Photography | Ladies Learn

Hi, I’m back, sorry to have neglected this portion of ladies learn. This season of photography proved to be busy and one of my best yet! However, I am committed to bring you inspiration and education in this department. I want to use this blog as a way to “give back”. I know how frustrating it can be to look at other people’s pictures and think, “How did they do that?” I’m not saying I know everything or that my style is the greatest, I’m still in learning mode and want to seek out workshops or blogs for help…. (this is me looking dazed and confused)

I had a nice morning doing a mentoring session with Ashley. She is an aspiring photographer and has a love of learning. We spent the morning talking photography and then when we were finished we went through a list she typed up. It was a list of questions for me. So I am going to answer some of her questions here:

1. Do you use manual or auto focusing? What settings do you adjust to get what you want in focus. I have a hard time getting all faces in focus when photographing two or more people.

Okay, for sure I have my camera do the focusing for me – I have it set to auto focusing. There is a little button that looks like a rectangle with a plus sign in it that you press and then you can choose what dot focuses on what. I am constantly changing that focus point. I believe it is called back button focusing (I could do an entire post on this subject). If ever you feel like you aren’t getting all the people in focus make your f-stop number bigger. I would stick to a f5.6 or f6.3. However, I think it’s interesting to show depth so I usually don’t mind if some people are out of focus.

2. Which lenses do you use and for which occasion?

In general, use my 50mm 1.4 lens for babies, seniors, and couples and I use my 24-70mm 2.8 lens for weddings and larger groups. But there are a few more lens I would love to buy in the near future: 85mm 1.2 and the 35mm 1.4.

3. What type of equipment would you recommend for beginning photographers?

I’m a canon girl so for canon I would recommend getting the 40D, 7D, 5D, or 5D Mark II. They are all good cameras, but the higher the price the more advanced the camera tends to be. I shoot with the 5D Mark II and love it. As for lenses? Here’s what to start out with : 50mm 1.4 and the 85mm 1.8. In particular the 50mm – it’s the best lens to learn on:

4. Do you use a flash and under what circumstances. Was it a learning process using a flash?

I don’t use flash, if I ever did in the past it was after the sun went down during a wedding. I love natural shadows and would rather have a high ISO with some grain than pull out my flash.

5. What are some tips you could give for posing families and what are the most flattering angles to photograph large people?

Sorry, Ashley, I did a poor job answering this question when we went over it. I really just throw them together, I usually put the parents in place and then go from there. of course it’s awesome when you get a super candid feel like there was no posing at all. As far as posing larger people? I don’t do anything different than I would with anyone else.

She had a couple more questions that were more related to establishing a business, marketing, and post processing. Let me know if you have any specific questions you want answered and I could add them to the next “Q and A”.

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By Aubry | Also posted in Equipment, Secrets & Tips, Uncategorized | Tagged aubry startin equipment, best camera, best lens | Comments (1)

For me it’s all about what my lighting is like… if it’s super bright then I take the ISO down (160-200), if it’s heavy shade I’m between 400 and 640, and then if it’s indoors not too much light – I bump it up around 1000-2500.

This ISO is like your secret weapon; it lets you capture a picture that your camera would normally want its flash to automatically pop up. But instead you bump up the ISO and your camera becomes a lot more sensitive to the light it is given. I’m just not a fan of flash… it takes away all the romance. I like natural shadows.

Okay, that said, let’s talk “grain”, “pixels”, “noise”, whatever. When you get up in those higher numbers, you’ll get more grain. So keeping it low and find more light, BUT grain is not always bad if you need that rad shot indoors when your son is blowing out his birthday candles, go ahead and jack up that ISO.

Here, I was at 800 ISO – see the grain?

This is also where the quality of your camera comes into play. With my Canon 40d I didn’t want to go over 800 ISO, but now with my canon 5D Mark II I don’t hesitate bumping it up to 2500 as my sun starts to fall. Nicer (more expensive) cameras give you that luxury.

I would just recommend always bringing as much light to the subject as you can so that you can stay in those lower ISO numbers. When I do a newborn shoot, I put the babe right up to a window no matter where it is.

I just stuck Josie on my dining room table that was right next to a window.

If you really don’t like to see grain and need to shoot over 800 ISO, then I would recommend getting a noiseware plug-in for your photoshop. Imagenomics is the best in my opinion. Check it out.

I used noiseware on this pictures of my little guy. It was super grainy before, there was hardly any light in the room.

There are times when I want a picture to look more “aged” so I add in grain. I use an action for this or here is a tutorial on how to put it in manually. Here are a couple where I’ve added in the grain.

You can see how I like to use it mostly with black and white pics. So now you have the third point on the triangle. Once you set your aperture (how much blur) the way you want and your shutter speed is fast enough to capture the shot without blur through movement… you can now set the ISO to higher or lower to give you the perfect exposure.

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By Aubry | Also posted in Secrets & Tips, The Basics | Tagged exposure triangle, ISO | Comments (0)

Go ahead and do it… I dare you. Shoot right into the sun!

This is a tricky one, first off, you have to be in manual otherwise you’ll get some nice silhouettes (which can also be lovely). You’ll also find that the pictures look washed out and super bright. Make sure you get the proper exposure on your subject and don’t worry about the brightness of the sky. The best actions to use on sun flare pictures to make them get that richness back is “boost” from the pioneer women’s actions or “oh snap!” from Totally Rad Actions.

Here are a few from my collection:

I love the warmth that it gives and how the picture becomes more alive. I love looking a photographer’s work who embrace the sunshine like this. You can also fake sun flare. I do this by brightening a corner of one of my pictures and the using the action “sunshine” in Pioneer Women’s actions or “flare up (golden)” in Totally Rad Actions. Here’s the link to Pioneer Women’s actions.

This is fun technique, now go try it out!

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By Aubry | Also posted in Secrets & Tips | Tagged photography tips, sun flare | Comments (0)

So we took this fabulous trip down to Rocky Point, Mexico. Kids were great, food was awesome, company was wonderful, weather…. kinda crummy. When I came back to view all my pictures I realized that they lost some of the warmth and sunshine that beach shots should have. Leave it to photoshop to turn my cloudy pictures into a tropical “warm” paradise. I’m going to teach you how to “warm” up your pictures. Here’s one of my lil Josie.

Straight out of the camera (SOOC)

First off I add my Color Pop action.

Go to Filter – Adjustments – Photo Filter

Now select Warming (81)

Here, you can adjust the “Density” for more or less “warmth”. I like 15 for this picture.

Okay, now it looks more like the bright and sunny day we were looking for.

To really finish off this picture I’m going to run one of my favorite actions and give it a slight crop. I ran “Pool Party” at 30% opacity from Totally Rad Action’s (click the link on the right sidebar to check out all their amazing actions. You can also get this particular action for free from Pioneer Woman’s blog. It is called “Seventies” in her action set. Actually go ahead and download both of her action sets, they are fabulous.

Have fun trying this technique, it seems that all outside pictures could use a little “warmth”. Now when it comes to indoor pictures sometimes they appear to warm or yellow. Do these same technique only choose a cooling filter and adjust the density to achieve the right temperature in your picture.

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By Aubry | Also posted in Before and After, Lights, Camera, ACTIONS!, Secrets & Tips | Tagged before and after pictures, editing pictures in photoshop, photoshop actions | Comments (0)

After teaching you about levels and curves, you now have an idea as to how I created this action. It’s basically that with just a slight saturation boost. So download this action and try it out on some of your favorite pictures. One thing you have to keep in mind is that the picture must be properly exposed or it won’t give you the same results.

Download Aubry’s Color Pop action!

After you click on the link you can have it automatically show up in Photoshop or you can save it somewhere on your hard drive.

Here is one of my pictures straight out of the camera (SOOC).

Here I applied “Aubry’s Color Pop” action

SOOC

After “Aubry’s Color Pop” action

SOOC

After “Aubry’s Color Pop” action

I know it is pretty subtle, but I love keeping things natural. From here I feel like it is technically perfect and ready if you wanted to run some further actions for added creativity. I would call this complete after i burned around the edges and warmed it up a bit. I will do a post on how to give a picture more warmth or cool it down a bit in the near future.

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By Aubry | Also posted in Before and After, Lights, Camera, ACTIONS! | Comments (1)