Shoot & Tell

Members of Shoot & Tell are addicted and devoted to sheer photography, so we shoot every day. We bring a story about each picture and give it color and feeling by words; documenting actual facts, poetry, stories, thoughts and feelings, almost anything to bring a little extra to the picture.When this group started we wanted it to be a bit different from other groups. For a long time we had ideas that grow into the tell part. To see how a picture can change by words and not by editing. By the time this group have grown new ideas came up and we added those slowly.

We had the wish that everyone should feel a part of this group. So, we started the Exhibitions.
Every active member will have a chance to show their picture. It is very nice to see how popular the exhibitions have become. We also added The Themes challenge for every month; Altogether popular. And we wanted to give something more by giving Technical articles that has turned out very useful for many. We also started the "News for the month" where all member can get to know new members and what is happening in the group; Like our guest photographers and their articles. This all together is Shoot and Tell. Let us all make Shoot & Tell better!!

Shoot & Tell has been around for two years now And we celebrate it by publishing this wonderful video made possible by Orlando and photographed by us Also thanks to Eva for caption. The soundtrack Photosphere by Charles Atlas band you can find at Free Music Archive.

Officially S&T:s birthday is on April 15th. That is the day when Jux opened the Shoottell account to create and moderate this group. From few we have become many. Currently we have approximately 25 active photographers and at least 100 members altogether following us (that is a rough estimate).

If you want to share this video on your MyOpera blog, then do it like this:

[VIDEO=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTejztEPcrQ][/VIDEO]

Or like this:

<object width="640" height="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/YTejztEPcrQ?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/YTejztEPcrQ?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="640" height="480" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>

Or visit Youtube for codes to share it elsewhere. And if you feel sorry not to see your picture on the video, then do take your best shot ever during next 12 months and participate next year

Digging again our old forum archives, we found this useful article on flash photography. The idea is to encourage you to use the built-in flash more often, not on when it is dark, but also as a tool to bring light into shadows.

Flash photography
Written for Shoot & Tell by Sami

Fellow photographers, here comes a few tips for using built-in flash. You may have external flash as well, so please do read some literature or search Web on how to use "bounced flash" and all kinds of other techniques for external flashes. Here I only cover tips and tricks for built-in flash.

Using flash

Problems with built-in flash is that it gives rather hard and direct light very close to the axis of lens. Therefore following four problems may occur: 1) People looking directly to the camera get red eyes, 2) the light looks somewhat cold and hard, 3) subjects get sharp black shadow behind them if the background is light, and 4) the contrast between the main subject in front and background is huge, thus often giving "pale faces" against very dark background.

Use red eye reduction flash mode

To avoid red eye effect there are developed special flash modes where the flash fires first once or multiple times with limited power before the flash fires fully and picture becomes taken. The idea is that strong light makes the eyes react and pupils get smaller before shot is taken. So, do use the red eye reduction flash on your camera when shooting people and animal with flash.

Adjust white balance on camera or on post processing

Try setting the white balance on camera either for "shadow" or "cloudy" to get warmer picture when flash used. However, this may not work on all cameras because the camera software may still force the white balance for flash shooting white balance. If so, then you can adjust RGB (Red, Green, Blue) values on photoeditor to get warmer image. Try something like +10 unit red and -30 unit blue.

Make a flashbox to get softer shadows

To reduce the dark shadows casted behind the subjects needs some extra effort done. What you can do is cut a piece of paper and attach it in front of the flash folded like seen here:

Just make sure the paper is wide enough so the light of the flash does not flood from the sides of paper when wide angle lens used. Normal copy paper is just fine but if you have translucent plastic film then it's even better.

Here's what picture looks like when no flashbox used:


And here's the same when flasbox used:


Other advantage you get when using flashbox is that it also moves the light a little up and further from camera. This also in part help you to avoid shadow casted by lens on close-up & wide angle shots.

Use fill-in flash to reduce the contrasts

Find out if you have option for so called 'fill-flash'. In your camera manual and menus it can be called as 'night flash', 'portrait flash', 'night portrait', 'slow synch flash' or anything like that. The point is that it makes the camera to combine the light of flash and the ambient light, thus giving more natural effect.

Limit the power of flash

Especially on close-up shots you may find the power of flash too strong and you get white washed subjects on foreground. Then find out if you have a feature on camera to limit the power of the flash. If that does not work as expected or you don't have that feature, then use ordinary paper to limit the amount of light. Just use one layer or folded paper and test when the result looks good. Here's an example when the amount of light controlled with a piece of paper on front of the flash on pocket camera.

Without paper:


One layer of paper on front of the flash:


Two layer of paper on front of the flash:


One layer of paper and fill-flash combined:


So, do experiment all alternative settings you have on your camera. Keep piece of paper and tape in your camera bag in case you need to build flashbox or limit the power of flash on pocket camera. Try using fill-flash, not only in dark, but also in the middle of day.

Welcome to Shoot & Tell March 2012 exhibition which consist from Contrast theme and Monthly best.

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