Posts by Trevor Mercer

When I first moved to Columbia from Hawaii at age 3, we moved to the town of Irmo.  I lived in Irmo until I was 8 and then moved to Lexington.  I remember being very upset about moving.  In Irmo, I lived in a huge neigborhood.  Everyday all the kids would come jump on the trampoline and the ice cream truck would come by.  All you had to was walk outside and there were people to hang out with.  We moved to the deep country side of Lexington where there were no neigborhood kids to play with.  Luckily I had one neigbor my age.  But I remember hating that I moved to Lexington and hating living in SC period. 

Now that I'm a little older, I love South Carolina.  I realize all the great things that are available to the people of this state.  Here in Columbia, I have beautiful rivers where everyone hangs out and has a good time.  Of course there's Lake Murray where we can swim, boat, and ski.  Only two hours from the beach and two hours from the mountains.  This really is the life.  (Now if I only had time to get out and enjoy it all!!) 

Here's some pics I took at Saluda River and Lake Murray.  I messed with the contrast on both of these and also the saturation on the river picture.  This is how the originals looked. 

In Photoshop, to mess with Saturation.   Click on Layer/ New Adjustment Layer/ Hue and Saturation.  Here you can mess with Hue, which will change the overall color of your picture.  I typically do not use this feature.  The lightness will change how light your picture is, but I typically do this with other controls.  Saturation refers to the intensity of color.  If you compare the two river pictures, the top one has way more color to it (maybe even a little too much!).  In most cases, you want to add saturation to bring the colors out, but not TOO much that it looks unnatural.  This is a handy trick to make almost any picture look a little better. 

The other adjustment I make very often is with the Levels.  Go to Layer/ New Adjustment Layer/ Levels.  Underneath the histogram you have three sliders.  From left to right, you can control black point, midtones, and white point.  I moved the black point slider in to the right to exagerate my shadows and make the image darker.  This also seems to give the image stronger colors and more punch in my opinion.  I then moved the midtones slider to the left to lighten the image slightly.  I made no Saturation adjustments to the lake image.  The difference you see was made entirely by playing with the Levels.  I change the Levels on tons of my images, because again its an easy two-second trick to make your images look a little stronger. 

Hope this helps you make your pictures look a lil better!! 

<<TRuTH>>

Over the weekend I worked at a Soap Box Derby race.  I admit that I wasn't too excited about waking up at 7am to go watch a bunch of wooden cars roll down a hill.  But I'm glad that I did.  I was taken completely by surprise with how exciting and serious of a sport this is.  This was also the nicest group of people in the world!  Everyone offered me food, drinks, and sun screen (is it that obvious I need sun screen?!?).  Being that this is a serious sport, I wanted to get some serious shots.  I wanted to emphasize the speed these cars were getting.  What better way to do that than with a little motion blur?

Motion blur is a tricky thing to perfect.  Of course you can try to add it in with Photoshop later down the road, but I prefer to do as much in-camera as possible.  Plus even the experienced Photoshopper would have a hard time getting these results! These shots were not put through Photoshop at all.  I didnt even mess with the levels or contrast.  For all the photographers and hobbyists who want to learn motion blur - I'll try to explain the method I used. 

The first thing I do is set my F-stop, shutter speed, and ISO to get a proper exposure just like always.  Shutter speed is what controls movement and stop-action.  So in order to show movement in a picture you want a shutter speed that is slower than your subject.  I believe these shots were taken at about 1/50th of a second.  For faster moving objects, I may have used a slightly faster shutter speed.  So start dropping your shutter speed and remember how many steps it takes to get to 1/50th.  Then RAISE your F-Stop that same ammount of steps.  Your exposure should now look roughly the same as it did to begin with.  If not, adjust your F-stop accordingly. 

Here is the technique for firing the shot.  I got nice and low on the ground for a good angle.  The subjects were coming down the hill from my right to my left.  This is the hard part... you want to pan with the subject while the shutter is open.  Its important that you pan at the same speed and the same direction that the subject is passing you.  This is very tricky and although you see 3 good images here, I took several pictures that did not come out.  The more accurate your panning, the clearer the subject is.  In the first two images, I was focusing on the car furthest from me.  In the first image, its almost perfect.  Even the small text on the car is in focus.  The second image is not quite as accurate, but still very good.  When you're panning its important that you move ONLY in the direction the subject is moving, or you end up with unwanted camera movement.  Funny right?  You ARE moving the camera, but you dont want to move it in the wrong direction.  So remember, practice takes perfect.  And luckily with the digital era, practice isnt very expensive!   To see the rest of the images I took, go to

http://www.photostockplus.com/home.php?tmpl=43&user_id=33487&album=148856

 Photography is an art.  Whether you're taking beautiful scenic shots to be displayed on someone's wall or family portraits to be displayed in someone's wallet, its an art.  Trying to make a living as an artist is a difficult task, as I've learned from both the photography and the music business.  Most artists spend tons of time perfecting their art, their technique, and talent - and not enough time developing their business.  I've been working in the photography industry for my whole life.  From processing rolls of film as a child in my family's 1-Hour Photo Lab to taking portraits of soldiers graduating boot camp, I've always been involved with the business of photography.  I've had access to the best photographic equipment my entire life, and never taken advantage of it.  Until recently, all I could see with photography was dollars.  A living.   Now, however, I'm starting to see the art.  Just taking a camera with me over the weekend and having fun. 

The moral of the story is that - taking the best pictures on earth does no good if you can't market them.  I'm a photographer by trade and for a living first, and as a hobby second.  I am blessed to have been raised in this industry and have a solid foundation of business.  But many aspiring professional photographers are photographers as a hobby first, and by trade second.  Pretty pictures don't put food on the table.  So make sure you spend as much time developing your business as you do developing your art. 

That being said, these are some of the first "artistic" pictures I've ever taken.  Being a professional photographer for over 4 years, that's kinda sad lol.  But I figured I'd start off taking pictures of things I love.  The first shot is a picture taken at the Columbia fair grounds while photographing a BBQ cookoff for a children's home charity.  I just looked up and saw a beautiful scene and snapped a few shots.  I've always loved industrial scenery.  And then the beautiful sky just set it off!  The second picture is a pic I took of my car behind the Pastime movie theater in Lexington.  I did a whole photo shoot of my car that day, so more are to come.  I just really liked the angle and colors.  These were taken on a 1DS and a 40D.  I took several different shots of each of those scenes and hope to make both into collages for big prints to hang on my walls at home. 

So remember, photography (for profit) is a balance of art and business.  Most photographers are unbalanced in that their business is underdeveloped.  I have the opposite problem of not focusing enough on my art.  Well hopefully that is changing, and I'll keep posting so you can watch as I grow!  Stay tuned and hit me up with any questions or comments!