© 2011 Wazari Wazir | My Son HaiQal and Raphael at Putrajaya Botanical Garden

© 2011 Wazari Wazir | Expressive Portrait Photography | Improve Your Photograph With The Right Cropping

In photography cropping is also the way how you compose your photograph but normally we use composition technique when it comes to picture taking process and we use crop when it comes to editing in Photoshop or in any photo editing software but basically they are more or less quite the same. During picture taking process you can crop the picture in the frame which we call “composition” meaning that you choose what should be in the frame and cut out unwanted part with careful composition.

Cropping is also part of editing skills apart from image enhancement, with the right cropping you can improve your photograph so much. Before I go further I really would like to stress out that it is better to get it right in the camera when it comes to composition, so you don’t spend your precious times in Photoshop, but there is a situation where you just can’t get it right in the camera, maybe your lens is not long enough to get the tight shot that you want or you just can’t get close enough to your subject for a variety of reason or circumstances and the only way how you can improve your photograph is to crop it later in Photoshop.

But please remember though, one thing for sure if you decided to crop your picture later in Photoshop, your photograph will loose it’s quality a bit depending on how much you crop, depending how large your original files is and also depending on your camera megapixels. That’s why it is better to shoot with RAW Format or if you like to shoot with Jpeg, make sure it is set to “Large Fine” so that when you decided to crop it later in Photoshop, you have a large file size to begin with. When you crop a large chunk of your picture, the end result is that you will have a “grainy” picture, you will see some “noise”, that’s why it is better to use lower ISO like ISO 100 or below, so when you crop, you still be able to maintain the quality of your photograph.

Like I said previously, it is better to get it right in the camera when it comes to composition but sometimes you can’t. I would like to use an example of my son picture above. I took that picture with 50mm lens, after spend few hours shooting, he get angry with me a bit, maybe he get uncomfortable with me chasing him around with my camera, in this particular photograph my vision is to captured his expression, his emotion, his anger and I’ve very little time to really concentrate on composition, and I really can’t get close to him because if I try to get really close, he might grab my camera and I will loose my shot, I can’t zoom in closer because all I have with me is a fixed 5o mm lens. So I’ve to shoot with a safe distance where he can’t touch my camera within his arm’s length.

When I come back home and look at the picture on my computer screen, I see that I can get a better picture if I crop it tight, I think this particular photograph will have more impact if I crop it tight since this photograph is about emotion, expression and I think by having a tight shot, I can make this picture even more stronger. Personally for me when it comes to portraiture, if you want to show someone emotion, expression, a tight shot will have more impact but depending on the situation also. Sometimes you need a background (in photojournalism, background is important for storytelling) to enhance the story telling and sometimes you don’t. Like the photograph above, the background is just plain blur and doesn’t add up to the context of the picture.

Sometimes it is better not to shoot too tight in the camera and it is better to leave some negative space especially if you shoot for brochure, magazine or any editorial purpose. They can use that plain boring negative space for text, maybe put some title on it. That’s why if you wanted to shoot for stock photo or magazine it is always better to have a reasonable head room for portrait so that the magazine can put some text or title above the head. When you shoot for magazine cover, or hoping that someday your picture will be used for magazine cover, it is always better to keep in mind to leave some negative space all over your subject, leave some space to the left, right and top or bottom and make sure plenty of space on top of your pictures so that if someone decided to use your picture for cover, they can easily put the title of the magazine on it.

I’ve also read somewhere in photography magazine not too long ago, there is this one photographer who customize his viewfinder for magazine cover. So when he shoot his picture, he knew exactly where to position his subject because he have the layout cover of the magazine in the viewfinder. He don’t have to imagine how his picture will end up on the magazine cover because his viewfinder is already customize for it.

Since the title of this blog post is about cropping, I will not go further about that “Negative Space” for editorial purpose but hopefully you get some ideas and hopefully also you know what you are doing. Get it right in the camera if you can but if you can’t then crop it later in Photoshop or any photo editing software. Undoubtedly a good crop can enhance your photograph. A good crop can eliminated unwanted distractions, give it more impact, create more balance image but nothing can beat to get it right in camera.

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© 2011 Wazari Wazir | A Portrait of My Son

“If Your Pictures Aren’t Not Good Enough, You’re Not Close Enough.” 

- Robert Capa -

Sometimes it was true, that our picture is not good enough if we are not close enough. But when it comes to portrait photography, we have to look it in a different ways, sometimes we need to leave some space for that particular person to have a room for breath or to have something in the background to add context to the photograph especially if we are talking about environmental portraiture where we need to show to the viewers about the subject, where he work, play or rest but when there is nothing much to tell about the background then it is better for us to get really close to the subject.

Close-up portrait photography have more impact compared to the loose picture of a person. If you fills the frame with just the face of the subject, you will have more strong photograph where nothing will distract the viewers from the person being photograph. I took this photograph of my son form my point of view where he is really close to me, even though there is no eye contact between me and my son but I like his expressive joyful look here and the background behind him is not important in term of story telling, I just wanted to share with the viewers, the expression of my son hence I think close-up work is more suitable than full length portrait.

Talking about expression, I like what well known portrait photographer, Bambi Cantrell once said “Expression Beats Perfection” meaning that if you have great expressive picture, it will always outperform perfect photograph with no expression or emotional impact and getting a close-up portrait of your subject will definitely enhance the impact of your portrait photograph.

© 2008 Wazari Wazir | A Moment To Remember | Mother and Son

      “There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained”  

 - Winston Churchill -

 This is not the latest picture of my second child Raphael, it is my first son HaiQal, in case you miss the caption up there, it was taken in 2008 when he is one year old. It was truly a moment to be remembered. For those of you who have been following my blog or my flickr, will notice that I took a picture of my son almost daily, if not, almost every week without fail. It is my passion to photograph my family.

Every moment spent with my family is a moment worth to be remembered, that’s why I seldom going out to join my friends during photo outing which usually being held on the weekend, I want to spent my weekend with my family. I’m a full time working photographer and usually busy will an assignment from Monday to Friday and weekend is very precious to me and my family.

As a photographer or someone who own a camera, we can freeze a moment with our camera, just don’t look for perfection because I believe every moment is special and I believe also it is the imperfection that makes us human. To tell you the truth, I do take a lot of blurry picture, a “trash” picture, it just that I don’t share it here but I don’t delete it either, I save it because among the blurry pictures that I took, there is a special moment that I want it to be remembered, the picture maybe blur but with the picture I can remember those moment clearly, vividly with the help of those blurry pictures.

© 2011 Wazari Wazir | Expressive Portraiture | My Son HaiQal

My life becoming busier than ever since we have a new addition to our family which is our newborn son Raphael, it is among the greatest things that happen to our family since HaiQal our first son was born but the problem is I don’t really have much free times these days, but I will try my best to share few of my thought here in my blog.

I’ve quite a few of my blog post entitled with the same title like this one “Expressive Portraiture”. I’m not really in favor with cheeky, smiling looking face, I like to capture natural feeling, something that show true colors or character of my subject which in this case is my son. This is not a beautiful picture but nevertheless this is great photograph to me and our family and I guess nothing else matters as long as we are happy.

As many of you who have been following me all this while since the day HaiQal was born, will know that I took picture of my son a lot, sometimes almost everyday if I was around, not working outstation and I know  my son get tired of me chasing him around with the camera. I really don’t have much to do when I was at home, apart from wasting my time in front of the computer, my other interest is taking picture of my son and now I’ve two “Big Boss” that I’ve to attend to.

Going back to the title of this post, I like taking a portrait with natural expression, and I highly suggest to those of you who have a child, a small child like mine, to just photograph them even when they are not ready, in fact they will never be. My son was busy playing around with those little stick when I call him to look at me for a photograph and when his “game” is interrupted, I get this look and without wasting too much time, I took the shot.

About the editing, I just applied a little bit of grain in Photoshop under Filter Menu > Texture > Grain, just minimal grain and turn it into black and white before converting it to sepia look. Actually it was easy for me to get those look, all I’ve to do is to take one of my texture which have that sepia tone and then just blur the texture to 100% because I just wanted the tone and not the texture, so you get the idea already.

The reason I turn this picture into monochrome is that I don’t want any colors to take away the mood of this picture, by stripping away the color sand make it monochrome, I hope the viewers will concentrate more on the expression of my son more than anything else. Sometimes too much colors can become a distraction and sometimes the choice of colors also play an important role to express ourselves or our picture better.

© 2011 Wazari Wazir | Children Portrait Photography | Vintage Edition | Retro Muted Colors

Basically muted colors is fade color, less contrast. You can get this type of look in so many ways, among the easiest way is to drop the saturation in Photoshop. Bit for me it goes through a little bit of work, usually I will start with normal editing, then I will add another layer with the same picture or simply copy the layer below and turn the picture into black and white. You can either use black an white adjustment layer or simply convert it into greyscale or desaturate it under image adjustment.

Then what we can do is play with the opacity, just drop the opacity of the black and white picture so that you can see through your color picture below, it is easy to do this way since you can control easily how much color do you want to get through the black and white layer. This is just a starting point for me, not a finish product.

Later on I will play with color tone, add few grain or noise or add texture into the photograph. That’s why my muted color photograph look a little bit different, I just want to get that retro classic look. I don’t have standard workflow when it comes to editing my photograph, I just go with the “flow” and I will stop when I get the look that I want or I get the feel that I want.

My point here is that, it is good to know many ways of doing things so that you can express your artistic vision easily. There are many ways of doing black and white, many ways to boost the contrast and many ways to play with texture in Photoshop and it is really an advantage if we know how to do things in many ways since some way is better than the other, just like taking a picture, if we know how to handle our camera, know it’s function, know how camera works, know how ISO, Shutter and Aperture work together, then it is easier to get a picture that we want the way we want it to be.

Related Post : How To Get Muted Colors

© 2011 Wazari Wazir | A Portrait With Texture

Basically adding texture to a photograph is not really a difficult process, all you have to do is find a texture that you like and then choose a photograph that you want to add a texture into it and just blend it together in Photoshop, you can choose Overlay, Screen or Soft Light blending option under layer palette and you are done, it is that simple.

Sound that easy right? Same like taking picture, anybody who have a camera, be it iPhone camera, compact or DSLR can take picture, even a toddler can press a shutter button and take picture, the difference is whether the picture is good or not, it is still a photograph but the question is whether it is a good picture or bad picture, that’s a another story.

Like I said before, basically adding texture to a photograph is so simple, it is a matter of playing with different blending option but it took me almost a year to really understand what work and what won’t work with texture, just like black and white photography, no matter how good we are at editing black and white in Photoshop, we should realize that not all pictures will look great in black and white, some picture really made for colors and only certain picture that really work superbly in black and white.

In this post I just wanted to share just a few tips, this is not a tutorial for texture editing but just few tips from what I’ve learn base from my very own experiment and experience. What will work and what will not work.

For me, the best picture to add a photograph when it comes to a portrait is a portrait which have strong emotional feeling, sad looking face, crying, a portrait of a hardship, a portrait of and older person and something similar like that. When I do texture editing for portrait, I will look for a portrait which is in serious mood, I mean serious looking person, a face that have strong character and personally I don’t like top add a texture to a smiling face, If you look into my Texture set in my flickr, you will find very few portrait where the person is smiling, maybe it is just my taste but I really don’t think that a happy smiling looking face suitable for texture editing, our taste is different but this is just my personal preference.

Another thing that will make a texture editing look great is that, choose a portrait that have simple background, lean and simple background work best since the texture itself is  a “distraction”, you really don’t want to add another “distraction” to a photograph which in itself is fill with distracting element. Choose a simple photograph, clean background,avoid a photograph which have too many distraction.

You need the “clean background” for the texture to rest, I mean leave the clean and simple background for the texture to “fit in”. If you can see from the portrait of my son above, I leave the empty space on the left hand side of the photograph, so that the texture can fill in the empty space. If the background already have too many distracting element, this photograph will not work well with the texture. Basically the texture need some space in the photograph.

Another thing that I personally think will work great with texture editing is that, it work well if you desaturated the picture a bit, if the photograph have too many contrast, too colorful, then the texture work will not look great, there is nothing wrong adding texture to a bright colorful looking photograph but for me personally it won’t look great but if you think it look great to your eyes then by all mean, nobody have any right to say that you are wrong, it’s your artwork after all.

The reason why I think that the texture work look great with muted color or desaturated photograph is because normally we associate texture image or portrait with old photograph, maybe a 20 to 30 years old photograph where the colors is a bit fade, lack contrast and you can see texture or “crack” all over the place, we want to mimicked that kind of  look in our texture work and with super rich colorful photograph, usually it won’t look great but I’m not saying it it wrong, it just doesn’t look right.

When we do the editing, vary the brush size, the hardness of the brush and always pay attention to the opacity of the texture, too much texture is not good and usually I will never work with 100% texture opacity. When it comes to adding texture to a portrait, always pay close attention to the amount of texture on the face, we just want a very soft texture on the face, this is the tricky part actually and normally I will convert the Texture into Smart Object in Photoshop before I do my texture editing, so that I have a greater control to the amount of texture that I want to apply into the face.

Texture editing may look easy but to get it right, to get it blend well is not that easy, it take practice and a lot of experimenting to get it right. Personally for me texture editing is an art in itself, you really can’t run an Action or Preset and voilà, it is not that simple. If you want to get some inspiration, just take a look at old vintage photograph and you will get the idea.

Related Post : Mastering Textures

© 2011 Wazari Wazir | Senior Muslimah Portraiture

This photograph were taken during Spylens Studio photography workshop held in Lok Kawi outskirts of Kota Kianablu Sabah. It was taken purely with just natural light, without reflector. I’m not doing any senior photography business but if I’ve free times and if I get an invitation from my photography friends, I will join them for fun.

I like to get a close up shot of the person I’m photographing, just like a portrait of My son, I like to get really close and I’m not interested to get cheeky smiling face on my photograph. I like my subject to relax, maybe a bit serious look.

I’ve discuss in my previous blog post, how you can achieve this look, this tone in ACR or Adobe Camera Raw and from the ACR just continue the editing in Photoshop. I just add a little bit of “Grain” here under Photoshop Filter Menu, you can find Texture and choose  Grain. Before I add the grain, I just fine tune the tone to get the result that I want.

© 2011 Wazari Wazir | Photoshop Killer Tips | The Grain Factor | How to Add Grain

Some of you might want to try “Noise”, nothing wrong with that but what I do to get the above result is by using “Grain”. This post is not really about Photoshop tips but about a senior portrait but I think maybe some of you like to know a little bit about my post processing. This is just the tips of the iceberg, you can figure it out what is the next step that needs to be taken.

For those of you who just starting out to get involved in Portraiture, just don’t be afraid to get really close to your subject and please do take different expression, not just a smiling face. A good portrait shot will bring out the character or the personality of the person being photograph. There you go, some tips about portrait and just a glimpse of my post processing, to find out more, just attend my Photography and Photoshop Editing Workshops if they are available. Actually I do conduct One to One Photoshop editing class for those who are seriously interested.

Related Post : Great Work From Jeffrey K. Edwards With Similar Technique

Just wanted to share some of the simplest way how you can get muted color or less vibrance color inside ACR or Adobe Camera RAW. Just open any picture in ACR or Adobe Camera RAW. If you don’t have RAW file, you can also open Jpeg file in ACR from BRIDGE, please refer to my previous post if you wanted to know how you can open your Jpeg file in ACR.

Once you get your picture in Adobe Camera RAW, just follow the next step. It was really straight forward process. Just push the “Temperature” to somewhere around 10 000 to 30 000, in this picture I set the Temperature to 32 000. Don’t worry my friend, your computer will not blown up or heat up, it is just a number. The reason to push the Temperature is to get a “warmer” effect.

Once you’re done with the Temperature, next step is to reduce the “Vibrance” to almost minus 100 or  - 100 but in this case I set the “Vibrance” to – 98. Those are the key factor that you need to control, the “Temperature and Vibrance”. You can adjust other slider control if you want to, like  Blacks, Contrast and Exposure for example but the key point here to get this tone is to adjust those two things “Temperature and Vibrance” and if you still need to lower the contrast, just push the “Saturation” slider to the Left – Minus.

I know that there are many ways to get this effect but I found out this is among the simplest way to get this kind of tone. I would like to let you know also that this is not a finished product, normally this is just a starting point for me before I go deeper with my editing in Photoshop. Sometimes I will add grain or texture to finish this picture or simply make few adjustment to really get the tone that I want and normally I will finished this editing with one of the technique that can be found on my Photoshop Tone eBook

So to those of you who have already purchase my eBook know what is the next step that needs to be taken and for those of you who are satisfied with the result above, just open the image in Photoshop and save the file but if you still wanted to know more, just hit the banner below…

Related Post : How To Get Muted Color

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© 2011 Wazari Wazir | All Photograph Were Taken With iPhone Camera

Lately I really enjoy taking a picture of my son with my “little camera”, iPhone camera, all of the picture above were taken with my iPhone camera which nowadays people called it as iPhoneography. I did not do the editing in Photoshop, in fact the picture above were coming straight from my iPhone which I take with “Cross Process Apps”.

Sometimes I just wanna have fun, playing with toy, just like what my son did playing with his environment, enjoying every moment. The joy of childhood can be captured with any camera and the picture that coming from iPhone is good enough to freeze this beautiful moment of our family having fun together. I did bring my DSLR here, I switch camera from DSLR to iPhone, I take a picture with both medium.

The good things about taking picture with iPhone camera is that I can share the picture with the world straight away from the iPhone, I can share it with my Twitter followers and also share it with my Facebook friends while I was still at the location and when I get home, I’ve already got few comments from my friends about the picture  taken. It is not really about the comments that I’m after but it is good to know that someone is care enough to put a little thought.

Some people like to keep their family pictures to themselves but I like to share it with the world, with friends and relative which for most of the times we rarely have a chance to meet face to face regularly due to our busy schedule. It’s about sharing our happiness, it’s about sharing the joy of childhood of my son being happy as a child. We have seen a lot of bad picture in this world, we have seen a lot of war picture in this world. Some children are not so lucky, some are struggle to find a food for the day. I choose to share a picture of happiness.

I think everyone can do their part to make the world a better place to live. Even though I was busy with my other work, I will always put a high priority when it comes to family picture. That’s why you rarely see me going out to join any photo shoot lately. I like to spend my free time with my family, capturing the joy of childhood of my son while he is still a little boy and I believe without a photographs, we will only have a fade memory especially the memory of our childhood.

Related Post : Portraiture Backlighting Tips