It’s the Fourth of July weekend, and that means awesome events, good food, mega sales and FIREWORKS!  If those beautiful fireworks shots have eluded you till now, check out the following tips courtesy of Samsung to ensure that you get some screensaver worthy shots tomorrow night.

• Turn on Image Stabilization and Use a Tripod! – When it comes to shooting fireworks, or any low-light scene, don’t go it alone. No matter how advanced your camera may be there is no better image stabilization than a tripod. If you don’t have access to a tripod, try using any surface to steady your camera, whether it be a tree, fencepost, chair, etc. Because you’ll be using longer shutter speeds, you must keep your camera perfectly still in order to capture crisp, clear images free of any blur caused by camera shake.
• Setting Your Camera’s Shutter Speed –if you have a digital camera which offers a manual shooting mode, you have the ability to adjust your shutter speed.
• Shutter speed plays a crucial role in photographing fireworks. Depending on the look that you want, your shutter speeds can vary anywhere from one to 10 seconds. Longer shutter speeds will allow you to shoot one or multiple explosions from start to finish, capturing the full bursts and light trails; however, just because it’s dark, don’t use too long a shutter speed as you’ll risk over-exposing the image.
• Setting Your Camera’s Aperture – Again, if your digital camera offers a manual shooting mode, you can manually configure your camera’s aperture setting. When it comes to setting your camera’s aperture it’s important to remember that while the nighttime sky is dark, the light that fireworks give off is fairly bright. The aperture that you can set will depend on your digital camera, but estimate using an aperture anywhere between F8 – F16. Practice makes perfect as there is no clearly defined rule when it comes to setting shutter speed and aperture. Experiment early on with the first few bursts to make sure you have the appropriate settings and to adjust where needed.
• Setting the ISO – You should also manually adjust your camera’s ISO setting. Your camera’s ISO refers to its sensitivity to light. Typically, in a lower light setting, you would want to boost your camera’s ISO, but due to the bright light given off by the fireworks, you’ll want to stick to a lower value. Try setting your camera to the lowest ISO possible. An ISO of 100 or 200 should yield good results and provide a clean image.
• If you’re using a point-and-shoot camera without a manual mode, you can still take great photos of fireworks.
  Dial up your digital camera’s scene mode menu and search for a scene mode called “fireworks.” Most of Samsung’s point-and-shoot digital cameras feature the “fireworks” scene mode. Selecting the “fireworks” scene mode will automatically adjust your camera’s settings to capture the best image possible. But remember; still try to use a tripod or other surface to steady your camera.
• And last but not least, the most important tip to keep in mind is to have fun. This is your chance to express yourself and be creative, so play around with framing the shot both vertically and horizontally. A digital camera gives you the ability to take a preview shot to see if you’ve dialed up the appropriate settings and better yet, allows you to delete those that didn’t turn out so well.
• A larger memory card will also allow you to fire as many shots as you can, improving your chances of capturing some really spectacular photos.

Also, you can check out the following links for other great photography tips and ideas for the Fourth of July.

• How to Paint Your Photo with Sparklers (Photojojo.com)
• How to Photograph Fireworks (Digital-Photography-School.com)

Yesterday the family and I enjoyed a relaxing and beautiful breezy afternoon at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, NYC. 

We went in the middle of the afternoon, so although the day was absolutely gorgeous, I was stuck with the harsh, blinding afternoon light that photographers are less than enthusiastic about.  So in order to take full advantage of the flower taking opportunities presented at the world renowned New York Botanical Gardens, I decided to try a few “flower in the sky” silhouette photos.

Armed with my trusty 50mm f/1.8, I got low low low and shot upwards.  My only peeve is that I wasn’t using a macro lens!  (which is on my photography wishlist!)

Custom shaped bokeh?  Mmmm!

And no expensive filters, inserts or lens hoods required!

Check out DIY Photography for more information about making a super-cheap lens hood: DIY – Create your own Bokeh

Here’s a crappy cam pic I took of my postcard cutout bokeh-maker:

As you can see it’s fashioned from a Maxim magazine reply card (any opaque rigid paper or cardstock should do the trick) that I folded in half before cutting out a teensy heart shape.  Unlike DIY Photography’s version, which is secured all around the front of the lens due to its faux lens hood design, I actually just held my bokeh-maker right up against my lens, which in my case is my trusty 50mm f/1.8 Nikkor .

It might be a good idea to take advantage of a little thing called tape though, as that will definitely make this whole bokeh project a lot easier.  If you do exactly what I did, results may be inconsistent or uneven.  As you can see, the bottom area of my custom shape bokeh example above no longer features hearts, but more like misshapen heart-wannabe blobs.

I love babyQ’s expression in this photo: it’s so telling of the future mischief he’ll be getting into!

The first photo is the “regular” version with general color corrections and post processing, and the second version is one that I converted to black and white after standard post processing by making adjustments to hue/saturation, levels and curves.  That is, however, a discussion for another day.

I created a Photoshop action (Soft n’ Sharpen) that you can download here for free that’ll give you the two masked layers necessary to give your subject’s skin a creamy texture while allowing the subject’s eyes to pop.  I think it’s a pretty subtle effect, but of course, you will be able to adjust the opacity of each layer to suit your needs.  You should have a familiarity with layer masks, but it’s not necessary if you’re just going to follow my directions verbatim.  Your photo should already have pretty sharp to tack sharp eyes as this action and tutorial is created to subtly accentuate existing sharpness.

Please be aware that the effect is not complete by just running the action.  You will need to follow the steps below for the Soft n’ Sharpen effect to be implemented. 

If you are familiar with masks and how to load and run actions, you can skip to step 4.

1. Download the Soft n’ Sharpen action.  Load it into your actions palette by clicking the little arrow at the top right area of the Actions palette, click on load brushes and select the soft-n-sharpen.atn file from where you saved it to.
   
   
2. Open the image you want to use Soft n’ Sharpen on.  Flatten your image if you’re currently working with multiple layers.  Make sure to work on a duplicate copy of your file if you don’t want to lose your current layers.  Run the action by clicking on it in the Actions palette and pressing the “play” button.
   
   You will have now three layers:  sharpen layer, soften layer and your original Background layer.
   
3. Select the layer mask on the sharpen layer.
   
   Set your brush (standard round brush) to 0% hardness, 100% opacity and 100% flow in normal mode.   You can of course adjust the diameter to suit your needs.
   
   Set your foreground color to white.
   
4. Focus on one eye at a time.  Zoom in at 100& on the eye, and making sure you have the LAYER MASK on the sharpen layer selected with white as your color, paint over the eye, eyelashes and eyebrow.  Adjust your brush size as necessary. 
5. Next, select the Layer Mask on the soften layer, switch your foreground color to black, and again brush over the eye, eyelashes and eyebrow.  Adjust your brush size as necessary. 
6. REPEAT steps 4 and 5 for the other eye (or eyes if there are multiple subjects)
    
7. At this point if you want to you can adjust the opacity of the sharpen and smooth layers for different degrees of the Soft n’ Sharpen effect.
8. Flatten your image, and voila! This is just one of the ways you can get eyes that pop.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment below, or contact me.

Bryan Peterson’s Understanding Exposure seems to be one of the books that almost every photographer, from novice to pro, has on their bookshelf.

I haven’t had a chance to really go through it and read every page, but I’ve flipped through, read a page or two, and I must say I am excited to make use of Peterson’s tips, tricks and techniques.  There’s nothing like the push of a little solid direction from a veritable photography deity to stir your creativity!