Wedding Photography Editing Tips and Tricks

Trick photography is an intriguing branches of photography, it is the art of adding special effects to photographs by using both in-camera techniques and post production methods. Used skillfully these techniques will produce pictures that are not only a sight to see but also causes one to wonder how these were done.

Although there is a wide choice of equipment available to enhance picture quality, there are actually only a few items of equipment required to take photographs of this type.

The camera may be any entry level DSLR camera, this is a digital single lens reflex camera meaning it allows the photographer to look directly through the lens and so accurately view what will be captured, also pictures taken are stored digitally instead of using film. Another benefit of this camera type is that it allows lenses to be changed depending on the type of subject being photographed, a 18-55mm lens suitable for this type of photography is usually included with entry level cameras. A new camera would also need a memory card to store the pictures, and these are available in different capacities.

The second required item is a tripod to keep the camera steady while taking long exposure shots and as long as the tripod is firm, any old used one would be fine.

In this type of photography it is frequently the case to edit images using graphics editing software. One of the popular packages is Adobe’s Photoshop, however, the Gimp a very good free open-source graphics editing application is also available to download. These recommendations are the essentials to help one get started in this interesting branch of photography, but more equipment will inevitably be added as experience and purpose increase.

Regardless of what equipment one has, it is creativity and knowledge of trick photography techniques that are the key to shooting first-rate special effects pictures, these are some of the popular effects:

Long-exposure photography:
Utilizing slow shutter speeds to capture the apparent rapid motion of an object in a still photograph. Long-exposures are usually taken in dim ambiance conditions having a stationary subject against other fast moving ones. For example, a person standing next to of a moving train will capture the person clearly while the moving train is a blur.

HDR photography:
HDR is an acronym for High Dynamic Range. It is possible to generate an HDR image from a single photograph but results would be significantly improved by using multiple images of the same scene shot using different shutter speeds and with the aid of software tools combined into one picture. This technique enhances the contrast in light or dark areas of a photograph causing the image to look more vivid naturally or exaggerating the contrast for artistic effect.

Infrared Photography:
Infrared light is invisible to us, however using an infrared lens filter it is possible to capture images that are captivating and quite different from the reality we know. Most infrared shots are of static objects like landscapes due to the long-exposure times involved when capturing IR images. These types of photographs are frequently edited using graphics software after taking the shot to adjust the color tint of the original image. Not all camera lenses produce good results when shooting IR photographs, therefore when buying a new lens, it is good practice to check that it works well in this field.

360×180 Planet panoramas:
These photographs have the appearance as if we have a spherical field of view. This is achieved using a technique requiring images taken starting from the ground and taking pictures and moving around after each shot is taken. After each complete circle the camera is raised and another round of photos taken until the top is photographed too. All these Images are then stitched using a software tool called Hugin to produce the desired effect.

The Droste Effect:
This is an effect where an image has a smaller version of the image within itself recursively, this appears similar to what we see if we had to look at two mirrors facing each other. This is produced by manipulating the image using a graphics editor.