• Fundamentals: Frame-filling glamour portrait with great tonal range.

• Framing: When a model strikes this pose (reclining, propped on one elbow), most photographers would yield to the tempation to show her stretched out horizontally. But she’s in a vertical, portrait-style frame.

• Lighting: Soft, even light keeps her skin smooth and feathers textured. Highlights are where they should be — lips, eyes, and glossy headband.

• Tones: Span the full range. Details in the white feathers and black bodice stand out, but there’s plenty of midtone in the skin.

• Angle: Because the model is reclining, her head is tilted, coming in diagonally from the corner. (The feather boa hides how strained her neck probably looks in this position.)

• X Factor: The model’s tilted head and body, bisected by the serpentine boa, create an X shape that fills most of the frame. And that vertical lock of hair is just the kind of imperfection that makes the composition perfect.

5 Ways to Meter Midtones

Your camera’s lightmeter makes what you aim it at appear medium-toned (or medium gray, in black-and-white terms). Usually this makes a good exposure, but not if your scene is full of tonal extremes. The badly exposed shot (upper right) is how a centerweighted meter reads a scene with a lot of detail in darker areas: The sunlit foliage is blown out.

Here are five ways to get the midtone right, once you’ve spotted it:

1. Move close to a midtone subject, meter it, and return to your original position to shoot. To get the good exposure (lower right), I drove to the end of the road, metered on the sunlit foliage, added half a stop, then drove back to shoot.

2. Use a spotmeter on a midtone detail. No spotmeter? Isolate the detail with a longer focal length by zooming or switching lenses.

3. Meter off an 18 percent gray card. Or meter off the palm of your hand and add exposure, about 1 stop for light skin. (It helps to compare readings from a gray card and your palm in advance, so you know how much to compensate.)

4. When outdoors, apply the Sunny 16 rule: Shoot at f/16 with a shutter speed close to 1/ISO sec (e.g., 1/100 sec for ISO 100) or the equivalent. On overcast days, add 1 stop; for heavy clouds add 2 stops, and, if your subject is in the shade, add 3 stops.

5. Right after the shot, check your digital camera’s histogram reading for blown-out highlights and dropped-out shadows. Then adjust your exposure accordingly, and try again.

And in tricky light, bracket your shots — that is, take several at different exposures. That way you’re certain to get one good image.

A serving of Spudz: We all know by now that a microfiber cloth is the best thing for cleaning smudgy camera lenses (or LCD screens, or viewfinder eyepieces, or binoculars, or eyeglasses). The problem is our tendency to keep these cloths precisely in the wrong place — e.g., in the sunglasses case in the glove compartment when we’re in the woods shooting. A clever answer comes from Alpine Innovations: Spudz microfiber cloths, permanently attached to their own tiny pouches. They’re so small and light that you can get a bunch and keep them attached to camera straps, belt loops, even keychains. Senior Editor Pete Kolonia says they stay clean longer than other microfiber cloths, and that’s a pretty good recommendation coming from Ol’ Greasy Thumb himself. The Standard Spudz, 6×6 inches, is available for about $5 at many photo retailers. The XL Spudz, 10×10 inches, comes in a variety of colors ($10, street) and 18 percent neutral gray ($14, street). For info: www.alpineproducts.com.

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4 Ways to Cure The Blues

Even with winter turning into spring, you can still get chilly just looking at photos taken in the shade or on overcast days. In the photo above left, the blue cast is a faithful rendering of this shaded waterfall, but…brrr! Enhancing reds and suppressing blues adds warmth to a photo. Here’s how:

Warming filter: If you’re using film, put a warming (yellow/amber/orange) filter on the lens. For sub-jects in the shade, an 81B filter restores colors to what they’d be in white light. The slightly weaker 81A is for dark, overcast days. For heavy warming, try the 85.

White balance: On digital cameras, white balance (WB) controls can work in place of filters. The WB preset for shade is about equivalent to an 81B, and the cloudy preset acts something like an 81A. Many newer DSLRs let you fine-tune white balance with slider controls. Moving the slider toward amber will warm things up.

Shoot RAW: Shooting a digital camera in RAW mode means extra work at the computer, but this lets you experiment with different WB settings to get one that’s just right.

Adjustments > Photo Filter roughly mimics warming filters, including the 81- and 85-series. I created the image above right by adding a layer of orange (at 25% opacity using the Overlay blending mode).Fast Relief

Socket to ’em: You say you don’t have a clamp to attach your accessory flash to your lightweight tripod? Oh, yes you do:

Look in the box. Most mid- to high-level accessory TTL flashes come with a cute little tablestand with a flash-shoe mount. They’re no great shakes as stands, but turn ’em over and — aha! — there’s a standard 1/4-20 tripod socket.

30 Second Photoshop

Super Skies It: Here’s a quick way to add some pop to dull or dreary clouds: Go to Layer > Duplicate Layer, and click OK. Then switch the duplicated layer’s Blend Mode to Multiply — you’ll find the pull-down menu to switch the mode from Normal on the upper-left corner of your Layers palette. Once it’s set to Multiply, you may have to add a mask to the layer and hide the effect on the elements of your photo that aren’t in the sky (see this month’s Digital Toolbox for hints on how).

What’s That For?

Custom program mode: Depending on your camera, this can go by Custom Mode, User Mode, My Mode, or other monikers. Lots of compacts (film as well as digital), and a number of digital SLRs have this design-it-yourself exposure mode.
Where it is: As usual, anywhere from the obvious to the obscure. Some cameras have it right on a mode dial (convenient); others have it in a menu (inconvenient).
What it does: Stores in the memory the exact combination of settings you make, so you can access them near-instantly on demand.
Why: With digital SLRs, the number of settings that can be made is dizzying — besides exposure, focusing, and drive modes, there’s file format and size, white balance, ISO, color space, etc. Generally speaking, the standard exposure modes (e.g., program, aperture-priority) maintain your settings until you change them. But it’s nice, as well as prudent, to have your exact preferences available with one press. The other good use is to store settings for a specific photo task that you do frequently. For example, if you do tabletop shots of your junk…er, vintage collectibles for sale on eBay, User mode is the fast way to set up the camera.
How: Usually straightforward; you go down a list of menu items, make the settings you want, then click OK. But check your manual!

On this camera: Samsung’s GX-10 has a User Mode where it should be — on the exposure mode dial.Problem Solvers

Happy clamper: When I’m shooting studio work — people, products, or still-lifes — I can never have enough Bogen Manfrotto multiclips (#2880) on hand. These $10 (street) wonders hold improvised barn doors on lighting units, fill cards, gels, and other small items. (I even use one on my office lamp to hold a card to keep glare off my computer screen.) The multiclip consists of two 3-inch-wide spring-loaded clips connected by a U-shaped metal bar. While the clips can rotate around the bar, they have enough friction to hold the position you leave them in. To use, simply clip one end onto the thing you want to hold and the other end onto a convenient anchor, like a tabletop or a photoflood reflector. They’re not strong enough to hold large objects, but for something like a piece of cardboard they’re just what the Picture Doctor ordered. (www.bogenimaging.us)

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1) Get down and dirty. You usually see Rover and Fluffy from above, but that’s not the best angle for a portrait. Instead, flop down on the floor and meet them at eye-level; this presents them as equals in the photo and reveals their personalities.

2) Light it right. Direct on-camera flash will give your pet a killer case of green-, yellow-, or blue-eye. Try to avoid direct flash: If you can, bounce the flash off the ceiling or a wall, or move the flash off-camera. Or just ditch the flash and try available light, both indoors and out.

3) Fill the frame. You’ve heard this one before. Fill the frame with your subject to make it prominent and to crop out any distractions.

4) The eyes have it. You might find yourself shooting with a shallow depth of field, so whatever else you do, make sure the eyes are in focus. The windows to the soul must be kept clear!

30 Second Photoshop Tip

Picture in picture: Ever working so closely on a photograph (for instance, when cloning) that you can’t tell if what you’re doing is making the picture better or worse?

Solution: Get Photoshop to show you a zoomed-out version of your image while you work on a zoomed-in one. You’ll see your changes happening in real time. Just go to Window > Arrange > New Window For [your file name]. Zoom out to any size you want, move it to the side so it doesn’t block your workspace, and in no time you’ll be using that little picture to keep the big picture in mind.

What’s That Button For?

Autoexposure (AE) lock : Using a spotmeter with autoexposure is a pain. Aim the spot at the area you want to meter, and you probably won’t have the composition you want. So you gently press the shutter release to lock in the exposure and recompose — and now the autofocus may be locked onto something other than your subject. Or you take your finger off the shutter button momentarily and lose the exposure reading. It’s enough to make you start using manual exposure …

The button : Usually on the back of the camera, within poking distance of your thumb. Markings range from the obscure to the obvious.

What it does : Separates meter reading/exposure lock from the shutter button. Aim the spot at the tone you want to read, press the AE lock button, and the camera memorizes this reading. Now you can focus where you want, and recompose, without losing the meter reading.

Why: AE lock is really for speed spotmetering. If you’re a perfectionist (especially a slide film or digital shooter) who wants precise exposures, AE lock lets you shoot much faster than if you went to manual control. For this reason, some cameras automatically switch to spotmetering when AE lock is engaged. The most obvious situations for AE lock: backlighting and spotlighting.

How: With some cameras, you have to press and hold the button (a little clumsy). On others, you need only press it momentarily and the camera will hold the reading until you take the shot or make another reading (better). On some cameras you can program how the button works. As always, consult your manual for all the details.

A) Where is it? Usually on the back, and sometimes even clearly marked, as on this Pentax *ist DS2.

B) Spot marks the exposure: For a quick meter reading without the dark background throwing it off toward overexposure, aim the meter spot at a midtone (outlined) and hit AE lock. Now you can recompose and shoot.

Problem Solver

Grow a third arm: Photographers who need a way to hold accessories often resort to teeth and duct tape. A better idea is a flexible tube with a gripping clamp on one end. One of the best is the McClamp ($40, street; www.mcclamp.com): it has a long reach and a soft gripping clamp that’s gentle on foliage. To hold the McClamp in place, use its ground stake (if you’re outdoors) or its clamp to attach the device to a tripod or any other handy anchor. Hold on! A McClamp can hold small reflectors, diffusers, fill cards, and gobos to improve indoor or outdoor lighting. Hold still! Shooting a flower outdoors can be a pain if it sways in the wind. A McClamp on the stem just out of the frame holds the subject steady during long exposures. Hold away! When shooting outdoors there may be branches or leaves in the way of your subject. A McClamp will pull them out of the way.

Bonus: A McClamp can also hold a recipe while you’re cooking in the kitchen.

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Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.