Photography podcast – photography blog – Photography.ca

Should I ditch photography School?

Recently on our photography forum this question (To go or not to go to photography school) was brought up by forum member kat. She wondered whether it was worth it to take a photography program at the university level.

It’s a very interesting question and it brought me back to my own university days and reminded me of something a statistics professor once told me. He said that the WORST thing you can do (ON AVERAGE for the average person) for your lifetime earnings is to go to university. This is because while you are going into university you are racking up debt and not making money. Obviously for professional degrees (accounting, medicine, law etc.) there is no other way, but photography is different. You can either go to photography school or learn photography by yourself, online, by taking workshops, apprenticing etc.

As for myself, I did go to photography school and completed a 2.5 year program after university in the mid 90’s. I don’t regret it one bit, I love knowledge and photo school trained my eye quite well.

However – If I were in this position today would I do the same thing?….Honestly, I doubt I would.

The world these days is digital, and there’s SO much excellent online learning that wasn’t there when I studied, plus the darkroom work that was so important then, has been replaced by digital.

I really think I’d recommend workshops and self-learning over a full on program that takes 2-3 years. Keep in mind that AFTER the 2-3 years nobody will be waiting to give you a job, you will have to hustle BIG TIME and market yourself  BIG TIME..or else, on average you will fail.

Another sobering stat from back in the day is that 2 years AFTER graduating from photography school, only 20-25% of the graduates will be working photographers. That stat still seems accurate to me today based on what I  see.

So what do you think – Is photography school a waste of time?

Tags: photo school, photography school

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74 – Hyperfocal distance – How to use the hyperfocal distance

Photography podcast #74 is all about the hyperfocal distance and how to use it in landscape photography. In a nutshell, hyperfocal distance is the distance you focus at to get greater depth of field when focusing on an object in the distance. In this podcast we define what hyperfocal distance is and how to use it for both traditional (film) photography and in digital photography with new DSLRs and lenses.  We also talk about when not to use the hyperfocal distance in landscape photography.

Hyperfocal distance chart from dofmaster.com – used by permission; thanks Don Fleming!  This beautiful application from the dofmaster.com site clearly shows that by focusing at the hyperfocal distance you gain over 4 feet of sharpness toward the foreground when you use a 5omm lens at F-16 and focus at 27.1 feet instead of  where the object actually is at 50 feet.. Try this test for yourself; shoot 1 shot the regular way and 1 shot using the hyperfocal distance. This application already lists the most common digital cameras and takes their crop factors into account.

Left image shot normally while right image was shot at the hyperfocal distance. Even at this small size you can see that the right shot shows a bit more sharpness in the midground while the background looks similar in both shots. The effects are more noticeable when you print at larger sizes.

Links /resources mentioned in this podcast:

Dofmaster’s awesome depth of field calculator that also calculates hyperfocal distance
Dofmaster’s depth of field calculator for free use with an iphone (need to connect to the Net – use this URL from an IPhone ONLY – NOT from your computer)
Dofmaster’s simulated depth of field calculator for free use with an Non-iphones (need to connect to the Net)
Dofmaster’s Itunes depth of field calculator App for $1.99 (No Internet connection required)
November’s ‘landscapes in portrait orientation’ assignment on the Photography.ca forum
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

Thanks to Kat, Glenn Euloth (Iguanasan), Bambi and Alex Maxim who posted a blog comment about our last podcast. Thanks as always to everyone that sent comments by email about our last podcast. Although ALL comments are appreciated, commenting directly in this blog is preferred. Thanks as well 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. I Subscribe with iTunes I Subscribe via RSS feed I Subscribe with Google Reader I 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 below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tags: hyperfocal distance, photography, Photography tips

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Freeman Patterson exhibition – Montreal till Nov.15/09

If you live in or near Montreal and love artistic landscape photography you OWE it to yourself to take a drive to Dollard Des Ormeaux to see the Freeman Patterson photography exhibition.

Sunrise at Kokerboomkloof - © 2006 Freeman Patterson

This exhibition is AWESOME. Freeman Patterson has been shooting landscapes around the world and teaching workshops for many decades. I’ve been a major fan of his for a good twenty years and I consider him to be a modern master landscape photography artist. Everything about this exhibition screams quality. The images themselves are gorgeous and I spent a good seventy minutes looking at each and every one. The composition of each photograph is very well thought out as you would expect. Freeman is a teacher and expert at visual design and you’ll note the attention he has paid to the foreground midground and background. There’s exciting stuff going on in all 3 of those zones.  But everything else in the photographs work too; exposure, colour and the printing. Gorgeous printing on heavy watercolour paper that reveals great tonality from pure white to deep black with excellent shadow detail in most prints.

Freeman exhibits about 18 large sized photographs that are around 20 X 30 inches. All the prints are for sale in small limited editions. The Gallery is located in the Dollard Civic Center (across the street from Marche de L’Ouest) 12001, boulevard De Salaberry, Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Qc. H9B 2A7 (General Tel. # (514) 684-1011).  Look for the LIBRARY, the gallery is in the basement of the library building. Tues.-Wed. 12-4 PM, Thurs.-Fri. 2-5PM, Sat.-Sun. 1-4 PM and there are guided tours available. The gallery is closed on Nov. 11th for rememberance day.

I have seen NO publicity for this show…which is a travesty as this work is aching to be seen by photography lovers. So take a drive to the West Island and you won’t be disappointed!

Tags: Freeman patterson, landscape photography, landscapes, photography

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My new logos – Thanks a ton Sylvain Grand’Maison

I’ve been wanting a new logo for my own personal photography for quite some time now. There’s just something about ’signing your work’ that I feel is important. For me, a signature provides a sense of closure. There are so many ways to tweak/modify/enhance a photograph that sometimes you’re not sure if your version is the finished version. A signature allows you to say, OK enough now, I’m done with this image, let’s move on.

I’d like to thank Sylvain Grand’Maison BIG TIME for the great work that he did for me. For those of you that don’t know Sylvain, he has one of the most popular French Podcasts (even though he’s perfectly bilingual) in Quebec called le Quebec en Baladodiffusion. He also helps businesses and individuals get started in the social media space and works as a consultant in this regard. So why did I ask him to create my logos?  That’s because his background is in graphic design and he still takes on the occasional graphic design gig.

So now I need YOUR help. I really dig both of these logos and I think I know which one I like best but I’d like some opinions. Which one of these above logos do you like better, the left one or the right one?

In choosing these logos Sylvain presented me with a bunch of different choices on totally different themes. Here is another design Sylvain created. I love this one as well – it has a serious Russian feel. I’m not sure what I’ll use this red design for, but I do know what my next Facebook avatar will look like.

Tags: photography, photography logos, Sylvain Grand'Maison

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The city and the people working as one – NOT

Every photographer has subject matter that interests them more than other subject matter. For me, what gets me going the most is fine art photography and portraiture. However…..every once in a while I’ll pull out my camera to shoot different subject matter. Gotta pay those bills. This morning however I pulled out my camera because I was simply pissed off at my city. Look at what they are doing with our recycling. Does THIS look like a recycling truck?

I love Montreal. I find the city VERY progressive, tolerant, fairly clean and great place to live. My wife and I love it here. We are community minded people who believe in the environment and we ALWAYS recycle as much as we can. We wash out containers and bottles and separate papers to make it easy for the recycling crew. We used to see our recycling going into a recycling truck, where it would get sorted on the spot. As far as I know, crunched up mixed recycling in a garbage truck is NOT recycling…it’s friggin’ garbage on its way to a landfill.

Does anyone know what is going on here? I mean as much as I love to do my part, I hate wasting my time, and I hate municipal bullcrap. If my recycling is going into a landfill, then why am I wasting my friggin’ time?

Tags: garbage, Montreal, photography, recycling

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