It’s hard to believe that its been two months since I’ve lasted posted.
Grad school has kept me busy, but it’s been enjoyable. What I’ve come to realize over the past week is that I’ve dropped the editing of my photos from over the summer and creating a diary of the trip.
The impetus for the thought – Ken Burns’ series on the National Parks. Another outstanding series from him. I love watching the imagery and the narrative on the background stories behind the parks. You have to shake your head and wonder why the citizens of Wyoming didn’t want to protect this –
Oxbow Bend at Sunset
My take on Hopper
Originally uploaded by irishwildcat
One of my favorite artists.
Canon’s introducing new Firmware to 5D Mark II to give it full manual control in movie mode – http://www.usa.canon.com/app/emails/eosmay095dmii/?WT.mc_id=EM0905EO04002.
The manual mode was sorely missing from the camera, causing those who wanted to shoot video and control their aperture settings to find 3-party lenses to mount on to their camera bodies. This is going to make it a lot easier to utilize this feature. It’s still going to be non-trivial for the novice user given the need to put it on a tripod an manual focus. An the “indie” film buffs will whine still as to why it shoots at 30fps rather than 24….
Firmware is available next week (2 Jun 2009). I’ll wait a few days before installing, though.
Recently, I was going through my photo collection within Lightroom and came across this image I took a couple of years ago at the Monterey Aquarium. It’s not necessarily good or bad, but now that’s two years later, I’m realizing that there are some very quick changes that I can do to enhance it:
So, here’s how I re-processed it:
- Used Lightroom 2.3 instead of 1.x. The improved processing engine (esp for noise) made an immediate difference.
- Next, I brought it into Photoshop CS3 and applied Imagenomic’s Noiseware at default settings. (At a recent workshop, I really picked up how important it is to use noise reduction early in the process as it minimizes the noise artifacts from being magnified during later processing.
- Third, I cloned out the tentacles and jellyfish along the left hand side. I also went through and cleaned up various spots (either junk on the window, my lens, my sensor, or “stuff” in the water). This comes back to looking at what’s the subject of the photo – which is the primary jellyfish swimming down from the upper left. Once that’s identified, subtract what’s not needed to simplify the image. I choose to keep the other jelly fish in the background to give it a sense of depth. I also like how the curve of the background jellyfish “frames” the subject.
- Finally, I sharpened the image with a high-pass sharpen action
So here’s the final version now:
Your thoughts?
I spent last week taking a photography workshop in the North Carolina Outer Banks.
Although parts of the workshop left something to be desired, overall it was a great experience. I got to meet some new friends (John, Scott, Joseph, Davis) as well renew a friendship (Bart) with someone I took a workshop with last year. (I’ll talk about the workshop experience in a later post).
Below a Google map of various places I’ve discovered to photography whether it be through the DLWS Workshop, the Carolinas’ Nature Photographers Association (CNPA), or my own research:
View Outer Banks Photography Locations in a larger map
In addition to these locations, there’s always other standard things to be found along the coast: (some of these items are more desirable than others)
- Beach – people, crowds, kite flying, fishing
- “Culture” – tourist traps, minature golf courses,
- Wave abstracts
Exposed, by Claire Lewis, is a quick, fun read into the neurotic world of wedding photography. Claire gives quick, funny, and insightful comments on a wide range of weddings – from the quirky to the disaster to the perfect. And perfect, isn’t what most young brides think of – it’s what works best for the couple, their families, and their friends. About every three chapters, Claire gives a quick autobiography of her life – both professionally and personally.
There’s not necessarily a lot to learn from a technical standpoint outside of the additional equipment list that she carries in her bag. But wedding photography (from an outer sider’s perspective) isn’t about technical skill (which is mandatory), it’s about how to run a business and survive what ever gets tossed your way.
Final recommendation: Read a copy from the local library. It’s enjoyable, but necessarily something that you’ll want to read again. If you enjoy the story, you may also want to lurk on the wedding forum at Fred Miranda – glimpses into a spectacle that can be like watching a train wreck, but at the same time, seeing some amazing photography.
This book is very similar in some ways to Bryan Petterson’s Understanding Exposure, but goes beyond into covering more technical details and providing specific techniques to improve the photographs that you make, as well as details to improve through post-procssing.
I don’t think advanced photographer’s will benefit from reading the book, but both beginners and intermediates will. The book starts with an overview of composition, followed by discussions of exposure in terms of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Next, he presents an excellent overview of the various ways light appears in photographs (side, top, front, back, ….) with very relevant photographs. Rick covers various exposure modes available in digital SLR camera’s, hints for tricky circumstances, and ways to improve your photographs with flash.
The photographs throughout the book are stunning and appropriate for the related text.
Well worth the purchase price for $19.77 at Amazon.
If you publish a vendor’s site that has just declared bankruptcy prior to the list being published?
RitzCamera appears #67 on this list – http://www.web100.com/photo-100
What’s even more shameful is how much higher it appears ahead of couple serious camera stores such as B&H (#89) and Adorama(#100).
Taken in Fall, 2009 – a couple sharing a moment of tenderness with each other.
As I’ve tried to mature and grow as a photographer, I’ve studied other photographer’s work much more closely than I had previously:
- What is the subject of the photo? How identifiable is it? Are there extraneous elements?
- Does the picture tell a story?
- How does the eye move through the photo? Where does it go to first?
- When was the photo taken? This is both the time of the day as well as the time of the year. You don’t get colorful leaves except in fall and sunbeams only appear in slot canyons during the summer.
- What were the approxiamete aperture and shutter speed settings?
- Why did they choose the particular composition?
- What compositional elements did they use? color, patterns, lines, shapes, texture
- How did “light” play into their photograph?
- How did they choose to post process the work?
- Does the background enhance or distract?
