Shooting Techniques

Hello,

Just some simple tips on how to shoot.

#1 - Custom White Balance

This differs from camera to camera so do check the manuals on how to do this. But once you find where to set the custom balance, all you have to do is to fill up 70% of the frame with something that supposed to be white and snap. After that just go to ya white balance settings and set it to the custom that you have created.

This is because even if you shoot in raw, if the blue channel is clipped, which happens often especially indoors with warm lights, it will be hard to retrive the blue due to the lack of information that channel. It is easier to minus off the blue in post processing intead.

If you are shooting in sunlight, then I suppose that all cameras do pretty well on auto white balance. No worries on that!

#2 - Light and Metering

If you are out to get moody images, This is what you do.

Step 1 - use the spot or center weighted metering on the camera and get an exposure value on the brightest spot in your frame. After that you can either switch to manual with the setting you got or just do an exposure lock. For nikon cameras its just holding on to the AE-L button next to the viewfinder after you have half pressed to get the exposure on that spot.

This will enable you to expose for light. Since the lighted part will not be overexposed, that means you get pretty nice shadows in ya image. This will help make the photo look more 3d.

#3 - Composition

No fixed rules on this. But when in doubt, just shoot wider, we can crop later anyway.

That's all for now!
Just msn me @ gerald.tay-at-hotmail.com if you need anything.

Cheers!
geraldtay

Admin Nitty-Gritty

Great photo Yi Kang! (the one you took of your friend, not the mirror one, that one too scary for me haha).

Thanks guys for contributing to the slides. Yi Kang, may I use your photo in our ppt as well? All words now, so boring lol.

Last round of calling. Everyone who has yet to view the ppt, please at least open it go right to the last slide and choose which category you'd like to work in?

P.S. We already have more than enough for youngsters side. Please choose from the other categories from now on?

That's all for now! I'll compile a final version and send it out tonight. See you guys tomorrow. :)

~*Raine

firstly sorry for flooding and hogging this blog space man... anyway i jus took a picture tt could fit into the "young people" part. a friend dropped by sg and he has a nice tattoo so i thought its best to grab the opportunity before he flies off again.

he's liam from canada (ard 26 years old), a videographer (and photographer) for this company called "idyll", which produces educational videos or documentary. he asked his friend to design a tattoo with oceanic elements, which symbolizes his many journeys across the pacific ocean.

this is a picture of him in his room (i noe its not v env-portraitish :P ).

of course, by all means discard this if there are better ones from the "young people" group! wasn't well prepared for this shot, its quite last min, cos he's flying off soon.

certainly, all kinds of harsh, critical comments are welcome, so that we can all have a rough idea of our general artistic direction.

anyway here's a cool shot, we could adopt this idea hehe:

http://photoawards.com/07/contests/winners_detail.asp?id=34337

Environmental Portraits

Hey team here's a sweet intro to environmental portraits:

http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/environmental-portraits/

(the above website is very concise n easy to read!)

• they give context to the subject you’re photographing
• they give points of interest to shots (something you need to watch as you don’t want to distract from your subject too much)
• they help your subject relax
• they often give the viewer of your shots real insight into the personality and lifestyle of your subject

here are some examples:

http://www.dennyrenshaw.com/environmental_one.php

http://www.asmp.org/culture/gallery/environmental.php

http://www.timeout.com/chicago/article/15705/thinking-about-inking (tattoo artists)


and this is a v famous env portrait photographer

http://www.pdngallery.com/legends/newman/

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0312/an_index.html

good environmental portraits really exude attitude!

Project Framework

Hi guys,

Gerald, Kenneth and I have done the framework for our presentation next week. Will be sending the ppt file via email in a while. Please take a look at it.

As mentioned by Yi Kang in previous post, there is a slide titled "Workload". The chart is more or less the content we going to cover. Please put your names down in the respective columns. Each group should have 1-3 people.

We will need to start on research as well. Post any findings up here to share ya?

Cheers.

~*Raine

tattoo themes and sub-groups

Hi everyone,

yikang here. we can start splitting up into different sub-groups to do the different themes i think... can i volunteer to do the "secret society" part (cos hav some contacts)? should we split into the five themes (2 people each), 6 photos of each theme?

yikang

Hi guys,

Please accept the invites to be writers of the blog. That way we can just log in and blog using our own respective accounts haha.

P.S. JunCheng, you can kick us out and change ur password when the invites are more or less accepted hee.

Regards
*~Raine

Brief Intro

yo guys...feel free to use this blog to update our progress for the exhibition....well any photos take you all take feel free to just post up here ba...we can do selection using this blog....cheers