Three weeks ago I went on a photo tour in the Rockies with Darwin Wiggett who has been interviewed on our podcast a few times already. Man, that Darwin Wiggett is inspirational and I came back on a photo high. Darwin has been shooting an image a day for well over a year I believe, and he calls it his daily snap. Here is Darwin’s daily snap for today December 3rd 2010.

Although I am envious of Darwin’s passion and commitment, I know myself pretty well. I’ll try hard to post images that are shot by me and others, or post vintage photography that I dig. I’ll even write a few lines about what intrigues me about the images. I should be able to do this several times a week each week — but not every single day. Anyway, effective immediately and thanks again Darwin for your additional inspiration, I’ll start posting photos of the day as often as I can.

Here’s an image I shot just yesterday a few meters from my home. The day was very overcast and windy and puddles reflecting the city were everywhere. The wind caused ripples in the water and gave it a painterly feel which caught my eye immediately. Because the scene already had very little colour I thought it best to convert it to BW using Silver efex pro. Although the shot does feel a bit ‘dark’ to my eye, it did represent the mood of the day and the changing seasons. Please feel free to critique or comment on any aspect of this image.

Puddle Reflection by Marko Kulik

In terms of the actual techniques used to dodge and burn a photo you can try this one if you have Photoshop. Create a new layer and set your blending mode to soft-light or overlay. Use an opacity of around 4–15%. Use a SOFT paint brush with these settings. To burn (darken) use black as the foreground colour in the palette. To dodge (lighten) use white as the foreground colour.

This podcast was inspired by Yisehaq a member of our photography forum. Feel free to join — it’s fun and free! This podcast was recorded in a park. Please let me know if you found the ambient noises too distracting.

Many thanks to Yisehaq for letting me use the above images of the Blue Nile as a teaching tool!

Post edited August 18 2008 — Adding 2 of my own images to further illustrate the difference between the image after it comes out of the camera versus the dodged and burned result. The result looks much livelier and the main reason is the local dodging and burning. These are of the grand canyon and they are the same images from the podcast on deliberately underexposing your images.

Image 1 of the Grand Canyon (leveling/quick colour balance)

Image 2 — after including quite a bit of dodging and burning and a quick sharpen.
After a while you’ll learn to see the potential tones just waiting to come out.

Links/topics mentioned in this podcast:
Original thread with Yisehaq’s images and comments
Photo assignment forum on Photography.ca

Thanks as always to Benoitc23, Benny and DeStefanoPhotography for recent comments and suggestions. We LOVE comments and suggestions so please send more.

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Yesterday as I walked through my new favourite location (Parc Lafontaine), I spotted 2 lovers in a hammock and asked if I could take their portrait. They agreed and I think I captured the feelings they have for one another. This was shot at about 6pm with no flash or reflector, only ambient light.