Work Of The Lighting Camera Man

The biggest job a cinematographer has on set is directing how the lights look in the frame. He knows everything about the lights and what they represent. The cinematographer is the master of lighting. Working closely with the director and gaffer of the production, the cinematographer creates a happy balance of lighting in the frame to produce a realistic picture. There are four key concepts a cinematographer utilizes when setting up lights: movement, placement, intensity and color. This is how I describe each:

Movement: “Why is the light moving?” “How much is it moving?” These are two questions a cameraman or cinematographer must ask himself. If there is no movement, fine-the scene is still. Movement causes curiosity, chaos and directs the eye to a certain place in the frame. If not trying to recreate a scene that requires lights to flicker, turn on and off at a certain rate or move back and forth as if searching for something, movement of light is not required-it just helps to make a more believable situation if necessary. Some examples of scenes that use light movement would be in a scene where the lights are going out or flickering or something like an interrogation scene. Movement could also be used to portray a lightning or a massive earthquake where everything is falling down and the power is going out. Also, any sort of club or party scene would use not only moving lights but colored lights as well.

Placement: Depending on where you place the light on a character, it creates different shadows on their faces and can create different moods and can change the way you look at someone. For instance, when you light someone from the bottom, it creates an evil look. Remember when you’d go camping and you’d scare your little sister by placing a flashlight under your chin, turning it on and making a scary face? Just like that. The more lights you use, the less shadow you will create, so using just one light will create more shadow and make a character look darker and more mysterious.

Using more lights makes things brighter and creates a happier mood. Therefore, villains normally are lit less and heroes are lit more to portray the darker and the lighter moods. Heroes will not be lit from underneath as much as they will from the front, back and side, using more lights. Their faces will be better lit so you can see their eyes better.

Intensity: Light intensity can make things look different and hide objects and even wrinkles in shadows. I once had an actress ask me to turn the light down a little because she thought she looked better in the lower lighting-and she was right-it took away some of her wrinkles and made her look a little younger and thinner. It was after this encounter that this lesson stuck with me. Just like black clothes give you the illusion of looking thinner, less light also makes you look thinner and younger. If you notice, in films you will see that antagonists are shown in darker lighting because shadowy figures represent someone evil or unapproachable to people. Protagonists are better lit and you can see more of their face because someone who’s eyes you can fully see seems more trustworthy and approachable.

The darker it is, the more mysterious and dingy the scene becomes. The brighter the scene, the happier the characters are and the audience will feel more comfortable. Dramas tend to be darker and comedies are brighter for that exact reason. Comedies want you to laugh; so making it brighter will create a happier mood for the audience, therefore making them laugh easier.

Color: Light color is fun to play with but can also be challenging because it can change the way a character’s skin tone looks and can mess with the white balance on your camera. A cameraman must know how to properly white balance a camera to every color temperature without losing an actor’s proper skin tone. Light color can also determine the time of day, as daylight is bluer and indoor lights tend to be more orange or “tungsten,” as we call it in the film industry. Color can also be used to portray sunsets, sunrises and can be used for schemes throughout the film. Perhaps a character’s light tends to have more of a certain color in it every time they appear on the screen because color also represents how we feel about people and can evoke certain feelings.

When all these concepts are learned and mastered, they come together to create a masterpiece and can be used and manipulated in every project you shoot to invent a different, unique look. With all these concepts and a touch of your personal creativity, the possibilities of painting with light are endless!

Thrilling work of the music video camera person at Mark Cella‘s site.

Golf Putting Secret Tips to Hit the Golf Shot | Golf Pro News

Putting can account for 50% or more of your golf score. So, it is critical to master golf putting basics to achieve your scoring goals. Here are some key golf .

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Golf Putting Secret Tips to Hit the Golf Shot | Golf Pro News

Golf Putting Secret Tips to Hit the Golf Shot | Golf Pro News

Putting can account for 50% or more of your golf score. So, it is critical to master golf putting basics to achieve your scoring goals.

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Golf Putting Secret Tips to Hit the Golf Shot | Golf Pro News

Family Documentary: The Legacy That Keeps On Giving

If you have ever wondered whether some legacies maintain their value better than others, you are not alone. Among many who have thought and planned seriously about what they will leave behind, there is a growing movement to focus less on material wealth, and more on preserving family memories, history, and stories for future generations. How? With a family documentary.

A family documentary, or a personal documentary, breathes life into a family tree. Sensitively and professionally conducted interviews are filmed and then edited together with family photographs, current events from by-gone eras, passages from letters, diaries, maps, or whatever memorabilia is available. The result is a living legacy of story, continuity, and a sense of belonging for those who come next.

Here are just a few of the ways that family documentary makes a lasting difference:

Instead of “knowing” a grandparent just for their elderly, and often misleadingly serious appearance in a photo, seeing childhood photos and hearing stories about an ancestor’s growing up can touch a personal note with a younger generation.

While history lessons in school can be boring, they may take on a whole new meaning when the stories of family members are brought to life in the details of first-hand experiences like war, depression, or big cultural movements. Who remembers Woodstock, or when women got the vote?

Family memories, openly shared, can become the real “stuffing” in a family holiday feast. Telling family stories together is a priceless tradition that binds many families and generations to each other more powerfully than anything else.

Family and personal documentaries inspire even more storytelling. They are truly the legacy gift that keeps on giving.

When family stories and memories are not passed from one generation to the next, they become lost. Even while names and dates can be retrieved from public records, the personality, quirks, everyday achievements, sorrows, hilarity, and life lessons that make up the intimacy of family experience, only survive in the stories that are passed from one generation to the next.

A family documentary does more than preserve an important part of the family history; it can make the difference in whether future generations will continue the tradition of storytelling and documentation themselves.

Because of this, many would say that family documentary is a legacy that becomes even more valuable with age.

Such a legacy really can make a difference for generations to come.

Learn more about family documentary. Stop by Susan Saunders’s site where you can find out all about leaving a livinglegacy and what it can do for your family for generations to come.

Vintage Golf on Fashion Served

a photo story by eye mgmt. (all hair, makeup, photography, wardrobe stying, graphics and retouching by Amy M. Phillips and Fairlight Hubbard of Eye)

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Vintage Golf on Fashion Served

There Are A Variety Of Excellent Photography Schools In Canada

Photography schools in Canada offer you all the programs you need in order to be a successful photographer. Your goal may be a career in photography or perhaps, you only want to learn photography to enjoy taking better photographs. You find that whether it is to pursue a career, or a hobby, there are many options available to you.

You will find many top notch photography centers of education. A photography school trains you in all the most recent technological advances in the field. The photography courses they offer help you to bring out the creativity that you have hidden within you.

There are degrees in photography from very reputable universities. In a degree program, you learn about the history, aesthetics, and theory of photography. You study the significance of color theory, composition, and techniques using digital imaging. All aspects of photography using computer applications are part of the curriculum. Your course load also contains other courses relating to photography needed for the degree.

In the college photography courses, you do not receive a degree, but a certificate. The course material is comparable to the one in university. This curriculum also teaches the various aspects of digital imaging. The business of photography is also a college course.

Online courses are also available. They provide studies in basic camera skills, lighting, and composition. This form of study allows you to go at your own pace and, for some students this is what they prefer. This can be a good option for those already working in some creative field.

Workshops are a wonderful way to improve your skills. Usually, photography workshops are held in the evening, on successive days, or sometimes as long as a week. You can find workshops almost everywhere in the world.

A workshop is a wonderful way to increase your knowledge. People can learn the best way to use their camera and learn advanced techniques in taking photographs. If photography is your passion and your career goal, attending workshops may not give you the knowledge you need.

If photography is of interest then perhaps web design may be interesting to you. The creativity that photography has taught you is well used in web design. In creating web sites, your computer knowledge and skills must be extensive.

Graphic design courses may also interest the photographer. Digital photography is a course that is necessary to become a graphic designer. Knowledge of composition, color, and creativity is required. All photographers possess these skills and would adapt well to this career.

Another way of learning about photography is workshops and night courses. This is also a way to meet other people who have the same interest and possibly spend time together shooting. Learning from groups or from others by spending time together is a fantastic way to learn new skills.

There are many options to choose when looking for a photography schools in Canada. Choosing the best photography school will depend on whether this is a career or a pastime. Photography is a very fulfilling form of expression. The picture you take may be the same as another person but it is never the same because of your ability to see things differently.

Ready to channel your inner creativity? Enrol in an art college or art institute for animation or one of the many graphic design school in Canada. The career you dreamed of may be just around the corner.

Find Out How To Remove Images From The Background With The Photopaint Cutout Lab

In this tutorial we’re going to be working with the Cutout Lab in Photopaint. At some point when working with images you’ll realize that you want to isolate an image from the background. As a result, you’ll have to create what is called a mask and this allows you to use the object in a variety of compositions.

The first thing to do is load an image into the workspace. Before you start to cut out the image, you’ll need to look at the Objects docker on the right side of the interface. You’ll note a background image, an Object that I’ve filled with green and a copy of the background which I’ll use as the working Object.

The reason there’s a green Object in place is for when the masking process is finished. At that point I zoom into the mask and check out the edges against the green high contrast Object. This is to make sure that the edge is smooth and that there are no pinholes in the mask. If there are, they will show up as green through the object.

At this point I’ll turn the top background object (layer) on and make sure it’s activated. And now we’re ready to access the Cutout Lab. One last point, when cutting out an image, you can use a mouse, but it’s unwieldy and clumsy, a bit like painting with a baseball bat. I recommend that you use a drawing tablet instead. I use the Wacom 6×8 Intuos 3 tablet.

To get started, I go to the main menu and choose Image: Cutout Lab. In the Cutout Lab interface, I click on the Zoom tool and zoom into the image so I can see the edge more clearly. This will allow me to do a better job of masking.

In the interface, the next step is to use the Highlight tool to define the edge of the cactus. Since the default tip is too large, I make it smaller. When I define the edge, I make sure to draw on the cactus as well as the background. Every now and then this tip will be too big, so I have to make the tip smaller to get into the tight areas. If I make a mistake, I click on the erase tool and remove the previous strokes.

Work your way around the cactus using the hand tool or scroll bars. Once the edge of the mask has been defined, I zoom out and apply the fill (in this case, blue, which is the default. To apply the fill, I click on the Paint bucket, then then the center of the cactus.

I set the background to None and click on Preview. This allows me to see a checked pattern in the background. Unfortunately, it’s hard to see, so I decide to try out some other options, which include: White matte, gray matte and black matte.

Settling on gray matte, I notice some artifacts around the edge of the mask and I also notice holes in the mask as well. To fix this, I activate the Add Detail or Remove Detail tools. And this goes for the entire image. While you can do some of this after the fact, it’s much easier to do it here, where you have the tools at your disposal.

Once the cleaning up is complete it’s time to cut out the image, which can then be used in other composites. The choices are: Cutout, Cutout and Original Image or Cutout as click mask. Here, I chose Cutout and Original image. The end result is a new Object, the cut out image and the original image below that.

There’s only one more step, to test the cutout image against the green high contrast object. To so so, I zoom into the image and look at the edge. In some areas it’s still a bit ragged, which can be fixed by using the eraser tool.

After that the edge is pretty good. To go further than that, I’d need to use feathering, which is the subject of another tutorial.

[youtube:MPFYEGlEqY8;[link:image masking cutout lab photopaint];http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPFYEGlEqY8&feature=related]

Find out how to streamline your graphics and photography workflow at: DigitalArtistU.com. Check out our samples page to improve your photography, image processing and results. This article, Find Out How To Remove Images From The Background With The Photopaint Cutout Lab is available for free reprint.

Guide For A Comcorder Buyer

What a digital video camcorder does is to take the analog details within the video clip camera and then translate it into bytes of data. Digital online video is converted from moving images to a stream of zeros and ones.

The face detection feature aims to recognize and focus on human faces that you can set in the camcorder’s frame. It tells the camcorder to select optimal exposure and other settings and zero in on a subject to give you a clear and precise focused video.

The digital image stabilizer is great for handheld shots because it eliminates the shakiness of the video. This however also reduces image quality by producing a pixelated, grainy-looking image.

Mini-DV lets you replace tapes simply and it is also simple to modify. It often demands some time though to transfer to a computer. Alternatively, using clean DVDs is a favorable choice if you are just going to share the video with pals and you are not troubled with modifying them.

Many HD Camcorders let you take still photos. You may want to consider the resolution for capturing still photos if you wish to have a good digital camera and camcorder in one device.

With a digital camcorder, you can easily film an event and then download it right to your computer. There, you can edit the film and put it on a DVD if you have the right software. Many digital camcorders have the ability to plug them directly into a DVD player to be viewed on the television. Most new digital camcorders even offer the ability to edit videos while they are still on the camera, allowing you to add captions, titles, credits, and delete frames.

Looking to find the best deal on Sony DCR-SR68 80GB Hard Disk Drive Handycam Camcorder , then visit us to find the best advice on Sony DCR-SR68 80GB Hard Disk Drive Handycam Camcorder for you.

The ElliptiGO combines running and biking » Coolest Gadgets

The ElliptiGO combines running and biking on Coolest Gadgets.

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The ElliptiGO combines running and biking » Coolest Gadgets

Golf. | RA64FREDDY!

Golf . Posted on July 7, 2010 by Freddy. ALMS Aston Martin DB9 with Golf ..errr..Gulf livery..sorry, had a Tiger Woods mistress in my mind… Oooo..shiny.

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Golf. | RA64FREDDY!

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