The title may be misleading. I don’t mean taking photos of your kids, but with them. As in: go on a photowalk. You might be surprised what you get – for example, this: Click to continue »
Observations
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Taking photos with your small child
Sunday, March 7th, 2010
The most interesting part of a Photo
Saturday, March 6th, 2010I was reading a missive only recently (sorry, have absolutely lost the link), and came across a nugget of semi-wisdom: it was posited that the most important (or interesting) part of an image is the background. This struck me, as I’ve heard similar thoughts from a variety of photographers. Shortly after the article came out, I came across a black-crowned night heron.
Now, here’s the thing. I had a decent (400mm) lens with me, and actually had a decent opportunity to catch a good shot. So, first thing: just catch the guy, right? Here was the initial result:
Black-crowned heron, first take
This will be a slow read
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010Referring to “Within the Frame
I mean, the view was spectacular: clouds rolling in, overhead. The sky blue, but going hazy – the sun was losing its strength. But there, in the distance: yes, it’s light, hitting the mountain! This is a great thing, if only I can show the contrast well. And in that sense, I think it failed.
Early on, duChemin makes a point about color. To paraphrase: if color doesn’t add anything to the meaning of the frame, don’t use it. It will merely dilute the main idea.
Now, Mr. duChemin prefers monotones and duotones. I’m not really sure what I prefer, although I do have a strong affinity for B&W – especially through NIK’s Silver efex plugin. So I played around with a few versions, trying to get a feel for things. What ended up being my favorite:
Hospital again, in B&W
If you view it large, you’ll get the intended effect: the light on the mountains, darkness all around.
This was, perhaps, a tad overdone in processing. But it makes two points: first, color wasn’t really an integral part of the experience. Black and white rendering makes that distant brightness really stand out. Second, the processing in B&W allowed me to focus on really driving in the differences in luminosity, which again drove in the point of there being light in the distance.
Besides, I also got to make it look coolish with the grain and what all…
Stop
Monday, February 8th, 2010Seriously, just stop. You’re going somewhere – the the store, to a friend’s, to work. You see the light, and it’s beautiful – say, a cold sunny day, but clouds building on the mountains to the east. The clouds pool, like a living mist. It’s beautiful, you should stop. But you keep going – it’s cold, you say. Don’t have the right lens, you say. You move on.
Too late, you’ve missed your chance. Click to continue »
Change in Website Trends
Thursday, February 4th, 2010A Photo Editor popped up on my radar again. Seems this happens weekly. This time it was just a quote, about how blogs will drive more business to photographers than websites.
This is certainly true, if not a bit obvious to many of us. And as I alluded to in a comment there, it’s not a black-and-white cutoff: static pages are fine for static information. Reference sheets, historicals – all good. But the freshness of a blog? Static sites can’t compete.
Something I’ve noticed, though – as the owner of my own business where I provide a certain amount of web-based services: a lot of my recent work has involved setting up blogs. Not just for business clients, but for personal uses as well.
The future is here, which means it’s passé. What next?
Almost Missed: Uzbeki Oppression
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010I normally don’t like making inflammatory comments, but I think that this story may just be worth it.
Summarizing from that link:
Uzbek photographer Umida Akhmedova is awaiting trial and is facing a potential sentence of six months in prison or three years forced labor. At issue is a 2007 work called Men and Women from Dawn to Dusk that contains approximately 100 of her photographs of life and customs in Uzbekistan.
I missed this when it was initially important, but fortunately Mike Johnston at The Online Photographer won’t let me forget. He posted a further link today, which has entertaining comments and a link to another 50 pictures from this lady.
Personally, I don’t see anything degrading. I suppose if I were raised in Uzbek society, I might have a different perception. But I wasn’t, and now I don’t think I’ll be going there any time soon.
I suppose they don’t want me there, either.
Constant bokeh hits
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010When I take the time to review hits for this site, I find it interesting to me that I get so many visitors who are searching for bokeh. I mean, there’s really only a couple of pics, and they’re fairly poor at best. Yet over the last three months it has been my main reason for getting traffic from image searches. Click to continue »
Slowing down on posts
Saturday, January 16th, 2010I suppose it’s normal to start out a blog with a flurry of posts, then slow down over time. While reviewing posts over the last year, I noticed a definate pattern: the more frequently I posted, the lower the quality of the topics and writing. This was not 100%, and is of course a highly biased self-assessment.
Just an interesting note. I believe I’ll be putting less pressure on myself to do frequent posts, and more effort into doing quality posts. Which is highly subjective.
Maybe I’ll just put more effort into amusing myself. That sounds like fun.
Orange Beer
Thursday, January 14th, 2010
Orange Beer
“What is wrong with your beer?” he said. “It’s orange!”
And I thought: yes, indeed, why? I mean, beer is usually a yellowish brown. But then I remembered: brown and orange are really in the same family of colors – only brown is darker. Try it: choose a nice brown color in photoshop. Now drop on a curves layer and brighten it. As it brightens, you’ll see it go in stages from brown, to light brownish, to an orangish, to a yellow. Mess with it a little more (darken the shadows), and you’ll get a true orange – even red, if you take it far enough.
When photographing beer, if the strobe hits the bottle dead on (in this case from beneath), it’ll light it up – essentially lightening up the browns in the beer. In beer the browns are already warm & on the orange side, so it lightens them up – to a full orange.
The photo to the right/top of this post is the exact photo that started this. Note the hues of the oranges – the closer to the light source, the more yellowish it is – the higher up, the darker – until the neck of the bottle draws light in to itself again.
How to Eat Vegemite…
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010…or Marmite, or whatever yeasty variant happens to be your favorite. In keeping with the entertainment that some members of my family had with making and eating food that, at least on the surface appears pretty nasty, I’ve decided that I’m going to learn to like Vegemite this year. Call it a New Year’s resolution, if you will.
Keep in mind that before I started this, I had only ever eaten Vegemite once, in a little packet not unlike a jam packet you might find at Denny’s. Not knowing what I was doing, I took the entire thing and smeared it over a small piece of bread – as if it were peanut butter. Then I took my first ever bite of the stuff.
That was nearly ten years ago. I’m still traumatized. Click to continue »