Foto Friday – I HDR, Do you? Part 2

As many of you remember from my first post about HDR or high dynamic range photography, these type of images can really spice up your digital scrapbook layouts and your photography.  And they are so easy to get cool results.  I have to admit I really don’t know what I’m doing – just visually playing around but I am loving the results.  A quick recap: I am photographing 3 separate exposures at normal, +2 f/stops and –2 f/stops.  I then open the pictures in Photomatix Pro
(affiliate link) and letting the creative juices flow.  Here’s the latest batch of pictures:

Original picture of some rare ice in a puddle:

(click on any picture to enlarge)

Some variations

Beautiful holly outside our house:

The HDR version – I was aiming for a natural look:

And last – a  house in our neighborhood:

The HDR version:

This is a variation I did using the Topaz Software Simplify plug-in – a review  coming within two weeks!

I really like this one – how about you?

Would you like a tutorial on how to do these type of pictures?  Leave a comment and if there is enough interest I’ll try a series of video tutorials.

Quick impressions from the Photo Marketing Association show

As many of our digital scrapbooking and photography friends know I work for a large photo lab here in Tennessee and have worked in the photo industry for (gulp!) 30 years.  One aspect of my job is staffing or attending trade shows and conferences for the lab and previously for Kodak.  While travel can get old sometimes (see my “been to Vegas again and again” post), I enjoy meeting new customers, catching up with old ones, learning new things, and seeing new products to spark my mind for how I can help my customers’ succeed and grow in their business.

Too bad I wasn’t able to do any of that at this year’s show!

Wow – what a bad show.  And that’s a major diss from someone as positive as me. The show was in Anaheim, CA this year – why? no one really knew.  But it seemed to keep the attendees and vendors away.  I know for us it was much harder to travel to and more expensive to stay.  The show was easy to move around and you could easily get helped in a booth – meaning there was no one there.  And some of the major industry players (Canon, Epson) didn’t exhibit.  I hope that doesn’t spell the death of this once great show.

So on the bright side what did I learn and what did I see?

I learned a fair amount (really emphasized what I had recently learned) about social media, Search Engine Optimization, and how a website can be used to promote and further your business.  I picked up one tip that will help us significantly promote our new site for ordering additional photo gifts and ideas – so that made the learning worthwhile.

We saw and purchased a great suite of software from Topaz Labs. The software has great uses for digital scrapbookers and digital photographers.  I’m working on a review and will post it within two weeks.

 

Kodak used Microsoft’s Surface technology to showcase their products.  It generated a lot of traffic and interest in their booth and made it easy to find out about their offerings.  Here’s a very quick video of me using one of the tables:

Unlike the last few years, there was no scrapbooking booths at all.  I think at one time the  independent photo stores had thought that scrapbooking might be a natural addition to their offerings but I feel both the photo industry and the scrapbooking industry saw it wasn’t quite the right fit and have given up.  I know paper scrappers when they think “I gotta go grab a new kit” aren’t thinking their local camera store. 

So that’s it.  All around a disappointing show.  I’m looking forward to the Wedding and Portrait Photographers International (WPPI) show next week (3/8-3/10/2010) in Las Vegas.  I’ll try and do reports from the show through my Facebook account and might even be able to get in a blog post or two.

I didn’t even get a doughnut…

Digital Scrapbookers – Size matters

Ok ladies, stop the snickering.

No really… This is serious.

Size does matter.

The size of your sensor, that is.  Yes, the size of the sensor (the actual “chip” in a digital camera that takes the picture) matters for a lot of things.  What I want to talk about today is how your sensor size affects the depth-of-field you are able to get.

This “bokeh” effect or the shallow depth of field effect is very popular with digital scrapbookers and photographers.  And why not?  Bokeh produces some artistic, unexpected effects and the shallow depth of field isolates your main subject so the viewer’s eye immediately focuses in on the most important part of the picture.  During our digital photography classes we are always asked “how do I do that”?  And it’s really simple – you need to use the shallowest depth-of-field on your f/stop or aperture setting (that would be the lowest numbers.)

And here’s where the size matters.  The size of the chip determines how shallow the depth of field will be – the larger the chip, the shallower the depth of field is and the easier it is to get a good bokeh effect.  So my little point-and-shoot digital camera, in order to keep it small and portable, has a really tiny chip – making it tough (if not impossible) to get a shallow enough depth of field.  It will always be easier and better using a DSLR.  Here’s a real shocker – a typical DSLR set at f/1.4 would need to be set at f/0.6 on a typical point-and-shoot digital camera to get the same look. And I know my point-and-shoot doesn’t go down that low!

So I guess Jenn and I will be buying the shiny new DSLR soon, right?

I don’t think so.

Leave us a comment with your thoughts!

Some of our best from a year ago

(Note from Stan – thanks for all the well wishes for Jenn’s recovery but believe it or not, now we’re both sick! Must have picked up something in the hospital where all the sick people are. Please enjoy this post from more than a year ago recounting some of best Photoshop and Elements tips.)

We’ve been posting Quick Tips for a year now! So I thought it was time to take a look back, and see what YOU liked best (judging by number of comments) and visit some of our own faves…

You’ll notice some are on this blog, and many are over on our ScrapKitty Design Blog

Here are the top 10 in descending order of popluarity:

1. Subject Too Dark – our very FIRST tip was our overall most popular! Has it really been downhill from there or are you guys just getting less chatty?

2. Out in the Weeds – this was a VERY close second AND a recent post. Guess we’re still getting it right!

3. Tutorial Roundup

4. Find That Font

5. Get Shapely

6. Keeping it all Straight

7. Elements Beats Photoshop

8. Selecting Colors Outside Photoshop

9. Super Quick Tip

10. Straight as an Arrow

Hope you discover something cool you missed the first time around! To keep you amused, bewildered, and awed until we’re feeling better, here are links to all of our Quick Tips. (Feel free to leave comments, we’re still listening!)

ScrappersWorkshop Quick Tip Archive
ScrapKitty Design Quick Tip Archive

Recovering!

Jenn and Stan

Scrapping Simply is having a sale

Our good friends at Scrapping Simply are having a fun sale:

We love their 12×12 prints for $1.99. They are true photographic prints -not ink-jets or thermal – so the quality and longevity is top notch! This is a very short sale so try to take advantage of it. Even if you can’t you still can’t beat their everyday low price for the 12×12 ( and 8×8 and 6×6’s too!)

(disclaimer: while we make no direct money for referrals, Simple Scrapper advertises at Scrappers Workshop. We would recommend them anyway because we like their product, services, and prices so much!)

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