Photography Bay

Digital Camera News, Reviews and Tips

Watch Thomas Heaton Pick His Shots in Iceland with a Midnight Sun

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkdLmrQzhsc&w=700&showinfo=0&rel=0]

In this video, photographer Thomas Heaton travels around Iceland looking for just the right shot at a variety of locations. One of the unique aspects of Heaton’s video is that you feel like you are walking through the process with him as he tries to find just the right shot in just the right location.

You hear him say throughout the video that it’s worth the time to walk around and see what is there rather than just arrive and start shooting. Of course, the slow fading light in Iceland helps with that process too. As he points out, you might have 10 minutes to set up and get a sunset show in England (or the US) but Iceland gives you three hours of similar sunset light so you can wait for just the right moment.

Clocking in at over 16 minutes, it is longer than most YouTube tutorial videos; however, it is well shot and edited for those interested in the photographic process.

[via Reddit]

 

Need Some Pointers for Shooting Fireworks This Weekend?

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Camera Settings for Shooting Fireworks

There are plenty of creative ways to shoot fireworks but if you’ve never got good shots before, I’ve got some good pointers to help you get it right this year. I wrote a post a couple years ago with some basic settings for shooting fireworks.

Check it out here: Camera Settings for Shooting Fireworks

Hope this helps you get some great shots this weekend during your Fourth of July celebration…

Common After Effects Problems and Mistakes

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After Effects Startup Splash

After Effects is a powerful video compositing, effects and motion graphics program that’s part of Adobe Creative Cloud. The problem for those coming from a video editing application like Final Cut or Premiere Pro is that the learning curve is steep.

Once you’ve spent some time in the program, you learn some of its nuances and start wrapping your mind around the different workflow that it presents. Then, you change a setting or apply an effect and nothing works the way you expect it to. [Read more…]

What is Lens Flare and How Can You Avoid It?

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Lens flare commonly occurs when shooting in the general direction bright light sources, whether they are a part of the image or not. The bright light creates internal reflections and scattering of light inside the lens, which results in artifacts or haze in the final image. A common scenario for producing lens flare is shooting into the sun.

In the above video, Karl Taylor shows us examples of lens flare and how to use a lens hood to avoid it. The lens hood serves the dual purpose of protecting the end of the lens in the field.

Advanced Sharpening Technique Using Photoshop & Topaz Denoise

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2aln2dLKdw&w=700]

Here’s a new sharpening technique that I had not seen before but works very well, particularly with low light images. It uses a combination of Photoshop with Unsharp Mask, Topaz DeNoise and then back to Photoshop for another pass with Smart Sharpen before using blend modes to apply the sharpened layer with the original color layer.

There are several examples of the technique in the video walk-through above.

[via Topaz Labs]

Crash Course in How to Use the Liquify Filter in Photoshop

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duQAoinUbbs&w=700]

The liquify filter in Photoshop is often demonized as the tool for making unrealistic body alterations in advertising images. However, that doesn’t have to be the case. In the above video, Jeff Rojas walks us through the basics of using the liquify filter and what the various tools inside the filter do to an image. He also makes a case for editing subtle changes with an eye toward natural body proportions.

[via ISO 1200]

Using Photoshop Smart Objects with Lightroom

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPiScE2lXWk&w=700]

In his latest video, Karl Taylor and Adobe’s Richard Curtis look at the power of integration between Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop using smart objects and linked camera raw settings.

Curtis covers some pretty cool landscape editing approaches. The tutorial clocks in at 27 minutes but is worth the watch if you have not explored the relationship of Smart Objects in Photoshop and Lightroom.