Digital Photography Guide

A few months back we published a collection of Forced Perspective images which was very popular with readers.

Forced perspective is defined as ‘a technique that employs optical illusion to make an object appear farther, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is.’ (Wikipedia)

This is far from a recently popular thing for photographers to do. Here’s a great example from 1918 which was submitted by one of our readers – Graham Parkhurst – that illustrates it from 90+ years ago.

The picture is of 18,000 men preparing for war in a training camp at Camp Dodge, in Iowa.

A few facts about the image:

• Length from base to Shoulder: 150 feet
• Right Arm: 340 feet
• Length of Torch and flame: 1000 feet
• Total Length: 1490 Feet
• Number of men in body and head of figure: 2,000
• Number of men in right arm: 1,200
• Number of men in torch: 2,800
• Number of men in the flame only: 12,000
• Total men: 18,000

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

A 90 Year Old Example of Forced Perspective Photography

Weekly Assignment

Ghosts, goblins and things that go bump in the night were a common theme in our Scary or Spooky assignment. There were definitely some scary and spooky entries this week but we had a very clear winner with this week’s votes. The winner this week was Murtasma’s Skeletor shot. This elaborate costume was both scary and well done. Our first runner up was a_brewley’s “Thing under the bed”. She took this shot while her daughter was asleep! Thank goodness she didn’t wake up. One thing we learned from this shot was that lots of us mods were scared of finding things under the bed as kids. It was gritty and scary and all kinds of film noir and probably a few of us found ourselves checking for things under the bed again (definitely click on the image to see the detail in it since the thumbnail doesn’t do it justice). And last, but not least was SNOOPY’s spooky black cat. While not as scary as our other winners, the black cat is classic halloween and the detail captured in both the fur and eyes was amazing. Congrats to all of this week’s winners and best of luck to everyone in the next assignment.

Speaking of the next assignment, our current assignment is Architectural Detail. Sometimes buildings have some great architectural details that we miss out on because we’re so concerned with capturing the bigger picture. But this week we want you to focus on some of those smaller details. As usual, a quick reminder of the rules for those of you who want to enter the weekly assignment competition. First, your photo must have been taken between 21 October – 4 November 2009. Second, your post must include the words “Assignment: Architectural Detail” and the date the photo was taken. Finally, your EXIF should be intact and it’s useful if you can include some of the main information (e.g. camera, lens, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, etc). You’ll need to head over to the Assignments area of the forum to enter. Next week’s assignment will be “The Economy” so start shooting.

Hot Threads

• How to capture visual opportunities in bad weather: Jim Bryant offers up another one of his informative tutorials, this time on the subject of photographing in less than ideal weather. This one is useful whether you’re going into summer or winter, so if you’ve ever felt the need to stay indoors when the weather is frightening, this tutorial might change your mind.
• Lightroom 3 Beta Released: Whether or not you’re a current Lightroom user, it may interest you to know that Adobe has released it’s upcoming version of Lightroom as a beta. There are still bugs and issues in it, but if you’ve used it come join in the discussion on the forum and tell us which features you’re most interested in.
• Halloween Tangerine: A tangerine may not be a typical halloween food, and the normally aren’t all that scary, but mmatasic shows us how to turn an ordinary tangerine into something appropriate for halloween.
• The Haunted Path Halloween Fun: In keeping with the season, here’s a creepy photo for your halloween. It’s definitely at least a little haunting!

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

This Week in the Digital Photography School Forums (25-31 Oct ‘09)

Fireworks season is coming up soon here in the UK, so here is an updated article to help you get the best out of your camera at fireworks displays, including a gallery of 28 sample images and notes to help you.

If you are like me you had a kaleidoscope as a kid. You would look through one end and turn a dial and the world would be displayed as a mirrored fractured shape. Thanks to Photoshop you can create kaleidoscopes from your photos. Any image with interesting color and shapes will work just fine.

Step 1

Convert the background layer to a regular layer by double clicking it and click Ok.

Step 2

Select the layer and use the Move tool to rotate to 60 degrees and position it over one corner of the image canvas making sure one side of the image sides crosses two sides of the canvas.

Step 3

Use the Magic Wand tool to select the empty background, choose Select > Inverse to select the shape and choose Select > Modify > Contract and contract the shape by one pixel. Now choose
Image > Crop to crop the image to the shape itself. It is important to do this to remove the anti-aliasing that Photoshop applies to the image edge as it rotates it.

Step 4

Duplicate the image layer.

Choose Image > Canvas size, click Relative and set the width to around 3 times the current image height (NOT its width), and the height to 2 times the current height. Select the middle top of the nine positioning boxes and click Ok.

Step 5

Choose View > Snap to > All and make sure View > Snap is selected. Click the Move tool and the top layer of the image and drag the left edge over the right until the W: value is -100%. Ensure the piece is lined up against the edge of the piece on the layer below.

Step 6

Merge these two layers by selecting the top one and press Control + E (Command + E on the Mac).

Duplicate this merged layer, select the top layer and choose Edit > Free Transform and, in the tool options area, select the middle bottom of the 9 point grid to fix the point around which the shape rotates. Set the Rotation to 30 degrees.

Step 7

Press Control + J (Command + J on the Mac) and then Control + Shift + T (Command + Shift + T on the Mac). This duplicates the current layer and repeats the transformation on it.

Repeat this until the kaleidoscope is complete – four times in all.

Step 8

Merge all the layers. Use the crop tool to select around the canvas. You can drag outwards if necessary to add back in any of the image that extends beyond the outside of the image canvas.

Step 9a

Now you can get creative with the shape. For example, you can make a duplicate of the shape and place it in the middle of the original shape sizing this second version down to a small size and then cropping the final image to a square shape. Use the Alt and Shift keys (Option and Shift on the Mac) to size the shape down leaving the middle in the same place and in proportion.

Step 9b

You can fill the middle with another kaleidoscope if desired. Here I used a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to match the colors of the two kaleidoscopes better.

Step 9c

You can select the shape and choose Edit > Define Pattern to make it a pattern. You can then fill a larger image with it so it displays as a repeating shape.

There are lots of creative ways you can use your Kaleidoscope.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

How to Create Kaleidoscope Patterns from Your Photos

AKVIS Software Inc. has released Noise Buster 7.0 for Windows and Macintosh with further improvement to its noise suppression algorithm, as well as many other improvements.