Some designers have writing skills, others have photography skills, each with varying strengths. For some, it’s not knowing how to attain the perfect shot that’s important, it’s how to describe to clients and photographers what types of shots are needed for a set project. If it’s lacking, one way to gain this ability is to improve photography skills, so I asked the question, “How can a designer improve their skills in your industry?”

Bill

Hmmm, I’m not sure, but looking at lots of photography books is always good — and I think it’s also useful to look at the trade magazine Photo District News to get an idea of the business side of the advertising and editorial photography industry as some photographer perceive it.

Bill Wisser | Advertising and Editorial Photographer
Bill Wisser Photo.com | The Naked Eye

Bruce

Improve your skills by hiring more photographers; there is no replacement for experience. You’ve no doubt learned something since you were first “on press” supervising a job – the same goes for working productively with a photographer. Find the most talented individual you can afford (price and talent aren’t always mutually exclusive but you know what I mean) and trust. If you run into difficulty you should be able to trust in their experience to get you the best possible photographic solution. However, knowing the basics doesn’t hurt just like with lithography.

Bruce DeBoer | Photographer
DeBoerWorks Photographic Productions

Jeffrey

With all the digital cameras out there, everybody is a photographer these days… or thinks they are but I’ll share a few pointers. Look before you shoot, think about what’s in the frame, be thoughtful about the lighting and PLEASE leave the “good enough” and “I’ll fix it later” attitudes at home, you’ll be amazed at how you photographs will improve. Take your time, compose your image, be aware of how the light (natural or artificial) strikes your subject, make adjustments based on the light and capture your image. Oh and most important, have FUN! Good luck.

Jeffrey Jacobs | President
Jeffrey Jacobs Photography Inc.

Jon

1. Most importantly, adopt a colour managed workflow. If the image tags and profiles aren’t talking the same numbers the colour goes out of the window. On critical shoots involving product lines this can mean many many rounds of proofing which can be avoided by a good solid end-to-end colour management regime.
2. Understand unsharp mask as it applies to images and output, so a large hi-res file that gets reduced in size gets the right sharpening to restore the acuteness lost in the downsampling.

Both the above are REALLY important!!!!

Colour management of images:

Photographers work primarily in RGB. Designers work in CMYK. The middle point can be easy or painful! Any professional photographer worth their salt has a colour managed workflow. Meaning we work in colourspaces and our files are colour managed so the next computer in the chain knows how to display those images properly. Any machine running a colour-aware software package like Photoshop MUST have the colour management dialogues working and set up correctly else its a throw of the dice whether the colours and saturation are on or off. Lots of good web resources for this subject though hard to get your head round initially.

CMYK conversions

Some photographers convert to CMYK before supply and some don’t. Those that do will normally be working to a designer/printer with specs of the actual press the images will be printed by. You can’t hope to get a decent CMYK print from just converting in Photoshop by the way, you must have an icc profile from the press you are printing to or a colour standard to convert to.

In the digital world colour management is king. Ignore at your peril!

Sharpening of files

On quite a few occasions I have supplied large files that are downsized quite a bit by a designer and then sent to print. No sharpening was applied and the acutance/contrast of the image suffers and it looks mushy. I include a readme file on CDs to ask designers to sharpen at the OUTPUT size required. All images unsharpened as a digital image must be sharpened as the last step in the chain, at the required output size and dpi and after the CMYK conversion. This is becoming much more important as native file sizes supplied by photographers are getting larger due to larger captures from the newer generations of cameras and digital backs.

Jon Boyes | Advertising and Editorial Photographer
Jon Boyes

Patrick

I think the best thing a designer can do to improve their skills is work closely with their photographer. Over the past few months I’ve learnt a lot by working closely with my designer at my new place of employment.

Patrick Chuprina | Photographer
Chuprina Studios

Rochelle

Many might say it’s all about keeping up with the constantly changing technology, but I believe it’s most important to keep your mind fresh and creative. What a photographer is really selling is his or her ability to see what others don’t see, and to capture it. I would recommend that photographers immerse themselves in a variety of hobbies, clubs, traveling etc., for sources of inspiration and new perspectives.

Rochelle Dahl | Photographer & Designer
Rochelle Dahl Designs

Tom

If you want to improve in photography, there is no other way than being behind the lens. Shoot and shoot often! Also, lighting is extremely important - so understanding good metering techniques is vital to photography. The good thing about photography is that the fundamentals haven’t changed since it started, so books about photography don’t date nearly as quickly as computer books. There are several sites on the Internet where you can submit your photos and members will critique them. Photo.net is a good site for inspiration, and there are several others that are specific to different photography disciplines. Finally, don’t be afraid to ask questions because everyone had to learn at some point.

Tom Smalling | Photographer
Tom Smalling Photography & Design | Tom Smalling’s Photography Blog

Will

Improving communications, verbally and if possible visually.

Will Williams | Photographer and Designer
Perspective-Images.com

And now we are almost at the end of the photographers section of the series. Next week will be the summary of the points made over the past several weeks.

until the next
Designers WW,
cat