Underdog photo exhibition — Montreal

September 26, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Yes­ter­day I went to see the Under­dog pho­tog­ra­phy exhi­bi­tion in Mon­treal. It’s a gallery specif­i­cally opened to sell beau­ti­ful prints of shel­ter dogs AND have dogs there at the gallery (from shel­ters across Mon­treal) that are avail­able for adop­tion. The pho­tographs are by pho­tog­ra­pher Jaime LeBlanc and they are well done indeed. All the money from the sale of the images goes to shel­ters. This image was taken at the exhi­bi­tion yes­ter­day with my cameraphone.

Today was sup­posed to be the last day until 7pm at 4922 Sher­brooke W. (514) 969 3376
BUT the response has been so amaz­ing that they are con­tin­u­ing the exhi­bi­tion for a short while.

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

Point and Shoot cameras are good

September 26, 2009 By Leave a Comment

So you are into your DSLR or SLR, and can­not imag­ine using another cam­era… espe­cially a point and shoot cam­era, right? Well they are often a good thing to have on hand in addi­tion to your DSLR .

Point and shoots (P&S) aren’t ideal for learn­ing pho­tog­ra­phy. In fact they are a bad choice. Why? Because you can’t do many impor­tant things on most point and shoots (like change lenses, learn to man­u­ally focus a lens, man­u­ally meter eas­ily, change shut­ter speeds eas­ily etc.) that are essen­tial when learn­ing photography.

But — for some­one that already knows pho­tog­ra­phy, a point and shoot is very con­ve­nient due to its way smaller size. Many pho­tog­ra­phers want to have a cam­era with them at all times because there are always pho­to­graphic pos­si­bil­i­ties around us.

Would I ever bring a point and shoot to a pay­ing gig?‚ Maybe as a 3rd emer­gency backup. The cliche about not bring­ing a knife to a gun­fight holds true for pay­ing gigs and cheap cam­eras. But when I’m not shoot­ing, I want to relax with­out all the gear. I still need to carry pro­tec­tion (the P&S ) though, just in case.

Which point and shoot should you get?‚ There’s way too many out there to list. One that I have my eye on that seems like it may be tasty treat is the Canon Pow­er­Shot G11. It’s sup­posed to be out in Octo­ber. Buying/ordering through the B&H link above helps sup­port the site. Thx.

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

72 — Exposure compensation

September 22, 2009 By 6 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #72 dis­cusses how to use expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion. It’s a fairly sim­ple con­cept that just means devi­at­ing away from (or com­pen­sat­ing against)‚ the cam­era meter’s rec­om­mended expo­sure to make the image brighter or darker. We also talk about which cam­era modes you’ll want to use expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion with, and I dis­cuss why pro­gram mode sucks and should be avoided. Even though expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion in pho­tog­ra­phy is an easy con­cept, I dis­cuss the rea­son­ing behind it, why I fre­quently use it and why you should too.

exposure compensation
The expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion dial on the Canon G10

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Orig­i­nal sug­ges­tion thread from our forum — Thanks Iggy!
September’s “New Beginnings”‚assignment on the Photography.ca forum
Please join the Photography.ca fan page on Face­book
My Face­book pro­file — Feel free to “friend” me
My Twit­ter page — I will fol­low you if you fol­low me (Hey that’s a Gabriel lyric) — Let’s con­nect

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

Thanks to Nijip, jack­la­bel, jab­ber and Tom Restis 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

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

Photographing Tattoos — Tatoo photography

September 17, 2009 By 3 Comments

We eas­ily acquire tips to pho­to­graph flow­ers, peo­ple, and still life. Yet one sub­ject that often doesn’t have clear cut tips and direc­tions is pho­tograph­ing tat­toos. This sub­ject is art in itself, and to effec­tively shoot this piece requires not only patience and an eye for com­po­si­tion, but also tips from peo­ple that have already done it.

Tip one: Do not use a tri­pod unless you have a spe­cific effect (e.g blur) in mind. It is likely going to limit your mov­ing around and will take extra time to set up for each shot.

Tip two: If pos­si­ble, shoot out­side if you’re new to the game, or use great win­dow light, it’s so much eas­ier. Pay atten­tion to clut­ter and dis­trac­tions though. Be aware of what’s in the frame, what’s out of the frame, and make deci­sions on what to include or chop.

Tip Three:‚ Eas­ier light to han­dle might be around sun­set time or on a cloudy day with dif­fused light. A reflec­tor like white card­board can help if needed.

Tip Four: If you already know how to work with flash and/or are com­fort­able with your tech­nique, feel free to shoot in a tat­too shop if you get the per­mis­sion. You’ll likely get cool effects if you try slower shut­ter speeds on their own and/or mixed with flash.

You can find loads of fine tat­too pho­tog­ra­phy in the gallery at vanishingtatoo.com

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

Portrait without a head

September 7, 2009 By 2 Comments

Do all por­traits need a head or is it okay to frame or crop a photo so that it is head­less? Most times I’d say, “for the love of God include the head”. Nor­mally we con­nect with the sub­ject of a por­trait pri­mar­ily by look­ing at the subject’s eyes, which reveal much about the per­son being photographed.

But.…once you know the rules, you can try to break them to achieve a par­tic­u­lar result. This image is a good exam­ple of a head­less por­trait that works IMO. If we try to ana­lyze WHY it works, it works because the cou­pled ele­ments tell a story. The Jake tat­too on the hand cou­pled with the suit, cou­pled with the Royal Monaco car actu­ally tell a SPECIFIC story. These are all ele­ments of the movie The Blues Broth­ers and both the pho­tog­ra­pher and I likely show our age by know­ing this fact.

How­ever, even if I did not catch the Blues Broth­ers con­nec­tion, for me this shot still works. The ele­ments are still there. The tat­too, older freck­led skin, suit and older car all sug­gest a story. The fact that the shot is in black and white rein­force this fact. It’s up to the viewer to extract the story for them­selves, but all the ele­ments are there.

Okay then — do you agree? What do YOU think about this shot and the con­cept of a head­less portrait?

Many thanks to 1putts of our pho­tog­ra­phy forum for allow­ing me to use this image. Here’s the orig­i­nal photo.

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

The truth about polarizing filters

September 5, 2009 By 2 Comments

The truth about polar­iz­ing fil­ters is that every pho­tog­ra­pher should have one in his/her bag at all times. It is pos­si­bly THE sin­gle most impor­tant and‚ use­ful photo acces­sory you’ll own. When there is light out­doors, this fil­ter is on my cam­era the vast major­ity of the time.

A CPOL (cir­cu­lar polar­iz­ing fil­ter) can be used any time you’re in the out­doors, espe­cially in the bright sun. It reduces reflec­tions, and deepens/saturates col­ors like a blue sky. In bright sun,‚ you’ll often get skies that are blown out if you don’t use this fil­ter. It makes the sky much bluer and richer look­ing in many cases with­out really affect­ing the other tones in the image. You will note the great­est results when the sun is low in the sky (so early morn­ing and later afternoon/evening). The CPOL will not help your color and sat­u­ra­tion much on over­cast days, or when the sun is high in the sky.

For more infor­ma­tion on this amaz­ing lit­tle gad­get, includ­ing a lit­tle insight into the ‘rule of thumb’ when using a CPOL, visit this link on polar­iz­ers in our pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Here’s a link from B&H where you can look at or pur­chase dif­fer­ent polar­iz­ers.
Buy­ing from this link helps sup­port our site.

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