Watermarking Your Images

It is surprising how something as simple and mundane as watermarking images can cause such headache amongst beginner photographers. Everyone gets told, “watermark your images”, but hardly anyone gets told how to. Thankfully programmes such as Lightroom make this easy, but it is as easy in Photoshop. The basic idea of a watermark is a logo or piece of text that is embedded in the actual image so that copyright of the image is ensured. It also makes theft of the image rather difficult if the watermark has been placed affectively. If you are using Lightoom the easiest way is to export the image with a tick in the box that indicates that the image should be watermarked. Using Lightoom you have the option of either a simple piece of text or of using a graphic that you have created. The advantage of using Lightroom is that once you have made all your choices and created some templates, an entire export of images can be watermarked. If you are wanting something a little more complex than a text watermark the an image can often be more eye‐ catching. My watermark for the past few years has looked like this:

Building Relationships - The building blocks of composition

Successful pictures draw the viewer in and have them do a wander round the picture space. They engage the viewer, force the viewer to scan the image in its entirety and begin to ponder the moment of image capture. One of the most important ways of engaging the viewer through the image, is by building successful relationships between the elements that have been identified as core to the image’s composition and meaning. Relationships within the picture space engage our eyes and create a map through which the image is viewed. Relationships beyond the picture (symbols, intended meanings etc.) turn the image into a message which does the work of a thousand words.

Losing The Mirror

Over the last few years the category of ‘mirror-less’ cameras has made somewhat significant inroads amongst the photographic fraternity. Also known as ‘compact system cameras’ these digital cameras differentiate themselves from the full grown DSLRs by ubiquitously not having a mirror to direct light through an optical viewfinder. Rather, the image is composed via the rear LCD screen or a small electronic viewfinder (EVF). The imaging sensor is therefore not only responsible for capture, but also for composition, focus and to a large extent, exposure.

A comparison of size and weight - left to right the Nikon D800 at 900g, the Fujifilm XT-1 at 440g and the Sony NEX-5n at 269g

Playing With Panoramics

 I have recently been doing quite a bit of panoramic shooting. Initially it was meant to be for a client that wanted a gigapixel image. Lots of internet searching later I thought I had everything sorted out...sort of...and went to work on my first gigapixel which I'll post at some point in the future. At any rate, the project is supposedly on hold until I actually receive a deposit or go ahead for the job in question. Completely coincidentally though, I was asked by a different client to do some panoramic of a hospital for their marketing department. Thanks to the unrealized project I now had the software in hand as well as some cobbled together hardware (I have yet to purchase a dedicated panoramic head as I still haven't decided which one). The software in question is the very specialized PTGui Pro. One commercial project later and I am starting to only just get to grips with it. 

Then along came a Drakensberg hike specifically to create some timelapse material for a project that I am working on. But, it also gave me a chance to play with some panoramics while waiting for timelapses to finish shooting. Above and below are two examples.