Two Ways To Get Background Circles

As you probably noticed, there is a certain background setup I've grown to like in the last few weeks.

It is a setup that produces a nice circle in the background. You can see it in the gridspot article, My Ode to PSU and the shot I took to be the icon of the Babies series. You can also see it used on a large scale portrait here.

Why Circle?

I like this circle effect for several reasons. The first and obvious one is that a patterned backdrop is more interesting then a "flat" background. Of course, that does not mean that the shape has to be a circle, it can be a square, a diagonal line or just a random pattern. However, circles are nice, symmetric and round.

The second reason is that a circle brings your focus to the center of the circle where you can place your subject or model. For this I place the model / object in the middle of the circle, and usually break the 2/3 rule and place my object dead center.

The last reason, which is actually the most important one, is that a circled illuminated background provides very good subject/background separation. It provides better separation then "just" an illuminated background because of the dark edges and the three dimensional quality it has.

So, How to create this type of background? There are actually two ways to do it. While both methods use a sheet of gel and a lighting modifier, they are different both in result and in the underlying mechanism that created the circle.

Option One - Gridspot

The Idea - Let's restrict the light that comes out of the flash to a tight beam of light. A cone of light if you will. Now when that cone of light hit the backdrop it will create a circle or light.

The physics of this method is that the light will not go astray and contaminate the area which is out side the circle of light created where the cone of light meets the backdrop.

Execution - The first thing that you want to do here is place a single color backdrop behind your subject. It can either be a piece of Bristol board like the one in the shoes shot, or huge muslin, like the one in the portrait.

Next thing is to gel your flash. The background will be colored in the same color that you gel your flash. This is true for Black, white and gray background, other backdrop colors will have a cast.

Now to cast the cone. Place the gridspot (and you can create one at home) on the flash and shoot away. You can place the flash pretty far from the backdrop and still get a nice crisp edge. Actually you have two ways to control the size and crispness of the circle. The first control that you can exercise is distance - placing the flash closer to the backdrop will make a small circle. The further you'll take the flash away, you'll get a bigger circle. The further you'll take the flash, you'll also decrease the color intensity.

The second control you can employ is changing the gridspot. This is actually more about light restriction then backdrop coloring. Making a longer gridspot will create a tighter circle. You will also get a tighter circle if you use a gridspot with narrower "channels".

Results -The thing that characterizes the color circlet cast by the grided flash is the relatively crisp edge of the light. Even at a longer distance.

Option Two - Stofen

The Idea - OK, I'm gonna spill some physics at you now. The general idea is to position the flash in a way that there will be an impact to the distance of the flash from the background. How can we do this? If we place a stofen box on the flash. Now, placing a stofen on a flash does exactly the opposite from a gridspot it throws a sphere of light in all directions (it is also called bare bulb flash). If you place the flash close enough to the backdrop, you get an interesting effect. The places where the flash is close to the backdrop will be illuminated more then the places far from the flash. Hoe much more? This is where physics comes in. It work that by doubling the distance you reduce the light intensity by four. This is called the inverse square law.

It means that the light fades off pretty quickly from the center - the height of the flash - to the edges. This drastic falloff creates a circle of light.

Execution - like with the gridspot, you will want to prepare a backdrop and a sheet of gel. Instead of a gridspot, you'll want to prepare a stofen (or a cap of yogurt).

The thing about this technique is that you must bring the flash really close to the backdrop to work. Otherwise the distance from the flash to the entire backdrop is kinda the same, so there will be no circle.

Results - Results here are great, and provide a circle with a nice fade off. As you can see in the image on the left, the falloff is very smooth. To get this I placed the flash about half a meter from the backdrop. It is hidden by the beautiful model.

From: diyphotography.net

Rule of Thirds

Perhaps the most well know principle of photographic composition is the ‘Rule of Thirds‘.

It’s one of the first things that budding digital photographers learn about in classes on photography and rightly so as it is the basis for well balanced and interesting shots.

I will say right up front however that rules are meant to be broken and ignoring this one doesn’t mean your images are necessarily unbalanced or uninteresting. However a wise person once told me that if you intend to break a rule you should always learn it first to make sure your breaking of it is all the more effective!

What is the Rule of Thirds?

The basic principle behind the rule of thirds is to imagine breaking an image down into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) so that you have 9 parts. As follows.

As you’re taking an image you would have done this in your mind through your viewfinder or in the LCD display that you use to frame your shot.

With this grid in mind the ‘rule of thirds’ now identifies four important parts of the image that you should consider placing points of interest in as you frame your image.

Not only this - but it also gives you four ‘lines’ that are also useful positions for elements in your photo.

The theory is that if you place points of interest in the intersections or along the lines that your photo becomes more balanced and will enable a viewer of the image to interact with it more naturally. Studies have shown that when viewing images that people’s eyes usually go to one of the intersection points most naturally rather than the center of the shot - using the rule of thirds works with this natural way of viewing an image rather than working against it.

In addition to the above picture of the bee where the bee’s eye becomes the point of focus here are some of examples:

In this image I’ve purposely placed the head of my subject on one of the intersecting points - especially his eyes which are a natural point of focus for a portrait. His tie and flower also take up a secondary point of interest.

In this shot I’ve placed the subject along a whole line which means she is considerably off center and therefore creating an additional point of interest. Placing her right in the center of the frame could have resulted in an ‘awkward’ shot.

In a similar way a good technique for landscape shots is to position horizons along one of the horizontal lines also as I’ve done with the following shot (I’ll let you imagine the lines).

Using the Rule of Thirds comes naturally to some photographers but for many of us takes a little time and practice for it to become second nature.

In learning how to use the rule of thirds (and then to break it) the most important questions to be asking of yourself are:

• What are the points of interest in this shot?
• Where am I intentionally placing them?

Once again - remember that breaking the rule can result in some striking shots - so once you’ve learnt it experiment with purposely breaking it to see what you discover.

Lastly - keep the rule of thirds in mind as you edit your photos later on. Post production editing tools today have good tools for cropping and reframing images so that they fit within the rules. Experiment with some of your old shots to see what impact it might have on your photos.

From: digital-photography-school.com

How To Make Digital Photos Look Like Lomo Photography

The following tip on getting digital images to look like Lomo Images was submitted by DPS reader - Frank Lazaro. You can see his photography at his Flickr page and see some of his Lomo shots here NB: most of the shots in this post can be enlarged by clicking them. update: once you’ve read this tutorial and had an experiment with the technique head to our Forum to share some of your results.

From the first time I saw a photo that looked like this, I wanted to shoot one of my own. But, for the longest time I couldn’t figure it out how people took photos look like this. Then one day searching the web, I realized I needed a Lomo LC-A camera. This is a Russian made camera that was a knock off of another camera. It is poorly made and by Japanese camera standards, a bad picture taker too. As the legend goes, somewhere in the 1990’s a cult following developed and hasn’t stop since.

Low and behold I went out and bought 2 of these babies. I love them, but I also had a digital SLR - a Canon 20D. After shooting with the Lomo, I wanted to take photos from my 20D and give them the Lomo look and feel.

I searched and searched and after trying several different Photoshop methods, I finally came up with my own using a mix of different techniques. By all means, there are probably other ways to do this, but this method has served me well.

Here is my step by step on how I take a digital photo and make it Lomoified. I do have one suggestion though, create an action script once get this down, it will save you a ton of time.

Getting Started - Creating a Vignette

The first thing you want to do is create the classic vignette that the Lomos are well known for and I achieve this by doing a freehand lasso of a circle around the photo. It doesn’t need to be perfect and to prevent hard edges, I set the feather to 80-90px before creating the circle.

Once you have set the feather (shown above) and have drawn the circle, you must invert the selection. You can do this one of two ways. #1 Shift-Ctrl-I (Shift-cmd-I on the mac) or #2 Go to the menu Select>Inverse.

Now to achieve the vignette, I add a Levels layer. Note: I still have the invert selected.

This will add a masked out layer on top of your original layer. I then adjust the levels by moving the center arrow to the right. This will darken the edges, giving me a vignette. The amount is up to you and in this case I went from 1.00 to 0.50 on the center number highlighted in the image below.

Now you have a vignette.

On to making the photo look Lomo

Another key to a Lomo picture is the color contrast and saturation. This occurs because people with real Lomos use color slide film and cross-process the film in C41 chemicals.

For those that don’t know what cross-processing is, it’s when you develop film in a chemical other then what it was made for. Standard 35mm film is usually processed in C41 chemicals and Color Slide film is usually processed in E6 chemicals. Interesting results happen when you mix and match.

Typically, Lomo owners will take color slide film (E6) and have it processed as standard 35mm film (C41). This results in over saturation of colors and at times some freaky results. All of which make Lomo as special as they are.

To get a digital photo to look Lomo, we need to fake the cross-processing effect (E6 film in C41 chemicals).

At this point I usually flatten the image using shift-ctrl-e (shift-cmd-e on the mac) or go to the menu and Layer>Merge Layers.

First, I add a curves layer and create a slanted S.

Then I create a new layer on top of the other two layers. I select the paint bucket and pick the color black and fill the new layer with solid black.

Then I change the blending mode and set it to Hue and reduce the opacity to 40%.

Sharpening and Saving

This has gotten us very close to be finished. Again, I flatten the photo by using shift-ctrl-e (shift-cmd-e on the mac) or go to the menu and Layer>Merge Layers.

Before saving the photo as a JPG, you need to sharpen the photo. I use the unsharp mask and Lab mode/lightness technique. The purpose of this step is that it adds more contrast and darkens some of the areas as well. Now you can use whatever sharpening technique you want, but the following method prevents the color halos that come with certain sharpening techniques.

Go to Image>Mode>Lab Color. If you hadn’t flattened the image yet, it will ask you if want to flatten, please do so.

Then select your channel window and click on the lightness channel. The 3 other channels should deselect.

Then go to the menu, select Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask.

I like sharpness, so I set the Amount to 50%, Radius to 50% and the Threshold to 0. Click Ok. This is completely up to you on the settings. Plus it will depend on the photo as well and use your best judgment/preference.

Go to Image>Mode> RGB Color. You do not have to reselect the unchecked channels, when converting back to RGB, the channels will automatically turn back on and the photo will go back to be in color.

Now you are done, save the file and share.

Final step, save as a Jpeg.

Before the Lomo Photography Look

After the Lomo Photography Look

From: digital-photography-school.com