JJ’s random photo tip of the day: Why to use Manual Exposure mode

The two images to the right were taken split seconds apart,
by a camera set to Aperture-Priority mode.

The lighting did not change between the two frames,
and yet the second frame is over-exposed.

This isn’t a case of the sun coming out from behind the clouds and making the second frame overexposed.

The only thing that changed is that I walked a little bit more into the frame.

The second frame is overexposed because the dark shadow of my shirt taking over more of the frame threw off the exposure. The camera saw the patch of dark, thought that it was *too* dark and so let in more light to compensate, thus creating an image that is actually *too* bright.

Automatic modes are just fine if you want to make average pictures in average situations. They are easily fooled though, because they assume that your subject is evenly lit, and of average values.

If you want to make above-average images in non-average circumstances,
you’ll need to learn to work with manual exposure.

No matter how sophisticated the camera’s metering system may be, you are still a whole lot smarter than it is. The learning curve is a little bit steeper, but in the long run you’ll get better exposed photographs.

Remember, the light is never too bright, or too dark for a picture.
It’s simply that your photo may be over or under exposed,
and you might not yet be thinking about how the light works
in your particular composition.

Happy shooting!
-jj

PS these images are from JJ’s Magic Photo Booth at the 2009 Roots Picnic on Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia. See an animation of the making-of by clicking here, or to see the final images, click here.

PPS Bring me in for a workshop: www.jjtiziou.net/teaching

My “magic photo booth” made it’s first appearance (but probably not it’s last) at Nichole Canuso Dance Company’s 1st Annual Benefit Cabaret at Johnny Brenda’s. Click below to pan through the images.

Click here to view the individual images for prints and downloads

Or check out these animated recaps:

I’m in the process of migrating my entire photo archive to some new infrastructure. 

Pros:

• The new lightbox organization features will make it easier for you to choose your favorites.
• It will be much easier for you to order prints or download images directly via the website.
• Funds from archive print sales or downloads will help support my community work.
• While the unedited galleries won’t be publicly listed, they’ll be accessible, so if you want to get a print of that photo that I took at an event five years ago because you think that it might make a nice gift for someone, it’s now easily done.

Cons:

• Links to old galleries will no longer work, and you’ll have to contact me to find the new locations of those older series of images. This is an unfortunate side effect of the transition.
• It won’t be quite as easy for people to download my images and benefit from them them without contributing to the costs involved. 

I’m excited about using this new infrastructure, both because it will make it so much easier for viewers to interact with my archive, and because it may help me build more of a community-supported model for my work.

In the past, the internet has allowed me to easily share my work with my community, but it wasn’t as effective in helping distribute the costs. I would simply share my unedited galleries with the world, hoping that people who appreciated the images would contribute to their creation, much like I throw a few dollars in the tip jar for my local musicians.

Unfortunately, most people expect everything on the internet to be free, especially since digital has made photography practically free and instant for the average consumer. As the years have gone by, my community work has consumed more and more of my overhead. (If half the people using my photos in their facebook profiles contributed $5/month, that would probably cover the archiving costs of my personal projects, but unfortunately it’s been hard to convey that idea to people who don’t understand the significantly greater costs (both in equipment and in time) associated with making one’s living through photography and administering a million photo archive.

While of course it’s still the commercial work that primarily pays the bills, there’s a limit as to how much work I can do in for my community without funding.

I hope that facilitating online print sales will enable the audience that values my photographs and activities to take a more active role in supporting them… and get some nice prints in the process!

Many thanks for your continued support,

-jj

PS Tthere’s still an easy direct way to support my work via PayPal, either as one time donations, or as small repeating contributions.
Check out the support section.

For those of you who care about the beautiful city that is Philadelphia, please help spread the word about Casino-Free Philadelphia’s next townhall meeting on March 18th. Info/RSVP here.

I’ll be running another little photobooth, so come and add your face to the movement!

30 is just another number, and it’s just another day older, but what a privilege to celebrate such things in wonderful company and with great music. 

If you’d like to hear what the event sounded like, there’s recordings of the sets below: (crappy video, but decent sound)

photo by Phill Strauss

You can of course also visit their websites: 
www.blackseahotelusa.com 
www.myspace.com/blackseahotel
www.scottpryormusic.com
www.myspace.com/scottpryor
www.myspace.com/galataensemble

So we’ve got another excellent evening of music planned in west philly this friday… if you’ve been to one of these before, you know the drill… please rsvp if you can.

Amy Pickard, Jeb Lewis and Aaron Dunlap will be playing a set together, sharing each other’s songs-†

We’ve also got Jess Yoakum in town from Massachusetts, and Rob Hinkal of ilyAIMY will be coming up from DC. (unfortunately we’ll be missing out on ilyAIMY’s female vocalist segment, as Heather apparently just got booked as the percussionist for Dar Williams’ tour, but we’ve got the added bonus of Rowan Corbett (of Tinsmith fame) coming up to play with Rob, so that’s a great bonus!

Philly is getting it’s own Complaints Choir!†

If you’re not already familiar with the complaints choir phenomenon, it’s worth checking out. It’s a rather brilliant and fun thing started by†Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kallleinen†

There’s just a few monday evening rehearsals, starting October 13th – I hope that you’ll come join me. Information is at complaints.firstpersonarts.org -†

Below are a few videos if you’d like to check out what this is all about:

Helsinki

St. Petersburg
†

Hamburg:

Chicago:
†

and more…

The awesome folks at Casino Free Philadelphia are organizing a trip to Chicago, to ask Neil Bluhm, one of the investors in the SugarHouse site, to consider moving his casino away from our neighborhoods. (The planned location for the giant towers is a mere 200 feet from two story residential housing)†

If you know people in Chicago who’d be willing to provide contacts on the ground, and help with organizing there, please have them contact Lily: lily@casinofreephila.org

Casinos (an industry who’s business model is based on generating losers) aren’t what our city needs- a long term vision for a thriving, world class city should focus on education, arts and culture, not on cheap thrills and exploitation! Please support Casino-Free Philly…

So, my friend Heidi needs a roommate. She’s pretty great.†

The location is right on the edge (quite literally) of Fairmount Park, so it’s a gorgeous location for someone who likes to spend some time outdoors.†

Here’s the deal:

• $550 rent.
• $150-200 -ish utilities. (internet, gas, electric)
• Finn (her awesome dog) lives there, too.
• Non-smoking house.
• R-6 Wissahickon stop.
• Kelly Drive bike path runs very near the house.

If you know someone who’d be interested, you can contact Heidi via her website.

I don’t know many people in the market for horses, but my new housemate (who in another life is an excellent horse trainer) has a few that she needs to sell as she is starting Vet school.†

If you might know anyone who might know anyone who might want to buy a fancy horse, send them to:

http://www.laurelsforge.com/horses4sale.html