Archives / 2008 / April

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A Quick Review of Portrait Lighting Terms

I shot this portrait as a demonstration to discuss lighting ratio and contrast effects in a workshop that I hold once a month. The point that I was demonstrating happened to be exposure values versus perceived tonal values in various parts of the image depending on local contrast. More on that subject another day. During the demonstration I used a couple of terms that were either unfamiliar to the participants or were perceived in a different way than I perceived them. In any event, a discussion followed that I...

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Color Management and Other Stupid Internet Tricks

A few days ago I stumbled across an internet article related to color management written by a professional photographer that made me wince in pain. The article was all fine and dandy it’s purpose was to discuss the shortcomings of a certain piece of software. It really doesn’t matter what the software was or what it’s shortcomings were. The problem was that the author was doling out advice and work-arounds that are dead wrong. This prompted me to attempt to write a brief explanation of color management principles and...

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Histograms and Using Your Head

If you saw a histogram like this one on the back of your camera what would you think? Mull it over while I yammer on about what a histogram is. A histogram is a graph representing the relative number of pixels of a particular tonal value and in the case above a color value as well. Great what the heck does that mean. For now we’ll stick with tonal values for simplicity. Tonal value 0 would be all the way on the left and it is dark. Tonal value...