Miz Booshay's Frequently Asked Photography Questions: Answered





Following are the links I promised.


Photography Tutorials by Donna Boucher


Ken Rockwell


DP Review



To answer a few questions that I didn't cover in the video and that I don't cover in my tutorials:

How do you size your pictures for your blog?

I upload my pictures at Flickr and choose from the sizes they offer.
That's all. When I started this blog, Blogger did not have photo capabilities so I had to go somewhere else to get the html for my pictures. I started with Walagata (who has dumped my pictures without a word and that is why you will see 'x' in the first few years of my blog. This broke my heart!) Then I used Photobucket to get the html but the size was too small.
Flickr has the best size choice for me.

How do you focus ?

The secret to focus

It's not much of a secret. But that tutorial says all I can think of saying about it.

How did you take that tulip picture?



Camera: Nikon D80
Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/640)
Aperture: f/1.6
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO Speed: 100

This photo is SOOC. Straight out of camera. The red in the tulips makes my camera act wacky so I didn't want to fool with it in photoshop.

I got down real low. Sat in the grass. I set my aperture or f/stop on 1.6
By doing this and focusing on one of the tulips in the front, I knew the others would be out of focus.
I set the camera on 1/640 because that is where it lined up for proper exposure.

See that bright white spot in the top left. That is bad. But, I didn't really care.



Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/800)
Aperture: f/1.6
Focal Length: 50 mm
Focal Length: 50.4 mm
ISO Speed: 100


Same with this one. This is way over exposed. That means I metered the light wrong.
But I didn't care. That's the fun of digital. You can experiment and do wrong things all the time and like them anyway :o)

I have pointed the camera toward the sky and front porch and that is why it's so blown out.


Do you edit all of your photos?

Yes, I edit almost all of my photos. Of the pictures I print. All of them.

I use photoshop to make the picture look how I see it in real life.

Most digital images need contrast. So I do that.
Most images need a tiny sharpen. So I do that.
Black and white is considered editing. I really like to do that.
For professional work, I take away pimples and scratches.

Actions?


For art's sake I like to mess with the editing by using Actions.

I use Pioneer Woman's Actions, Sesame Ellis Actions, Cinnamon Rose Actions, Totally Rad, Jinky, MCP, Brenda's, JOtte's and Leah's actions.

Holy Cow. That's a lot of actions!

My favorite black and white actions are Sesame Ellis Black and White, Cinnamon Rose Tritone, and MCP's Newsprint.

Photoshop and Lightroom

I use Photoshop CS3 95% of the time.
I fiddle around in Lightroom.

I have found my style and touch in Photoshop lately so I am just sticking with that for now.

Book Recommendation

I bought one book.

The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby

I liked it a lot!



Camera: Nikon D80
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/2000)
Aperture: f/1.6
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO Speed: 100

All I did to this picture was a slight lighten and a slight sharpen.

But I did do something, so I must confess.

(The one on the right is the sooc)

I know, this one would have been fine without the edit. But some of them really need the help :o)

The camera is set on 1.6 so I get the blurry grass.
I have turned Katie so she has gentle shadows on her face.
(I usually stay away for shady shadows, but the light was pretty this evening so I think it worked well enough.)
I am especially picky about how the light is hitting my subject.
It's the most important thing.

The light.


Become a connoisseur of the light.

If you know Latin you already have a great clue to what photography is all about.

Photo means light.
Graph mean write.

Photography : To Write with Light.

It's all right there...in Latin.


It all begins with the light,
Donna