Photo Extremist: Creative Photography Tutorials, Photoshop Tutorials, Instructional Videos

2Jan/1215

My Photography: Best of 2011

Most photos shot using:
Nikon D300s DSLR
Sigma 17-50mm 2.8 Lens

Music:
Aphex Twin - Xtal
Jan Jelinek - Them, Their

Tagged as: 17-50, 2.8, 2011, 300s, art, artwork, dslr, effects, f2.8, highspeed, imagery, images, lens, light, lightpainting, long exposures, nikon, owling, painting, photo extremist, photoextremist, photography, photos, photoshop, planking, portraits, sigma, slide show, slideshow, special, special effects, surreal, trick, trick photography 15 Comments

16Dec/104

In order to capture great bokeh shots you will need to set the aperture of your lens to as shallow as it can go. Use a 50mm f1.8, a 70-200mm f2.8, or if you don't have those, you can still probably use the 18-55mm kit lens that came with your camera (just make sure to zoom in all the way and set the aperture to as low as it can go, f5.6 in most cases).

Because we are working in low light situations, it is a very good idea to have the camera on a tripod to rid camera shake. You can light your subject up with a lamp. In the video I used regular incandescent / tungsten light bulbs in the background and lit my subject up with a near-incandescent modeling lamp as well. If you are a strobist you can use an external flash to light your subject, just make sure to put some sort of tan colored gel over your flash unit to make sure the lighting in the background and on the subject match color temperature.

Bokeh Photos

Additional Resources on Bokeh Photography

Tagged as: 1.8, aperture, blur, bokeh, defocus, depth of field, dslr, f1.8, how to, howto, photography, shallow depth of field, tutorial, video, video tutorial 4 Comments

6Dec/108

Photographic Special Effects with Christmas Lights

This video shows you how to take psychedelic abstract long exposure photographs of Christmas lights. You'll want to set your camera's shutter speed to to BULB mode and use your camera's pop-up flash (or external flash), then spin yourself around in front of your Christmas tree. It helps if all the lights are turned off in the room except for the Christmas tree lights.

Here are the six different tricks. There will be an image on top, and an description underneath each image.

Spin either in a chair or while standing up. Try not to move your arm, hand, or head while doing this, because it will cause unwanted camera-shake. You can experiment moving your arm up and down or something if you want to, it just will give you a different effect.

Hold your camera by the lens out in front of your with your right hand, twist just like you did in the first trick, only this time take your left hand and move your camera so it zooms in and rotates at the same time. If you do this several times, you should eventually get a result where the lines will twirl around you, like you are in some type of TRON video game or something. And hey, Photoshopping your face using the Liquify tool to make you look like an alien never hurts.

Use a star filter screwed on the front of your camera lens. This will slice and the light into thin lines. This looks cool when you twirl the filter around your lens as well because the stars will appear to be "twinkling".

Use manual focus, still in bulb mode, and simply move your camera around your Christmas tree while the exposure is taking place. You will end up with really techy-yet-beautiful abstract photographs that you can use in backgrounds for Photoshop projects or the like.

Put your camera on a tripod and zoom in while the exposure is taking place.

If you have a higher end DSLR (I'm using a Nikon D300s) there may be a Multiple Exposure function somewhere in the camera's menu. I like to set it to ten and then take several exposures, each shot at a different focal length.