For all you aspiring photographers out there, you may at some point consider trying to sell your images online. One way to do this is by selling them as stock photos. Keep in mind, selling as stock requires a specific kind of photograph. Basically, it needs to be something that graphic artist would need. This definitely doesn't apply to all photos.
Anyway...I wanted to share a few things I have learned about selling stock photos. First of all, it is not easy money. Your photos have to be good, and you have to have a lot of them to make money. It is tough to get noticed. However, I have had a little bit of success (by little I mean I made 20 bucks) using www.fotolia.com. This has been with minimal effort and very average pictures, so I guess that means anybody can do it. Here is my online portfolio. You will see that it is nothing special. It is definitely worth a try to everyone. There is nothing to lose except the time and effort.
Beyond simply recommending fotolia I will also refer you to an article I wrote a long time ago about making money off your images online. Read through it. There are a lot of good ideas, info, and web pages you may not know about it. Here is the article. Feel free to leave comments if you know some things I don't, or share your success stories.
Showing posts with label Free DP Articles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Free DP Articles. Show all posts
Friday, July 18, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
HDR images: Basic Explanation and Tutorial
HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. An HDRI, therefore, is an image that has a high dynamic range of colors. In other words, it has a range of values that is much larger than 0-255 which is typical of a jpeg. For example, what appears as white on your screen would not necessarily be a value of 255, but could be 255 x 5 or 10. This may not make much sense, but allow me to explain its utility for photography and it should make sense to anyone who has even dabbled with a camera. Also, here is the wiki explanation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging
In photography, a common problem that inevitably confronts everyone, is exposing properly for both super bright and super dark areas at the same time. I especially notice it when taking landscaping shots. It is hard to get correct exposure for things in shadow, things in direct sun, and the sky all at the same time. The range of tones your camera can capture all at once is only so much. Usually what happens to me is my landscape is exposed correctly while my sky just becomes a solid white color with no detail. Like here:
Essentially, HDR solves this problem. It allows you to take one shot exposed for the sky, one for the landscape, and really however many you want, and then combine them. More exposures means larger range. If combined properly, you can bring out all the detail in the shadows, and in the highlights at the same time. For my HDR image of the photo above I used this exposure plus four others, 2 lower and 2 higher.
Keep in mind that you can get these different exposures in 2 different ways. One way is to use a tripod and actually take the picture several different times with different exposures. This way you have to make sure everything stays perfectly still. It is best to use auto exposure bracketing if you've got it, and take the pics in quick succession. The second way to do it is by simply taking one photo using RAW format, and change the exposure after the fact. Export each exposure you want to a jpeg for combining later. If you do it this way, I have found that you need to keep your ISO low because noisy images wont combine well. The HDR will only accentuate the noise. 400 or lower should do.
The program I use to combine my exposures into an HDR is photomatix. Combining exposures is really all this program does. Open all the images up and hit combine into HDR. Once you do this the program will spit out an image that looks funky. This is because it contains much more information then your monitor can even display at one time. If you hover over it you will see a little preview box that will show the different ranges of the image. It is hard to explain but you will see.
In order to get this image back to something you can actually display on screen you have to tone map it. This is also done in Photomatix. An easy way of thinking about it is taking a wide range of tones (wider then can be shown by the monitor) and converting it back to a range that can be shown in a regular jpeg. However, this jpeg is special because you get to choose how each different area of the image will be exposed.
The full settings and explanation of how I do this is contained in the previous post to this one.
Tone map to your hearts content. Mess with the settings till you get something you like.
My image from above came out as this once I got all the exposures combined into one:
In photography, a common problem that inevitably confronts everyone, is exposing properly for both super bright and super dark areas at the same time. I especially notice it when taking landscaping shots. It is hard to get correct exposure for things in shadow, things in direct sun, and the sky all at the same time. The range of tones your camera can capture all at once is only so much. Usually what happens to me is my landscape is exposed correctly while my sky just becomes a solid white color with no detail. Like here:
Essentially, HDR solves this problem. It allows you to take one shot exposed for the sky, one for the landscape, and really however many you want, and then combine them. More exposures means larger range. If combined properly, you can bring out all the detail in the shadows, and in the highlights at the same time. For my HDR image of the photo above I used this exposure plus four others, 2 lower and 2 higher.
Keep in mind that you can get these different exposures in 2 different ways. One way is to use a tripod and actually take the picture several different times with different exposures. This way you have to make sure everything stays perfectly still. It is best to use auto exposure bracketing if you've got it, and take the pics in quick succession. The second way to do it is by simply taking one photo using RAW format, and change the exposure after the fact. Export each exposure you want to a jpeg for combining later. If you do it this way, I have found that you need to keep your ISO low because noisy images wont combine well. The HDR will only accentuate the noise. 400 or lower should do.
The program I use to combine my exposures into an HDR is photomatix. Combining exposures is really all this program does. Open all the images up and hit combine into HDR. Once you do this the program will spit out an image that looks funky. This is because it contains much more information then your monitor can even display at one time. If you hover over it you will see a little preview box that will show the different ranges of the image. It is hard to explain but you will see.
In order to get this image back to something you can actually display on screen you have to tone map it. This is also done in Photomatix. An easy way of thinking about it is taking a wide range of tones (wider then can be shown by the monitor) and converting it back to a range that can be shown in a regular jpeg. However, this jpeg is special because you get to choose how each different area of the image will be exposed.
The full settings and explanation of how I do this is contained in the previous post to this one.
Tone map to your hearts content. Mess with the settings till you get something you like.
My image from above came out as this once I got all the exposures combined into one:
As you can see it brings out way more detail in the overall image, and my sky and and lanscape are both exposed properly.
Please try it out, and share your best in our gallery. The best ones will be featured here for all to enjoy.
Monday, July 14, 2008
HDR landscape
Here is my latest attempt at HDR. The exposure problems were only minor (the detail in the sky was blown out) so the real reason I processed it like this was to bring out the details. I like how HDRs do that. I try to keep mine subtle too so they don't look cartoonish, flat, or overprocessed.
This is the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. The HDR is made with only one photo. I took it in RAW so I could export different exposures after the fact. Actually, with this one I exported 5 different exposures. I used the original exposure plus -2, -1, +1 and +2. I use photomatix to combine them. After all images are combined I do the tone mapping. I will go over the basic settings I use here:
Keep the strength low unless you want to look way overprocessed. I think I used around 30-40.
I put smooting on High, and Microcontrast too (this is where the details really come out)
Adjust black and white clip as necessary.
The luminosity is important. Adjusting it can increase the local contrast as well. Adjust it to your preference. Overdoing this can again make things look overprocessed in my opinion.
Keep the saturation lower then you think. If it looks good in the preview it usually ends up being a little too much from what I have found.
When all that is done I usually take the exported, tone mapped imaged into photoshop and maybe adjust the curves, maybe sharpen it up. Of course it depends on the image.
This one came out alright. It does look pretty processed, but the HDR did bring back my sky, and there is a ton of detail in the cliffs.
This is the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. The HDR is made with only one photo. I took it in RAW so I could export different exposures after the fact. Actually, with this one I exported 5 different exposures. I used the original exposure plus -2, -1, +1 and +2. I use photomatix to combine them. After all images are combined I do the tone mapping. I will go over the basic settings I use here:
Keep the strength low unless you want to look way overprocessed. I think I used around 30-40.
I put smooting on High, and Microcontrast too (this is where the details really come out)
Adjust black and white clip as necessary.
The luminosity is important. Adjusting it can increase the local contrast as well. Adjust it to your preference. Overdoing this can again make things look overprocessed in my opinion.
Keep the saturation lower then you think. If it looks good in the preview it usually ends up being a little too much from what I have found.
When all that is done I usually take the exported, tone mapped imaged into photoshop and maybe adjust the curves, maybe sharpen it up. Of course it depends on the image.
This one came out alright. It does look pretty processed, but the HDR did bring back my sky, and there is a ton of detail in the cliffs.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Selling Your Prints Online
Flickr Photo Download: Abstract Architecture
Well...as you know I have recently obtained my first Digital SLR camera. I have taken a few pictures so far that I feel are worthy of print. This one shown here is my favorite. I looked into selling my images online. I am not too serious about it, because I realize having any success would take a lot of time and work (and probably more talent then me). However, if you are interested, I wrote an article about making money off your images online. It covers more then just photographs, but it really applies to all kinds of images.
Click on my photo if you want to purchase it, and read the article if you are interested in finding out how to sell your images. It can be purchased in various sizes all the way up to 24"X36". I think it would look great as a poster on your wall!
You can also vote to see this image in JPG magazine here.
technorati tags:print, poster, architecture, art, Disney, Concert, Hall, Frank, Gehry, Photography
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