Another ‘Mad Moment’ — Self Improvement — by Mad Aussie

March 15, 2009 By 1 Comment

G’day once more Photography.ca fans.

Another week flashes by, and the Photography.ca forums have hus­tled and bus­tled along quite nicely as usual lately. Lots of new peo­ple join­ing in the fun and learn­ing which is great to see!

My ‘Mad Moment’ this time around is on ‘Self Improve­ment’ and we have two threads in the forum (one by raiven and one by Greg Nus­pel) that dis­cuss this sub­ject. Do you go out to shoot a mas­ter­piece but return with a piece of some­thing else? Do you feel like you are doing every­thing you can to cre­ate a work of art and only end up with some­thing that rhymes with art? Yeh, we all do that sometimes.

So then, how do you go about lift­ing your pho­tog­ra­phy skills? Are there reg­u­lar ways and tech­niques one might apply to their weekly pho­tog­ra­phy that might advance their skills? Can you pro­duce bet­ter images on a more reg­u­lar basis? Well, quite a few of the Photography.ca mem­bers seem to have var­i­ous ideas on this sub­ject so fol­low the two links below to read about how you can learn from them.

Even bet­ter, join the forums if you haven’t already and explore ALL the ways you can learn inter­ac­tively with Marko and the Photography.ca members.

Forum Threads
Improv­ing One’s Pho­tog­ra­phy
Self Improve­ment Assignments

By Mad Aussie — Photography.ca blog con­trib­u­tor & forum mem­ber
www.astrovisual.com.au
www.astrovisualphotography.com.au
www.istockimages.com.au

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

Program modes — A ‘Mad’ Moment by Mad Aussie

March 9, 2009 By 2 Comments

Hello Photography.ca fans, mem­bers and lurk­ers.
Our forums here are a very con­struc­tive way to help move your pho­tog­ra­phy for­ward in a pos­i­tive man­ner and within the forums, blog entries and pod­casts, you can find a vari­ety of means to suit you and your cur­rent level of pho­tog­ra­phy skill and interest.

A cool exam­ple of this, and my ‘moment’ for today is a thread in the forums which asks a ques­tion and the rea­son for why one answered as they did.

The ques­tion is ‘What Mode Do You Use?’

Many pho­tog­ra­phers ignore many of the options avail­able to them and many of us are unaware of how some of these modes can ben­e­fit us in spe­cific ways. Learn­ing what modes peo­ple are using on their cam­eras and for what sit­u­a­tions they employ these modes goes a long way to help­ing us under­stand­ing how we can ben­e­fit also.

To visit the thread of my ‘moment’ fol­low me HERE

Mad Aussie — Photography.ca blog con­trib­u­tor & forum mem­ber
www.astrovisual.com.au
www.astrovisualphotography.com.au
www.istockimages.com.au

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

Program modes — A ‘Mad’ Moment by Mad Aussie

March 9, 2009 By 2 Comments

Hello Photography.ca fans, mem­bers and lurk­ers.
Our forums here are a very con­struc­tive way to help move your pho­tog­ra­phy for­ward in a pos­i­tive man­ner and within the forums, blog entries and pod­casts, you can find a vari­ety of means to suit you and your cur­rent level of pho­tog­ra­phy skill and interest.

A cool exam­ple of this, and my ‘moment’ for today is a thread in the forums which asks a ques­tion and the rea­son for why one answered as they did.

The ques­tion is ‘What Mode Do You Use?’

Many pho­tog­ra­phers ignore many of the options avail­able to them and many of us are unaware of how some of these modes can ben­e­fit us in spe­cific ways. Learn­ing what modes peo­ple are using on their cam­eras and for what sit­u­a­tions they employ these modes goes a long way to help­ing us under­stand­ing how we can ben­e­fit also.

To visit the thread of my ‘moment’ fol­low me HERE

Mad Aussie — Photography.ca blog con­trib­u­tor & forum mem­ber
www.astrovisual.com.au
www.astrovisualphotography.com.au
www.istockimages.com.au

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

Photography.ca winning member images

March 7, 2009 By 4 Comments

For the past 2 months we have added a new fea­ture on our pho­tog­ra­phy bul­letin board where the Admin on Photography.ca (Me, Marko),‚ chooses 1 photo that he thinks is great and talks about the photo. The Eagle photo below by kentw was my choice for this month. (check the pre­vi­ous link for the explanation).

We have lots of pho­tographs being sub­mit­ted each month on our forum for cri­tiques, assign­ments or just to show the photo. Choos­ing Kent’s photo as the ‘win­ner’ took about 3.5 hours of care­ful sift­ing. Given that it took so long to choose, I came across many many many close con­tenders. Seems like a waste of time just to include 1 photo so I’d like to include 3 hon­ourable men­tions right here.

If you haven’t joined our forum I would encour­age you to do so. We are an extremely friendly bunch that share and learn daily.

Here’s the win­ning photo:

Eagles on the Mississippi by kentw

Eagles on the Mis­sis­sippi by kentw

Here are the 3 hon­ourable mentions:

A leaf in water by Michaelaw

A leaf in water by Michaelaw

From Exploring b/w thread by Mad Aussie

From ‘Explor­ing b/w thread’ by Mad Aussie

Shot of my dd...by ~Carla~

Shot of my dd…by ~Carla~

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

Portraits from the Plateau — Sylvain Grand’Maison

January 26, 2009 By 5 Comments

I took this shot for fel­low friend, art direc­tor and pod­caster Syl­vain Grand’Maison about a month ago. Syl­vain pro­duces an extremely suc­cess­ful French pod­cast here in Que­bec that fea­tures great pod­safe music,  great artists and does it all while drink­ing great beer and talk­ing about social media and podcasting.

Syl­vain needed some pho­tog­ra­phy done so we got together for a few hours and clicked the shut­ter. He specif­i­cally had a con­cept in mind and we focused mainly on his con­cept (can’t talk about it yet). After the shoot though, we also took some casual shots and many of them came out quite nice includ­ing this one.

Sylvain GrandMaison

Syl­vain Grand’Maison

Sylvain’s blond hair and eyes came out really well against this black back­ground and both he and I really dig this shot. In terms of light­ing, I used a Quan­tum flash in an umbrella at 45 degrees and a reflec­tor on the oppo­site site. I did a bit of soft­en­ing on his body and added some glow to his hair in post so that his face is the most strik­ing ele­ment in the shot. Exif data is 1/80 at F-7.0 ISO 400 at 75mm.

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

Portraits from the Plateau — Sylvain Grand’Maison

January 26, 2009 By 5 Comments

I took this shot for fel­low friend, art direc­tor and pod­caster Syl­vain Grand’Maison about a month ago. Syl­vain pro­duces an extremely suc­cess­ful French pod­cast here in Que­bec that fea­tures great pod­safe music,‚ great artists and does it all while drink­ing great beer and talk­ing about social media and podcasting.

Syl­vain needed some pho­tog­ra­phy done so we got together for a few hours and clicked the shut­ter. He specif­i­cally had a con­cept in mind and we focused mainly on his con­cept (can’t talk about it yet). After the shoot though, we also took some casual shots and many of them came out quite nice includ­ing this one.

Sylvain GrandMaison

Syl­vain Grand’Maison

Sylvain’s blond hair and eyes came out really well against this black back­ground and both he and I really dig this shot. In terms of light­ing, I used a Quan­tum flash in an umbrella at 45 degrees and a reflec­tor on the oppo­site site. I did a bit of soft­en­ing on his body and added some glow to his hair in post so that his face is the most strik­ing ele­ment in the shot. Exif data is 1/80 at F-7.0 ISO 400 at 75mm.

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

Where the Ocean Meets the Sky

January 9, 2009 By 3 Comments
Calm image from a moving bus :)

Calm image from a mov­ing bus

Oh how this calm pho­to­graph is decep­tive! You’d think it was taken care­fully and leisurely and this is not at all the case. The truth is, is that it was taken through the win­dow of a bus mov­ing quickly down a rocky road. The only impor­tant thing done to this pho­to­graph in post was straight­en­ing as it was a good 25 degrees away from being ‘straight’. Exif data — F10 1/1250 ISO 640

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries

Winter patterns

December 14, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Even though win­ter is uncom­fort­able in many ways for tak­ing pic­tures, win­ter offers lots of pho­to­graphic pos­si­bil­i­ties. Pat­terns of frost, ice and snow make inter­est­ing sub­jects and some­times give off an abstract feel. The tip of the day there­fore, is search for win­ter pat­terns! The shot below was taken dur­ing one of the first snow­storms in Mon­treal this year. I call this one Win­ter Zen.

Winter Zen

Win­ter Zen — by Marko Kulik

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

More photography podcasts are coming!

December 3, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Just an FYI — More pho­tog­ra­phy pod­casts are com­ing, I promise.

In fact I’m in the mid­dle of edit­ing one right now and have 2 sched­uled.
Per­sonal cir­cum­stances had halted pub­lish­ing pod­casts, but I’m now back on track.

Thanks for your patience every­one and for the many sup­port­ive emails that con­tinue to come in. — Marko

Filed Under: Photography blog entries

LIFE photo archive hosted by Google

November 19, 2008 By 1 Comment

Time and Google have teamed up to make a huge archive of his­tor­i­cal pho­tos avail­able online. Great body of work, worth perus­ing when you need inspi­ra­tion of just want to look at great and time­less pho­tos.
http://images.google.com/hosted/life

Hat tip to Acadieli­bre from our forum for bring­ing this to my attention.

Migrant mother Flo­rence Thomp­son & chil­dren pho­tographed by Dorothea Lange — 1936

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

Picpockets by Jerry Ghionis

November 13, 2008 By 2 Comments

I met Jerry Ghio­nis at the 2008 Pho­to­Plus Expo/conference‚ in New york and he has what I think is a great teach­ing tool. They are sets of cards called Picpock­ets and they are the same size as play­ing cards but they con­tain pho­tos or pho­tos with notes writ­ten on them. They come in a sturdy pack and can be taken on loca­tion and used for inspi­ra­tion. The ‘Ordi­nary to Extra­or­di­nary’ series is nice because it shows you the sim­ple back­grounds plus the fairly sim­ple light­ing and Exif data that were used to cre­ate the many strik­ing pho­tographs that make up the set. Each set of cards cur­rently sells for about 80 dol­lars and con­tains about 50 cards. In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure, Jerry was kind enough to give me sam­ples of his prod­ucts for review.

Ordinary-Extraordinary Vol 2

Ordinary-Extraordinary Vol 2

Ordinary-Extraordinary Vol 2

Ordinary-Extraordinary Vol 2

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

Podcast/posting delay for 1 week

October 26, 2008 By 5 Comments

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

Filed Under: Photography blog entries
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