Cutting a Picture Frame Mat

One of my past hobbies included picture framing. I thought it would be wise to learn how to do this, because then I would be able to offer framing as a part of the portrait service.

 

 

 

First a picture of a cutie-pie is needed. I used my daughter. Once the picture is edited, I e-mailed it to walgreens to print.  

 

My wife is a huge fan of ikea, so, she picked up a few styles of inexpensive frames. They're always good to have on-hand. As you can see, above, the matting  that came with the frame was too small.

 

A few years ago, I picked up a mat cutter from michael's. They had a 50% off your next purchase coupon, so, I used it for this. I was around 30 bucks, with the coupon, but, I knew I would use it for years.

 

There are lots of colors available for the mat, so, I kind of stocked up on my favorites.

 

The angled cutter really takes most of the thinking out of it. After a few measurements, I cut the mat to the size of the frame, then, cut the inside opening 1/4 inch smaller than the picture

 

 

 

You can see how nice the bevel looks because of the cutter.

 

After taping the picture to the back side of the mat, it's ready to go back into the frame.

 

 

 

If you have any questions, please, ask.

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quick diy gobo

  There are a million lighting terms out there. One is 'gobo'. I'm not sure how it was named, but, the definition is 'anything that stops light from getting somewhere'. Simply, it keeps light off the things you want dark.


  If you have a speedlight type external flash, this is for you. If you don't have one, you should get one.

 

First of all, the I bought this velcro tape, made for extension cords, or, what not. Cut it log enough to wrap around your flash, plus an few inches. I use this to attach all kinds of accessories.

 

 

All it takes is a common index card. Cut it at one end, as shown.

 

I put black duct tape or gaffers tape on one side of the card.

 

 

Then, you put the gobo on the side of the flash, closest to the area you do not wish to light.

 

 

The picture on the left, is the flash without the gobo. The one on the right is with the gobo in place. All the settings are the same on both images.

 

 

 

 

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A few words about Auto Focus

A good friend of mine recently got a new camera.

 

 

It's a real beauty.

 Although any camera you have can capture really good focus, automatically, most of the time, understanding your equipment will always give you the results your looking for.

Now, I'm not good enough, nor by any means, a 'professional' photographer, to critique other peoples work, but, if this person asked me what could be improved upon, I would tell her this: Learn how to change your auto focus points. Most digital cameras have multiple focus points. Mine has 9 (pictured above). That's not a lot, compared to more expensive cameras...Some have hundreds!!

 

The common type of autofocus is contrast detection. If I don't explain it well, check it out on the internet. (there are people dying to tell you all about it) Basically, the camera looks at the scene, assumes that whatever the highest contrast is, is the thing you want to focus on. If it was a guy in a tuxedo, the sensors closest to the black tie/white shirt, or the white shirt/black jacket would be given all the attention. If it's a hairline/face or light purse/dark dress, that sensor would get the attention. MOST of the time, this is a dead accurate system. But, when the contrast is not what you want to focus on, you need to pick which sensor you want to use, instead of the camera picking it...does that make sense? 

 

Clearly, in this photo, the camera 'thought' I was trying to capture the closest mic stand, instead of the band. By switching the focus system to concentrate on only the center focus point,(below) a much sharper image is taken.

 

 

 

This method is necessary to pinpoint focus on something. If you're taking a portrait of someone, the eyes have to really be the sharpest thing in the picture. Selecting your own focus point is the only way to achieve this.

 

Most cameras have what's called af lock or autofocus lock. When you activate the center (or whichever) focus point, hold down the shutter release and then you can move the camera to frame the subject. Then press the release all the way.

 

Look in your manual and find out how to change focus points!

 

 

quick portrait lighting

                                                                 Here's a quick one.

 

Bounce lighting has been around for as long as flash has. If you're able to turn your flash toward a white wall, it will be reflected and the size of the light will be enormous. This will soften the light immensely. However, sometimes, there are no walls around, white or otherwise. I've found that if you turn your flash, as if there were a wall, and hold up a piece of white material in your left hand, this soft lighting can be easily achieved.  

 

 

wrong                                                                              right

 

 

Try it at different distances. The results are really noticeable.

 

 

 

 

Broken Ego headshots (for lack of a better word)

  At a recent band practice. I took a few headshots my fellow members. Ever since I started using the inspirations of guys like Peter Hurley and David Hobby, I started to realize how important the headshot is. Whether you're an insurance agent or an actress, everyone tries to out their best foot forward with their headshot.
  I had this vision in my head of a new band poster featuring (of course) the members and (of course) in black and white, so, I had to choose the light. Hard light: which is where there is a hard line drawn between good exposure and heavy shadow, or soft light: which seems to 'wrap around' the subects head, from bright to faded exposure. I chose hard light. It's easier to achieve and hey, this is rock and roll, anyway.
  Unless you walk around with a freight train headlight on your shoulder, all the time, you must have realized that flash coming from your camera ( near the lens) looks un-natural. So a light source that comes from the side, or front-side should be seeked out. For me, the easiest way to do this is to fire an off-camera flash. Not every camera is capable of this, but, with a little planning, it could work on most.

   If your camera flash is non removable, then the short answer is to get close to a white wall, and bounce the flash off of it.
 You'd have to take a piece of paper, or something, and put it in front of the flash, to 'steer' it toward the white wall.

 

(she is really thrilled to be a part of this experiment)

 This really turns out to be soft light, but, you can see, it no longer looks like an on-camera flash.

                                      My method of choice, is to utilize my cameras hotshoe.

 

 As i said, the flash should not be near the lens, so, quite literally, I remove it from the camera. You can buy a wireless trigger to set it off, but, in these pictures, you could have gotten away with a 3 ft. TTL cable that runs from the camera (right hand) to the flash (left hand). At arms length, it was just enough light to get the effect I was going for. These are lit with very hard light.



   In closing, try a few picture with your flash off the camera.
Also, I want you to know that it is difficult  to try and get the 4 nicest guys in the world to look mean, but, they came through.

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lighting bob and laura's portrait

 

    Two really good friends of mine got engaged and asked me to shoot the engagement picture. I was honored and I accepted. As I posted earlier, I have a really strong definition of what a portrait is. Being that I want to make a business as a 'mobile portrait' photographer, I saw on my first real assignment that I shouldn't really draw such a hard line on this opinion.
   In my head, I was thinking 3 ft. between me and the subject(s), 2 ft. between the subject(s) and the backdrop, and 1 ft. to play with. All I need is 6 ft. to make a portrait. Well, after seeing what 6 ft. looked like, I would have rather had 10, but, there I was unpacking, knowing full well it would work. The further distance would have blurred the backdrop perfectly, but, we didn't have it. We tried a white backdrop first, but, the couple preferred the black. I was shooting tethered, so, we got to see our results immediately on the laptop.

It's pretty straight forward, really. 2 similar sized umbrellas with equally powered strobes bounced into both. I was running the flashes at about 1/4 and there were triggered wirelessly.

The backdrop was set upon a bench, behind them. I pointed a 3rd, slave flash (that means it's triggered by the 2 other flashes), at the backdrop. We onlty used that for the white backdrop, but, when we switched to black, we didn't use it.

 

I stood between the 2 umbrellas and made sure to focus on the eyes. Also, make sure the heads are equal distance from the lens. Only 1 of them will be in focus if that happens. Sharpness in the eyes is critical for a good portrait. This gets harder to achieve with the more people that are in the shot.

After we shot about 70
 frames, they looked at all of them and decided that there were lots to choose from that would work well. On the laptop, Laura pick out her favorite 10 (any number of picture can be chosen) and I came home to edit them.

Portrait editing will be a post soon.

Please, let me know what you think and thanks.

 

Congratulations, Bob and Laura!!

 

Clip art wall hanging

  Here is my method for making a really cool wall hanging.

 

First find an awesome picture. The higher the resolution, the better. Right click on the image and select 'savepicture as' and name it something. The computer puts it in your 'pictures' file by default.

 

Open the picture in your photo editing software and convert it to black and white.Any editing software should work. Between contrast/brightness and levels, you should be able to make it a picture with no shadows. just solid black or solid white

 

Once you decide on a size, in this case, mine is 16" by 22", you have to chop the picture up into printable sizes.  

You may have to re-sharpen the picture with a sharpie marker.

 

Lay the template under the glass. The art store calls this stuff 'foto frisket' and it's $3.00 for an 8x10 sheet, but, Target calls it clear contact paper and it's 6 bucks for a 24 foot roll. 

 

 

Cut thorough contact paper and peel off the unwanted portion.

 

 

Once the paper is peeled off, start painting. Oh, yea...make sure the glass is super clean.

 

 

After the light color is dry, peel off the rest of the contact paper and spray the dark color.

 

 

Put it all back in the frame and it's all good. A few points: As you can see, everything is painted backwards, so, make sure to factor that into your photo editing. Please, leave a comment or ask a question.