[tweetmeme]If you’re working with an SLR or a high end point and shoot camera, it’s likely that you’ll have the ability to use filters. Filters are additional pieces of glass or plastic that are placed over the lens to achieve certain effects or modify the light entering the lens. Here are the three most common types of filters that are essential tools for any photographer looking to excel.

Ultraviolet Filters:

As the name suggests, a UV filter will block ultraviolet light from entering the lens. Ultraviolet light is not visible to the human eye, but can cause a slight haze in your photos in some bright conditions. The effect of a UV filter is barely noticeable though, and the use of a low quality UV filter may harm your photos contrast, increase lens flair or add a slight colour tint. Using a Multicoated UV filter is the best way to avoid reduction in image quality. Above all, UV filters are mainly used to protect your lens. Having a UV filter over your cameras lens is a great way to keep it safe and scratch free.

Polarized Filters:

Polarized filters use polarized glass to eliminate glare and reflected light. The result of this is a crisper photo with higher colour saturation, sharper colours and, most prominent of all, a deeper blue of the sky. A polarized filter is an essential tool for a landscape or outdoor photographer due to the vibrancy it adds to a photo. If you’re interested, be sure to get a circular polarized filter as a linear filter won’t work on a modern digital camera. A polarized filter is one of the best things you can buy for your camera.

Neutral Density Filters:

A Neutral Density or ND filter effectively acts like a pair of sunglasses for your camera. They’re used to reduce the amount of light passing through your lens. This means you can use longer exposures in daylight conditions. An ND filter will allow you to capture silky smooth water, use a shallow depth of field or capture the motion of an object, even in bright conditions. It’s not wise to use one of these filters permanently though, as they can reduce the saturation of your photo.

There are many different levels of ND filters, all of which hold a different level of darkness. Typically, the title of the filter will denote the fraction of light allowed through by the filter. For example, an ND 64 filter is a strong, dark filter than allows just 1/64th of the light through. An ND 4 filter however is a weaker filter that cuts out all but 1/4 of the the light. ND filters aren’t an essential photographic item, but they’re a great tool for the experienced photographer who likes to photograph waterfalls or capture other forms of motion.

[tweetmeme]It amazes me how much abstract architecture there is in a train station. In this collection I’ve put together 16 of the most inspiring train station photos from the web. The next time you’re waiting for a train, pull out your camera and go for a walk. Hopefully this collection will give you a few ideas.

Quick Tips for Train Station Photography:

Symmetry: Almost all of these photos bare a symmetry, and this produces a truly stunning effect when you’re dealing with architecture.

Colours: The majority of these photos are in black and white, or are heavily desaturated with an accentuated blue element to them. This combination appears to be very effective, and adds a cool, crisp feel to the photos.

Abstraction: Look at how the photograph moves. The way the photographers have captured some of the abstract lines in these photos is astounding.

Movement: A train station is a lively place. Try to capture this in your photo

Into the Light by Philipp Klinger

Is Time Linear by Philipp Klinger

Old New York Subway Car by Tara Holland

Diffuse Station by hopefoote

Liège Guillemins by rpbdesigner

Inside the Space Station by yushimoto_02

Grand Central Station by Digital Agent

Liege Railway Station by cedsarlette

Station Story by liquidkid1

Escalator by mickeyxmouse

Symmetry by genr

Subway IV by Dr007

Subway by KYAV

Abandoned Subway by BalchPhoto

Subway song by DinnerSpoiler

The Butterfly Subway by Demyan

[tweetmeme]Here are some of the smoke photographs from my portfolio. Smoke photographs always fascinate me. A sense of anonymity on the type and shape of smoke makes it so unpredictable and poses a challenge, and at the same time increases our creativity to come up with things that match the shape.
To completely understand the process involved in taking a good smoke photograph read my Quick Recipe for Smoke Photography. Otherwise, enjoy 17 of my best smoke photographs.

My kind of torch !

Giraffe on Dope

Buzzz

Array of Colours

Curtain

Red Hot Tea Pot

Rooster House on Fire

Tri Colour

Don’t come next to me

Dream

Lady Lying In Her Arms

Serene

Bat on Flight

Wave

Angel

Eaten

Threesome

All the pictures in this post are copywrighted to AnRb photography and any use of this work in hard or soft copy or transfer must be done with the expressed consent of Amar Ramesh, the author, in written.

[tweetmeme]Lately LetterPress has become a real trend in web design. For those unfamiliar with the effect, LetterPress gives the impression that words and letters have actually been pressed or bevelled inwards. It’s not hard to see why it’s so popular. LetterPress is stylish, very simple, and it’s third dimension allows it to catch the eye without being overpowering. It’s very easy too, and only takes a few minutes. Here’s how to apply the LetterPress typography effect in photoshop.

Step 1:

Open a new canvas in photoshop and paint a new colour to the background. Radial Gradients work well here. As you can see I’ve chosen a gradient of light greys, with the lightest colour glowing from the bottom of the canvas.

Step 2:

Type your word in and choose the colour of your text. The colour should be white, black, or a lighter or darker version of your background colour. As you can see, I’ve chosen white which conforms with the grey background.
The LetterPress effect works significantly better on larger sized text, and bold fonts work much more effectively. I’m using Museo with the weight as 700 and the size at 150pt. The settings in the next few steps apply mainly to text around 150pt. If your text is smaller, just use smaller sizes and depths. Likewise for larger fonts, use larger numbers in the settings.

Step 3:

Add a gradient overlay to your word. Set the colours to black and white, and reduce the opacity to around 5-10%. Your gradient needs to be subtle, and the lighter colours work better at the top.

Step 4:

Add an Inner Shadow to the text. This will give the effect that the text has been pressed into the surface. The depth of the inner shadow determines how far inwards the text is pressed, but I tend to find that less is more. Set the colour to black and reduce the opacity to 40%. The size and depth may change slightly depending on the size of the text you’re using (the size I used was 150pt). I’ve gone with a depth of 2px and a size of 4px. Also setting the angle at 120 degrees tends to be the most effective. The angle we use here will depict the position of the light source. 120 is a fairly natural angle, and it also helps to add the third dimension.

Step 5:

Add a light Drop Shadow. The shadow helps to give the effect that the edges are curved, as though they are beveled inwards. In order for the effect to be optimal, we need to once again consider that less is more. I’ve gone with a distance of 0px because all corners of the text will be beveled, as well as an angle of 120 degrees to be consistent with the light source and the inner shadow. Also, the colour is very important. In order to make the lighting of the text realistic, your shadow needs to be darker than the darkest colour in your background. This can easily be achieved by setting the colour to black and reducing the opacity to between 30% and 60%, depending on the darkness of your colour. That way, if you’ve got a red background, the shadow will appear dark red. Likewise with blue and every other colour.

Step 6 (optional, but worth doing):

Add some noise to your background. This light noisy texture adds to the realism off the pressed in letters. It looks like paper, or a notepad, or something else you’d imagine letters could be pressed into. I’ve gone with uniform, monochromatic noise with the amount set to 3%. Once again, i’m being minimalistic.

But I’ve got small font and it looks crappy with these settings:

Just use smaller numbers for the settings. I’ve based my figures around a font size of 150pt. If your font is significantly smaller, then just use 2 or 3 for the inner shadow depth instead of 4, or whichever number makes it look good.

That’s really all there is to it. The LetterPress effect is very simple to apply and produces great results. It’s simple, modern and incredibly stylish. Just remember to be minimalistic and all should be well.

‘Photographer’ by thibanphoto

[tweetmeme]Any photographer will understand the difficulties of dealing with camera shake. Whether lighting is dim or you’re zoomed in, a slight movement while the shutter is open could ruin your whole photo.
The clear solution is to use a tripod or to rest your camera on a steady object. But what if you’ve got nothing to lean on, or you’ve left your tripod at home?
Here are a few quick tips to help you avoid camera shake.

1. Keep your camera close. Look through the viewfinder

If you hold your camera far away from your body with your arms stretched as far as they can go, then a tiny movement will be amplified, thus resulting in a blury photo. If however you hold your camera close and look through the viewfinder then slight movements won’t matter as much. Also, holding your camera closer to your body will improve your balance, and even though it’s only a slight improvement, it really does count towards reducing that camera shake.

2. Your elbows are perfect tripods

Lie on your stomach with your elbows on the ground and look through the viewfinder. By doing this, your elbows will act as the perfect support for your camera and significantly reduce camera shake.
If however you can’t lie on the ground or you’re wearing your good shirt, leaning down on one knee with an elbow resting on your knee can also be beneficial.

3. Pretend it’s a machine gun

The ‘Machine Gun Hold’ is quite a popular ‘trick of the trade’. Place your left hand on your right shoulder, and simply rest the camera on your arm.

4. Hold your breath

The movements made by your body while breathing can actually have an impact on your photos. In order to avoid this, simply hold your breath for the duration of the shot. If you’re shooting with a 30 second shutter speed though I wouldn’t recommend this. If that’s the case, just get a tripod.

5. Use the 2 second countdown timer

The simple action of pushing the shutter button can cause a significant amount of movement. Thankfully, many cameras have a two second countdown timer to avoid blur as a result of pressing the button. If your camera doesn’t have the two second countdown timer then you could use the ten second timer instead. It may be a long time to wait, but it will help to keep your camera as steady as possible.

6. Hold onto that lens

This doesn’t apply if you’re using a point and shoot with a small lens. If you’re using an SLR with a long or heavy lens, then placing a hand towards the end of the lens can be a great way to avoid camera shake.

That’s pretty much it. As a night and evening photography enthusiast, I always used to struggle with camera shake. These tips though really have helped me out, and hopefully they’ll help you out too.
If you’ve got any more tips, feel free to share them in the comments. Good luck!

Valley of Views, Tasmania. Epic is an understatement for this place.

[tweetmeme]One of the defining properties of a great photo is that is captures the true essence of a scene and puts the viewer right in the shoes of the photographer. When you’re presented with a vast landscape, sometimes it can be difficult to portray the world around you using a single frame. In order to capture this essence you need your photo to be a depiction of everything you see, so we need to stretch beyond the bounds of a single photo and create a photograph that conveys the whole world around you.

Panoramic photography is a great way of capturing a vast scene. All it involves is taking multiple sequenced photos of a setting and then stitching them together to create a single, seamless and expansive photograph. In this guide you’ll learn a few tips on photographing panoramas, as well as how to stitch them together using photoshop.

Overlapping your photos.

When it comes to stitching your photos together, the program you’re using will look for matching features in your photos and use them to blend and align the photos together. Because of this, it’s important to have a distinct overlap in the original photos you take. Allow for a 10% to 20% overlap on the sides of your photo.

Don’t clip main features.

If there’s a distinctive object such as a tree in one of your frames, try to include all of it. If you clip half of it off then it’s likely that photoshop will have a hard time aligning and matching the intricate branches of the two photos, and you’ll see a distinct seem where photoshop has tried to put the two photos together. These can be hard to fix, so it’s best to avoid clipping significant features when taking your original photographs.

Photograph in Portrait.

This is probably the best tip I can offer. If you photograph in portrait mode then the extra sky and land in the shots will not only allow you to include more in the end photo, but it will also add another dimension to it. Take a look ‘Valley of Views’ panorama above. This has been created using 5 portrait photographs taken from a central, and if you look at the left and right edges, the photo seems to be wrapping around you. Whilst the effect is still visible when you look at a landscape-shot panorama, this third dimension is amplified by the extra sky and ground in the portrait-shot panorama.

Photographing in portrait will also give you a significantly higher resolution result. The above photo comes to almost 50 megapixels, as opposed to the 20 megapixels that would have been achieved had it been shot in portrait.

Maintain the same exposure and white balance.

Whilst the sun can still produce stunning results in a panoramic photo, its intensity can also corrupt your lighting and exposure between frames. You can quite easily combat this by using either manual mode to maintain the same exposure between shots, or alternatively use the ‘AE-Lock’ feature which will automatically lock the exposure between shots to ensure you end up with a balanced result.

Up, down, left and right.

Don’t constrain yourself to just left and right panoramic images. Experiment and try some up-down ones as well, or maybe combine both of these and produce a grid of photos with ups, downs, lefts and rights. Photographing in this way can be handy when you’re close to your subject, but if you’re distant enough to include the whole scene I’d avoid photographing in a grid and sticking to one direction.

Stitching them together.

There are a number of programs available which allow you to stitch your panoramic photographs together, many of which are free and produce great results. PTgui is probably the free one I’d recommend. Otherwise, Photoshop is perfect for stitching together your panoramic photo. Here’s how to do it:

Step 1: Open all your photos in Photoshop
This one’s pretty simple. Just open all the section photos of your panoramic photo in photoshop.

Step 2: Photomerge
Click File > Automate > Photomerge.
This will bring up a new window displaying the options for merging your photos

Step 3: Add open files
Clicking Add open files will of course add all of the photos you have open in photoshop to the photomerge list.

Step 4: Select your Photomerge layout
I tend to leave this on Auto, but there’s always room for experimentation! You should also make sure that ‘Blend images together is selected’

Step 5: Click Ok
And wait for it to load. You should now see your basic panoramic image, similar to the one below. (this image however doesn’t have blending applied)

Step 6: Crop and refine
Just crop out the wobbly edges from your panoramic image and refine any rough edges by blurring them or using the clone stamp tool.

That’s all there is to it. Panoramic photography is a great way to capture the true essence of a scene and can produce some breathtaking results. You don’t need an expensive camera, nor do you need an expensive program. All you need is an eye to capture the world around you, and these tips should help you do that.

Good Luck!

Sky high panoramic photo from Queenstown of New Zealand

There’s a Podcast version too, and it likes you.

Ever since apple started the campaign a few years ago, iPod graffiti has been immensely popular and is one of the most recognized and effective trademarks in advertising today. In this guide you’ll learn how to create your own iPod graffiti photo in a few simple steps.

Once you’ve got the basics covered you’ll be able to explore a wide range of customizations to make your photo truly unique.

There are a few resources you’ll need to try this for yourself:
The original photo, by Néstor Baltodano
or you could search Flickr for your own.
Grunge Brushes
More Grunge Brushes
Grunge Corners (very handy)

This is the photograph created in the guide:

Also, if your internet doesn’t like this Vimeo version and its high quality and size, it might get along better with the Youtube Version.

Good luck!

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Before we begin…

This guide is also in a video.

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Step 1: Choosing the Right Photo.

This is a very important part of the overall process. Some photos simply don’t work with the applied effect. To create the best Tilt Shift photo possible you need to remember that miniature models are viewed from above. Thus you need a photo overlooking something from a reasonably high angle. It doesn’t need to be hundreds of meters up viewing a whole city though. Even a single street could work nicely. Just make sure you’re high up and everything should function smoothly.

This is the picture I’ll be using. Left to it’s own devices it’s nothing special. The high angle and the cars buzzing around though make it the perfect photo to Tilt-Shiftize.

Overlooking part of Johannesburg, South Africa. My thanks goes to Paul Williamson (a friend of mine) for letting me use this photo. It really is perfect for the job.

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Step 2: Quick-Mask It.

This is a fairly simple part. Just click the little icon and you’ll be in Quick Mask Mode.

Enter Quick Mask Mode

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Step 3: Choose your Gradient.

For this you’ll need to use the reflected gradient (the 4th gradient icon from the left). This will create your depth of field effect so that there is one main focal point and everything else in the foreground or background is blurred.

This will create your Depth of Field effect.

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Step 4: Draw a Line.

Start your line from your main point of focus (that being the object you want most to look like a toy) and then draw down. The start point will be the object in view and the end point will be where the transition from clear to blurry is complete. You’ll need to experiment with the length of the gradient because this is the make or break aspect of your final image. In my image my central point of focus was the car. I drew the gradient roughly to the bottom of the image because this created the best effect in my opinion.

Experiment with this step. It can make or break your image.

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Step 5: It’s all gone red!

You’re in the right direction. This red section just shows you the gradient you drew before and won’t appear on the final image. If you don’t like the length or think it could be better, just draw your line again.

If it isn’t red then make sure you’re still in quick mask mode.

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Step 6: Exit Quick Mask Mode.

This is pretty simple. Just click the Quick Mask button again to exit the mode (or Q if you like using shortcuts). Your image should now change from being red to having the top and bottom section surrounded by ‘marching ants’. The main point of focus shouldn’t be selected.

The parts selected will be blurred out completely, gradually becoming clear as they near your focal point.

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Step 7: Open Lens Blur.

You’ll find it in Filters – Blur. Selecting this will bring up the interface where you can create your blur and thus your tilt shift.

Click it.

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Step 8: Fiddle.

Now your Tilt Shift will start taking shape. Fiddling is all you can really do here. There’s no right or wrong answer because it all depends on your specific image. To change the intensity of the lens blur you’ll need to play with the ‘radius’ bar. In my case I’ve gone for 25. This level of blur I felt pulled of the tilt shift effect nicely and still looked rather natural. Too much and the background would be too blurred and have no real place in the image. Push ‘ok’ when you’re happy with your lens blur.

Play around here until it looks right in your eyes.

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Step 9: Get rid of the Marching Ants.

To do this simply push Control+D, or for mac users push Command+D. If you don’t do this then any further edits will only occur in the selected region.

Simple enough. It isn’t a real step but some people might miss it otherwise and then their photo would be ruined.

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Step 10: Open the Hue/Saturation option.

Selecting Hue/Saturation will open up a small menu that gives you quick and easy control over the colours of your image.

Press Control+U or Command+U if you’re in a hurry.

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Step 11: Increase your Saturation.

A toy world always has much simpler, brighter and more vibrant colours. Increasing the saturation will change the colours to make the objects look more like plastic. Don’t do it too much though or it will just look too fake. The level once again is up to you and unique to your photo.

Once again, determine your amount based on what you think looks good.

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Step 12: Tweak your Image.

This is pretty much the final step. All thats left to do is whatever you think can make the image look better. Advanced photoshop users might like to adjust the levels (control/command+L). Making the dark points darker can have quite a nice effect.
In my case, I fiddled with the levels and also cropped the photo to get rid of part of the sky. I felt there was too much sky which tampered with the illusion of this being a toy world.

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Finished!

Here’s what I ended up with…

Tilt Shift Town.

I’m very happy with how mine turned out.
If you’ve got your own you’d like to share then feel free to post a link in a comment.