By Ellis Vener

“Sketching Light: An Illustrated Tour of the Possibilities of Flash”
By Joe Mc Nally
Part of the series, “Voices That Matter,” published by New Riders Press

Read an excerpt from “Sketching Light"

Every well-known successful photographer you can think of knows how to use light to tell stories. By “well known” and “successful,” I don’t mean someone with thousands of friends and followers on social networking sites, I mean photographers who make their living and reputation by working for real-world clients. You likely have your favorites; mine are Dan Winters, Gregory Heisler, Matthew Jordan Smith, Nick Knight and Joe McNally. Perhaps no one on my list is as broadly influential as Joe McNally, mostly because he has successfully taken on the challenge of using social networks and teaching what he knows through seminars, workshops and books.

Fortune has favored McNally with resilience and a great sense of self-deprecating humor. He seems to approach assignments big and small with equally intense levels of preparation, energy and flexibility. Fortunately for us, he brings these traits to his fourth how-to book, “Sketching Light: An Illustrated Tour of the Possibilities of Flash” (New Riders Press).

In this lighting cookbook, McNally provides abundant recipes and results, complete with copious notes, diagrams and “war stories.” These are not the kind of lighting formulas that mandate placing Light A with Modifier X at a 32-degree angle to the left, slightly above and 6 feet from the subject, and placing Light B with Modifier Y here or there with specific key-to-fill-to-accent ratios—you get the point. Instead, McNally gets you to thinking about how to generate and use light to help the story you want the photograph to tell, and to make that story engage with the viewer’s imagination. Even if you think you already know a lot about lighting, I bet you’ll pick up more than a few good ideas from “Sketching Light.”

And really, the book really isn’t so much about how to make nice with light, but how to live. In the first lines in the introduction, he writes:

The key word on the cover of this book is not “flash,” or even “light.” It’s the word “possibilities.” Because that is, at its core, what this book is about. It isn’t about pictures that already exist. It’s about what might be possible to create, in terms of pictures, if you experiment with light.

Excerpted from “Sketching Light” by Joe McNally. Copyright © 2012. Used with permission of Pearson Education, Inc. and New Riders.

Read the Professional Photographer review of “Sketching Light”

Every once in a while, you try something on a wing and a prayer, and you get a picture that works. You gave it just about zero chance of success when you put the light out there, and then it’s so absurdly first-frame simple, you have one of those “coulda had a V8” moments back at the LCD. Which, of course, you then try to cover up by assuming a knew-it-all-along look, a confident nod, and a quiet, murmured, “Think I’ll just shoot a few more of these.”

I was on the main plaza in pre-dawn Venice, which is the only time of day that beautiful, historic place is not a sea of backpacks and a jumble of accents and languages. The sun was up and light was bounding out on the waterways, but I was struck by the cool, beautiful nature of the ancient arches, where open shade still ruled.

When trying to work simply and influence a scene with just one small flash, open shade can be your best friend. You don’t have to stress the light by fighting the high, hard sun, and the muted tones introduce the possibility of effectively influencing the color palette of the scene without bringing in movie grip trucks.

This setup was, as I indicated above, crazy simple. I used the little plastic floor stand that comes with the SB-900, put a full CTO warming gel on the light, took off the dome diffuser, and zoomed the flash head to 200mm so the light spread would remain pretty tight, and placed it out there on the ancient stones of the plaza. The zoom feature helps in directing the light right to the dancer, and also keeping floor spill to a minimum. As worn as they are, the tiles on the plaza will pick up light and reflect it pretty well, so if your light is zoomed wide and splashes everywhere, you got a problem. Zooming the light tight sends it where it needs to go—to the dancer—and minimizes the telltale photon path on the floor. A hint of light works fine. A big, blown highlight is not okay. Nuking the floor is always a concern, obviously, when you actually place the light down there. I didn’t need to employ this tactic here, but a couple of simple swatches of gaffer tape on the floor side of the flash head, serving as cutters or flags, works really well, as shown here.

I just happened to have a ballerina with me. I’d suggested dancers to the group I was shooting with, and it was a notion they embraced vigorously. Bringing a dancer onto the Plaza Venezia in dawn light is definitely stacking the deck in your favor, kinda like flying in a sure thing, but it’s a good thought when seeking subjects for flash portraits. It’s certainly better than wandering the streets hoping an ancient drunk with an interesting hat stumbles into a beautiful highlight. (Unless, of course, you’re street shooting and looking for happenstance. Different mission altogether.)

The following is excerpted from “Kevin Kubota’s Lighting Notebook: 101 Lighting Styles and Setups for Digital Photographers” (Wiley). Look for three more informative excerpts in the November issue of Professional Photographer magazine.

Kid In A Candystore

The final image was processed in Lightroom with my Vintage 2 preset, from the Vintage Delish collection. I like the added warmth in the shadows, which feels like chocolate!

One of the best ways to get children to cooperate on a photo shoot is with good, old-fashioned bribes. Candy works really well, so why not do the entire session in a candy store and save a trip! The image I had in my mind was of this little girl sitting on the counter licking a giant lollipop. When we got there, however, the lollipops they had were not actually very giant. I knew I needed a wideangle lens to exaggerate the perspective and make the lollipop look larger than life.

The RayFlash ringlight attachment is an innovative photo tool. It fits to the front of any camera speedlight and encircles the lens. Unlike most other ringlight setups, the RayFlash is completely portable, allowing you to move about and try different angles. It also allows for normal TTL flash operation, so you don’t have to worry about adjusting the light manually. Normally, the RayFlash is used with semiwide to normal perspective lenses, but I decided to use it with a 10.5mm fisheye lens, which has such a wide angle of view that it actually shows the edges of the ringlight. I loved the effect as it felt like looking through a portal to a fantasy world of delectable treats.

A portable speedlight was placed behind the subject to add an edge light and separation from the background. A PowerSnoot from Gary Fong was used to constrain the light to a narrow beam. I balanced my flash exposure with the existing light in the shop using TTL mode on the oncamera flash and manually for the backlight. The second speedlight was triggered by the built-in optical slave, which works fairly well when in close proximity and indoors.

After taking a few images of our little lady delightfully devouring the lollipop, the candy smeared all over her face and an even better image came to light than I originally imagined. Can you say “sugar rush”?

I asked Mom to stand very close and keep an eye on her daughter in case she started to scoot off the edge of the counter. Fortunately, she wasn’t going anywhere—as long as the lollipop lasted.

The original image from the camera

Exposure Info:
10.5mm lens setting
f/4.0 at 1/160 sec. ISO 500
Exposure comp. +/– 0

Tools Used:
Nikon D300s 10.5mm f/2.8 fisheye Nikkor lens
RayFlash ringlight from Rogue Imaging
Nikon SB800 Speedlight
Gary Fong PowerSnoot

Go to the jump for two more tutorials!

By Thea Dodds, GreenerPhotography.org

“The Changing Range of Light: Portraits of the Sierra Nevada” combines art and science in a book of landscape photography, employing imagery to inspire action. It features gorgeous landscapes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range by Elizabeth Carmel, and text vignettes outlining the effect of global climate change in the Sierras by Robert Coats, PhD. and Geoffrey Schladow, PhD.

Carmel is an acclaimed landscape photographer based in Trukee, Calif. This volume is a follow-up to her book, “Brilliant Waters,” also featuring photographs from the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Contributing author Robert Coats has a B.S. and M.S. in Forestry and a PhD. in Wildland Resource Science from the University of California at Berkeley. Contributing author Geoffrey Schladow holds a B. Eng. and PhD. in civil engineering from the University of Western Australia, and a M. Eng. in hydraulic engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.

The release of this 136 page, full color book was well timed with the December convening of the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, the largest conference of its kind in history. Carmel is courageous for publishing a book that combines grassroots education with contemporary landscape photography. She risks taking the reader away from her art with the addition of scientific commentary that is heavy both in content and technical in its language. It is striking how well the images lead the reader to the text, and the text takes the reader back to the images with additional information and appreciation. The climate change vignettes are interrupted by poetry at well-timed intervals to give the reader a needed breath of lighter content.

By Jim Benest

The following is partially excerpted from Andrew Darlow’s "301 Inkjet Tips and Techniques: An Essential Printing Resource for Photographers" (Course Technology, PTR).

There are many ways to light artwork. You can choose different types of light (traditional halogen, fluorescent, LED and others), and many different strengths and focus types (direct, indirect, spot, flood, etc.). These tips offer some suggestions for lighting a commercial gallery, but the suggestions can be used for any location where artwork will be displayed, such as a doctor’s office, home or office building.

TIP 229
Determine how many pieces you will put on each wall.
Depending upon whether you will have one piece in the center of a wall or three or more stacked (like in our gallery), your lighting will be different. Also consider the mood you want to have in the space. You can choose from dark ambient lighting with dramatic spotlights on every piece of art, or you can select a more broadly lit effect, as we use in our gallery.

A view of one side of The Collective Fine Art Gallery, with multiple types of lighting shown in the track lighting system. Photo ©Andrew Darlow

By Andrew Darlow 

Are you able to invest the time and effort it takes to handle your own inkjet printing? Preparing files, hand-feeding individual sheets of paper or loading rolls of canvas, waiting for printing to finish, and trimming and mounting prints when necessary?

In many cases, you can save time and money by printing your work yourself, but it’s a good idea to think about the many costs and other commitments that are involved before making any printer purchase.

There are many reasons to consider having someone else do your printing for you. Also consider the investment necessary to keep inks and paper on hand.

How do you find a reliable and competent printer? In many cases, traditional photo labs are where professional photographers go to have their inkjet prints made. The same features one looks for in a lab carry over to inkjet printing:

Consistency
Customer Service
Fast Turnaround
Finishing Options (such as canvas stretching and mounting/spraying)

Rick Ralston's "The Designer's Apprentice" (Adobe Press, $39.99) shows you how to use the Automation tools in Creative Suite 3 to save time and effort, freeing you for more creative work. Though written for a graphic designer audience, this book has valuable information for professional photographers as well.

Though automation may seem intimidating, it doesn't have to be. You can make your computer and software work better for you. Learn how to combine your customer data with images for personalized communications. Learn how to record macro-like Actions with Photoshop and then reuse them with multiple files.

Also, keep an eye on the magazine for more information from Rick Ralston, written exclusively for the Professional Photographer audience. He'll explain what automation can accomplish for professional photographers, what ROI you can expect from incorporating automation into your workflow, and how you can get started.

In the meantime, enjoy this excerpt that teaches you how to make a Photoshop Action that gives your images the Reflecto effect, familiar from Apple's marketing and featured on the book's cover.

Download the Reflecto Action tutorial from "The Designer's Apprentice," by Rick Ralston 

Excerpted from "The Designer's Apprentice: Automating Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign in Adobe Creative Suite 3" by Rick Ralston. Copyright © 2008. Used with permission of Pearson Education, Inc. and Adobe Press.

Mikkel Aaland turned his experiences from a once-in-a-lifetime photography expedition to Iceland into a striking guided tour of Lightroom in "Photoshop Lightroom Adventure" (O'Reilly, $39.99). Along the way he shows readers how they, too, can use Lightroom to create exciting new images. More importantly, Aaland, an award-winning photographer and bestselling author, inspires readers by providing a far deeper experience than most instructional manuals. Part Icelandic road trip, part photo essay, "Lightroom's" photo-rich pages come packed with beautiful, exciting photographs from a dozen talented working photographers.

"Yes, it's a technical book. Yet it's not only a complete guide to the latest version of the application, but a pleasure to look at, too," explains Aaland. For this is not an update of previous Lightroom versions, but the first book written specifically for Lightroom 1.1. "And my new book honors photography through the beautiful images that fill every chapter," adds Aaland.

Professional Photographer magazine's Web Exclusives gives has a special excerpt from Chapter 3 of Mikkel Aaland's "Photoshop Lightroom Adventure," Editing a Day's Shoot in Iceland. In this valuable excerpt, Aaland takes you through editing a day's shoot in Lightroom, illustrating Library Module features and variations, from setting thumbnail size and customizing the Loupe view to magnifying in tandem and creating a collection.

Download a PDF excerpt from Chapter 3 of "Photoshop Lightroom Adventure" (8.4MB)

Photoshop Lightroom Adventure
Mastering Adobe's next-generation tool for digital photographers
By Mikkel Aaland
First Edition: July 2007 (est.)
ISBN 10: 0-596-10099-X
ISBN 13: 9780596100995
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596100995/
Copyright © 2007 O'Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission. 

If you've been wondering what's new in Adobe Photoshop CS3, why not get your information from the best? Martin Evening is a fantastic photographer and gifted teacher who makes time in his professional schedule to instruct photographers on digital imaging and Photoshop. Evening’s Adobe Photoshop for Photographers titles have become classic reference sources, written to deal directly with the needs of photographers and filled with a wealth of practical advice, hints and tips to help you achieve professional results.

"Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers," is published by Focal Press, an imprint of Elsevier.
ISBN: 0-240-52028-9 (old style ISBN)
ISBN: 978-0-240-52028-5 (new style ISBN)

Download What's new in Adobe Photoshop CS3 (PDF, 3.6MB), Chapter 1 of the newly released "Photoshop CS3 for Photographers" by Martin Evening.

Printed with permission from Focal Press, a division of Elsevier. Copyright 2007. "Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers" by Martin Evening. For more information about this book, please visit www.focalpress.com.

In his newest book, "Professional Filter Techniques for Digital Photographers" (Amherst Media; $34.95) pro photographer Stan Sholik covers the gamut of possibilities and applications now available to the digital photographer through traditional (hardware) filters and filter software.

He advises on how to select your best filter options for your photographic style and how implementing the device will impact your photos. Covering filters used for color correction, contrast enhancement, soft focus, and a full spectrum of interesting, artistic effects, this book will satisfy your quest for technical precision and your yearning for greater creative expression.

Features:

• Comparisons of effects achieved using traditional vs. digital filters
• Charts that allow readers to predict effects of a variety of filter types
• Page after page of analyses of top filters

In this excerpt, Sholik examines color converting, light balancing and compensation filters.

By Ellis Vener

"Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography and Creative Thinking," by Julieanne Kost, is one of the more profound Photoshop and photography related books I've seen in many years, yet has the least amount of technical content. The photographs are from Kost's collection of photographs made while on business trips over a five year period. As a mainstay in Adobe's Photoshop education program, Adobe Evangelist Kost is on the road "about 200 days" a year. While she has educated many thousands of photographers on Adobe's flagship software through  various Photoshop conferences, workshops, and a DVD series from Software Cinema), the real meat of her book is a plainspoken treatise on how to stay fresh and creative, even in the face of your fears or while mired in the prosaic grind of the workaday world.

Layer blending modes have been part of Photoshop for years, but because they're not easy to understand at first glance, this immensely useful feature tends to get overlooked. "Photoshop Blending Modes Cookbook for Digital Photographers" is the only recipe-format book that covers blending modes specifically for digital photographers.

The book covers:
•    Changing hue, saturation, luminosity, and color
•    Correcting basic color shifts
•    Repairing highlights
•    Sharpening or softening focus
•    Adjusting lighting for subtle or dramatic effects
•    Controlling contrast
•    Creating surface effects and textures
•    Adding interest to landscapes and urban scenes
•    Enhancing portraits of children and adults
•    Simulating graphics arts techiques

and much more.

In the summer of 2004, armed with cameras and press credentials, Canadian photojournalist Steve Simon moved in and out of Madison Square Garden, capturing the essence of the 2004 Republican Convention. The arrangement of his images in "The Republicans" (Charta, $35.00) delivers an outstanding visual narrative of iconic opposites and shrewd observations, a recording of an unprecedented moment in American politics, power structure and media predominance.

"I knew this would be both an important political convention and an ironic portrait of the Republican Party against the interesting choice of New York City as its backdrop," said Simon. "With 15,000 accredited media covering 5,000 Republican delegates, I understood how powerful the media's role would be in presenting the convention to Americans and to the world. That's why I elected to focus my cameras not only on the delegates inside and the protesters outside, but on the media participants themselves."

How do the best photographers turn RAW data into beautiful images? Bestselling author and award-winning photographer Mikkel Aaland shows you how. His straightforward, visually oriented instruction will take you step-by-step through the process of capturing, organizing, and optimizing RAW images. You'll learn how to produce the best possible digital images, using Photoshop CS2, Adobe Bridge, and Camera Raw. Aaland--whose pioneering work in digital photography dates back to 1981--draws on his own 30 years of experience, as well the expertise of over 10 top-notch professional photographers who generously share their tips and techniques. His personal, easy-to-follow style illuminates and inspires, but doesn't intimidate or needlessly complicate. You'll get immediate results when you apply these solutions-oriented techniques to your own photographic work.

Whether you're a newbie or a seasoned Photoshopper, without expert guidance you might never get further than sliding your mouse across the surface of Photoshop's true capability. "Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One," the number-one selling Photoshop tutorial book updated for CS2, can help you master this most powerful-and daunting-of graphic tools. A straightforward, step-by-step user's guide to Photoshop and the new features of CS2, Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One will show you how to take full advantage of all that Photoshop offers.

"Adobe Photoshop CS2 One on One" by Deke McClelland, published by Deke Press/O'Reilly, ISBN: 0-596-10096-5, $39.95 USA

Download Lesson 3: Correcting Color Balance

Lesson Files
(Right-click or control-click to save linked file to desktop.) 

Craftsmen_at_work.jpg
Helicopter_hotel.jpg
iStock_Tokyo_clown.jpg
afewgoodgrads.grd
Max_asleep_01.dng
Max_asleep_02.dng
Max_asleep_03.dng

Watch QuickTime Total Training Video: Variations and Camera Raw

In the world of digital photography, digital asset management (DAM) refers to every part of the process that follows the taking of the picture, through final output and permanent storage.  Anyone who shoots, scans or stores digital photographs is practicing some form of DAM, but most of us are not doing so systematically or efficiently.  In The DAM Book, photographer Peter Krogh presents a solid plan and practical advice on how to file, find, protect and re-use photographs, focusing on best practices for digital photographers using Adobe Photoshop CS2.

"The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers" by Peter Krough, publisher O'Reilly, ISBN: 0-596-10018-3.

Visit O'Reilly online to order your copy.

Read Chapter 3: Creating the Digital Archive

In this full-color, easy-to-use book, award-winning designer and best-selling author Colin Smith teaches the fundamentals as well as the more advanced features of Photoshop. Smith shows how to use traditional drawing and painting tools ranging from pencils to airbrushes, how to add and manipulate text, retouch photos, create special effects, and more. A bonus "Behind the Scenes" gallery demonstrates the Photoshop techniques used by professional artists. Read more of Smith's Photoshop tips at www.photoshopCAFE.com.

"How to Do Everything with Photoshop CS2" by Colin Smith, publisher McGraw-Hill Osborne, ISBN: 0-07-226160-9, $29.99 USA

Read Chapter 9: Save time with automation.

"Photoshop Retouching Cookbook for Digital Photographers" tells you everything you need to know to adjust, correct, retouch, and manipulate your photographs—without making you first learn everything there is to know about Photoshop CS2. These straightforward, easy-to-follow recipes give you specific directions so you can quickly and easily:

- Fix exposure, focus, and color problems
- Add special effects like motion blurs, lens effects, and surface textures
- Improve portraits by removing red eye, wrinkles, and blemishes
- Add and remove objects from photos seamlessly
- Use lighting effects to create more dramatic images
- Restore faded and damaged photos
- Give new shots a vintage, old-fashioned look
- Create posterized and hand-tinted images

With clear step-by-step instructions, hundreds of full-color examples, and practical tips covering key techniques in detail, this book will help you turn everyday photos into memorable images.

Download a PDF file excerpt on Soft Focus Techniques.
Download a PDF file excerpt on Removing Skin Blemishes and Wrinkles.

Printed with permission from Focal Press, a division of Elsevier.

This new title by Martin Evening will be in stores by the end of May (ISBN: 0240519841; $44.95). For more information about this book, please see Martin Evening's Web site at photoshopforphotographers.com.

For ordering information and to view similar titles, please visit www.focalpress.com.

Download Chapter 1, What's New in Photoshop CS2 (1.6MB)