photography Archives - Page 46 of 60 - Teton Photography Club

January 12, 2015

Getting away from iPhoto

If you own a Mac and have ever downloaded pictures to your computer, you’ve been prompted to add images to iPhoto. This is a very handy program for you to organize, edit, and share your photographs.

The program is built in, it’s free, and it’s quite powerful for the cost. Many people use the software and been quite happy with it.

However, if you photograph a great deal, are serious about your shooting, and really need to upgrade your images, the only major software on the market now is Lightroom. It has far more capability than iPhoto, being able to manage images with keywords, collections, heavy editing, and seamless integration with Photoshop.

iPhoto to Lightroom

What happens when you have overwhelmed the abilities of iPhoto and you want to expand your repertoire, go pro, or whatever else you might like to do with your images? How do you get these images out of iPhoto and into Lightroom easily? Unfortunately there’s no easy answer. There are software packages out there to do the conversion but there’s nothing that’s truly dominating the market.

You are most likely going to need to convert manually. Before you break out in a cold sweat, don’t worry, it’s not a terribly complex deal, just a bit laborious. However, once you make the switch to using Finder to organize your photos on the Mac then use Lightroom to edit the ones you want to work on, you’ll be set.

Mac, iPhoto and Lightroom tutoring

I spent the afternoon with a private lesson student working on exactly this process. There were over a hundred events in iPhoto to convert. At first it seemed overwhelming, but once I shared the tricks and procedure of how to make the conversion and organize the files, the student saw it really wasn’t a complex process. Just a bit laborious. Once the folders are set up in Finder and the files are exported as originals out of iPhoto, it will be much easier to manage, view, and share these images.

If you’d like help with this process, contact me and I can arrange a lesson show you how to make the daunting task manageable.

The post Getting away from iPhoto appeared first on Aaron Linsdau.

December 17, 2014

Recording Voice Overs

AT2035 in case

Recording voice overs isn’t as simple as it seems. I’ve been working on getting the audio set for Antarctic Tears: The Movie, and it’s been a long haul getting audio correct. As all still cameras now have video capability, learning better audio to present your video and still work is worthwhile. The Nikon D800 records amazing film, as well as the Canon 5Diii. Photographer journalists are now virtually expected to produce good video as well as compelling stills.

Apple would have you believe you can just hook your ear buds into the computer, click the Record Voice Over in Final Cut Pro X and everything will be good. Only if you want room noise, the dog next door barking, and lots of static hiss to ruin your otherwise good film.

How about the built in microphone on your Macbook Retina? Only if you want to record fan noise, your keyboard strokes and who knows what else.

No, you have to go to some effort to get good audio and a great deal of effort to get excellent audio. People spend a lot of money on it! How do you make a basic voice over that sounds decent?

Buy a great mic
Buy an awesome audio recorder
Build a sound booth [you’re an audio engineer, right?]

10k later, you’ll be set for your first audio book. Maybe.

Buy a pretty good audio recorder: Zoom H4n
Buy a good starter microphone: Audio Technica AT2035 + XLR cable
Hop in your car/truck, get a few blankets, and make a recording.

Don’t believe it? Here are 2 audio samples of what you’ll get if you chose

A bad recording location: Wood floors, cathedral ceiling, lots of windows. This was recorded directly into a Zoom H4n into the stereo mics

You can hear the room echo. It’s terrible and makes the voice over difficult to hear.

Now, listen to this audio recorded on a Audio Technica AT2035 connected to the Zoom H4n in mono mode (mono input mode makes it possible to use a single microphone and record on both stereo tracks).

You can hear the voice, it’s clear and there’s no high or low frequency echo. Would this be better if it were recorded on a Schoeps CMC641G microphone? Sure! But you’ll be set back $2000 or more just for the microphone.

The post Recording Voice Overs appeared first on Aaron Linsdau.

December 8, 2014

The Lion in Winter

The Jackson Hole Off Square Theater Company contacted me to photograph their staged reading of The Lion in Winter, a 1966 play by James Goldman about Henry II of England, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and their children (include Richard the Lionheart) during the Christmas of 1183.

The play was made into a movie in 1968 featuring Peter O’Toole and Katherine Hepburn. It was also made into a television show in 2003 with Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close. Though those actors are gone, the actors who played in this rendition directed by Natalia Macker, went well and was quite enjoyable.

Presented in two parts, the play relates the trials and tribulations of the medieval era and illustrates how people have not changed in 1000 years. The intrigues, devious nature, and constant infighting are no different today than they were at any other time in history.

Given the play was presented as a staged reading, I at first thought it wouldn’t be too interesting but I was quite wrong. Even though the actors held their scripts to read from, they did such a good job of interacting with each other and making the reading dramatic that them holding their scripts didn’t take away from the action at all.

One interesting technique that the play used was a narrator at the side of the stage to give audible cues to the audience for actions that would have required more props and action than the play afforded. Whether it be Henry drawing a sword on John or Eleanor cutting herself with a knife, the lack of props didn’t detracted from the play.

One of the best parts of photographing on a stage with the lighting is that I don’t have to add any drama to the image, I just have to capture it at the correct moment. So often lighting in things can be bland, so I work hard to add great lighting to give dimension and emotion to the image.

It’s important for me to deliver dramatic images to my clients to give them the feeling of a moment which would be lost otherwise with boring lighting. It’s not the camera that makes the photographer better but rather a sense of timing and ability to manipulate lighting to make the image striking and exciting. And if you can’t change the lighting, then finding a place that makes the image good and the lighting workable is just as important. When I teach photography, I impart in students that it’s important to work the image. With digital photography, you can see what you’re getting, so you can keep adjusting and get the image just right.

For those more interested in learning some of my lighting techniques, check out my training DVD Flash Photography with Aaron Linsdau at TVL Video.

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