Month: June 2012

And we’ve got one.

[Did you miss the beginning of this story? It’s over here…]

I’m not sure if you knew this, but I’ve been Knitty’s graphic designer since we began. Everything about the visual look of the magazine is in my job description, and I love the graphic part of working on Knitty just a little too much. When I’m stressed, I design stuff for the Knittyshop. It calms me. I’m weird, aren’t I?

Anyway, I worked hard on a logo for this big occasion, and came up absolutely empty. It was too important to me. I was dry. So I put out a call on Twitter, and a lot of really great designers came forward. One really stood out, though, as the most Knitty-esque, and I was very glad when she agreed to work with us! You’ll see why when I show you the result of our collaboration:

This is the work of Cynthia of Green Couch Designs. I think it’s whimsical but stately. Is that possible? Yes. I say so.

This logo feels a lot like us.  Cynthia was wonderful to work with, and I would recommend her without question to anyone looking for a designer. She has none of that pretentious ego that some designers I’ve met [in my past life…it’s none of you, don’t worry] can bring to a project. She simply gave me a lot of options, and was great fun to work with. And fast. Okay, enough of that.

This logo will be used throughout the 2012-2013 publication year, and yes, we’ll be putting up a special Cafepress shop with Anniversary merch for those who like shwag like we do. We’ll let you know with a blog post when it’s ready for y’all to browse.

Cynthia designed this logo to work the way I like to — the current seaside blue can be swapped out for any color we want. Here are a few examples of what we could do, edited to fix my error — I had the 10 in the contrast color, not black as it was supposed to be. Blame me, not the designer! 

So, tell us. What do you think? Do you like the logo? What color would you like to see it in?

My journey to become a better photographer continues. Part 1 here. Part 2 here.

Step 7: Get familiar with basic photo editing software.
Cropping is your friend. Even the simplest of apps – the Windows Microsoft Office Photo Gallery application enables cropping and provides basic light tools. Crop out stuff you don’t want. Lighten up a dark shot.

And I know this isn’t directly related to being a good photographer, but it makes you a good friend: If you’re planning to email your photographs around, learn to create smaller copies so you don’t jam up your friends’ mailboxes.

And learn more about what else you can do with photo editing software. Franklin Habit, photographer extraordinare, recommends The National Geographic Field Guide to Photography. I learned tons from this book about what you can do with photographs once they’re on your computer. Adobe Photoshop is the grand master at this stuff, but there are others.

Step 8: Take your camera everywhere.
I know, this one seems obvious, but just today I walked past an amazing garden thick with daisies, and I didn’t have my camera with me. The worst photo of all is the one you never took.

Other Tips To Improve Your Photography From The Very Wise

• Buy a reflector Laura says it best. $14 and it’s like you’ve got your own lighting studio!
• If you’re taking photos of your work, or posed shots, take your time: don’t expect to be able to create a really great posed shot in 5 minutes. Set aside time so that you can experiment. Sometimes, you won’t know if the photo is good or not until you’ve looked at it on your computer, and you may want to go back and reshoot.
• Play with clever settings on camera I bet your camera has some clever pre-programmed settings. Mine has settings for sports (a fast shutter speed with shorter time between shots), for low-light shots, for shooting in fireworks, for shooting in snow (tweaks the colors so that the white doesn’t blow out the other colors). Play with them!
• Learn from your camera: when in Auto mode, your camera display should tell you what settings it’s using to take a shot. Make note of those, switch your camera over to manual and recreate those settings. Take a few shots. Then change one of the settings and shoot again. And set the first one back and play with another setting. Take notes as you’re doing this so you know which settings you changed in which order. Then when you’re going through the photos later, you can compare the adjusted settings to see the differences.

This is a tricky shot. Backlit, and it’s clear the camera wasn’t really sure what I wanted to emphasize more. And then I turned to manual mode and left everything the same but for the aperture, and what results is this:

In the second one, the sock is better lit and I love the way the sunshine lights up the beer.

And Steps 9 through 1,000,000: Take Pictures!
Remember, you can’t get better if you don’t practice.

Part 2 of a series documenting Kate’s efforts to take a decent photograph. Part 1 appeared last week.

Step 4: Get to Know Your Camera

The manuals for most cameras are pretty terrible for photographers in my position. They’re sort of like computer manuals – they explain what a button does (e.g. “Av sets the camera into Aperture Priority mode”) without actually explaining what that all means and why I would want to do it.

As soon as I realized this, I bought myself a copy of a guidebook specific to my camera manual: David Busch’s Canon Powershot G12 Guide to Digital Photography. Not only does it explain what all the buttons and dials and settings do, it shows you how to use them, and why you might want to use them.

Step 5: Practice, Practice, Practice

You can’t get better at something without practicing, and it was Caro who suggested a ‘photo a day’ project.  Every day, I make a point of taking out the camera and take some photographs. Easy.

And every day, I make a point of looking at the shots I’ve taken and posting one of them to my ‘Photo a Day‘ page on my blog. They are not all good – in fact, most of them aren’t – but being forced to look through them and choose which one I like best is making me really look at the pictures I’ve taken.

And all the shots have something to teach me. For example, I love this one, except for the edge of the table on the right side, and the stray sunglasses on the left. And if I’d cropped those out, I would have lost the top of the straw.

However, I like the composition and the colors – the red and white of the straw really pops –  and the light is pretty good.

This is the great thing about digital photography – you’re not paying for film or developing – it costs the same to take 200 pictures as it does to take 2. And as long as you’ve got space on your memory card, you can take as many as you want. Take the same picture from 10 different angles. Take  the same picture with and without flash. Take the same picture on fully automatic mode and in other modes. Take the same picture with different settings.

Step 6: Look and Learn
Caro, photographer extraordinaire, wrote this brilliant article “10 Ways to Instantly Improve Your Finished Object Photography” for Petite Purls. She teaches by example – showing pictures of good & bad photos.

Follow Caro’s lead – look at your own photographs, and look at everyone else’s too. What do you like? What do you think works? What do you think doesn’t?

For example, this one: great concept, but I don’t like the result. Rather than just deleting it, I spent some time looking at it.

It’s all very orangey-brown: orangey-brown dog on orangey knitting on orangey-brown floor. And the framing is pretty terrible: there’s a chair leg center left, a corner of our kitchen floor top right, and part of the seat of a chair bottom right. And this was taken at night, so the flash is reflecting off the floor just above the dog.

But it’s a picture, and it taught me a lot about color. Now, wouldn’t that blanket look great against the concrete I used for the background of the picture of the book, top left? Hmm….

To Be Continued
More next week!