Michael Freeman is an award-winning editorial photographer and best-selling author, and since taking up photography I have read a number of his books.
- The Photographer's Mind: Creative Thinking for Better Digital Photos
- The Photographer's Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos
- The Photographer's Eye: A Graphic Guide: Instantly Understand Composition & Design for Better Photography
Apart from being very informative, these books are a good read and they have helped me in gaining a better understanding of photography and how to take better photographs.
The book I am currently reading is:
“Exposure is the deceptively simple concept at the very heart of photography. It has always been a subject of fascination to aspiring amateurs and professional photographers alike. Recent developments in digital technology have transformed the ways in which exposures can be manipulated, and this in turn has forced photographers to think about what they can achieve by understanding the variables of aperture, ISO and time.”
One concept the book introduces is the Pixelated Matrix. By reducing an image to it’s tonal distribution it is a way of seeing the important tones, but without the content interfering. It makes it easier to consider any exposure issues (after the event).
To create a pixelated matrix in Photoshop do the following:
- Create a duplicate of the image
Image | Duplicate… - If the duplicate is made of multiple layers, flatten it
Layer | Flatten Image - Reduce the duplicate in size to 1,200 pixels on the long side
Image | Image Size… - Desaturate the duplicate
Image | Adjustments | Desaturate - Apply a mosaic filter to the duplicate with a cell size of 67
Filter | Pixelate | Mosaic…
Cell Size: 67
I plan on using this technique quite often in the future to assist in making sure that I am not loosing any detail in the shadows and highlights, an area that competition judges like to pick up on.
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