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Guest Post: How I Document My Days & Record Family Memories
I'm so excited to have a wonderful photographer and friend share with us on the blog today! Estelle is a mum of 3 who loves to photograph her family and their everyday life, and creates beautiful albums with her images using Project Life. I so love this idea as a way of recording memories and using lifestyle images, that I asked her to tell me how she does it: the result is this blog post! Over to Estelle….
Shooting For Black & White Images
I love black and white images - they are beautifully timeless and allow you to see the world in a completely different way.
However, there are many images that are just not a good candidate for a black and white conversion. If you have ever converted an image and thought it looked a bit "meh", the chances are it was just because that particular image wasn't a good fit.
Although there are no hard and fast rules about what makes a good black and white image, here are the things that I watch out for if I am looking to convert the image into black & white. You can use this in processing, or even when you are shooting if you know you want to convert the image later.
Ready? Let's go!
How I Nail White Balance in Camera
One of the best things I did in my photography journey was to start setting my white balance in camera, rather than relying on AUTO. I was really struggling with getting the right colour in my image - in particular skin tones - and I could spend ages mucking around in Lightroom or Photoshop trying to get the image to look "right". When you can't "see' colour correctly, this is a really, really hard task!
Adding Noise for Creativity
Most of the time we will want to try to use the lowest ISO setting possible to get a good "clean" image, with minimal noise and rich vibrant colors. This type of image is generally sought after in studio and portrait photography, and many lifestyle images also require that clean, simple look - any images where we don't want the added distraction of noise and have colours that are vivid and true to life.
How to Add Images to a Photoshop Template
As I've been sharing a few photoshop templates here on the blog, I thought I'd take a moment to show you how to add images to a collage or storyboard template. It's actually very easy to do but I know that some of you may be totally unfamiliar with Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and it can take a while to learn where everything is, so this should allow you to get started. You can use this same method regardless of template type (such as cards or album pages etc) as they all use pretty much the same steps.
5 Tips for Getting Good Bokeh
First of all, how many of you have heard of the term Bokeh? It comes from a japanese word meaning ”blur” or ”haze” and refers to the part of the image that you have intentionally blurred by using a selective depth of field. This affect is used a lot in photography to focus the eye on a specific subject within the frame (used a lot in portrait photography to isolate the person from a background) and just to create a more pleasing image. It’s probably one of the keys things that will make people think of a portrait looking more ”professional” so it is a good little trick to have in your photography arsenal!
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It's been quite a few years now since I made the switch from Aperture Priority Mode to shooting in Manual Mode, and it was one of the BEST things I ever did to improve my photography skills.
It was like a whole new world opened up to me, and I started TRULY understanding exposure, and in turn, getting the images that I wanted.
Of course, there was a lot to learn, and there are some things I wish I had known before I started!
So, here are 10 things about shooting in Manual Mode that you might just wish you knew…