"Basic Photography with Bake along #7"

So we are in our second last week of these sessions :) before I write today’s one, I want to thank you guys for patiently reading me. Your responses encouraged me to dig more deeply into the subject. thank you once again :). I am really happy to see that you guys have practiced it with full dedication. I can see the improvements in your photography and most of you have picked all the points very well. 

Following slight improvement I wish to suggest though:

1. When you click a setup like you did in Hazelnut white chocolate cake, please avoid clicking outer areas like floor or other part of table which we didn't decorate as per our story.

2. Please don’t over crowd the setup, props mean one or two things which blend in with situation. You have to enhance the beauty of main object not to suppress it. Overcrowding of props confuses the viewer.

That's it :) rest all is going fine thanks to your hard work :). Thank you again for this honour. So let’s start with the last topic “Post processing”.

When you have captured the photograph in your camera, another story begins. It’s not like that you’ve to do it every time and with each and every photo. But at times, when you feel that even after your efforts the picture is not up to the mark then for such situations these tools are helpful. But keep in mind that editing a picture will decrease the quality of the picture a bit, though we will achieve the desired effect.

Note/caution/warning – Before starting the post processing of a photograph, save the original copy in a separate location and use another copy for post processing so that if you don’t like the result of post processing you can use the original picture or try again for editing. There are several editing softwares i.e. Photoshop, Picasa, Lightroom etc. But I will discuss the one which is available on all the computers by default.

Every computer has this software ‘Microsoft Office picture manager’. Open the photograph either by directly opening it or by right click and choosing ‘open with option’. Once the photo is open, click on 'Edit Pictures' button on toolbar and various options will appear on the right pane where you can perform the following steps.

1. Crop – with this tool one can cut the excess/unwanted area you want to remove from the photo.

Before 

After 

2. Rotate and flip – If you want to rotate the picture you can use this tool. Flip or rotate can be done and you can rotate it with specified degree also. Like if the picture has to be slightly rotated you can choose rotate by degree option and specify the degree of rotation i.e. 2 degrees or 20 degrees etc.

3. Colour enhancement - following effects can be given by choosing the colour option.

a) Saturation - This tool enhances the colours. Like if you want the grass looks greener or sky more blue then you can use this tool. But let me remind you, increase the saturation of the photo only upto acceptable limits so that the photo doesn’t looks too dramatic.

b) Hue -  At times you want to add a tint in photographs like blue or yellow. In that case you can use this tool. Say if your photograph has a warm tone then you can add some blue tint to sooth it.

Blue tint

Yellow tint

4. Brightness and contrast – Even after your efforts of maintaining good lighting condition for capturing a photograph, if the photo is not bright enough, then Brightness tool can brighten the photo to some extent. Further if the photo is very bright you can up to some extent reduce the brightness.

With the contrast tool you can adjust the contrast between different colours.

Now a days some mobile cameras have many of the camera settings which have been discussed earlier. Like you can change the tint, shutter speed while clicking the photos. Still if your mobile camera doesn’t have these features then you can use the above post processing tools to get desired results. Most of the cameras don’t have aperture settings for which I’ll explain in the next session which is also my last session in the series. 

Further, while practicing the earlier sessions you might have come across some obstacles or doubts, you can send these doubts to me before Friday so that I will try to clear the doubts in my last article.

Exercise #3

With this week’s bake along, click photo using the ingredients of your recipe as prop. For example, you can use eggs, flour, chocolate bars or cocoa powder as prop. You don’t have to use all the things as props, just one or two ingredients from the recipe.

P.S. I’m again reminding that before using post processing tools please save the original copy separately :)