My Learning Experience in Photography (2)
“我的摄影学习笔记”第一集 大都是2009年2月之前写的。这里的第二集放的是我2009年8月以来写的。和大家一起学习，欢迎指教。
Online forum
On July 3, 2009, I joined a Chinese blog website, www.wenxuecity.com, to post my pictures on their photographic section. This has turned out to be a great experience. Previously, I show my friends of my photo work only by prints. The feedback is great and helpful; but I only have limited audience.
The online community gives me an instant exposure to many reviewers world-wide. Many of these reviewers are highly experienced and I value their input greatly. I have learned a great deal from them in a short time period of one month. Several of the entries below are a result of learning from them.
I am looking forward to learning even more in the years to come.
Another benefit of this online space is that I have met many new friends in both photography and golf. They live around the world. This online friendship is only possible in recent years. A few of them even live close to me in Houston and other Texas cities. I am sure I'll meet many of them in person to exchange experience and share thoughts in the near future.
The online forum has added a totally new dimension to my journey in photography. I’ve been loving it ever since.
Over saturation
When I first started using Canon DPP software, I got too excited by the possibilities of adjusting the saturation level. I noticed that I can easily get brilliant colors on every picture by adjusting the saturation. It often resulted in over saturating. This is reflected by many of my early pictures, which I posted online and immediately received comments by many sharp-eye, experienced photographers.
Over saturated pictures appear to be “unnatural,” although some lighting conditions may produce similar results that are not familiar to those people who do not see such conditions in their daily life. In theory, I can go back to change those back to more natural state. However, I decided not to do that to save time and to mark my lessons.
Now I still adjust the saturation level, but to a much less degree. If a picture already has bright colors, I would leave the saturation alone. I would leave saturation alone also for pictures with people’s faces as the main components.
Some one suggested that I should calibrate my monitor. That will be another update to this note after I try that.
I dropped my external hard drive
About one month ago, I dropped one of my external hard drive by accident when it was powered on. To my dismay, the hard drive is now dead. Fortunately, it was my backup drive. It appears that I didn’t lose any data since I still have them on a main copy. However this alarming experience taught me a big lesson on data backup. I have heard several horror stories of losing one-year worth of hard work.
I have been generating about one terabyte of photo data each 6 months. No DVD backup method can keep up with that kind of volume. The only solution for me is hard drive backup. Here is how I am now doing it:
I have an external hard drive box with two 1 TB hard drives set with SATA RAID 0. These two drives mirror each other so if one fails there is always a copy. This is my main work-horse storage. I work with them daily at home. I have another single-drive external drive to save for working JPG files (not the raw files) (It was this drive that I accidentally drop).
Then I keep another single-drive external drive (also 1TB) in the office. Each time I load the picture files from CF cards to my home storage, I would upload another copy to this drive as a backup. I very rarely work on these files. Once this drive gets to 80% full, I’ll use another drive.
This is a very practical way to do it. Hard drives are very inexpensive now. To me the DVDs are too troublesome, unless it’s for specific images that are marked as “the greatest” for printing purposes.
Cropping and panoramic pictures
Most of our photographic subjects are cluttered. So a good photographer has to use many techniques to isolate an interesting subject and eliminate those distracting elements. These techniques include:
- Careful composition when shooting
- Use lights, shadows, objects, and fog to hide the unwanted items during shooting
- Use software to stamp out the distracting elements after shooting
Recently, I learned another way to do it after reading some comments by readers of my photos online: cropping or trimming. Previously I rarely do trimming on photos. This time I tried trimming to create panoramic events. The outcome is very positive, especially for golf photography.
I think our human eyes are naturally panoramic. I measured our vision limits in vertical and horizontal directions. The ratio is roughly 1:2.5 or 2:5. This is the ideal size for cropping. I have seen many panoramic
However, creating panoramic by cropping may have limited resolution and size for printing. Eventually I’ll have to learn how to do stitching. That will be my photography assignment for this fall quarter.
Photographic seasons
Talking about the quarter, I have to make a note on the season. Photography seems to be highly seasonable. In my opinion, fall is the best season with leaves turning to different colors, which is rare to see in other seasons. Spring would be the second best with flowers, but most flowers are too small to really show on landscape pictures. Winter is nice with bare trees. Summer is probably the worst, although the storms may be beneficial.
I have now completed my first complete year of journey into photography. I can’t wait for my next year.
Tripod design matters
Previously I didn't like use tripods. I tried several cheap models and gave up on them. The main difficulty I felt was the clumpsiness and limitations to adjust the camera directions.
I have finally invested in an expensive Manfrotto carbon-fiber model the day before I took the Europe cruise trip. It was a very worthy investment. I like it much better. The ball mount (an extra $100 from a local retail store) made the camera adjustment much easier. With its light weight and easy to use, I think I'll use a tripod much more often now. Hopefully that will mean more clearer pictures.
Remote shutter release
I have been using the shutter on my SLR ever since. Eugene told me that he uses a cable release. He thinks the pressing of the shutter bottom on a camera may shake the camera slightly to cause some distortion to the pictures. I bought such a release before the cruise ship to trip. The retail store clerk offered a more expensive wireless model (not made by Canon) so that I can walk away from the camera for a few feet when shooting. I thought that is unnecessary so I bought the Canon model.
Its much easier to use than I thought. The initial feeling is that it does indeed help to make the picture clearer. The canon accessory works for both of my 50D and 5D. I will definitely use it when shooting landscapes in the future.
Red filter
I have had a red filter for quite some time but never used it. It came with a package deal I got together with some other filters. Since I have more time on the cruise I played with it many times on the boat. I feel that it's a good tool for sunset and sunrise. I remember I read it somewhere saying that the red filter is also nicknamed "sunset filter." I think it's also a good way to add the red tone to an entire picture for some special purposes. I know it can be done through software, but I like to play with the hardware. However, most people can recognize the use of the red filter right away. So it's usage should be limited.
Now I am ready to buy and try a blue filter.
(I'll update this blog with more entries later)
我的摄影学习笔记第一集 My Learning Experiene in Photography （1）
