Up to this point all my images were color, but the contest pro-
vided a separate category for black & white. My version of
Photoshop has a fancy new black & white converter in it. I used
it to convert several color shots to gray scale and give them a
little tint.
Up the Creek - 12
The three most important things in photography:
The three most important things in photography are similar
to the most important things in real estate. They are Lighting,
Lighting, and Lighting.
Directional lighting helps a lot. Go outside on any day other
than overcast and look at the shadows. If your sunny-day
model photos don't have shadows like them, your photos
won't look right. Fluorescent fixtures in the ceiling cast a lot of
light but they don't create realistic shadows.
Lighting spectrum is important too. Fluorescent and LED lights
use much less power but have spiky color spectrums that can
make colors appear different to a camera. Incandescent and
halogen bulbs have a much smoother spectrum which better
mimic the sun and result in more natural colors.
Size of lighting matters. If you want realistic shadows, don't use
big lights that are close. A 3" diameter light should be 15' or
farther away from the scene to cast realistic shadows!
Another reason to keep lights distant is that light falls off as the
square of the distance. Keeping lights farther away puts you in a
more linear area of light fall-off which helps avoid light-blasted
foregrounds and dark backgrounds. Don't use your flash!
Be sure to set a custom white balance to match your camera to
the lighting you're using!
The black and white converter lets the user determine how
red, green, blue, cyan, yellow, and magenta each contribute to
the brightness of the gray scale output. I used these to set the
darkness of a green locomotive and bring out white clouds on
a blue sky (17) and (19).
In the past I used the saturation control to remove color from
the image. The black and white converter is much more sophis-
ticated and produces much more satisfactory output.
How did I do in the contest?
I did pretty well! I picked three color and two black and
white photos to enter. I came away with the Best of Show
Photography (20), a People's Choice photography, and a couple
of other prizes.
If you have the yen to enter a photo contest I'd urge you to do
so. With modern digital cameras, photography is easier then
ever. Take your time. Think about what you're doing and work at
it. Be honest with yourself and when you see things that don't
seem quite right, don't say "they're good enough," go fix them.
Pay scrupulous attention to lighting, and white balance your
camera to match the lighting. If you find a few little problems
like a flecks of crud on the background, a particularly large
chunk of ballast somewhere it should not be, a crack in the sky,
or a bit of fascia showing, go ahead and edit them out.
Good luck!
MRH-Aug 2013
