Use a Machine Gun to Shoot Silhouettes

This photo was taken in my Lianzhou, China journey.

Silhouettes give people a mysterious feel.
Wanna reveal their mask?

Take a photograph of silhouettes like that is not an easy task.
What?

Please count how many legs in the photo?
What happens if one or more legs overlapped? If a silhouette's legs overlap, they will melt into one piece.

Now, do you see the trick?
I needed to take a photo in which all the 10 legs are seperated.

It is a issue of timing.
A machine gun (high speed shooting) is a great help.

I continuously shot 50 photos to get one that all legs are clearly seperated.

Photography requires your patience and tricks!

Step on Cloud

This was my first time seeing this kind of fishing method in my Yangjiang, China trip in 2005.

The fishmen put a extremely long net into the sea before dawn.
More than 20 fishmen pull the net back to the seashore when the first twilight reached the ground.

The scene was not as beautiful as you see now.
I drew a new scene based on what I saw in my mind.


Having what I needed in my head, it was not the time to press the shutter button, but to organize objects I were going to shoot.
I made the net look like a "S" shape instead of spaghetti.

Someone may argue we should not manipulate what we see.
I agree if it is used for documentary.

A photographer is also an artist if she/he treats photography as a visual art.
Re-organization and creation is part of an art.
It requires a photographer to have a sense of art.


I always ask people to take beautiful photos of sky, sea or tree.
Those photos become your photo library.
Then you can find the required components from your library.

The above photo of sky is taken from my photo library.

You might retort components such as the sky, the sea etc can be found in Internet.
As a photographer or visual artist, the originality of works is a must.
If you mix others' works into your own work, who is the original artist?


Now, I put the cloud photo and fishmen photo in 2 layers as shown above.

The cloud photo is used for the reflection on the seashore.
Please refer to the next photo.

Note:
The layer mode of fishmen layer is hard light.

I cut the top part of the cloud photo because it is something else, but it won't affect the output because it is the area of sky. I will give the fishmen photo a more beautiful sky later.


This is what we see when I put the cloud and fishmen photo in 2 layers and set the fishmen photo's layer mode to hard light.


Now, I found a suitable sky from my photo library.
Again, do you see how important is a photo library?

Please do create one for yourself now!

The lower part of the sky photo is something else, so I cut it.
It does not matter because it is enough to cover the sky of the fishmen photo.


There are the arrangement of the 3 layers.
The top layer is the sky. The middle layer is the fishmen. The bottom layer is the cloud.

I put a layer mask for the sky layer because the sky photo overlaps the sea of the fishmen photo, so I used a layer mask to hide the extra lower portion of sky.


The is the outcome after applying a layer mask for the sky layer.


As usual, the last step is to adjust the contrast because people in digital world love rich colors.

Do NOT just press the shutter button.
Please also try to design and draw your own picture while shooting photos.

Travel with a Lomo

Those photos were taken in my trip to Daocheng in China.
It was a very nice place because no vehicles can reach there.
Everything is unpolluted.

Why the colors of the photos are so weired?
Coz the film was developed in a E-to-C process.


It was the starting point of my trip.

When there are a strong tunneling effect on the photo?
It is one of the charactistics of a lomography camera.
The one I was using is LC-A.


We were 4659m from the sea level as you can see from the sign.
Freezing cold and icy.


Everywhere was full of reglious atmosphere.
A very colorful place.

Does lomography give you a different world?

Hint:
If you want to have a blue tone in your lomo, Agfa CT-100 is a good choice.
But it is very difficult to find a roll now.

Frame Your Photos

When you use something as frames for your objects, it could turn a ordinary photo into a special one.
I used a ligh bulb as a frame for the yacht. Isn't it more attractive now?

Try to use natural frames in your next trip!


Part of the dirty green glass was cleanred. It created a natural frame.
I shot through the cleaned area.


Windows of a door framed my friend.
It looks more wonderful with the existence of the "frame".

Portrait: 3/4 Train Platform

One day, one of my friends asked me why I bought my own camera.
"Taking photos for girls." I answered him honestly.



Although I also take photos of sceneries, plants, animals etc, I still love portrait most.
Why? Coz taking portrait photos is an interaction process.



To take a good portrait photos, I need to make joke and communicate with people I am going to take pictures for.
To make them relax, to let them feel natual and present my concept to them.

It is simply an art!



If you are a photographer, you need to remember some good poses and apply them to your models or friends.
If you like being a model, you have to observe poses of other models in magazines or music videos.

Your photos must look more interesting than your "stand straight and shoot" photos.

When Day meets Night

In the picture below, The sun was there, but all light pods of the bridge was on.



How do we put day and night together?

I have made use of a photographic technique called double exposure.

Please prepare the following ingredients for the magic first:

1) Set up a tripod and put your camera on to it

2) Shoot, shoot, shoot and shoot in day time or sunset, but do NOT move your camera

3) Continue to shoot or wait until night comes without moving your camera

4) Take some photos for the beautiful night scene, but keep your camera in the same position

Then... it's time to do dark magic which is Adobe Photoshop.

5) Open your Photoshop

6) Open one of your daytime photos

7) Open another photo which was taken during night time

8) Go back to the daytime photo and place your night-time photo on a new layer

9) Now the first layer is your daytime photo and the second layer is your night-time photo

10) Change the mode to "Lighten"

11) Adjust the Contrast, Colors and Level if required

12) Yeah! Here you go!

Where are those wonderful clouds?

In next lesson, I will teach you how to put clouds into the photo to make the magic hour prettier.

As you can see, double exposure can turn your dull photos into fantastic pictures.

Go and practice now!

Playing with Shadows

For someone who loves photography may reach a point that every photo looks the same somedays. Then one will start struggle to improve photographic technique.

To break the barrier, please play with shadows. Yes, shadows are your best friends. You will have a lot of fun while playing with them.

The dark shadow on the left photo gives you more imagination than a real man. Do you agree? He could be a handsome man, an eldery or even a vampire. It gives audience unlimted possibilities.

Go and make friends with shadows now!