Steven B. Zwickel
March, 2018
I
searched in many places for a book that would teach them the basics of
photography— nothing fancy, just enough to make clear, interesting photos that
could be printed in black and white (or color, if the budget permitted). In
2000, the student who was magazine photo department head wrote and illustrated
a very good basic guide to taking photos for the magazine. But, because she was
an expert photographer herself, a lot of what she put in the handbook was too
complicated for the staff photographers, some of whom had never used an SLR
camera before. Nevertheless, I was able to revise her work and turn it into a
usable Guide to WEM Photography that
did the job for several years.
Then the
smartphone put a camera into the hands of millions of people who had never
taken pictures before. Not only did it make cameras ubiquitous, using them is
fairly easy and the quality of digital images has steadily improved.
Unfortunately, the smartphone became so good as a camera and made it so easy to take photos that people
didn’t bother to learn the basics of visual composition and graphic design. We
started to see students joining the magazine photo department who had never
taken photos with anything other than a smartphone. Our photo editors did a
good job of training them to use a digital SLR, but the learning curve can be
steep and time was limited.
In 2015, I went on another hunt for a
decent text that would introduce students to the basics of taking photos for
the magazine. Even though content on the internet has exploded in size, I still
couldn’t find a book on the topic.
Photography books tend to showcase the
work of professional photojournalists and fashion photographers, or they teach
readers how to get started in photographing weddings. The photos you’ll find in
WEM are of professors and scientists, experimental labs, and the cool
inventions and devices engineers come up with. Needless to say, guides
explaining how to shoot lions hunting gazelles in the veldt or models wearing
the latest swimwear in Majorca are not helpful. The terminology they use is
confusing to anyone who doesn’t have a good background in the field, and there
is an assumption among some writers that no one should be taking photos who
isn’t capable of spending thousands of dollars on equipment.
No one,
it seems, has written a simple guide for the non-professional photographers who
illustrate the thousands of newsletters
and magazines put out by schools, companies, religious organizations, community
groups, etc. Apparently, the job taking pictures to illustrate the articles is
given to the writer/editor, who may hand it off to “some guy who owns a good
camera.”
What the
WEM photo staff, and anyone else who wants to use photos in a non-fashion,
non-travel newsletter or magazine need was a simple manual without a lot of
bells and whistles. I don’t claim to be a professional photographer, but I have
been taking pictures for 60 years, I used to have my own darkroom, I am an
expert user of Adobe Photoshop, and I know my way around different types of
cameras. I put together two guidebooks for the WEM staffers—one on taking
pictures of people, the other on taking photos of places and things.
Portrait
Photography: Using Photos of People to Illustrate Articles, came out in 2015. There are no examples of tracking lions in the
wild and no tips on lighting fashion models. I divided the material into four
chapters:
★
Working
with a Human Subject
★
Lighting
the Subject and the Scene
★
Composition
★
Preparing
Photographs for Printing: Black & White and Color
I made the advice given in each chapter
simple and straightforward, with a minimum of technical jargon (although I did
provide definitions of terms in case a reader wants to try using one of those
other guidebooks).
To
illustrate the guide, I used my own photos and added examples of how the photos
could be used to design a magazine layout. While the material in Portrait Photography: Using Photos of People
to Illustrate Articles was prepared specifically for the college students
who work on the Wisconsin Engineer magazine, the information really applies to
anyone who takes on the responsibility of illustrating any magazine, program,
or newsletter.
If you
would like a copy of Portrait Photography: Using Photos of People
to Illustrate Articles, please contact me at ProfSBZ@gmail.com.
The
follow-up to Portrait Photography is Photos
of Places and Things Using Interesting Photos to Illustrate Articles ©
2016, Steven B. Zwickel.
★
The
Exposure Triangle
★
Photos
of Places
★
Photos
of Things
★
Captions
Portrait Photography:
Using Photos of People to Illustrate Articles
Using Photos of People to Illustrate Articles
Contents
📷 Working with a Human Subject
➢ Kinds of Portraits
○ Orientation
○ Types of
portraits
○ Sizes
➢ Poses
○ Warming up
○ Smiling
○ Where should the
subject look?
○ Sitting,
standing, leaning, and bending
○ Clothing and
Props
📷 Lighting the subject and the
scene
➢ Lighting Outdoors
○ Sunshine and
Clouds
○ Bracket your
exposures
➢ Indoor
Lighting
○ Shooting in Low
Light
○ Use a Tripod with
a low ISO in low light
○ Backlighting
○ White Balance
➢ Using a Light Kit
➢ Catchlights
📷 Composition
➢ Taking photos of more than one subject
○ Two people (not
always a Couple!)
○ Group Photos
○ Compensating for
some physical attributes
➢ Camera Angle and Viewpoint
○ Background
➢ The “Rules” of Composition
○ Rule of Thirds
➢ Balancing Elements
○ Composition: the
camera “Portrait” setting
➢ Crop images
○ Why crop?
○ Cropping tips
○ Size photos
proportionately
○ Cropping in the
camera
📷 Black & White and Color
➢ Choosing the correct mode
➢ Black and White Printing
➢ Converting Color to Black & White
○ Color to
grayscale in the camera
○ Color to black
& white with Adobe Bridge
○ Color to black
& white with Photoshop
■ Hue/Saturation
■ Black & White
■ Black & White Properties
■ Desaturate
➢ Desaturation is just the first step
➢ Increasing Contrast
➢ Photoshop tools for adjusting contrast
○ Brightness/Contrast
○ Levels
○ Curves
○ Shadows/Highlights
➢ Ethics and Photoshop
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