The Setup:

You need a tripod for your camera and a lens to cover the whole TV screen. I recommend a zoom lens so you can adjust the focal lenght until you have your TV screen taking 100% of the frame. With wide screen TVs the borders will be outside of the frame but that’s not a problem.

About 1.5 to 3 meters away from the screen is a good distance for the tripod. A remote control will be ideal to take some shots while enjoying the show at the same time.

2'' exposure

The Shutter Speed

It’s everything about finding the right shutter speed here. Use your camera in shutter speed priority mode (TV in some cameras) and try different speeds to see what effects you can create. I found that speeds around 1/4 of a second were good to freeze some of the action while still giving the image an abstract look while speeds from 1 to 4 seconds were good to create abstract patterns from the movements in the screen.

1/4 of a second

When processing the images try to increase the contrast and the saturation. That will give the images more life.  You can also try playing with the focus and making fake miniatures, screen shots if aerial can work fine for those and the increase in contrast and saturation will give the miniature some life.

1 second

This was just a very small example of the things you can do while watching a game or any other TV show. Try different speeds, press your remote shutter when something interesting is happening and then review your collection of abstracts in the half time show or after the game.

1/2 second

Now you can get your own personal image of “the catch” or any other significant play. It’s a way to create personalized and artistic memories from big TV shows.

I can’t even start to count the number of books, articles and tips that are written about sharpening. There are so many recipes and so many methods that it gets confusing. In this small article I will describe a simple technique to control the amount of sharpening in an image. It’s a technique commonly used in astrophotography where the finest level of sharpening is needed and it can be applied to daytime images without any difference.

Using the HighPass Filter for sharpening

The tool we’ll use for sharpening is the high pass filter. The method is simple, duplicate the layer, apply the highpass filter to the new layer and set its layer mode to overlay. You will see how the new layer is a sharpened version of the previous one. To control the level of sharpening you change the radius of the highpass filter. A very small radius is useful to enhance textures without modifying the rest of the image. A larger radius can increase contrast in the edges. A very large radius will increase local contrast a lot but will probably create some artifacts.

The filter in action

To show you the effect of the filter I will show some images with different levels of sharpening applied.

Original Image

HighPass Filter Radius = 1 pixel

High Pass Filter Radius = 10 pixels

High Pass Filter Radius = 20 pixels

You can see how increasing the radius changes the amount of sharpening applied to the image.

Sharpening Textures

If you want to enhance local contrast in your photo textures you should apply the filter with a radius of less than 1 pixel. 0.3, 0.5 and 0.7 are good values to try. This values will enhance micro-contrast in your textured areas without impact in the rest of the photo.

This is a example:

Original

High Pass Filter Radius = 0.5 pixels

Different Levels of Sharpening

As we have seen we need different levels of sharpning for different things. The best approach is to create several copies of your original photo and apply the highpass filter to each layer with a different radius. Then you can use masks and opacity to decide the amount of sharpening to use from each layer and where to apply the changes. I use a very low radius to highlight textures, a 2 or 3 pixel radius for general areas of the image, a 5 pixel value for edges and a 10 or 20 pixel value for things such as grass or clouds where a higher level of sharpening can be needed.

This is how the layers look while editing:

Once we have all the different levels of sharpening masks and opacities are used to decide how the final image will look.

Original

Finished

Final Sharpening Tips

Sharpening should be applied only to the final image once resized. Save your master photos in full size without applying sharpening at all. Then when you want to print it or put it on the web resize the image, apply sharpening a save a jpg to be used for printing or publishing. Different sizes need different levels of sharpening.

When we see a photo of the Moon we usually see a monochrome image with tones of gray showing an image very similar to what we see with the naked eye. Surprisingly the surface of the Moon has some colors, they are muted but they exist. The colors represent the different materials present in the lunar surface. In this small article I will describe how to create a photo showing the moon in its real colors.

1. Start with good photos of the Moon.

You need to start with several good photos of the moon, while any moon phase can work it’s usually better to start with a full moon. I wrote about how to take photos of the moon last year, so you can start with that article: http://www.photographyblogger.net/ten-keys-to-photograph-the-moon/

2. Take Many Shots!

I will explain you why in just a few paragraphs but for now when you take your moon photos don’t stop with just a couple of shots. Take 10, 20 or up to 50 shots of the full moon. Try to keep the moon in the same place in the frame, if you are using a long lens you will need to chase the moon around as it will move quite quickly. A micrometric head or a ballhead with good friction control help you adjust the camera position as the moon moves across the sky.

3. The trick for color: Bump Saturation

Is it that simple? Well yes and no. To reveal the colors of the moon you just have to bump the saturation when you process the photos. A massive bump in saturation quickly degrades the image quality so it’s better to do it in steps. Increase saturation 20%, flatten the image, increase another 20%, flatten the image. Etc. With this technique you will slowly reveal the real colors of the moon surface. When to stop is your artistic decision. The only problem you will see is that as saturation increases noise also increases, and that’s why we took many photos.

4. Stacking to the Rescue

This the real trick: in order to increase saturation a lot without increasing noise you need to start with an image that is almost noise-free. This can be achieved stacking several photos of the moon. Noise is random in each photo so when you stack all the photos and average every pixel the noise gets cancelled. To stack the photos in Photoshop do this:

- Load all the photos as different layers

- Select all the layers and do edit->Auto Align Layers

- Convert to a Smart Object

- Choose smart-object>Stack Mode: Mean

This will align and average all your shots. If you don’t use photoshop or if the above method failed you can align the photos with a pano software such as PtGUI or Hugin.

Once you have your stacked moon shot you can do the saturation process with little noise in the final photo.

5. About White Balance

How can you be sure that your colors are right? White balance can create differences but usually the camera auto-WB works fine as the moon is seen in neutral tones (gray). You can check a map taken by NASA’s Galileo probe to see if your colors are similar to what they should be.

So if there’s a full moon and you are around with your camera you can now try to take a color shot of the moon and impress all your friends showing how the different minerals in the moon’s surface reflect different colors. They can’t be seen with the naked eye but they are there!

For 2012, I’m taking a different approach to the business of my photography: doing less work, but in the right areas.

You’ve probably heard many variations of this – “time management” and the art of making the most out of your day. In the past year I’ve taken on many different projects with my photography, and in retrospect I’m happy I went in so many directions. It taught me what’s worth my time, and what should fall by the wayside. For 2012, I think it’s time to take what I’ve learned and only invest in things that yield the results I want.

Social media is a good example. How can someone possibly work full time, shoot on the weekends, and then invest hours of networking on Twitter, Facebook, and G+? As daunting as it may seem, you can always find time to balance your life and your photography – the key is spending your time wisely. More time spent on being productive on social sites…even if it’s just flipping through the recent work of a talented photographer for inspiration instead of redundant news…will yield incredible results for your work – or at the very least, get you brainstorming.

Also, keep this important fact in mind – the most successful photographs are the ones that people haven’t seen before. This means that the creative genius behind it most likely went above and beyond what the average photographer would do. Simply put, the more time you invest in your photography, the greater the output.

If you’re at a point in your photography where you’ve mastered the technical aspects of your camera (aperture, shutter speed, ISO, etc.), then try spending more time planning a shoot that will have an incredible impact. Get models, find a location, and rent the gear you need to create the image you want. Wake up at 3am for that incredible mountain sunrise that few photographers are willing to capture.

In short, the more effort you put into your images, the more satisfaction you’ll have with your own work – and the recognition you want will come automatically.

Another fantastic way to prioritize your time is to filter what kind of information you want to be exposed to. Go through your emails and unsubscribe to everything that you don’t absolutely need, and unlike fan pages that flood your feed with redundant or pointless news. You’d be surprised how you can lose hours going through updates that stemmed from an email you don’t even need to receive in the first place.

Remember – these are your incoming streams of information, so you decide what it consists of. If you want to think photography, replace your subscriptions, Likes, and Follows with sources that give you high quality info – and delete the distracting ones. Your time is valuable, so decide where you spend it and if it’s worth it.

TIP: Google+ is an absolute gold mine for photographers of all levels – hobbyists who want to get inspired, or professionals who want to connect with other industry leaders on a personal basis.

By surrounding yourself with content that inspires you – not distract you – your level of creativity will skyrocket.

Photo by 55Laney69, on Flickr

Below are the five most important things I learned along the way that I wish I had known from Day One.

1. Working in Manual Mode

The biggest reason why I upgraded to an SLR was for greater control over my manual settings. However, one needs to know exactly what those settings do first in order to control them. Before you can really open up all of the possibilities with your camera, you need to know the basics – aperture, shutter speed, ISO – and more importantly, how they all work together (read: your exposure triangle).

If you’re not 100% confident that you know how these three manual settings work in harmony, please check out my simplified explanation that has helped quite a few new photographers wrap their minds around how an image is made – Photography 101 Series.

2. Proper Care

When I got my new Canon 30D (which was the camera to get in 2008), I thought nothing of cleaning my lens with my t-shirt. Turns out, it’s not such a good idea. When caring for your new camera, even the most simplest care techniques can potentially cause damage. It’s best to learn how to properly care for your camera right from the beginning, so Google your specific question before you try something new – photography forums are especially valuable, and photo.net has a great series on proper camera cleaning techniques right here (make sure to read the comments section for some fantastic info).

3. Insure Your New Gear

If you have homeowners or renters insurance for your personal property, your brand new camera may not automatically be covered depending on your policy terms. Typically, you’ll need to list your gear separately and pay an additional (but nominal) monthly fee. Talk to your insurance provider and ask them what you need to do to protect your expensive – and delicate – new purchase from theft and accidents.

4. Push Your Limitations

Your SLR is different than your cell phone or point and shoot, so treat it as such. Take advantage of your new gear and push the limits of what you can do with it. Eventually you’ll need to obtain additional gear depending on what you want to achieve ( i.e. a tripod and remote shutter for long exposures), but make sure you reach the limits of the gear you have first before jumping into a new purchase. And as long as you’re discovering a new function or technique from each shoot, you’ll be well on your way to becoming the photographer you want to be.

5. Make Friends With Your Flash

Built-in flash has a way of producing flat, uninteresting lighting…something your SLR can help you move away from. If you have a hotshoe (and most SLRs do), you can start working with off-camera flash – here is where the real fun begins with creating your own lighting. While I don’t use strobes for my landscapes, I love seeing what kind of outstanding images photographers come up with using their flashguns…and not just portrait photographers either.

Photo by Astragony, on Flickr

For more info on how to get started with flash photography, try Strobist for their madly popular 101 series on lighting.

And of course, have fun. The road to getting where you want to be with your photography starts with you shooting as much as you can and gaining knowledge along the way.

This list is definitely not an exclusive one…so feel free to share what you think were the most important bits of info you wish you knew from the get-go in the comment section below.

To quote Chase Jarvis, “The best camera is the one that’s with you,” I believe that to be sage advice.

While this may not be the all-in-encompassing iPhone photography apps list, it’ll get you started. They are apps that I’ve boughten and used and continue to make my iPhone, well, not just a phone.

Instagram

Price: Free

Instagram is a lot like Facebook, but instead of a post in words, you let your photo do the talking. The interface is easy to navigate, the filters are superb, and the community around Instagram is thriving. Only downfall, if you can call it one, is that every shot is a square, so stop thinking 2×3!

Camera+

Price: ($.99)

Camera+ has been at the top of the charts for quite a while, so I’d assume you know what this app can do. I love adding clarity to my images the most. It’s replaced the standard camera app on my iPhone.

PictureShow

Price: $1.99

PictureShow is an all in one ToyCamera. It emulates various analog toy cameras. You can start off from a random preset and then fine tuning it from there or just start from scratch and add effects. There are a ton of features and effects in this app!

MagicHour

Price: $1.99

Magic Hour is anything but another lame photo effect app. It offers a robust and flexible set of photo editing tools that allow you to create and share your own filters. The amazing Filter Market is hands down one of my favorite features of any photography app.

Pano

Price: $1.99

Pano for iPhone lets you take beautiful, seamless panoramic photos straight from your phone, no other software necessary.

Tiny Planet Photos

Price: $.99

Turn your photo into a tiny planet. One shot stereographic projections!

Take a photo, or choose a photo from your camera roll and with one tap convert it into a tiny planet. Or push the photo inside out into a tiny tube!

Photogene 2

Price: $1.99

Photogene is back with a brand new version! Loads of new features and a completely overhauled user interface.

Photogene is the ultimate tool for handling your iPhone photos. The app offers a wide selection of photo editing tools. No gimmicks – they will actually make your photos look better.

Filterstorm

Price: $1.99

Filterstorm was designed from the ground up to meet your mobile photo editing needs. Using a uniquely crafted touch interface, Filterstorm allows for more intuitive editing than its desktop counterparts with a toolset designed for serious photography.

Filterstorm contains a suite of powerful tools including curves manipulation, color correction abilities, noise reduction, unsharp masking, and black and white conversion fine-tuning. Its powerful layering and masking tools, giving you the ability to apply filters by brush, color range, gradient, and more, as well as to the entire image.

Snapseed

Price: $4.99

Snapseed is made from the company called Nik, one of the leaders in photo editing applications for the Mac. I use Color Efex and Silver Efex in conjugation with Lightroom and Photoshop. Like in these 2 apps, you can put individual control points and adjust just that part of the image. Pretty amazing.

Dynamic Light

Price $.99

Dynamic Light gives you the best and most vibrant HDR-like look on any mobile platform. And this is all accomplished from just a single image using only a single dial. Rotate the dial to the right and you get the very same HDR look you had admired on many photographic sites.

Phoster

Price: $1.99

With stylish templates which are already within the application, you will be able to create posters without great effort.

This App is for you to create posters to promote and invite your friends at your party, concert, birthday etc.

Diptic

Price: $.99

Diptic helps you easily combine multiple photos and apply artistic effects to create exceptional photo collages that can be shared with friends and family via email, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr or Posterous. With rounded borders, 21 customizable layouts and color effects, there are unlimited options to create unique images!

The Photographers Ephemeris

Price: $8.99

The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE) helps you plan your outdoor photography shoots, particularly landscape and urban scenes.

It is a map-centric sun and moon calculator: see how the light will fall on the land, be it day or night, for any location on earth. Must have for any outdoor photographer!

These are my personal favorites, but obviously you have an iPhone.

What are YOUR favorite go to apps for taking and editing photos on your iPhone?

1. Use a fast Shutter Speed

With a long lens freezing the subject motion is critical and even when the subject is not moving you have to avoid vibrations and camera-shake. This means you have to use fast shooter speeds even with static subjects. Try to keep the speed at 1/500 or faster increasing the ISO if needed.

2. Lens Wide Open is Better

With shorter focal lengths using the lens “sweet spot” is a good idea to get sharper photos, that’s usually 1 or 2 stops past the lens maximum aperture, mostly around F8. With a long lens it’s better to use it wide open to get a faster shutter speed. Sharpness with long lenses is all about motion blur, the fastest you can shoot the better.

3. Use a Tripod

A long lens needs support for two big reasons. One is that they are easier to use if you have a support to rest the lens and camera weight. The second reason is to dump vibrations faster. A tripod or monopod is strongly recomended when you use a long lens.

4. Try Macro Shots

A long lens can be used as an excellent macro lens adding an extension tube, you can get really good magnification and excellent distance from your subject.

5. Stack the Focus

When you use a long lens you will have a very thin depth of field. If you need everything in focus in your shot you have to take several shots and then stack the focus. This is a very common process in macrophotography and it can also be used for landscapes. To stack the focus you can do it manually or using specific software such as CombineZP (free).

6. Shoot the Moon

The moon is always a great subject with a long lens.
See this article for some good tips about shooting the moon:

7. Juxtapose Elements

When you use a long lens you can create a sense of depth by having something in front of your subject. Look for a branch, grass, clouds or something that will not cover the subject completely.

8. Decide what to Blur

If you have a thin depth of field you will have a blurred foreground or a blurred background. The “normal” thing is to have a sharp foreground and a blurred background but sometimes your main subject is the background and the opposite thing works.

9. Shoot Bursts

Always shoot in burst modes, due to camera shake, subject movement and other factors you will find that the shots in the middle of your bursts are usually sharper than the first and last shots.

10. Pre-Focus Manually

When you use auto-focus for moving subjects do a quick manual pre-focus at the distance your subject will be, then the AF will work faster and you will get more time for the right shot.

The photo above shows a conjunction between a 3% crescen moon, Venus and Mercury seen from a rural area of Argentina. Sometimes you are lucky to get such a nice view and be there with your camera but many other times shots like this one require some planning. In this small article I will discuss some useful tools to plan your twilight shots.

The first tool I use is Stellarium (from www.steallarium.org) this application can show the sky at any time from any location in the world, you can select the location from a list or just entering latitude and longitude so it also works for remote locations. In stellarium you can scan the sky from sunset until the night begins looking for interesting things in the sky. The moon and bright planets like Venus, Jupiter and Mercury present the best photo opportunities. Once you find a view that you like the next step is to plan which lenses you need to take the photos you want.

I wanted a wide view of the conjunction so I adjusted the zoom tool in stellarium until I was seeing something like what I wanted for the shot. I took note of the field of view that Stellarium was reporting, in this case 19 degrees.

I also wanted a closeup view of the conjunction, zooming in I took note of the field of view needed for the shot: 5 degrees.

Then I used an online tool from Howard Edin (http://www.howardedin.com/articles/fov.html) to calculate the field of view of lenses for my camera to decide which focal lengths were needed for the shots I wanted.

For the wide angle shot I needed a lens with 19 degrees in horizontal field of view, that’s a 105mm focal length for my camera. For the closeup shot I needed a 5 degree field of view about 300mm focal length for my camera. So I took a 70-200 lens with a 1.4x extender knowing that it will be suitable for the shots I was planning.

The wide angle shot.

And the closeup shot.

The last step in planning is to select a location for the shot. For that you can use a great application known as “The photographer’s ephemeris” from Stephen Trainor. (http://photoephemeris.com/)

TPE can be used to display the direction of sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset from any location. It also provides information about sunrise and sunset times, moonrise and moonset times as well as twilight. This conjunction was visible after sunset so I looked for a rural area with a clear horizon in the direction of sunset.

Then after the planning was done you just have to be there at the right time with the equipment you selected. If things went well you will see exactly what you expect to see at the right time.

This set of tools is really nice to plan shots including the moon, conjunctions, sunrises and sunsets and unless you are very lucky they will help you save plenty of time.

Safety First:

Never look at the sun thru any optical instrument, including your camera & lens combination. Avoid looking directly at the sun and use live-view to focus and compose your shots. As soon as the sun rises above the horizon stop photographing it without special filters.

Equipment

A tripod is needed to be able to compose and focus via live-view. A long telephoto lens is recommended for photos where the sun is the main subject.  A remote release is useful for shooting from a tripod.

In sunsets and sunrises you will have a very high contrast scene, greater than the dynamic range of your camera, you need to use a filter or several exposures to achieve a balanced exposure. A reverse graduated ND filter is recommended as they are darker at the horizon and then fade to clear at the top.

Mirages

Mirages are produced by refraction of the light in a layer of warm air above the water. You need a clear horizon and a high point of view to see them. In practical terms the coastal area of any ocean works perfectly.

When a mirage is produced a second sun will appear below the real sun. The sunset/sunrise will take the shape of an Estruscan vase or Omega letter.

When a mirage happens the conditions are right for the mythical “green flash” a bright explosion of green light that comes from the sun just before sunrise or just after sunset. Hunting for green flashes is difficult so my recommendation is to use video if you have it in your camera to photograph the entire sunset / sunrise event and look for frames where the green flash is present. Once you get used to the exact moment of the flash you can try again in photo-mode.

If you see small spikes at the horizon then you have the right conditions for mirages and the green flash. Those spikes are not real! They are just produced by distortion of the atmosphere.

Sunspots

Large sunspots can be photographed at sunrise or sunset without a solar filter, you need to expose carefully as the sun is really bright even when it’s just above the horizon. Use the fastest shutter speed your camera have and try different apertures until you can see the surface of the sun yellow and not bright white.

Clouds

If you have a cloudy morning/evening don’t get back home! Clouds can create several interesting effects and distortions including refractions, shadows, pillars and other interesting and beautiful effects.

Focus Carefully

Before you start trying your sunrise/sunset adventures here’s a tip: Focus each shot carefully, the atmosphere produces all sorts of distortions and the focus that was good for one shot may not be good for the next one.

Sunsets and sunrises are full of unexpected surprises and each event is unique be there and capture what nature has to offer.

To average images you can use photoshop, Gimp or any photo-edition software. The recipe is simple: load each image as a layer and set the transparency for the nth layer as 1/N.

For example if you have 5 layers transparency would be:

 
Another approach is to use Image Magick, a free software that can be used to do many interesting things on your photos. I use it a lot for batch cropping, resizing and to create composites using different techniques. Once you have downloaded and installed ImageMagick you can average a number of images using the following commandline instruction:

convert *.jpg -average result.jpg

Averaging can be used in static scenes to create a new photo with less noise. Noise is reduced in the function of the square root of the number of images. So if you average 25 shots you have 5 times less noise than in a single image.

Averaging can also be used in non-static scenes to simulate a long exposure.

For example you can simulate a 4 hours exposure of a sunset to see how many different colors you can get as in this example:

A four hours exposure would be impossible as the photo would be blown but a 4 hours average is possible. Averaging skies is a good way to get a surprising abstract combining all the shapes and colors in a time span.

You can try this with the sky or any other scene, take many shots one after the other and use average to find a surprising result. You can average a complete day or a complete night, the results will be surprising.