Quick Photo Tip: Getting In Close

Wow its been forever since I've posted some basic photo tips. I'm not sure if I've posted this simple trick before but its always a good to come back to.

Making better photos is as easy as taking a few more steps toward your subject. Moving in closer eliminates more of the background, emphasizes your subject, and invokes a lot more emotion. Here are a few lovely pictures of my offical photo tip model, Debra. See which one is your favorite!

The best of Josh's Photo Vortex

Believe it or not, this is post #200 on here. I decided it would be a good time to look back and highlight some of my best blog posts (voted by you!) of the last 200 posts!

I know there are a lot of you that are new to the blog (readership has exploded from 5 to 50+ in the last few months!) so this will give you a chance to catch up on some of my best posts. Enjoy!!


Church of Christ Scientist - Beautiful Architectural Photography from one of Rochester's most beautiful churches



Mount Marcy Climb - Absolutely stunning images from the tallest mountain in new york



New Years Eve Times Square Pictures - A documentary of my trip through times square on new year's eve



Stef and Ryan's Engagement Shoot - Some awesome images of some of my good friends that got married earlier this year



10 Tips for Night Photography - A in depth article into some of my best night photography tips and tricks



Red Hot BMW Z4 - Some of my best automotive photography



The Waterfalls of Greenville - Some beautiful photos of the waterfalls of downtown Greenville South Carolina



Jill and Charlie's Wedding - Some of my favorite wedding photos ever!



Rochester Downtown Wasteland - An emotional documentary about how the downfall of the economy has affected Rochester, New York



Watkins Glen State Park Gorge - Some stunning nature images from my trip to Watkins Glen State Park

Architecture Class Update

If there is one thing I have learned in my Architectural Photography class so far this quarter, it has to be trial and error. My first shot for the class turned out alright, and I got some good feedback to come back a little later when there was more sunlight on the building. The teacher also suggested I wait until closer to spring so the grass would look a little more alive. Here is my original shot, followed by the updated one. A big improvement if you ask me!

Original Shot


Updated Shot

Stop, look, listen

You probably heard your teachers and parents say this to you as a kid. I bet you never thought to apply it to photography though.

Last weekend I was out taking pictures at the Pittsford Nature Center with my friend Rich and there didn't seem to be a lot going on. Typical nature scenes, a couple distant birds, nothing really to write home about. So I decided to do something not so many people do when they are out taking pictures. I just stood there and listened. After a few minutes I started to hear some rustling in the leaves near by me.


I saw this small snake stick his head up out of the leaves, and since I wasn't walking around or in a hurry, he wasn't either. He let me get within 3 feet of him to take his picture. So here's an easy tip to use next time your out taking pictures. Stop, look, and listen, you never know what great photos are hiding right next to you.

Five Minute Difference

It just blows my mind how much lighting can change is such a small amount of time. I was downtown shooting some landscapes of the city lights and I kid you not, these images were taken within 5 minutes of each other. What a huge difference!

Taking a break from photography

Here's a tip that you probably don't see on many photography websites. Sometimes its good to take a break from photography. Although its good experience to shoot everyday, and will really enhance your skills, after shooting for a long time its good to take a break. Just like most things in life, after training for a long time, you need to take a break to recover and expand your skills in other areas. Ever heard the term "crosstraining"? Well that applies in photography as well.

As I write this I haven't touched my camera in well over a week. Webdesign, school, and tutorial videos have consumed my life. I can just hear my camera down there crying. But soon I will return to it, with new ideas, and a clear head.

A random picture of a pigeon downtown

Leading Lines

The use of leading lines is just one of those subliminal things that fits together with a lot of other aspects to make a great image. These lines can imply motion, stability, or simply entertain the eye. Here's one of my favorite "Leading Lines" images, taken at a local park.

Color Contrast

I don't know what it is. Contrasting colors are just plain interesting. Take the following shot for instance:



I took this picture downtown the other day. It's just a pretty ordinary scene but the strong blues and vivid reds really make the photo interesting. Here's a quick tip: Next time your out shooting look for scenes where there are two wildly different colors. It can turn a very ordinary scene into something beautiful.

Albums, Prints and Frames

It's been nice not being at school for the past week. I've been able to catch up on some sleep, printing, album making, and some framing. When you shoot 25,000 images a year it takes a lot to keep them organized and useful. 

Here is how I keep my stuff organized:

1. I tag all my images with the date and subject
2. I pick out my favorites from each shoot
3. I touch up just my favorite shots from the shoot
4. I then save them in a seperate favorites folder (one for each month)
5. In that folder I have a folder for resized images for posting to the web
6. I keep backup copies of all my images on a 1tb external drive

I just started doing this about a year ago but it really helps you keep your head on straight. This way when I want to locate my favorites from each shoot, its easy, I just open up my favorites folder from that month. 

I order prints of these favorites to frame. I think its extremely important to print your work. There is nothing like seeing one of your images framed on the wall. 

Here is some of my latest work:

Lisa & Alan's Wedding Album - I really liked the suede cover on it!







Some 11x14" and 16x20" prints I did for them


Too much stuff to frame

I finally found the missing link!

Usually I don't post this late but I'm just really excited. As a lot of you know I've been experimenting with new workflow lately. While the improvements I've implemented have been a big help, I've noticed that in some of my night photos and car photos there is still something wrong when I resize them for the web. 

I've been doing a lot of reading lately about resizing techniques. There are several ways that images can be resized. One way is nearest neighboor. In this resizing technique the program simply drops out the other pixels. This is probably the fastest way for a computer to resize a photo, but it is also the roughest. Bilinear is a better method where the program averages the pixels, then removes the redundant ones. This takes more computing power, but yeilds much better results. The best way to resize images is using a Bicubic method. This uses a more complex algorithm to resize the image, which takes more time but yeilds some great results. With modern computers there is no reason not to use a Bicubic resizing method. 

So what does all this have to do with anything? Well I was using a program that didn't really specify what type of method it was using to resize the pictures. My best guess is that it was using a Bilinear method. This looked good for most pictures but I noticed, especially in my last series, that it was creating some weird artifacts that are not present in the full sized images. 

Since photoshop continues to be a pain with batch resizing, watermarking, and sharpening, I started to look on the internet for some suggestions. I came across a post on a forum in which a photographer recommended using a program called Photoscape for batch processing. It was also free so I figured I better give it a shot. Wow! I've been looking for a program like this for months! I've never seen a free program that combines the complex bicubic sharpening method, a multitude of filters, and batch watermarking. Go check it out!

Anyways enough rambling, this is a photoblog after all! Here is an example of what I'm talking about.

Resizing With Bilinear Method (Using Old Watermark Utility), JPG Quality 100%


Resizing With Bicubic Method (Using Photoscape), JPG Quality 100%


Resizing With Bicubic Method (Using Photoscape), JPG Quality 95%


Wow! Look at the difference between the first and second image! I don't know about your eyes but to me the lines look a lot smoother and there is more natural detail in the image. It doesn't look oversharpened and retains a realistic look. Bicubic resizing also seems to be much less sensitive to JPG compression as well. I can't tell a difference between 100% and 95% quality, even though the later is half the file size. Photoscape also seems to handle alpha layers much better as well, look how much better the watermark looks in the 2nd and 3rd pictures.

Here is one more example:


Bilinear Method, 100% Quality JPG


Bicubic Method, 95% Quality JPG



Bilinear Method, 100% Quality


Bicubic Method, 95% Quality

You might not be able to see it but there is also a slight improvement in color rendition with Bicubic as well. This example shows it pretty drastically:




Bilinear Method, 100% Quality


Bicubic Method, 95% Quality

I always thought it was compression that was causing the issues. After all this I was just using the wrong type of resizing method. It just didn't fit well with my workflow to have to do each image individually in photoshop. I'm really glad a found a free, powerful utility to handle this. Thumbs up Photoscape! Now I can get back to the important stuff, like photography! But first I need some sleep...

Shooting Broken and Dirty Things

Sometimes the ugliest things in life can make the best pictures. I've found that pictures of trash, broken glass, rust, and a spray paint really add to a picture. These things add texture and character to a picture. They also bring along vibrant colors and strange shapes.



Take the above image for instance. The dirt and grime really add to the image. Another one of my favorite things to do is to take pictures of something very clean and shiny in front of something completely the opposite.



The contrast of the shiny black car and the dirty, rusty pipes really make the image. Experiment with things like this next time you are out shooting! Here is one more example how patterns as well as rust can really add to an image. I found these rusty augers in a local farming community. They really made for an interesting image!


Keep an eye out for things like this next time your shooting. Things like this are all around and can provide for some very interesting images.

Favorite Shots from January 2005

Between school and all these weddings I haven't found myself with a lot of free time to go out and shoot as much as I want to. I found myself looking though some of the pictures I took the very first month I got seriously into photography. These pictures are about 4 years old, and at the time I thought they were really great! Just shows you how much you can improve if you stick with something.

At the time I was shooting with a 3.1mp Kodak CX7330. I was just beginning to learn what a shutter speed was! If your just starting off and your pictures aren't coming out the way you like, stick with it. Remember I sucked back in the beginning too!

New workflow

After a lengthy discussion on a forum I am on, I decided to look through my workflow that I use to post images to the web. Before I would do a three step method of doing touchup work in photoshop CS3, then batch resizing the images in MS Picture Manager to 640x480, saving them, and then opening them in my watermarking tool. This was secretly creating a lot of artifacting and compression in the image. That maked my images appear less sharp and detailed than they really are. 

JPG files are a Lossy format, meaning everytime you modify them and save them, compression is applied to the image and some of the data is lost. I was saving them three times and never really output sharpening them for the web. 

Well I fixed these issues this morning by adapting a much simplier and faster way to output images for this website and the many forums I am apart of. Now after photoshop I simply just open them in my watermarking tool, do the watermarking, sharpening, and resize all in one shot. This means less compression and sharper images. I also upped my standard size from 640x480 to maximum of 660px on each edge. This means that from now on my images will be slightly bigger on your screen, as well as showing more detail. The file sizes should also be kept around the same size as well, which means no increase in loading times. 

Here's an example of what I'm talking about! 

Before:



New:


Look closely and you will see the extra detail and slight increase in size. It's like more branches just appeared on the trees! I encourage all of you photographers out to there come up with an effecient way to put your images on the web so they look the best. 

What a difference 6 months makes!

Have you ever gone back and visited the same place in a totally different time of year? I recently visited this same spot in Churchville Park where there is an abandoned door. Instead of being surrounded by plants, this time it was covered in a few inches of snow. Seasons are a great tool for a photographer. They provide them a chance to visit the same place twice and come home with drastically different results.