For starters, a hero shot is one in which the product is showcased in all its splendor. Careful attention is placed on making the product look its very best. For this shot of Don Julio I knew I wanted to give the bottle some majesty by photographing it from a low angle. That low angle makes the bottle look tall, towering over the viewer and creating a position of dominance. Can't you hear the choir of angels singing in the background? I also knew that I wanted a rich, moody image with lots of darks. I am partial to darker images, which is surprising to most people because the majority of the work I do are images on white backgrounds. But that's another story. I also tried a lifestyle type shot with glasses and lime slices but I wasn't feeling it and ended up scrapping it. Again, that's another story.

In this article I am reprinting a critique I published on photoMENTORIS.com regarding the painting entitled ' Census at Bethlehem ' by famed painter Pieter Bruegel , who was born in what is now the Netherlands in the 1520s. The first point I would like to say is that you first need to consider both the medium and the time frame of this painting. Being a painting, the artist has a certain advantage of being able to carefully direct the large amount of content presented to the viewer, unlike, say, a photo of opportunity of the street photographer (I strongly believe Pieter would have been the 'street photographer' of his time). Even a studio photographer, with the luxury of space and time, would have a hard time justifying creating such a complex composition. Where you would see this type of visual composition today would be in modern cinema. In particular, period pieces that rely on background elements to "sell the era" .  Secondly, the era in which thi...

One of our more popular events is the Multiplicity  shoot. This is a fun selfie portrait  event where we set up our cameras, take multiple photos of ourselves and combine them into a single frame so it looks like we're interacting with our twins. At right is an example of one my grandson and I did together a few years ago. While it may seem complicated, the editing part is quite simple. I'll walk you through the steps to accomplish this effect.

I'm a firm believer that extra images (seconds) from a photo shoot should be saved. For a while at least or until you know you will never need them. The reason I stand on this is that seconds have proven to be invaluable on many circumstances in my past. Often it's a client preferring one of my seconds rather than the image I picked. The other common circumstance is the need to use some element from one of my seconds to fix an issue with the principal shot. Just recently I found myself in a situation where I couldn't decide which of two images was the keeper and which was the second. In the end I decided they would both be my seconds. Here's what I mean.

I have a love/hate relationship with watermarks on photos but I know there is a place for everything. While my opinions are my own I also realize that not everyone has the artistic skill to create anything beyond a simple text watermark. Adobe's Lightroom program has a very flexible watermarking utility that allows the creation of simple text based watermarks. For anything fancier Lightroom requires a pre-designed PNG file with a transparent alpha channel. If you are not familiar with alpha channels, they are see-through layers that allow a background to come through the non-logo areas when overlaid on a photo. While making these is relatively easy for a knowledgeable designer they can be tricky for the novice. Fortunately there is a great online tool that can make that whole process as simple as one, two, three.

My background in illustration and graphic design has offered me a unique view in analyzing lighting, composition and overall layout. Photography and illustration share many of the same visual guidelines so I tend to use my training in illustration when post editing my images. Specifically when working to establish the point of interest (the main theme or main subject). When a photographer creates a photo there is an unwritten dialog between the author and the viewer. A topic is presented that will hopefully engages the viewer in a dialog. The dialog comes through the interplay of the viewer's eyes over the content of the image and is controlled by the photographer through the use of certain techniques (rule of thirds, leading lines, depth of field, contrast, and so on). One technique I rely on to direct the viewer's eyes to my subject is through the manipulation of light. After all, we are using light to capture our scene, establish mood and shape our subject. This ligh...

In my Digital Workflow workshops I discuss many of the problems digital photographers deal with, including storage space. This seems to be a major issue with many less experienced photographers and includes what to do with all those extra photos. The duplicates, the not so good ones or the ones that may never get used or see the light of day. These are what are generally referred to as seconds . Seconds is short for secondary image choice or secondary image selections . In culling through images the photographer selects images that represent the best for a given shoot. During this process some images are deleted (because they're unusable due to blur, misfires, camera setting errors, etc.) and the remaining are the seconds . Let's suppose, for the sake of this example, that the photographer selects 10 of the 50 images to process. Of the 40 remaining, 10 of them are tests, errors or so blurry that they get deleted. That leaves 30 images as seconds from this photo ...

Prism at work Color is determined by the light reflecting off an object. It is a physical process with a constant set of values resulting in a predictable conclusion. It is basic physics. Sir Isaac Newton established many of the basic principles of light through his experimentations with prisms. Simple as it seems today, this toy  was instrumental in laying the foundation for particle based physics. Scientifically that's all well and good but, as an artist, I could care less about particle physics. What I am most interested in is the psychology of color. Psychologically, color has more properties attached to them than mere luminance values, RGB values or even their common names. Sure, you might understand what the numbers 255,0,0 represent or that the term red  is the common name for those numbers. Let's face it, we don't go around looking to photograph  255,0,0  or 87,53,64  or  15,8,164  or any other assortment of digital combinations betwe...

The Matchmaker by Gerrit van Honthorst In the previous article, Studying past Masters - Gerrit van Honthorst, pt1 , I introduced you to the chiaroscuro style of painting and discussed how light is used to direct the viewer's eye to the main subject. I also explained how studying the works of many of our great art masters can help improve your photographic education. In this installment we will analyze the compositional choices of the painting and comparing them with well established photographic practices. So dust off your rule of thirds and let's take a look at The Matchmaker through the eyes on a camera lens.

The Matchmaker by Gerrit van Honthorst The art world is rich with educational possibilities for a photographer. The grand masters in particular. All one has to do is be open to the potential lessons. One of the more influential of the art movements in terms of lesson values to a beginner photographer is the Tenebrism style of painting of which the term Chiaroscuro is most commonly associated with it. I won't get into a long explanation of tenebrism and the subsequent chiaroscuro movement here as there are plenty of resources you can use to research on your own. I will, however, explain some of the elements that make it a valuable tool for photographers.

This is the conclusion of a three part article on image file organization. If you haven't yet, take a few minutes to read Part One and Part Two . To this point you should have an understanding of how to get your images organized in such a way that makes finding them easier. Although the previous method discussed was about organizing personal images the same holds true for client work, with some minor adjustments. If you are a working professional, many of your private images likely cross over to your paid work. Technically you can claim that you are your own client but let's not confuse things.

In " Image File Organization, Part One " I introduced a folder structure for organizing working image files that come off the camera for editing. In part two I will expand on a file structure for derived work from your working files. In other words, images output from your edits. After all, one image may be saved at several different sizes for different needs. These files I consider to be my Portfolio pieces. While they may not all be displayed in a typical portfolio format, they all showcase my work, whether on Facebook, Flickr, Shutterfly or my own portfolio site. Before moving forward though, I strongly suggest taking a quick inventory of all the typical formats you use in your image sharing. Take everything into account. Social media sites like Facebook or MySpace, image sharing sites like Flickr and 500PX, forums, blogs and personal web sites. Anything where your images are posted and shared. You might also keep print output in mind as well since these files need to ...

One of the biggest hurdles for many hobbyist photographers (and some pros also) is how to properly organize digital images. Long gone are the flat boxes of print and negative storage. Today it is a matter of disc space. But it's not just disc space. There are multiple issues that need to be considered and addressed. Working files need to be organized into logical groups. They need to be able to be accessed by Digital Asset Manager (DAM) and editing programs like Lightroom and Photoshop. They should also be available outside of any program. In short, good file organization is key to maintaining a good workflow, from initial capture to final output.

Aspect ratio refers to the relationship of the width of an image to its length independent of the actual size. Aspects are typically written as two numbers separated by a colon; i.e 3:2, 4:3, 16:9, etc., where the first number represents the width. While it's not crucial to have a full understanding of ratios and how they are calculated, it does make sense to have at least a passing knowledge. "Why?"  I hear you ask. The answer, in a nutshell, is this; if you plan on printing your images you need to understand what will fit into your picture frame. Let me explain.

A big issue with photographers today is the problem of ownership protection of digital images. While there are a few methods and systems that can minimize fiduciary loss one of the easiest methods of image protection is the very basic and very simple watermark . For those of you who may be wondering what a watermark is, let me give a brief description. A watermark is simply a logo or logotype that is placed discreetly somewhere within the frame of your image that identifies you as the owner or creator of the image. A watermark can be placed boldly onto your image or given a subtler look by applying a transparency or incorporating it into a design element. The most basic type of watermark is simply the copyright symbol followed by your name. The watermark is then placed somewhere on your image and it identifies that image as belonging to you. For a more professional look brand the image with a logo or logotype. Anyway you decide to go, if you are going to mark up your images wit...

An old mantra from way back in the film days was to, "get it right in the camera." Now that we are in the digital age I still hear that mantra repeated time and again. Unfortunately it's usually followed with some reference to not needing to do any post processing or some other such nonsense. That should tell you my feelings on that. To prove it, I have decided to show you some post processing on an image that was done right in the camera. I normally start off showing the finished product first, but in this case I'll start with the before image. You can see that it's a pretty decent shot. Exposure is good, composition is nice, we have a nice light trail leading into our frame; a simple, quiet scene of a neighborhood bar on a corner. This is how it looks like with no editing. As with all your edits it should start with an analysis of the obvious. In this example there really is very little, but very little doesn't mean none. Again, I want to re...

There are times when I will take a photo without any clear idea of what I am going to do with it. It could be that something in the subject doesn't spark my creativity or I may have hurried through the process. Whatever the case, I will often take a photo just to document a location or event. We all do this. Such was the case with Motif No.1  located at Bradley Wharf in the harbor town of Rockport, Massachusetts earlier this year. You can see my version of the location here. Diane and I had gone there with a bunch of friends from a local camera group to photograph the various points of interest. Motif No.1 is a fairly famous attraction having been made famous by local artists including Lester Hornby and John Buckley . In this tutorial I am going to show you one process to take a ho-hum image and add a little pizzas to it. Several techniques are utilized that can be adapted and applied to your own work and I'll point those out. Overall, this is a very simple process...

  Photography purists debate that using software to process an image is cheating. Older converts from film days look on digital manipulation as a means of saying goodbye to stinky chemicals. New photographers, who have never even seen film and think celluloid is the stuff on the thighs of fat people, embrace digital manipulation as part of the process. The diagram at right shows there really is little difference in the two processes of creating a good photograph. Then there are the countless non-photographers with a camera. Say what you will but cameras are now in the hands of everybody, cell phones being the leader. This trend has opened up a whole industry in photo sharing and photo manipulation apps. Oh, those, well, photo manipulation really isn't the correct description. More like photo abomination.

Now that we have our multiple photos from part one of this tutorial it's time to put it together. If you did everything right in the first part then each image should line up with each other. Most major photo editing software can be used to accomplish this effect. Just make sure you can work in layers . If you are a beginner it is often easier to do all the image composing first and then do a final enhancement after. If you are more advanced and/or are working in RAW do all image enhancement first. Just make sure you apply the same enhancement to all the images in the series. This will ensure your final composition has a unified look.

A fun little project we have done with our group in the past is a ' multiplicity self portrait '. It is a simple technique that challenges several skills to accomplish good results; storytelling, staging, maintaining continuity, photo composition, layers, blending and so much more. If you're an advanced photographer this is all child's play and you might want to skip over this, but sometimes playing is good for the soul. This is also a fun project you can sell to potential customers, specially young people. Kids really get into this. If you're a beginner this is a great way to learn several skills at once. It gets you thinking in terms of a project rather than just going out and snapping photos . Doing this exercise requires planning, attention to detail and patience. Skills needed if you are to advance as a photographer. In this first part I will go over the setup and things to consider when doing the actual photo shoot. Part 2 will cover the post proc...