Master Photography

Questions:

Catherine Johnson – Does anyone else, that does HDR, convert their RAW file to TIFF before merging the bracketed shots? It was recommended in a video I watched and I have tried it and don’t see any real difference but thought I’d see if anyone else does this practice.

Gio Rizzo – Mailing larger metal prints

Josh – The Inspire 1 Pro with X5 16MB camera

-The big brother of the inspire 1

-16Megapixel micro 4/3 camera

– Much heavier than phantom series- generally good for stability

– Image quality is drastically better. Dynamic range, color, cropping ability all much improved.

– Cons-Watch out for battery issues

– recent price drop means new versions may be coming soon.

Midroll: Brent Rents Lenses: This episode is brought to you by a fella named Brent who rents lenses. His website is BrentRentsLenses.com. Brent is always happy to provide the advice you need when you need it. Use offer code “improve” at checkout for 15% off your first rental.

New Feature!  IP CRITIQUES!  #ipcritique

Jim – 5D4

Rumored specs by Canon Rumors

30.4mp

7fps

Compact Flash/SD Card Slots (No CFast)

Built-in Wifi

24/30fps @ 4K

Nick

Entering the world of Wacom tablets

Wacom Intuos Pro Pen and Touch Tablet, Medium (PTH651)

Learning curve – not too bad, you just have to turn off your mouse and leave it for a few days

So awesome in photoshop – speeds up many common tasks

Read more: http://www.canonrumors.com/canon-eos-5d-mark-iv-specifications-and-image/#ixzz4HiWCqVuX

Doodads of the Week!

Check out all the doodads from 2016 at http://improvephotography.com/doodads

Jim – Lexar flash drive 

Josh – Supon ¼” camera waist holster 

Nick – Impact flash clamp bracket and Iceland photo adventure

Doorandom of the Week: Flir thermal imaging camera 

Questions:

Andrew Block “I’m curious are folks still using Pixoto, 500px, and Flickr or is everyone just having fun on Instagram?”

Ron Lawrence: “I need some advice. I’m beginning to need storage outside of my internal hard drives, but there is no way that I can afford a Drobo. What are some other options.”

Connor’s Segment: It is always a great learning experience to sit and watch other professionals do the thing you do.

I attended a wedding recently for the first time since I started shooting them and it was a great learning experience that served to show me ways to do certain things I had either never considered doing, or had at least stopped doing and forgotten the practice of. An example of this was the outstanding communication between the photographers and the DJ. The DJ even helped to pose the bride for a fake bouquet toss before the real thing to get a better picture.

The experience also showed me some not so happy things that reinforced my beliefs in the way wedding coverage should be done.

In an absolutely gorgeous outdoor setting My fiancee and I arrived to see the primary shooter standing up by the altar. We sat down and I proceeded to watch and grit my teeth through the photographer not taking photos for over a half an hour. We were near the edge of a pond, very nearby the flower girl was playing in the grass next to the pond with her father and brother, an adorable shot. The photographer looked over and didn’t snap a photo. Some parents had their kids go pose with a group of other children right next to the photographer and she still didn’t lift her camera. This just broke my heart because these were all incredible moments that could have been excellent additions to an album or additional prints sold to the friends and family of the couple, but instead they were lost forever.

Long story short, it has become incredibly hard not to direct for the sake of photography on a wedding day. I am glad I was able to be a silent observer of a wedding, and it was a great reminder for me that others will notice the way you work on a wedding day!

Midroll: Brent Rents Lenses: This episode is brought to you by a fella named Brent who rents lenses. His website is BrentRentsLenses.com. Brent is always happy to provide the advice you need when you need it. Use offer code “improve” at checkout for 15% off your first rental.

Laryssa’s Segment:

How far ahead to you prep.

I will typically start thinking of what I need to bring about a week or so in advance.  There are various iphone apps where you can create a packing list.

The most important thing to do is to make sure you have all of the little things.  When we went to St Maarten I had rented a camera and didn’t grab the plate for the tripod from my main camera hence I had to do everything handheld or on something.

More than likely if you forget something it is going to be something small not something big.  A charger, a memory card.  You should make a list of what you need and keep it as a running list until you leave and check things off of the list as you put it in the bag.  

Doodads of the Week!

Jim – Jisen Newborn photography hammock prop 

Laryssa – Rick Sammon’s Creative Visualization for Photographers: Composition, exposure, lighting, learning, experimenting, setting goals, motivation and more

Connor –

Pre-Roll:  Brent Rents Lenses: This episode is brought to you by a fella named Brent who rents lenses. His website is BrentRentsLenses.com. Brent is always happy to provide the advice you need when you need it. Use offer code “improve” at checkout for 15% off your first rental.

Pre-Roll: This podcast/episode/show is sponsored/brought to you by Squarespace. Whether you need a landing page, a beautiful gallery, a professional blog, or an online store, it’s all included with your Squarespace website.  Start your free trial today, at Squarespace.com and enter offer code IMPROVE to get 10% off your first purchase.

What drone to get

Phantom has sucky quality, but really capable drone

Overexpose

Bracketing

Inspire is too pricey, but $1,000 off now.  Inspire 2 to be released for Photokina?

Locations

Patterns on the landscape

FOREGROUND!

Ipad vs Phone for a drone

Jim prefers a phone.  Ipad was too giant and inconvenient to bring.

Midroll: Squarespace

Legality

Basically illegal right now.  

Section 333 exemption is not worth going after

Available on the site

This fall it’s suddenly legal!

Nick’s points:

Overcoming noisy shadows in stills

Video for drones –  video settings and resolution

Useful accessories

Circ polarizer

Nd filter for video

Parabolic antenna booster

Pelican case for dji phantom 4

Jim: Location Finder

Toying with the idea for the last few YEARS, but it’s finally time.

Problems with the many attempts I’ve seen before

Mockups for the web version – ImprovePhotography.com/photolocations

First will have a way to submit.  I AM GONNA NEED HELP!

Web version completed when we have 2,000 locations worldwide

Phone app will commence when we have 6,000 locations worldwide

Those who submit will get a chance to advertise their website or that they offer daytrips in the area

What do we call this thing?

What do you think of the mockups?

Doodads of the Week!

Nick – Lume Cube

Jim – Control Shift T

Pre-Roll:  Improve Photography Plus!

Questions of the Week:

Kevin Jordan – I’d like to record a basic video of the wedding ceremony for my friend’s wedding.  What cameras, settings should I use, and what about audio?

Jim:

Lr for apple tv

Midroll: Brent Rents Lenses: This episode is brought to you by a fella named Brent who rents lenses. His website is BrentRentsLenses.com. Brent is always happy to provide the advice you need when you need it. Use offer code “improve” at checkout for 15% off your first rental.

Brian:Organizing and saving raw files. New website.

Laryssa:

How To Keep Things Organized

With having a full time job, shooting on a regular basis and reading and writing blogs how do you keep things organized.

 

* Photography

* For my photography business I use Pixifi.  I know Jim had tried it once before and didn’t like it.  I’m not a power user but I like to keep myself organized using it.

* I keep appointments in here contracts, questionnaires and client information.  Also, you can use it to track expenses, I don’t use that part.

* I also keep track of my annual calendar sales and profits and loss.  I can keep track of how much I spent and how many I sold and if I made a profit.

* Blogs I put reminders on my calendar for my now weekly blog and I also put topics I know I will do in as an event.

* Blogs I read

* I use newsify which is kind of what google reader was to bring in all the blogs I follow into one place so that I can read them at night.  If there is something I want to read later I just star it so I can go back to it later.  With Newsify you can separate your blogs into categories.  I have travel, money and photography

* Miscellaneous things

* I use Microsoft One Note (for mac)

* One Note is notebook you can use.  I have several Vacation Planning,  my Photos By Laryssa Notebook  (which Incudes all things photography)

* You can have sections and pages.

* In my photography one I have  Improve Photography to keep track of idea topics and doodads

* In my St Augustine Camera Club I am a member of the critique committee so I keep track of the photos I critique each month I have a tab for each month and a page for each photograph.

You can create as many sections, pages and notebooks as you like.  You link other documents, create check lists and link web pages and add photos.  This might be good for tracking things you want to shoot.

As a bonus this is available on mac, windows, ipad, iphone and android (and I’m pretty sure windows phones) and you can sync it across all the devices and share with others also.

Doodads of the Week!

Brian – Peak Design Camera Strap https://www.peakdesign.com/all/slide

Jim: RunawayCampers.com

Laryssa Yongnuo Wireless Flash controller and trigger.

YONGNUO YN-622N 1 x TX + 2 x RX i-TTL LCD wireless flash controller wireless flash trigger transceiver DSLR for…

Pre-Roll:  Brent Rents Lenses: This episode is brought to you by a fella named Brent who rents lenses. His website is BrentRentsLenses.com. Brent is always happy to provide the advice you need when you need it. Use offer code “improve” at checkout for 15% off your first rental.

Questions of the Week:

* Jenny Wu: When I’m roundtripping, Photoshop saves the image as a TIFF before going back to Lightroom.  Am I losing the flexibility of a RAW file at that point?

Kevin Jordan: Can you guys convince me why I need to spend $400 on an expensive tripod?  Having a tough time understanding why I would need to spend that much.  What’s the difference?

Jim’s Spiel

It’s okay to not scat

Connor

* Face Detect Liquify in Photoshop.

This is still the same liquify as before, however it now has the ability to detect facial features. I have only glanced at the features so far, but I am mildly worried about the effects this feature will have on the way retouching in perceived amongst common people.

Retouching should be subtle and look natural, I worry people will very quickly over do this

Sandy

It’s kind of sad to think about all the money I spent on photography materials that I never used or that didn’t last.

What I SHOULD have done is save my money, and found ways to create my own light modifiers.

There are a lot of resources online that show you how to make your own light modifiers out of pvc pipe and sheer fabric.

If you would like me to send you a PDF to Tinker Tubes (some more advanced light modifiers you can build), email me: [email protected] with the subject line “Tinker Tubes”.

Jeff: Time/Sky replacements are so much fun to do.  

Just published a photo tonight where I transformed a shot taken at mid-day, full on bright shot and did a sky replacement with a sunset that same day.  The image is on Facebook here.

Turned two fairly boring, unusable shots into a single fun shot

Used luminosity masks to select the drab, boring, no clouds sky with a sunset taken the same day that had great sky and clouds but had a terrible foreground.  Still had to touch up the selection and usually I use the refine edge tool (now called “Select and Mask” as of the latest Photoshop CC release) but my scene didn’t work well with that either because the difference between the blues of the mountains in the distance and the sky was too little.  So took some manual effort to clean up the layer masking to make it look believable

Had to darken the mid-day shot in a couple different ways because the corners felt too bright

Had to mirror bits of the sky in the water reflection to make it more believable

Doodads of the Week!

Connor – Peak Design Every Day Messenger Bag

Jeff – Logitech MX Master Wireless Mouse

Jim: Total Wireless

Sandy:

Doorandom of the Week

Connor- Roomba Vacuum!

Contact Info:

Jeff’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/harmon_jeff

Jeff’s Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/jsharmonphotos/

Jeff’s Portfolio: