137 — 5 Photography Resolutions For the New year

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #137 finally returns to offer up 5 real­is­tic pho­tog­ra­phy res­o­lu­tions that we can make for the upcom­ing year. Happy New year Everyone!!!

Click the player at the end of this post to lis­ten to or down­load this (almost)10 minute podcast.

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Thanks for all the sup­port emails and wel­come to all the new mem­bers of the photography.ca forum!

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. |Sub­scribe with iTunes|Sub­scribe via RSS feed |Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!!

136 — Lube up your Old Filters

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #136 talks about cre­at­ing dreamy images by plac­ing Vase­line or petro­leum jelly on an old UV fil­ter attached to your lens. By doing this you are often able to cre­ate dreamy, impres­sion­is­tic images. The pro­ce­dure is sim­ple; take an OLD UV fil­ter (because remov­ing the vase­line from the fil­ter after use might dam­age its coat­ing) and screw it onto a lens. Then place a wee bit of petro­leum jelly (just a bit goes a long way) on your fin­ger and apply it to the front of the UV fil­ter. Take a few images and see what you get. Play with the level and posi­tion of the blur by remov­ing some Vase­line or mov­ing it around with your finger.

It goes with­out say­ing that you need to do this care­fully so as not to allow the Vase­line to touch your cam­era or lens. The Vase­line should only be on the front of the fil­ter. When you’re done shoot­ing, remove the fil­ter imme­di­ately and place it in a plas­tic bag. Then clean it (I just used reg­u­lar dish soap) when you get home. If you have a few wet wipes along with a dry cloth (to thor­oughly wipe your fin­ger between mov­ing the vase­line around and touch­ing the shut­ter release but­ton) and an extra plas­tic bag or two, you should have no prob­lem doing this.

Feel free to add to the con­ver­sa­tion by leav­ing a com­ment or sharing/liking this post in some way.

Click the player at the end of this post to lis­ten to (or down­load) this 9.5 minute podcast.

Here are some of the pho­tographs I was able to make with this technique;

 

Crossing Ducks - Lafontaine Park Montreal

Cross­ing Ducks — Lafontaine Park Mon­treal — Image shot with a 50mm lens using a UV fil­ter coated with petro­leum jelly

 

 

 

Dreamy Carmy - Laurier Park Montreal

Dreamy Carmy — Lau­rier Park Mon­treal — Vase­line in front of an old polar­iz­ing filter

 

 

 

Lily pads - Centre de la Nature - Laval, QC.

Lily pads — In this series of images I took a straight shot and then 2 vase­line shots over the UV fil­ter. You can see how com­pletely dif­fer­ent the 2 vase­line images look from one another. This dif­fer­ence is sim­ply due to the quan­tity and position/pattern of the Vase­line on the filter

 

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Exhi­bi­tion and Film on Impres­sion­ism and Pho­tog­ra­phy (Lorin’s com­ment from pod­cast 135)
Pic­to­r­ial Com­po­si­tion and the Crit­i­cal Judge­ment of Pic­tures by Henry Rankin Poore

If you liked this pod­cast and want to review it on Itunes, this link gets you to the main page

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My Face­book pro­file — Feel free to “friend” me — please just men­tion Photography.ca
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If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :)  Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred — Thanks Lorin Duck­man, Dave John­son and Jane Chese­brough! Thanks for all the sup­port emails and wel­come to all the new mem­bers of the photography.ca forum!

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. |Sub­scribe with iTunes|Sub­scribe via RSS feed |Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

 

Photography forum winning images of the month — Round two 2015

Hi photo lovers,

In case you are new around here this is where the Admin (me) chooses one excel­lent photo nom­i­nated by other mem­bers from the Member’s monthly choice forum. Once 10 images are nom­i­nated, I choose a ‘winner’.

Just so it’s clear, the photo I choose are not nec­es­sar­ily the best ones of the month. I’ve come to real­ize it’s not log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That’s why there are cat­e­gories in photo con­tests. My goal is to sim­ply choose an excel­lent photo and talk about why I think it rocks. 

This round of nom­i­na­tions, once again yielded images of excep­tional qual­ity and I waf­fled for a few it was very dif­fi­cult to choose just one. This round’s win­ner is Late Snowy Owl for the GTA by Rdben­der. I chose these images for sev­eral reasons;

1 — Colour/exposure — The colour here was well seen with the yel­low sign match­ing the owl’s yel­low eyes and blend­ing into the yel­lowy back­ground. Expo­sure is well han­dled with lovely non-clipped white tones.
2 — Sharpness/aperture — The eyes look razor sharp as they should be and I really like the super-shallow depth of field that sep­a­rates the owl from the back­ground.
3 — Framing/composition — Unlike many com­po­si­tions that include words that become a dis­trac­tion, here the word ‘cau­tion’ on the sign com­pli­ments this com­po­si­tion big time. We see the owl’s direct intense stare as well as its sharp claws and we should indeed take cau­tion. I very much like the scratch marks on the sign that may well have been the result of those sharp claws.

For all these rea­sons, this is my choice for this round. Since we all have opin­ions, some mem­bers may dis­agree with my choice. That’s cool but THIS thread is not the place for debate over my pick, NOR is it the place to fur­ther cri­tique the image. The pur­pose here is to sug­gest strong ele­ments in the photo that we may learn from.

Con­grats again Rdben­der!

 

 Late Snowy Owl for the GTA by Rdbender

Late Snowy Owl for the GTA by Rdbender

135 — Photographers — Get Thee To a Museum

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #135 dis­cusses how going to muse­ums to study painters and paint­ings can improve your pho­tog­ra­phy. After all, both paint­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy are 2D media try­ing to rep­re­sent a 3D world. When pho­tog­ra­phers study the com­po­si­tional and light­ing tech­niques used by paint­ing mas­ters, their own pho­tographs often improve.

Feel free to add to the con­ver­sa­tion by leav­ing a com­ment or sharing/liking this post in some way.

Click the player at the end of this post to lis­ten to (or down­load) this 15 minute podcast.

Caravaggio - The Conversion on the way to Damascus - 1601

Car­avag­gio — The Con­ver­sion on the way to Dam­as­cus — 1601
Look how the scene and the sub­jects’ faces are lit, look at the ges­tures of the sub­jects and the over­all com­po­si­tion. Pho­tog­ra­phers can learn a lot from the mas­ter painters that lived long ago.

 

When it comes to light­ing por­traits in pho­tog­ra­phy, painters have been think­ing about the light­ing for their own sub­jects many hun­dreds of years before pho­tog­ra­phy was invented. Pho­tog­ra­phers can learn so much about light­ing by study­ing the great por­trait painters.

 

Rembrandt - Self-Portrait - 1630

Rem­brandt — Self-Portrait — 1630 — Rem­brandt is well known for his por­trait light­ing style. The tri­an­gle of light on the darker side of the face is one of Rembrandt’s sig­na­tures. Pho­tog­ra­phers love this light­ing tech­nique and it has become a basic por­trait light­ing style in photography.

 

 

Rembrandt - Jacob Blessing the Children of Joseph 1656

Rem­brandt — Jacob Bless­ing the Chil­dren of Joseph 1656 — Lovely light­ing, great ges­tures and inter­est­ing com­po­si­tions work well in pho­tog­ra­phy as well as in painting.

 

When it comes to pho­tograph­ing moun­tains and other land­scapes, pho­tog­ra­phers often zoom right into them as their first instinct and of course that’s a good thing to do for a shot or two, but then what? By study­ing the com­po­si­tional tech­niques of land­scape painters, we see that they often include lots of ele­ments that com­pli­ment the main focal point in their images.

 

A.Y. Jackson - Winter Charlevoix County - 1932-33

A.Y. Jack­son — Win­ter Charlevoix County — 1932–33  - We can see that this paint­ing has a moun­tain in the back­ground. But it’s the way that Jack­son ties in the fore­ground and midground with their visu­ally inter­est­ing ele­ments that help make this land­scape paint­ing interesting.

 

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Out­line of paint­ing his­tory
Car­avag­gio
Rem­brandt
A. Y. Jack­son
Group of Seven (artists)

If you liked this pod­cast and want to review it on Itunes, this link gets you to the main page

Please join the Photography.ca fan page on Facebook

My Face­book pro­file — Feel free to “friend” me — please just men­tion Photography.ca
My Twit­ter page — I will fol­low you if you fol­low me — Let’s con­nect — PLEASE email me and tell me who you are in case I don’t rec­i­p­ro­cate because I think you are a spammer.

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :)  Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks for all the sup­port emails and wel­come to all the new mem­bers of the photography.ca forum!

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. |Sub­scribe with iTunes|Sub­scribe via RSS feed |Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Photo Backup Strategy While Travelling

Hi there pho­tog­ra­phy lovers!

It’s been a while since my last post and pod­cast and  I hope to make up for it– shortly.
I’m lucky enough to be trav­el­ling on a pho­tog­ra­phy hol­i­day right now (I’m in Prague, CZ) and because this is a photo hol­i­day, the pho­tographs I am tak­ing are pre­cious and irre­place­able. I’d like to think that most seri­ous pho­tog­ra­phers feel the same way and so I thought I’d share my photo backup strat­egy while trav­el­ling. 

Bubbles, Kids and the Tyn Church - Prague CZ

Bub­bles, Kids and the Tyn Church — Prague CZ

Let me say up front that I am not upload­ing my RAW files to ‘the cloud’ — because upload­ing huge files (30 megs per file in my case) only works well when you have a super fast con­nec­tion and a fast com­puter. Even then, it can take a looooong time to upload 50–100 files. So far I have been to Lon­don, Paris, Ams­ter­dam and Prague. The wifi con­nec­tions, on aver­age, have been spotty every­where I have been. (I’ve been using qual­ity airbnb’s but so far my wifi has never ever been flaw­less). There­fore, upload­ing is out of the ques­tion and I’m basi­cally going old school.

Here’s my sim­ple method; The mem­ory cards that hold the files (I brought 4 cards of 32 GB each) NEVER leave my sight. They are with me 100% of the time and eas­ily fit into my pocket at all times when not inside my cam­era at my side. When my cam­era is not by my side, the cards are removed and go in my pocket.

In addi­tion, I backup those files to a small portable West­ern Dig­i­tal 2GB drive that I pur­chased for 79 dol­lars before I left. It’s around the size of a pack of 25 cig­a­rettes. Then I usu­ally hide that drive some­where in the room I’m stay­ing. This method is quite fast and effi­cient and it makes me feel safe. There would have to be 2 cat­a­stro­phes for me to lose my data.

One last thing to note — You need a decent lap­top com­puter to do this kind of thing. Tablets and Ipads are pure JUNK for photo editing.

If any­one has addi­tional sug­ges­tions to share — I’d love to hear them. Thanks and many more pics to fol­low when I return.

Photography forum winning images of the month — Round five 2014/2015

Hi pho­tog­ra­phy lovers,

In case you are new around here this is where the Admin (me) chooses one (occa­sion­ally 2) excel­lent pho­tos nom­i­nated by other mem­bers from the Member’s monthly choice forum. Once 10 images are nom­i­nated, I choose a ‘winner’.

Just so it’s clear, the photo(s) I choose are not nec­es­sar­ily the best ones of the month. I’ve come to real­ize it’s not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That’s why there are cat­e­gories in photo con­tests. My goal is to sim­ply choose an excel­lent photo and talk about why I think it rocks.

This round of nom­i­na­tion yielded images of excep­tional qual­ity and now for the sec­ond time in a row I was unable to choose just one.

This round’s two win­ners are “If you wait by the river long enough, the bod­ies of your ene­mies will float by.” by mbrager and Fort Myer’s Beach Bird­ing by Mike Bons

I chose these images for sev­eral reasons;

“If you wait by the river long enough, the bod­ies of your ene­mies will float by.” by mbrager

 

“If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.” by mbrager

If you wait by the river long enough, the bod­ies of your ene­mies will float by.” by mbrager

 

1 — Mood/Contrast/Exposure — I like every­thing about this image but it’s the expo­sure itself and the sub­se­quent post-processing (which I’ll get to) that are the stars for me. This is a late sun­set shot and it looks and feels like it. The con­trast is low, as it should be, and yet beau­ti­ful shadow detail dances with vary­ing degrees of high­light detail. This cre­ates the won­der­fully gor­geous and thought­ful mood of the image.

2 — Com­po­si­tion — Extremely well framed image and I can see the delib­er­ate think­ing that went into mak­ing it. Very thought­ful place­ment of the focal points and other ele­ments that make up the image. I love the dark moody reflec­tions at fore­ground left that seem to play diag­o­nally with the brighter high­light reflec­tions in the water as well as in the sky. There are lots of gor­geous lines for our eyes to fol­low in this pho­to­graph. These include the snow­line at midground left toward the cen­ter, bridge­line in the cen­ter, ver­ti­cal lines in the trees and reflec­tions. There are even lines in the sky for our eye to explore and enjoy.

3 — Post pro­cess­ing — Fab­u­lous choices were made in this regard. Temp­ta­tion was surely there to pull addi­tional high­light detail as well as shadow detail from the water in par­tic­u­lar. This would have made the tones more dra­matic and excit­ing, but it would have for­ever changed the mood and turned this into a com­pletely dif­fer­ent, and less inter­est­ing photograph.

(4) — The title — I don’t think it influ­enced my deci­sion, but I’m a sucker for per­fect titles like this one.

 

Fort Myer’s Beach Bird­ing by Mike Bons (Red­dish Egret)

Fort Myer's Beach Birding by Mike Bons (Reddish Egret)

Fort Myer’s Beach Bird­ing by Mike Bons (Red­dish Egret)

 

1– Colour, Clar­ity and sharp­ness — All 3 are superb in this image. I really like the tones of grey in the feath­ers and the red­dish feather tones as well. The colours and con­trast look natural.

2 — Ges­tur­ing and deci­sive moment — The bird’s ges­ture is grand and Mike’s quick trig­ger fin­ger was there to cap­ture it.

3 — Expo­sure — Expo­sure is bang on for me. A nice high shut­ter speed cap­tures the lovely feather detail and a medium aper­ture on a long lens gets good eye and feather sharp­ness while blur­ring the back­ground for good fore­ground to back­ground separation.

For all these rea­sons, these are my choices for this round. Since we all have opin­ions, some mem­bers may dis­agree with my choices. That’s cool but THIS thread is not the place for debate over my picks, NOR is it the place to fur­ther cri­tique the image. The pur­pose here is to sug­gest strong ele­ments in the pho­tos that we may learn from.

Con­grats again to Mike Bons and mbrager!

134 — Finding Your Unique Photography style — Interview with Bret Culp

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #134 fea­tures an inter­view with Toronto, Ontario fine art pho­tog­ra­pher Bret Culp. Dur­ing the inter­view we talk about find­ing and devel­op­ing your own pho­tog­ra­phy or shoot­ing style. Bret offers up some prac­ti­cal tips on how to make this process easier.

Feel free to add to the con­ver­sa­tion by leav­ing a com­ment or sharing/liking this post in some way.

Thanks to The Cam­era Store (The largest cam­era store in Cal­gary, Alberta, Canada)  for spon­sor­ing the Photography.ca podcast.

Click the player at the end of this post to lis­ten to (or down­load) the 30ish minute podcast.

Monolith, The face of Half Dome by Ansel Adams

Mono­lith, The face of Half Dome (1927) by Ansel Adams

 

Clearing Winter Storm (1938) by Ansel Adams

Clear­ing Win­ter Storm (1938) by Ansel Adams

 

The Dark Hedges, Antrim, Northern Ireland, 2011 by Bret Culp

The Dark Hedges, Antrim, North­ern Ire­land, 2011 by Bret Culp

 

Dunluce Castle, Antrim, Northern Ireland, 2012 by Bret Culp

Dun­luce Cas­tle, Antrim, North­ern Ire­land, 2012 by Bret Culp

 

Bret shares his own Artist State­ment on his Irish port­fo­lio just to give listeners/readers an exam­ple on how devel­op­ing an Artist State­ment can focus :) you.

Irish Port­fo­lio Artist Statement

The mythic Irish land­scape and its peo­ple have had a pro­found impact on one another. The Celts saw the land as a liv­ing source of wis­dom, beauty and trans­for­ma­tive spir­i­tual power. Among the first to believe in the eter­nal nature of the human spirit they con­structed mon­u­ments to death, rebirth and the cycles of the sea­sons and stars. Cas­tles, fortresses and ruins are evi­dence of untold inva­sions and con­flicts through­out a tumul­tuous his­tory. These ves­tiges of the past con­tinue to res­onate through the coun­try­side today. Beau­ti­fully poignant in the process of decay they tell their own story and pos­sess their own mor­tal­ity. Noth­ing that belongs to the earth is ever free from it. The sacred con­nec­tion between the land­scape of Ire­land and its peo­ple has not dis­ap­peared over the cen­turies.” —Bret Culp

Over­all Body Of Work State­ment

“The tran­si­tory nature of exis­tence binds every­thing in the mate­r­ial world. Care­ful obser­va­tion reveals the beauty within each fleet­ing moment.” —Bret Culp

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Bret Culp’s Irish Port­fo­lio
Ignore Every­body: and 39 Other Keys to Cre­ativ­ity by Hugh MacLeod

If you liked this pod­cast and want to review it on Itunes, this link gets you to the main page

Please join the Photography.ca fan page on Facebook

My Face­book pro­file — Feel free to “friend” me — please just men­tion Photography.ca
My Twit­ter page — I will fol­low you if you fol­low me — Let’s con­nect — PLEASE email me and tell me who you are in case I don’t rec­i­p­ro­cate because I think you are a spammer.

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :)  Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Many thanks to Tim Mackle and Ruth M for their com­ments from the last pod­cast. Thanks as well for the emails and wel­come to all the new mem­bers of the photography.ca forum!

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. |Sub­scribe with iTunes|Sub­scribe via RSS feed |Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

133 — Essential Camera Features — Interview with Royce Howland

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #133 fea­tures an inter­view with Cana­dian fine art pho­tog­ra­pher Royce How­land. Dur­ing the inter­view we dis­cuss what cam­era fea­tures we think are essen­tial. There are loads of extra bells and whis­tles on cam­eras these days and even though both Royce and I have kick-butt cam­era gear, we ignore the major­ity of the new fea­tures and focus on the essen­tials. We also dis­cuss essen­tial cam­era modes and touch on essen­tial lenses.

Of course feel free to let us know if you feel we missed some­thing essential.

Thanks to The Cam­era Store (The largest cam­era store in Cal­gary, Alberta, Canada)  for spon­sor­ing the Photography.ca podcast.

Click the player at the end of this post to lis­ten to (or down­load) the 44ish minute podcast.

I Should Be So Industrious by Royce Howland

I Should Be So Indus­tri­ous by Royce Howland

 

Royce wanted to men­tion some­thing about this image because it relates to a cool fea­ture of some new screens on cameras.

Some­thing we’re see­ing more com­monly, and the Pen­tax 645Z also has it, is a cam­era LCD that pops out with tilt or tilt-swivel move­ments so you can see it from dif­fer­ent angles. I think this idea is great.….

…This sea holly bloom and bees were about 18 inches off the ground. I wanted a shoot­ing angle of more or less straight across, rather than steeply down­wards or what­ever. That would have been very awk­ward (or even painful!) to shoot through the cam­era viewfinder, hav­ing to con­tort my neck, back, knees, etc. to work through the viewfinder for any length of time. Even using a nor­mal, non-moving LCD would have been a bit of a chal­lenge to see from above. Instead, I was able to put the cam­era on a sta­ble tri­pod, sit on a short 3-legged stool, and pop out the LCD to a com­fort­able angle that I could see just by look­ing down. No neck or back strain even though I pho­tographed from the low shoot­ing angle for about an hour.”

 

Nick Cave Osheaga 2014 by Marko Kulik - This high ISO image was made using aperture priority and I moved the focus points over the hand invading Nick's shirt. Moving those focus points is my favourite essential camera feature.

Nick Cave Osheaga 2014 by Marko Kulik — This high ISO image was made using aper­ture pri­or­ity and I moved the focus points over the hand invad­ing Nick’s shirt. Mov­ing those focus points is my favourite essen­tial cam­era feature.

 

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Royce Howland’s Pho­tog­ra­phy / work­shops
Tours-courses by Marko Kulik

If you liked this pod­cast and want to review it on Itunes, this link gets you to the main page

If you are inter­ested in writ­ing for our blog please con­tact me photography.ca ( A T ) G m ail Dot co m (using stan­dard email formatting)

Please join the Photography.ca fan page on Facebook

My Face­book pro­file — Feel free to “friend” me — please just men­tion Photography.ca
My Twit­ter page — I will fol­low you if you fol­low me — Let’s con­nect — PLEASE email me and tell me who you are in case I don’t rec­i­p­ro­cate because I think you are a spammer.

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :)  Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Many thanks to San­dra Fos­ter for her com­ment from the last pod­cast. Thanks as well for the emails and wel­come to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. |Sub­scribe with iTunes|Sub­scribe via RSS feed |Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Wounded The Legacy of War — Q&A with Bryan Adams

I saw some new pho­tog­ra­phy work by Bryan Adams a short time ago ago where he pho­tographed wounded sol­diers. The images of wounded sol­diers were stark and I wanted to ask Bryan a few ques­tions about the new work. What fol­lows is a quick Q&A about Bryan’s new work called Wounded: The Legacy of War.

Wounded - Karl Hinett © Bryan Adams

Wounded — Karl Hinett © Bryan Adams

 

Wounded: The Legacy of War — Q&A with Bryan Adams

Ph.ca - I’ve been fol­low­ing your pho­tog­ra­phy for a while and this lat­est work is the ‘rawest’ work of yours I’ve seen thus far. Can I ask what drew you to this sub­ject matter?

ba: I felt com­pelled to do some­thing for these guys as I was never happy that we went to war in the Mid­dle East. I was for­tu­nate to have meet a jour­nal­ist called Car­o­line Frog­gatt who wanted to do some­thing and she was acquainted with some of the sol­diers already, so the project started from that.

Ph.ca - Why pho­to­graph wounded soldiers?

ba: I want to cre­ate pho­tos of the time and doc­u­ment as many peo­ple as I could that had incurred these severe war injuries in order to raise aware­ness to their plight and also show peo­ple a side of the hor­ror of war that is often con­cealed from every­day media. The long term idea was that per­haps it could maybe be an exhi­bi­tion or maybe even a book down the road. All of that hap­pened thank­fully in part to my pub­lisher Steidl who saw the beauty in the pho­tos and agreed to make the “Wounded — The Legacy of War” book with me. It’s now its tour­ing the world as an exhibition.

Wounded Mark Ormrod © Bryan Adams

Wounded Mark Orm­rod © Bryan Adams

 

Ph.ca –How long did you pho­to­graph each veteran?

ba: For an hour at the most, then we would sit and have a chat and film that, I’ve not even looked at the inter­view footage, it’s just archived. Some­times these guys would stay over at my house as they had come great dis­tances from the North of Eng­land and even Scot­land to be involved and it was too much to travel there and back in a day.

Ph.ca - How long did this project take from start to fin­ish and where were the pho­tographs taken?

ba: sched­ules were always being sorted out, I sup­pose the whole thing took nearly 5 years, it was very on and off. Ini­tially it wasn’t easy to find sub­jects that would agree to being pho­tographed, but once a few sub­jects had agreed and par­tic­i­pated, rec­om­mend­ing their friends became nor­mal and the word got out.

Ph.ca - All of the pho­tographs that I’ve seen from this series high­light the vet­er­ans’ wounds, ver­sus play­ing them down through pos­ing tech­niques as other pho­tog­ra­phers have often done. Was the pos­ing of the sub­jects a col­lab­o­ra­tive process or solely under your direction?

ba: it was all ulti­mately under my direc­tion, how­ever they were wel­come to show as much as they liked and I always hoped they would show as much as possible.

I would show them what I had done with other sol­diers, and usu­ally once they saw what was going on, the shirts would come off and the wounds became very apparent.

Wounded Rory Mackenzie © Bryan Adams

Wounded Rory Macken­zie © Bryan Adams

 

Ph.ca - Did some vet­er­ans have trou­ble expos­ing their wounds so boldly?

ba: Only one as I can remem­ber who didn’t want to take off his pros­thetic limb. I never asked why.

Ph.ca - Was it an emotional/cathartic process for some veterans?

ba: I think they were curi­ous that some­one like me was doing some­thing like this, but I’ve had a lot of pos­i­tive con­ver­sa­tions with them since and the reac­tions have been incred­i­ble. Too many to men­tion here.

Mostly to do with see­ing them­selves as a vehi­cle to help other peo­ple, the unselfish­ness was hum­bling, let me tell you.

Wounded Rick Clement © Bryan Adams

Wounded Rick Clement © Bryan Adams

 

Ph.ca - Our read­ers will want to know - Can you describe the cam­era gear and the light­ing gear you used to cre­ate these photographs?

ba: It’s all shot in my day­light stu­dio using nat­ural light which I would drape off to cre­ate the amount of light for each guy. Occa­sion­ally if the stu­dio got too dark in the late after­noon, I would bounce a light into the wall to give me a stop or two and mix it with the day­light. There was never a direct source of light it was always dif­fused. I used a Mamiya RZ cam­era with a Phase One back.

Ph.ca - Given that the legacy of war will con­tinue, and there will be no short­age of future wounded vet­er­ans, will you be adding to this body of work, or is this a closed project?

ba: it’s closed for now, espe­cially now that the book is done.

Ph.ca - What addi­tional pho­tog­ra­phy projects are on the horizon?

ba: another book of sub­jects I’ve worked with is being planned, but it may be another year before it’s ready.

—————————–

I’d like to thank Bryan Adams for tak­ing the time to answer this Q&A.
30 images of Bryan’s new work are on exhibit at Som­er­set House from 12th Novem­ber 2014 – 25th Jan­u­ary 2015. The pho­tog­ra­phy book Wounded: The Legacy of War, Pho­tog­ra­phy by Bryan Adams, Edited by Car­o­line Frog­gatt is avail­able here.

Fuji X-T1 — A Fine Camera for Almost Everything

Thanks to our part­ner­ship with The Cam­era Store (The largest cam­era store in Cal­gary Alberta Canada), I recently tested The Fuji X-T1 w/the Fuji XF 18-135mm f/3.5–5.6 lens. The Fuji X-T1 is a solid, retro-looking mir­ror­less cam­era that I’ve been want­ing to test for a few months as it has been get­ting seri­ously good reviews and some pros have even touted it as a DSLR killer. Although I love my DSLR (Nikon D800E replaced by the D810), it’s heavy and a pain to carry around for hours and hours at a time. I’m always inter­ested to test smaller cam­eras that can give my DSLR a good fight for its money in the hopes that one day I can just bury the DSLR beast.

Fuji X-T1

Fuji X-T1

 

For those that want the con­clu­sion at the begin­ning, I really liked the Fuji– XT1 and I’ll talk about why in a few para­graphs, but let’s get that DSLR killer thing out of the way.

Straight off the bat this is one of the best mir­ror­less or point and shoot dig­i­tal cam­eras I have tested. It goes head to head to with my DSLR on many lev­els. That said, it can­not kill my DSLR or even lower priced DSLRs built in the past cou­ple of years because it can’t track and cap­ture mov­ing sub­jects with the same ease. I’m NOT a sports pho­tog­ra­pher but I reg­u­larly want to shoot a bird, squir­rel, fast mov­ing dog, or run­ning baby. For me, a DSLR killer must be able to track and cap­ture a mov­ing sub­ject with the same ease and effi­cacy (and ratio of keep­ers) as a DSLR. The X-T1 can­not eas­ily do this and admits to being unable to do this on page 68 of the man­ual. It’s the one big thing that’s miss­ing for me in this (and every other mir­ror­less or point and shoot on the mar­ket today) cam­era. It does a bet­ter job at this task than all the other mir­ror­less or point and shoot cam­eras I’ve tried, but DSLRs cost­ing the same or less money as this cam­era will get you sharper results with greater ease. If you accept this lim­i­ta­tion and you have the bud­get for it ($2100. for the cam­era and lens) it’s the best non-DSLR cam­era that I’ve tried.

Here’s a check­list of the main things I really liked about the Fuji X-T1

1 — Solid feel and size — The Fuji  X-T1 is a solid feel­ing metal cam­era and I like that. I’m sick of pla­s­ticky feel­ing devices. This cam­era is VERY rem­i­nis­cent of my old Nikon FM2 film cam­era in terms of shape, size and weight. One of the main advan­tages of this cam­era is that it is much smaller and weighs less than most DSLRs. The FUJI X-T1 weighs 440 grams with the cam­era and card. My D800E with bat­tery and card weighs more than dou­ble (994 grams)!

Comparison between the new Fuji XT-1 and the 30ish year old Nikon F3. Hat tip and © Wendy Kennedy for this image.

Size com­par­i­son between the new Fuji XT-1 and a 30ish year old Nikon F3. Hat tip and © Wendy Kennedy for this image.

 

2 — Over­all sharp­ness — Aside from sharp­ness on fast mov­ing sub­jects, you will love the sharp­ness of this camera!

The XT-1 gives you lovely natural colours. Images are sharp straight out of the camera.

The XT-1 gives you lovely nat­ural colours. Images are sharp straight out of the cam­era. Exif — ISO 400, f/5.6, 1/100. Note:  I did NOT try to get the birds sharp in this image, I was fram­ing the peo­ple on the bench and the mov­ing birds were a happy coincidence.

 

3 — Auto­matic elec­tronic viewfinder  - You can frame your scene by look­ing at the back of the LCD screen or through the viewfinder. The cam­era ‘knows’ when you bring the viewfinder to your eye and all inte­rior con­trols become instantly vis­i­ble — It’s very cool.

4 — Hori­zon line — This appears auto­mat­i­cally in order to let you know if your cam­era is par­al­lel to the sub­ject for dis­tor­tion free images. I really like this but you can shut it off if you don’t.

5 — Shoots in RAW for­mat, Jpeg and RAW/Jpeg

6 — Although I already ragged on the aut­o­fo­cus being infe­rior for mov­ing sub­jects when com­pared to a DSLR, it does a bet­ter job than all other non-DSLR cam­era that I’ve tried. In addi­tion it has focus points that you can move around your screen fairly eas­ily to allow the aut­o­fo­cus to focus where you want. I use these focus points all the time when I’m fram­ing a scene.

In order to assure sharp eyes (or sharp anything) I am always moving the auto-focusing square to exactly where I want the most sharpness to be. In this case, I moved it right over my boy Baci's eye. The Fuji XT-1 does a decent job at this! (Not as good as most DSRs mind you, but MUCH better than most mirrorless/point and shoot cameras I've tried). As an aside, this was a relatively low light shot with EXIF data at ISO 6400, f/4.7 at 1/80.

In order to assure sharp eyes (or sharp any­thing) I am always mov­ing the auto-focusing square to exactly where I want the most sharp­ness to be. In this case, I moved it right over my boy Baci’s eye. The Fuji X-T1 does a decent job at this! (Not as fluid as most DSRs mind you, but MUCH bet­ter than most mirrorless/point and shoot cam­eras I’ve tried).
As an aside, this was a rel­a­tively low light shot with EXIF data at ISO 6400, f/4.7 at 1/80.

 

7  - Low light shoot­ing. This cam­era does a killer-good job in low light!  It’s a low light maven! This image below was shot/pushed at ISO 12800. I never shoot at this ISO because nor­mally you get tons of noise (pixelization/grain) at this speed. But look how accept­able this image is! I have even included a 100% crop of a por­tion of the image with shadow detail as noise is most vis­i­ble in the shad­ows. Yes there is noise in those shad­ows but it’s accept­able noise, it’s not a hail­storm. Most mirrorless/point and shoot cam­eras (and most DSLRs) on the mar­ket today are infe­rior to the Fuji X-T1 with regard to their low-light and low-noise performance.

This image was shot at f/3.5 at 1/110 at ISO 12800! Look how acceptable the noise level is.

This image was shot at f/3.5 at 1/110 at ISO 12800! Look how accept­able the noise level is.

Here’s a 100% crop from the same image.

Noise is its nastiest in the shadows but look at how well the noise is handled at ISO 12800 - Very, very impressive!

Noise is its nas­ti­est in the shad­ows but look at how well the noise is han­dled at ISO 12800 — Very, very impressive!


X-T1 Gripes

As hinted at pre­vi­ously, my main gripe with the X-T1 (and every other point and shoot/mirrorless cam­era that I’ve tried) is that it can­not aut­o­fo­cus fast enough to cap­ture fast mov­ing objects as sharp as I like them. Here is a shot of a squir­rel. I admit it’s very good for cam­eras in its class but my DSLR and most oth­ers I’ve tried does better.

This is a 100% crop detail of a squirrel. I focused on the eye for about 15 images and the eye is good but it is not tack sharp. My DSLR has a much better ratio of keepers for difficult shots like these. EXIF data was ISO 800 f/5.6 1/850

A 100% crop detail of a squir­rel. I focused on the eye for about 15 images and the eye in this image is good but it is not tack sharp. My DSLR has a much bet­ter ratio of keep­ers for dif­fi­cult shots like these. EXIF data was ISO 800, f/5.6 @ 1/850

 

The main other gripe would be the price as $2100. for a mir­ror­less cam­era and lens is quite a chunk of change when DSLRs with lenses can be had for many hun­dreds of dol­lars less. That said, we should be used to pay­ing more for devices that are phys­i­cally smaller; it’s the trend across so many con­sumer prod­ucts. To tem­per the price blow a bit, this cam­era is very ver­sa­tile and can accom­mo­date many dif­fer­ent lenses of vary­ing focal lengths. It’s solidly built and it seems like it will last.

In con­clu­sion, if you have the bud­get for this cam­era you will love its size, shape, feel and its weight. The qual­ity and sharp­ness of the files are superb and as long as you don’t expect tack sharp eyes from mov­ing sub­jects, you will love this cam­era. To date, it’s the best non DSLR cam­era I’ve tried.