How To Pose Photos Taken By Bystanders - and edit

 

Finding a Suitable Bystander

When you are travelling around, either to an event, even in your home city, or overseas, you have many places and people you may wish to record. If you are concerned about permission and copyright, instead of taking other people you can take yourself next to a landmark or in an historic place.

Who can you ask? To be sure that no stranger runs off with your camera and disappears down a side street, it is safer to ask somebody with your own group, or a static, known person, such as your tour guide, or the waiter in a restaurant.

This picture was taken by a bystander. She was good enough to take half a dozen pictures. 

Editing

What is wrong with this version? Everything. I am trying to show off my new Anthony Sicari outfit. I have tried to make it look formal and save myself having to wash the heavy, bulky knitted jacket by wearing a lightweight white shirt underneath. 

The first thing I noticed when I got home and blew up the picture on the big screen is that the collar is lopsided. It is and bent on one side. 

My earliest pictures of myself in clothes on dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com were mostly taken my my husband in good light and re-posed when necessary. Or we took several different poses. 

My husband has the know-how and patience to correct this, by copying white from the collar, or copying the point of the other collar and adding a blob of white, then marking a line and deleting alongside it.

Looking at this version of the picture later, more critically, I see more aspects which would need correcting. I checked at the time that my head was not cropped. However, I did not get both my feet fully visible in this picture. I think I had in mind that it did not matter because if I had socks or leg showing I would crop the picture. 

It looks better to crop at waist level than to have part of the footwear missing.

Here is a list of items to check when photographing

1 Subject is smiling to look cheerful and lift wrinkles around the mouth.

2 The glasses can be removed. If the eyes are crossed or baggy or too small, the mask of the glasses might improve the picture or add variety.

3 Remove items growing out of the subject's head. Occasionally the subject can be re-positioned to have flowers or a tree as a halo or frame. In this picture, the photos behind cannot be seen properly and destroy the outline of the head. The head should be between the pictures. 

Standing forward or backwards against the scene will change the ratio of how large the head appears compared to the pictures in the background. Also, you can blur background. 

However, in an historic building, usually the background is an enhancement and you want it in focus. So the reverse is the case. Check that the camera is not in portrait mode.

Editing

How Tactile Paving Helps The Handicapped At Stations

Those lines running parallel to the base of the picture are raised metal to guide the feet of the blind. Some blind people have tunnel vision or restricted vision, so if they look ahead or to the left or right they cannot see the floor in front of them. Others see a blur.

As you get older you get cataracts, like taking off your reading glasses. When I went to the optician for a sight test in London, England, I was told that I was developing cataracts, but they would not need, or qualify for, an operation for another ten years. Naturally you put off an operation on your eyes as long as you can. Meanwhile, clear images and bright colours on artwork are welcome, as is anything to lift your mood.

More Information
Tactile Paving
Tactile Paving is the technical term for those raised round bumps. The SMRT website points out that the tactile paving in Singapore leads to the wide wheelchair access gate where you put in your ticket to enter the platform or go to the escaltor down to the platform.

Useful Websites
http://blog.smrt.com.sg/smrt-mobility-features/ (Tactile paving)

How I edit photos

Problems
1 You have a dozen photos of a person or place.
2 You can't remember the name of the person you met at a business meeting, holiday or conference.
3 Your photos are distorted.
4 Your picture of a holiday destination are ruined by bits of litter, graffiti, people scowling in the background and somebody's hand waving in the foreground plus your finger across the corner.
5 The helpful bystander cut off your hat and your shoes.

Answers
1 However busy you are, go through the photos and pick one to send to the organisers of the event, to put on social media or your website, with the names of the persons, the place, and yourself as photographer so they can come back to you later for more photos.

Captions
2 Caption every photo immediately with the names of people and the place, whilst you have the literature handy. Photograph the event programme or tourist brochure so that you have the name of the place with correct spelling for later captioning.

Look for banners or advertisements with the names of the event and organisers and phone numbers and correct addresses and postcodes and websites.

3 Your photos may be distorted because you are too close. At an event, try to sit in a different place in the second half.

Watch any professional photographers. If they are professional they may have a tripod.

If you have a small camera such as a smart mobile phone you might need to be near to the people on stage.

If you think you have distorted photos, ask them to pose later. With a window behind you will get a silhouette. (Might be useful if they don't like being photographed.) Too much light and they screw up their eyes. Take two photos, preferably from different angles.

Take one vertical picture and one horizontal. Most magazines are A4 or A5, tall, so you/ they want one photo that shape. You might want a vertical picture for the back cover of a book.

Multiple Photos
Take at least two photos. In case they shut their eyes in one photo.  Or you have camera shake on the first one.

Steady your camera against an upright surface such as a desk or shelf or wall if there is poor light.

Editing
1 I cut out duplicates, blanks from having the view finder covered and photos accidentally taken of my own foot.
2 I go through several versions of the same place or person and select the best. The others can be deleted or hidden. I have found that if I have six photos almost the same and edit only one I risk accidentally loading up one of the un edited versions. to edit every one wastes a lot of time.
3 I lighten a photo where the face is in shadow because of the angle or because the person is dark skinned.
4 I click on contrast to enhance colour. If the colours look unnatural, I gradually go back towards the original.
5 I sharpen the picture. If this reveals spots and wrinkles on faces I can either edit out spots and wrinkles or go back to soft focus.
6 I crop to remove distractions: the fire extinguishers, the notices about other events, the handbags in the aisles, the disembodied feet and hands from somebody else unknown alongside, the cigarette butts in the street, the trailing wires from electrical equipment.
7 I could keep two similar photos in case I ever want to offer one as an exclusive and then get asked for another photo by somebody else.
8 I use the one with the graffiti, cropped to show the graffiti, in an article about graffiti. I use the one with the cigarette butts, cropped to concentrate on the cigarette butts, for a post about smoking.

Self Censorship
9 I self censor the photos. If that was a photo of me, would I want it to show me frowning, scowling, with wrinkles and blemishes?

If I were the tourist board or PR would I want the photo showing the place looking a mess? But if I were a tourist, would I want to know that the pretty place seen empty at sunset after closing is full of queues of people at mid-day on a bank holiday?

I can show both pictures as a contrast and use that as a tip for tourists. Or even show photos of a queue (Americans say line-up): For example: ''Go at sunset to take a romantic photo without the crowds.'

I can write a caption to please the tourist board whilst warning the tourists. For example, "You can see how popular 'Dracula's' Bran Castle, in Romania, is in summer time."

Or, a building under scaffolding in the UK: "The museum is closed for renovations. I plan to go back next summer. Make a note in your diary."

Time Taken
It takes me half a minute or a minute to write a caption and another half a minute or a minute to edit the photo. That is a short time.

However, if you have thirty pictures of an event, that's at least half an hour of your time, plus the time emailing to the subject of the photo, event organiser, or a magazine or newsletter or social media page.

If you have sixty pictures of a big event or a two day event, that's at least an hour. A three day weekend conference or a holiday means three hours, half a day. You can see why a photographer would expect to be paid, or at least a big thank you, a photo credit, and maybe a certificate of appreciation, a round of applause at the next event, or a small gift.

You don't see the time they spent deleting all the photos where people waved and made camera blur, or the idiot at the back made a V sign over the head of your VIP.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please bookmark useful posts and share links to posts which you find informative or amusing.

Do you want to make a book of your travels?

Problem
You want to make a memory book of your travels. What are your choices?

Answers
1 PHOTO BOXES
Stick them in a shoe box with card dividers by date or country. I visited the head of a photographic society in new Zealand. He had a room the size of a library full of photos of his lifetime's travels. How did he keep track? He filed everything in date order. Everything was numbered by first the date and then consecutive numbers. So 1990's first photo was 1990/1/1/1. The first of January 1991. It was in the box kept in date order.

He kept a second index by subject. So photos ofMount Fuji or whales would be listed by the subject and date. For example, Whales 1990/1/1/2. The second photo taken on Jan 1st 1990 would be a whale. he could get out a dozen photos on a subject, and later replace them, and later still find them again.

Most holiday records will be for yourself and friends and family, a hen party, stag do, or club, about 25 people maximum, meaning printing about 25 copies, rather than selling to the public. You can also do a one-off book for yourself, as insurance against losing your phone or computer or website.

2 PHOTO CALENDARS

3 PHOTO BOOKS
Yesterday evening June 7th 2017, I sat with a friend looking at the prices of producing a book. We found:

On Lulu.com a paperback book, black and white photos inside (colour cover)
for 100 pages black and white photos inside would cost £2.95 to print.

For 115 pages black and white would cost £3.17 to order a printed copy.
A colour book for 115 pages would cost £16.98.

Postage was expensive. Depending on whether you wanted just royal mail, or were wiling to pay extra for tracking. The highest postage rate was for next day delivery plus tracking. Why would you ever be in such a hurry? You should order well in advance. What tends to happen is you decide three weeks before a conference that you need to print a bon You spend a week planning and writing. Then the book arrives. You diced to rewrite it or write a second book. Deadline approaches. To be sure of it arriving in time you have to pay extra for fast postage.

I went back through my gmail folder labelled Lulu to see the emails of offers I had been sent in the previous year. Offers included, 10% off. Then 15% off if you ordered one book. Thirty per cent off if you ordered five. Spend £40, save14% (that doesn't look right?) and get free ground shipping.

Save £40 on five or more books (five copies at 115 pages, for £16.98 is a toal of £85.90 but after the £40 discount it costs £45.90 plus shipping.

The next offer was save £40 on 25 or more books. 25 copies of colour at 115 pages would cost £425, with 40% off that is reduced to £169.80.

We also looked at ISSUU.
ISSUU

My friend wanted to know how I produced a book from Facebook.
BLOG2Print
Then we turned to Blog2 print which prints books from Blogger, Wordpress, Typed and Tumblr.

Not Facebook? Why was next?

BLURB
Blurb was charging Us dollars $14.99 for 20 pages and 20 centre per extra page. Going to a currency converter site we saw that was £11.57 for a twenty page book. Only 20 pages! Not enough. My friend had lots to say, as well as producing illustrations.

My Social Book
MySocialBook.com makes books by extracting your posts from Facebook or Instagram. The cost was £30.60 for 324 pages? with free shopping but covering only April to June of one year with was 2 months, at £10.??

We had been going to look at e-books but we had been going for two hours and stopped to go our separate ways and eat.

The exercise was sufficient to show my friend that if she wanted to produce a book to show to her club, she could display one book on a welcome desk, then tell people, perhaps through a flyer, that they could order the book on line. That reduced her expenditure to under 325 including postage and allowed the public to buy a reasonably priced ebook.

You could do the same kind of comparison exercise again for yourself. If you are taking notes in a lined book, I suggest you make four or five columns, to compare black and white, colour, 100 pages, 115 pages, one copy, 25 copies discount of 10%, and add shipping costs.

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share my posts.