This multipurpose chair is not just a regular chair – it transforms into a twin-size bed! It’s an ideal addition to your living room, especially if you frequently host overnight guests but lack a dedicated guest room. It’s also perfect for stretching out during a movie night! Constructed with a combination of solid and engineered wood, this chair boasts an armless structure and a spacious back and seat for a laid-back appearance. It’s dressed in a polyester fabric that comes in a fashionable solid color, with channel tufting adding a touch of vintage charm.
Achieving fast and precise focus is a primary goal of all outdoor photographers, whether they shoot wildlife, sports, adventure, or travel images. Even landscape photographers want to hit the proper point of focus when capturing static scenes.
In the eye-opening tutorial below, accomplished photographer Mario Kilian reveals his top secrets for making pin-sharp images every time. Based in central Germany, Kilian specializes in wildlife photography and he’s been shooting for over 40 years.
Even though Kilian is a working pro, you needn’t own high-equipment to take advantage of his advice. In fact, he’s known for capturing beautiful imagery with budget gear. In this episode he demonstrates how to select the proper focus mode and focus area for a variety of different tasks. And he does so in barely seven minutes.
While Kilian’s goal is to help you sharp images of birds, most of what you’ll learn applies to shooting all sorts of outdoor subjects. As he says, “In my case the autofocus system works through two main components; the lens and the camera body”—with key adjustments to both.
When using a long telephoto like his 100-500mm zoom, Kilian typically sets the focus limiter on the lens to a distance of 100 ft. to infinity. Doing so makes focus acquisition much faster, and he rarely photographs subjects that fall inside this range.
Tip number two involves important camera settings, with an explanation of the various autofocus modes offered by most DSLR and mirrorless cameras. Once you understand the differences it’s much easier to choose the best option for any particular subject.
The lesson wraps up with an important discussion of how to pick the most appropriate AF Focus Area for the task at hand. When photographing stationary subjects Killian typically uses a single small focus point because, “it helps me a lot to get the bird without having the risk that the focus moves into other places” like adjacent tree branches.
Kilian then describes why he always selects a large Focus Area when photographing birds in the sky. He says the most difficult situation occurs when birds are flying low to the ground or water—with trees or other objects in the background. He then explains the settings and techniques he prefers for challenging scenes like these.
Adobe created quite a buzz with the recent update to Photoshop, much of it with regard to new Generative Fill capabilities. But there’s another significant improvement that hasn’t received quite the attention it deserves.
Photoshop’s Gradient tool received a big bump in productivity, as you’ll see in the tutorial below from the Joy of editing YouTube channel. Among other enhancements, this helpful tool now provides real-time visual feedback.
According to instructor Dave Kelly, this headline feature now enables you to “effortlessly preview and enhance your photography with precision gradient adjustments.” Kelly demonstrates how this works, in barely 14 minutes, while explaining other improvements to the Gradient tool.
Kelley says “this is a really great addition to Photoshop,” and he uses two images to walk you through the process. His first example is a landscape scene when a mountain looming in the distance. His simple goal here is to darken both the sky and the foreground.
The first step is to grab a Curves adjustment layer. Then Kelly changes the Blend mode from Normal to Multiply to initially darken the entire image. He inverts his white mask (to make the darkening adjustment invisible) and gets to work with the Gradient tool’s hot new features.
Kelly illustrates the types of gradients available and provides keyboard shortcuts to speed up the step-by-step process. The enhancements work really well, and they happen in a hurry. There’s also an option to use the old and familiar “classic” Gradient tool, but by the end of this lesson it’s unlikely you’ll want to do that.
The second demonstration image is a tight wildlife shot of an imposing big cat in the very foreground with a soft-focus background that is pretty effective. For this shot Kelly wants to add some extra impact with a warm golden glow in the upper right corner of the scene.
For this straightforward edit Kelly says a Radial gradient is the best way to go because it enables him to give the glow a realistic contour. As you’ll see, this requires barely more that placing your cursor in the corner of the image and dragging the gradient down and toward the middle of the frame.
He then opens the color picker, chooses the perfect tone, and changes the blend mode from Normal to Screen. A few quick minor tweaks and the transformation is complete.
At Photography Life, we are introducing weekly photo challenges so you can practice your photography and editing! There are two types of challenges: a photography theme challenge and a Raw editing challenge.
