The Low Down on Metering

Chesapeake, VA senior portraits


boudoir photography Virginia Beach, VA, pin-up photos Chesapeake, VA, Pin up pictures, boudoir photographer, Norfolk, VA

As a self taught photographer, I found there were some essential things I didn't learn until months into my business.  Some of these were just things I stumbled upon on blogs.  I am embarrassed to say it, but metering was one of those things for me, which is crazy because metering is so important!

When you shoot in manual mode, your meter tells you if your image will be properly exposed with your current settings. Keep in mind your camera can be fooled by trickly lighting situations and it isn't always right, so you should always take a test shot and see if you need to make any adjustements.  Your camera will assess the light based on one of three different metering choices:

Overall Metering
Simply put, if you have set your camera to overall metering it will take in the whole scene in your viewfinder to decide if your image will be correctly exposed.  In general, portrait photographers do not use overall metering too often because we are more concerned with our subject being perfectly exposed, even if it means sacrifising the background to a little under or over exposure.

Center-Weighted Metering

Spot Metering

Editing 101- Making your photos pop using curves

This is the first tutorial in my brand new series- editing 101.  Learn some tips and tricks for making your photos look more professional, one lesson at a time.  Please excuse the small size of this video.  Between this video and the next I will be working on getting them to show up larger here (without having to go full screen). 
This lesson is on using curves to give your photos that pop that really takes your image from flat and amateur to professional.  Knowing how to use curves is SO essential to making your photos look professional.  If you are still intimidated by curves you are not alone, but it's time to dive in and start playing with the most powerful tool in Photoshop!  There are many things you can do with curves and this is just one of them.  Photographer Chesapeake, VA, Portrait studio Virginia Beach, VA
http://sweetconfectionsphotography.com

Here is the final edit of this photo.  Other aspects of this edit will be covered in future tutorials.

Marketing and Sales: Lesson 1 {Creating Print Packages}

For the first year of my business I included the DVD of images with the session (terrible I know, but I was trying to build my portfolio and get some practice and experience).  When I finally decided that I was way too talented for the prices I was charging I knew it was time to start requiring a print purchase on top of the session fee. 

I looked at what a lot of other photographers offered and just kind of threw some packages together.  They didn't really have any meaning to me.  I didn't know which one I wanted my clients to purchase or why I was offering certain things at certain price levels.  My sales were pretty sporadic with these packages, I never knew which one people would choose and I wasn't making quite what I wanted to for all the time I put into each session.

Feeling overworked and underpaid isn't good for your business so I knew I needed to re-create my packages.  My first step was to decide how much I wanted to make from each session.  My next step was to create a package that would leave me with that profit while providing enough great stuff to my clients that they felt they were getting a good deal as well. 

To choose what goes into this package think about what you want to sell.  If you hate designing albums you won't want to include an album in this package.  Whatever you do include in this package should be the things you display a lot of in your studio and talk a lot about to your clients during their session (pre-selling).  This will end up being very different for each photographer.

For me, I included the DVD of images (printable up to 8x10) in that package because I knew it would pretty much guarantee me to sell that package almost every time because people are so fixated on getting the DVD now days.  I realize many photographers wouldn't want to do this because you are pretty much capping yourself off at that price for most sessions.  For me, as of right now, I'm okay with that. 

Once you've got your ideal package created you'll want to create a couple packages below it and one package above it.  I've heard other photographers tell me that if you sell your smallest package very often there's too much in it and if you sell your largest package very often it's not expensive enough.  I think that's true.  I designed my other packages simply to guide people to the package I want them to choose (package 3).  Of course your packages will be unique to you, but here is my pricing list for some inspiration:

Since I implemented these new packages I have sold package number 3 (with the exception of only one client) every single time!  Amazing.  And that was over three months ago.  It's so nice having more stability in my income and being more confident in what I am providing and why it is valued at what I am charging for it.

I hope this is helpful for some of you.  If any of you have any tips to add to this please comment!

DIY Prop Tutorial: Pennant Banner

Pennant banners are all the rage right now for newborn and baby photography.  I really wanted a boy banner and a girl banner and there are so many cute ones out there, but they are a little on the spendy side.  After looking around and debating about purchasing one I realized I could probably just whip one up myself.  You may also want to check out arts and crafts classes at online accredited colleges that can teach you how to make different kinds of darling pennant banners using left-over fabrics.

Now here's the thing, this is a simple, no-sew banner.  I wanted it to be quick and easy.  It is not heirloom quality like the ones you can purchase on Etsy.  Those banners are spendy for a reason, they are double sided and stitched with love and care to make a very high quality product.  I may very well purchase one of those beauties in the future but for now, since I have to pick and choose which props to spend money on, I save where I can.   The banner I am going to show you how to make may fray over time or in the wash because that's what happens to fabric when you don't finish your seams (which includes lots of sewing time). 

However, if you take care of the banner it should last you quite awhile and make a great, affordable, and fun prop to add to your collection.

A couple notes before we get started:

1) After seeing the finished product used in my photography there are a couple things I would change If I were to do it over again.  I would choose only fabrics with small prints on them because the larger prints seem to be a little distracting.  I would probably also switch the brown fabric out with another shade of blue, or maybe a soft green.  The brown just seems to bold to me.  I would also choose a ribbon that had no gloss/shine to it. 

2) The adorable birthday outfit set was purchased from Fuzzy Cheeks Boutique.

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Okay let's get started.

Supplies:

- An assortment of fabrics.  I chose to do three flags of three different fabrics (total of 9 flags) but you could choose nine different fabrics if you wanted, or do something in between.  If you do three fabrics like I did, a half yard of each will be plenty.  If you do nine different fabrics the little pre-cut portions (I think they're called fabric quarters) would easily be enough for one or two flags.

- Fabric scissors

- A ruler

- Fabric chalk or normal chalk

- A piece of paper

- A roll of 1 inch wide ribbon (that coordinates with your fabric)

- A hot glue gun

Steps:

Well there you have it.  I hope some of you will have fun trying this out and making yourself an adorable pennant banner!  I would love to see any photos if you do try it out!  Let me know if there are any questions.

Taking Your Own Family Pictures

I am being featured over at Inspired by Family Magazine today!  I hope you'll stop by and check out my article on taking your own family portaits.  Hope you're all having a fabulous Wednesday :)Alternatively, you may also want to check photography classes at online colleges that can teach you the Do’s and Don’ts of Family Portraits. 

Family Portraits: What to Wear

Saratoga Springs Family Photographer

When planning family portraits, wardrobes play a huge role in the final outcome!  And any of you who have had the joy of trying to coordinate outfits for your whole family know just how challenging that can be.  Here's what I tell my clients to help them prepare for their session:

Please plan outfits carefully. Solid colors are great (and slimming). Layering and texture are essential for adding visual interest. Be careful with busy prints (they can look good but must be planned carefully) and avoid tees with large logos or words on them. Choose colors that coordinate and compliment each other, but do not match exactly.

The layering on the dad and little guy here are perfect, they have tons of visual interest.  I usually recommend a solid color, especially for mom, but this particular mom is thin and pulls off the print very nicely.  It adds visual interest since the other family members are wearing solids. 

Accessorize!!! Add a scarf, a cardigan, a blazer, an awesome necklace, and more. Adding lots of accessories and pops of color is great. Choosing one color to be your accent color and adding it here and there can be fun. An outfit that looks great in person can look boring in photos if there is no accessorizing.
Think about your outfits well in advance so you can buy additional things if needed.

I loved this family's choice of color palette, bright and beautiful, bold summer colors.  The print looks great on dad and there is some layering there.  The solid color looks fabulous on mom and I love the texture on her top as well as the texture of the ruffles on the little one's dress. 

Some great color palates are yellow and gray or earthy neutral tones like brown and beige with pops of color like purple or pink for example. Sometimes really bright, fun colors can make an awesome color palate. You may want to consider the season your photos will be taking place in (but you don’t have to!) and definitely consider which colors look good on you.

This is from my family's most recent photo session.  It was Fall so I loved the earthy tones for our color palette.  Getting both the boys outfits from Gymboree made it easy because they have coordinating lines.  I went for a solid color for both me and the hubby to slim and balance the kiddo's outfits that were a little on the busier side.  I made sure to add a great necklace to my outfit, accessorizing is important for photos.

I've put together a pinterest board with some great outfit inspiration that I also share with my clients, so you can stop by for more ideas.  http://pinterest.com/jilltirrell/outfit-inspiration-for-portraits/

Hope this helps!

Complete Newborn Edit Tutorial

This tutorial is for all of you new photographers who are still trying to get your newborn editing skills where you want them.  I use some purchased actions in my editing, but I can say without a doubt that those actions have been one of the best investments I've made for my business.  I know how to do all these things myself BUT not as well and not as efficiently.  The companies that sell their actions are (usually) photoshop geniuses and having that kind of skill available to use on my work has helped set me apart from all other photographers in my city! 

Okay here goes, a complete newborn edit:

I always shoot in RAW.  It's amazing.  When you shoot in RAW Photoshop will automatically open your image in Photoshop Camera Raw, where you can make improvements in a snap.  You can often even save underexposed or overexposed photos if you've shot in RAW.  So the first thing I do is make adjustments in Photoshop Camera Raw. 

Here are the things I always check for and often tweak in this step:

- color balance (My photos often have a little too much red, so I move the slider towards the cyan side a little and voila, much better!)

- exposure (Very important!  This depends on your style.  I like bright photos so I typically brighten until I start to see hot spots then I take it back down to that level just before they showed up.)

- temperature (Would it look better if it were a bit warmer?)

- I usually raise the black a little

- I often up the clarity a little

- Sometimes fill light if my shadows are too heavy

Most photos don't need all of those edits.  In this photo, for example, all I did was adjust the color balance a bit, raise the blacks to +6 and raise the clarity to +3.  And then we have this to work with:

Okay now that we are in photoshop I run two of my favorite actions.  The first is classic color from the Florabella Classic Workflow Collection.  The second is creamy and smooth skin from Paint the Moon's Picture Perfect Portrait Mega Set.  Skin smoothing is essential for newborn portraits to look professional!  And now we're here:

My next step was to sharpen her eyes with the sharpen tool.  I also used the patch tool to get rid of a little cut on her cheek.  I then decided there was still a little too much red in her skin.  There are two ways you can fix that.  You can either lower the saturation of the reds by going to hue/saturation in the image menu under adjustments.  You would then select reds in the drop down menu and lower the saturation to your liking, sometimes raising the brightness too.  The other option is in the same menu, but instead you would select color balance and just move the red slider towards the cyan side until you like your result.  In this case I went the saturation route.  You can also create a layer mask if you want the changes to be made only to baby's skin and not the rest of the photo.  In this case that wasn't necessary.

My last step with any photo is usually using my Boost action from Pioneer Woman (this one is free)!  I rarely leave it at 100% opacity, this time I lowered it to 20%.  I know you can do the same thing using curves, but I am yet to become an expert at curves. 

I hope that was helpful.  Let me know if you have any questions for me!  Happy editing :)

Reflective Christmas Lights How To

I had a question about creating this photo. . .

Ask and ye shall receive :)

The bad news is you really do need to know how to shoot in manual mode to get this photo.  The good news is I'll try and finish up the manual mode series before Christmas so those of you following it can come back and try this out after we're done. 

But for those of you who already know how to shoot in manual, here we go. 

The reflective surface is just hardwood floor in my living room.  If you don't have any hardwood floor there are a couple things you can do.  The first is you can buy a pack of laminate floor from home depot for less than $20.  Snap it together in just a few minutes and you've got a little platform for your little one to sit on.  The other option is to buy a piece of plexiglass (also at Home Depot).  The plexiglass will look different, because it will only be as dark as your carpet, but it should still reflect the lights.  The lights I used have a green strand and were 100 light icicle lights, but I'm sure any lights would look good!

This photo needs to be taken in the evening or in a room where you can shut the blinds because you don't want much extra light.  You don't want it to be pitch dark, but you don't want any noticeable light coming from any one place and you want it to dark enough that the Christmas lights appear to be the only light source. 

You don't want your little one sitting too close to the wall because the farther away from the wall they are the darker and less noticeable the wall will be.

Set your white balance to incandescent.

Aperture

Now before you get your little one in place you'll want to set your aperture setting and make a guess on ISO setting.  For aperture it's simple, you want it to be as wide open as your lens will let you go.  I was using pretty pricey lens that lets me open up to 1.4.  Although I took this picture at ISO 1400 I actually could have gone down to somewhere around 800 with such a wide open aperture.  If your lens opens to 2.8 you may want your ISO at 1600.  You may be able to go lower depending just how light your room is, how good you are at holding your camera steady, and how still your little one is. 

Most lenses that come with your camera only open up to around 3.5, and even that is only possible when you are zoomed out.  My advice is to zoom in only as far as you can without your lens closing in any more than that.  Then move yourself closer instead of zooming in.

ISO

To make things simpler I am going to advise you to set your ISO to 1600.  Now what you're going to do it is put your little one down and place the lights around him or her.  You'll now mess with shutter speed until you get the look you want.  The nice thing is your little one will likely be perfectly content to sit there and play with the lights for at least a few minutes while you work on getting the perfect shot. 

SAFETY NOTE:  I've seen a lot of photos where little ones have the lights in their mouth.  If you feel comfortable doing that, go for it, but I'm personally not going to recommend letting your little one put the lights in their mouth just to air on the side of caution.

Okay getting on with things. 

You will need to have your camera set to spot metering.  As always, if you don't know how to change that setting on your camera, I recommend looking it up on youtube. 

You'll want the photo to be taken when baby is looking down at the lights so their face is lit up, but you can feel free to practice even while they are looking up. 

Shutter Speed

For shutter speed I always start by adjusting it to where my camera's meter tells me to.  For this photo I wanted the lights to be exposed correctly and the rest of the photo to be kind of dark (which is why we need to be using spot metering).  I aimed my focus point at the lights and adjusted my shutter speed to where my camera directed me.  Once I got that set I aimed at my little one's eye (as always) and took a shot.

After you take that first shot it's just a matter of looking at the photo and deciding if you want it darker or lighter.  If you want the photo darker, make your shutter speed faster (larger number).  If you want to make your photo lighter, make your shutter speed slower (smaller number).  Remember that their face will only be lit up if they are looking down at the lights.  Keep adjusting and checking out the photo until it is just how you want it.  I took several photos until I got the exposure how I wanted it. 

If your shutter speed is below 30 you will need to keep cranking up the ISO until you can get a faster shutter speed.  If your shutter speed is 30 or above and you've still got a blurry photo you can do a couple things.  Try to hold your camera very steady (check out this tutorial for holding your camera properly) or use a tripod, chair, box, or anything you can sit your camera on.  You'll also want to push the trigger button very gingerly as that can shake the camera too.

Of course when your shutter speed is slow and your little one is moving the photo will still be blurry no matter how still you are.  You can either take a whole bunch and assume that he or she will be still in at least one of them, or you can keep cranking up the ISO until you can get a descent shutter speed.  The last option is to take the photo a little darker than you like and brighten it up a little in post-processing.

If you are lucky enough to have a lens that opens to a wide aperture setting you shouldn't have much problem here, but many people only have the lens that comes with their camera (and understandable so, those things are expensive).  If you are going to invest in a new lens don't be afraid of the generics or used lenses.  I have some Nikon lenses and some Tamron lenses, some used, some not used, and I haven't had any problems with any of them.

Post Processing

In post processing you will probably want to reduce the grain a little.  I think this photo looks good with some grain, but I always reduce grain a little.  You can also tweak your exposure, temperature, and anything else until you've got it just how you want it. 

I always recommend shooting in RAW because editing is a beautiful thing when you shoot in RAW!  I love Adobe RAW (which automatically launches when you open a RAW image with Photoshop).  If you don't have a program that can open RAW images then of course you wouldn't want to shoot in RAW.  Although I'm pretty sure there are some free ones out there, if anyone knows of any please share with everyone else in a comment here!

Once you've got your images edited to your liking it's time to convert it to a black and white.  You can do this really simply in any photo editing program.  If you have Lightroom, I like this tutorial for getting great black and white images.  If you don't have Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, I love picnik.com because it's very user friendly and has tons of options for editing. 

And there you have it!  Comment if you have any questions.

Learning to Shoot in Manual Mode- Lesson 1 (ISO)

Alright folks, there's a lot of technical information that goes into achieving correct exposure (getting an image that is neither too bright {overexposed} nor too dark {underexposed} but is just right).  It is actually much simpler to shoot in manual than many people think and we'll get to that in our final lesson of the series, but first it's important to have a basic understanding of the settings you will be changing.

There are three settings that go into achieving correct exposure and here they all in all their glory:

ISO
shutter speed
aperture

I am going to post one lesson for each and then we'll have a lesson that puts it all together and explains how to actually shoot in manual mode.  And I'm going to try and make these lessons as basic and easy to understand as I can. 

ISO



Simply put, your ISO setting will determine how much grain is in your photo.  You have to zoom in to see the grain, so here we go.

The first photo was taken at ISO 1200.  The second was taken at ISO 200.  In other words, the higher your ISO setting the more grain you will have in your image.  When images have a lot of grain photographers often convert them into a black and white image because black and white images pull off high amounts of grain better than color images do. 

So why would you ever shoot with high ISO?  With the exception of adding grain for artistic effect, the only reason you will ever crank up your ISO is because you are shooting in a low light setting and you need to increase your ISO so you can get a properly exposed image that isn't blurry.  That cause and effect will make more sense once we've gone over all of the lessons in the series, but it's important to know why and when ISO needs to be increased. 

KEY CONCEPT:  Low light (inside your home) = crank up your ISO
                              Plenty of light (outside in the daytime) = keep your ISO low

When I'm shooting inside my house my ISO is usually anywhere between 600-1600.  Of course if you can find a big window to shoot by you won't need to raise the ISO nearly as much.  When I am shooting in daylight I usually keep my ISO between 100-200. 

Now if you would like the option of printing a nice enlargement of your image you should try to keep your ISO down around 200, but how often do we really need that?  (Well unless you are a professional photographer).  My point?  Don't be afraid to raise your ISO, even up as high as 1600 if you need to.  It's better to have a grainy image than a blurry one!  And like I mentioned before, if it's too grainy, make it a black and white.  I love black and white candids of my kids, they're my favorite. 

Don't get me wrong there's no reason to raise your ISO higher than you need to, but sometimes it's necessary, especially inside most homes.  This is part of the reason it's so much easier to shoot outdoors. 

Start Thinking about How It Goes Together



The fourth and final lesson of this series will go into putting the three components together but I want you to start thinking about the relationship now.  Put simply, it's a balancing game.  Your camera needs a certain amount of light.  ISO, shutter speed, and aperture setting all help determine how your camera will get the light it needs. 

 Lets go over a scenario real quick.  You take a perfectly exposed picture.  That means you have balanced your settings correctly.  Then you decide that you want to change your aperture setting.  No problem, you can do that.  You will just need to then change either shutter speed or ISO to compensate for that change, because again, they have to stay balanced. 

This will all make sense and you will see in the final lesson that your camera helps you make these choices (yes, even in manual mode) so you don't have to just start shooting in the dark.  I just want you to start thinking about how they are all interrelated.

That triangle won't all make sense to you just yet, but it will once I'm done with you :)

Homework

Switch your camera into manual mode (scary, I know).  Go to youtube and search "how to change the ISO on a [insert the name of your camera here]."  Watch the video and experiment with changing your ISO.  You don't actually need to take any pictures since we're still missing two pieces to the puzzle, I just want you to know how to change your ISO setting. 

If you would rather you can also look up that information in your camera manual.

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And that's it, ISO in a nutshell.  I hope this made some sense.  Please comment with any questions.