So, it’s pretty much guaranteed that bubbles make ADORABLE photos. Especially when your subject is a 19 month old little boy who knows something is SUPPOSED to happen when you dip the stick in the bottle, but doesn’t totally get the mechanics of it.
I could have photographed this for hours.
Oh, and you can bet that bubbles are definitely going to appear in some if not all of my summer shoots. Guaranteed cuteness!! Who doesn’t love that??!
Posted by sarah | 4 commentsThis is one in a series of tutorials called Starting Out. Feel free to browse the whole series!
So, before I started this whole photography thang, I thought that when someone got married and then posted their photos online with a giant sign that said, “Jo and Frank’s Photography” across the middle that they were infringing upon copyright and doing something terrible! Those images are protected! And that big sign across the middle is telling you you’re wrong!
NOT SO.
Now that I’m on the other side of it, I see how wonderful the watermark- the giant sign- is and how we photographers HOPE AND PRAY that they’ll be sent and posted all over the internet with our lovely little advertisement all over them.
So, this is a session about watermarking- what, why, and how to.
Let’s start with what. What is a watermark? A watermark is something that you stick on your images that tells who took them. I have them on every individual photo that I post here- the little pikkuarkki.com banner at the bottom.
I used to have a different one:
But then I switched to my banner with my web address for the following reasons:
1. I felt like it was too much- too bold for my photo style. I changed focus as a photographer and my watermark reflected that.
2. If someone saw the photo, I wanted them to know where they could see more. ”Little Ark” doesn’t give any information about who I am. If someone Googled “Little Ark” they wouldn’t come up with my company in the first one hundred pages. pikkuarkki.com, however is pretty clear- they know exactly how to find me.
The second reason ties in with the “why” of watermarking. WHY should you do it? Why spend the extra time taking that extra step resizing and labeling your photos?
You do it for the following reasons:
1. The same reason Guess puts “Guess” on every single thing they make. They’re branding it. When you buy a Coach purse, for instance, you may feel cool, but you’ve basically paid 300 dollars to be a walking advertisement. Albeit, a super chic, well accessorized advertisement. :) But when I do a photo session, I allow my clients to right click, copy, and digitally share the watermarked images. And I don’t just let them, I REALLY REALLY REALLY want them to. I want them to post a whole album of how cute they are and how great their family looks. And then I want all their FB friends to be totally jealous and beat down my door to schedule their own session. I can’t pay for advertising, so my watermark is the best bet.
2. It stops people from ripping you off. I don’t necessarily think that anyone is going to steal any of my images and call them their own. In fact, I HIGHLY HIGHLY doubt that anyone would. But Jasmine Star? Jessica Claire? Becker? Their images stand a chance at being stolen. So, putting that watermark there in a place that would be inconvenient to crop out is important.
3. It makes you look legit. I started watermarking before I had any paying clients, when I’d just give away my photos to anyone who asks. In fact, I do give away playgroup images to the playgroup moms, and I STILL watermark them when I put them on my site. It just makes you look like a professional- like you’ve got something worth stealing. And in photography, as in most things, presentation is 80% of the battle.
And now for how. You can do this any number of ways. If you want a semi-opaque banner at the bottom of your photographs, here’s what you do:
First you resize your giant 4 MB jpeg to a nice, small 900×600 pixels or something else appropriate for your website. You do this by going to “Image” and then “Image Size” and typing in your desired width. (I have created a Photoshop Action to do this for all my horizontal blog images, but that’s for another post.)
Whatever width your image now is, that’s how long your banner watermark is going to be.
So, go to “File–New.” And specify how long and how high you want your banner to be. Maybe 900×50 pixels? And set your background color to “transparent.” Your banner should look like this:
Then you’ll want to choose the banner color. I use white as the background, because I don’t want it to clash with my photos. But let’s change it up and make it black for this exercise. So, grab your rectangle tool, select black as your fill color and make a rectangle big enough to cover the whole banner.
Now it’ll look like this: Notice the rectangle tool is chosen, black is fill color, and on the right under “layers” it now has a layer called, “Shape 1″.
Okay, now to make it semi-opaque (i.e. you can see the photo through the banner), click on “opacity” under “layers” and turn it down to 25%.
Then you’ll add your text in a new layer. Choose the text cursor. Choose your font, font color, and text justification in the upper part of your screen. Decide if you want it bold or italic. Then click once inside the banner and type your watermark- your company’s name, website URL, whatever you want.
In order to position your text where you’d like it, click on the “Move tool” and move it with your mouse. To get it precisely where you’d like it, use your up and down keys on your keyboard.
And then- this is important- go to “Layer–Merge Visible”
And then click on “save” and save as a .psd file. DO NOT save as a jpeg, or it will lose it’s semi-opacity and make it completely opaque, meaning you’ll have a huge stripe at the bottom of your photos. That’s fine if that’s what you’re going for, but if not, then save as a .psd.
Then you ctrl+a and ctrl+c. Go back to your resized photograph and ctrl+v. Then use your move tool to put it where you’d like it.
Then save your new watermarked image in a new watermarked image folder (again, I use Photoshop Actions for this, but that’s for another lesson).
And now you’ve got your newly watermarked image!
Hope that helps! Post any questions in the comments section.
Posted by sarah | 2 commentsPlaygroup! At a park! Not in a house!
The sudden great weather gave us courage to head outside! And wouldn’t you know it, for the two hours we were actually at the park, it was pretty stinkin’ cold and grey and windy.
And great weather for photographs!
And what greater subjects than these adorable kids on the little carousel?!
These three renegades started everyone out, and pretty soon most of the kids found their way, twirling around and around. ADORABLE!
Another day of summer! Out we went! And we took the grandparents (Mymi and Vaari) with us!
Benjy loves his Mymi and Vaari. And he loves the forest. And he loves hats. Put them all together and you’ve got a really happy boy!
Today was summer. Seriously. Maybe the only day of summer we’ll get all year. And we had it today.
It was gorgeous and warm and sunny and PERFECT.
So we headed to the lake. Nevermind the water would be freezing (did I mention we had a blizzard last Tuesday?), Benjy could play in the sand, we could eat sandwiches, fun would be had.
But once Benjy got near the water, once we let him in, he refused to get out!
The water was NOT WARM, but he didn’t care. He wouldn’t come out for anything.
Until I took off his sandals- he has a fear of touching sand. So, once those sandals came off, he was pretty much stranded in my lap. Oh, I’m so clever, I am.
But then we played in the sand and ate ice cream.
So, Benjy played in the sand (check), we did indeed eat sandwiches (check) and fun was most definitely had.
Posted by sarah | 1 commentsHere’s the second entry in my Starting Out series- a series of tutorials designed to give tips and tricks to those just figuring this whole camera thing out. Some of it is pretty technical, but I try to make it as simple and user friendly as possible. If you ever have any questions, please leave them in the comments, so that everyone can benefit from the answers. And if you are more knowledgeable than myself (highly, highly likely), please feel free to leave extra tips in the comment section.
They say that a cloudy day is your best friend when taking photos outdoors. It essentially means that you don’t have to worry about direct sunlight. You can go anywhere, find the prettiest background, and go to town. NOT SO. I’m here to set the record straight. Shooting on a cloudy day can be VERY tricky- as I learned on Saturday.
And here’s why.
1. Although the light LOOKS even, it really isn’t. Underneath those clouds, the sun is coming at you from an angle. And if you shoot from the wrong angle, you’re going to get dark shadows on the face, just like you would do if you shot from the wrong angle in shade. Unless you’re doing something artsy and creative, you’re going to want the faces of your subjects properly exposed.
2. Your light meter might be TOTALLY wonky. ”I’ll just switch to the A-setting” I thought. ”Then I won’t have to worry about working out my shutter speed with all these moving people.” BAD IDEA. I took ten photos in rapid succession, all were too too too dark. The camera could somehow sense that light was floating around, but didn’t understand it wasn’t radiating off the face. Even though I use spot metering.
So- just to show you what I mean, I’ll give you some straight out of the camera (SOOC) shots. Then I’ll show you why Photoshop can be your best friend. And then I’ll give you some advice for a way to prevent such a situation (trust me, I’ll be taking my own advice on the next cloudy day shoot!).
Here’s a side by side of Emily and Raymond, SOOC. The first one was of them facing North, the second of them facing South.
Do you see the huge, gaping difference? In the first photo, their faces are SO DARK. Shadows everywhere. The light meter was telling me I was a-ok. In fact, it told me I was overexposing (that the photo would be too light). NOT SO! Luckily, I quickly realized this and had the kids walk at me from the other direction, towards where I knew the sun was behind the thick layer of clouds that surrounded us.
In that case, it didn’t really matter, because the landscape was the same no matter which direction I shot from- it was all forest.
But what about the sea? Unfortunately, around here, the sea surrounds us on the South side, meaning people have to face North if they want the sea in the background, meaning the sun is hitting them from behind, EVEN IF IT’S CLOUDY.
And if you set your camera so the face is exposed perfectly, chances are you’re going to blow out the scenery in the background- that gorgeous blue sea will just be a whole lot of white blank space.
Like this photo of Raymond being silly SOOC.
If I had set the camera so that his face was any lighter, then the background would also be lighter. And you wouldn’t be able to tell that the sea was behind him at all.
So, I had to sacrifice a perfectly exposed face for a somewhat-exposed background.
And then Photoshop came to my rescue.
The first thing I did is what I do with all my photos- enhance the contrast. I do this with PW’s Boost (Pioneer Woman’s Photoshop actions are FREE, by the way, and come for both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements ).
Nice definition, yes, but it’s made poor Raymond’s face even darker. You’ve got one of three options here. You can either
a. Use PW Slight Lighten until the face is properly exposed.
The problem here is that you then have lightened the WHOLE THING, including the sea behind him. And you want that sea to have some definition, you don’t want it to be too dark. What you do next, then, is take your paint bucket tool, select black, select the layer mask and then dump your black paint all over it. This essentially turns your Photoshop Action OFF, so your photo will be all dark and gloomy again.
And THEN you take your paint brush tool, select white, select your layer mask, and paint over the parts that you wanted lightened. This will turn the action back ON, but only where you want it on (like over Raymond’s face and perhaps over his clothes).
OR b. run Kubota’s backlight compensation 1x- It lightens the dark bits without touching the light bits.
The problem with this action is that it can seriously wash colors out (Raymond looks a bit pale there there), so play with the opacity and the order of the layers a bit.
Your third option is c. create your own backlight compensation Photoshop action. Use this tutorial to sort it out.
I opted for option 2- I love Kubota’s actions with all my heart (although they are decidedly NOT FREE). And then I played around a bit more with Photoshop actions until I got what I wanted. And I cropped it a bit, too.
Here’s the before and after, side by side.
Now, what should one do on cloudy days to avoid this mess in the first place?
First, figure out where your light source would be coming from if the sky were clear. In the Northern Hemisphere, your light would be coming from the South, so that’s a good place to start- start by facing South. If it’s the afternoon, the sun’s going to be coming at you from the West, so face West. This will eliminate a lot of the shadow that overcomes the subject’s face.
If your background is South and you are just going to have to suck it up and face North, then compromise between exposing for the face and exposing for the background. When you get home, Photoshop it using one of those three methods (or another method! Share in the comments!)
Questions? Comments? Concerns? You know where to find me…
Posted by sarah | 4 comments
