Digital Diversity

Learning how to expose photos in anything but automating modes can start to get confusing. When I got my first digital camera (Ixus 75) I didn’t know much about cameras in general, let alone metering modes and correct exposure.

When I upgraded to a superzoom (panasonic fz28) I switched to aperture priority mode. My main reason for this was that I could choose the aperture and change the ISO and exposure compensation to alter my shutter speed. This served me well and a lot of people use this method. I pretty much stayed clear of manual mode as it just sounded to fiddly to be of any use.

Since I got my DSLR (Canon 500D) I have started to think about this more. The only problem I would get with aperture priority was inconsistent exposure. What I mean by this is that say I was photographing my dog. As he runs passed different colour backgrounds this will in turn effect the exposure settings and lead to an over / underexposed shot. This would in turn have effected the shutter speed and can cause unwanted blur. I would also have to use exposure compensation and sometimes I may forget to change it back which would ruin the next shot. Another problem I had was that the exposure lock button never seems to lock the exposure for very long and getting the exposure back to what is was can be a pain.

To escape these problems I needed to step into the realm of manual mode.

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Having recently entered the world of making stock photography as a little side venture, I looked at what I would need to create the type of images I wanted to take. Having graphic design experience I knew that a lot of images I purchased for jobs fell into a few areas. These tended to be business men or women doing various things such as meetings, Life style shots and still life shots of various objects. I don’t do portraiture shots so that sort of ruled out the first 2 so this meant I would be concentrating on the 3rd. For this sort of photography I would need a Tri-pod, a sharp lens and a light box. I already had my Tri-pod and recently purchased the Canon 50mm f1.8 mk2 lens that can be incredibly sharp at the right settings (mainly f2.8 and higher). The one thing I didn’t have was a light box.

So what is a light box?

A light box is simply a box with reflective surfaces so you can bounce light around giving an even spread over your subject. You can also get light tents that do a similar thing. Seeing as Christmas is almost upon us, I have a mortgage to pay and a wedding coming in the new year, I find myself finding it hard to justify buying such an item. Instead I decided to put my Macgyver hat on and build one.

To make your own light box you will need the following.

• Cardboard box (or any box really)
• Kitchen foil
• White paper
• Sticky tape
• 2 flexible desk lamps (I got 2 for £6 each from Argos)
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With Halloween just passing, playing a certain game involving the death of a lot of innocent zombies and after watching dawn of the dead for the millionth time,  I found I had zombies on the brain (was that a pun?). This gave me the idea to create my very own zombie in Photoshop Elements 7. Everything from flaking dead skin, rotting flesh, blood and even a bit of bone is in there.

Hopefully this tutorial will show you how I implement some of the techniques I have shown in my previous Photoshop tutorials.

To create an image such as this you will already need to understand the following Photoshop techniques
• Layers and masks
• Adjustment layers – can be learned in this tute.
• Photo filters
• Selection tools
• Dodging and burning
• Cloning and healing
• Texture blending

If you already know about all those things then you should be set to dive straight in.
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