It’s Diwali time; time for festivities, friends and relatives, lights and fireworks, food and gifts, and prayers for prosperity. It’s the ideal occasion to capture the memories of our loved ones and the festivity while experimenting with multiple styles of photography. Equipped with the right tools and technique, one can capture an array of experiences; from macro shot of a lamp to long exposure shot of fireworks, from family portraits to candid shots on streets, Diwali is the time for you to unleash the photographer in you.
Follow these quick tips and tricks by Adobe’s very own Vipul Vaibhav, video editor and avid photographer, and Abhishek Mukherjee, solution consultant, to make this Diwali a memorable one!
1. Handheld photos come out blurry as one needs lower shutter speed to capture firework in the dark sky. Use a steady tripod while using a shutter speed of around 1/20-1/60 seconds to prevent shaky images in the dark. Experiment with different shutter speeds!
2. Frame the shot in advance. Analyse the area in the sky where fireworks are visible. As finding a focus is difficult in the night sky, it is advisable to shoot in manual focus. So, frame the shot using liveview (DSLR and a point and shoot) and manual focus (some lenses have “depth of field” scale which allows you can keep focus near infinity to have everything in focus).
3. In addition to manual focus, choose a low aperture of about f/8, which can let you choose a slower shutter speed.
4. Don’t be afraid to use ISO freely. Noise on an image can be easily removed in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw.
Shooting portraits
1. Use a wide aperture of about f/1.8, for capturing people. Wider aperture gives interesting background results if there are lights and lamps behind the subject. For example, Bokeh shot is the most popular form of picture clicked during the Diwali festival.
2. ‘On camera flash’ can be used as a fill flash to keep the subject and the background well exposed. The setting ‘flash compensation’ allows you to increase/decrease the power of flash. Adjust it as you need, and if your subject comes out over-exposed, lower the value of flash compensation.
Taking candid images on the street
1. Natural shots always look better. Zoom lens is the way to go for taking candid images from a distance so that you do not get too close to crackers!
2. A wider aperture can be used as more light needs to enter the sensor while keeping a fast shutter speed ensuring the subject is not shaky.
Post processing images
Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, available at a monthly subscription of INR499 as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan, help you make your shots just perfect, irrespective of low lights, dark exposure and camera shakes. Use the following ideas to give a new dimension to your images:
1. Lighten up the dark alleys or under exposed shots or specific regions of an image with the new and redefined Radial Filter in Lightroom 5 and Photoshop CC’s Camera Raw filter. You can also lighten up specific areas of an image.
2. Make the Diwali lights and surrounding perfectly gorgeous by light-painting them with specific colors. The Adjustment brush in Lightroom 5 and Camera Raw in Photoshop CC will help you achieve the look with ease.
3. Use the Camera Shake Reduction filter to remove all camera shake from your pictures.
4. Click slightly over exposed image as it’s easier to retrieve details during post processing. Increasing the exposure of under-exposed images in Lightroom or Photoshop will result in better visibility of the items in your photo.
5. Always shoot RAW! RAW images have larger amount of light information compared to regular jpeg images. One can retrieve all the details from a RAW image while keeping the quality. Adjusting exposure, contrast, highlights and shadows slider will begin to give you better results.
6. Shooting in RAW will allow you to play with different white balance options in Lightroom. Select different white balance settings; play around with temperature slider to get the desired mood of the shot.
7. Lightroom has a detailed panel which will allow you to reduce noise and sharpen the image.
Don’t have a DSLR? Do you prefer to use your iphone/ipad for clicks? Enjoy the new Adobe Lightroom Mobile app and post process your images on your mobile and share pictures directly on Facebook, Flickr or Behance!
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