Shooting Herps (part 4)

I’ll now finish up part 4 of this series with letting you know what my workflow is.

So here we are, you have your photos finally on your computer. If you shot RAW then you already know that they need to go into a program such as Adobe Lightroom, Apple’s Aperture, or some other RAW conversion and editing engine (many camera manufacturers supply their own).

But if you shot JPEG and only have a simple editing program such as Adobe Elements or the free GIMP then you can still edit your jpegs.

I recommend Scott Kelby’s books on using Adobe Lightroom. There are also numerous articles on the internet which will make you more versed in post processing. Or you can take a class at your local community college.

Also, if you are a professional or serious amateur the chances are you will be working on a calibrated monitor. This allows you to work with true color and makes it a lot easier when you go to print. (Have you ever printed out a photo that looks nothing like it does on your computer?) This article won’t cover that aspect but it’s something to consider. Here is a resource to educate you on that.

http://www.imaging-resource.com/ARTS/MONCAL/CALIBRATE.HTM

In brief, I will cover a couple of the major points to consider. This is a starting point.

Cropping

Sometimes it just looks better to crop something. You have to be careful when cropping jpegs because the resolution tends to go down when you HEAVILY crop a photo. There is the rule of thirds that comes into play as well so aesthetically sometimes your photograph will flourish when cropped. Another thing that cropping can do is focus your viewer's attention.

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Saturate but lightly please.

Sometimes it is nice to saturate the photo to enhance color. Don’t go overboard and overly saturate. This will looked “over cooked” as it’s called and will then ruin a perfectly good photo. You want it to look natural but subtly enhance the color (your eyeball sees much better depth of color than ANY camera on earth today). If shooting JPEG your camera can apply saturation in the camera while shooting, with RAW you have the power to determine that yourself.

Sharpen it up

Again this can be applied in camera to jpegs, but with RAW you can decide the degree to which you want to sharpen things. It’s very nice to enhance the sharpness of the iris or scales or whatever.

Lighten or Darken, but not too much.

Hopefully you got your exposure correct when you were shooting. Trying to lighten or darken a photo without losing details and without creating NOISE can be a tough thing to do and it’s even worse with JPEG. You have some play with RAW but JPEG there is very little headroom to work with. But try just a little to lighten or darken. Sometimes, darkening a little will give it a more saturated look. But be wary of going past what your RAW can handle or jpeg. Too much and it will be very grainy and or all detail will be lost.

For the Web!

Alright, now the final output of your photo if you are posting them to the web can be at 72dpi and this should knock down the file size and make upload time much quicker.

There are many places to host your photos and many of them are free. A very popular and currently the largest free photo hosting site is Flickr by Yahoo. It’s not bad for being able to be social as well.

DeviantArt is also another great place and hosts many different images. And so the list goes on, Smugmug, Zenfolio, Imageshack, Pbase, Photobucket, Tinypic, on and on, ad infinitum.

I host my stuff at Zenfolio where I also make it available for purchase. If you want to get an account at Zenfolio use this code in the referral box. (Zenfolio referral code: 7UT-WQR-4RE)

For Print!

For print, I leave my prints at maximum size. As I usually shoot RAW I just convert to the highest quality JPEG and leave the resolution around 240 ppi. This ensures prints up to poster size.

You’ll want to do this if you intend on printing too. And you will notice your file sizes increasing exponentially. This can be a problem at free photo sharing sites such as Flickr, that give you a maximum amount in megabytes that you can upload a month.

Well that’s pretty much it. My summary (at long last):

1) Patience

2) Shoot in Raw + Jpeg

3) Use an off camera flash that is either cabled to your camera or linked through the infrared system, E-TTL on Canon, I-TTL on Nikon. This is available in other brands of cameras too.

4) Hold flash to a side, above or below and fire using autofocus.

5) Conversely, if you find it too hard to maintain focus because your subject keeps moving, switch to manual and basically focus in, resume holding the flash and then take your pic when you see through the viewfinder that the pet is in focus.

6) With a telephoto lens and in well lit spaces or outdoors you won’t be close enough to hold a flash and use a telephoto lens. So just shoot.

7) Get down on their level.

8) Focus on key parts such as the eyes.

9) Vary the aperture for different focus points, more open such as f1.4 gives you a very thin plane of focus. Higher such as f5.6 puts more into focus.

10) Capture your pet from different angles. Capture their characteristics which make them unique. And capture them in their element if possible.

11) Apply some basic post processing techniques to enhance your photos, not drastically change them. Your viewers will be awed.

12) Practice, practice and more practice. Don’t expect to be able to take National Geographic submissions overnight. It takes time. As a novice it really takes time and experience. Just keep at it and refer back to the various parts of this article as many times as you need to. And also look for over articles or books on the subject.

Happy Shooting!!