Adjusting Brightness and Contrast

Last week, I showed you a variety of photography backgrounds, and I mentioned that none of the images had been adjusted, and that some of the backgrounds look grey, even though they are actually white.

Here's something really important to know about cameras and how they work.


Cameras try to average the picture to an overall 15% grey. 

That's really important to know - so say that a couple of times in your head.

OK - what that means is, the camera is not nearly as flexible as the human eye, and it just can't deal with dark darks and bright brights at the same time, so something generally has to get sacrificed when dealing with an image that is not the norm, i.e. a landscape or picture of someones' face.

So the camera makes a decision about how to record the image, based on the 15% grey rule. Which means a picture of the white stage, as part of a composition showing the light tent and the stage and etc is fine, but a close up that is mostly white stage and a bracelet comes out dull.

That is why the grey mirror stage and the slate work so well as a background - they are already pretty much at 15%. The white backgrounds, however, need some help.

Here's that same series of photos, this time, duplicated, and the second one has been adjusted by increasing the brightness and the contrast just a little.

Let's look.

Illuminated panel background, before



and after



and the same background - with the High Key setting, before,



 and after. (Oh look - finally - a white background!) A little blown out - but pretty dramatic and attractive.









The canvas sweep before


 and after


 The slate tile before

 and after


The white plexiglass stage, before



 And after.



The black stage before



 And after. Didn't really improve it  - now the colours are just "blown out." (Over exposed)




 Clear stage over the sweep.
















And after

















Mirrored stage, before

 and after


 Mirrored stage with clear stage over it. Before.




 and after.





Overall - in some cases this helps, and in some cases, it doesn't. But, I hope that shows you how a simple adjustment of the brightness and contrast can help make a photo much better.

If you have any photography questions, please ask them in the comments! 

Photography Backgrounds

Last week - we talked about the photography process. This week - I'll answer Sue Henry's questions about the backgrounds I use. I use a number of different backgrounds. Some items show better on different backgrounds, and sometimes, I just get bored and want something new to look at. ;-)

This is called a "sweep." It is a piece of cloth hung that sweeps forward to the front of the staging area - so there is no seam or line at the back. In this case, it is painted canvas - painted quite artfully to shade a little lighter in the middle and darker at the edges. You could easily paint your own.

 I have a series of "stages" - which are plexiglass, bent into a small, raised table.This is the clear one.

 This one is mirrored - shiny silver. It is not as reflective as a mirror per se, reflections are softer and less focused.

 This is the clear one stacked over the mirrored one.

 This is gloss black.

 And this is plain white.

This is an old slate roofing tile (part of one, anyway.) I salvaged it many, many years ago.

 And this is an illuminated panel.

And this is the sort of picture you get. This is the canvas sweep.

 This is on the clear stage. This give you reflections, but also the ambient colour of your background.

 This is on the mirrored stage.

 And this is the clear stage, stacked over the mirrored stage. Notice that this separates the item from it's reflection - making it appear to float in space.

This is on the black stage.

 And this is on the white stage. This has not be re-touched, and the background does not really look white.

 This is on the slate tile.

 And this is on the illuminated panel. Again - this has not been retouched, and the background is a shade of grey.

This is also on the illuminated panel - but the camera was set to "Hi-Key" - a setting that over-exposes the image and reduces the contrast. The back ground is much closer to white. Not white, but closer. 

Try your local dollar store and look for serving trays in plain white or black to serve as a staging area for your photos.




If you have any more photography questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments section!

Interview: Bead Photographer

Q. So you're the person that takes the photos for the website? How did you get that sweet gig?

A. Well - it sort of came with the rest of the job as being the person that processes everything, writes the descriptions, and gets it onto the website. You gotta have pictures ... .


Q. Absolutely. Walk us through the process - what goes into photographing a bead?

A. I start with a box of beads - usually all from one wholesaler. I'll empty the box and sort it, and get a sense of what I need to do. If it is all consistent items, say, a new shipment of Swarovskis where it is two or three shapes in a rainbow of colours - then I sort them.

Q. Why sort them?

A. Well - it's much faster to process them afterwards if they are in some sort of order.

Q. Fair enough. Then what.

A. Then I start shooting. I start by taking a photo of the invoice, then the package ...

Q. Wait a minute - the invoice? the package?

Yep - it's how I can be certain that I match up the correct product with the correct information. That's one of the reasons why I love digital photography - you can use photos to store information like that.

OK - then what?

I take them out of the package, arrange them on a stage, shoot them, and then re-package them.

That sounds like less fun than I imagined!

Well - I'm pretty sure that if I dumped them all loose in a box - the gals at the store who then have to re-package them for sale would kill me!

How many pictures do you take of each item? One or two?

Five - fifteen - more. As many as it takes. Depends on how cooperative the bead is being.

Really? Then you must take a lot of pictures.

Yep - 500 - 700 in a day's shooting is not unusual.

Wow. Do you have any tips for the rest of us who are trying to improve our own picture-taking?

Well - I have some specific and concrete tips, or I have a general philsophy.

Let's hear the specific tips first.

OK -

• one - Get the subject in focus.
• two - make sure the background is not cluttered
• three - get enough light on the subject, and
• four - take LOTS of pictures.

Is that it? That seems pretty simple. Nothing about f-stops and aperatures?

Yeah - that's it. Look at the picture enlarged - find out where the camera focused. Not on the background, hopefully. "Take  lots of pictures" is the most important. I find that if you take lots of shots - your chances of having one good one are much better. The focus may be a little out on one, or, you might move the item and the light hits it a little better. I use 3 lights, and I often pick one up and move it around as I shoot, looking for the most flattering lighting.

You make it sound like you are shooting portraits!

That's actually how I think of it - bead portraits. I'm trying to capture the character of the bead - not just a product shot.

Have any favourites?

Geez - there have been soooo many! I'll fall in love with one for awhile - but soon, there will be another, better one. I will say though - shooting the really big Swarovski pendants in Crystal AB is always a treat! How can you not love those colours!


And matte finish beads seem to be particularly photogenic - I really loved the way these came out.







So if that was the specific tips - what about the "philosophy."

OK - I heard this from another photographer a long time ago - and it helped me a lot - but I'm not sure that it will help anyone else. What he said was, "Don't shoot the object - shoot the light." I spent a lot of time thinking about that - I still do think about it.

Oh - and the other thing is - keep at it. Practice, practice, practice.


Any other tips or tricks?

Hmm - some colours are hard to capture accurately. I've found that you get a truer red with a black background, sapphire beads look like cobalt, and cobalt beads are just impossible to shoot. They never look right.

Can you show us a picture of your set up?

OK

I bought the entire set up from Table Top Studio.

Geez - that's - um - kind of cluttered.

True - I said the photo should be uncluttered, not your desk. But notice, it's well lit and in focus. ;-) Also - I took two photos - just to make sure that one would be ok. And if they both sucked, I would have gone back and taken more.


And what kind of camera are you using?


A Nikon D5000, with the stock 18 - 55 mm Nikon DX lens.


That's a pretty high-end camera, is it?

No - it's what they call - "Pro-sumer" - somewhere between amateur consumer and professional grade. The enthusiasts' camera, I guess.

Do you take photos for fun as well?

Actually, I do.

What kind of photos are those?

I like to shoot a lot of sky and scenery shots - and I use the camera a lot to take photos of dogs - mostly casual or action shots. I like to capture the moment - not stage it.

Can you share some of those with us?

OK - here's a couple of favourites.

What do you like about these two pictures?

The first one - the silhouette - captures, for me - that bond, that partnership - between a dog and his human - plus - the sky is just great! There is the awesome sunset - and a sun pillar in the background too as an added bonus!

The second one is more painterly - and the way the tree trunks echo the colour of the dog - it really ties him to the environment - shows him as a creature that is as comfortable in the forest as he is on the couch - a little echo of his wild ancestors. You can easily imagine him - slipping through the trees - silently stalking ...



Well - thank you for your time. I think that wraps it up for now!

If you have any questions for our photographer - post them in the comments!

My Shiney Little Secret

I get a lot of questions about my photography techniques. One of the things that is really important in photographing beads and jewelry is to  have an uncluttered background that does not detract from the item being photographed.

I often use a "stage" - a plexiglass sheet with a silvery backing to create a soft reflection of the bead in question.

But glass scratches plexiglass - and over time - it develops a haze of fine scratches that seriously detract from the professionalism of the finished picture. If you were photo'ing anything of normal size - no one would notice - but zooming in on these tiny items ... the scratches look huge and messy!

 See? Ew.

Scratch remover to the rescue. This scratch remover polish comes in a different grades - depending on the depth of the scratches - and is excellent for removing those fine scratches that  detract from the look of the stage. Just put a tiny dot on and rub with a very soft cloth.

 et voila! Scratches significantly reduced - (apparently - I also need some of the next size up - for deeper scratches).

 Also works for scratches on plastic sunglasses - oh, and for scratches and haze on plexiglass airplane canopies - which is what it is actually sold for.  ;-)

Smart Blur: Photoshop Tip

Hey - I haven't posted a photography tip in a long time - mostly because I have already taught you everything I know.

But I learned something new in the last little while, and recently had reason to use it. Last Wednesday, I posted a photo of a piece I made for the weekly inspiration. When I first posted the photo, it looked like this.


I uploaded it, looked at it, and thought, "Eww! Where did all those scratches and gunk in the background come from? Nasty!"

Generally, at that point, I consider my options to be:

1. Re-shoot it
2. re-touch by hand using the "spot-healing" brush

But this time, I had a new trick up my sleeve, that produced this, in one, smooth, easy step - no re-touching by hand.


It's called "Smart Blur" - look for it in the Filter dropdown, under the Blur filters.

Open your image and navigate to the Smart Blur filter.

Select "Quality" as Medium or High, and move the radius and threshold sliders until you get the right degree of blurring. Most probably - your intention will be to keep the foreground sharp, and blur a messy background. When you have a result you like in the preview window - Click OK and save. (Remember - you can click and drag in the preview window to view other parts of the picture, and use the + and - buttons to zoom in and out.)

Many of the other photo-editing programs have a similar feature, Corel does for sure. Look for Smart Blur in whichever one you use.

If you choose "Quality" as "Low" and push the Threshold and Radius sliders around, maybe going right to the extremes - you can get some interesting effects that look rather like watercolour paintings.


While you probably don't want to use that for photos where you are selling items, you might want to use it on a photo of yourself if you want to use one as an avatar or for an "About me" page. You can tweak it to have enough info so that people feel like they are connecting with a real person - without feeling like you are revealing too much to the crazies out there. Or, just to make your photo way more flattering. ;-)

A Photographic Journey of Discovery: Depth of Field

One of the things I'm really struggling to get a handle on with this new camera is some sort of decent depth-of-field. In case you have forgotten, depth-of-field is the part of the picture that is still in focus in-front-of and behind the actual point that is in focus.

I have been comparing the original lens that came with the camera, which is a 18 - 55 mm lens - a telephoto lens from wide angle (18 mm) to normal (55 mm) vs the 60 mm Macro lens that I got in addition.

This photo, where you can see the dish the beads are in, is shot with the 18 - 50 mm lens - set at 50 mm, and the camera set on the macro setting (which is the little flower icon.) Note where the beads cease to be in focus - there is a band of sharply focused beads across the centre.


Now this is the same picture, taken with the macro lens, from the same distance. Notice that dish more than fills the frame - I haven't cropped at all. The depth of field isn't that much smaller, actually - but the drop-off in focus is so much more extreme here - that it is distracting,


The resolution is so much higher, however, that I can crop down to the focused areas only, and eliminate the out-of-focus areas. This one is the first photo, the 18 - 50 mm lens.


And this is the 60 mm lens. Cropped like this, this picture has held up better, because the area being cropped was larger to start with.


I'm torn on this 60 mm macro lens. I think it is a superiour lens - but I have to wonder if it is really the best lens for what I need to do.

But on the other hand - it takes totally juicy pictures like this. How can you not love it?