Jeff Wignall's "The Joy of Digital Photography"

Buzz.X Filter No Longer Available

I've been alerted by a few readers that the Buzz.X Photoshop plug-in filter software that I have a tutorial for on my website is no longer available. This was, I believe, a British company and it appears they have gone out of business since their website is down. Too bad because the filter, a type of "simplifying" filter, was a great creative tool. I was first turned onto the filter by a photographer in Montreal and I've had a great time with it. As you can see in the shot of Sailor, above, the filter creates a sort of watercolor look by reducing detail in selected areas.

If you happen to have any updated info on the company, let me know and I'll post it here.

How to Photograph (and Photoshop) Fireworks and Happy 4th of July

Photographing fireworks sounds easy when you read about it in the photo books, but it's actually quite a challenge! There are basically two methods for in-camera shots: 1) Just crank up the ISO a bit and shoot individual bursts at their peaks or 2) use the bulb setting on your shutter speed dial (in Manual mode) and leave the shutter open for as long as necessasry to catch all of the bursts you can on one frame. The third option is, of course, is to use the first technique for shooting and then use Photoshop to collage several shots together, which is what I've done here.

To create this shot I used a 70-300mm Nikkor zoom on my Nikon D70s and set the IS0 to 800. I then photographed a series of individual frames of fireworks explosions. Once I downloaded the images into Photoshop CS2, I chose one frame (the large explosion featured in the center) and made that the background layer. I then dragged several other frames onto the background layer (using the move tool) which automatically creates a new layer for each frame. I then used the "scale" tool (Edit>Transform>Scale) to scale the other shots down to size and used the Move tool to position each burst. In some cases you could see the "black corners" of the frames overlapping on the layer beneath, so I used the move tool a lot for positioning and then used the Clone tool where necessary to copy a portion of one bust onto another to hide the dark corners. (The problem I was having was that dark corners of one frame would be laid over the fireworks of the frames below, so careful positioning and sizing was important.) During a final pass I flattened the image and then used the Hue/Saturation tool to zap the colors a bit. Hint: if you save a layered file of an image like this (in addition to the flattened version) you can always go back later and "move" each individual element or alter color/hue/saturation.

In reality this collage was very simple to create once I figured out that the Scale tool was the simplest way to size and position the bursts. It's harder to describe the technique than it is to do it. Write to me if you have any questions. I posted the image on Flickr and got 50+ views in a few hours and someone on NowPublic requested use of the image with a news story (which, of course, I granted).

In the next few days I'll post an example of using the other technique, of keeping the shutter open to capture several bursts--it's quite a challenge but I've got some tips that will make it go much more smoothly.

Thar's Gold in Them Thar Outtakes

One of the great things about shooting digitally, of course, is that you can shoot all the photos that you want (provided you have enough memory cards) and it won't cost you a dime. Back in the days when I shot only slide film (and that was only five or six years ago) the number of photos that I shot on a trip was limited by how much film I was willing to carry and how much money I was able to spend on film and processing. Even if a client was picking up the tab for film and processing there was still the issue of how much film I really felt like carrying: 10 rolls a day for a 10-day trip meant carrying 100 rolls of film. That's a chore by any standard (and often a major hassle), especially when you're going through airports and having to have all the film hand inspected!

Today though you can fit thousands of photos on a stack of memory cards small enough to carry in your jeans pocket. One of the problems I've noticed with this, however, is that if you do come home from a trip with hundreds or thousands of images, some of the photos get lost in the editing shuffle and often there are some great photos that get ignored simply because you don't have time to look carefully at (let alone edit to a finished version) every single frame. Another assignment or vacation comes along or daily life gets in the way and the next thing you know you have a whole new group of photos to review and edit. Sure, the same thing happens with film images, but the funny thing about looking at slides on a light table right after a shoot is that the photos are right there looking back at you. You turn on the light table and there they are. You're just not as likely to miss any killler images; even at a quick glance the great shots pop out.

Digital images have a way of hiding in folders that you may not open regularly or that don't make it to the "best shots" folders. It's important then to take time occasionally to look back through older image folders and see if you might not have ignored some potentially great images. A few nights ago, for instance, while planning a trip to the southwest I decided to go through my folders of "outtake" images from a 2003 trip to Nevada's Valley of Fire State Park.