Against the light

With a point and shoot camera - which is what most people are using - it is not easy to take good photographs when the light is behind the subject. Yes, I know there are quite a lot of controls hidden in the menu of the camera - but how many people actually use the menus? I can answer that! Very, very few. So I am going to give  you a little hint on how to get a better result in strong light.
Our on-line group has "windows" as one of the topics this month and with that in mind I have taken a couple of shots.
For this I used my Samsung NV4, which is a very simple point and shoot camera. I took a photo out of the kitchen window with a vase of flowers on the table as my main subject.
Aiming to get the framing I wanted this is what I managed to get.

The camera has manage to get the view through the window perfectly! The flowers look terrible.
By aiming the camera down at the flowers - I held the camera high and tilted it down - I could half hold the shutter button to ensure the flowers were brighter, then I moved the camera down so that it was framed exactly as the first picture and this is the result.

Neither of these photographs have been manipulated in any way - and most people do not want to do complex photo editing. So depending on what you want to feature, the foreground subject or the background you need to tell the camera where you want the light sampled. It is sampled at the same time as the focus is set and the same way - by holding the button half pressed down.
Be sure that when you sample, as I did, by holding the camera with the subject out of position, that the camera is exactly the same distance away from where you move it to to finish taking the picture. If the distance changes then the shot will not be in focus.
Backlighting does make photography difficult and the best way to get good lighting on a subject is to have the camera between the light source and the subject but sometimes that is not possible. Always take more than one photograph in difficult lighting situations and do not delete your images until you have them on your computer so you can see them more clearly.
AJ      joanren@gmail.com

A simple polarizing effect

Just occasionally you may get a photo that looks very "washed out" the main part of the picture may look reasonable but the sky is lighter than you think it should be. This very simple fix may be your answer!

 Here I have a rather wishy washy photograph that will benefit from the technique I am about to show you.
First of all, open the picture in Photoshop Elements (this technique will work in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements) and use "Full Edit" from the selection on the right - not Quick Edit or Guided Edit. We will be working with LAYERS and this is not possible in Quick or Guided edit modes.
In the Layers palette on the right hand side, click on the "Create new layer" button.

Can you see the word "Normal" written in a box above the layers?
Click on this box and it will drop down giving a long list of words.
Click on "Soft Light"

The word "Normal" should now be replaced with the words "Soft Light".
You will see no changes to the picture yet but the "Soft light" blending mode will make a big difference to what we do next.
Now change the foreground colour to black (pressing the letter "D" on your keyboard will change the foreground and background colours to black and white)

Click on the brush tool and make it large enough to paint the sky - and make sure that you have a soft brush.

Now paint over your sky - I have deliberately painted over the little stone church so you can see more clearly what I have done.

Use the eraser to remove the darkness that is created, from the areas where it is not wanted. I do not want it over the church so after erasing my painted layer looks like this.

I did change my eraser to a hard edged brush so that it made a neater job of cleaning the sharp edges of the roof.
Once you are satisfied with the job you have done. go to Layers (on the menu bar) and click on "Flatten image" now the picture can be saved. Always save your altered photos with a new name, so always click on "Save As" not "Save".
I have put both pictures together so that you can see the effect of the painting with black and using Soft Light blending mode.

The foreground also looks a lot brighter - but I must admit that I also went to Enhance>Auto smart fix (from the menu) and that clever little tweak balanced the light and shade.

The effect I have just described to you give a similar effect to putting a circular polarizer on your camera to deepen the blue of the sky and define the clouds.
I hope you give it a try.
AJ