Guitar photography thread - Post your crappy pics!

[1trussell]

Re: Guitar photography thread - Post your crappy p

This thread is extremely helpful! Thanks so much for going through all this trouble. And I'm glad that my poor photography skills could be the inspiration behind such a thing. In my defense, it was a rainy shitty day yesterday that I couldn't do anything outside (plus it's f'n December in St. Louis). And my house has such shitty light inside, there just isn't much for me to work with until I get some better light.

[hammer84]

Re: Guitar photography thread - Post your crappy p

[ QUOTE ]
I'm loving the neck angle of that Star, man [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Here's one of my "secrets":
Instead of turning off the flash and trying to capture "natural light", wrap a thin piece of paper (or two depending on the strength of your flash and the density of your paper) around your flash to diffuse it. Since my camera (Olympus D600L) has a pop-up flash, I just rubber-band a small square of double-folded printer paper around it, but if your flash is embedded in the camera, try taping it on with some Scotch-type tape.

For neat effects, you can also cover the flash with a pair of those old red and blue 3D glasses, of course, be aware that you'll get a TON of red or blue, but it's a neat effect.

[/ QUOTE ]

Most digital cameras have a flash compenstaion setting on them. I just turn the flash down with that setting and have had great results.

[StukaJU87]

Re: Guitar photography thread - Post your crappy p

This pic is pretty washed out with the flash. Work some magic! [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[Newc]

Re: Guitar photography thread - Post your crappy p

FOCUS!!!!! [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Hammer - Mine don't have that [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]
It does have a neat filter lens that kinda takes care of that, but I can never remember which one it is [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[Number Of The Priest]

Re: Guitar photography thread - Post your crappy p

Neilli:

Great pic to begin with. Minimal tweaking is needed. In this short lesson, I'll highlight what I did... WITH VISUAL AIDS!!! Yeah baby!!! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

I opened up the Level Adjustment in Photoshop to see the histogram. It's missing some of the extreme dark tones at the low end of the spectrum (red circle on the figure below) so we're gonna hit the Auto button (green circle on the figure below):



And this balances the photo a little bit better:



It looks a little dark, so we're gonna slide the gamma (midtone) adjuster over a little bit to allow the guitars to jump out of the shadows, as follows (blue circle on image ABOVE):



Now we see the slider is over a little bit, and the picture is seemingly brighter without actually increasing the brightness. So we have the final photo:



No Saturation adjustment was needed... Neilli probably has a good camera that really captures colors vividly. For some reason, every Canon and Nikon camera I've come across has wicked color reproduction. I can't say the same about my own Minolta subcompact though, so I've been known to abuse the Saturation tool to compensate for my lacklustre images.

Okay, that's all I have time for right now... hope you enjoyed this little lesson. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] I have to go shovel snow now, but I'll be back later to edit more pictures and give more lessons. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

LOL @ Exodus' Space Odyssey style photo. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[toejam]

Re: Guitar photography thread - Post your crappy p

Here's the last pic I took. It's kinda dark in my basement, so I had to use the flash. I did enhance it a little with my photo software, but it's still not all that great, you can't really make out the red speakers in the Jackson cabs.

[neilli]

Re: Guitar photography thread - Post your crappy p

Those tweaks look great man - thanks very much for doing that, and this is a really useful thread [img]/images/graemlins/toast.gif[/img] Oh, just for interest, the camera is just a Canon Powershot A75....

[ApeDosMil]

Re: Guitar photography thread - Post your crappy p

[ExodusAttack]

Re: Guitar photography thread - Post your crappy p

[ QUOTE ]
LOL @ Exodus' Space Odyssey style photo. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe I should've painted it black instead... [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[Number Of The Priest]

Re: Guitar photography thread - Post your crappy p

I didn't bother touching ExodusAttack's "Space Odyssey" picture. The color balance to me looks fine, although the computer tweaks it minimally. Overall, it's a good picture in terms of light and color balance. [img]/images/graemlins/toast.gif[/img] But the background is a little bit distracting, and when I look at the fretboard, my eyes always seem to get distracted over to the trees unconsciously. More about composition later... [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Stuka: Not a bad flash picture, but there wasn't much I could personally do with it. Ramping up the midtones (gamma slider) allows us to see the Jackson logo on the dark headstock, at the expense of making the JCF01 body look whiter than Jessica Simpson's teeth. So I left it alone and didn't do anything. The computer will do a small Auto Level adjust kind of like ExodusAttack's picture, so I didn't bother. [img]/images/graemlins/toast.gif[/img] But it does look a tiny bit out of focus, as Newc mentioned above.

Toejam: An easy fix. Auto Level adjust, followed by an increase in the gamma, livens up the picture and allows us to see the red speakers of the Jackson cabs and the grille on the THD Univalve. A tiny bit of Saturation was added. Final result:



MichaelMadeja: Same advice as Stuka. I left both pics alone because the final result is very subtle. Auto Level adjust is very minor, and bumping up the gamma a little bit is very minor also. All very easy to do on your own. Use discretion on how much of each tool you want to use. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Another comment about Neilli's picture... I realized why there was a huge chunk missing from the low end of the spectrum (red circle). I believe his exposure was set a little high. He can compensate by lowering the EV directly on his camera. How can I tell that it may be overexposed? Look at the GMW Adrian Smith Strat (white Strat with black pickguard) on the right side. The maple fretboard (supposedly a light yellowish brown) looks nearly identical in color as the white body. Either that, or the Adrian Strat is angled differently than the rest of the guitars, and that's why that particular guitar and the Roswell Rhoads look a bit washed out. They look like they're facing a window which was behind his left shoulder when he was taking that picture. Look at the other guitars, they're angled so that the reflected light bounces away from the camera.

Remember, I'm not an expert, so these are just my speculations. I don't take perfect pictures myself yet... and I'll demonstrate it in the following lesson about COMPOSITION using my own photos and pointing out where I can improve.

Composition to me is very important in showing off a gorgeous guitar. You want to emphasize the guitar so that a viewer's eyes are drawn immediately to the guitar or a certain part of the guitar you want to show. Let's look at some examples.

This photo of my Taylor K14c was taken purposely to show crappy composition. There is clutter all around, and it distracts from the otherwise stunning guitar.



The next photo is a little bit better, although it's one of the worst full-guitar shots I've ever done (look at the crappy uneven lighting). But less of the BACKGROUND distracts.



So, clean up your background. Put up a one-color cloth as your backdrop, or use a blank spot of wall in your house, or the shingles on the side of your house. Anything that doesn't scream, "LOOK AT ME INSTEAD OF THE GUITAR!!!" is good. See the following where I laid my Taylor K14c on a blue blanket on my bed:



However, that particular angle isn't very flattering to that guitar body shape... but you get what I mean. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] At least you're looking at the guitar. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

More examples of plain background to emphasize the subject:






We can also de-emphasize features we don't want by purposely putting them out of focus and leaving the desired areas in focus. We make use of the depth of field here so that the background is fuzzy, allowing is to focus attention on something particular in the foreground (or vice versa, depending on what you want to achieve). By the way, I haven't quite figured out how to do this on an AUTOMATIC camera yet, because I can't manually control the aperture and shutter speed. So I usually have to take a couple of shots by focusing on different things before I get the one I want.

Here, I wanted to emphasize the output jack and knobs, and the rest of the guitar and background has been fuzzed out, which further draws your eyes toward the jack and knobs. These were new speed knobs, and I wanted to show them off. Excellent.



In the following, the background is very out of focus and the guitar is very IN FOCUS, drawing your attention to the extreme detail. It's also one of my favorite extreme closeups that I've done so far, and I'll go into detail on how to do that in another lesson. But the point of the following photo is that you're so drawn to the guitar so prominently in the foreground that you don't even notice the background, which has been further de-emphasized due to the field of focus being limited to the guitar close to the lens.


Same goes for this next picture. The foreground is so in focus that you can actually read "GOTOH" on the tuner, and the tuning key is very well defined against the out of focus background. It almost looks like you can reach out and turn the tuning key because it nearly jumps out of the screen against the background. Awesome.



So clean up that cluttered guitar room, or bring your guitar to a spot with no other distractions! Pets are cute but can be distracting sometimes. Don't shoot pictures of the guitar on the floor where your feet are in the frame too. Compare the following two pictures, where one has the distracting tripod legs in the way, while the other one is cleaner and makes you want to look at the guitar.




Hope you enjoyed this little lesson. Feedback is greatly appreciated. [img]/images/graemlins/toast.gif[/img]

[toejam]

Re: Guitar photography thread - Post your crappy p

Cool. Thanks! Great tips. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[ExodusAttack]

Re: Guitar photography thread - Post your crappy p

[ QUOTE ]
I didn't bother touching ExodusAttack's "Space Odyssey" picture. The color balance to me looks fine, although the computer tweaks it minimally. Overall, it's a good picture in terms of light and color balance. [img]/images/graemlins/toast.gif[/img] But the background is a little bit distracting, and when I look at the fretboard, my eyes always seem to get distracted over to the trees unconsciously. More about composition later... [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you for your input. [img]/images/graemlins/toast.gif[/img]
Great job so far with the other pics! [img]/images/graemlins/headbang.gif[/img]

[illumina]

Re: Guitar photography thread - Post your crappy p

Eric's little tidbits:

For Directional Flashes: Aim them up - don't aim them directly at the guitar, or it'll wash the colors. bad.

For Traditional flashes build into most cameras - cheap trick - use an index card in front of the flash to 'bounce' it away from line of sight. pictures almost always turn out better this way.

NOTP has a very very good point - turn off that damn flash if you can.

NOTP - the unsharp mask filter can do amazing things to flame tops, fyi.

[Number Of The Priest]

Re: Guitar photography thread - Post your crappy p

Christ, I forgot Illumina takes some excellent pics. [img]/images/graemlins/toast.gif[/img]

I just tried playing around with the unsharp mask filter on the flamed koa sides/back of my Taylor K14c. I'm definitely not good at it. Feel free to give a little tutorial on how to subtly enhance flametops if you have some time... I'll definitely be one to read it. [img]/images/graemlins/toast.gif[/img]

Great tips and thanks to everyone for participating so far!

[illumina]

Re: Guitar photography thread - Post your crappy p

here's a quick photochop.



Top half of the body was unsharp masked. 100% amount, 7 radius, 0 threshold. Check out the flame quality compared to the bottom half. If you take the time to select the body, you can do PRS-quality flame job pretty easily.


Cam is a Nikon D70s, Nikkor 18-70 Lense, SB25 Flash (pointed up and away)

another simple tip to instantly create better shots: Tuck your elbows into your body. your arms will shake less, and will reduce blurring due to motion.