Tag Archives: Photography

Digital Photograph and Folder Naming

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Do you have a plan in mind when naming photos and folders?

A person with no plan is going to pay sooner or later. And a person who changes file naming schemes often is also in for deep trouble. I am experiencing some of this pain right now. I am nearly finished moving all my photos over to my new Drobo, but it’s been a real chore. It was difficult only because I changed how I named my folders. Now, I wanted everything to be consistent so I had to rename quite a few folder names. It took much more time than if I had just maintained the same naming scheme all along.

Here’s what I do now. When I import a photo shoot into Lightroom, I rename each photo by assigning the date first and then a sequential number starting with 1. The file name looks like this: 20100323-23  This way I will never have a file name with the same name as another one.

I also name the folder with the date of the photo shoot and a descriptive name. Something like: 2010-03-28 Middle School Musical. This makes it easy to find a folder by date or name.

There is no real right or wrong way to name files or folders, but find something that works for you and stick with it!

Mental Checklists

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When you are on an important photo shoot getting the shot is important. There is little room for mistakes, which is why shooting in RAW is so helpful. We all know that. But there is nothing better than getting the shot from the camera to begin with.

That’s why a mental checklist can help us capture the shot we are after. Your mental checklist might include things like White Balance, ISO setting, Aperture, and Shutter Speed. This morning I was shooting in very difficult stage lighting. I couldn’t figure out at first why I kept getting blurry shots. Then I realized that I had not set my aperture properly. Obviously, I did not cover my mental checklist.

What is on  your mental checklist? Do you have a standard operating procedure to use this checklist? Plan ahead, create a mental checklist and use it!

Portrait Lighting

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Getting your flash off the camera makes a huge difference. It is even better to diffuse the light.

I use a Lastolite Soft Box and have enjoyed very nice results. Even with just one off-camera flash the difference is incredible. Learn how to set up the light to create a variety of looks with your subject. Experiment by taking some photos, move the off-camera flash, and take some more photos.

David Ziser communicates this very well in his new book, “Captured by the Light.” I just received my copy yesterday and after just reading the way to change the studio lighting is most excellent! I am sure I will enjoy this book and learn a lot in the process. Oh, and don’t worry if you are not a wedding photographer–this book will still apply to some of your photography nevertheless.

Portrait lighting is intimidating to some photographers but it doesn’t need to be this way. With just a few simple tips and suggestions you can use portrait lighting to make awesome photos. Give it a try!

Think about Depth of Field

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Depth of Field is an important concept for photographers. How much of your photograph is going to be in focus? Is it a landscape scene where you want the viewer to see pretty much everything in focus, or is a portrait where you only want the subject to be in focus?

Depth of Field will determine how much of a photograph is in focus and which parts of the photograph will be out of focus. Here is a quick way to illustrate this in a visual way. Find a long fence or a series of many parking meters. Angle your camera to catch us much of the fence or parking meters as possible. Ideally you will have your camera on a tripod to keep each shot the same. Now, close the aperture way down to something like 22 or even 32 if you can and focus about half-way into the scene. Take the photograph. Now take a second shot with your aperture somewhere in the middle range like f/8 or f/11. Finally take a third shot with the aperture fully opened.

When you get back to your computer compare the three photographs. The depth of field should be the greatest in the first shot. That is, you should see more of the fence or parking meters in focus. In the third photo you should see the least depth of focus–just a small part of the fence or a parking meter or two in clear focus. Do you see the differences?

Now, this concept needs to be applied in the photographs you are creating with your camera in all different situations. Let’s say that you are shooting a baseball game. You only care about the player at the plate and the baseball, not the dugout or the fans in the background. So you will use a shallow depth of field by opening up your aperture as wide as possible. Be careful though, because if the baseball and the player are not fairly close together, only one will be in clear focus. Many sports photographers shoot at f/4 or even f/5.6 to try to get the best of both worlds–shallow depth of field, but not too shallow.

Let’s consider another scenario. Say you are on vacation and see this beautiful sunset that lights up the valley all the way up to an incredible mountain. The sun is behind  you but the light is long and amazing. Your goal in this photo is to capture as much of the beautiful scenery as possible. This is where a deep depth of field can really help to keep as much of the scene in focus as possible. So you close down the aperture to f/22 or even more to capture this photograph.

Get the idea? Depth of field exists in every photograph to some degree. The goal is to get the proper depth of field for what you are trying to achieve. Practice and experiment with depth of field. You’ll be very glad you did when the photograph of a lifetime presents itself to you!

Backup Strategy

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A photographer’s backup strategy is crucial. Without such a strategy we risk losing important photographs that can never be recovered? Sound scary; it should!

I’ve had one hard drive failure many years ago. It was only 20mb in size, believe it or not (I did say it was many years ago!) and it only contained documents that I had backed up to 3.5″ floppy disks. About a year ago, I had another hard drive problem. It did not fail, but it did cause me to lose some files–mainly my email messages, calendar, and some other personal management software. Much of it was backed up, but I did lose all of my email messages. But thankfully, I’ve never lost a photograph, at least not yet.

My previous strategy was to use external hard drives to backup my photographs. As time passed and more and more photographs began to be stored, I purchased a second hard drive. This worked until this year when one of the drives became completely filled. So now I have some photographs that are not being backed up. Yikes!

So, my newest strategy included purchasing a Drobo, but then I also had to upgrade my desktop computer. The new one just arrived today! What timing, too! It is raining cats and dogs outside and while I have many projects to do around the house, this project is a great rainy-day project.

I put the desktop pc together and attached the Drobo. I also made sure to install McAfee on the new pc, too. Then I hooked up my biggest external drive and started copying most of my photographs to the Drobo. The dialog box says that it is copying the photographs, but it is going to take a whopping 14 hours to complete!

I will still have quite a few folders to copy over to my Drobo from my second external drive and then my laptop. It will take time, but I will finally have a solid backup strategy in place once again. The only problem with my strategy is to implement an off-site strategy in case of a fire, tornado, etc. Then I will have a solid backup strategy and will be able to sleep at night.

What is your backup strategy? Is it solid? And are you using it faithfully?

Batteries Keep Getting Better

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Have you tried the Energizer rechargeable Ni-MH batteries yet?

If not, I strongly encourage you do try to them. They work great and recharge fast! I have the Energizer 15-minute charger and it is fantastic! When you load the batteries and then plug it in, you hear the fan blowing to keep the unit cool. The batteries charge in no time which makes using rechargeable batteries a great option now.

I was using some other rechargeable batteries for my speedlight but they require overnight charging. This is much different than the short 15 minutes to charge the Energizer batteries. So I plan on replacing these older batteries with the Energizer batteries. Besides, then I only have to carry one charger along with me, too.

Getting Ready for a New Season

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The weather is starting to show signs of breaking and spring is just around the corner, but there is still time to make all the preparations for a new photography season.

Baseball season is about ready to begin and I can’t wait! There is hardly anything I like more than trying to capture the action on the baseball diamond. So I am making preparations for the new season so that when it begins I will be ready.

First of all, I purchased the MB-D10 Multi-Power Battery Grip for my Nikon D300. This will allow to shoot at a whopping 8 frames per second, which will surely let me capture much more of the action on each play!

Second, I purchased a new desktop computer to make editing and preparing photos for printing much easier. It will also allow me to make use of my storage system to catalog and backup all my photos.

Third, I am already watching some spring training games on tv to help me anticipate where the best photographs might be found during a game.

Similar preparations can be made for any style of photography. So, what are you waiting for? Start getting ready because a new season is coming soon!

One of the best times of the year

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This is one of my favorite times of the year.

The college football championship was just decided — Roll Tide! And now the NFL playoffs are in full swing with two wildcard games completed today. College basketball is in full swing and the NHL is playing, too. Isn’t this a great time of year?

Photographically I will be shooting some upcoming basketball games and this week I will be in Chincoteague, Virginia to do some bird photography.

I love this time of year!

Catching Up

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The Christmas and New Year’s holidays along with some time away on vacation have kept me away from my blog. I am slowly catching up and enjoying every minute of it!

Time spent with family and friends are always welcome by me and when accompanied by special holidays and vacations how can one not be happy?

We did spend some in Elk County and saw 8 elk–all bulls! It was snowy and cold and not ideal for photography, but it was fun to be on the mountain again. The elk sure are beautiful creatures!

Oh yeah, and watch for this coming Sunday’s edition of The Morning Call newspaper for an article about “Pennsylvania Elk Photography Experiences.” I was interviewed on New Year’s Day by the reporter, Diane. We talked for almost an hour and a half! I thoroughly enjoyed answering her questions and am looking forward to seeing the article myself.

Much more to come soon!

What Christmas Tree?

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The plan was to put the Christmas tree up but a lot of interesting distractions got in the way!

My son, James, and I started going through all of our trains and we got distracted. After all, we had track to lay, accessories to locate, and engines to test. There is nothing more exciting than watching a steam engine chug down the line with smoke circling out of its stack!

Lydia is not happy that we haven’t progressed to actually putting the tree up yet, but it is coming–I promise. So are some photos of our trains and the tree with its lights and decorations. Christmas is fast-approaching but we will be ready, I’m pretty sure.

Ever notice how life changes our best-laid plans? That’s been the story of my week, but I like trying to handle the curve balls that get thrown our way! This happens in photography, too. We plan and plan for a specific shoot–trying to imagine every possible thing that could happen. Then the big day arrives and something pops us that never saw coming. Learning how to handle these surprises is what makes us successful. The alternative is we let the surprises take over and we merely complain about them. No, this is not the approach for me. Deal with the surprises and unexpected trials that come our way. In the end, we will learn and be much better for it. Bring it on!