108 — Film Photography Rocks — Interview w/John Meadows

July 4, 2012 By 2 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #108 fea­tures an Inter­view with fine art pho­tog­ra­pher John Mead­ows where we talk about the advan­tages of shoot­ing on film. Although it’s true that film pho­tog­ra­phy is slowly being replaced by dig­i­tal, it con­tin­ues to remain VERY pop­u­lar with fine art pho­tog­ra­phers for a bunch of rea­sons. One of these rea­sons is the incred­i­ble qual­ity of the cam­eras and lenses avail­able to film pho­tog­ra­phers that can be pur­chased these days for peanuts.

In this pod­cast we talk about the advan­tages of shoot­ing on film, film char­ac­ter­is­tics, buy­ing film, devel­op­ing your own film, print­ing your own images in a dark­room, the hybrid approach of using both film and dig­i­tal and more.

Dur­ing this phone inter­view recorded by Skype, the qual­ity of my voice is mediocre and I apol­o­gize in advance for this —  Luck­ily John Meadows’s voice sounds great.

Bro­ken and Unbro­ken © John Meadows

 

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Royce Howland’s fol­low up com­ment on the photo-realistic HDR pod­cast
John Mead­ows web­site
John Mead­ows on Flickr
apug.org — Ana­log Pho­tog­ra­phy Users Group
Freestyle film pho­tog­ra­phy sup­plies
Pocket light meter
Mar­shal Oils at B&H
Film at B&H
Photo tours in Mon­treal — Pri­vate pho­tog­ra­phy instruc­tion in Montreal

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)

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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 John Starmer, Lucille B, chris f, Rob S, Royce How­land, Mike Lang­ford and Del­ben­son­pho­tog­ra­phy who posted  blog com­ments 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. Most of the links to actual the prod­ucts are affil­i­ate links that help sup­port this site. Thanks in advance if you pur­chase through those links.

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 with Google Reader|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.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With:

F-16 Isn’t Magic

June 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I’ve been giv­ing photo courses lately and I’m com­ing across a few points that peo­ple are reg­u­larly hav­ing trou­ble with. The lim­its of depth of field (or how sharp objects should be in gen­eral) is one of the things that many pho­tog­ra­phers don’t com­pre­hend. This is often because they are aware of only one of the three fac­tors that deter­mine depth of field, namely the aper­ture. Many of us know that when we use a small aper­ture we get good sharp­ness from fore­ground to back­ground ver­sus large aper­tures. But this is true only up to a cer­tain point because two other fac­tors are miss­ing.  A small aper­ture like F-16 isn’t a magic one that will give you great sharp­ness from fore­ground to back­ground in all cases.

Take the fol­low­ing image called Rust for exam­ple. It was cre­ated by Crash­cat from our forum for our monthly assign­ment called - June 2012 — f16 or smaller– Shoot­ing with a small aper­ture. Thx Crash­cat for the use of this image.


This image was shot at ISO 1600 f/16 at 1/20 using a 105mm lens.
As we can clearly see the depth of field here is shal­low and this is because there are two other fac­tors besides the cho­sen aper­ture that influ­ence depth of field. These fac­tors include the dis­tance from the object we are pho­tograph­ing and the focal length we use.  As we  approach an object, depth of field dimin­ishes. The longer the lens we use the less depth of field we will have ver­sus using a shorter one.

The image we are look­ing at is a macro image and so the cam­era is very close to the object. Had the cam­era been far­ther way, we’d see more sharp­ness from the top of the screw to the bot­tom of the screw. Not tons more sharp­ness mind you, but more. The side effect is that the screw wouldn’t have the mag­ni­fi­ca­tion that it does and would look less ‘close-up’.

Had this lens been wider, we’d also see a small increase in sharp­ness from the top of the screw to the bot­tom of the screw, but again the screw’s per­spec­tive would seem smaller.

There is no easy answer here. It’s just a mat­ter of prac­tis­ing and know­ing what to expect.

For those that are look­ing for fab­u­lous pre­ci­sion, feel free to use a depth of field cal­cu­la­tor which will show you the depth of field you can expect under any shoot­ing condition.

 

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries, Photography tips Tagged With:

107 — Photo Realistic HDR — Interview w/Royce Howland

June 1, 2012 By 11 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #107  fea­tures an Inter­view with Cana­dian Nature pho­tog­ra­pher Royce How­land. In this pod­cast we talk specif­i­cally about how to get real­is­tic colours using the HDR process. HDR (high dynamic range) is a process that allows us to cap­ture details in the high­lighs and the shad­ows of our images by shoot­ing mul­ti­ple frames of the same image at dif­fer­ent expo­sures and then blend­ing them in software.

Many HDR images that we see on the web have really wonky and unre­al­is­tic colours. We pass no judge­ment on these types of images but this pod­cast is ded­i­cated to get­ting real­is­tic colours using the HDR process. We sum­ma­rize the process from why we do this, to cap­ture, to gear,  to using the soft­ware to cre­ate the images. We also dis­cuss the dif­fer­ences between the HDR process and using grad­u­ated neu­tral den­sity filters.

Old Prairie Church & Storm Front, Mundare Alberta Canada © Royce Howland

 

That Hal­loween Mood, Glen­more Reser­voir Cal­gary Alberta Canada © Royce Howland

 

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Royce How­land web­site
Royce Howland’s fea­ture on Photography.ca
Older HDR arti­cle by Royce How­land
HDR­Soft — Mak­ers of Pho­tomatix
Olo­neo — Mak­ers of Pho­to­Engine
Red Giant — Mak­ers of Magic Bul­let Pho­toLooks
HDR Labs — HDR infor­ma­tion resource
Topaz Adjust
HDR Efex Pro

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

Thanks to Benny and Del­ben­son­pho­tog­ra­phy who posted  blog com­ments 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. Most of the links to actual the prod­ucts are affil­i­ate links that help sup­port this site. Thanks in advance if you pur­chase through those links.

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 with Google Reader|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.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: ,

106 — White balance and why snow is blue

May 3, 2012 By 2 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #106 dis­cusses the often con­fus­ing topic of white bal­ance and why some­times the cam­era screws up our images like giv­ing us blue snow. Cor­rect­ing this is really easy and it just requires a bit of under­stand­ing of what is going on in the back­ground.  In a very tight over­sim­pli­fied nut­shell, when we see some­thing that has colour, it has that colour due to the colour tem­per­a­ture of the light source illu­mi­nat­ing it.

Light a can­dle in a dark room and look at a white base­ball; it will look orange. The same thing hap­pens with white snow that looks bluish under cloudy over­cast con­di­tions because cloudy light is bluish. Our eyes might not notice the blue because our brain com­pen­sates for the cast because it “knows” that snow is white, but the cam­era often gets it wrong. In this pod­cast we talk about white bal­ance, auto­matic white bal­ance, the white bal­ance pre­sets that your cam­era comes with and set­ting a cus­tom white bal­ance. If you’ve ever wanted to improve the colour accu­racy of your images, this photo pod­cast offers up some fast tips.

Colors and color temperature in photography

Left image — When we see an object that has colour, it has that colour due to the color tem­per­a­ture of the light source illu­mi­nat­ing it. This is why if we take a white base­ball into a room lit only by a can­dle, the base­ball looks orange. The same thing hap­pens when we take a pic­ture of white snow on a cloudy over­cast day and it looks blue. Right image — White light (the kind we see at noon on a sunny cloud­less day) is actu­ally made up of equal parts of Red, Blue and Green light. These are the pri­mary colours in photography.

 

Blue snow in photography

Left Image — The camera’s AWB (auto­matic white bal­ance) didn’t ren­der this scene prop­erly and the snow looks bluish because the day was cloudy and cloudy light is bluish. Right Image — I cor­rected this in post pro­cess­ing and the snow looks more nat­ural to the eye.

 

AWB and 2 presets
If your image has a colour cast, to neu­tral­ize it, you add the OPPOSITE colour of the cast. 

 

Mixed lighting in photography

This image was lit with 2 light sources; the light com­ing from the stove AND over­cast light com­ing in through the win­dows. AWB does a very good job here but is a hint too warm. The cloudy pre­set adds yel­low to com­pen­sate for cloudy light which is blue. In this case it repro­duces too warm. The Incan­des­cent pre­set adds blue to com­pen­sate for incan­des­cent light which is warm. Here it added way too much blue. The cus­tom set­ting, where you take a quick read­ing from a grey card or use a tool like an Expodisc was the most accu­rate and best repro­duced the scene.

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Spin­rite - To recover crashed hard dri­ves
Allan Lev­ene is run­ning for con­gress!
Grey cards at B&H — Expodisc at B&H — Color meters at B&H
Pho­tog­ra­phy tours in Mon­treal — One to one pho­tog­ra­phy instruc­tion by yours truly

- Wide open aper­ture is our reg­u­lar forum assign­ment for May
– Tex­ture is our level 2 forum assign­ment for May

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

Thanks to Rob vE, Yise­haq and Robertv in Edin­burgh who posted  blog com­ments 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. Most of the links to actual the prod­ucts are affil­i­ate links that help sup­port this site. Thanks in advance if you pur­chase through those links.

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 with Google Reader|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.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography lighting, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: ,

105 — Four tips to improve your bounced flash photography

March 28, 2012 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #105 offers up tips on how to improve your bounced flash pho­tog­ra­phy. Bounc­ing your flash off of walls and ceil­ings is easy and really soft­ens the light which is often desir­able espe­cially in por­traits. You can also achieve a much more inter­est­ing light­ing pat­tern ver­sus direct on-camera flash. You can often achieve great results with min­i­mal effort and min­i­mal help; I often use bounced flash when I am shoot­ing alone and need a quick light­ing setup.

The images below of my wife Carmy were shot in about 5 min­utes against a slightly green wall in my liv­in­groom. The tones in the face and back­ground wall are sim­i­lar but not iden­ti­cal in all images and I delib­er­ately chose not to match them to see the sub­tle dif­fer­ences. These dif­fer­ences are due to the dif­fer­ent ways that the light bounced around the room. There were win­dows in the room but the day was cloudy and no direct light was shin­ing through the win­dows. Images are unretouched.

Direct flash versus bounced flash

The image on the left shows direct flash. Note the harsh shadow on the wall and the rel­a­tively even light­ing on the face. The shot on the right, bounced the flash off the ceil­ing. The shadow is still on the wall but it is softer. The light­ing pat­tern on the face is less even but more inter­est­ing to the eye.

 

Bounced flash photography

The image on the left used flash that was bounced off of the wall about 12 feet behind me. The image on the right used flash that was bounced off the side wall about 6 feet from me. Note the absence of any shadow on the back wall com­pared to the left image in the first set. When you try this for your­self make note of how far the bounced walls are from your flash. The far­ther the walls are from the flash, the harder the flash has to work and you may need to increase the flash’s output.

 

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Spin­rite - To recover crashed hard dri­ves
Photo pod­cast #4 — Fill flash
Photo pod­cast #47 — Flash sync speeds
Photo pod­cast #71 Portable flash

- Bright Colour is our reg­u­lar forum assign­ment for March
– Sil­hou­ettes is our level 2 forum assign­ment for March

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

Thanks to Neil Speers, Stephen Kennedy, Ken Wolter, Jonathan Rams­dell and Allan Lev­ene who posted  blog com­ments 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. Most of the links to actual the prod­ucts are affil­i­ate links that help sup­port this site. Thanks in advance if you pur­chase through those links.

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 with Google Reader|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.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography lighting, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting

104 — Backing up images like a pro versus a bonehead

February 15, 2012 By 5 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #104 dis­cusses strate­gies for back­ing up your images. One of my exter­nal hard dri­ves that held tens of thou­sands of images failed recently. Even though I had a dupli­cate of the images on another drive, the dupli­cates were poorly arranged. This got me think­ing about bet­ter and safer backup strate­gies. I’d DEFINITELY appre­ci­ate hear­ing about YOUR backup strategies.

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
– Crashplan.com
– Backblaze.com
– Carbonite.com
– Ama­zon S3 ser­vices calculator

- “Trans­porta­tion” is our reg­u­lar forum assign­ment for Feb­ru­ary
– Inten­tional Over­ex­po­sure is our level 2 assign­ment for February

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

Thanks to skcazador, amber, cartman75 and Glenn Igua­nasan Euloth who posted  blog com­ments 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. Most of the links to actual the prod­ucts are affil­i­ate links that help sup­port this site. Thanks in advance if you pur­chase through those links.

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 with Google Reader|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.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: ,

103 — Photography umbrella for rain and snow

December 29, 2011 By 5 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #103 talks about a wet weather pho­tog­ra­phy umbrella con­trap­tion that I recently put together. Basi­cally it’s a GIANT golf umbrella and a sling.
I’ve been shoot­ing a lot in the rain and snow lately and some­times you need to have both hands free. This umbrella con­trap­tion allows you to keep both hands on the cam­era and works well in heavy rain or snow so long as it’s not too windy.

This giant 68″ dou­ble canopy Gust­buster golf umbrella in a sling gives you close to 30 inches of dry shoot­ing when it’s not too windy.

 

A close-up of the sling I pur­chased from brellabag.com — It’s pricey at $30. but works well when the sling is loaded with heav­ier items like a long lens or bot­tle of water.

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
– Golftown.com
– Gust­buster umbrel­las
– Brellabag.com
– Pod­cast #88 — Rain pho­tog­ra­phy
- “Lights” is our reg­u­lar forum assign­ment for Decem­ber
– Ugly duck­lings — look­ing for beauty in every­thing  is our level 2 assign­ment for December

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

Thanks to cartman75, Benny and Gale who posted  blog com­ments 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. Most of the links to actual the prod­ucts are affil­i­ate links that help sup­port this site. Thanks in advance if you pur­chase through those links.

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 with Google Reader|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.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: ,

102 — Layering images with interesting elements

November 25, 2011 By 3 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #102 dis­cusses lay­er­ing your pho­tographs with inter­est­ing ele­ments. This involves seri­ous atten­tion to the over­all com­po­si­tion of every frame that you take.
If you are tak­ing a shot of a moun­tain for exam­ple, there’s always more to the shot than just the moun­tain. When you are aware of what’s around the moun­tain and take the time to “layer” the image with inter­est­ing ele­ments, the com­po­si­tion as a whole gets much stronger. We also touch on how to refine those “lay­ered ele­ments” in post processing.

 

Athabaska River Reflecting Pools at Sunrise - Banff National Park - Alberta., Canada

Athabaska River Reflect­ing Pools at Sun­rise by Marko Kulik — Banff National Park — Alberta, Canada. As you can see this shot is about more than just the moun­tain which is in the back­ground. The fore­ground, midground and back­ground “lay­ered” ele­ments all con­tribute to the over­all com­po­si­tion in this scene.

 

Sometimes you feel like a nut - Image by Lisa Couldwell

Some­times you feel like a nut — Image by Lisa Could­well. Even scenes using larger aper­tures ben­e­fit from “lay­ered ele­ments”. Here, Lisa focuses on the nut medal­lion but the tire in the back­ground is a repeat­ing shape that adds inter­est to the image. The diag­o­nal lines in the image help to guide your eye. The com­po­si­tion here is very deliberate.

 

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
– Improv­ing bor­ing land­scapes
- Images that com­pli­ment SONG titles or Book titles is our reg­u­lar forum assign­ment for Novem­ber
– Inten­tional cam­era move­ment  is our level 2 assign­ment for November

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)

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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

Thanks to Scorpio_e, Melissa Dorner, Josh G, Math­ias,  Avi­tal Pin­nick, Henry. b, and Jill bayer who posted  blog com­ments 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. Most of the links to actual the prod­ucts are affil­i­ate links that help sup­port this site. Thanks in advance if you pur­chase through those links.

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 with Google Reader|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.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: ,

101 — Moving your camera during the exposure — Interview with Michael Orton

October 12, 2011 By 9 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #101 fea­tures an inter­view with one of my favorite pho­tog­ra­phers, fine art pho­tog­ra­pher Michael Orton. In this pod­cast we talk about delib­er­ately mov­ing your cam­era dur­ing the expo­sure. Nor­mally, this is FORBIDDEN and you do every­thing in your power to keep the cam­era as still as pos­si­ble while shoot­ing. But Michael has a very unique way of see­ing and has again bro­ken the rules. He has cre­ated a unique and fab­u­lous new port­fo­lio of one-of-a-kind abstract land­scape images, by way of com­pound cam­era move­ments that I now refer to as Orton Com­pound Cam­era Move­ments or OCCM. This pod­cast dis­cusses delib­er­ate cam­era move­ments for cre­ative effect.

Michael Orton is a fine art pho­tog­ra­phy pio­neer. First he cre­ated Orton Imagery, AKA the Orton effect some 30ish years ago.  This tech­nique has been used by tens of thou­sands of pho­tog­ra­phers and has become so pop­u­lar that Adobe Ele­ments 10 now fea­tures an action called the Orton Effect. I’d bet hard that Michael’s tech­nique involv­ing com­pound cam­era move­ments also devel­ops a cult-like fol­low­ing in the years to come. Thanks so much Michael!

 

Awakening by Michael Orton
Awak­en­ing by Michael Orton — The abstract painterly feel to this image was cre­ated IN CAMERA by using OCCM (Orton’s com­pound cam­era movements).

 

Michael Orton at ‘Work’ — Image by Marko Kulik

 

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
– Michael Orton Pho­tog­ra­phy
- Michael Orton’s fea­ture on Photography.ca
– 67 – Orton Imagery – The Orton Effect – Inter­view with Michael Orton and Dar­win Wiggett — Pod­cast #67
– Pho­tograph­ing Cre­ative Land­scapes by Michael Orton: Sim­ple Tools for Artis­tic Images and Enhanced Creativity


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

Thanks to Patrick, Bambi and Glenn Euloth who posted  blog com­ments 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. Most of the links to actual the prod­ucts are affil­i­ate links that help sup­port this site. Thanks in advance if you pur­chase through those links.

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 with Google Reader|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.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , ,

100 — Shoot in any light

September 20, 2011 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #100 cel­e­brates our 100th pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast and focuses on the tag line of the pod­cast which is ‘keep on shoot­ing’ in any light.

I’d like to take this moment to thank all our lis­ten­ers! Your sup­port and encour­age­ment dur­ing these past 100 episodes has been awe­some. Thanks for all the feed­back, all the com­ments and all the con­tri­bu­tions. Spe­cial thanks as well to all the guests that have shared their knowl­edge so freely. More inter­views are planned for the future.

In this pod­cast I offer up tips on how to shoot in any light so long as it suits the subject.

 

I shot this image at about 2pm. The light that most of the ducks were rest­ing in was bright and harsh. Had I shot this duck in that direct light, the shad­ows would have been too harsh. This par­tic­u­lar duck though was rest­ing under a shel­ter that soft­ened the light and the soft light suited this sub­ject far bet­ter and holds details in the blacks and the whites. Straight shot — No flash was used here.

 

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
– How to pho­to­graph with hard light — Pod­cast #97
– Rain pho­tog­ra­phy — Pod­cast #88 
– Stu­dio light­ing for begin­ners — Pod­cast #33 
– September’s reg­u­lar assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum — Yel­low
– September’s level 2 assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum — Macros of any kind


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

Thanks to Rob vE, Rich, Anuj, Photo art cafe and Best who posted  blog com­ments 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. Most of the links to actual the prod­ucts are affil­i­ate links that help sup­port this site. Thanks in advance if you pur­chase through those links.

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 with Google Reader|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.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: ,

99 — Controlling brightness in photography

August 25, 2011 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #99 dis­cusses how to con­trol bright­ness in your images. Our eye tends to fol­low or rest upon bright objects in a pho­to­graph and very often these objects or ele­ments are not the focal point of the image thus caus­ing our eyes to wander.

Con­trol­ling the brighter ele­ments in a scene takes some plan­ning dur­ing shoot­ing, and some work in post-processing but ulti­mately your images will be stronger. You’ll also have way more con­trol over the final image where you the cre­ator of the image guide the viewer’s eye purposefully.

Bright­ness is well con­trolled in this image. Along with com­po­si­tional curves, part of what makes this image work is that other bright ele­ments in the scene are not com­pet­ing with the bride. All eyes are on her as she makes her entrance. Image by Dominic Fuizzotto

Image by Richard Sparey — This lovely image of deli­cious pears suf­fers slightly from what I call weak edges. This causes our eye to wan­der out of the frame. It’s more notice­able on printed white paper or on a pure white background.

The same image with the edges burnt in (dark­ened) quite a bit to show the effect. This helps keep our eyes from wan­der­ing. Thanks to Richard for allow­ing me to use this image.

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
– August’s reg­u­lar assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum — Num­bers — Pho­to­graph some­thing with a num­ber
– August’s level 2 assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum — Cre­at­ing coun­ter­points
– Bright­ness prob­lems and dis­tract­ing ele­ments — Pod­cast #44
– Neu­tral den­sity fil­ters and grad­u­ated ND fil­ters — Inter­view with Dar­win Wiggett —  Pod­cast #77
– Dominic Fuiz­zotto Pho­tog­ra­phy
– Richard Sparey Photography


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

Thanks to forum mem­bers North­stone,  Scorpio_e, Howard J, Yise­haq, Bill Sorensen and use­akme who posted  blog com­ments 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. Most of the links to actual the prod­ucts are affil­i­ate links that help sup­port this site. Thanks in advance if you pur­chase through those links.

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 with Google Reader|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.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , , ,

Watch Your Backgrounds by Kristen Smith

August 8, 2011 By 3 Comments

Watch­ing what is going on in the back­ground is use­ful advice, not only for cops in urban shoot-outs, but also for close up and macro pho­tog­ra­phers.  Because bokeh and depth of field are such promi­nent aspects of these types of shots, you really have to watch the back­ground to make sure it com­ple­ments your sub­ject and doesn’t com­pete with it.  Some­times I get so focused on the sub­ject itself that the back­ground just fades away.  And because often times a sub­ject is far away from the back­ground, things just don’t get noticed.

With this shot, I was so intensely involved with the flow­ers that I didn’t really “see” my back­pack which was about 4 feet away and clearly in view.  I really needed to stop and look at the whole scene, but I didn’t.  Some­times it can take a few min­utes to set­tle into the groove and start prac­tic­ing good habits and by the time I got dili­gent, it was too late for this one.

Pho­to­graph by Kris­ten Smith

In addi­tion to watch­ing the far back­ground, keep an eye out for stray items close to the sub­ject that might dis­tract the eye.  So many times I get my pic­tures home only to find some annoy­ing leaf, pine nee­dle or branch.  Ugh.  I find that using Live View not only makes tak­ing the photo eas­ier, but gives you a 2D image to look at right away. Many times I catch bad com­po­si­tional ele­ments this way.  Check out this series of shots that illus­trate how I cleaned up my shot –

Pho­to­graph by Kris­ten Smith

Hmm that back­ground doesn’t do the flower any favors, does it?  I need to make the flower really pop out of the bokeh, not just sit there in it.  That stump has got to go. Luck­ily at this mag­ni­fi­ca­tion and per­spec­tive, very small move­ments make for very big changes.

Pho­to­graph by Kris­ten Smith

I barely moved my cam­era, but the dif­fer­ence in back­ground works so much bet­ter.  But this time I notice two things – one, there’s a lot of light play­ing the back­drop and I have to time the shot right so that it is more uni­form back there and there aren’t any hot spots to detract from the flow­ers, two, there are a few stray pine nee­dles and that leaf in the bot­tom right isn’t con­tribut­ing any­thing good.  I pluck those out of the way and lo and behold there’s moss under that leaf and when I judge the light to be the best — Presto!

Pho­to­graph by Kris­ten Smith

So as you can see, the process can take a few steps to get a use­able image.  The key is to develop good habits.

  1. Stop and look at the whole scene, back­ground and fore­ground and eval­u­ate each aspect includ­ing the light if it’s variable
  2. Remove dis­tract­ing things like sticks and leaves
  3. Change cam­era posi­tion for more har­mo­nious back­grounds and foregrounds
  4. Use Live View to see how the 3D trans­lates to 2D

Hope­fully this helps you in the field the next time you’re doing close-up and macro work.  Got any to share?  Feel free to log in to the Photography.ca forum and start a thread.

For more of Kristen’s out­door pho­tog­ra­phy and other arti­cles visit wickeddarkphotography.com

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries, Photography tips Tagged With: ,
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