Podcast/posting delay for 1 week

Dear sub­scribers and fel­low learners/sharers,

Pod­casts and posts are on hold for about 1 week due to a per­sonal fam­ily tragedy (my mum passed).

I have much to post and share includ­ing a fan­tas­tic inter­view with a fine art pho­tog­ra­pher I met at Photo Expo in New York. It’s all on hold for about 1 week though. To those that have emailed me and posted on the forum giv­ing me con­do­lences, I am deeply touched and your wishes mean so much.

Sin­cerely,
Marko

56 — How to photograph smoke — Photography podcast

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #56 talks about how to pho­to­graph smoke. We dis­cuss pho­tograph­ing dif­fer­ent types of smoke includ­ing incense, out­door smoke and liq­uid nitro­gen. One note right away is that if you want to try this, it’s fun, but have patience. The incense image below took about 90 min­utes from setup to fin­ish­ing shoot­ing. If you want to try this your­self, here’s what I used for the shoot; Incense sticks, black back­ground, 1 portable off cam­era flash (with sync cord to fire it) a CUSTOM (smirk) home­made snoot made on the spot, from con­struc­tion paper that went on the portable flash to keep light off the back­ground and a reflec­tor (not essen­tial, but help­ful and you can use any­thing white). Thanks so much to Clusty for this awe­some suggestion!

Incense smoke by Marko Kulik

Monk in outdoor smoke - Image by Marko

Monk in out­door smoke — Image by Marko Kulik

Scary theme using Liquid Nitrogen - Image by Marko

Scary theme using Liq­uid Nitro­gen — Image by Marko Kulik

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Post pro­cess­ing assign­ment forum
Octo­ber Assign­ment #2 — Halloween/Horror

Thanks as always to‚ Susan who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast. Thanks also to Jlindy, Cap­tureev­er­more, mpykalo, lamar328, pho­to­cell, EJC, CB Photo and jcrys­tall who recently joined the photography.ca forum and posted a few times. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

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. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I

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

Portrait from the Plateau — L’il Pigeon Feeder

This was a straight shot of a lit­tle girl feed­ing the pigeons on an over­cast day. I actu­ally shot this before I recorded my last pod­cast. Talk about a twofer (two for one) :) . No flash was used and about 5 min­utes of post-processing was done on this one. I really like the intense con­cen­tra­tion on the kid’s face. She’s on a mis­sion. I also like the duck in the back­ground look­ing at what’s goin’ on. I think the duck is envi­ous of all those sweet chee­rios! As always, when pho­tograph­ing chil­dren it’s best to get a parent’s per­mis­sion, which I did. If you wanted to sell a shot like this, you’d need a model release.

Pigeon Kid

Pigeon Kid

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Portrait from the Plateau — L’il Pigeon Feeder

This was a straight shot of a lit­tle girl feed­ing the pigeons on an over­cast day. I actu­ally shot this before I recorded my last pod­cast. Talk about a twofer (two for one) :) . No flash was used and about 5 min­utes of post-processing was done on this one. I really like the intense con­cen­tra­tion on the kid’s face. She’s on a mis­sion. I also like the duck in the back­ground look­ing at what’s goin’ on. I think the duck is envi­ous of all those sweet chee­rios! As always, when pho­tograph­ing chil­dren it’s best to get a parent’s per­mis­sion, which I did. If you wanted to sell a shot like this, you’d need a model release.

Pigeon Kid

Pigeon Kid

Get these posts by email:

Photographing words

We have a new addi­tion to the 2 mon­thy assign­ments already going on our forum. Pho­tograph­ing words is an assign­ment where you find let­ters made by ordi­nary objects. Then you shoot them and put the images of the let­ters together to form words. The word this month is Love. Many thanks to kiley9806 and mor­gan for their sug­ges­tions to start‚ this up on our forum. The first Pho­tograph­ing words assign­ment is Love and the thread is here. Here’s my con­tri­bu­tion from that thread. Hope to see more peo­ple sign up and contribute!

Hey I took my wife shopping today - Thats love.  So what if I hung around the parking lot?

Hey I took my wife shop­ping today — That’s love. So what if I hung around the park­ing lot?

55 — Using Photoshop Actions — Photography podcast

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #55 talks about using actions to stream­line your work­flow. Actions are a set of steps that you record to trans­form an image in some way. Once you have recorded the action once you can apply it to any other image file. We also talk about com­mer­cial actions that you can buy that will totally trans­form your images. The 2 that we talk about are Kevin Kubota’s actions and Craig’s actions. I’d like to thank Kevin Kub­ota once again for giv­ing me some actions to play with. The images below were all done with Kevin’s actions.

Top shot - straight; Middle shot uses vibrant glow action; Botton shot uses BW GM Warm2 +snappy action

Top shot — straight; Mid­dle shot — vibrant glow action; Bot­tom shot BW GM Warm2 +snappy action

Left shot straight; Right shot uses Anime soft action

Left shot straight; Right shot uses Anime soft action

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Kevin Kubota’s actions
Pod­cast #52 Kevin Kub­ota inter­view
Craig’s actions
Free pho­to­shop actions search result
Pho­tograph­ing words assign­ment forum

Thanks as always to‚ Susan who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast. Thanks also to gbh59, Michael van der Tol, justin­m­cguigan, pogueca, Fredric, DeepR, mor­gan, JoMama, fante, lily13, SMG, Wymasa, liamm­clen­nan, J & R Par­ent, and malechi who recently joined the photography.ca forum and posted a few times. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

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. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I

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

Montreal in the Fall

A few months back we started an assign­ment forum on photography.ca and this month the 2 themes are fall and Halloween-horror. Each theme lasts for 2 weeks and the Fall theme is first. I took this shot just yes­ter­day on Mount-Royal in Mon­treal. I tried to go for some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. Did I succeed?

Please feel free to join our forum and sub­mit your own assign­ments. It’s fun and a great way to get creative.

Oct. 2008 assignment on the Photography.ca forum

Oct. 2008 assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum