Post processing part 4 – Dazzling eyes

To me, the eyes are probably the most important part of a portrait shot. Ask me again after loads more experience and I’ll have probably changed mind. But for now, it’s the eyes. Unlike the post processing for skin, you can go a little wild with the irises.

This person already has great eyes – there is no need for any work. But I will go through the steps that I carry out when I want to add some extra punch to the eyes.

Just like for when doing the skin, I create a new layer group, and call it “eyes”.

Create a eyes layer group

Spot correction

“Spot correction for eyes?!” Yes, because there are often numerous catch lights in the eyes and I prefer them with just one well defined catch light. So if there are numerous catch lights, I clean them up in the same way as for skin.

I create a new layer, rename it to “spots” (I could perhaps call it “catch lights” but I as I said before, am such a lazy typist :)

Create a new layer

On this layer I make whatever corrections I need to. Mostly this is removing additional catching lights.

Eye whites

The white of an eye is not pure white! So I don’t make them pure white. But if the person has been awake all night (like me) having fun in Edinburgh (not like me, I’m stuck in front of a computer screen) then their eyes might be a little bloodshot (like mine).

Firstly, I select the eye whites, then save the selection and next very slightly feather (Sift-F6, menu Select, Modify, Feather) it, perhaps 2px.

Select the eye whites

Then I create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer

I rename the new layer to “eye whites”. Notice that this adjustment layer is not clipped to the layer below – there is no small downward pointing arrow in the icons for the layer. This is because I want the adjustment to be applied to all layers below, specifically the background layer, and not just to the layer immediately below. To toggle the “Clip to layer below”, use the button shown below.

Also, below are the two adjustments that are made. First, I reduce the saturations of the red, making any bloodshot eye whites greyer. Then I increase the master lightness to make them a little whiter. Care must be taken to not go overboard and give the person glow in the dark eye whites – these adjustments are usually very small (unlike I’ve shown here). Of course, I can always lower the power of the effect by reducing the layer opacity.

Desaturate the red and lighten it all

Irises

This where some fun and some fairly wild effects can be applied. There are numerous ways to make the irises really pop, but I tend to use just either levels adjustment or dodge/burn, sometimes I use both. There’s another method that involves painting and blending that I’ll describe, though I’ve not really had much success with it I’ll describe it because it a quite a different process – perhaps it’ll work better for you than it has for me. Methods similar to levels adjustment that also produce a pretty good effect and are worth trying out are Curves, Hue/Saturation or Brightness/Contrast adjustment layers.

Irises – levels adjustments

This adjustment is just for the irises, so I start out by making a selection of the irises (and of course, saving that selection), then some very fine feathering of just a few pixels. If the black pupil is reflecting some colour, I usually exclude that from the selection – I don’t want to make the pupil reflection more vibrant (except once when there was a very good silhouette of me taking the shot!).

Levels adjustments are very good for someone who has eyes in one of the adjustment channel colours – green, blue or red (ok, maybe not red). For other colours, I tend to increase saturation and brightness a curves adjustment, but it is a little trickier.

Select the irises

Create a Levels adjustment layer.

Create a Levels adjustment layer

For a Levels adjustment on blue or green eyes, simply reducing the brightness of the appropriate channel is usually enough – reduce blue channel brightness for blue eyes, green channel brightness for green eyes. Below, is the change that I would make for blue eyes, as well as the equivalent for a Curves adjustment.

Typical Levels adjustment for blue eyes (and equivalent Curves adjustment)

But this was not the effect I used for this gentleman’s irises.

Irises – dodge/burn

By dodging (lightening) and burning (darkening) the irises, I often manually draw in a slight effect to make the eyes stand out.

Dodging and burning can be carried out directly on the image, but I prefer to do such changes on a layer. That way I have the freedom adjust the effect, particularly in this case, the blending mode. So this almost starts out like most operations by creating a new layer, but this layer is created in a different way. Either hold down the Alt key at same time as clicking the “Create a new layer” button, or use the menu Layer > New > Layer…, or press Shift+Ctrl+N. This will open a dialog box to giving very useful options.

Creating the Dodge/Burn layer

I give the layer a name, and set the Mode to Overlay, and tick the “Fill with Overlay-neutral colour (50% gray)” option. This creates a grey layer that has no effect – my dodging and burning later will produce the effect that I want.

The new layer

Then I use the Dodge/Burn tool on this layer. Where the “burn” is applied to layer, the image gets darker. Similarly, when the “dodge” is drawn on this layer, the image gets lighter. While dodging and burning, I make sure that the exposure is set to something low, like 20% so that I can more carefully apply the effect,and I only use Midtones (the others have next to no effect). Like all eye changes, subtlety is the key!

What to dodge and burn? I could just say “Wherever is best” but there is a pretty good guide that I always follow – I darken the outside third of the iris, and lighten the inside third. Then I apply any extra little bits of dodging and burning as I see neccessary.

Darken the outer iris, lighten the inner iris

Finally, I change the layer blending mode from Overlay to Soft Light (to more exaggerate the effect) or to Hard Light (to extremely exaggerate it) to see how it looks. The effect can always be toned by by reducing the layer opacity.

Again, this was not the effect I used for this gentleman’s irises.

Irises – paint and blend

This is the quickest and probably easiest method on it’s own, but I usually find that it’s not enough on it’s on. In particular, the irises get darkened and so there is usually some extra work to do afterwards. Because of this, I very rarely use this method.

I use the Eye Dropper (keyboard I) to select the iris colour. Then I create a new layer, and use the Brush to paint the iris colour over the irises.

Paint the irises with the iris colour

After that, it’s just a simple matter of changing the blending mode from Normal – Soft Light is usually best but Overlay and Hard Light can also be good. Finally, lowering the opacity of the layer can make it look a lot less outlandish. A little selective erasing with a low flow and it’s done – easy, fast.

And even this was not the effect I used for this gentleman’s irises.

Irises – so what did I do?

H’s eyes were already brilliant. I initially did nothing to them, but in the end, I added an Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and increased the saturation just a fraction. It’s just enough to add a little more of the wonderful dark golden colour in his eyes.

Phew, that’s the eyes done!

Post process series

Post processing part 1 – What post processing?
Post processing part 2 – The shot
Post processing part 3 – Nice skin
Post processing part 4 – Dazzling eyes (soon)
Post processing part 5 – Brilliant hair
Post processing part 6 – Cool clothes (soon)
Post processing part 7 – Final tweaks (soon)

Post processing part 3 – Nice skin

I have no order for doing post processing – it is simply driven by whatever catches my eye. But I typically start with skin since that is usually such a large area of the photo. I create a layer group, rename it to “skin” and place all the skin post processing in layers within this new group.

Create a skin layer group

Spots

Everyone has spots or small skin blemishes. The good news is that they are gone in a few days, the bad news is that I don’t have a few days to wait, so I correct them.

I create a new layer, rename it “spots” (I could perhaps call it the slightly less bad sounding “blemishes” but I am such a lazy typist :) and make sure it is in the “skin” layer group.

Create a spots layer

With the new “spots” layer selected, use the three healing tools. Make sure that “Sample all layers” option is checked so that the healing tool will heal the background image, but place the alteration on the “spots” layer (but I haven’t completely figured this important bit out!). I try not to over do it – I want the person to still look human and not like a porcelain doll. Apart from skin, I also correct things such a maybe a stray hair, distracting clothing glint (zips are bad for this) and lips.

Use the healing tools

Blue channel softlight blur

I had been applying a very similar process but just using greyscale until bassqee suggested Iuse the blue channel – what a great improvement! This is probably the most complex operation. It also has the one greatest effects on the image, particularly in shadowing and colour.

I start out by making a selection of the skin – avoid anything that you want to keep pin sharp such as eyes and eyebrows. For beards, sometimes I keep it out of this selection to keep it sharp, and sometimes I include it in – I have no rules on when or why, just what ever looks better to me at the time. Once I’ve made the selection, I save it (Shift+Ctrl+N, menu Select, Save Selection…) because it will needed again soon. Because I’m not imaginative at all, I named the saved selection “skin”.

Select the skin

Then I feather the selection (Sift+F6, menu Select, Modify, feather…) to something reasonably large so that the transition from unprocessed to processed skin is not (very) obvious. In this photo, I used 20px. I save the selection before any feathering so that if necessary, I can later apply a different feathering to reloaded unfeathered selection.

I create a new layer in the “skin” layer group and name it “skin” (see, no imagination). It is important now to highlight the “background” layer to make it the source of what I do next. Switch over the Channels tab and select the Blue channel, copy it (Ctrl-C), switch back to the Layers tab, select the new and empty “skin” and paste the blue channel into it (Ctrl-V). This will create a grey mask of the selected skin over the person.

Copy and pase the blue channel

But wait! There’s a problem. The mask is a copy of the blue colour that is in the “Background” layer, which means that any blemishes corrected on the”spots”, are also in this mask! To fix this, just do the steps again but for the “spots” layer – create a new layer above (this is important) the “skin” layer, select the “spots” layer, copy the blue channel into the new layer, finally merge this new layer and the “skin” layer. It sounds worse than it is, trust me.

I select the skin layer and blur it a lot (menu Filter, Blue, Gaussian Blur…) so that all detail is lost and only the general shape and shading remain. I used 20px here and probably should have gone quite a bit higher, 30px looks better.

Blur the mask

Finally, change the blending mode, “Soft Light” is usually best but for a more edgy look, “Hard Light”.The other modes give very freaky effects. I also adjust the opacity to lower the effect if it is a bit overwhelming and doesn’t look good.In this case, I left it at 100%.

Set the blending mode and opacity

Try toggling the “skin” layer on and off (click the little eyeball just to the left of the layer) to clearly see what effect this layer has on the image. The most obvious thing is some increased shadow definition and some very very gentle skin smoothing, but now there is a slightly yucky yellow cast!

Warming

To correct the slight yellowing, I add a warming filter. To add a warming filter, select “Create new fill or adjustment layer” (there are a few ways of doing this but I use the popup menu from the bottom of the layers tab), and chose “Photo Filter…”. Rename the new layer to “warm skin”.

Add a warming adjustment layer

The small downward pointing arrow in the icons for the layer indicate that the effect will only affect image in the layer below, which is what I want – I only want to warm the skin and not the whole image. The “Clip to layer below” switch (indicated above) on the Adjust tab for the layer toggles this option. Another way to restrict the warming layer to only the use would be to create a layer mask using the handily saved “skin” selection.

And that is it for the skin!

Post process series

Post processing part 1 – What post processing?
Post processing part 2 – The shot
Post processing part 3 – Nice skin
Post processing part 4 – Dazzling eyes
Post processing part 5 – Brilliant hair
Post processing part 6 – Cool clothes (soon)
Post processing part 7 – Final tweaks (soon)

Post processing part 2 – The shot

Raw

D700 + Nikkor 85mm f1.4 + SB800 at ISO200, 85mm, f5.0, 1/500sec, exposure -2/3EV, flash +0.7EV

This is the photo straight from the camera. Often, white balance and exposure correction is required but not in this case. With the white balance set to “cloudy”, the colour was right.

This photo is a fairly typical of the way I do things. Since I am only interested in the persons face, I use center weighted metering to get the exposure for the face correct. I only care a little about the exposure of the environment behind them – a little – I want to darken it to make the persons face stand out from the background. I set my camera exposure compensation to -2/3EV making the whole image darker than it would be, and then I set my flash (SB800) to +0.7EV in commander mode (Custom Menu Setting, e3 Flash cntrl for built-in flash, Commander mode). This will lighten the foreground to a good exposure level, and leave the more distant background darker.

Basically, all I’m doing is setting a relative exposure difference between the background and the person.

Of course, there are some fine points to it.

• More often than not, I err on the side of slightly overexposing the person since it is easier to correct that than underexposure (well, at least with my camera).
• If I have time (and can be bothered), I use matrix metering and read the exposure setting for the whole scene and then later spot meter the person – this give an acurate exposure setting but it takes time to do.
• If it’s very sunny, then I increase the exposure difference and this reminds me of the most important thing, shot in the shade!

Importing

I import the photo in Lightroom, and then right-click it and select “Edit in Photoshop”. This will conveniently stack the Photoshop image with the original raw on in Lightroom so that the two images (the oringal raw, and the photoshoped one) are kept together.

From Lightroom, Edit in Photoshop

In Photoshop, I try not to make any changes directly to image, so there are still things I haven’t figured out and a few slightly mucky steps to manage and use layers – I must learn better ways!

Post process series

Post processing part 1 – What post processing?
Post processing part 2 – The shot
Post processing part 3 – Nice skin
Post processing part 4 – Dazzling eyes
Post processing part 5 – Brilliant hair
Post processing part 6 – Cool clothes (soon)
Post processing part 7 – Final tweaks (soon)

Post processing part 1 – What post processing?

I was asked “What post processing do you do?”

“I really don’t know what I’m doing, but just enough to so that the person is really happy with their shot”, I replied. Truthfully, just “I really don’t know what I’m doing” would be right. I work through a few processes that I’ve discovered but I’m always learning and looking for better ways of doing things. At the moment, I’m not entirely happy with the way I currently process skin.

Anyway, yesterday I took a photo that I really liked – no white balance or exposure correction was required, but I then performed some post processing. The amount of post processing and the actual steps I carry out vary from photo to photo, but this is a reasonably typical example.

Here is a half-size crop (click the image to see the full size) that show the Photoshop alterations – skin, eyes, hair, clothing.The changes are subtle, I hope, but they add some impact, again, I hope :)

Before and after

The final Lightroom adjustments are some exposure gradients, and the obvious crop.

Full image

D700 + Nikkor 85mm f1.4 + SB800 at ISO200, 85mm, f5.0, 1/500sec, exposure -2/3EV, flash +0.7EV

After Photoshop

Finally, after some Lightroom tweaks and cropping before publishing

Post process series

Post processing part 1 – What post processing?
Post processing part 2 – The shot
Post processing part 3 – Nice skin
Post processing part 4 – Dazzling eyes
Post processing part 5 – Brilliant hair
Post processing part 6 – Cool clothes (soon)
Post processing part 7 – Final tweaks (soon)

Posing a face

I’m supposed to be witting this blog so that I don’t forget… but I did forget! I watched an interesting video, thought “wow, I must save that”, and then promptly forgot to do so :(

Today I spent ages searching for it again. At long last I found it.

Threatening grass

Here’s a shot that I like, I even like the fun text with it (click on the photo to read that) but I’ve never been 100% happy with the face angle.

D300 + Nikkor 85mm f1.4 + SB800 + SB600 at ISO200, 85mm, f2.8, 1/80sec

Rembrandt Lives

David Ziser of Digital Pro Talk gives a great 15 minutes presentation called Rembrandt Lives on posing a face for portrait shots. He says:

Classical portraiture is an important starting point in becoming a good “people photographer”. By knowing the classical basics, we can do out best at creating the and most flattering images for are clients.

It is probably the of stuff that is taught in the first year of a photography course, but since I’ve never done any such courses it was all new and interesting to me. Also, it addressed something that I was starting to get an inkling of in my portraits – how do I angle the face? I hadn’t yet found anything that explains a such concept, and then I stumbled across David’s video which does it so well. Now I’ve got to put it into practice, and then learn to break those rules.

I’m not certain that “Threatening grass” above can be improved by following one of the classical poses; perhaps it is one of those cases where the rules have to be broken.

My notes

These are my notes to act as a memory jogger for me, but make sure that you watch the video; David goes into depth about the poses and suggestions on use.

Full Face Here’s lookin’ directly at you babe

• The axis of the subjects face is in line with the lens axis.
• Pupils are centred in the whites of the eyes.

2/3′s View It defines the mask of the face and is not dependant on the eye direction

• Inside corner of the eye lines up with the tip of the nose. Outside eye always contained in far side of face.
• Don’t let the tip of the nose break the check line, and/or don’t let the far eye hang out in space.

Modified 2/3′s View

• The axis of the subjects face is not quite 2/3s View.
• Pupils slightly decentered in the whites of the eyes.
• Even a little white of the eye shows at the bottom of the eye.

Profile View

• Exactly half of the face.
• Only look for far eye lashes, not eye ball, eye lid or check.
• Pupils looking slight towards the camera side to give centred appearance and reduce eye white on the side. Chin down a fraction to get eyes looking slightly up.
• Keep profile clean.

A shot in the dark

A few days ago I zipped out to photograph a band who I meet last year at the Edinburgh Festival – Mayhew. It was enjoyable evening listening to them and others play, and also fun to meeting other people there enjoying the music.

I usually take shots in bright light, and with a flash, so shooting a band on a dark stage was something completely different. I had to rapidly discover how to take shots in such a dark environment.

The shot in the dark

For stage shooting I learned to use high ISO, large apertures, held holdable shutter speeds, spot metering and ignore colour.

Here’s the singer of Mayhew.

D700 + Nikkor 85mm f1.4 at ISO2000, 85mm, f1.4, 1/100sec

Camera settings

I am glad my even in such loud place, I was glad that I have camera set not to make any noise (d1 Beep: off). I was sometimes shooting over a person’s shoulder, so a camera going beep in their ear would have been disturbing. I also have the low light auto-focus assist light turned off (a9 Built-in AF-assistant illuminator: off). The musicians can’t see much because of the strobing stage lights but once again, it would have annoyed other people in the audience. And no way to a using a flash – that would have annoyed everyone! So I had use my camera in “dark-mode” :)

I made one setting change, I already have the LCD brightness very low (Setup menu, LCD brightness: -2) but I set it the lowest of -3. Even then it seemed bright in the darkness of the audience space. The LCD can only be adjusted from -3 darkness to +3 brightness. This range is fairly limited; you can still see the full gamma chart at -3 and at +3. It would be nice to be able to set it even darker and a lower contrast so that I can still see the images, but not light up myself at the same time! I only need to check composition and focus. For stage photography with crazy lighting, I don’t really care the colours, surprisingly.

Along with reducing the LCD brightness, I should have also made another setting change. Next time, I will also turn off the auto view of the images (current set to c4 Monitor off delay, Image review: 4 seconds) but instead, I simply half pressed the shutter immediately after taking photos to get turn the LCD off when it displayed an image. I would shot a series of images, then check them later – I didn’t want to check them immediately.

One thing that I did like was being able to press the function button, right where my fingers were on the body grip, and bring up the camera info display. When I needed to look at the camera settings, the info screen was a very fast and very clear way to see everything. The LCD displayed in night mode (black background, grey text) which was perfect. The function button is still set to let me change the focus area (f5 Assign FUNC button, FUNC button + dials: Dynamic AF area) but I’ve now added spot metering to it too (f5 Assign FUNC button, FUNC button: Spot metering). I used to have this setting do nothing, but quickly being able to do spot metering I sometimes find useful. I don’t do it often do spot metering using the function button while looking through the viewfinder, but when I do, I put up with the LCD suddenly coming to life below my eye. Of course, for the photographing of the musicians, I had the metering mode switched to spot metering anyway.

Shooting

Making the shots also involved a quick bit learning. The obvious was high ISO, large aperture (have I told you that I love my 85mm f1.4?) and shutter speeds that I could hand hold.

The stage was light by a few coloured stage lights, and then flickered in steaks of moving colour and strobes. I wanted the person well light, particularly their faces. Talk about impossible! I tried to spot any lighting pattern, but it seemed random. In the end, I spot metered for the face, fired off rapid shots, and quickly looked to see if anything was good. I was only looking for good focus, exposure and a good image. If the colours were something crazy, that didn’t really mater since I have so much flexibility in changing them during post-processing. If the colours were really wild, then that would probably make a good shot too.

Just starting?

A friend of mine has bought a Fujifilm FinePix S2000HD for a safari trip and asked me “Help!” I offered to go along on the safari to take the photos for him (as long as he covered my expenses, of course), but what he actually wanted was help with understanding photography :(

So anyway…

I found this great series of articles that explain the basics of photography. If you are just starting out, then perhaps you’ll find them a good introduction too. The clear explanations, diagrams and exercises really make this series a brilliant tutorial, particularly lessons 4, 5 and 6.

Lesson 1: Light and the Pinhole Camera
Lesson 2: Lenses and Focus
Lesson 3: Lenses, Light and Magnification
Lesson 4: Exposure and Stops
Lesson 5: Aperture
Lesson 6: Shutter
Lesson 7: ISO
Lesson 8: The Light Meter

They say:

In this series, we cover all the basics of camera design and use. We talk about the ‘exposure triangle’: shutter speed, aperture and ISO. We talk about focus, depth of field and sharpness, as well as how lenses work, what focal lengths mean and how they put light on the sensor. We also look at the camera itself, how it works, what all the options mean and how they affect your photos.

Questions and answers on this series have been posted to Question Time.

What editing can Lightroom do?

Tonight I was asked, “what editing can Lightroom do”?

I use Lightroom as my library management tool. It allows me to sort and find all my photos with ease.

I also use it for most of my initial gross editing too. A few things I use pretty much all the time are file conversion, white balance correction and cropping. Frequently I use exposure and saturation corrections too. This type of change that is made to the entire the photo is what I call “gross editing”. Some slightly more localised editing is possible in Lightroom such as vignetting and gradients – this sort of editing only affects certain regions of a photo.

Here’s an example of the original photo (cropped) and after I had finished the gross editing in Lightroom.

D700 + Nikkor 85mm f1.4 at ISO2000, 85mm, f1.4, 1/80sec, cropped

D700 + Nikkor 85mm f1.4 at ISO2000, 85mm, f1.4, 1/80sec, cropped and post processed in Lightroom

There are also some finer selective editing features in Lightroom too; these affect really small areas that you choose. Spot correction and red eye correction are two examples, and both work reasonably well. You can also use a brush a change the exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation, clarity and sharpness over areas that you paint. But personally, I find that the brush does not give the control or the very careful selection that I want. And for the kind of portraits I do, I think that spot and eye correction can be done better elsewhere.

Lightroom is fast and easy to use, but the Lightroom adjustments were not quite enough for me with this photo. To complete it, I used Photoshop. I made very fine changes to the musician’s eyes, hair, and some other tweaks, in particular to the overblown forehead and ear. The final version is here.

Finally, who is he? Check out www.mayhewmusic.com :)

Focus on Imaging

A few shots from the Focus on Imaging expo.

Gear, printing, presentations thinly veiled sales pitches and lighting

D700 + Nikkor 85mm f1.4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f2.5

Haute dryad

I got kicked off the Hasselblad stand for sullying their model with my Nikon :) They were letting people shot this model with demonstration Hasselblads – obviously that would not be a good enough test to decide if you were going to spend £50,000+ but at least you could have a play.

D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f2.5 at ISO800, 70mm, f4.5, 1/640sec

Focus on Imaging

I spent last week in Birmingham and visited the Focus On Imaging 2009 photography expo. It is my very first time attending such an event. It was almost as I expected it.

I had expected stalls selling stuff. I hadn’t expected hard sell. I had expected presentations. I hadn’t expected thinly veiled sales pitches. And I had expected to meet interesting people. But I hadn’t expected so much clambering for my credit card. Basically, I enjoy photography purely for fun, so I’ve never really encountered the hard face of the business side. I got a scary glimpse of that at the expo.

Everywhere was sell sell sell. There were people selling gear to photographers, guides to photographers, albums to photographers, software to photographers, almost everything you could possibly want from super expensive medium format Hasselblads to lens wipes were available. Almost everything; I couldn’t find any SB28′s.

The presentations

There were numerous presentations held at various booths and stages throughout the day – with many happening at the same time so that when I tired of one, I could simply wander to another.

Some presentations were good, they started with information, tips and tricks or suggestions and they would segue into a sales pitch. Pretty much all of the software presentations were very small tips on how to do something in their own software which unbelievably no other software could do, and therefore, you really needed to buy it – apparently. Some presentations were horrible slick snake-oil hard-sells trying to push silver bullet gadgets that would solve photography problems. I really hope that people were not suckered into buying such junk. While listening to anything from any stall holder, I had to have my metal filtering and bullshit-guard turned all the way up to 10!

One of the more popular presentations was the strobist demos by The Flash Center. They gave a very brief overview of what strobist was that would confuse anyone who was not familiar with it, and bore anyone who was. But after setting up some gear and taking some shots, it became clear. It was weird that even though they were using cheap stands, flashes and umbrellas, they were taking the photos with a £25,000 PhaseOne camera. It was also weird that they would show the shots on a few monitors and try to explain why one was better than the other thanks to some strobist concept and their gear, but the differences were sometimes too subtle to perceive in such a rapid presentation. The only thing I got out of it was how big some of the stands that I am interested in are, and that many people are interested in strobism.

The PocketWizard demos were also popular, no doubt because of the strobism popularity. I was interested in the new TTL PocketWizard but there was actually very little hard info them other than release dates and that they’ll sync at 1/500th. I’ll wait for reviews.

Another popular presentation was on freelance work by RedEye. The reason that it was popular was obvious; many prosumers would like to make some money, but also the presentation was factual. It was sales-lite. Sadly, I got a phone call and missed most of it.

At one demo, a person asked the speaker “how can you justify your high prices (to take photos)?”. The presenter then gave a little rant about Flickr folk “who suddenly think that they can take good photos and so they start doing jobs”. It was clear that this is a tetchy subject for him. I wonder if they person who asked it knew that – if he did, well done :) Ultimately the presenter did not give a good answer, or even any real answer, but he showed that he was angry and perhaps a more little scared of the encroaching Flickrities. Another presenter also conveyed the same sentiment – that Flickr people were not worthy, and that they were probably eating into his business. Perhaps I can understand why they might be losing business; the photos taken by those two presenters might be good, but I wouldn’t want to sit down and share a drink with them!

Software

It should not haven been a surprise to me, but it was – there was a huge amount of software being pushed. Either library management or just plain old photo-editing. I never knew that there was so much available, but I have never looked before.

Sadly, I can’t think of a single software demo that was good. Everyone single one would give a few tips, and then explain why their software was the best and how it was absolutely the one that you wanted. I wondered if people would ask good questions at the end, so I hung around listening to a PhaseOne software demo, but the questions were all about the photos themselves and the photographer who had made the presentation. They all probably felt the same as me, “enough of the software, tell me, how did you get that shot?”.

There were also lots of accompanying DVD covering pretty much everything – tutorials or guides on how to use some piece of software, a camera, how to take protrait shots and on and on and on. It was rare if a presentation completed without some mention of a DVD, especially if it was being given by photography on behalf of a software company, then he (I never saw a female presenter) would also push his own photography DVD as well.

Gear

There was tonnes and tonnes of gear to goggle at. The things impressed me the most were the huge printers slowly churning out fantastic prints, and surprisingly, the film medium format cameras. I liked the film medium format cameras for their engineering – and using the light table to look at some amazing shots. There was only one other film booth that I could find, everything else was digital.

Well, not everything was digital. There were bags, tripods, reflectors, books, insurances, places to study photography… so much to see. And that was good – I was able to browse so much in a day with some easy wondering, and actually see the items for real, try them out and ask questions, instead of just seeing picture on a website. What was lacking were all the (hopefully impartial) reviews that are available on the web. I don’t think that I would buy anything without at least reading some reviews – maybe that is why I didn’t buy a single thing.

There were some good deals being offered. Discounts on many things brand new and even bigger discounts on demo items. One that stood out was Nikon Capture NX on sale for only £50 (instead of the usual £100+).

There was an interesting product that I had never heard of before but obviously it is not a new idea since there were a few competing offers from different photographers. And it did seem to be only photographers who were selling this, not any particular store. They were selling flash cards on “How to shot a wedding”. The small deck of cards, usually held together by a metal ring, show what shots to take for a wedding. Each card had an example of a shot, and some text describing it. The idea is that you can simply follow the instructions and examples on the cards and cover the whole wedding. Quite a good idea I though for people who have never done wedding or have no idea on how to do it. But I didn’t buy one – they were outlandishly overpriced!

The people

But this was the best part – I meet loads of interesting people and enjoyed talking them most. Of course, they were not the ones trying to sell me something. The first thing that they want to establish is what kind of photographer you are – amateur, pro… – then, what you photograph – portaits, landscapes… – and then, what gear to do you use – Nikon, Canon, HasselBlad… Once through the techno-geek babel and comparing “my flux capacitor is bigger than your flux capacitor”, it was good to talk with them.

So, would I go again?

The easy answer is no. Not unless I had a shopping list and knew that the good deals would probably be available for the gear I wanted. Everything else, I can get from the web or friends. Without the hard-sell. Maybe it is more suited to pros with bigger budgets – but there was a MooCard booth :)

Oh, and I got kicked off the Hasselblad stand for using my Nikon :)