Tips of the Trade: Capturing that Ghost Effect This Halloween

I regularly subscribe to various Digital Photography 101 tip pages, including emails I receive from Lifepics' Digi Pixels. I thought this week's episode explaining how to capture the ghost effect in pictures this Halloween would be extremely timely.

"The Ghost Effect creates an eerie blurry trail around your subject without losing focus, giving the impression that a ghost has haunted your picture!



Set the Scene...
To begin, set your camera to manual mode. Use a longer exposure (around 1/2 second), set your aperture to f11, and set your ISO to 800. The exact settings will depend on the amount of light you are using, so use these settings and adjust from there. The key to this shot is to make sure your flash is set to trigger; the flash will help create the ghost effect.

...and Take the Shot!
Next, get your victims -- I mean subjects -- ready. As you take the shot, move the camera intentionally, or have your subjects move while the shutter is still open (for example, ask them to jump as you shoot). The flash will freeze the scene, but the movement will create the ghost-like trails surrounding the subject. Be sure to take a few shots and adjust if needed. For lower light situations, raise your ISO and slow down the shutter speed, and do the opposite if you are shooting in a lot of light. Keep shooting until you get it right!

A Few More Tricks (or Treats)
Another technique you can try while shooting the Ghost Effect is to raise your ISO to intentionally make the picture grainier or noisier. Try ISO 800 or 1600, or even 3200 if your camera goes that high. This technique works best for dimly lit areas, like your outside porch. Also, try placing a color gel (such as orange) over the flash to add some more color to the shot. Finally, take a look at the last email I sent about converting the image to black & white or sepia for another spooky enhancement."

Tips of the Trade: The Importance of Marketing with Jim Turley

I got an email today from my friend and business management instructor Jim Turley that I thought would be helpful for my blog readers. Turley tipped me and several of his students off about The Wedding Report, a site that features statistics and market research for the wedding industry. I quickly joined the site and receive regular updates and news such as this report on Colorado wedding statistics. You need to join and login if you want similar access.

Turley says wedding photographers have to consider the fact that all of us will be working harder to attract the attention of a shrinking number of brides while the numbers of new photogs entering the field keep growing.

"Not quite as bad as GM selling SUV's to a shrinking market, but the
same factors are involved," says Jim. "Good marketing will be even more important
in the coming years so you get more than your share of the market because the market size will decrease."

Jim pinpointed this report on wedding trends completed in September prior to the start of the economic crunch.

"The contents are not encouraging; less being spent on photographers,
increasingly popular to have friend/family shoot the wedding, etc."

The Wedding Report just released the results from their most recent online report, which can be purchased for $129. Competition is frightening in the $60 billion wedding industry, so this report might be worth the cost of having a leg up.

It covers:

What the future online wedding market holds for your business
What tools brides want to see on your website
How social plays a role and what it means for you
What future web trends you should plan for now
How important your web presence is
When you should spend your online marketing dollars
What key SEO trends you should focus your content on
Who the top Internet players are and why

It's food for thought definitely, and I'm starting to considering more options for marketing my company as well. I finally have enough money to get pay for having someone create my business logo. That's an important step I should have taken a long time ago, but I never saw the importance of it until now. I have to start making my business stand out from the hundreds of other photographers working in Colorado now.

Instructor's Tip: Travel Shots - People

Enjoy this week's "Instuctor's Tip" by award winning nature photographer Russ Burden:

"Travel Shots - People
Getting hooked on travel photography is kind of like the chicken or egg debate. Which comes first - the desire to travel which leads you to record what you experience or were you already involved in photography which encouraged you to travel to get images of certain locations? For whatever the reason, the two go hand in hand.

A favorite subject of many photographers when they travel is people. Whether it’s a family member, travel companion, or the native people of the area, capturing a good image allows you to relive your experiences in a positive way. Many options await the eager travel photographer with regards to photographing people. Tightly cropped portraits, wide angle environmental shots, small or large groups, candids, posed formal shots, you get the idea. Use the following options to create diversity in the images you bring home to create a memorable album or slide show:

FILL THE FRAME with tight head shots.

GO WIDE to capture the people in their environment.

SHOW THE NATIVE PEOPLE your digital sensor so they can see the fruits of your labor.

PHOTOGRAPH PEOPLE IN GROUPS to add variety to your images."

-Russ


The photo(s) in this post were taken by Russ Burden. To learn more about how Russ captured this image, join him on one of his photo tours. Visit Russ Burden Photography to get more information.

To take a class with Russ or a fellow Digital Photo Academy instructor in your area, check out the Digital Photo Academy. I took Russ' intermediate and advanced courses last year, and he continues to be a strong source of knowledge and encouragement as I progress in my photography.

Don't forget to check Take Great Pictures for Russ' most recent tips. On the home page, click on the "Photo Tips And Techniques" button in the left hand column. Additionally, check out his "Digital Tip of the Month" found by clicking on the Digital Photography button.

Tricks of the Trade: Subject Matter and Composition

I am introducing yet another new category that will run on Saturdays called "Tricks of the Trade," featuring insider tips from professional photographers in the field. This week I introduce you to Detroit DPA Instructor Don Werthman, a Native Detroiter who brings more than 25 years of imaging experience to Panasonic LUMIX, Digital Photo Academy participants.

AN APPROACH TO SUBJECT MATTER AND COMPOSITION
by Werthmann, Don

I frequently think of the camera as a sketchbook that allows me to practice compositional strategies and sharpen my awareness of how to organize space within the frame. When those moments in life that really matter occur — personally or professionally — I must have my camera ready, in addition to the lessons of how “studies” like these inform my approach to image composition. So when I happened upon this scene during a walk about on the grounds of the abandoned Delaware copper mine in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, I had to bring the Lumix L-1 up to it. The mid-nineteenth century structure has been in a ruined state for several decades, and so the tree growth present within its walls presented this stunning juxtaposition of natural world growth and industrial ruins. This scene compelled me to stop and study it for several minutes, and I proceeded to make fourteen different exposures of with the Panasonic Lumix L-1, with its RAW file format selected. Here’s why:




Organizing Space

The intuitive side of me saw order and possibility, and the thinking side of me immediately revealed a few keywords; “I see proximity, similarity, and closure here.” The proximity of the red brickwork window/door frames in the background becomes a group of information, which is easy to unify to the arched brickwork in the foreground. The similarity in the stonework in the foreground and the background provides strong unification by itself, but the fact that the bark of the birch trees are similar — in color and general design — makes the scene more intriguing. Finally, because the window frame visually cuts the top and bottom of each tree off, the viewer’s mind completes the rest of the information — this is called closure. If part of an object is subtracted, but still has enough information to be identified, then the viewer’s mind can mentally complete what is missing. It’s an effective technique, because the viewer doesn’t need to see an entire tree to understand what it is.

Shooting Strategy

Many people are bewildered when I tell them I shoot so many frames of a particular scene. A good habit of photography is providing choices from which to edit when returning home. Each exposure has a subtle correction of point of view, lens focal length, a tilt of the tripod needs correcting, etc. These comparisons, in the editing stage of a photograph’s life are what help the photographer determine the best rendering of the situation. I ended up choosing a frame with both the foreground and background sharp, which required f/16 to obtain this particular depth-of-field. I created other versions with selective focus and shallow depth-of-field with a wide aperture setting, like f/4 — some with the foreground sharp, some with it out of focus and soft — but in the end those don’t have the same visual impact. The Lumix L-1, by the way, handles much like my traditional film cameras do, with an aperture ring mounted on the lens, and a shutter speed dial mounted on the body. I really enjoy that.

Think of your camera as a high-tech sketchbook, and the really meaningful photographic moments that unfold in the future can benefit, because you did some prep work. Be ready for what can appear around the next bend on a walk, and what some hindsight thinking during the editing stage can reveal. Thinking one, or two steps ahead in the process can make a significant difference in the quality of the images made. When you’re lucky, be ready.