THE MAKING OF A WINNING PHOTOGRAPH

Reflections of a Fisherman's Life, winner of 1st place for Beginner/Landscape TBPS 2009.  This was taken at Peggy's Cove in Nova Scotia. Thankfully it was a cloudy but bright day so having my camera set on auto, which is where it is 99% of the time, worked. Also, it was a calm day so I got nice reflections in the water. I used Photo Shop to make this good shot better. Using the Highlights and Shadows tool brought out the details that were hidden tin the shadows. Increasing the contrast just 10% reduced some of the haziness in the air, therefore making the photo more clear. I enhanced the colors just enough to make them brighter but not unreal. I think cropping is so important...I tried to get enough of the scene in the photo to show the different areas of the fisherman's life without showing objects that were not necessary to tell the story.                 Stephanie Dixon

UPCOMING CPG ACTIVITIES

Our October  meeting will be held at the Glynn County Police Deptment meeting room on 10-15-09. There will be a presentation on Historical Photography.  The field trips for October. The homework theme for this month is Macrophotography.

TIP OF THE MONTH

The Macro Field Studio: The term studio implies controlling both background and lighting. In macro photography, controlling the background and lighting in the field requires some thought, but it can be done fairly easily. So the 'field studio' approach would be to make a macro shot using some sort of poster board or reflector as a white, silver, or gold background behind your subject and removed just enough so as not to be in focus, as well as controlling your lighting in some fashion. With linkable automated strobes, sun shading, and reflectors your imagination would be your only limitation to variations of lighting. Your probably would also need 2 or 3 tripods with varying attachment features and, of course, a good macro lens.

DEFINITION OF THE MONTH

Shooting in RAW literally means making a digital image using unprocessed 'raw' data as opposed to, for example, shooting in jpeg or tiff formats. The term RAW is not actually a format but an umbrella term for a format that will vary from one camera manufacturer to another. For example, Nikon RAW files are designated .NEF and are not interchangeable with Cannon RAW files designated as .CR2. The advantage of a jpeg file is to conserve camera memory (maximizing the number of images you can get on your memory card) by using a compression algorithm, whereas, the advantage of a RAW file is to conserve image data (highest image quality obtainable) thus maximizing your options in postprocessing. Obviously, RAW files are very large and you need to use a postprocessing program such as Photoshop or Lightroom to take advantage of them.