SAW’s free photography tips

My good friend at the art university hit me up for some tips to tell his graphic design students concerning photography. These tips are for 3rd and 4th year students taking the DIY (do-it-yourself) class. btw, this is the same university I occasionally teach at in the graphic design and photography departments—so I was happy to [embark my wisdom] help out.

These came to me in a flash. I stopped at 11. I could go on...

1)
just click the SEXY button!

2)
every time you launch Photoshop, God kills a kitten.

3)
if you take a photo of poo in RAW,
and convert the RAW file to 16 bit TIF in Lightroom,
and then manipulate that photograph in Photoshop,
making sure you keep the histogram intact,
then what you get is a “beautiful” photograph of poo.

4)
HDR
http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2009/08/black-hole/
read second pet peeve

5)
255 = 666, don’t go there

6)
if you do not know what 255 is, you are blown out!

7)
stock photography is the devil. do not feed the beast.
shoot your concept yourself or collaborate with a photographer.
don’t worry you will have your whole career to “buy stock” :-\

8)
there are 100+ adjustment tools in Photoshop.
figure out which 15 of them to use, then ignore the rest.

9)
photoshop preferences are setup by default for amateurs.
just remember sRGB stands for sh*tty-RGB.

8) part 2
okay, the 15 tools are:
masks, curves, hue/saturation, fade, unsharp mask, dodge/burn, shadow/highlights, crop, free transform, soft light, gaussian blur, noise, convert to profile, save/save for web, and command+option+Z!

10)
back your files up. seriously, backup your files.

- - -

bonus tip

11) in order to go from taking taking BAD pictures to taking GOOD picture you need to take A LOT of pictures—hundreds of thousands.
The good news is that there will be some wonderful ones along the way. These are gifts from the universe; be grateful.

1) part 2
there is NO SEXY button! doh!


Stephen Austin Welch
October 12, 2009