Eyes

I apologize for the long delay, but between going out to shoot and staying in to write and edit those select shots I am including in a couple of upcoming works, I haven't had much time to share some tips on here...so, for that I apologize.

Today I want to point out the importance of making your subjects eyes clear and how Photoshop, or Lightroom, can help you. Rule one in animal photography is to have the eyes in focus and clear...as beady as you can make them...but sometimes the light situation or an off exposure will make your pictures come with darkened, unclear eyes. Notice I'm not blaming the lenses since there isn't much we can do about that at the moment because even those with the sharpest lenses do come up with photographs with darkened eyes. So, without further ado, let's see the differences...

Canon 500D (Rebel T1i) with EF-S 55-250mm IS @200mm 1/640s F/5.6 ISO 100

You can click on the image to enlarge it and you will see the eye still somewhat dark and unattractive. Now, I have not adjusted the exposure or any other setting, but I want to stress the importance of shooting RAW especially as a beginner with less than good lenses or spot-on exposure settings. 

Now let's take a look at this one.

Click on the picture to enlarge it and see if there you notice the difference. I did increase the exposure, but I also used the Adjustment Brush in Camera Raw to focus on the eye and increase its contrast, clarity, and exposure. To up the color, I increased saturation all the way and a little on the brightness, too. That's the good thing about the Adjustment Brush, I could select and isolate the eye and work on it without altering the rest of the picture.
Now, let's take look at another photograph.

Canon 500D (Rebel T1i) with EF-S 55-250mm IS @250mm 1/640s F/7.1 ISO 100

For this set, everything is the same except for the eye and all that was needed to bring out its beauty was an extra isolated touching up using the Adjustment Brush in Camera Raw. You can see how its color contrast well with the rest of the picture and how it livens up the bird and the photograph in general. 

To end it all, here's a little something I made using this image to go along with today's subjects. Enjoy and, remember, to focus on the eye.

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Should You Shoot RAW?

You've probably heard about RAW and its supposed benefits, but should you be shooting RAW? If you are a beginner, any seasoned photographer will tell you that the best way to improve and get acquainted with your camera is to snap, snap, snap...take as many photographs as you can. By doing this, you get to know the limits of your camera and its best settings under different shooting conditions. JPEG takes less memory card space than RAW, so in this aspect I would suggest you begin by taking JPEG pictures until you are better at judging the optimum settings for any scene you encounter.

Secondly, RAW can turn you into a lazy photographer. Don't believe me? Take a look at these two photographs I took while I was experimenting with RAW.

Canon 500D (Rebel T1i) EF-S 55-250mm IS @ 60mm 1/100s F/8 ISO 400

Canon 500D (Rebel T1i) EF-S 55-250mm IS @ 79mm 1/100s F/4.5 ISO 800

Both of these represent the extremes of the histogram (I will talk about the histogram in a future post). One is completely white, while the other is completely black. In the first, the speed was too slow for the condition, and the speed was too fast for the second one. 

If this had been JPEG, I wouldn't have bothered to fix them as it takes too long to fix something like this and the final image would have punished the quality so much that it wouldn't have been worth the hassle. 

Keep in mind that I did this on purpose to see what I could get away with in RAW, but it's not unusual to take such pictures while you are still getting used to playing around with the settings, so don't feel bad if some of your shots turn out this way. 

Here's what came out once I finished retouching them in Camera Raw.

For this one, I simply reduced exposure by a few stops, darkened the highlights, and made a few other adjustments to bring out this image.

This one was more unforgiving as the noise was simply too much. I cranked up the exposure, then used the Adjustment Brush in Camera Raw to pump it up again, put saturation at 0, pumped up contrast and clarity both to 100, and did a few other things to try to bring out the image. I still like the effect of the enlarged pixels, so I cropped it to try to highlight them more.

Kind of like a mosaic, right? 

Well, these images are extremes, but they show how one can take an image without putting too much stock in using the right exposure settings by shooting RAW. 

I, personally, shoot RAW, but I still put as much effort into using the right exposure as if I was shooting JPEG. RAW can be your best friend, but it can also be a hindrance into you becoming a good photographer if you are not careful. I strongly suggest you shoot JPEG until you are familiar with all the aspects of exposure, then you can focus on RAW and learning the software needed to fully get the most out of it. You will appreciate the extra leverage give by RAW that way, too.

Another thing is that as a beginner or intermediate photographer, your focus should be on learning about taking a good picture and not manipulating them. If you haven't done so, take a look at my previous post on taking a great photograph. After that, you will find you don't have to manipulate a picture as much, and you will be well on your way to being the great photographer we all know you can be.

Great snapping, folks.

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