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Photography student Josefine Amalie explores underrepresented bodies in her work The Human Body

RAW talent with Josefine Amalie

Josefine Amalie is a dreamer. Sensitive to the inequalities in the world, the recently graduated Danish photographer is interested in creating narratives through her work that break with what we are used to seeing.

In this latest post in our RAW Talent series, Josefine tells us about how she tries to deconstruct stereotypes and create a different reality with her photography and how Capture One helps her along the way.

Tell us a bit about yourself!

Where to start. I’m an idealist and I easily get impassioned. I have a vibrant inner life, where I often daydream and invent all sorts of stories and visualizations. I hate that we are not all equal and I often get overwhelmed by the thought of people struggling all over the world.

And for the formal part; I have served an apprenticeship for fashion photographer Rasmus Mogensen in Paris and corporate and portrait photographer Norddahl & Co in Copenhagen during my studies at NEXT CPH. Besides that, I have a bachelor’s in Communication and Digital Media from Aalborg University in Copenhagen. Now, I am living in Copenhagen with my fiancé and our 1.5-year-old son.

How did you get into photography and visual storytelling?

I always saw myself as an academic, and I have never had a creative hobby. But as a young woman, I started to take interest in the fashion industry and figured out that it was the photo and the visual elements, and not the clothing, that interested me.

I started taking pictures of all kinds of things in the street – often ugly or weird stuff that wasn’t photogenic at first glance. But I loved the thought that I could make it beautiful or interesting with the camera and my framing.

Your work has a strong focus on empowering minorities and underrepresented communities. Why do you think it’s important to give voice to these people and their stories?

As a young, white, slim, cis-gender, straight female in Denmark, I am very privileged, and I have felt represented everywhere and felt that I could do anything because I had people like me to look up to.

I think it should be like that for everyone. My story can be seen everywhere, so I think it’s time to give that space to someone else.

Our diversity is a huge gift for everyone, so let’s embrace it and show how many different amazing people there are out there. Representation is certainly not everything, and it is not the answer to equality. But I hope that by learning about each other, hearing each other’s stories, and seeing more diversity in the media, we can approach each other and hopefully get more equal opportunities over time.

Your work touches upon sensitive topics. A common thread seems to be body positivity. How do you get your subjects to look so comfortable when they’re at their most vulnerable?

I try not to stage or instruct them because I think the story is more natural if the people in it take control instead of me.

I almost never work with professional models because I don’t like them to be performing; they just have to be themselves, relaxed, and just be. So, I try to make a pleasant atmosphere and take the time to make them feel calm and relaxed.

Why do you think photography is a good medium to deconstruct stereotypes?

To create a narrative, you will have to make some choices; something must be selected and something else must be left out. You have to point the camera in a certain way and frame the reality. You can’t include everything. In that creation lies a power that you have to be aware of and consider the consequences of.

There is so much information in a picture. Depending on what your background is and what you have experienced, it can be interpreted very differently. A lot can go wrong in communication, and I think many use stereotypes to make a clear story that is easy to decode.

The problem, as I see it, is that communication and narratives can construct our reality. So, if we only show stereotypes and the majority, we create a world where there is no room for diversity and a world where you, based on your appearance, are put into a box that might not fit you.

I also understand why a lot of people are scared to break away from stereotypes because it might steal the attention from the actual story. But again, I think that when you have the power to make narratives, you need to take that power seriously and consider the effect of your narratives and be aware of your bias. But I also believe that communication can create reality.

How/when did you first hear about Capture One and what role does it play in your creative process?

I got introduced to Capture One through my education and my apprenticeship.
Most of my creative process lies within my head. But I work with different color grading to experiment with other expressions.

What are the aspects of Capture One you enjoy the most? How does it influence your workflow?

I use Capture One in the photo session so that I and the person I am portraying can see the pictures as we take them. It is a big help to evaluate the work through the process. Also, it is a crucial tool in making the narrative throughout selecting the photos. I think that selecting the photos is one of the most important parts of photographing because it is where you make the narrative. And Capture One Pro is my favorite tool for that.

If you have one tip to give to new Capture One users, what would that be?

Learn the basics, and don’t get caught up in all the opportunities. When you learn the basics and get very good at that, then you can play with all the special features. But don’t let the technology or software control your photos; practice so that you can use the technology or software to create and support your narratives.

Discover more of Josefine’s work here or follow her on Instagram to see her upcoming projects.

Are you new to Capture One? Try it for free here.

6 tips to become a Capture One superuser from Sarah Silver

Knowing your software is power. It lets you express yourself creatively because you don’t waste time thinking “how do I do this?” and leaves more room to think “how can I take this ten steps further?”

Fashion and beauty photographer – and Capture One superstar – Sarah Silver shares her best tips for speeding up your workflow, getting better images, and becoming a Capture One superuser.

Make shortcuts for anything and everything

Crowned by her colleagues as the Queen of Hotkeys (or shortcuts), Sarah has customized every part of her workflow to be ready at her fingertips.

“If I could hotkey making breakfast, I would,” she says. “Not only do hotkeys make me more efficient, but it also uses the part of my brain that I used when I played the piano as a kid. It’s like playing a chord.”

Giving her hotkeys easy-to-remember names, like ‘three across’, ‘corner’, ‘spider’, and ‘wall’, helps her immediately find the finger placement and function for each of her shortcuts and makes it easier to let her colleagues on set know what to do with the images while she is shooting.

“I have made a bunch of my own custom hotkeys, but I also use a lot of the OG hotkeys,” says Sarah, encouraging people to fall in love with the existing shortcuts in Capture One Pro.

Learn how to use and set up your own shortcuts/hotkeys here.

Sarah’s hot(key) tip #1: Make a list of all your favorite hotkeys and memorize one a day.

Sarah’s hot(key) tip #2: If you are going to do something more than once in a session, save time and energy by making or using a hotkey. Don’t use the mouse unless absolutely necessary! It slows you down and makes you less efficient.

Use filters to edit everything all the time with hotkeys

Sorting through images and selecting the best ones can be one of the less enjoyable parts of any job. Sarah speeds up this part of her work and gets her final selections done in no time by being fluent in the software, using hotkeys when culling, and filtering down her favorites.

“Two weeks ago, I had a job where I had an hour to shoot, 20 minutes to edit, 5 minutes to upload to the retoucher, and 24 hours to get the first round of retouching done. That’s fast!”

“How do you do it? Hotkeys and filters. Not thinking about how to use your software but being more concerned with the visual. More time editing, more time shooting, less time computing.”

Here is Sarah’s culling process step-by-step:

1. While shooting pick rough favorites – Add a green tag to all your favorite images to start (press ‘+’ on your keyboard to add a green tag).

2. Use the filter function to see the images you tagged with green only [“3 ACROSS” (CONTROL + OPTION + COMMAND) & +]. From here select your super faves by giving them a 5-star rating [press ‘5’ on your keyboard to add a 5-star rating].

3. Remove the green filter and filter to show 5-star ratings only. Then downgrade images you like less to 4 stars. The 4-star images disappear from the screen but are still searchable by green and 4-star ratings. (press ‘4’ on your keyboard to add a 4-star rating).

4. Voila! Your selection is DONE!

Pay it forward

Do your images unintentionally end up look different from one shoot to another? Add an image from a prior folder into a new session/catalog to compare the earlier capture with the new captures so that everything matches. Sarah calls this ‘paying it forward’.

“I am notorious for bumping the settings on my camera. And we won’t notice because we are shooting so fast. But if you pay it forward by adding an image from the last shoot into the new folder, you can tell.”

“I always copy forward a favorite from the last shoot to make sure my Capture One settings, look and feel, and camera settings transfer over to the new folder,” she says.

“It’s a great way to maintain continuity from folder to folder and make sure you don’t bump your camera settings. Since I put the camera down and pick it up often during a shoot, it is a common issue for me!”

Bigger is better – Export at 200%

“I like to export my images at 200% so that when I crop them down in post, they’re still very large,” says Sarah.

“I have been doing this for years and have never experienced that it affects the quality in a negative way – as long as your histogram looks healthy. But it gives you a lot of freedom to crop the images how you like.”

“This is good for when, for example, the client asks me to shoot the whole face, but they also want to use a picture of the lips only.”

Share files as EIPs so they never lose their sidecars

When sending her images to the retoucher, Sarah always shares her files as EIPs. This guarantees that her settings and edits don’t get lost on the way.

“Packing them as an EIP ensures that the images you shot, and that the client likes, come back looking exactly how you intended. It makes it super easy to share files over dropbox and they always have their settings intact.”

“How many photographers have shared images without including the sidecars – the retoucher had to work from a RAW file with nothing applied, no color balance – and gotten their images back and they look terrible? When you are working with short deadlines, you can’t afford that.”

Learn how to export your files as EIPs here

More detail is more detail

To get the most amount of detail in her shots, Sarah sets her highlight and shadow warnings to 236 (highlight) and 15 (shadows).

“These days everyone wants to see real, and real is pores, and pores are natural, and natural is skin. If you overexpose something, you lose a lot of that detail. When I set my highlight warning to 236 and have a little bit of red exposure warning showing, I know I have plenty of leeway and will catch all the detail. Every pore, texture, every detail is still there.”

Learn how to adjust your exposure warnings here

New to Capture One? Find tutorials, webinars and more tips and tricks here

5 time-saving tips for photographers from Vanessa Joy

As photographers, we are always looking for ways to be more efficient in our work. We are looking for ways to save time on tedious and sometimes unnecessary tasks and get more time for being creative and doing the things we love.

In her 23+ years as a wedding and portrait photographer, Vanessa Joy has learned a thing or two about how to save time in all stages of her workflow.

In this video, Vanessa shares her best tips for a more efficient photography workflow.

Discover the Harmony Styles by Vanessa Joy here.

Set expectations

Vanessa’s first tip might not seem like an obvious time-saving tip. But if you follow it, you will save a lot of time and headaches down the line.

“You want to make sure to set your client’s expectations for the outcome about whatever it is you are promising them,” says Vanessa.

“That has to do with style, that has to do with deliverables, and creating expectations for your client off the bat.”

“Don’t just go into a shoot saying ‘I’m going to take your pictures’. Talk about the different shots you’re going to take, talk about the lighting and give examples of the overall aesthetic that you are going to photograph for your client. So they know what to expect of the outcome as far as timing, but so you also know how to plan effectively for an efficient photoshoot.”

In her own work, Vanessa likes to send her clients questionnaires to ask them about their style, their personality, what they like about each other, and what they are planning on doing with the images. This helps her know her subjects better and capture those intimate and meaningful moments that her clients expect.

Stay in one spot

Now that you have set client expectations, you want to save time on the shoot itself.

“One thing that us photographers are super guilty of is running around to all these locations to get the different backgrounds and lighting. Hold your creative roll. Slow down for just a second,” advises Vanessa.

“Once you find a spot that has really good lighting, just stay there. Stay there and pose your couple differently, try different emotions, and work within that space before you go running to the next. We don’t want to waste time going from spot to spot. Stay there and shoot to your heart’s content.”

Slide to see before and after using the “Stupid Green” Style from Vanessa’s Harmony Styles pack.

Bring only what you need

“My next tip might irk some of you photographers out there because we just love our gear so much,” says Vanessa.

“But the truth is that having a lot of gear, especially heavy gear, on the day of the shoot can be a real hindrance.”

To be efficient while you are on the shoot and not be slowed down by having a lot to carry or not finding the right equipment, Vanessa strongly recommends thinking about what you will need on the day and only bringing that.

“I know you want to pack every lens; I know you want to bring every light. But we have set expectations, we know what we are going to shoot, so plan accordingly. Pack what you need, and maybe one extra thing for a little added creativity.”

Use Styles to get a consistent look, quickly

One of our goals as photographers is to get a consistent look that fulfills what you have promised to your clients. Try to incorporate Styles into your workflow to be more efficient and get the look you are going for quicker.

Vanessa has collaborated with Capture One to create a new Style pack with some of her favorite looks to get your portraits and event photography to a great starting point. Explore the Harmony Style pack here.

Slide to see before and after using the “Grey Day” Style from Vanessa’s Harmony Styles pack.

“Now that you have set your clients’ expectations, and shot in the good light, all of that is going to make your post-production a whole lot easier. My Capture One Harmony Styles are specifically designed to save you time in your workflow,” says Vanessa.

“They include styles like Joyfully Simple, which has my creative preference, plus a lot of other styles I am sure you are going to love in black and white and color. Using Styles is going to help you edit, not just more quickly, but it’s going to help you have a more consistent look to your photos.”

Start your editing on the go

Vanessa’s last tip for making quick deliveries to her clients is by starting her editing work while still on the job.

“One thing I like to do is to rate the images on the job and then transfer them to my iPad,” she says.

Using Capture One for iPad, you can make your initial selections by rating and tagging images. You can also get a head start on your editing by applying Styles or making manual adjustments before transferring the images to Capture One Pro or exporting and sending them directly to your clients or your own social media.

“This is not only going to make you look like a hero to your clients, but it is going to help you with your culling in the long run. Right on the job, you already have what you need for social media and a blog. All of that marketing is part of your job and things you have to do as a photographer. So why not get that done on the job?”

Are you new to Capture One? Try it for free here.

capture one webinar color grading and colour editing

Color grading and color editing

Join us for a livestream on everything color!

Capture One has a host of tools to edit colors and color grade your shots to your own taste.

In this livestream, we’ll take you through the basics of the Color Balance tool and the various ways you can use it to enhance your photographs. Coupling its use with the Basic or Advanced Color Editor will give you endless opportunities for color grading.
Attend this livestream to learn how to:

The mechanics of the Color Balance tool
Simple Color Grading Techniques
How to combine the Color Grading tool with Layers
How to use the Color Editor in combination with other tools