And We're Back!

Helloo, helloo!  Well my indecision was final - after closing this blog down a year ago and trying out Wordpress (can't say I was impressed), I've decided to reopen Words Words Words renamed as The Happy Pumpkin. No particular reason for that name other than that I like pumpkins and I'd rather see a happy one than one drowning in self-pity and misery, and Words Words Words just didn't seem right for a blog so heavily biased towards photography!

So what's new? Well I'm working part time as a photographer, and part time for PetPals who are a pet sitting/dog walking company.  I love my job (well the majority of the time I love it, every job has its days...); I get to go out and play with pooches, then come back to my kitties and be grateful for how quiet and calm they are (usually).

So talking of cats, let us waste no further time before posting some pics:

Pepper: Yes my beautiful little Buddhist is still as fabulous.

It was her 17th birthday on Sunday - she celebrated by lying

around on tulle with some artificial flowers.

Charlie: Charlie is getting on in years now - still irascible,  still a diabetic, 

and still moaning about Ralph.  He has become something

of a lap cat in his old age - although I'm not supposed

to mention that so as not to ruin his 'hard cat' image.

Sorry Charlie ;-)

Ralph: Ahh Ralphie, well he is a total love bug.

He's funny, cuddly, a bit naughty but just

so gorgeous it's untrue.

Photography tip: When shooting portraits of pets or people, always, ALWAYS, focus on the eyes.  This is especially important when using wide apertures as you will only have a narrow depth of field to play with, so it's important to get the focus spot on.

You can view my professional photography websites at www.barbarajacksonphotography.co.uk and www.happypetsphotography.com

Why You Should Shoot in Manual...

I know it's scary but really you should! Many people have a DSLR but you mainly shoot in Programme i.e. Auto) Mode or maybe Aperture Priority, but I'm here to tell you why you should finally take the training wheels off and go Manual.

Your DSLR is a very clever computer, but it's just that, a computer.  It doesn't 'see', it doesn't do artistic interpretation and it doesn't know what you want.  (In fact, did you know your camera effectively registers in black, white and shades of grey? But more of that another time).  

When you shoot in Manual you decide how you want things to look. You can slow down the shutter speed to catch motion blur, you can open up the aperture to get a shallow depth of field, you can under expose so that your highlights appear as mid-tones giving you wonderful moody shots. The thing is it's all up to you.  You just have to remember the exposure triangle: 

These three elements are how you control the exposure of your images, and there are untold ways of combining them so as to do this.  Just remember if you alter one of them, let's say you increase the shutter speed because you want to catch fast movement, you are letting less light into your camera so you have to compensate for this by either opening up the aperture, or increasing the ISO.  The choice is up to you depending on the effect you want.

So here's a quick image I took on my Canon 6D in Programme Mode.  My assistant Charlie was lying against the sofa, backlit by the french windows.  My camera has tried to come up with an average exposure that works for the whole scene but it's blown out the background, in fact it's lightened the whole scene way too much.

My camera chose 1/40sec at f1.4 with an ISO of 500.

What I wanted was something with a bit more mood, altogether a bit darker.  I also wanted to up the shutter speed as I try in general not to shoot with a speed less than the focal length of my lens to avoid movement (I was using a 50mm lens here so it wasn't a major issue, but still...).

My settings were 1/100 sec at f1.4, ISO 400 and I used bounced fill flash to

lift the shadow on Charlie. I also altered the WB to warm it up slightly.

This is much closer to how the scene

actually looked.

Another example: 

1/60 sec at f8, ISO 3200.

Note how everything is in focus from front to back

because of that aperture of f8.

1/200 sec, f1.4, ISO 320

I wanted a shallow depth of field to make the flowers

stand out from their surroundings so increased the shutter speed

and decreased the ISO to compensate accordingly.

… and finally, one where I did want
an aperture of f8 to get as much as possible in focus, so then
chose the other settings around that.
1/50sec, at f8, ISO 400, 35mm lens.

Easy peasy!

Matt Edit How To...

I thought it was time I did something constructive and posted a quick 'how-to'.  You see a lot of images with a matt edit on them - some people love them, some hate them.  I think it looks great on the right image.  Like most edits it's very quick and easy to achieve in LightRoom - so here goes.

So here's my original image of Pepper being a diva under a blanket,

and this is how the histogram looks.

NB You don't have to take any notice

of your histogram if you don't want to, I'm only

showing it to illustrate what I'm doing and why.

What we want to do is lessen the contrast and squash the tones together toward the centre of the histogram.

So here's the first edit. 

 On the Tone Curve in RGB mode I've brought the shadow point up (left side) 

and the highlight down (right side).  

Note what it's done to the histogram.

I used the contrast slider to add slightly more contrast than I had...

 The Tone Curve is great for working with different

colour channels too.  I wanted a more 'vintage' feel to the image so

I used the Red channel and took

the shadows very slightly up and the highlights down.

I then used the same technique with the Blue.

To show you can play around with the Tone Curve

to get the effect that best suits your image and the effect you want,

here I've taken the original photo and moved only the

shadows pointer, but also brought the curve down slightly.

The whole thing is now 'punchier' with brighter light tones. 

Here's the same image with the saturation

slider taken right down to the light.

I think the matt effect particularly 

suits black and white.

So play around with it and have fun.

You Know You're Bored When...

You start taking photos of cake decorations in front of the Christmas Tree for something to do... 

Want to know how to create the heart bokeh?

All you need is a piece of card with a heart shape cut in it (not too big), then hold it or stick it in some way over your lens and using a wide aperture focus on your foreground objects and magically it will turn your background light source into heart shapes.

Easy-peasy...