just 3 or 4 photos but there were so many photos I liked and realized if I didn't post them they would just be hidden on my hard drive forever. So I think I ended up with 16 new photos. But each bit has been lovingly handcrafted for your viewing pleasure.
Bay Area Strobist Meetup
Originally uploaded by Moose408
The Bay Area Strobists (a Flickr group http://www.flickr.com/groups/608107@N24/) had a meet up on Saturday at a studio in Fremont. Had a big turn out with over 20 photographers and 4 models. We mainly shot in the studio with large studio strobes but one guy setup his speedlights out in the parking lot and I grabbed the shot above.
It was a meetup and I learned quite a bit. Would have liked a little more focus and talk about strobist techniques. Because of the models and nice studio most folks were concentrating on shooting the models and not much in the way of changing the lighting. Still a lot of fun though.
More photos in my Flickr stream or at the Bay Area Strobists group page.
Alcatraz Lighthouse
Originally uploaded by Moose408
This past Tuesday I spent the afternoon/evening doing a private photo tour of Alcatraz. This event was sponsered by a local camera store.
There were approximately 30 of us and we had access to pretty much the entire island. This event was held after the island was closed to the public so we got to go in a lot of areas that are normally closed to the public, Some really great locations. I had a great time and plan to do it again next year.
Foam Core Stands
This is my latest DIY project. These stands hold a sheet of foam core board vertically. I use foam core a lot in my photography, to act as a reflector, a background, or a gobi. In the past I have used a variety of methods for holding the foam core boards in place such as taping them to light stands or leaning them up against bricks or boxes. But this did not often work well as the boards tended to move and fall over.
So to the solve the problem I devised these stands. I made two sizes. The large is made of wood and is designed to hold large 4'x8' sheets of foam core. The smaller ones are cut out of acrylic and can easily hold a 3'x4' sheet of foam core. The slot is cut so it is exactly the size of the foam core thickness. This provides a tight fit, and I can actually pickup the foam core from the top and the stands stay in place.
So this is a simple, yet effective solution to my problem. If you would like to make your own stands I have plans available for the acrylic version here. Plans for the larger wood version will be coming soon (or you can probably figure out yourself).
For those of you who would like the stands but don't have the tools to make your own, I am also selling them on my web site FoamCoreStands.com
Here is a photo of the small acrylic version