Understanding the image Histogram

In this episode of the 5 Minute Photographer, Helen Bradley explains how to analyse your image histogram and to understand what it is telling you about your image’s exposure. She shows you how to use the Curves tool in Photoshop to adjust the image based on the data that the histogram provides. She also explains how to avoid having to make fixes to an image’s exposure in your photo editing software by harnessing the power of your camera to show you a histogram at capture time. If the histogram shows you are having problems she offers a couple of solutions to compensate for these.

This video shows you how you how to select the best image from a sequence of images. Photographer Helen Bradley explains how to evaluate a series in a sequence and how to successively eliminate images until you find the best of the sequence.
 
Helen steps you through her thought processes in assessing each image from looking at what the subject is doing to determining if there are problems in the background and whether these are easily fixed or not.
 
By following this approach with your images you can quickly determine the best image in a sequence so you spend time working on only the best of your images.

Whether you’re a professional photographer, semi-professional or a keen amateur you’ll be showing your images to others. You might be trying to sell images to a client, attract new clients or share your work with family and friends. Whatever the situation, you need to choose the right images to show and you need to assemble them into a cohesive collection and then do the job of selling your work to your audience – whoever they are.

In this video you’ll see how to pick images from your collection – which to include and which to omit. You’ll learn different methods of showing your images and you’ll hear how to talk about your work so your clients and your audiences love it.

We have just uploaded a new video - Working the subject

This video shows you how you how to work a subject to explore the photographic possibilities it offers. Photographer Helen Bradley explains how to set your camera to shoot fast, how to get in the right place to ensure you’re ready when something happens, and how to make your own luck when capturing images. She also explains the importance of being patient and anticipating how someone will behave.

We received some nice unprompted compliments recently, which I thought I’d share, as they may be informative for anyone considering signing up.

Like most photography forums, the feedback is mostly friendly and helpful. I also like that the expert photogs who feature in the tutorials jump into the forum, fairly frequently, and provide their feedback on images loaded up to the site. One even checked out my Flickr feed and commented on pics there.

What a fab way to connect with other people who love this stuff as much as I do!

The video tutorials are great, bite sized snippets of photography wisdom on topics such as exposure, lighting, composition, landscape, people and flash.Being only five minutes in duration, they’re short enough to listen to a couple every few days - and again before you’re heading out in a situation when you know you’re going to need to know say, how to pose people or use flash etc.The Five Minute Photographer is also great for those days when it’s too wet to go out shooting. When you can’t go out shooting, the next best thing is to watch videos about what you COULD be doing when it fines up.

Melanie - http://surpliceofphotography.blogspot.com/2010/10/why-im-loving-five-minute-photographer.html

I am traveling more and will be offering more along the lines of what I mostly do (documentary and travel photography). Plus the members are really great here on 5MP and been emailing me for help. Hopefully I can offer more insight.

Elsie mentioned this when making a renewal inquiry.

Before Five Minute Photographer founders Shelton Muller and John Pospisil started the Five Minute Photgrapher website, they published a free photography magazine for many years (here’s a sample) that provided free photography tutorials to shoppers at retail outlets.  Of course, our video tutorials now supercede our printed work, but for those who are interested, we’ve starting  to publish some of our Total Image magazine tutorials on the Total Image website. Some highlights include:

How to take photos in harsh sunlight

How to take wedding photos

How to take pet photos

How to take baby photos

How to pose a subject

We hope you enjoy the tutorials!

We’ve just uploaded a new video to the 5MP members area.

This is the second video by our newest team member Helen Bradley.

One of the quickest ways to jumpstart your photography is to undertake short self-assigned photo projects or self-assignments.

Self-assignments are quick and easy to do and shouldn’t require you to buy anything special or go anywhere special to do.

In this video, Helen Bradley explains the requirements of a self-assignment, how to prepare for one and she gives you some idea as to topics that you might consider shooting.

If there’s a piece of your kit that you don’t often use, then Helen has some ideas for incorporating exercises using unused pieces of kit into your self-assignment projects.

To help you crystalize what you’ve learned throughout your self-assignment there are some ideas for assessing the image you have captured.

So if you have a camera handy and ten minutes – spend the first five watching this video and the next five working on your first self-assignment.

Shooting outside presents amateur photographers with a host of problems, but one of the biggest issues has to be the sun. However, when you learn to work around it, it can actually become your friend.

Each time of day presents its own problems with shooting in the sunlight. For instance, shooting in the mornings or late afternoons you deal with a squinting subject if they face the sun, and if you face the sun you are going to deal with glare. If you shoot in the middle of the day, the direct sunlight can cause a host of severe shadows that will block some of the finer details of your subject.

The best options for shooting is morning or afternoon so long as you keep the sun to the side for both you and your subject, but even then you can deal with shadows you may not want. The simplest solution is actually use a flash during the day to help fill in some of those shadows.

If you plan on taking a lot of daylight photos, you may want to invest in a reflective disc to help even out the lighting.  The issue with this is you usually need another person to hold it so that you can have them move around as need be to get the best solutions to your problems.

The key thing to remember is that the sun isn’t your enemy, but instead take advantage of some of the benefits you can get only when you shoot out in the great outdoors with the ultimate light source.

Shelton Muller’s new video “Playing with Time” looks at how to use aperture, shutter speed, and  flash to “play with time” when taking photographs. Understanding your shutter is your key to understanding how time can be altered in a single frame.

Any time you see a professional photo shoot of a model or actor, have you noticed how there may be things in the background, but at all times the person is the focus of the image. If it’s an ad for lipstick, then the lips are the focus. Pictures of flowers in a field? In general it doesn’t matter what the subject of the photo is, but the whole point is that you want to reduce the distractions as much as possible.

While some distractions can be removed through cropping the image once you get it on your computer, the less items you start with in the background the better. Of course this isn’t always going to be possible as the everyday world is filled with all sorts of little things to distract in the background.

In the picture below, I took a quick shot of one of my dogs one day, and it never fails that people inevitably ask me about one aspect of it.

It never fails, but every person I have ever show this picture to has asked me about the phone the window ledge.  (it was there because at the time it was the only place in my house it could get a signal)  This is a perfect example of a bad photograph as the dog should have been the focus, but in my defense it was an off-the-cuff, oh he looks cute, photo opportunity.

If I had had the time, I would have removed the phone and sat at a different angle to get less of the table on the right edge of the shot, and that is even after editing.

This is a perfect example of how shooting the photo with as few distractions as possible is always the better option than trying to correct things in editing because some things simply can’t be fixed.  Always try to remember what the true subject of your photo is and make that the focus of the image you take.