McFarland Photography » Tricks

Obamiconme

Carol — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:41:09 +0000

Thanks to a flickr friend for the link to this website: obamiconme.pastemagazine.com. You can do your own poster! If you visit, add mine as a favorite! This is my daughter, Rebekah…she was a very willing model.

You can make your own Obamicon, too!

Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes!

Carol — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 05:58:14 +0000

Whenever I browse the portrait photography in Flickr or on other photography websites, I notice what makes the great ones stand out from the amateur ones is the sharpness of the eyes, and the bright, white, shiny “catch lights.” The key to a good portrait is having the focus be on the eyes; the rest of the photograph doesn’t have to be in focus, as long as the eyes are, and those catch lights make the eyes sparkle and give them dimension.

I have found that many photographers I admire use a 50mm prime lens for portraits, because it gives a great depth of field, where the background is out of focus, and the eyes are in sharp focus. Bill has a really nice 50mm lens that is a GREAT deal…only around $100. I have been coveting this lens, but on my Nikon D40 it doesn’t have automatic focusing, and, unfortunately, my aging eyes make it difficult to focus on manual. I was determined to give it a try anyway, to see if I could get away with ordering one for myself, so the other day I was experimenting while visiting a friend. I found that if it was light enough outside, I was able to get it in focus some of the time. As sunset came closer, I couldn’t see well enough to focus on the eyes.

I took some pictures of my friend’s 3-month-old baby, and a couple of her other children, with awesome catch lights and sharp eyes. If you look closely, you can even see my shadow in his eyes! Infants’ eyes are always so beautiful–they’re HUGE and sparkle, and they tend to just stare right at the camera, while the older kids get bored so much more quickly! Here are some examples of the 50mm lens and those awesome catch lights! You can find some tips on how to get them from digital-photography-school.com, a great site for learning more about photography! Here’s the link: An Introduction to Catch Lights

Eyes That Sparkle

Putting On A New Face

Carol — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:48:41 +0000

Having a large family, we know how difficult it is to get even ONE good family picture where everyone is looking at the camera and smiling. Thankfully, Photoshop can save the day, or portrait in this case. I was editing a group photo and couldn’t find any one photograph where everyone looked good, so I chose one that had the most people smiling, and replaced the silly looking faces with the same person’s smiling face from another shot, then rotated the replacement until it fit into the original photo. I erased the original face with a soft edged brush so that when the layers were merged, it looked picture perfect! I read a tutorial from the Digital Scrapbook Magazine that describes this process.