As a portrait photographer photographing musicians for their promo shots, sometimes I want odd and interesting color. Not real color, but something different. Other times, though, I want real color as it looks in the real world. In either case, though, I always like to start with the correct color: then if I want to change the color, I know where to start.
One of the best ways to get quick and accurate color, is to color balance the portraits in the camera. I have a couple of tools to do this, but the most basic tool is my Photovision One Shot Ditigal Target.
This is a popup reflector that has on one side 3 stripes: black, grey and white. They are all a neutrel color, so I can use it to white balance in my camera.
Using it is easy. I pop it open (it folds up to store in 1/3 of its full size) and place it directly in front of my subject. Usually when I’m photographing a musician for a portrait, I place it right in front of their nose. I ask them to hold it and I take a photo of the target, filling the frame with the target.
I then go into my menu on my camera and select “custom whitebalance”. In the custom whitebalance screen, I select the image with the image of the target. I then make sure that the custom white balance setting is engaged on my camera.
After that, I’m done. I just shoot like normal and as long as the light conditions remain the same, everything is perfectly color corrected. No messing with color correction in Photoshop or Lightroom. Fast and done.
Another use of the target, is that I can review my exposure in the histogram on my camera. Since the target includes a white, grey and black stripe, when I look at my histogram I can see exactly where whites, blacks and greys are exposed.
This technique has saved me hours and hours of time editing my images. Well worth the price of the target and the 30 seconds it takes to set it up before each portrait session.
As a professional photographer working with businesses and corporations, when I’m done with a job I need to make sure my images are safe until I can get them back to my photography studio and back them up on my computer and backup systems. It isn’t okay to just throw the CF cards in my camera bag and hope for the best. I need better protection to ensure my images arrive to the studio safely.
For years, I’ve been relying on the Gepe Card Safe Extreme Watertight Case to protect my CF cards. These cases are wonderful: they store my CF cards in a heavy protective plastic. The cases are made of a special material which protects the data from electrostatic charges, dust, water and shock.
The case has a clear window so you can see which cards are stored in the case. Over the years, I’ve devised a system. First I format a CF card in my camera. I do this for new cards and for CF cards after I’ve transferred the images to my computer. CF cards that are empty and formatted are stored so that I can read the label when I open the case. After I’ve exposed images, I put the CF card back in the case with the label facing away: so then I know that that CF card isn’t available. It is a simple solution, but very effective to make sure I don’t format a card with exposed images.
Let’s face it, if you are photographing in the middle of the day, the reviewing images on the back of your camera can be tough. The bright sunlight makes it very rough to review images. That’s way I almost always carry my handy Hoodman HoodLoupe. This thing is great: it is very similar to the loupes we used to use to review film and slides but designed to use on the LCD screen on the back of your camera.
I carry this in my bag and just bring it out when it is sunny. It has a nice cord to hang around my neck so it is always ready for me to review shots.
When I’m at a corporation taking business portraits of high-level executives, I almost always take my fabulous Canon 85mm f1.2 lens. But sometimes I’m out in town, walking around with my camera and I want a smaller, less conspicuous lens. In these cases, I often grab my reliable Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens.
This lens isn’t one of Canon’s professional lenses, but since it is a prime lens, it is still a great lens. I love the lens because it is sharp, fast yet very small. It makes my camera light and easy to carry around and also makes me less conspicuous (much less conspicuous) walking around. Great for carrying in the city or when I’m walking around alot and don’t want to carry something heavy.
Since it is the beginning of a new year, now is a good time to get ready to track your mileage for your business use of your car. So do it now and buy a notebook for your car to track business mileage expenses. To make it even easier include one with a pocket in it so that you can put all your tolls & parking receipts in it as the year progresses. Find a notebook with a pen loop so you can attach a pen, so you always have it handy.
What’s the easiest way to do it: just jot down the date, the reason for the trip, the start mileage and the end mileage every time you take use your car for a business trip. And remember to include trips to the store to pick up office supplies and other business related errands.
It really adds up. After a year of tracking, you can take a nice additional deduction of your taxes.
It’s the new year and it is time to update your copyright notices. Take a moment now to review your copyright notices to check which ones need updating.
Remember to check
- Website. Review your website for any hard-coded copyright notices. Especially check your footer. If your website doesn’t use a design that includes a copyright notice on each page, go through each page of your website and check your copyright dates. For a copyright notice on a website, you’ll usually want to use a range of dates including the first year you published your website and the current year. For example: Copyright 2005-2011 Cheryl Savan Photography.
- Lightroom. Review any place that you automatically include a copyright when exporting images. Check out your metadata presets in Lightroom, the Bridge, any Photoshop actions or in Aperture (or any other program you might use that automatically includes your copyright.)
- Contracts. Review any contracts that you use in your business to make sure your terms are up to date. For instance, if you include in your contract any copyright notice, make sure that is up to date.
I love Photoshop Lightroom for managing my photography images. As a business photographer, I come home from a photography session with thousands of images. Lightroom is great for managing and editing images.
But sometimes, I need to rename images and I don’t want to import them into Lightroom. For instance, I might have just done a very big image export but forgot to rename the images when I set up the export. I don’t want to redo the export but I certainly don’t want to manually rename the images.
In these cases, I found a great little tool to use to rename my files: NameMangler. I can use it to rename my photography image files or can use it to rename any type of file.
I’ve been using Namemangler for quite a while now and it has always worked flawlessly for me. It has a very robust schema for renaming files, so you can create something very custom when you rename your files. You can find it at http://manytricks.com/namemangler/ and it is very inexpensive (about $10).
As professional photographer, I have lots of expensive lenses. And I’m out in the field doing location portraits and location shoots. I have one really great way to protect my lens: the UV lens filter. I keep a UV lens filter over every single one of my lenses. It constantly protects the lens and I never need to remove it.
I recommend the B+W 77mm Ultraviolet (UV) Filter. I have one of these on all of my lenses. The filter is a bit expensive (about $50 each) but when you consider that many professional lenses cost around $1800, this is a small price to pay for protection.
When I clean the filters, they are often very dirty and smudged from an extended photo session on location. But whenever I remove the filter and look underneath, the lens is clean and pristine.
Worth it in my book!
For my professional work, I mainly photograph portraits: photographs of people. I’m really obsessed about creating sharp portraits if people are using their portraits for marketing purposes: I feel that the sharpness helps their customers clearly see them and connect with them. To do this, I have one lens that I always go-to over and over: the Canon 85mm f/1.2 lens. I love this lens. But it isn’t cheap. I resisted buying this lens when I first started my photography business: but one use and I was hooked! Why do I love it so much. First, it is sharp. Very, very sharp. A photographer friend of mine recently asked what I did in post-processing to get my images so sharp. The answer: nothing. It’s all done in camera. With the super sharp 85mm lens, fast firing lights and careful focus I don’t need to sharpen after the fact. Some of the great things about the 85mm. It is a “fast” lens so it has a very wide aperture. This is great for a couple of things. First, if I shoot shallow (at say at f 1.2 or f 2.0), the lens creates a beautiful background blur. Because the quality of the glass is so high, the blur is particularly beautiful. Also since the lens can open up so wide, it lets in a lot of light. And this helps with focusing. With more light, focus is better. Resulting in sharper images. Try the 85mm lens. You’ll love it. But watch out, once you try it, you’ll want to buy it.
As a professional photographer, when I’m on a job, I find that there is often a lot of curiosity about the equipment I’m using. I thought I’d start a series of posts on the equipment I use and why I like it.