Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I x Found Idea & Opportunity

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process Found Opportunity: Running with an idea I’m often thinking about how to illustrate certain kinds of photographic, design, and lighting ideas. While switching from one computer to another in my work area, I happened to notice a new kind of Sharpie. I’ve always found Sharpie pens to be very useful. So, noticing a new Sharpie product caught my attention and imagination.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process Object: Details The new Sharpie was bigger and had a different shape than the standard sharpie. My intuition immediately offered up an image idea of contrasting the old with the new size using a wide angle lens. My visualization depended on forced perspective distortion. And because of the small size of the objects, the camera would need special macro focus capabilities.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process Right Tool: Super wide lens with Macro capability My DSLR Nikon D70 is equipped with a super wide angle lens but it doesn’t have the macro focusing capability. My current favorite Sony H1 compact digital has a phenomenal 12x telephoto capability but it only has a standard wide angle. It also lacks a true macro focus capability. That only left my Nikon Coolpix 5400, which has both the super wide and the macro capability.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process Nikon Coolpix 5400: Prosumer compact digital It has a better than 4x zoom starting out at the super wide angle to beyond the portrait/product telephoto range. It also has special ED glass optics which assures corner to corner sharpness. It also has the RAW image output mode, a very high end feature. Combining that with the ISO 50 means extremely high quality image.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process Not Using Red: Warning I had recently been warning students about not using red in the background. Or using only small amounts of it with great care because it’s such a powerful color. And using such a intense color can take away from the subject. I also suggested using red toned down in its “intensity”.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process Using Red: Intentionally My visualized image was going to be dynamic but I was looking for “2 nd and 3 rd reading” elements to enrich the story beyond just seeing the two sharpie pens. My creative muse also talked to me through my intuition that I should try using high intensity red in the background.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process Background: Making it work The background is your opportunity to enrich the subject and story. It’s also a chance to add the illusion-of-depth. One of the amazing things that Leonardo Da Vinci’s did in the Mona Lisa painting is the depth that he created behind her. He did it by applying the rules of perspective and chiaroscuro, atmospheric haze. Da Vinci is actually credited with inventing the concept of adding “atmospheric haze” to the distant mountains to add to the illusion of depth.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process Sharpie Shot: This is my vermillion bull’s eye new product introduction shot.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process Design: Balanced any way A good design will usually look balanced in any rotated position. Since this is a recognizable object, the original view looks the best. But view the layout as abstract elements, then they all work. The different rotated angles main difference is the “implied motion potential” in each.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process Negative Space: The negative space and background color are both just as important here as the subject. The subject and background are separate but are inter-connected at the same time. The subject lives on and through the background. See the dark incident reflection (shadow) taking the subject line through the red surface.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process Lighting: Soft top-back light This set is lit by a soft broad “top- back” light creating the bright area in the red bull’s eye. The incident highlight and the resulting dark shadow-like reflection is part of the image depth illusion. A large white card is bouncing light back into the set from the lower right which highlights the standing Sharpie name.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process Avoiding Amputation: The red target was cropped to show the form, circle, and to avoid amputation. Usually, you can crop into an object by 10 to 30%. Any less or more can end up looking like amputation.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process Playing Out the Image Idea: I made up a headline and body text to turn the image into an ad layout. The headline and body text fills up the negative space on the right while still leaving plenty of negative space surrounding the subject. Big Shot The little brown fox jumped over the lazy purple cow. The little brown fox jumped over the lazy purple cow. The little brown fox jumped ver the lazy purple cow. The little brown fox jumped ver the lazy purple cow.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process Commercial Considerations: Design your shots with potential commercial use in mind. Compose your shots to stand alone or with headline and body text for commercial use. Big Shot The little brown fox jumped over the lazy purple cow. The little brown fox jumped over the lazy purple cow. The little brown fox jumped ver the lazy purple cow. The little brown fox jumped ver the lazy purple cow.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Welcome 18, Week 9 – Specs unchanged. Pay Attention To Shape

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process Keep In Shape: Become super conscious of shape. Know whether your camera has a 4:3 or 3:2 shape. Even with a compact digital 4:3 native shape, it can be adjust to 3:2 “accidentally” on some cameras. DSLR owners usually don’t have the option of choosing a 4:3 shape. They have to work with a super wide shape. You will have a harder task of imagining the correct shape when shooting. For this class, the correct shape is 4:3!

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Welcome 18, Week 9 – Specs unchanged. Working Backwards

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process Incremental Improvements: Levels Besides having a story, making incremental improvement is very important in learning photography. I refer to this same idea with variety of words and phrases: 1.Re-shoot 2.Least, Next, and Best 3.Next Level 4.More believable 5.ID, IDplus, In environment 6.Gallery image

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process Working Backwards: Story evolution I went directly to the “Gallery” level image with this shot. So I decided to shoot a plain ID version to illustrate the “evolution” of the story idea.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process ID Version: The shot This is my take on the ID shot. My self-critique is that it’s still a notch above the plain ID shot. A notch down shot might have had both pens side by side in the up and down orientation. The vertical format shot might not even use the grid paper for the background. That would definitely be bare bones ID shot.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process ID Version: Detail ID shot doesn’t mean done without thinking or shot using poor camera or lighting technique. The image to the right is a 100% Photoshop detail section. Notice that it’s well drawn with light, exposed properly, and very sharp. Even in this macro detail, you can feel the tubular surface with highlight, transition, shadow, and shadow core.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process ID to Gallery Version: Steps 1.ID shot should show the subject clearly as in a passport shot. 2.The next PLAY phase should show experimentation with story telling ideas. I used green to infer “good idea”. 3.The last STORY version should bring it all together into an image that will grab the viewer and offer some a visual treat by design “moves”.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Found Opportunity – Creative process Gallery Version: And beyond Just like the real world photographic subject, the captured image “use” is only limited by your imagination. “Use” will also change with time. And each “new use” will probably required different image processing. Being creative is about staying fluid in your thinking, action, and attitude. Big Shot The little brown fox jumped over the lazy purple cow. The little brown fox jumped over the lazy purple cow. The little brown fox jumped ver the lazy purple cow. The little brown fox jumped ver the lazy purple cow.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I x End