How do I take better photos?
One question I receive frequently is how to take better photos. Now this is a question whose answer can go on for miles and miles, as one can always take better photos, but I’ve realized that most problem photos I’ve seen boil down to the same old thing: Weird color and lighting effects caused by using your camera’s built-in flash unit.
For the most part, my recommendation is this: If you own a simple point-and-click digital camera, you should refrain from using the built-in flash at all, except in the few cases when you find yourself outside at night after a dinner party wanting to take that final group shot before your friends all disappear into the night.
Typical digital camera flashes create more problems than they solve. Their purpose is to provide enough fill-light to allow for a proper exposure. Boy that sounds really nice, and in the professional world, flash units are as adjustable as you need them to be. But common point-and-click camera flash units usually have 2 settings:
1. Off
and
2. Violently bright.
The “violently bright” setting casts uneven light on your subject, causing washed-out colors, resulting too little contrast or even underexposing the background to the point where it disappears completely, and of course the ever-dreaded Red-Eye attack. With the steady improvements of computer-based digital photo software, red-eye is much easier to deal with, but consider how easy it would be to deal with if you did not have to deal with it at all.
Bottom line
Life does not occur under idea lighting conditions, but your built-in flash is not the answer.
First, you’ll need to figure out how to disable your camera’s flash function, which means you’ll have to learn a little tiny bit about your camera here. Also, many point-and-click cameras return to default settings when you turn them off. You might therefore need to disable the flash every time you turn the camera back on and start shooting, so this will be something that you’ll have to remain aware of.
Your camera does not always know best.
While some digital camera models have built-in sensors which determine whether or not the flash is required, based on available lighting, I feel strongly that if there’s any available ambient light, the flash should still be avoided.
Without the camera’s flash function, you’ll need to rely on whatever ambient light is available. You’ll need to think a little bit more about how you’re going to frame your shot, and you might need to ask your subjects to move a few feet to one side or another, or even to relocate to the other side of the room for a moment. You’d be surprised how much your photography will improve when you start actually considering things like light source and composition. Anyway, I digress.
Light pollution.
Another issue with relying on available lighting is that in most cases, the available light is almost never pure white. This will happen especially outdoors around sunset, and indoors where incandescent (normal household) lightbulbs are in use.
Question: Well, hmmm. That means that whenever I shoot indoors with normal household lightbulbs without my flash, my photos will almost always have a slight yellow color cast applied to them.
Answer: Um.. yeah. They will. But hey, you’re shooting digital, there’s nothing we can’t fix.
Additional weirdness.
Note to owners of Hewitt Packard digital cameras: HP cameras seem to like blue a lot, and often amplify the amount of blue in photos taken under even the most perfect white-balanced lighting conditions. Strange indeed, but don’t toss out your nice little HP camera just yet…
Luckily for Mac users, these issues are non-issues. iPhoto 7 (included free with every new Macintosh computer, or available for $79 as part of the iLife ’08 software bundle available HERE) includes some nifty new tools which make color correcting a snap.
Okay, lecture’s over, let’s play!
Orange Appeal.
This photo was taken at night, in an art gallery with bright orange walls, strobing lights, and a projector casting a slideshow against the back wall. You will also notice that the subject (my wonderful wife, Pausha) is wearing an orange dress, and has bright orange hair to match. With orange-tinted light bouncing off the walls everywhere, it’s no big surprise that the photo is contaminated with a consistent orange glow.
Had I used my flash unit, this photo would have been a throwaway. The flash would have turned Pausha’s skin bright white, and it would have caused the background to completely disappear, as the back wall was about 20 feet away from her. iPhotos, color correct tool to the rescue!
With the photo highlited in iPhoto’s browser, we select the Edit icon from the toolbar to enter Edit Mode, and then we click on Adjust to invoke our Adjustment HUD (Heads Up Dispay).
Clicking on the little eye dropper icon next to the Tint controls will turn our cursor into a crosshair sight, which we are then prompted to use to locate a neutral gray or white point in our photo. I chose a white-ish spot over on the floor behind Pausha’s left shoulder. Doing this forced iPhoto to re-evaluate the color information across the entire photo, and removed (to the best of its ability) the color cast (in this case, orange glow) from the photo.
(Click the above photo to view image in full size.)
Notice in this example, the orange glow is gone. You can now tell that Pausha’s hair is not really the same shade of orange as her dress is. Her lips have returned to their proper color, her skin tone is distinguishable from her clothing, and as the exposure has been sublty altered, the contrast has been properly balanced out, making for a more dynamic and interesting photo. Not to mention the fact that this photo now looks the way that my eyes perceived the scene when I took the photo.
Click-click, done!
I’d like to mention that while you would be able to acheive the same effect in Adobe’s excellent Photoshop software, this same job required 2 clicks in iPhoto.
Whether you’re an avid hobby photographer, or you take photos only when you have to, learning to disable your camera’s built-in flash, taking a moment to compose your shot based on your available light, and learning to perform very basic color correction in iPhoto can take your own photography to a whole new level. Such a simple adjustment in the way you currently approach snapping photos can reward you with higher quality, more interesting photographs which you’ll enjoy forever.
Next up, we’ll talk about sharing your photos with friends and families once you have them looking great!
Cheers for now
~ Chris
Author’s Note:
I write about software available for the Apple Macintosh platform, because I am an avid Mac enthusiast and I utilize them professionally. My workshops and trainings are all Mac-based.
Having said that, I am certain that quality programs exist for the Windows platform which provide some or all of the features described in my articles.
I encourage Windows users to comment back with any information regarding PC-based programs which provide similar functionality as readers will undoubtedly find any such information useful and inspiring.
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