Lily Sawyer Photography » design

Recent shots taken with a 50mm f1.8

Lily Sawyer — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:21:21 +0000

I have been playing around with my lenses to keep them from getting too dusty! Here are a few shots taken with the old and trusty 50mm 1.8.

To convert or not to convert: Black & White and Sepia

Lily Sawyer — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:51:04 +0000

How would you know which photos to keep in colour and which ones to convert to sepia and black and white? As I’ve mentioned in my previous post, I decide on which photos to convert by instinct. Sometimes it just comes to me, at other times it is because I think the photo in colour is not good enough and trying out the photo in black and white or sepia usually makes it a better photo. By doing this I get more contrasts and often if not always, the impact and emotion of the photo changes. Some photos are just meant to be in black and white, and some in sepia. That is, during times when my instinct is right.

The photo below does not look right in colour; there are far too many bright colours vying for attention. A very similar photo looks just perfect in sepia.

The photo of my little boy by the fountain was taken on a very bright sunny day and the shadows on his face were pretty harsh. The background was over-exposed with the water reflecting the intensity of the light. Converting this to sepia meant that I was able to easily even out the exposure and bring the primary focus towards my little boy in the foreground.

The photo of my little girl standing by the tree was taken on an cloudy day. She had been running around and took shelter under the tree when it suddenly rained. I happened to be on the opposite side of the road and took this shot quickly before she could run away. The colour photo was pretty dull with the big green trees dominating the frame. Converting to sepia changes the whole emotion of this photo and focus is drawn towards my little girl for a more emotional impact.

The family portrait at the bottom of this page looks best in sepia. The original colour photo had far too many clashing colours for a formal family shot. Converting it to sepia gave it a classic look and a stronger sense of unity.

Experiments in saturation in Photoshop: random photos

Lily Sawyer — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:04:18 +0000

As my knowledge of Photoshop barely scratches the surface, I thought I’d experiment with a few other tools that I have not used much until recently. Saturation is one of them. Desaturating colour can be quite exciting; it can give photos an ‘aged’ look or make them appear classic. I prefer desaturating in RAW as somehow the outcome looks better.
Again, there’s an infinite number of saturation tones and any other tools you might want to blend with it. Here are some of my ‘desaturate’ experiments. Some I would say are successful, others are much better left in full colour. I suppose practice will make me better at it. When I look at a photo, I usually go by my instinct on whether it would look good desaturated, or converted to black and white or sepia. The more photos I take and the more photos I look at, the more I learn.

ISO and noise reduction experiments: Leigh-on-Sea

Lily Sawyer — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 22:09:37 +0000

When we acquired our DSLR a couple of years ago, it was my husband who read the manual, set the camera up and showed me how to take photos. When it comes to software and gadgets and how they work, I am not one of those sensible people whose first stop is the manual; I would rather be shown the process step-by-step, or fiddle with the equipment myself stumbling along the way, or find the answers with a click of a button on the internet. The quicker and less painful the process, the more preferred it is in my eyes. This time however, I decided to seriously learn the controls of our DSLR rather than merely pointing and shooting. I’ve had to sit down and painfully read the minute text of the instruction manual to understand what to do with them. I was clueless! But even then, reading was NOT enough; practice is what really matters.

You will see from these landscapes below my mistakes with ISOs and noise. I had set the camera’s ISO to 1600 when I had meant to set the ISO Auto to go up to 1600 when necessary. How could I have known these 2 controls were different? Thankfully once again, I shot in RAW, and was therefore able to control the noise down on the third photo with the noise reduction tool. To do this in Photoshop had I shot them in JPEG would have been very tricky, in fact, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to do it. So far, I have tried, without any success. I now know better not to go shooting with very high ISOs on bright sunny days.