Lloyd Spitalnik Photography » Photo Tips

Don’t Do This and Other Things

admin — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 16:05:46 +0000

“Don’t do this will come last in this post. Here it goes.

Last week my very good friend David Speiser made a presentation on Spring Warblers to the Linnaean Society of NY. His pictures are fabulous but the projector used for the presentation (supplied by the Museum of Natural History) made his images look overexposed by a lot. It’s a shame and I believe Linnaean Society owes David a public apology. David handled it much better than I would have. My hat’s off to him.

Denise Ippolito along with Artie Morris have written a guide to Barnegat Light. If you’ve never been there buy this guide. It will give you everything you need to know about getting there, all the safety considerations and some fabulous photography tips. You can get more information on Denise’s blog here. I highly recommend buying it.

Denise and I are happy to announce that we will be leading a photo tour to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge on August 13th. Details can be seen here. Just scroll down towards the bottom. You can always contact me at 917-301-8744 if you have any questions. Of course this is several months away and I will put reminders up as we get somewhat closer.

I’d like to thank Mike Lotito for inspiring me to go out East. Without him I’d still be missing American Bittern from my photo library.

And finally, “Don’t Do This” After photographing the American Bittern which was taken off a beanbag out of my car window, I arrived home. Put the camera/lens back on the tripod, which I always do to easily transport it back to my apartment. I tightened the camera to the tripod, or so I thought, and this is what happened.

The lens was also broken into two pieces. The moral of the story is, always check your equipment, don’t get cocky or lazy. Shit happens!

Tip #8 Photoshop

admin — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 18:52:40 +0000

This one couldn’t be easier to use. Towards the end of your workflow just before sharpening, go to “Selective Color”. You’ll find it in the layers palette. If in CS3 or earlier you’ll find it hiding under the little half black, half white circle. Same is true for CS4 and CS5 but it’s also in the new adjustment palette. Change the master color to neutral and move the black slider to +2. You’ll get a nice subtle change which should pop you image up. As always, let me know what you think.

An Announcement, Tip #7 and Some Photos

admin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 17:59:43 +0000

Don Riepe, Kevin Karlson and I are pleased to announce the 5th Annual Jamaica Bay Shorebird Festival will take place on August 14th and 15th in conjunction with the National Park Service, American Littoral Society and NYC Audubon. There will be slide show presentations as well as walks on both the East and West Ponds. If interested, and you should because all past attendees have enjoyed it immensely, please either call American Littoral Society at 718-318-9344 or email Don driepe
We’re asking for a $20.00 donation to cover expenses. More information will be available in the coming weeks.

Tip #7 Due to popular demand I’m going to give tips from time to time. Sometimes you think things you know are pretty basic and then after talking to people in the field you realize they aren’t. In Photoshop, to bring up your contrast to proper levels, go into Levels and hold your alt/opt key and move both the white and black slider located beneath the histogram. When holding the alt/opt key and pressing the little white and black triangle you’ll notice your photo will either turn black or white. Move the slider until you start seeing some color coming back and then move it back very slightly. When finished your image should have some pop to it. As always if you have any questions you can always contact me.

Migration Has Started

admin — Tue, 04 May 2010 03:59:26 +0000

Birds are on the move. This is the time of year that most birders wait for. There was a major flight of northbound migrants on April 30th. Today is May 3rd and there are still plenty of birds around. Central Park here in NYC is one of the prime stopover points for the birds to feed. Not only do they gather here but so do the birders. On any May weekend you’ll find several hundred people scouring the treetops in search of warblers, the “jewels of the forest” along with tanagers, grosbeaks, orioles etc. Here are a few images from the last day or so.

Tips #5 & 6 – RAW vs. JPEG and Keyboard Shortcuts

admin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:28:15 +0000

Since I’ve been missing in action for the last month here are two tips for the price of one. At the end of the post there’ll be a few recent images. This, after all, is a photo blog

Tip #5 – RAW vs. JPEG
I thought this was very basic but after meeting several photographers in the field, the questions comes up time after time. The short answer is RAW. About the only reason I can think of to shoot in JPEG is to have smaller files and therefore be able to fit more photos on your digital card. The reasons to shoot in RAW are numerous.
i’m going to try and keep this short. You can always send a comment and I’ll answer your question in more depth. JPEG is a highly compressed file and raw isn’t compressed at all. This gives you all the pixels your camera captured. Your aim is to get the best exposure possible when you capture the image but RAW gives you much more latitude to make corrections. RAW files will always be available for future RAW converter improvements. I’ll guarantee there will be better converters down the pike even though the ones available today are excellent.
These are just a few advantages of RAW. There are several more. Don’t be intimidated. RAW only requires one additional step to process your photos and that’s putting it through a RAW converter.

Tip# 6 – Keyboard Shortcuts
This tip is intended to speed up your work flow a bit. Rather than always using your mouse to pick tools, try learning some keyboard shortcuts. Here are some of the ones I use constantly.
B to bring up the brush
Brackets [ ] to increase and decrease the size of the brush
Q for Quickmask mode (learn how to use quickmasks and you’ll be able to dramatically improve your images)
Shift Control I (Shift command I on Mac) to inverse your photo
Control J (Command J on Mac) to duplicate layers
V is the move tool
Control/Command D to deselect
Control/Command E to merge layers
D to change foreground and background colors to default
X to reverse foreground an background colors
F to toggle between screen modes
There are so many more but these will get you started. If you’d like to learn more about how to use these shortcuts, I’m available for private lessons.

Tip #4 – Straighten Horizon in Photoshop

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:30:49 +0000

I’ve been very busy over the last 2 weeks and haven’t been able to devote time to the blog. My computer went down after the power supply died, so had to wait for the new one to arrive and install it. After that, with a little detective work on my part, I had to replace the cable that runs from the computer to the monitor. Needless to say, I lost several days. I learned that, at least for me, it’s near impossible to process images on a laptop. What normally takes 5-7 minute was taking over 10. That’s unacceptable! Finally something good, my new Canon EOS ID Mark IV arrived. What a camera!

This is supposed to be about photo tips so here goes. This one came as a special request from a good friend. If you have a question, send it to me and I’ll see if I can help.

The question: “I started in Lightroom and straightened my image or so I thought. When I moved my workflow to Photoshop I realized I needed to straighten the horizon a little more. What’s the easiest way to do it?”

Here’s the answer: Go to the eyedropper tool and find the ruler tool beneath it by right clicking (Photoshop CS4. As I recall, earlier version might have the ruler tool in another place). This is with a 2 button mouse. For you Mac users I’m not quite sure how to do it but I’m sure you do . With the ruler tool open, draw a line along the horizon line or beneath a duck on the water as another example. Next go to Image > Image Rotation > Arbitrary and click OK. This will straighten you photo but you’ll have to crop away the white areas that are created. Of course this all could be avoided if you get it the way you want it on the original crop. In both Lightroom and Camera Raw, it’s a very simple task. After you make your crop move the cursor outside the cropped area and you’ll see a curved arrow replacing your normal cursor. Just move it up or down and your image will begin to rotate. Lightroom even brings up a grid so you can see straight lines to guide you.

Tip #3 – Batch Convert Images

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:06:52 +0000

This one came up today. I’m currently organizing a program that has to be done by Wednesday the 27th. On that date I’m giving a slide show presentation to the Sierra Club’s Photo Club. It will be held at the St. Paul the Apostle • 405 West 59th St. • 2nd floor • New York, NY (1½ blocks west of Columbus Circle, between 9th and 10th Avenues) Suggested donation $5.00. Doors open at 6pm, the show begins at 6:30. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s proceed with the tip.

I had 75 large format tif files in a folder that needed to be converted to 1000 x 667 jpegs. Of course it could have been done one by one, but talk about tedious. If you ever run into this situation or one like it, here’s what to do. Create a new folder on your desktop or a location of your choice and move all the photos into it. Now, create another folder on your desktop and name it something like “photos small” or whatever you want. Open Photoshop and go to File > Scripts > Image Processor. In the first box choose the folder where the images are. In the second box choose the folder you created (photos small) and in the third box choose the file type you want, in my case JPEG, the quality 5 -8 is good for email or the web. Check “size to fit” and put your largest dimensions into the boxes. For the web or email check “convert to sRGB. Click on the RUN button and watch the magic begin. This is an extremely useful feature of Photoshop and really saves a lot of time.

Tip #2 – This Time Photoshop

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:27:59 +0000

This tip is easy to do but somewhat difficult to explain. For you seasoned veterans, nothing earth shattering here, but a good tip nevertheless. Let’s talk about the “Fade” command. It is used when there is no layer involved and you want to reduce the opacity or use a blend mode. Let’s say you do a “Shadows/Highlights” adjustment found under Image > Adjustments. A sometimes very useful adjustment but once it’s done, it’s done. Well not so fast. Immediately after doing it press on a PC Control/Shift/F or on a Mac Command/Shift/F and the fade control will appear. Adjust the opacity and or blend mode here. Remember, this is a one shot deal. If you make any other adjustment prior to the fade it will be unavailable. I hope this makes sense because I know I use it all the time and it really improves the image. If you have any questions, I’ll try to answer them. These are the types of things I can teach you in my private lesson sessions. Top image has a shadow/highlight adjustment. Bottom photo is exactly the same but with a fade of 65%. The effect is subtle but makes the subject look more natural. Click on each image for a better view.

First tip of the Year – Lightroom

admin — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:01:34 +0000

Hi everyone. As promised I’m starting a new feature of my blog. There will be one simple Lightroom, Photoshop or photography tip given every week or so. So without further ado, here’s the first one.

If you’re like me you want your workflow to move along as quickly as possible. When I’m culling images in Lightroom, because I shoot so much, I tend to go through the photos very fast and place a mark on the obvious clunkers with the “X” key which is “mark for deletion”. The default for Lightroom is to use the arrow key to move to the next shot. There’s a better and quicker way to get through your photos. Go into the Library module and then on the drop-down menu under “Photo”, put a check next to Auto Advance. Now when you “X” an image it will automatically go to the next photo. After you check Auto Advance it will work in the Develop module as well.

Let me know what you think. There will be tips for Lightroom, Photoshop and general photography in future weeks.