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altering the depth-of-field is the easiest way to change the look of your pictures with shallow-focus shots having a really professional look...

Creative camera

opening is denoted by the f/number, with a larger f/number corresponding to a smaller opening and a smaller f/number, a larger opening. This sounds complicated, and it’s not this way just because photographers like making things difcult for themselves – the f/number is actually the ratio of the focal length to the diameter of the aperture. What’s really important is the efect the size of the aperture has on the light that passes through, as this is what dictates

the depth-of-field. The basic rule is that a large aperture (small f/number) will give a smaller zone of sharp focus, whereas a small aperture (large f/number) will give a larger zone of sharp focus. An easy way to remember it is by the numbers – the larger the f/number, the bigger your zone of sharp focus will be, so an aperture of f/22 will give a much larger zone of sharp focus than an aperture of f/1.8, for example. Easy! Now see how it’s all done over the page...

Above: Knowing how to use your depth-of-field creatively can improve the look of all types of photographic subjects, from landscapes to still-life and portraits.

Top left: In modern cameras the aperture is controlled through the camera body rather than a ring on the lens. Switch the Mode dial to either Manual or Aperture priority and move the primary command dial to choose your f/number setting.

Bottom left: Your aperture value will be displayed on either the top-plate, in the viewfinder, or on the LCD screen on your camera.

camera screen or dials

SHOT AT f/1.8

SHOT AT f/1.8

SHOT AT f/5.6

SHOT AT f/22

Basic skills

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Step 1 Open the image you want to warm up

the first step is to open a suitable picture to start working on. pick one of your own landscapes – especially one taken on an overcast day, as it will really benefit from this technique – or for practice, use Skye.jpg from the Start images folder on our cover disc. in photoshop or Elements, go to FileOpen and in the window that appears, navigate to the Start images folder, highlight Skye.jpg and click Open. once you’ve got the image up on screen, the next job is to bring up the all-important layers palette, so if yours isn’t already open, go to Window Layers and make sure the option is ticked.

ABOUT THE START IMAGE SKYE.JPGthis image was shot on the isle of Skye in Scotland, taken just below the old Man of Storr. it was a fair trek up from the car park which was just beyond the woods, down on the far left of the image.

TRAnSfORM flAT And GREY IMAGESthe cloudy, overcast sky makes this image feel cold, lifeless and flat. We could increase the contrast to add a little punch, but to really make it stand out it needs a warming filter efect. this involves adding an amber hue which, using Variations, we can do selectively to the Shadows, highlights and Midtones for greater control over the outcome.

ORIGInAl SHOT

Advanced Photoshop

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Well, you can control the exposure in an image, but only all at once, and that means the light areas will darken, but so will the dark ones. For example, you can darken down a bright sky and return detail to that area, but the entire landscape will now be much darker, too. Not really what you want!

Fortunately, recent versions of Photoshop (CS4 and up) have Local Adjustment tools built into their Camera Raw interface and these allow you to control settings more selectively. In this lesson you’ll learn how to use them, specifically the Graduated Filter, Adjustment Brush and Spot Removal brush.

These local adjustment tools are non-destructive in the same way as the regular ones in Camera Raw and all the changes you make can be saved just as they normally would be, so you can develop a RAW file

from your camera, open or save it and come back later with the changes still in place. Alternatively, you can remove all the changes and start again for a fresh shot.

The Local Adjustment tools aren’t

available in versions of Photoshop prior to CS4 and you can’t use them in Elements, either, but once you’ve seen how useful they are, they’re a compelling reason to upgrade to the full package or latest version.

ABOUT THE START IMAGE BRIdGE.jpGin this picture we’re facing a classic landscape problem. Shooting into the light has added lots of contrast and it’s too much for a regular RaW conversion to handle.

ORIGInAl SHOT

TRIcky cOnTRASTthe foreground has fallen into shadow, but the sky is very bright, so we need localised adjustments to balance them up.

EdITEd SHOT you can make selective improvements within the camera Raw interface using the localised Adjustment tools to bring the best out of tricky scenes.

photography is a hobby Markus has to fit in around his day-job and family life, and one he had to learn from scratch, understanding how things like ISO, shutter speed and aperture work together. After researching and reading a lot about D-SLR techniques, he realised that to help him learn, he needed to see what other photographers were producing. “While looking at other people’s galleries on the web, I found some

simple water drops and was so fascinated, I decided to try it for myself. This was the start of my passion!”

Markus quickly developed his love of high-speed photography into a unique style. “I wanted to show beautiful, magic moments in simple water drops.”

Is the unpredictable nature of the subjects he shoots a challenge? And how does he achieve the sound explosion efects, shown

in his image ‘RYB’ over the page? “For this sound explosion image I used a speaker to play a single tune. This vibrated the membrane holding the liquid and the colour jumped upwards. I only process my favourites, choosing around 2-4 pictures from a stock of about 200-300! All my images are unique and unrepeatable; I can control the settings to influence the shape, but every series start at zero. I never know

Markus says crowns are the easiest shapes in this genre, but in order to make a more powerful and complex image, here he used diferent coloured drops and a soap bubble to connect the separate crowns to one unit.

Interview

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