You should know by now that I love high key photo especially portrait shot. As a stock photo contributor of istockphoto, I’m entitled for regular free download each week on some of the exciting stock photos featured in istockphoto. This week, I’ve got this high key portrait shot which I love it very much (not because of the sexy lady please!). I’ve downloaded it and decided to share with my readers here. If you still don’t have a clue about high key shot, read my post on high key portrait.
It will cost USD40 if I have to pay for it. Or you could join istockphoto to get this high definition royalty-free photo for free. To be less hassle, now you can download the full size image here at Travel Feeder. Mind you that the file size is rather big (3.6MB) as it is a high resolution image. Visit my Download page to download other exciting free download. I’ll post more free stock photos here for you in future if I think they suit. What you think about this photo and high key shot? Subscribe for free updates via e-mail. – Travel Feeder, the ultimate travel photo blog.
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Often enough we are relying on our camera’s intelligent to meter the scene for appropriate exposure. While the technology advancement has made our digital cameras so clever that they get it right on the spot most of the time, there are sometimes, under some tricky lighting condition, our camera metering can be fooled by the scene. This is when we should adjust our exposure compensation EV value.
One of the example is shooting portrait under overcast weather. Your portrait will be mostly under exposed if you were relying on camera’s matrix metering. In most happened occasion, you should increase the EV value to at least half a stop to capture a proper exposed portrait. Look at the example below.
This portrait was shot with exposure compensated to +1/3EV of a stop. The overall exposure is alright with no clipping highlight and shadow. However, if you look at the portrait alone (in this case would be my 2 children), they are slightly under exposed. This is where the mid tone is. How to create a cleaner portrait shot? I’ll need to adjust its level in post processing. Firstly, push the mid tone of the image towards the highlight zone. In this case, I need to blow some of the backgrounds like the sky and the boats, in order to get a perfectly exposed main object (the kids). Then I adjusted the middle tone contrast to reduce shadows of the children. Finally, I sharpened the image and that’s it!
This is the end result: A cleaner, brighter and more eye catching portrait shot. Because I pushed up the mid tone which is normally referred as key tone, a High Key portrait photo is created. In order to have a clean high key photo, you’ll need to capture the scene with reasonably correct exposure in order to avoid noise when adjusting the key tone level. In this case, the above photo would not be as clean if I captured with camera’s default metering which would be 1/3 stop under exposed. So back to the basic. Check the histogram on a trial shot to make sure the exposure is what you desired, and compensate if it is not. Enjoy photographing! – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog.
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Since now is still the first fresh month of Year 2010, I still have 11 months to realise this, hopefully. This is just part of my wish list this year for contenting my craving on travel photography equipment. If possible, I hope my wish could become reality before this May. Why? Because I would be better equipped by then. So what? SO I COULD TOUR THE TOP 5 EUROPE CITIES IN MAY! 
To be exact, I have only slightly more than 3 months to grab them into my packing list to travel! Can I? Let’s check my list first…
What camera system do I need to take with me for my photography travel? Firstly, what camera system do I currently own? As a budget traveler who prefers to travel light, I have a Nikon D60 body. Though it’s not perfect but it’s still good and light to carry around travel. For lenses attaching to it, I have the “3 lens combo for poor man” which includes a Nikkor 18-55mm kit lens, a Nikkor 55-200mm zoom lens and a 35mm f1.8 prime lens. For capturing day in day out travel photos under good ambient lighting, 18-55 and 55-200mm lenses are good enough. Whereas my 35mm fast lens are normally used to capture indoor or night scenes under available light, which is brilliant (you can see my Chinese New Year photos indoor). I have plenty of 4GB SDHC memory cards and 1 spare battery which should be enough (Europe is using the same power socket as Malaysia, so charging battery there would not be a problem). I’m currently using my only Lowepro Cirrus TLZ15 waist bag to fit in my camera and a single lens. For night scene long exposure (like my shot of Genting Highland), I would bring along my tripod. That’s all my camera system currently.
What else do I need? For a budget traveler with limited budget on travel photography, Nothing else I need. I don’t need a much more bulkier and heavier camera body like D300s to burden our rucksack eventhough though its metering and dynamic range is much better. I don’t need a ultra wide angle lens to capture the whole scene of Coloseum where I could still stitch a few photos up as panorama. If budget is my biggest concern, I don’t need a telephoto lens either. Out of 100 travel photos that I’ve been shooting, only 10 or less photos are telephoto. So I’ll miss only 10% of all photography opportunity.
However, To have a more complete camera system for better travel photography (but also heavier bag and heftier budget), and to ease my craving as a hobbyist photographer, I wish I could own these 5 camera components as listed here:
Wide angle Nikkor AF-S 10-24mm f3.5-4.5G ED DX lens costing USD 800. This is the lens for capturing landscape with more impact! I want this first!
Midrange Zoom Tamron AF 17-50mm f2.8 SP costing USD 449. This is the lens to replace my kit lens for travel. It’s fixed aperture make it a lot more flexible in shooting indoor and outdoor!
Telephoto zoom Nikkor AF-S 70-300mm f4.5-5.6G ED VR, costs USD 540. If budget allows, this lens can help you to capture those statues on top of the roof at St. Peter’s Square and PS can’t help you on this!
I need a much bigger sling bag preferably the Lowepro Slingshot 350AW sling bag, cost USD115. It will fit in more camera staffs on travel, and can be treated as a backpack cum waist bag, and
Finally, if budget allows me to do so, I wish I could upgrade my body to Nikon D300s which cost USD1,500 or RM4,950 only now! It’s tremendously good value now if compare to its original list price of USD1,800!
Other than the above, I would also get ready some ND and polarizer filters for some effects. What are the total cost of all 5 items? USD3,404.
However, I haven’t got any of the above. I wish I can get some of them (or at least the first 4 items) by end of April so I could fully explore my photography travel to Europe. Or can you think of anyway to support me on this please?
p/s: If you think this travel blog is worth for your reading, please support me by one of these ways: Subscribe to Travel Feeder’s feeds for free upcoming stories via RSS or email; Search and purchase my favourite photos from istockphoto; Get your camera stuffs through my link to Amazon where you won’t lose anything and I could earn some commission, or, buy me a cup of coffee as you like. Thank you. – Travel Feeder.
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If you come to Malaysia this year, one of the top 10 places to visit in Malaysia would have to be Melaka, the UNESCO world heritage city. When you are in Melaka, you must drop by (or you would definitely be passing by) the Christ Church, the red Spanish architecture. Behind it on top of [...]
The title may sound ridiculous. Yes. In terms of overall image quality, my Nikon D60 still has the edge. However, in certain aspect and under certain circumstances, my 15 month old Panasonic Lumix FZ28 is no doubt better than my DSLR, or even most of the DSLR in the market. “Are you sure?”
I’ve been using [...]
If you ever have the chance to visit to Malaysia for a week or so, one city you must not miss for your travel photography portfolio is Melaka. At about 150 km south of Kuala Lumpur, Melaka is one of the 4 heritage sites of Malaysia inscribed by UNESCO, other than Penang. It features all sorts [...]
I just realised I have a nice century figure of my istockphoto collection of uploaded and approved photos. So I put them all up and overlapped onto a blank image file this afternoon and this is how it looks like…
All photos above are open for downloads in various sizes and are all royalty-free. Click [...]
Recently I have a question tucked in my mind and I just wished to get the answer: How could my Nikkor 35mm f1.8 fixed normal lens handle outdoor landscape shot at day? Well, I’ve been using it for a few months and all of the time I used it for night portrait shots, night scenes, [...]
What are the lenses I normally bring along for travel? Readers following me on Travel Feeder should know that I love to have my favourite Nikkor 35mm f1.8 fast lens fitted on my D60 whenever I go travel. It gives me full flexibilities to shoot whatever scene under whatever ambient light, especially under low light conditions where [...]
A lot of my friends and readers online asked me how useful is Nikkor 35mm f1.8 lens that I bought and have been using it very often. My only answer to them is: “It is the cheapest Nikkor ‘FAST’ lens with built-in auto-focus motor!” It allows me to shoot night scene with lots of people in [...]
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