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Pictures by Pietro Zuco, (twitter)

The art of portraits is a game played by two people, the photographer and the model. The relationship between them is important and it’s the key point in the process to obtain the best expressions from our model. I remember that the first time I tried to take a portrait many feelings passed through my mind. I was nervous, I was shy and I was always afraid to make my model feel uncomfortable. The model as well perceived my feelings and at the end a whole uncomfortable environment got created. After that, I learned one important lesson: connect with your model.

Follow these recommendations and you will notice a huge difference in your portraits:

1. Get in touch with your model. If you will prepare a long photoshot, it’s better to meet first, and take a coffee. In that way, you’ll know about your model’s personality and create a more comfortable environment for the photoshot’s day. If you cannot have any previous contact with the model, always try to understand her/his personality that day. It will help you a lot for capturing and anticipating expressions and angles related to each person.
2. Talk to your model. Let her to be free to create by herself. Improvisation is the main source of unbelievable expressions and feelings. Ask things, feelings, try to put her in different situations like asking questions that she wouldn’t expect. Make her laugh. All of this will finally bring both to one point: get relaxed.
3. Try always to think that the model is looking at a lens and probably a huge peace of gear moving around her. Try to imagine yourself in her place, posing in front of a camera with a stranger in front of you moving around, asking you to put in that position, move your head, touch your hair and so forth. Some people get literally blocked. So, it’s your work, as a photographer, to relax and make the model feel just fine. It’s like a game.
4. Never and ever try to force your model to adopt a particular pose or to do something that she won’t feel comfortable doing. You want her to give to you the best of her talent. So always try to make her feel good.
5. Don’t be in a hurry. Take your time even if you have few. It’s better to have few good shots than 500 crappy pictures.
6. Don’t get stocked to some fixed ideas. Take different angles, different details of the face, the hands, everything. It’s a whole where each element plays a role in the final image. Relax about rules of photography and composition, try to brake them with harmony.

This is a fluid process, let it be. Portraits involve human communication and this is all about experience dealing with people. You can find a perfect portrait from a stranger in a street that accepts to pose for you. Even in that few seconds, try to imagine what kind of person she/he is. If you can, just exchange a few words. You will always learn something from others in this process.

Also remember that every person has a different color of skin, different shape. Some people are really expressive and others are just like a plain wall. Just try to adapt to them. At the end, they are the source of information for the stories in your picture. Try to catch it instead to force them to send the message that you want.
The art of portrait is like hunting feelings hidden in people faces and bodies. Everybody is unique and everybody has something to give. Print that in your film is your work :-)

Please share your experiences as a model or photographer.

At a glance

• 12.1 megapixel full-frame sensor.
  Enough MP for almost everything, prints of 14.1″ x 9.4″ for 300dpi and 21.2″ x 14.1″ for 200dpi. Only in case you really want to print huge prints you better try more expensive gear like Nikon D3X, Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Hasselblad H4D or Mamiya DM56 or just buy a traditional medium-format film-base camera. Cheaper and better quality.
• Image Sensor Cleaning (vibration)
  This is a really convenient feature. Usually technical service don’t ask too much for cleaning the sensor but it’s really annoying to find a dirty dark point in our pictures and realize that you are not able to do anything to clean it up in that moment. Some cleaning sets come in hand for those situations. But I strongly discourage to use them, only in case you really know what you are doing.
• ISO from 200 to 6400 and forcing until 25600 to 100:
  This is one of the greatest thing of the D700. The sensibility is just amazing. Almost no noise even at 6400 ISO. Check bellow for some examples.
• Don’t threw away your DX lenses!!
  They are supported. The resolution will drop to 5MP but you can still use them. Check examples bellow
• 51-point focus sensor:
  Forget about previous problems to focus with the D200 and some old lenses. D700 auto focus just works even for wide apertures.
• Active D-Lighting:
  This system increases the dynamic range. Check examples bellow
• Magnesium body and buttons are sealed against moisture and dust.

ISO

This is my most important feature, because I realize mainly many pictures in low light conditions. The ISO of the D700 is just awesome.
The FX format opens many new possibilities about light sensibility. Noise reduction is the first thing that receive a positive impact due the bigger size of the CMOS sensor.
Check the images bellow. Click each of them, they will open in a new window in full resolution:

Click on the image to see in full resulution

D700 ISO 1600	D700 ISO 3200	D700 ISO 6400	D700 ISO 25600

D200 ISO 1600	D200 ISO 3200

Just compare, ISO 6400 on the D700 has less noise than the ISO 1600 on the D200!!
I suggest to shot from ISO 200 to 1600 for best low noise performance. Anyway at 3200 it still just works fine.
Higher ISO level will increase a lot the noise. Usually I prefer to shot in black and white for those huge ISO level pictures. Colors get drained and details get lost.

What to do with my DX lenses?

Don’t worry! Your DX lenses will work just fine. The only thing is a reduction in resolution. It just drops to 5MP.
Advantages of DX format is that you can get a 127mm/1.8F lens for the price of a 85mm/1.8F lens. The DX format applies a crop factor of 1.5. This means that all your non DX lenses need to be multiplied by this factor. So a normal 50mm lens will become a 75mm lens. DX format cameras, for example a Nikon D200, have a smaller CMOS and that means more noise at high ISO but you can get more megapixels for that cropped image. For example a Nikon D200 have a DX sensor and a resolution of 10MP. That means that for a smaller surface compared to D700 FX format we have just 2MP less. Because DX lenses match perfectly with this format, we have an effective 10MP image.
If we use the DX lens on a FX format, the sensor is bigger but the lens project the effective image over a smaller surface. Remember that a DX lens was designed only for DX format cameras so the projected image will fit a DX format area over a bigger FX format area. Of course in this process we lose some resolution. That’s why using a DX lens in a D700 we have only 5MP instead of the 10MP of the Nikon D200.
For example if we use a Nikon D3X instead of a D700 and a DX lens, the cropped image will have 10MP instead. Just because the D3X has more megapixels than the D700.

Check these images for a better understanding:

If we don’t apply the AUTO DX crop on the D700 this is what actually a DX lens projects to the focal plane. Lens: AF-S Nikkor 18-70mm DX

After apply the DX AUTO Crop on the D700 settings, we can use any DX lenses. Remember that we are actually using only some portion of the CMOS sensor corresponding with only 5MP.

Same lens used on the D200.

Batteries

You can use the same batteries as the Nikon D200 and D300 EN-EL3e. The performance is great if you don’t make a extensive use of the flash. I just can use one battery for the whole day. Anyway, a second replacement battery is a must to just be safe. Only in case you need a frame rate bigger than 5fps the battery grip (same as D300) will come in handy. If you are happy with 5fps you can just same money and keep only one more battery in your pocked. The MB-D10 battery grip is expensive and add an extra weight to the camera.

Things that I really love of the D700

It’s robust and well made. The camera is really strong and you can notice that you don’t have a crappy piece of plastic in your hands.

Nikon improved the accessibility and it has more buttons near my right hand. So with just one hand I can access even more options compared with the D200. It also have the info button. Really useful!! Check the pic bellow:

The virtual horizon! I have already one in my tripod but having one integrated in the camera is just a great idea!

Live View! This is one more option that I can’t live without. I usually don’t like to see what I’m about to shot in a screen. I prefer to see through a viewfinder. Anyway for some situations the live view is really useful. Now I don’t have to lay down in the ground to shot in a weird angle. It also helps for some “discrete” photos so people don’t realize that actually you are taking a picture :-) it also helps for manual focus under low light environments. The live view lets me zoom in the actual view and see exactly how focused the image is.

You can also use the virtual horizon in the same live view!

Advantages of FX format

With the FX format the era of cropping factors comes to an end. You have the same format as a traditional 35mm camera with the advantage that all the old Nikon f-mount lenses will work exactly in the way they where supposed to. It also has the advantage to obtain real focal length for prime lenses.
FX format will improve the ISO as well. The CMOS surface is bigger and it allocate the same number of pixels than an equivalent DX format reducing electronic interference when a high ISO is applied and, therefore, reducing the noise at high ISO.

50mm prime lens on D700 FX format

Same 50mm lens on D200 DX format.

Now a fisheye

Fisheye AF Nikkor 16mm/2.8F on D700 FX format

Same lens on a D200 DX format

Remember that for Nikon digital, only D700, D3, D3s, D3X are full format. Other cameras, will have the same behavior as the D200 examples above.

Active D-lighting! Increase the dynamic range. This helps a lot in situations where the image is composed by very different exposure levels. For example, you want to shot a room with an open window. If we want to see the image outside the window, we have to adjust the exposure, but at the same time we cannot see the interior of the room because it will be dark. If we adjust exposure for the room, we will see a white square instead of a window. Usually HDR is the digital solution for this scenario. Anyway, Active D-Lighting will help increasing the dynamic range of the image and, therefore, showing an image closer to the one we are seeing with our on eyes.

Check the examples bellow:

No Active D-Lighting system.

Look at the grass in the bottom. It’s over exposed. Anyway we can see what is about under the tree.

Active D-Lighting system

Now the grass is not over exposed and we can still see what is about under the tree. This image is closer with the one I saw with my own eyes.

Who should buy this camera

The D700 is more expensive than the D300 but the extra price is totally worth paying. Anyway if you never, or just in rare occasions, need to take pictures under low light environment and you are not able to do any long exposure, maybe a D700 is not the best choice. In this case maybe a D300 is better for you.
If you want to shot people in movement in low light environments like parties, close locals, concerts and so forth, this is the camera for you!!

In case you are not a night images hunter, think about the advantages of a FX format when using prime lenses or old Nikon lenses. You get the real no cropped area as with a 35mm camera.

That simple! The main advantage of the D700 is the high ISO performance and the FX format. The rest is almost the same as a D300.

If you are a D200 or D300 user, you can save money reusing many accessories. Remote cord control, batteries, the grip (only for the D300) and so forth.

Until now these are some of the pictures I took with the D700, more are coming :-)

Using a flash under sunlight environment.

Desaturating with lightroom.

She’s cute ^^;

Fisheye 16mm Nikkor.

Check Akina web
Akina My Space
Follow her on Twitter

There are tons of photography apps for the iPhone. I didn’t have time to check all of them. From all the apps that I tried, these are the ones that actually I cannot live without.

Camera Genius
Flickit
PhotoForge
PhotoMarkr
PS Mobile
Camera Plus
TiltShiftGen
QuadCamera
Pro HDR

Camera Genius

It is a great tool. It has all the functions that the built-in iPhone camera software lacks: Zoom, stabilizer, timer, one touch screen, and many more.
Usually I use this application when I have to take a self-photograph because the one touch screen option lets me touch any part of the screen to take my picture, instead of the small button at the bottom that the native iPhone photo app has.

One more interesting use of it, it’s the timer. I can take a group pictures to include myself.

iTunes Link

Flickit

I use this app to upload on the fly pictures to flickr. The main advantages of this app are: automatic reduction of resolution, default set of group and tags, quick and easy interface.
This is my preferred tool for things like Tokyo Live Bloggers where I just upload things I find around Tokyo in real time. With Flickit I don’t have to worry about tags, groups, nothing. Just set it one time and all your content will be uploaded with the proper meta information.

iTunes Link

PhotoForge

This is a really powerful tool for photo edition. I use it constantly. It lets you edit almost all parameters: like Contrast, Brightness, Exposure, Vibrance and so forth. It also has many filters from LOMO, night vision, Black and white and many more. You can crop, paint with a brush, fill with color… It’s one of the most full featured apps for image editing on iPhone.

iTunes Link

PhotoMarkr

Good tool to watermark your pictures before upload them to the web. Easy interface and good watermarking options.

iTunes Link

PS Mobile

This is the Adobe Photoshop version for iPhone.
It’s a great app but it lacks of many functions that, for example, PhotoForge has.
Anyway the interface is good and it has some great effects.

iTunes Link

Camera Plus

It’s similar to Camera Genius but it lacks of many of it’s functions.
The main advantage of Camera Plus is that the application loads really quickly and it has a zoom control by default near the bottom panel.

iTunes Link

TiltShiftGen

Cool application for TiltShift. You have a tiltshift in photoforge too, but this one is more configurable and it has more options. This app is just for only tiltshift! But it’s great.

iTunes Link

QuadCamera

I really love this one. You can configure it to shot at a predetermined interval of time and put every frame in one picture, making a square composition. It’s useful specially to deal with those services where we just want to send one picture. For example in twitter. We don’t want to bother people with several links so we can create one shot with 4 or 6 shots inside.

iTunes Link

Pro HDR

Really cool HDR app. If you are able to keep the iPhone in the same position for two consecutive shots, this app will do a great HDR job.

iTunes Link

What app do you use?
Some better options for the ones I listed above?

Just in the middle of such a tech environment, I found her in the darkness illuminated only by the light of projectors and mobile screens. Geek girls are also cute :)

So white balance is just a method to find the right color balance. That means “understand when white is white” and from that point, understand the real color of things in the image. The automatic white balance (AWB) in almost every digital camera, does not match 100% the colors and sometimes we have to specify what kind of light we are exposing the picture.

What kind of light? Light is just light! Different light sources produce different temperature lights. For example, the light in a cloudy day is totally different from the direct light of a sunny day or from the light of an electric neon tube. The colors render differently and our eyes and brain adjust automatically to that light to show us colors as much close as possible to the original.

An image will clarify this better.

These two images have been taken the same day, at the same time. I just changed the white balance. The first one, told the camera to adjust to a light temperature that didn’t match with the light in that moment. Let’s think about light from a non-technical point of view. Light comes from one or multiple sources and it reflects all around. Objects absorbed some portion of that light and reflect some other portion of it. The reflected light is the color of the objects. Depending on the light source, that irradiates the scene, the reflected light, it means the colors, will be different as well. That’s why white balance is so important in color photography. In monochrome or black and white it is not a mayor issue, specially in digital photography, because we can adjust the final image to match the tones of grays that we want.

How to use the white balance.

To understand the process, just imagine the light at dusk. Objects under that light get an orange tone. Our brain doesn’t try to render them with their real colors. The color of dusk light overcomes the rest, and all the image has that special orange-gold color. We can try to force that image to match as close as possible the real colors, but depending on the situation, this effort might be a waste of time.
Don’t confuse white balance as a way to render always the real color of things. Think about it as a way to render the image as real as the one we are seeing with our eyes.

These are the common symbols that you can find in any digital camera. They represent different kind of lights.

Usually it’s more comfortable to set the white balance in automatic (AWB), so in case of a hurry to shot, we don’t have to think about the light and set it manually. Just let the camera sensors decide for us. In case of low light environment, specially in closed locals with different kind of lights, the pictures tend to have a reddish color. To avoid this is not easy. It also depends on the camera.
Usually DSRL cameras and also some compact cameras, let you set the white balance based on the light temperature in Kelvin degrees. Just think that light can be expressed in temperature, the sun is the highest and the blue of a gas fire in the kitchen is one of the lowest. Based on this, setting the temperature as low as possible, will help to overcome that reddish light.

This is the menu to set the light temperature in a Nikon D200. The showed temperature, 2500K is the lowest and the highest is 10000K

Some cameras, like the Canon G11, have a superb automatic white balance based on the environment. This let you set the white balance in really hard situations with low light conditions.

Anyway, in case the white balance was not properly set, if you shot in RAW and you use a good edition software like Lightroom or Aperture, this can be easily fixed to match it as close as possible to the real colors.

Just remember. White balance has a direct relationship with the way colors are rendered in the picture. So before you shot in an environment with artificial light or if you are going to use a flash, think about the white balance.

Requirements

I’m looking for beginners or amateur models that would love to pose in front of a camera. Age (+18), Ethnicity, Language and Gender are not a problem. Professionals are also welcome but please read about the payment and benefits at the end.
If you want to learn how to pose or you want to get used to be in front of a camera, I will love to help you in this process as well.

What kind of photography?

I’m not fixed with a concrete style. I like creativity and I love to hear from you, about your ideas as well. This is not a lonely-photographer game. This is a team work, the photographer and the model are a combo, that work together to express in the photography their feelings and their creativity. If you desire to play a particular role, to dress in a particular way or if you always dreamed about posing for a concrete kind of pictures, just let me know. I will love to listen about your project and work together to achieve it.
If you lack of ideas, don’t worry I have a lot of them :)
The kind of photography I’m looking for is:

• Portraits
• Fashion
• Make up
• Urban
• Cosplay
• Art nude (Check details at the end of this post)

Payment and benefits

I prefer to avoid to use money, so I won’t pay you with money. Anyway I don’t discard this possibility, so drop me a line and let’s discuss about this.

I’m actually asking for a collaboration where we both have a benefit.

Common benefits and agreements:

• I will give you the pictures, printed or in a CD or any other medium that you prefer. Of course in full resolution. This is also called: TFCD/P (time for CD/Print)
• The pictures will have a small watermark, linking to this site in the bottom.
• You are totally free to use those pictures for your own book, blog, web site, whatever.
• In a normal photoshot I can shot hundreds of pictures. I will reserve to myself the right to choose and edit the final ones that I will deliver to you. I never upload full resolution pictures in this web site but of course I will give you the full resolution ones in the CD.
• If you have a blog or online book, I will link you from this blog helping you to promote your name and your site. I’ll do this from this blog, from flickr, from twitter and from facebook.
• I we do a good job, I will recommend you to other photographers that are interested in finding models.
• We can also be friends :-)
• If you want to learn how to pose and get used to be in front of a camera, I will help you in this process.
• You have to agree that your pictures will be posted in this web site and my portfolio.

Art nude details

Models have to be more than 18 years old.
Only females, sorry guys…
For nude photography I focus only in the artistic aspect.

You can contact me in many ways:

twitter
facebook
Flickr
Drop me a comment and fill the e-mail text field, it won’t be shown in the site

Amano Ai-chan

Nekomimi

The three guys! From left: Peter Van der Weeen, Rob Van Nylen, Andrew Shuttleworth

Oren in Lady Gaga style ^^;

Big brother was watching us…
This is the “eye” created by Steve Nagata that broadcasted the event. Check Steve’s channel at USTREAM

Look at previous events:
CGM Night December 2009
CGM Night Episode #5

For example do this simple experiment:

With one hand close one eye and put your finger just in front of you but don’t cover the background, just move it a little bit to the right or left side, depending on which eye you had closed.
Now focus on your finger, just look at it and, don’t move your view from it! Try to see the background without moving your view from the eye. You can see that it’s blurred and your finger focused.
Now try the opposite, focus on the background and see at your finger without moving your view from the background. It should be blurred.
You have two fast prime lenses in your head! :)

We are used to see the world through our eyes, which behave approximately like a fast 50mm lens. That means that when we see a picture with a good bokeh our attention will point immediately to the subject and then we have the opportunity to admire the soft and nice texture of a blurred background.
Think about it, we are not able to see that background with our own eyes. Well, actually we are, but we cannot see it directly, we can only perceive it from the external borders or our vision.

To understand the technical details of the Bokeh, you need to understand the depth of field. For a technical explanation check the wiki. Anyway you don’t need to understand to go so deep into technical explanations to be able to use it. Let’s discuss here the practical (and funny) part of it.

The depth of field is directly related with the aperture. That is the amount of light that your lens let pass through it. The wider the aperture, and the bigger the blur. The narrower the aperture, the smaller the blur. Don’t get confused with the f/stop number. Check out the aperture controls in your camera.

Left: Wide aperture Right: Narrowed aperture

The number used to indicate the aperture is called the f-number or f/stop. There is not a concrete definition of the term stop in this context. Think about it as an attempt to say “something that stops light to enter!”. If we narrow the aperture, in some way we are stopping light to enter. The lack of a concrete context for the term “stops” could lead some confusion. Let’s focus on the practical matter: the f-number has a direct relationship with the diameter of the circle that we saw in the previous pics. Remember a big f-number indicates a narrowed aperture and a small f-number indicates a wide aperture. So don’t get confused. If somebody tells you “increase the aperture!!” what do you understand by that? Increase the f-number, “stops” light to enter or increase the diameter of the diaphragm?

Remember:

The smaller the number, the wider the aperture and the bigger the amount of light that will enter through the lens.

To obtain a good bokeh we need a wide aperture, that means a small f-number.
The best lenses to obtain this are the fast prime lens, the most common ones are the 50mm and 85mm at 1.2, 1.4 or 1.8F. Anyway, any lens that could be set to an aperture less than 2 or 2.5 is enough.

With this kind of photography we have to be specially careful of two things:

- It’s really hard to focus with such a small depth of field. We cannot rely 100% on the autofocus. Sometimes it’s necessary to deal directly with manual focus.

- In well illuminated environments we have the camera to shot at a huge speed. Depending on the equipment, sometimes the camera cannot afford the required speed. In such cases we can use an ND filter

ND FILTER (Neutral Density)

Check these three pictures that will show the meaning of the depth of field

If we narrow the aperture, the depth of field also changes and the sharped zone increases as well.

Also, the depth of field could be used to bring to focus the subject that we are interested to show. For example, in these two pictures, the second one shows the doll in the back giving a sense of depth. If we compare the second pic with the first one, we can see how we increase that sense of depth focusing subjects that are not in the first plane.

In this video, you have the depth of field in action.

Direct link here

The depth of field is a powerful concept that we can use for many different creative purposes. From a basic understanding, it’s used to put in evidence a particular subject and to catch our attention to the sharp point. From a generic point of view, depth of field is just an art, so let’s talk about it a later post.

Check some bokeh in Flickr

I bought one for 3000 yen ($33) in a shop in Akihabara (Techno district of Tokyo) that sells junk stuff. The glass is in perfect conditions and the big aperture plus the good ISO performance of the Pentax K-X makes a good combination for nocturne urban photography.

The lens started to be manufactured in 1962, based on the data in this database. It uses the old but popular M42 mount. Basically it’s just has a screw and you have to turn it until it got fixed into the camera body. In fact it’s not practical, it takes some time to change lenses. Actual Pentax K-X and other models don’t use that mount system anymore but there are adapters for them. I used an adapter that cost me the same as the lens!

This is the lens mounted on the Pentax K-X

I love the retro fashion of the lens :)

It’s not so big. Anyway it’s a little bit odd to see that lens in a new camera. When I see it, remembers me to see an old lady dressed as a teenager…

I love the bokeh and quality of this lens. It has a finest and soft bokeh, much better than the 50mm 1.4F for example. The aperture is manual and it’s better to use it in manual, because the camera automatic settings will get confused with no aperture control. When you use it in manual, changing the aperture and the focus, reminds me of a time where all those automatic capabilities was just science fiction. Changing manually the aperture and the focus, for some reason makes me feel a Leica experience. I just have to worry about few settings and I need an understanding of those settings as if they was part of myself. Just set the aperture, speed, focus and shot.

Don’t worry to buy old lenses. Just keep in mind that you maybe need to use only manual settings. It’s important to check carefully the lens, anyway. Scratches, malfunctioning or humidity could be there, hidden for an inexperienced eye, so if you still have no experience with this stuff, try to go to the shop with a friend that could advise you.
Soon I will publish a post about who to check the quality of used lenses.

To shot portraits do we need a studio? do we need a special high quality gear?
Of course if we have a studio, the knowledge, the time and the equipment we can do almost anything! But usually we lack of the necessary tools when we find the right person and the right moment to shot a good portrait.

This little Howto will explain how to do it with a DSRL, a small flash, an extension cable and a white sheet.
All this stuff can be easily carried in a bag.

Ok we are ready to shot portraits that looks like made in a studio.
Now the only thing we need to understand is the light.
Think about light as it was a high pressure water stream but without the damage that the water can produce. It’s easy to see the root source of a stream of water but it’s really hard to understand where the light comes from.
In a studio we can control light sources and direct it where we need. In case of an improvised portrait we have to minimize as much as we can non controlled light sources. That’s why we need a flash and a reflector, just to overcome environment lights.

Many other factors will come depending on the situation and the subject. For example, a cap, long hair, color of the skin and so forth. All of this can only be understood with practice and the practice is the funny part of this :)

How to make the background dark?

The darker the environment is the easier for this kind of portraits.
In case we have to take it in a well illuminated environment, we have to play with aperture and lights.
The flash light will be stronger than interior lights and this will help us.

For example, instead to bother a real model let’s take a drossel figma dool that will never complain to be tortured with the flash :)

This is the artificial illumination of a neon light at home. This is the illumination as perceived by a naked eye.

What we have to do is set the camera parameters so the background and the subject get totally dark without flash light. In this case I chose: aperture f/11 and speed 1/250.
Just increase the speed and reduce the aperture to minimize as much as possible the light that pass through the lens.

This picture still contain some information, if we increase exposure, brightness and fill light in Lightroom we can see that behind that dark square there is still something

So at this point we have to set our reflector as close as possible to the subject as well the flash. We don’t want that any light goes to the background, we want it dark.
This is the final result

Here you are, portraits everywhere and no need of studio or too expensive illumination equipment.

Finally this is the way to put the reflector and the flash.

In case the background don’t get totally dark, don’t worry, you can always use some post processing to make it dark :)

Check these pictures, they were made with the same technique in bars and streets:

So with these HowTo’s posts I want to explain how to develop that eye, and not how to understand that eye.
This makes a huge difference. Teaching how to develop something is nothing more than teaching one, of several paths, to reach the same point. So you don’t have to follow any path, you just have to see how other people feel and walk that path to get what you like for your own path. That’s why it’s not possible to explain the photographer eye, it’s only possible to show how people feel it. From that experience we can wake up our own one.

Let’s start with Composition. How important is to find the proportions and distance relationship between the elements in a photograph? There are some common rules called: Golden Rules If you don’t know them, please read about that first! Please don’t blame me because I told you before that no rule can explain how to develop the photography eye. These rules are related with the way humans perceive visual information. Of course, these rules can be broken to achieve the unachievable.

How can we put together the elements to have a good looking picture?

Every person, when seeing an image, has a different approach to it. Some people just see it as a whole, other people from one angle, because something called their attention, whatever.
So first of all, remember that it’s impossible to take a picture that everybody will love. Some people will consider it a crap and some of them may consider it a visual masterpiece.
Anyway, independently what people could think about the image, remember what a picture is, or one of it’s multiple definitions. It’s the art that captures that static moment in time, the real present. It can tell you a story.

Don’t try to think about this in the few instants before you shot it! Instead of that, try to get out with the proper attitude. You will notice how after some time, you will develop a better capacity to observe and see details that before just passed out unnoticed to your view. Take your time, see the things that surround you. Do those things tell something to you? Do you feel something when you see that moment that you thing it’s worth taking?

I got a good acceptance with this picture in flickr. It was taken with a Nikon D70, just a normal, entry level, old digital camera.
It was near one of the first places I lived in Tokyo, in Higashi Nakano.
To be honest, I didn’t feel really good that day. I started to live for a long term in Japan at the end of 2006, and at that time I was new here with almost no friends. I felt sometimes really alone.
So I decided to get out at night and do some photowalks until dawn was breaking in my lens.
So that picture tells a story, I still had a long path to do, starting my life in a new country, discover a new culture… It was dark, like my feelings of loneliness, and nobody was there, as my life was at that time.

So what I want to say is: if you shot your pictures and you just forget that you have a camera, try to feel the environment, smell the air, look at the simple things, like a street or a window, or a traffic light, or a taxi, whatever. Walk, see, feel, think, let yourself go… And in that moment, as an impulse, you will feel the need to share the whole moment with others. The only way to do it is using that camera in your hands!

So what about the composition???

So the secret is, when you see your story, when you feel that, when you are synchronized with the things you are seeing, in that moment try to see through the lens the same thing you are seeing with your eyes. Remember the basic rules and try, practice. After several shots you will realize the technical differences between the camera and your eyes. As a technical thing, you will be able to overdue these differences quickly and you will concentrate to develop that feeling, set your mind to the exploration and the harmony between you and the environment. You won’t have to worry what composition is anymore.

Try it and let me know your experience. Send me links of your pictures if you try to do this :)