the view findercvcameraclub.org/newsletters/cvcc_august_news12.pdf · jewels, archaeological...

Volume 1, Issue 8 August, 2012

Cary Wolinsky and Bob Caputo have a combined 64 years of experience photo-graphing stories for National Geographic and other publications. Along the way, they learned a thing or two about mak-ing photographs. In 2010, they launched PixBoomBa.com, which, through videos and illustrated text, imparts photo-making tips with insight, humor, and varying degrees of success It’s good to have a little perspective—to know where you stand and just how big (or small) your world and the things in it are. Most pictures we see include some-thing we recognize—a person, a house, a car, or something else that we already know the size of. Like leaves. We think we know what size leaves are. And usually we’re right. But the man in the picture above makes us go, "Whoa, those leaves are really huge." Even if the rest of the photograph is of something we have never seen before, one familiar object gives our minds a clue and we can then easily work out the sizes of

everything else. That’s why you often see pictures of fishermen holding up their catch—we know how big the fish is by comparing it to a human body. It’s why landscapes are often shot with a person gazing off into the distance. And it’s why jewels, archaeological discoveries, dino-saur bones, and the like are often photo-graphed with a ruler, a coin, or some oth-er easily recognizable item. Scale. But photographs can be deceptive, espe-cially in this age of easy photo manipula-tion. Take diamonds, for instance. Sure, quality and cut are important, but with diamonds, size really matters. If you see an image of a diamond all by its lone-some, you have no way of working out how big or small it is. You need a refer-ence point. Like this:

If you want to show teeny diamonds, a quarter isn’t much good—you would bare-ly see the diamond next to it. So use something else recognizable, like a straw-berry. And to show off a really big one, hands and faces are useful.

But it’s not just jewels that benefit from a little perspective. Most of us aren’t really familiar with the size of baobab trees or the spiky

Get Some Perspective

GET SOME PERSPECTIVE 1

COASTAL PIRATES QUIZ 3

BRITISH HOSPITALITY 3

PICTURES FROM FIELD TRIP TO ALL-A-FLUTTER BUTTERFLY FARM

4, 5, 6

HELP PORTRATE PICTURES 7, 8

PHOTOSHOP CS6 TRAINING SCOTT KELBY

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PRESIDENTS REPORT & EDITORS COMMENTS

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HOW TO MAKE YOUR SUBJECT STAND OUT

2

CALENDAR OF EVENTS 2

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 GET SOME PERSPECTIVE

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2 MAKE YOUR SUBJECT STAND OUT

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FOTO FEST KEVIN ADAMS & BILL LEE

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MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION 14

Inside this issue:

C a t a w b a Va l l e y C a m e r a C l u b

The View Finder

Continued on Page 9

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Photography is all about making your subject stand out. You want the viewer to easily recognize your subject, and appreciate its beauty. There are lots of ways to draw attention to your subject, but here are a few of my favorites:

Contrast

One of the simplest ways to make your subject stand out is to photograph it in

front of a contrasting back-ground. Ideally, you want the colors to be comple-mentary, but any kind of contrast will usually work. For example, in the photo on the left, I really wanted that yellow Desert Sun-flower to stand out, so I photographed it in front of some purple flowers (Desert Sand Verbena).

Depth of Field

Another simple way to draw attention to your sub-ject is to photograph it in front of an out-of-focus background. The viewer will always look at the sharpest part of the image first, so making your sub-ject tack sharp while the rest of the image is out of focus will help make your subject stand out. The key to getting a nice blurred background is to use a wide aperture (small f-number) and to make sure your subject’s background is far away (at least a few feet).

Scale

One of the simplest

ways to make your

subject stand out is to

photograph it in

front of a contrasting

background.

Calendar of Events

Aug 1 Projection Competition (2) Union Square Cannon

Aug 15 Print Competition (2) Open, 7:00 p.m.

Aug 18 Field Trip: Historic Brattonsville, SC Cynthia Harmon

Sept 5 Instruction: Creating Slide Shows Ed Lane

Sept 19 Projection Competition (2) Night Photography, 7:00 p.m.

Sept 22 Field Trip: Frying Pan Mtn.-Fire Tower Donny Teague

Oct 3 Projection Competition (2) Shoes, 7:00 p.m.

Oct 17 Print Competition (2) Open, 7:00 p.m.

Oct 20 Field Trip: Hanging Rock State Park Robert Hambrick


Continued on page 10

How To Make Your Subject Stand Out Posted by Steve Berardi

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Coastal Pirates Quiz

When pirates sailed onto our shores, we didn’t know their kind. They pillaged for treasure and left as legends.

1. North Carolina’s coastal inlets and backwater chan-nels were great hiding places for pirates. The inlets helped spur piracy’s golden age here between what years?

A. 1650-1725

B. 1700-1775

C. 1689-1718

2. Edward “Blackbeard” Teach counted our coastal wa-ters as one of his harbors. What was the name of Blackbeard’s flagship that ran aground and sank in Beaufort inlet?

A. Queen Mary’s Vessel

B. Queen Anne’s Revenge

C. Queen Elizabeth’s Wrath

3. According to legend, pirate William Kidd buried treasure on what island near present-day Wrightsville Beach?

A Money Island

B. Treasure Island

C. Sullivan’s Island

4. Blackbeard married his 14th wife in Bath in summer 1718. What Colonial North Carolina governor re-portedly performed the wedding ceremony?

A Zebulon Vance

B. Charles Eden

C. Richard Caswell

5. Pirate Jack Rackham flew a flag from his ship show-ing a skull with crossed swords. The design became a popular symbol for piracy and is known by what name?

A. Calico Jack

B. Jack’s Flag

C. Jolly Roger

Answers on page 10

British Hospitality An American tourist in London decides to skip his tour group and explore the city on his own. He wanders around, seeing the sights, occasionally stopping at a quaint pub to soak up the local culture, chat with the locals, and have a pint of bitter.

After a while, he finds himself in a very nice neighborhood with big, stately residences...no pubs, no stores, no restau-rants, and worst of all NO PUBLIC RESTROOMS.

He really, really has to go, after all those Guinnesses. He finds a narrow side street, with high walls surrounding the adjacent buildings and decides to use the wall to solve his problem.

As he is unzipping, he is tapped on the shoulder by a Lon-don police officer, who says, "I say, sir, you simply cannot do that here, you know."

"I'm very sorry, officer," replies the American, "but I real-ly, really have to go, and I just can't find a public re-stroom."

"Ah, yes," said the policeman..."Just follow me". He leads the American to a back delivery alley to a gate, which he opens.

"In there," points the policeman. "Go ahead sir, anywhere you like."

The fellow enters and finds himself in the most beautiful garden he has ever seen. Manicured grass lawns, statuary, fountains, sculptured hedges, and huge beds of gorgeous flowers, all in perfect bloom.

Since he has the policeman's blessing, he relieves himself and feels much more comfortable. As he goes back through the gate, he says to the police officer, "That was really de-cent of you... is that what you call English hospitality?"

"No sir...", replied the police officer, "...that is what we call the French Embassy."

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Some pictures from the July field trip to All-A-Flutter Butterfly Farm

Photo by Donny Teague Photo by Donny Teague

Photo by Cindy Martin

Photo by Tom Devlin


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Some more pictures from the July field trip

Photo by Tom Devlin

Photo by Tom Devlin

Photo by Tom Devlin

Photo by Donny Teague

Photo by Donny Teague

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Some more pictures from the July field trip


Photo by Tom Devlin

Photo by Tom Devlin

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Help Portrait Project Pictures

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More Help Portrait Project Pictures

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sisal plants growing around the one in the image below. The person standing next to it (below) lets us know just how big the tree really is.

And the doll’s head below left could be a foot high—or two feet or fifty feet. There’s no way to tell until you give it a context, as with the image at right.

Landscapes often include elements we intuitively know the size of, like trees or fences. Those elements are usually enough to give scale to the image. But if you’re shooting in a lo-cation that doesn’t have much to grab onto, like a desert, you might wait for someone to come strolling along or ask a friend to stand in a certain place. Not only will their presence give the picture scale, but it will also give the viewer something to concen-trate on, a center of interest. Looking at the picture below, for instance, we would have a hard time figuring out the size of the sand dunes without the figure. And, quite frankly, we proba-bly wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time looking at the image. Without the figure, the picture is pretty bland and our eyes don’t know where to go. His presence transforms it from being a snapshot to being a photograph.

Showing scale is especially important when you’re photographing monu-ments because the whole point of such buildings is that they’re, well, monu-mental. So you need to show it. The man on the camel is dwarfed by part of a Giza Pyramid, the size of which is accentuated by the small size of the tall buildings in the background (it helps that they’re pretty far away). In the image at right, the enormity of the hieroglyphic-covered walls is made evident by the men standing at their base.

There are also times when you might want to use scale to emphasize a point. In the image below, I wanted to capture the height of the Mississippi River is as it passes by the French Quarter in New Orleans, getting across the idea that the city could be threatened by even slightly rising wa-ter. (I was working on a story for Na-tional Geographic that was published a year before Hurricane Katrina.) By using a telephoto lens (300mm f/2.8 in this case), I could compress the im-age so that the freighter is jammed up against St. Louis Cathedral. The peo-ple along the bank give the whole thing scale. Because the ship is closer

Continued from page 1

to the camera than the cathedral or the people, its size is made larger and it really seems to loom. I call the picture "Darth Freighter." Notice also that depth of field in this image is important. In order for it to work, both the ship and the cathedral had to be sharp. But I needed a high enough shutter speed to freeze the freighter. Luckily, they move slowly. Depth of field is usually important when showing scale, as you want the ref-erence element to be clear—if it’s fuzzy, people will intuitively feel that it might not be giving them the correct information.

Whenever you’re shooting a land-scape, a monument, an insect, or a jewel—anything that you want to convey the impressive size of (whether its impressively big or small)—look around your frame carefully. Does it include some-thing that will give viewers an indi-cation of scale? If not, move around until it does or find some other way to work in a recognizable element. Not arbitrarily—it needs to work with the tone and composi-tion of your photograph. If you want us to feel it’s really big or small, show us. Get a little perspec-tive on things. Just think of how it made all of us feel the first time we saw a photo of the whole Earth floating in space. It changed our perspective. Photographs by Cary Wolinsky and Robert Caputo.

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You can also make your subject stand out by emphasizing how big or small it is. Just photograph it with another ob-ject that’s much smaller (or larger). For example, the photo below really makes the Sun and Venus stand out because of the massive difference in size between the two (note that Venus is actually MUCH smaller than illustrated here, it just looks bigger because it’s closer to Earth).

Isolation

One of the most common mistakes of beginning photogra-phers is to include too much in the scene. When there’s too much in the photo, then it’s hard for the viewer to find the main subject. So, to help draw attention to the most inter-esting part of a scene, subtract anything that’s not interest-ing. This usually means moving closer or using a longer lens to crop the scene more.

Depth

When your subject is a grand landscape (such as the can-yon in the photo above), then you can help make it stand out by emphasizing depth. To do this, photograph the can-yon (or whatever long geological formation you’re photo-graphing) from the side. At first, you might think of stand-ing right in front of the canyon or mountain, but if you photograph it from the side (and you’re “looking down” the mountain or canyon), then your image will help show depth as the canyon gets smaller and smaller.

Continued from page 2

Coastal Pirates

1. C. 1689-1718

2. B. Queen Anne’s Revenge

3. A. Money Island

4. B. Charles Eden

5. C. Jolly Roger

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COMING TO CHARLOTTE, NC | AUGUST 14, 2012

This new tour, developed by the world's #1 best-selling Photoshop and photography author, Scott Kelby, focuses on

nothing but the most requested, most useful and most important Adobe Photoshop techniques for photographers.

Although we cover everything from getting your color right to the pros' secrets for sharpening images, this one-day semi-

nar covers so much more including everything from today's hottest Photoshop special effects for photographers to how to

work faster, smarter, and more efficiently in Photoshop. Register now for only $99.

http://kelbytraining.com/event/charlotte-nc-2/?utm_source=charlotte-nc-2-announcement&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pscs6-charlotte-nc-2-moreinfo#?utm_source=charlotte-nc-2-announcement&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pscs6-charlotte-nc-2-moreinfo&_suid=134367506051802709033807855523

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Greetings Photographers!

If you're planning to attend the 3rd Annual Western North Carolina Foto Fest, but you haven't yet registered, or if you

don't know anything about the event, then I'm happy you're reading this! Located in Montreat, a short drive from Ashe-

ville, Foto Fest is an exciting weekend full of fun and photography instruction. This year's event will be held September

7 - 9, just in time to get you jump-started for the upcoming autumn season.

While the "official" Foto Fest event runs from Friday afternoon until Sunday, there are plenty of other opportunities for

those who arrive early or stay later. Superb photo locations are within an easy drive of Montreat. The website provides

information for many of these spots.

Since so many people do arrive early, Bill Lea, my Foto Fest partner, and I, wanted to do something extra to help make

the experience more rewarding for everyone. You won't see this on the website, but we're going to offer two informal

shooting sessions on Thursday evening, September 6. One will be with Bill at Cataloochee Valley in the Smokies, where

you may have the opportunity to photograph elk, whitetail deer, turkey, and the valley's historic structures. The other

event will be with me on the grounds of Montreat Conference Center where you can try out some night-photography

techniques. The best thing is that both of these extra events are FREE! We'll send full details when you register.

Also occurring on Thursday will be individual portfolio critiques given by Bill and me. The Foto Fest website gives full

information about this popular aspect of Foto Fest.

Please visit the Foto Fest website for all the details.

Hope to see you in Montreat!

Kevin

As an attendee of last years Foto Fest I can tell you it was a fun event that is reasonably prices. For $145 you got three presentations by knowledgeable photographers as well as presentations by Kevin Adams and Bill Lee. There are also vendors at the event such as Hunt’s Photography and many others selling products at discounted prices.

This year Kevin and Bill have added a field trip for anyone who arrives early at no additional cost. I highly recommend this event to anyone interested in photography as you will be one of about 200 like minded attendees and can share ideas with each other.

Donny Teague

http://www.wncfotofest.com/

http://www.wncfotofest.com/

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when using them on standard length lenses. This increased stand off dis-tance helps me with depth of field issues and allows me to get the shot without having to get into the bug’s space. Anyway if you haven’t ever tried them and don’t want to shell out the bucks to by a macro lens, extension tubes might be worth your consideration. If you want more information follow this link, http://www.shutterfreaks.com/Tips/ExtensionTube.htm I also have an additional tip I call “Poor Man’s Macro” that discusses using exten-sion tubes in concert with tele-converters and close up filter attach-ments I will be happy to email to anyone who asks. Rick

NEVER NEGLECT THE TRIVIAL SOLUTION TO A PROBLEM… This is a quote / piece of advice I’ve picked up somewhere in the past and it has often been very valuable. To-day I want to plug extension tubes as a viable, even vital, part of your photo-graphic equipment. One of the capabili-ties I missed most when I sold off all my big DSLR equipment and went mirror-less was extension tubes. Recently some 3d party manufacturer brought out extension tubes for my system that allow for full function: aperture control, auto-focus, etc. How happy I was. I find extension tubes very help-ful in a number of situations, most of which deal with close-up / macro pho-tography or when shooting in a confined space where the minimum focus distance of your lens prohibits focusing. Most often I find myself using my extension tubes on a telephoto lens. This allows for much greater stand off distance than

Presidents Report

We’re on the Web

http://cvcclub.wordpress.com

Club Officers

President: Rick Bell [email protected]

Vice President: Donny Teague [email protected]

Secretary: Richard Griffin [email protected]

Treasurer: Robert Dant [email protected]

Image Coordinator: Ed Lane [email protected]

Webmaster: Scott M. Powell [email protected]


From the Editor

Have you been satisfied with

the club’s programs, field

trips and competition sub-

jects. If not you need to let

the program committee,

headed by Robert Hambrick,

know what you did not like

about last years schedule or

what you did like. That will

be helpful in planning the

schedule for next year. As a

member of the committee I

have several suggestion that

I would like to see but we

need input from as many

club members as possible.

That will insure the schedule

reflects what club members

want to see in the way of

field trips, programs, and

competitions. Don’t take too

long to send in your ideas

because the program will be

set by the end of October for

publication in November.

You can send your ideas and

suggestion to Robert Ham-

brick or any other club of-

ficer for consideration. Rob-

erts email address is listed

below, the other club officer

are listed on this page above.

[email protected]

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Application for Membership

NAME_____________________________________________DATE__________________

ADDRESS_________________________________________________________________

CITY_________________________________STATE____________ZIP_______________

E-MAIL___________________________________________________________________

PHONE: HOME_________________WORK______________CELL________________

Dues are $35 per year. Meetings are the first and third Wednesday of each month.

Students: $15 per year

CLUB USE ONLY: Date Received__________________ Cash_______Check______

Please print clearly as our club correspondence is conducted via e-mail.

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