Regular LR 1.3

LR 2.0 with selective area editing to make the sky darker and more saturated.

Very cool. Lightroom 2.0 is out in Beta. Download it!

I was just on a forum reading about the unfortunate events that have happened to a photographer.  Basically, his airlines for a destination wedding went out of business.  He was out the airfare and the other options were for thousands of dollars that he didn’t have.  I completely feel for this guy, who is a real nice person and got stuck with a bill for thousands that he wasn’t expecting.  My issue, which is cold and callous, is that no one running a business should ever have so little cash on hand!

When I am consulting with photographers that are starting their businesses, I always recommend that they keep 6 months of all their expenses in the bank.  Not in stocks, bonds, real estate, or anything else that can make it inaccessible or could take a nose-dive in value.  You can call this your “rainy day” fund, or be more realistic like myself and call it your “Oh, crap I broke my hand and can’t hold a camera fund.”

Often, when I propose this idea,  I get the reaction that it would be hard or impossible to save that kind of money.  Followed by horrified reactions when I explain that a BMW is not a necessity.  Or that eating out is optional.  Or they try not drinking coffee at Starbucks and brewing their own at home.  So…stop buying cameras, lenses, monitors, computers, drive an old Kia, whatever it takes to get your rainy day fund so that you can afford to be in business on a bad day.

Great place to find sources of inspiration!  The Blog of Photogs.

Laurence Kim is a spectacular wedding photographer in Seattle. His images almost always feature perfect sharpness and it is a bit of a trademark of his. When I saw on his blog that he was giving away his secrets, I asked him if I could share them as well! You can see more of his images on his website and blog.

I get asked all the time - by professionals as well as amateurs - how I get my images to look so sharp - so clean and crispy. Well, there really is no secret (well, there’s one secret you’ll see in a minute). Getting that crisp look is a combination of several factors. I hope this brief explanation helps, let me know if it does!

(1) Make sure your image is properly exposed. In my opinion, this is probably the most important factor in getting a crisp image. Get in the habit of taking a quick test shot and look at your histogram. While the shape of the histogram will vary according to the lighting conditions, the one thing you want is for the shape go all the way to the right side of the chart, like this:

Now take a look at this histogram. You’ll clearly see the data does not go all the way to the edge of the histogram, it’s about one stop underexposed.

Yes, you can adjust the exposure slider in your image editing software of choice to stretch the chart to the right. You’ll need to do this to produce an acceptable image, but the drawback is that when you stretch the data to fix an underexposed image, it gets muddy. I’m not a techie so I can’t explain exactly why, but just do your best to get the exposure correct in the camera.

Since I usually shoot in aperture-priority mode, the way I do this is take a quick test shot, then look at the histogram. 90% of the time, if shooting indoors I’ll need to add some positive exposure compensation, often a full stop or more. If I’m shooting a bride in a white dress in a room with white walls I know for sure my default camera setting will be +1 exposure compensation. Don’t trust the image in your camera’s LCD! It will often look okay even if severely underexposed. Just trust the histogram. Lastly, don’t worry about blown-out highlights if they occur on non-critical areas of the frame (windows, light fixtures, etc.). It’s more important that your subject be properly exposed.

(2) Hold that camera steady! Camera shake is another enemy of sharp images. Find a technique that works for you. I form a little tripod with the camera pressed against my forehead and my two elbows anchored against my torso. Then I shift my feet so they are spread apart, with one foot in front of the other. Finally, I exhale then press the shutter. Try practicing by setting your shutter speed to a slow setting, like 1/15th, and see how many sharp images you can get.

It also helps a LOT if you have gear with image stabilization, either in the lens or in the camera body. Most professionals use either Canon or Nikon, which have lens-based IS, while Olympus, Sony and Pentax use in-body stabilization. In theory, lens-based IS is slightly superior. However, in reality many lenses - particularly prime lenses - don’t come with IS, making in-body IS superior in my opinion. Come on Canon, get with it!

(3) Speaking of lenses, get yourself some sharp ones! Lenses are more important to image sharpness than the camera body. What’s a sharp lens? While there are always exceptions, as a general rule primes are sharper than zooms, and zooms with large apertures (f2. are usually sharper than consumer-level zooms that start at f3.5 or smaller (the exception being the Canon L series f4 zooms, which are known to be pretty sharp).

You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get some really sharp lenses. Both Canon and Nikon have sharp prime lenses under $400. Sigma makes a great little 30mm f1.4 prime that’s super sharp for $389. Tamron makes a super sharp 28-75mm f2.8 zoom for $359 that some say is sharper than the Canon L-series equivalent that costs over $1,000. This little Canon 50mm f1.4 lens is the sharpest lens in my bag and it costs $289:

(4) Lightroom and Photoshop CS3 have a new slider called “clarity”. It adds some local contrast adjustments that make the image appear sharper. It’s right below the contrast slider. I move the clarity slider from 20-40 on every single image:

(5) Pre-sharpening. I go through 2 levels of sharpening on every image, one in Lightroom and then another in Photoshop. For my pre-sharpening, I use the lightroom defaults that you see here:

(6) Use large apertures to isolate your subject. This seems counter-intuitive, given that lenses are generally at their sharpest at f5.6 - f8. However, for most general shooting in a non-studio environment, shooting at a wide open aperture (say, f2.8 or wider) will blur the background so that the eyes will register the subject even sharper than it really is. In other words, the contrast between the subject and background is enhanced, making the subject pop out of the screen. In this example, I’m focusing on the leaf at f2.5 with a Canon 85mm f1.8 lens. The leaf isn’t really that sharp when viewed at 100% - it is slightly out of focus. However, since the rest of the image is blurred from the wide aperture, it appears really crisp:

(7) Of course, there’s the importance of proper sharpening in Photoshop. Don’t be afraid to sharpen! DSLRs come with an anti-aliasing filter that’s used to smooth out jagged edges that might otherwise make your image look pixilated. The AA filter blurs the image, so some degree of sharpening is needed to bring it back to normal. I’m not bashful when it comes to sharpening. Even if it looks slightly over-sharpened on a computer screen, I know it will print beautifully. Okay, here’s the secret I told you was coming: I use Kevin Kubota’s “Magic Sharp” sharpening action on every single image. I’ve tried virtually every method there is to sharpen over the years and in my opinion this is THE best method. I can’t tell you what the formula is because that would be unfair to Kevin. Just go to his website and buy it! It is in his Production Tools Volume 1 and costs only $69. I would have paid 100x that amount just to get this sharpening action since it makes such a huge difference in my images.

I hope this post was helpful. Follow the 7 steps and I’m sure you’ll achieve your quest to find the elusive extra crispy look:

One last thing to think about here. Please don’t get hung-up on image sharpness. I think it was Henri Cartier-Bresson who said that image sharpness was highly overrated. This image - taken by my second shooter Kip Beelman - was used as a full-page spread in one of my albums. It was taken in a dark room at a slow shutter speed and definitely has motion blur. It also has a lot of high ISO noise so it’s anything but crisp. However, I still think it’s a great image. I’ll take a shot that conveys a touching moment over a boring crispy shot any day!

It is really cool that one of my favorite products is made by a friend of mine. I love my Boda Bag and my friend Jim Garner just sent over the newest copies of them. The Boda Dry and the Boda Dry Jr. Keeping with the original bag, they are the most comfortable I have ever had with me. They are designed to be used when shooting as opposed to transporting your gear. Because of the more specialized intended use, they fit the needs of a busy wedding or portrait photographer better than any other bag I’ve use.

The new thing about these bags is that they are waterproof and will protect your gear in a rainstorm. This makes sense for me and Jim that are from the home of liquid sunshine here in Seattle. Also, he came out with a new, smaller size for someone wanted to carry one large or a couple smaller lenses stacked. Very cool. I see myself taking that one on vacation more than shooting because I shoot primes and switch out my lenses fairly often.

One more thought on the Boda is that Jim has done a great job of branding the bag. A couple of the photos I took were specifically to show off the number of times it says Boda on this thing. I counted 10 on the outside not counting the strap and the interior which say Boda repeatedly! Nice marketing!

Amanda Pryde has won the amazing RedCart system! It is a beautiful, flash-based cart system created by wedding photographer Tommy Tompkins.

My first image (AP-1.jpg) is a bridal portrait taken on the Blue Ridge Parkway right outside of Asheville, NC on November 3, 2007. The bride stood on a railing at a scenic overlook, and I shot from across the road where I’d climbed a large rock to be on the same plane as her, able to get a good deal of mountain scape and blue sky in the background. To make the finished image a panoramic, I duplicated and flipped the image in photoshop, and then merged the two images on a panoramic canvas, cloning out the bride in the second half and rearranging the mountain scape slightly to give the image a realistic panoramic appeal.

Thanks you to everyone that entered as well as RedCart and BigFolio for providing the prizes!

We had a tie in the voting for 2nd place.  Luckily for me, they both get the same prize - Rank Higher:  Flash Website Otpimization for Professional Photographers DVD published by BigFolio!

Dustin Izatt of Digital Izatt

 DI 01 was that same brides wedding.  It once again started to sprinkle and then another torrential downpour.  While everyone began to seek shelter, she ran out ot the middle of the lawn and cried out “This is what we do Dustin” I left shelter and once again began shooting in the pouring rain.  A few other brave guests joined her in the rain and that’s when I grabbed this shot.  Shot on my 5d with 70-200 L IS attached.  Available light shot at 1600, 1/100th, at f/2.8

Brad Wolf of SOTA in Washington DC and StudioThisIs in Chicago

This image was shot on August 28 of 2007 on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, Canada. This was actually the wedding of my best friend/co-owner of SOTA/StudioThisIs, Jeremy Bustos and his beautiful wife, Hailey. We took the entire day after the ceremony to shoot several different locations and scenarios. After rowing into shore from a lobster boat, the crew of about 7 of us got set up and shot away! The result was the image above. It was one of the moments when everything just clicks!  The image was also shot with  Nikon D200, 100 ISO, 1/1250 SS, F6.3 with a pocket wizard-slaved Quantum Qflash T5D w/ Turbo Pack. 

These are the images that made up places 4-10.

Brad Wolf of SOTA Weddings in Washington DC and StudioThisIs in Chicago

This image was just shot on Dec. 30 of 2007 on Oahu, Hawaii. The couple had contacted us almost year and half ago to shoot their wedding “Non-Hawaii” Hawaii wedding. We brainstormed several ideas and I began seeing this image in my mind. We found an old parking lot on the ocean, the clouds rolled in and we had no more than 5 mins before the down pour! I guess sometimes that’s all it takes to get the image you’re looking for! The image was shot with a Nikon D200, 100 ISO, 1/125 SS, F7.1 with a pocket wizard-slaved Quantum Qflash T5D w/ Turbo Pack.

Josh Lynn of New Jersey

Another bad weather image (I seem to excel when its nasty out!) This was
taken this past November and the couple had wanted sparklers. With the
rain we had to do everything quickly. The burst of light you see is a
Sunpak 120J on a monopod being held by my assistant mixed in with the
crown. He was simply instructed to pan with the couple as they went
past. Minimal post processing was done.

Michelle Moore of Washington State

This image was created as a bridal fashion piece I put together in
late winter. I worked with a fabulous team of hair & makeup artists,
a model (from Canada!), and a stunning hand-made gown. Having all
these pieces helped my final image look polished. I worked with the
model in a very fluid & natural way. I found my composition &
lighting, and had let the model do her thing. I gave her a sense of
the “mood”, and I found this pose to be the most successful. In post
I made the image very “warm” and added a light texture to mimic the
texture of the dress.

Nick Kuchar of BlueNaluPhotography

This image was taken at a wedding last October at Sea Brook Island. It was taken at ISO 320, f/5.0, 1/500 sec. We were at the beach and I noticed a large, shallow tide pool. It was perfect for the shot. I found the repetition of the groomsmen interesting, but my favorite part is how they are doing different things with their hands. In Photoshop I used a couple curves layers for contrast and color balance.

Ben Rogers of Infinity Studios in Australia

This image is actually a crop of the group photo. I love the expressions
on the parents of the bride and groom which the crop helps accentuate.

Adam Hudson

This image is actually a crop of the group photo. I love the expressions
on the parents of the bride and groom which the crop helps accentuate.

Jayme Morrison

Amy Sayers of Red Leaf Studios in Canada

Using off-camera flash seems like something difficult to do.  It isn’t.  Once you get over the mental hurdles involved, it is really quite simple.  To illustrate, I have an image that I really like that I took this last fall.

This image was really simple to create.  I took the couple out of the reception at sunset.  Then I set camera to the setting I wanted to expose the background.  When doing this, I usually underexpose the background by about 1 stop to create the deeper, richer colors.  So the ambient exposure that I set was 1/250, f8 at ISO 400 on my 30D.  Next, I decided I wanted the light to hit the couple from the left.  Then, I set up flash, which was an Nikon SB-25 on a small lightstand fired directly at them.  The flash was set to about 1/4 (might have been 1/8)  to properly expose the couple to “normal” density of the skin tones.  Finally, I put the groom where I wanted them and told the bride to go get him.  Pretty simple!  You can see more of my most recent work on my blog.