Tomas Mendoza Photography

Some of us grew up with the notion that if we did something wrong we’d go to Hell and that we’d burn in an endless fire pit

Now, in the past I have said that if Photography was a religion the camera manual would be the Bible, so… what would burn a Photographer the most?

Those who shot film might remember all the precautions we took to protect our precious film such as filling the refrigerator with rolls of film instead of food
It is also true that developed rolls would be placed in archival sleeves to make sure we could print pictures centuries later

For the most part, we don’t shoot film anymore but follow the same logic. We keep our memory cards as protected from physical damage the best we can and transfer the pictures to our computers as soon as possible, organize them and store them away. But is there a ‘Happily ever after’?

It was 1997 when my first laptop crashed and I took it back to the electronics store where I bought it to have fixed. They knew best, right? Well, they sent it to their repair center and a couple of weeks later got a call to come by the store. Two weeks without a laptop was too much so I was giddy as my children on Christmas morning
However when the store clerk informed that my laptop was ‘non-repairable’… Well, hate to admit I started crying just like my one-year-old son

Oh Hell hath no fury… like the loss of Pictures

We use at least two cameras, multiple lenses, redundant flashes, bunch of batteries and several memory cards…if something fails, we have a reliable backup. All because Mr Murphy says everything will fail… and fail they will. It’s a fact of life

We’d like to think it will happen to somebody else but, whether Mac or Windows, computers crash. Don’t need to like it… another fact of life

What we do (or don’t do) before the crash will set us on a Highway to Hell or send us to Picture Nirvana

A couple of weeks ago someone mentioned they had a computer crash and took their computer for repairs. The technician said they had to send the Hard Drive to a high-tech, static-free facility to recover all their pictures and that would cost a couple Thousands… at least
We just shot a wedding and last week was editing pictures and walked away to take a break. My one-year-old decided to play under my desk and turned power to my workstation… Yup, my computer crashed and crashed hard. Spent two hours after the workshop bringing the workstation back to life and deleting corrupted pictures
What if my workstation couldn’t come back to life? Another workstation or even my laptop could finish the job without lossing a single picture

External hard drives used to cost thousands… not so anymore
Next time you are roaming the electronics sections (before drooling over the HD TV sets) check out the External Hard Drives. If a Hundred bucks is too much allow me to ask, how much are our pictures worth?

Can you imagine telling a young bride “Sorry, I lost all your wedding pictures”?

Oh, Hell hath no fury… like the loss of pictures

Wasn’t Christmas just last weekend? Where have the first two months gone to? Have I been able to keep up with my New Year’s Resolutions?
The truth? We’ve been busy to care.  Time seems to fly when you have fun and do the things you love
So, where should I start?
December was packed with Photo Sessions, pictures to edit and prints to deliver that never got to buy anything for my beautiful partner… So, today I ordered a camera for my supportive wife who deserves my heart

Since we got questions about editing pictures we begun offering a Photoshop Workshop (link) this year and these two months we have been busy preparing for classes and printing assignments… We sure had fun at the workshops

So, how come I didn’t get anything for my Valentine

Well, we shot our first 2010 wedding on Feb 13 and have been busy editing all the pictures before deadline

My wife came with me to shoot the wedding


and the best part was yesterday when I came across a nice picture. I actually thought “Man, I’m good” until I saw the metadata and realized I didn’t shoot the picture: My wife did!!! (just don’t tell her)

Everything was fine…until I tried to upload pictures to my server and discovered that my host had updated the web server and I couldn’t connect…until tonight I was finally able to connect :)

Yes, I hate to confess to a great sin of omision: got a new camera and did not fully test it before an actual shooting.
A couple of weeks ago we were shooting at a pumpking patch and got about 180+ shots on a cloudy Saturday. Everything went great until I got home and downloaded the pictures.
To my surprise most of the pictures had a ‘soft’ look and I spent most of the afternoon shooting in a controlled environment to make sure there was no camera shake to blame and then most of the night doing a lens calibration or microadjustment for each one of my lenses… needless to say, frustraded and sleep deprived I called Canon Customer service and I was told to reset my camera to factory defaults and test using one of my ‘sharpest’ prime lenses if possible. I did and hours later I was shipping my camera for repairs.
At least I was shooting my kids and not a paying client, should that have been the case the liability would increase exponentially

Now the real question is… Why didn’t I notice the ‘softness’ before? Well, I shot a series of family shots and because I was shooting in my home studio I was using strobes and my apertures were about F11 or smaller and of course everything was in focus. At the Pumkin Patch I was shooting with my lens wide open at F2.8 for the most bokeh and to separate the kids from the people around. I know, I know… I got fooled by the LCD and what I thought were ‘in focus’ shots were…’soft’
Lessons learned? I was glad I had registered my camera and my lenses at the Canon Web site and I had scanned the receipts/invoices for warranty repair. Next time I will make sure I spend the whole morning/afternoon testing new equipment and do exactly as I preach
However, the best advice I can share is to always have backups and redundant equipment for times like this. I had a couple of shootings that would not be possible if I had no backup camera while my ‘main’ camera is in the hospital for open surgery

Bokeh

Bokeh refers to the aesthetic quality of pictures where the subject is sharp in focus and the foreground and background are out of focus.

For example, pictures look pretty cool when you capture a bride’s engagement ring completely in focus and everything else is blurry and people immediately know the subject of the picture is the ring

Bokeh is dependent on the Aperture (shallow depth of field) and quality of the lens used while capturing the image. For example, take three shots of the same object such as a toy, kitchenware or garden tool (if possible, use a tripod). Set the first shot at F2.8, another at F4.0 and another at 5.6 and you will notice that in the first shot the background is blurred while the subject remains in focus

Both pictures (above and below) shot at F1.8

Of course, this effect can also be created in Photoshop. In that respect, I know two kinds of photographers: those who use Photoshop to enhance a picture and those who use to correct their short-comings. In any case, is always better to begin with the best possible picture we can create

During our Photography Class I was asked why some pictures looked ‘blue’. So, we loaded the pictures on my laptop and compared the EXIF information of two pictures and noticed that the shutter speed and F-Stop were the same. The only difference in the exposure was 1/3 on the ISO setting due to the camera set to ‘auto ISO’

However, there was an unintended oversight due in part to the screen size of my laptop and the quality of the TV screen showing the pictures during class. Once I got home and loaded the pictures on my computer with a calibrated monitor the blue tint on the pictures was more noticeable and making it obvious that the 1/3 stop was not cause of blue pictures

So, how do we ensure our colors are true?

There are three main concepts to understand how digital cameras capture and reproduce color: Light Temperature, White Balance and Calibration

Everybody knows that pictures taken in the morning or in the afternoon look better (mostly) than pictures taken when the sun is high in the sky. However, not that many people notice the difference between fluorescent and tungsten lights, or ‘hot lights’ and flash and that is mainly because our brain automatically compensates for the difference. For example, at a wedding, we will always see the bride’s gown as white regardless of the light bulbs or candles because our brain already knows the bride is wearing a white gown. The camera, on the other hand, does not forgive and will capture a smiling bride wearing a yellowish gown.

If we are location or wedding photographers and we shoot using existing ambient light we need to understand light temperature in order to capture realistic colors and yet that is not enough.

Whether we have always shot Digital or we transitioned from Film, White Balance is exclusive to the digital realm of photography. Understanding the relationship between Light Temperature and White Balance will allow us to capture a beautiful bride wearing a white gown and a handsome groom wearing a black Tux regardless of the light inside the church or at the reception. Now, someone might say that “in Photoshop we can set the white and black point to match the dress and the tux” and that might work… Unless the groom is a Marine who is wearing his ‘Blues’ and you don’t want to show his Dress Uniform as black
We can also set a custom white balance to shoot the couple at high noon and give it a ‘sunset’ feel. Most cameras perform well set to Auto White Balance but for those tricky situations we need to set the white balance manually or even set a custom white balance. Want to see the difference? Go outside, set your white balance to Auto and take a picture of your backyard or parking lot and make sure to include plenty of sky. Now, set the white balance to tungsten and snap the same picture again. Compare both pictures. Which picture has the more intense ‘blue sky’? Because of the Tungsten white balance the second picture will have a bluish tone which is ‘cool’ as opposed to ‘warm’ (just like the picture shown here taken over Southlake and White Balance set to Tungsten)

Nevertheless, even if we understand Light Temperature and have set our White Balance Properly we can still mess up a whole wedding photo album. The pictures look great but when we get the proofs they are either too bright, too dark or skin tones are off (white skin too white or brown skin too dark). How is that possible?

Well, our ‘blue’ pictures mentioned above looked a bit dark on the TV and on my laptop they seemed to be underexposed. However, my monitor at home showed their true color. That is because the TV could not display as many colors as my laptop, my laptop had a higher contrast but my monitor at home was actually calibrated. Think about calibration next time you are in front of a dozen TV’s at the store showing the same movie and you will notice that not all of them show the same colors. Another simple test is to look at the same picture in two or three different monitors or more if you have them and you will notice the same picture displays different on each monitor because each has a different profile

Another point to consider also is the gamma value used. Windows by default uses a 2.2 value (darker) while Macintosh has a 1.80 default value (lighter) and this means you could get a brighter print from a Windows machine and a Darker print from a Macintosh. A good idea is to either inquire your lab what profile settings they use for their printers or request them not to color correct your pictures. I prefer the latter so I can get consistent print results across multiple labs and regardless or who prints my pictures

In conclusion, we have to be mindful of the light temperature and set our white balance appropriately when we take the picture and make sure our monitors and printers are all calibrated accordingly. As a student explained back “garbage in, garbage out”