Fashion Photography Course
Part 1 – Introduction to fashion photography – Icons & Trendsetters
Inspiration is the key to successful fashion photography and as a fashion photographer your best attribute is going to be your individual style. This is what people will remember you for and this is what they will ultimately hire you for.
If you want to try and make a living out of fashion photography there are some interesting points to take note of;
You have to stand out somehow. Impress the client with technical merit, stylistic merit, or shock them. Break a rule or taboo. Make them remember you.
No other photographer wants to be your friend. They will not want to share secrets or tell you how they do it. At the start of your career, expect to work for close to nothing in order to break in to a market.
Every day is work. You are doing one of three things each day: shooting, working on post-production or marketing yourself to find your next shoot.
My life consists of marketing. That’s what it’s about, you are building social networks, promoting yourself and your services and trying to complete a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle of possible contacts and future clients , but when all the pieces start fitting together the whole picture becomes clearer.
Never forget that there is unbelievable competition for fashion photographers and if you have something different to offer and the right contacts to get you noticed you will be on the right track to a successful career.
If however you have a passion for fashion photography and you feel inspired by a fantastic editorial in a magazine and have always wanted to explore the creativity that goes into creating those types of images then I can hopefully point you in the right direction to express that creativity and give you a good grounding to start exploring your individual style. Once you have developed an understanding of the basic principles and technical aspects then you are only limited by your own imagination.
Inspiration will feed your imagination and there is a wealth of inspiration to be gained from examining the work of eminent professionals, who’s styles have shaped the fashion industry itself and it is no surprise that students of photography aspire to become fashion photographers because the stars of the fashion world are not only the designers but the photographers who help bring their designs to iconic status.
If you study the work of some of the most influential fashion photographers past and present you will find that many have broken the boundaries of convention and have influenced the creativity and development of budding photographers around the world.
I have put together a list of who I consider to be my most influential photographers and artists that inspire me to create and be creative!
The Masters of fashion photography
Richard Avedon
Helmut Newton
Irving Penn
David Bailey
Terence Donovan
Modern Day Master Photographers
Herb Ritts
Nick Knight
David Lachapelle
Steven Klein
Art & Cinematography masters
Salvador Dali
Andy Warhol
Alfred Hitchcock
Stanley Kubrick
My list includes some of the key fashion photographers of the last century, who shot for both Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar from the 1940’s to the 1980’s and modern day masters who have shaped the digital revolution in the mid 1990’s to the present day.
I have also included four pivotal artists / film Directors that have helped shape and inspire the contemporary culture that surrounds the fashion industry and also served as starting points for the modern day fashion photographer.
It is clearly not just other fashion photographers that inspire fashion photography but the whole world around us and how we interpret our culture and our positioning in the world, from social context , nationality, perceived class, upbringing, religion, sexual orientation and what supermarket we shop in!
The whole zeitgeist around our personal position in the world will dictate and influence our creativity.
The Masters of Fashion Photography
RICHARD AVADON
Richard Avedon is the most significant and influential photographer to have taken fashion as one of his subjects. He began working for Harper’s Bazaar in 1944, when he was only twenty-one, and revolutionized fashion photography, dispensing with its prevailing mannered and statically posed formulas and introducing a more youthful, spirited, and distinctly American style. Inspired by Hungarian photographer Martin Munkacsi and encouraged by legendary Harper’s Bazaar art director Alexey Brodovitch, he took models out of the studio and photographed them in motion to exhilarating effect. His collaborative efforts with Brodovitch allowed Avedon a great deal of freedom in composing his photographs, as well as a great degree of editorial control over Harper’s Bazaar’s use of his images. Working in Paris in the 1950s, he spun a cinematic narrative around the couture collections with his revolutionary outdoor images, evoking a vision of Paris at its most glamorous and intoxicating in what was still a grim postwar city. The extended narrative was one of his most imitated innovations. He was as inventive as he was prolific, constantly pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable in fashion photography, such as his inclusion of models who were Asian and African American, and his avant-garde pop culture references. His two decades at Harper’s Bazaar are remarkable for their inventiveness and originality, as well as their breathtakingly hectic pace.
By 1957, little more than a decade into his career, the unmistakable hyperkinetic sensitivity of his work had become well known, as had the growing myth of Avedon himself. He was the inspiration and visual consultant for Stanley Donen’s film Funny Face, with the Avedon role played by Fred Astaire, and his reluctant model played by Audrey Hepburn. Avedon was the epitome of the modern fashion photographer—charming, sophisticated, and suddenly as famous as his celebrity portrait subjects. More so than any other fashion photographer, Avedon reflected the mood of the moment through his work, from postwar optimism to Pop exuberance. He was sensitive and responsive to the new sense of power, determination, and freedom gained by women during the mid twentieth century.
His favorite models had character and a collaborative spirit, and he not only encouraged them to express it, but he made them famous for it. While at Harper’s Bazaar, he helped Suzy Parker achieve a level of renown rare for models, and after following former Harper’s Bazaar fashion editor Diana Vreeland to Vogue in 1966, he gave many more previously anonymous models prominent credits and fame through his images. A new cult of celebrity bloomed for Jean Shrimpton, Lauren Hutton, Twiggy, Penelope Tree, and Veruschka, ushering in the age of the supermodel and raising the profile of fashion photography within popular culture.
Avedon’s work at Vogue became more provocative in response to the sexual revolution of the late Sixties and Seventies, but his most memorable and exciting images from this period are of models in motion—sprinting across the page on a headlong rush into the future with the trademark “Avedon blur,” where the camera captured figures mid-motion. Although Avedon remained at Vogue until 1988, he did little editorial photography in his final years there, only picking it up again for extended sequences in Egoїste magazine and, later, features in The New Yorker as their first staff photographer, including “In Memory of the Late Mr. and Mrs. Comfort,” a sensational 1995 color portfolio set in post-apocalyptic ruins. Avedon’s last major narrative, this portfolio will be included in the exhibition in abbreviated form, along with key examples of his witty advertising work for Versace and Dior. Throughout his nearly seven decade career, Avedon’s images were infused with an undeniable sense of personal style and a unique take on the importance of fashion in our lives.
The super cool set of pictures by Richard Avedon which was published in the November 1995 issue of The New Yorker magazine. The series features the model Nadja Auermann as Mrs. Comfort and a lively skeleton as Mr. Comfort.
On 6th November 1995 The New Yorker devoted 26 (almost 27) pages to a historic colour series by Richard Avedon. As he himself said in the title, this was a “fable” involving two characters, Mr. & Mrs. Comfort, whom he presented, mistreated and consigned to a world of utter desolation. Mrs. Comfort was a sublime mannequin, Nadja Auermann, and a real actress. Mr. Comfort, by contrast, was a skeleton, but one not without expression or meaning, who appears as an extra or a participant in each of the 23 photographs published. The pair tell us a story invented by Avedon in collaboration with Doon Arbus, which takes the form of a last will and testament.
What’s happening, in a radically brilliant way, is a farewell to the fashion journalism which in part made Richard Avedon a celebrity.
This was a shock, as much for Avedon’s associates as for fashion lovers and personalities – among them the models of the top fashion names – and for clothes addicts.
But that’s the way it was: harsh. Avedon, who owed part of his fame to having published in Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue and so on, was saying a violent NO!
Following a rationale like the one behind the opposition to the Vietnam War that landed him in prison, and his exploration of the American West, he set out to denounce a consumer society he found unbearable but which he had decided to take advantage of. Bye-bye fashion, bye-bye seduction, bye-bye the ephemerality of seduction.
We’re all mortal and even when we’re actors and famous we’re potential skeletons. Fashion is an illusion, a sublimely ridiculous way of trying to struggle – in vain – against the flight of time; a struggle I was part of until this series came along.
A magnificent young woman, a calamitous set, a cynically libidinous skeleton, a peeling world in which beauty means splendour.
And in the end a Garden of Eden marked “Strictly No Entry”.
Simultaneously beautiful and violent, and wonderfully controlled in terms of realisation and meaning, this challenge to the vacuity of the world has never been shown before.
All the images from this editorial can be found at the link below:
Helmut Newton
Newton reflected the sexual revolution of the 1960’s and 70’s, which coincided with his rise to fame. He photographed some of the most beautiful women in the world in poses that emphasized their sexuality, often with an accompanying sense of danger and violence.
His images, often in stark black and white, were calculated to shock, featuring tall, blond, sometimes naked women in heels, perhaps illuminated by headlights or trapped in a dark alley. Bondage, sadomasochism, voyuerism, murder, pornography, prostitution: each was exploited and explored in his photos over the years. Models were depicted in ways that few readers expected: in orthopedic corsets, or in wheelchairs, or on all fours wearing a dog collar.
His work was also closely associated with top designers, like Yves Saint Laurent, whose penchant for tight, wide-shouldered suits and long-legged models suited him.
Along with the photographers Herb Ritts, Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, Mr. Newton moved fashion photography from a staid reflection of the current year’s styles to a more artful, glamorous presentation of mood and story. Unlike those contemporaries, who focused mainly on celebrities, Mr. Newton often preferred strapping, lesser-known models.
”Helmut was very clear that he liked a big girl and blond girl, in an impeccable suit and high heels,” said Anna Wintour, the editor in chief of Vogue. ”He would take that girl and put her in some wicked or naughty situation, kissing another woman or in handcuffs.”
But his work was also associated with photographers like Guy Bourdin and Deborah Turbeville, and sometimes drew the ire of groups that felt his depictions of women could be demeaning and exploitative. In 1998, an ad for Wolford women’s hosiery — featuring a model wearing only stockings and lying face down — was removed from a Times Square billboard after being deemed too explicit.
Helmut Newton had no fear. He was capricious, demanding, exacting, a bit blunt, funny, and above all, the photographer that brought unbridled sexuality to the editorial page.
Famous for being fashion’s most blatant voyeur, he created images that weren’t just sexual. They were a comment, and an expression of candor without pretense.
He himself saw his pictures as ‘contrived’, but within the rigid control that he exercised over his models and portrait sitters there is a freedom and a naturalness. It’s believable, even when farfetched.
His work thrusts you into a scene that has implications, that alludes to a wider story outside of the frame. What I have always loved about Newton’s work is that it suggested a before and after – you were just seeing one moent in a longer story – and wouldn’t you love to know what happened?
Helmut was born in Berlin, and grew up there during the Roaring 20’s. At the age of 16, he began working with fashion photographer Yva as an apprentice. He fled Nazi Germany in 1938, and after living in Singapore for 2 years, moved to Australia where he joined the army and became a citizen.
He met June Brucker (an actress at the time who later became photographer under the name ‘Alice Springs’) when she modeled for him, and while she was never paid for modeling, she did become his wife. Newton was a working photographer from 1938 to 1970, and then came the event that changed his vision: he had a nearly fatal heart attack in 1971.
In an interview with Carol Squiers for his book Portraits he says “I know my work has changed. My outlook has changed….I think it’s better than it was.” The eroticism deepened and he took more chances. He photographed himself nude in a hospital bathroom mirror using a point and shoot camera, and perhaps that is the beginning of the change. When he was looking at himself, so recently reborn, and owning the moment through photography.
Realizing that life is short, Newton simplified his way of life, and poured more of himself into his work than ever before. From his portrait of Elsa Perretti in a bunny suit (the feminine body in stark contrast to the hard concrete that surrounds her) to his editorial work for Vogue and Vanity Fair he began producing work that was rich in psychological complexity. The work isn’t really violent, it just hints at the violent sexuality that often accompanies the latex and rubber that he often uses to style his models. The mood veers between S&M to the rarefied air of high society. He was brilliant at making the beautiful a bit freakish, and making freakishness seem attractive.
In the documentary Frames From The Edge (1988), we see Helmut working in studio, blithely using a model in bondage gear to sell hardware. And that’s his secret – he got people to accept what was outlandish and marginalized, because in the end, sex sells.
During the course of the film you see him working with models on location with just a camera and one assistant, and they trust him and allow him to direct them to take off their tops in gardens and press their genitals against car fenders.
I think it’s the element of trust, of people trusting him and his judgement that makes his photographs so special. He’s asking his subjects to reveal themselves physically, but he admits that he is only interested in the surface of the sitter or model.
It also creates a special image space – you, the viewer, are free to project onto what is happening, it lets your imagination into the frame. The viewer completes the photographic process completely. Newton himself admitted that he hated to take photos that were not going to be seen. He acted out the inner voyeur of his audience,and the exhibitionist in his sitter – and took the blame for everyone else’s perversity.
Over the course of his life he produced thousands of images and a number of books and monographs. Memorable titles include White Women, Big Nudes, World Without Men, Portraits, and SUMO. Published in 2000, SUMO was actually the largest art and photography book ever created, weighing in at over 70 pounds. The book came with it’s own stand, so that owners could manage to read it.
The sum of Helmut Newton’s entire career, the first copy of the book was signed by 100 of the celebrities that he had photographed. That copy sold for $430,000 at auction. He died 4 years later in a car crash – an end as dramatic as the life, the work, and the man.
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Irving Penn
Irving Penn was the last exponent of the aristocratic concept of fashion photography. He was sent to Paris by Vogue in 1950 to photograph the latest collection. The images seemed simple enough, but the representation of fashion was subordinate to the expression of the photographer’s personal viewpoint. Irving Penn, like Richard Avedon, operated simultaneously in another branch of commercial photography – advertising – and in his published albums he mixed commissioned images with others produced as part of more personal projects. The result was that his approach to fashion photography was shot through by that ambiguity which turns a commercial snapshot into a creative moment.
The apparent simplicity of Irving Penn’s compositions conceals a formal complexity. It is the result of the particular elegance of the model’s outline, of the abstract interplay of lines and shapes, of empty and filled space. Irving Penn’s deliberate aim was to reinstate fashion photography into the history of painting. “It has been helpful, in orientation,” he wrote, “to think of myself, a contemporary fashion photographer, as stemming directly from painters of fashion back through the centuries.” If Irving Penn’s idea of the existence of a pictorial category involving “fashion painters” was somewhat inexact, it did at least allow him to treat his own commercial activity with the free and disinterested attitude of the painter.
This evolution of fashion photography into a means of artistic self expression would become particularly obvious in the 1970s. Greatly assisted by the unusual physique of his favorite model (Lisa Fonssagrives, who was also his wife), Irving Penn seemed to consider each photograph to be like a portrait which interpreted freely the conventions of pictorial photography – to such an extent that he made little distinction between work in the studio and the more experimental craft of darkroom and printing techniques. Stage props are usually absent from his photographs. They are posed against a plain paper backdrop and translate his perception of a unique moment. In his work, a simple photograph constitutes a personal vision, in which the outline, the gradation of tones, and contrasts, become the trademark of a way of looking which gives form to the world.
Rankin Documentary:
Seven Photographs that Changed Fashion is very endearing. The programme paid homage to great photographers past and present and looked at iconic images in the history of fashion . To add a twist to things Rankin recreated each photograph with his own team of stylists and make up artists as well as contemporary models. You can see the new Rankin versions below.
Cecil Beaton – the quintessential British photographer.
“He helped set the template for fashion photography. Packaging a world of decadent beauty and above all selling a dream,” says Rankin. He recreated the 1934 photo in Vogue that showed off a white Panama hat. “Beaton brought to it his typical wit and elegance so that what she is wearing is secondary to the beauty of the image.” Rankin enlisted the service of pop star and model, Sophie Ellis Bextor to pose as the model as she was ideal for the 1930s and 1940s look.
Erwin Blumenfeld – the innovator and pioneer.
“Blumenfield was all about visual experimentation. He was an innovative fashion photographer of his era and a pioneer for colour photography. His stunning Vogue cover in 1950 shows the influence of the surrealist but also shows the excitement of the country looking forward to the next century,” says Rankin. Heidi Klum was chosen to be the muse for this shot due to her chameleon tendencies and stardom.
Richard Avedon – the first celebrity fashion photographer.
“Classic styling with energy and creative spirit. Daring, stylish and ambitious, his pictures reflected the optimism of 50s America and turned him into the first celebrity fashion photographer. His status was confirmed by Funny Face, a film based on Avedon but was was made famous for starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire. His photo of a model with elephants that was in Harpers Bazaar in 1955,” says Rankin. He chose supermodel, Erin O’Connor for the recreation because of her tall frame and demeanor.
David Bailey - the man who brought sex to photos.
“Before Bailey, fashion photographer in Britain was still a gentleman’s trade however he broke through all that bringing an energy, charm and incredible life to his images. Bailey is the perfect fashion photographer combining technical brilliance with sheer force of personality to create photos that have a sense of total spontaneity. He created some of the most iconic images of the 60s and most of them were with his muse and girlfriend, Jean Shrimpton, ” says Rankin. It is the image from Vogue in 1963 that Rankin chose to recreate with his own girlfriend, Tuuli Shipster.
Helmut Newton – the voyeur.
“In the era of sexual liberation, pornography going mainstream and conventions being challenged; Newton’s voyeuristic images of strong women in often highly charged sexual scenarios often captured the new mood. His pictures also suggested that fashion photographs could be more than just a beautiful snapshot. His images felt like frames from a slightly seedy film and moved fashion photography forward again,’ says Rankin. The photo that he recreated is the one taken for Vogue in 1975 with an androgynous and mysterious feel taken in the Rue Aubriot in Paris outside Newton’s apartment. Rankin has gone back to the same street for his shoot and is using models, Jade Parfitt and Mollie Gondi.
Guy Bourdin – one of the most imitated fashion photographers of all.
“His highly saturated look and dramatic scenario seem to suggest some hidden tension or trauma. His influence is incredible not just in photography but in pop culture,” says Rankin. He chose to recreate Bourdin’s 1970 Vogue cover because it captures the sleazy glamour of his work with none of the admiration of women normally seen in traditional fashion photos. He invited model and socialite, Daphne Guinness to pose for the shot.
Herb Ritts – who brought homoeroticty into the mainstream.
“Ritts’ work has been described as so dark you can see the shadows and the light. He wanted to make beautiful images with beautiful people and in doing so was responsible for the way men were portrayed in fashion. His image ‘Fred With Tyres’ which was about workers in denim was shown in Italian Vogue in 1984 and caused quite a stir,” says Rankin. To recreate this image, Rankin invited top male model, David Gandy who is the face of Dolce and Gabanna.
I learnt a lot from this documentary, as well as what a passionate and dedicated photographer, Rankin is but also the enormous respect he has for his peers and craft. He even took one of the images in a digital format but still achieved the same effect. Seven Photographs That Changed Fashion has also given me a great introduction into the artists who made their mark in photography.
Camera Technicalities & Settings
First have a look at this SLR digital photo simulator to gain a better understanding of how ISO speed, aperture, shutter speed and focal distance affect the outcome of your digital photography.
Camera Exposure - Getting it right
In photography, ‘exposure’ means the amount of light that falls onto the sensor of your digital camera. In modern cameras the exposure is usually set to automatic by default and, most of the time, it can be left there and will produce beautiful pictures. There are times though, when the camera lets us down or we want to produce a particular effect and it would be nice to understand what is going on ‘under the hood’.
Getting a ‘correct’ exposure means recording as much of the relevant information in the scene as possible.
Even when the exposure is ‘correct’ the problem with all cameras is that they cannot record the entire range of contrast (black to white) that the eye can see. Especially when you take into account that the eye is constantly adjusting to cope with high contrast. On a sunny day if you look into the shadows of a scene then into the bright areas, the iris in your eye will quickly adjust so you can see detail in both.
Faced with the task of recording as much information as possible, the camera will try to average out all the light levels and expose accordingly. As burnt out highlights are normally considered uglier than black shadows, the camera, left to it’s own devices, will normally err on the dark side. Which is no good if you are shooting against a bright background. It’s the subject you want to see, and you don’t really care if the background is white.
Auto Exposure Modes
The camera manufacturers have come up with all sorts of ingenious metering systems to try to help, there are now multi mode metering systems, which give you a choice of ‘center weighting’, ’spot metering’ or ‘multi spot metering’ on many of the better cameras, but none can guarantee to give you what you want every time.
Tip – using auto exposure to your advantage.
If you have a modern camera, the chances are that the default metering system is ‘center weighted average’, which means that, although it takes an average reading of the whole scene, it takes more notice of what is in the middle of the frame. Which is good news for us. The other good news is that it takes this reading at the time when you take ‘first pressure’ on the button to take your picture.
When you push it halfway down and it beeps at you, not only is the focus now set (on an auto-focus camera) but the exposure reading is taken and the aperture and shutter speed are set. So, if your main point of interest is not in the center of the frame, it’s a good idea to put it there temporarily while you focus and take your light reading, then move the camera whilst still holding the button halfway down and compose the picture the way you want it to be.
A common use for this technique is when you are taking a close up shot of two people and there is space between their heads, if you’re not careful the camera will focus on the wall or trees behind them. If the background is very dark or very light this can alter the exposure significantly and result in faces that are too dark or too light.
Skin tones are what most meters are set up to consider an ‘average tone’, they are also usually the part of the picture that we most want to get right. If I am photographing a group of people in difficult circumstances, like bright sunlight for instance, I will often move close in to the group and take a light reading from someone’s face or, if we are all standing in the same type of light, I will take a reading from the back of my hand. This is no good, of course, if the subject is in bright sunlight and I am in the shade.
Manual Exposure
Now it’s time to turn that dial away from ‘program’ mode and have a look at the dreaded ‘manual’ mode. There are also a bewildering array of other choices such as ‘aperture priority’, ’shutter priority’, ‘exposure compensation’ etc., but once you understand the basics you will be able to select the most suitable mode.
The amount of light falling on the film is governed by four things.
- The amount of light reflected from the scene which, if you are outdoors, you can do very little about.
- The ’shutter speed’ which is the amount of time the shutter is open, measured in fractions of a second.
- The ‘aperture setting’ which is the size of the hole through which the light enters. If you look at the lens of your camera you will see a diaphragm in the middle of the glass which the camera adjusts according to the light. This does exactly the same job as the iris in your eye. Aperture settings are measured in ‘f stops’. The ISO setting. This is the ’sensitivity’ of the sensor.
Why use manual exposure?
The advantage of manual exposure is that the settings do not keep changing as your scene changes. Let’s suppose that you are taking close up photos of cars passing by. Some of the cars will be black or dark colors and some will be light colors or white. If you are filling the frame with almost nothing but car, the meter will be trying to render each car as mid gray. Although it will probably not succeed, what you will notice is that the background is a different shade in each photo.
I often have to take portraits of people, some are wearing very dark clothes and some are wearing white. If I am not careful with my exposure settings will be affected by the clothes.
Although it is by no means always necessary to use manual exposure, an understanding of how it all works will save a lot of disappointment.
Shutter Speed
Although, as discussed in exposure, the shutter speeds and apertures are interchangeable as far as exposure is concerned, they each have their own unique effect on the picture. Let’s take a look at shutter speeds first as their effect is easily understood.
The shorter the time that the shutter is open the sharper the photo will be.
If you are photographing fast moving objects such as cars or people running you need to select fast shutter speeds to capture the sharpest picture you can. One exception to this is when you are panning the camera with the subject, the object of the exercise here is to render the subject sharply and blur the background, so a careful selection of the right shutter speed to do both is necessary. I often find that a little blur in the right places on a picture gives a greater sense of movement than if everything is pin sharp. This blur, however, must be in the right places, normally we want to see the head and torso rendered sharply but, if the feet and hands are blurred, it can often be a good thing. Blurring the background can also get you out of trouble when there is a lot of clutter that will detract from the main subject. Getting the shutter speed right to render the correct balance of sharpness and blur on any given subject can really only be determined through trial and error. One of the great advantages of the digital camera with it’s instant playback is that this learning process can be a lot shorter than it was before. If you have a zoom facility on your playback of pictures, now is the time to get familiar with it. I had my digital camera for quite a while before I realized that I could review my pictures and zoom in to check the sharpness.
Not only moving objects suffer from too slow a shutter speed. If you are holding the camera in your hand rather than having it mounted on a tripod, you will see the telltale signs of ‘camera shake’ (i.e. the movement of the camera) at shutter speeds longer than 1/125th of a second. A secure pair of hands will be able to get away with 1/60th or even 1/30th of a second but the camera would be better mounted on a tripod. Once again I will say at this point that the difference between a mistake and an effect is usually the degree. A small amount of blur would be considered a mistake, whereas really blurred streaks of light can be an interesting effect. It’s all a question of convincing the viewer that you intended to do it.
Tip – When the shutter speed is important as with moving objects, it’s a good idea to set the camera to ‘Shutter Speed Priority’ mode. This is where you select the shutter speed and the camera selects the appropriate aperture according to the light reading.
Of course, if you are taking photos of static objects like houses with a camera mounted on a sturdy tripod, you can leave the shutter open as long as you want without blurring. An interesting by-product of this, if you get to see really old photos taken in the first part of the 19th century, you will see that there are almost no people in the photos at all. That is because the exposure times were so long that the people had walked through the scene without being rendered. For the same reason the really early pictures, in the time of Niépce, the late 1830’s, have almost no shadows because the plates took all day to expose and the sun moved across the sky illuminating the scene from both sides.
Apertures
As well as letting more or less light into the camera the size of the aperture you choose governs the ‘Depth of Field’. Depth of field means the amount of the picture, from foreground to background, that is in sharp focus. A smaller aperture will give you a greater depth of field and a larger aperture will give you a more restricted depth of field. This characteristic can be used to good effect in many ways.
If you are photographing vast landscapes on a sunny day, the chances are that everything will be in focus and you will not notice this phenomenon at all. Depth of field, or the lack of it, is much more noticeable when taking close-ups. As I mentioned in the section on moving subjects, it is often desirable to render the background of your picture out of focus. This is easy to achieve by selecting a larger aperture to restrict the depth of field.
Conversely, when photographing very small objects getting everything in focus can be quite a challenge and may require a very slow shutter speed in order to be able to use the smallest aperture available. The focal length of the lens makes a difference to the depth of field available, the longer the lens the more restricted the depth of field. A wide angle lens will give you almost limitless depth of field.
Tip – If depth of field is important to either make sure everything is in focus or to throw some things out of focus, select the ‘Aperture Priority’ mode on your camera. In this mode you select the aperture and the camera selects the shutter speed according to the available light.
Technical Stuff – Shutters Speeds and Apertures
What do the numbers mean?
If you look at the exposure display in your viewfinder you will see two numbers. On a normal sunny day you might see something like ‘125 16′ or ‘500 5.6′. The first number is the ’shutter speed’ and is simply the time that the shutter will be open for, expressed as a fraction of a second. So 125 means that the shutter will be open for 1/125th of a second, and 500 means that it will be open for 1/500th of a second.
The second number, sometimes referred to as the f-stop, tells you the size of the hole (aperture) in the lens.
| Large aperture = small f number | |
| Small aperture = larger f number |
Exposure Compensation
Most of the time the camera’s meter does a good job of determining the correct exposure. Basically though, it can easily be fooled by subjects and backgrounds that are either too light or too dark.
The metering system, with a few clever refinements, measures the light in a scene and tries to take an average of all the tones. I say ‘with a few refinements’ because there are different meter modes like centre weighted average or spot metering to try and compensate for the shortcomings of the system, but every now and then you will have to resort to a bit of manual intevention to get the best exposure.
Then it’s time to hit the exposure compensation slider, most cameras have a similar display to the one on the right where you can set the camera to over or under expose the subject by up to 3 f-stops in 1/3rd stop intervals.
Using the slider is very simple, turn it to the left and the exposure will decrease (the picture will be darker), turn it to the right and the exposure will increase, making the picture lighter.
Each number on the scale (1,2,3) represents one f-stop, decreasing the exposure by one f-stop will halve the amount of light reaching the sensor. The dots in between the numbers represent 1/3rd of an f-stop.
One really important thing to remeber is to put the slider back to the middle when you have finished, otherwise all your pictures will be incorrectly exposed, the settings are not self cancelling.
ISO rating for Film Speed
ISO stands for ‘International Organization for Standardization’ and their film speed ratings are used to indicate the relative amount of light necessary to give a proper exposure. A normal film will be rated at ISO 100. A film rated at ISO 200 will give a proper exposure with only half the amount of light compared to the ISO 100 film, enabling you to shoot in lower light or with a smaller aperture or faster shutter speed. The ISO 200 film would be referred to as a ‘faster’ film. There are films available that range in speed from ISO 25 to ISO 1600.
So why not use the faster films all the time, what are the advantages of slower films?
The faster films have a more prominent grain structure the individual grains clump together to form spots that are visible to the naked eye, especially when you blow the photo up to A4 or larger from a 35mm negative. In certain circumstances this effect can be used creatively especially in black and white photography but mostly it is undesirable.
How does all this affect digital cameras?
In the digital photography world the phenomenon is called ‘noise’ not ‘grain’, the cause of the problem is slightly different. When light levels are low, the sensor has trouble reading the scene properly and pixels of random color are thrown into the picture. However to us photographers the end result is the same or very similar.
| ISO 100 |
| ISO 1600 |
The ‘better’ digital cameras have, usually hidden away among the manual settings, a sort of simulation of the film speed effect. My camera for instance, a Nikon D300 has an ISO range from 100 to 3200. This feature is not available when you are in fully auto mode but is available in all the other modes. I tend to keep it set to ISO 200 most of the time as the grain structure is not significantly worse than ISO 100 and it gives me that extra f-stop to play with. When I am shooting fast action and I want to freeze the action then I’ll select ISO 400 or 800. If the light is very bad ie night time or indoors then a shot at ISO 1600 is often better than a blurred shot caused by using too slow a shutter speed or no shot at all.
Here are two images, you are looking at a small blowup from the center of each image, the top one was shot at ISO 100 and the bottom one at ISO 1600. The difference is fairly pronounced at this magnification (this is at 100% zoom) but, at more normal sizes the difference is harder to see. The grain becomes most obvious in parts of the picture which are fairly plain, such as the sky. These two shots, of course, were shot in daylight. The effect will be even more obvious in pictures taken in lower light levels.
Some digital cameras have built-in noise reduction technology. Next time you need to take pictures in low light try a few shots with and without it and compare the results. Also have a look at your photo editing software. Programs such as Photoshop have filters that can remove or at least reduce noise. Careful though that this does not affect the overall sharpness of the picture too much.
Photo Editing
Getting it the Right Size
Although there are now photo library programs that will adjust the size of your photo automatically when you select print, a little knowledge will put you in control of the process, enabling you to be much more precise.
Photos for the Screen
When publishing photos on the web, it is best to make the photo the exact size, in pixels, that you need. This way the download time will be minimized. There is no advantage in having a greater number of pixels in the picture as they will not show on the screen and often the picture will have a strange ’squashed in’ look about it. Minimizing the size of the file is not so important if you are just going to make a slide show for your computer or a CD but you will find the whole operation will be slicker and work faster if you do.
The first and most important thing to realize is that reducing the number of pixels in a photo to make it smaller is a destructive process, the pixels are discarded and cannot be reclaimed. So always make a new file by choosing ’save as’ and giving the photo a new name. This way you will still have the original file as well.
In Photoshop, once you have your new file open, select ‘image’ then ‘image size’ from the menus which will open the window below. Other programs will have a similar window.
If we are dealing with a picture destined for the web, we are interested in the top section headed ‘Pixel Dimensions’. The section below deals with sizes for printing which we will come to later.
At the bottom of the window we have two tick boxes, the top one ‘constrain proportions’ keeps the horizontal and vertical proportions of your picture in ratio and, unless you are looking for a special effect, it is important to always keep this box ticked.
The second box ‘resample image’ just means that we are changing the actual file size as opposed to just the dimensions of the photo for printing. Keep this box ticked when working with photos destined for the web because, as I mentioned above, we want to make the picture the right size in pixels, which means we do want to change the file size.
Resizing pictures should only ever be done downwards. If you made the photo too small and now it needs to be larger then go back to the original and start again. (see ‘re-sampling’ for an explanation)
The drop down box next to the ‘Resample’ tick box allows you to choose a re-sampling method. These different methods govern how the new pixels are created when you upsize your picture or how they are selected for deletion if you are downsizing. Bicubic is the default setting and this setting gives you the best quality result, it is also the slowest method but that shouldn’t be a problem on modern computers.
When designing web pages, like this one, the unit of measure we use is the pixel, we are not really interested in how many pixels there are to an inch or a centimeter because that differs depending on the screen resolution set by the viewer on his monitor. Most screens are capable of showing either 72 pixels per inch or 96. So that gives you a guide to how big your photo will look on most screens.
The JPEG Format
The JPEG format is the most popular file format for photos by far. It has a variable system of file compression which can make files up to ten times smaller than the full TIFF or RAW files or more. All digital cameras have an option to store data in the JPG format and it is a very good compromise between file size and quality. The method of compression used is fairly complex, it basically squeezes the colors a little to give you a slightly smaller palette but one that contains ‘almost’ all the colors in your original photo. The important thing to know is that the compression system is ‘lossy’. This means that when you decompress the file, some of the original information has been lost and if you compress the file again, after making some changes in Photoshop, some more information will be lost and so on.
Most of the time the effect of this ‘lossyness’ is not too apparent on a first or second generation file but after that you begin to notice the deterioration especially when you resize the picture. Resizing a JPEG can often result in a softening of the sharpness of the image. Sometimes you can fix this easily enough with the unsharp mask in Photoshop but other times this quick fix will not look right.
Always keep the original file safe and do your editing on a copy. The best thing to do, especially with your best pictures, is to save the file straight from the camera to TIFF or PSD format. Even though it may have been saved in the camera as a JPEG it is still only undergoing one level of compression/decompression and will look fine. Then you can work on the TIFF or PSD version, resizing it or correcting the color, and then save the finished photo as a JPEG if it is for use on the web or keep it as a TIFF for printing.
When you save a JPEG file for the first time an extra window will appear with a quality select slider. I have found that the best setting for the web is 8 and for print I use 12.
Photos for Printing
Photos for printing need to have a much higher resolution. 300 pixels per inch is considered the minimum for printing in a magazine and seems to be a good optimum for printing on a color inkjet printer. When sizing a photo for printing refer to the bottom of the two areas in the image size window headed ‘document size’. Here you can select the unit of measure inches, centimeters etc. that you are happiest with and choose your print size. If you untick the box at the bottom marked ‘resample image’ then the file size won’t change. If you reduce the print size, the resolution (number of pixels per inch) will increase. As the resolution for printing is largely a matter of the more the merrier there is no point in reducing the file size unless you need the space on your hard drive.
Do not be tempted to increase the resolution by re-sampling It is possible to make your file size bigger by re-sampling to a higher resolution. The way the program does this is to fill in the new pixels based on the color values of the pixels around it. This normally makes for a fuzzier picture, it will never get better. If you have a photo that you want to make a large print of and the resolution is lower than 300 pixels per inch you will be better off printing at whatever resolution you have rather than trying to increase the resolution. I have printed pictures with a resolution as low as 100 dots per inch and they don’t look too bad.
Brightness and Contrast
Very often, when we upload our pictures to the computer from the camera and first look at them on the screen, they will appear dull and lifeless like photo No.1
In this instance the photo is under exposed, often a problem when auto flash is used with a long lens, the flash is too far away from the subject to give the proper exposure.
Here are some suggestions for altering the brightness and contrast of the image in Photoshop, use them in the order that they appear, only move on to the next method if you are not getting what you want.
Auto Levels/Contrast
There is a ‘magic button’ in Photoshop called ‘auto levels’ which you will find under the ‘image’ menu on the ‘adjustments’ sub menu.
Hitting ‘auto levels’ is always worth a try, it sometimes produces just the result you were looking for or, at least, a good place to start. If you don’t like the result then hit the undo button on the edit menu and move on to plan B. Hitting the ‘auto levels’ button in this case produced photo No.2, which is not too bad.
If you tried ‘auto levels’ and liked the overall brightness and contrast but the color balance was worse than before then try ‘auto contrast’ instead. This does the same job as ‘auto levels’ but without altering the color.
Curves
Sometimes though, the auto buttons won’t give us what we want, so we need to try something that we can control ourselves. The next weapon in the arsenal is ‘curves’. Select ‘curves’ from the ‘image->adjust’ menu and we get the window below. It may look a little intimidating at first but it is quite easy to use.
Keep the channel set on RGB to adjust all the colors at once, don’t try and use this window for balancing color as there are easier ways of doing it.
When the window is first opened there will be a straight diagonal line running from the bottom left to the top right of the grid. Put your cursor on the diagonal line and a black point will appear, drag this point diagonally upwards and to the left. Look at your picture and you will notice that the mid tones of your picture are getting lighter giving you a brighter looking picture. Pull to the right and downwards and you will see the mid tones getting darker.
Used carefully this is a very powerful tool indeed but it is best used sparingly, pull the curve too much and you will get all kinds of weird effects. I often use this tool several times in succession on the picture to drag the mid tones out of the mud.
If you have extreme work to do then you can move the end anchors to change the point at which the shadows go black or the highlights go white, but normally it is best to leave these anchors where they are.
In the ‘curves’ window pictured above you will see I have made a small adjustment to the curve to lighten the mid tones of the photo. The result of this adjustment is shown below in photo No.3.
Compare this version of the photo with No.2 above. You will see that the highlights and shadows have changed very little and the mid tones have been lightened quite a bit.
Brightness & Contrast
A little further down the ‘adjustments’ menu you will find the ‘brightness/contrast. . .’ entry which produces the window on the left. The two sliders will adjust the brightness and contrast up or down. The difference between this window and the ‘curves’ window is that the effect of these adjustments is linear, in other words if you adjust the brightness by +10 then all the pixels in the picture will be 10 units brighter.
Sometimes the adjustment of these two controls can give you a better result than ‘curves’ but it is also easier to mess things up as well so I suggest you only use them when all else fails. You may need to use this window if, for instance, your picture needs to be brighter and it needs more contrast.
A better way to make linear adjustments is to use the ‘levels’ window. When you need to adjust the contrast in your photo the best tool for the job is ‘levels’. In all flavours of Photoshop you can open the ‘levels’ window by using the keyboard shortcut ctrl+L in windows or cmd L on a Mac. Alternatively you can find it under enhance->adjust lighting in Elements or image->adjustments in Photoshop.
Although there is a separate ‘brightness’ & ‘contrast’ window, the ‘levels’ adjustment is a better option as you can really see what you are doing.
PHOTOSHOP ESSENTIALS
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