I’m still getting my learnin’s on here at Photoshop World. 🙂 Yesterday’s classes were great. There are different course tracks for photography, lighting and Photoshop techniques, and you can go to whichever classes you want. Then, between the classes, there’s a huge expo hall with dozens of booths set up by companies that sell photography equipment like lenses, huge studio lights and gigantic umbrellas.
Pretty cool if you’re into this kind of stuff…
Here are five tips I picked up yesterday to help you take your photography to the next level.
- Angles increase the “drama!” They also add a sense of movement and energy. You also don’t always need to fit objects entirely in the photo frame. Practice rotating your camera to create different effects.
- “When it comes to type,” says Scott Kelby, author of The Digital Photography Book series and NAPP president (National Association of Photoshop Professionals), “make it small, and when you think it’s too small, go a little further.” You don’t want your type to take away from your image.
- For your text logos and photo titles, think contrast, contrast, contrast. If using two fonts, pair a script with a sans serif, lowercase and uppercase, no kerning with high kerning (the space between the individual letters), etc.
- In photos, the viewer’s eye naturally seeks out text before anything else. Then it looks for the lightest parts of an image. Lighter objects also appear larger than darker objects.
- Tangents are points where two objects appear to touch/meet in an image. The eye will seek out these areas — these meeting points. It’s weird… You can’t resist looking at them! Sometimes, if they’re unintentional, they can detract from what you really want people to look at in your picture. Also, purposefully cropping parts of something (like a short beauty blogger) can make it appear larger or taller.
Some of these are crazy, right!? Didn’t your eyes look at that point where the pyramid barely touches the top of the picture frame? And those two apples — they’re both the same size, but doesn’t the lighter green apple look a little bigger than the red one?
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
P.S. For more tips from Photoshop World and other conferences I’ve attended, click here.
This is really helpful, thanks, Karen! 🙂
It’s funny to see you mention angles because lately, I’ve been trying to work them, by employing more Dutch Tilts. It’s been making a lot of difference.
I’ve been following this, Karen (your non-beauty posts may even rival your beauty posts) – you’re really enjoying this expo!
Also, that factoid about the eyes going straight to the text first? Yeah, my eyes connected “World’s Sexiest Cat” to uber-cool, lounging Tabs…but we didn’t need the text to already knew that 😉
Somewhat related: I’m reading your old blogging advice posts, and I’ve love to see you write about SEO in the future…
Wow Karen! This is so interesting. I’ve really enjoyed this! Thanks for sharing!
Hi Marian!
Yay! Glad you liked it. I have one more post on lighting coming up later tonight. Hope you had a great week.
Love this!
Glad you liked it, Chelsea! Are you a blogger or photography buff?
Definitely not a photography buff, but I always think about starting a blog, but grad school and the scholarista lifestyle gets in the way!
I love hearing what you learned at Photoshop World. It’s one of the conferences I’ve wanted to go to for a while, but haven’t taken the plunge. I’m living vicariously through your posts!
Hi Jen,
I can’t recommend it enough. I feel like I learned a lot about lighting, in particular, which is such a difficult thing.
Next year it’s in Vegas again around this time of year. Maybe I’ll see you there!
I mentioned a year ago that I loved your photoshopping skills and was hoping to see some quick tutorials on your blog and here we have it! Thank you!
These are great tips. I have to agree with the angle being so important.
Standard Tabs vs Action Tabs is cracking me up.
I love the Sons of Anarchy theme song, as well as the Justified theme song.
I find it really interesting that shows don’t tend to have a theme song (or opening credits) anymore, like they did in the past!