Category: Articles

Photography for Fun?

Jason5 Comments

As I started a new job here in Colorado, I was actually quite excited to do so, because a fair portion of it includes some photography portrait work, event photography, and a lot of publishing in catalogs, brochures, and marketing materials.

As a hobbyist photographer for going on 4 years now, I would guess that I am similar to many other hobbyists – I enjoy learning more about the field, and at some point, there has always been an interest in “taking things to the next level.”  Today, my Thursday Thoughts revolve around that premise, and the age old adage that one should be careful what one wishes for.

Taking pictures for ones own pleasure and self expression is always gratifying, but when taking on photography as a profession, your own creative vision can very quickly become muffled, if not lost on the creative vision of others.  In the past month of working at my new position, I am already noticing that photography at work has become very much that – work.  What it has also done though, is what I was most fearful of – I am taking my camera gear out less and less for my own creative expression and enjoyment.  I guess the silver lining is the awareness came rather quickly.

Now, I am making sure I take some time regularly to get out and just take pictures for the sake of taking pictures – doing it for fun and my own learning and advancement.  So, for my Thursday Thoughts, I figured it might be useful to share my own mission with the rest of the listening audience:  whatever your goals or dreams are with photography, make sure you save some time for yourself and your own creative vision and self expression.  After all, isn’t that what drew you to photography in the first place?

Happy shooting!

Kickstart that Creativity

Jason1 Comment

In a rut?  Got writer’s block or photo funk?  Here’s some great ways to kickstart those creative juices!  This is actually part of a larger work I am putting together, called 101 Sources of Inspiration.  Here’s the first 25 I’ve put together:

Inspired Photography:

25 sources of inspiration

 

As we all endeavor to find new ways to express ourselves creatively, we can often find ourselves in search of inspiration to give purpose and definition to our expression.  Here are a number of sources that can inspire.  Some are traditional, while others are hopefully new venues to spark those creative juices.

 

  1. Tour a museum
  2. Look at others works.  The internet is rife with photo blogs, galleries, and imagery that can awe and inspire.
  3. Listen to music – of all types!
  4. The dictionary – open to any random page, find the 1st noun (or verb, or adjective, whatever) and try to capture a picture that encompasses the essence of that word.
  5. Take any object you see every day and turn it upside down, backwards or sideways.  Use it in that position for a day or two (unless it’s a drinking glass!)  Your brain will be forced to think differently.
  6. Read!  Whether it’s a magazine, book, recipe, or anything, it doesn’t matter.  Go to the local bookstore and pick up something you’ve never read before and open to the first page that catches your eye.  Inspiration can often come from such places.
  7. Pick a letter of the alphabet and try to find that in objects around you (buttons on the phone don’t count!).
  8. Draw!  It doesn’t have to be structured with paints or anything – use a crayon, pen, pencil, whatever you have handy.  Just start doodling and a direction or theme will come to you eventually.
  9. Close your eyes.  Count your breaths.  If you don’t fall asleep you will start to hear things you didn’t hear before, or sense things you were otherwise unaware of.  Pick any one of them and try to define it in one word.  Now take that word and express it with your camera!
  10.  Donate some time to a worthy cause.  Pick a cause, whether it’s the United Way, March of Dimes, your church, or some other local venue.  Participating in such a way has its own rewards and often can be an excellent source of inspiration.  The Big Brother/Big Sister program is also a great one!
  11.  Buy a compact (you can get these at a discount in places like dollar stores, yard sales, and flea markets.) and use that mirror to look at things.  Looking at the reflection of something can often open your mind to new possibilities. 
  12. Take a walk in a new area.  Whether it’s a forest road, a new street, or whatever – new scenes can often inspire.
  13. Visit a place you frequent during an unusual time.  (For example, if you get a coffee at Dunkin Doughnuts every morning – try stopping in at night.)
  14. Change your desktop to a neutral gray – your eye will start wandering away from the bland to find color or something of interest elsewhere.
  15. Plant something.  The act of planting gets you doing something to help the environment, and gets your hands doing something different. 
  16. Join a photo club.
  17. Sing the first line of the first song that comes to mind – out loud!  Take the third word and find a way to capture that word in camera.
  18. Go to the hardware store and stroll the aisles looking at the products.  If something catches your eye, go with it.  If nothing does, buy a box of something, anything.  Whether it’s nails, screws, washers, grommets, o-rings, or whatever happens to be in the next closest aisle.  Take it home and dump the contents on a table.  Take a picture of it.  Now start arranging the objects.  Take a picture of that.  Keep re-arranging, and taking pictures.  Look down at the objects.  Look up at them (if you can).  Put them on their side, upside down or any which way works.  Try balancing one on top of another.  You’d be surprised where this takes you!
  19. Open an old photo album and look through some of your past work.  Pick a number and say you’ll make it your next project to re-create that scene.
  20. Spell the longest word you can think of.  Now try to find a way to capture the essence of that concept on film! (Anti-disestablishmentarianism doesn’t count!)
  21. Dance to the next song you hear on the radio (or your iPod)!  What do your feet do?  Take a picture of your feet!
  22. Make a trip to the local animal shelter.
  23. Take a self-portrait.  It doesn’t have to be your face – try just your hands, feet, or knees.
  24. Organize a photo-walk.  Put an ad on Craigslist or your local paper and make it open to all.  You’d be surprised the amount of people that show up who have ideas of their own to share that can really jump-start your creativity.
  25. Go to a playground and play on the swings, merry-go-round, or see-saw.  Act goofy!  Changing your mindset and environment to that of a kid can open up creative avenues that have been closed for a while.

Got another way to inspire or encourage creativity?  Sound off in the comments…meanwhile, happy shooting, watch those apertures, and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

The Beauty of Bokeh

Jason2 Comments

Happy Monday to all – before getting into this week’s first post, I’d like to take a moment and remind everone of the NEW CONTEST that CB has started.  The theme is Photograph Freedom, and there are prizes to be had.  More details can be found on the post from 7-3, linked here.

On to new news, I was thinking about subjects over the course of the weekend that could serve as useful material for fellow photographers and aspiring photographers that has not seen much coverage lately (no sense in repeating everything that everyone else has already said 10 different ways, right?).  I got to thinking about everything that makes for capturing great images, and one aspect that contributes (or detracts from) that I’ve not seen much attention on lately is that of bokeh.  So, in the spirit of putting out new and original (as well as useful) content, I did a bit of research over the weekend, and have put together an article on The Beauty of Bokeh. Any who would like to read this initial version are welcome to download the PDF file attached to this post.

In closing for Monday, I’d like to leave it to the readers out there:  what are your thoughts on the quality and nature of bokeh?  Do you clean up your bokeh or do you like the effect it has on images?  What types of bokeh appeal to you and what do you find not as appealing?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

What’s This: Week 4

Jason5 Comments

Now in it’s last installment for the month of June, “What’s This?” has become the most popular subject for the blog. Gary correctly guessed that last week’s What’s This was a shower head, so props, kudos, and congrats to Gary! Let’s see if someone else can mount a challenge this week. Here we go (and no more hints)…this week’s What’s This is:

What's This? - Week 4

Good luck to everyone!  If the fun continues, I may be able to start offering prizes too (depends on whether any vendor would be interested in sponsoring the “What’s This Weekly”…so, Canon, Adobe, USRobotics, Apple, Microsoft, Joe’s Tire Shop…anyone interested? 🙂

Just kidding – this is all just for fun, so there’s not any prizes, just bragging rights, and hopefully a way to provide creative spark and motivation to look at things differently! 🙂

In the web news this week, just a couple things that may be of interest:

  • ProPhotoLife has another video out on studio product lighting – 10 minutes well spent!
  • TWIP does a video podcast on lighting a model in studio – also about 10 minutes…
  • Digital Photography School has a 6-tip session on reducing camera shake – about a 3 minute read if you include the comments
  • Tim’s Digital Darkroom via  a connection over at Hyperphocal has some very cool shots of a light bulb shattering (scroll down)…1-2 minutes depending on what else you may find of interest
  • Naturally, Hyperphocal gets a nod too, not only because of the great articles they have there, but also because I have the “Cleaning your Gear” posted as an article there from yesterday – stop over and read their other articles – the one for today on Inkjets versus Dye Sub printers was very educational for me!

Altogether, about 30 minutes of stuff, so if you have half an hour to spare – take some time and visit these resources as they all have some really good content.  In the meantime, feel free to share other links to resources in the comments (as well as guess at this week’s edition of What’s This”).  Happy shooting, watch those apertures, and we’ll see you back here on Thursday!

Hot and Cold Lighting

Jason8 Comments

We all know that tungsten light is a warmer light (think regular light bulbs) and fluorescents and flash produce cooler lighting. While it makes sense, until I read an article by Peter Kolonia in Popular Photography, I have never thought of combining warm and cool light to produce different effects in a photograph. Since I’ve not tried this yet, I don’t have any sample pictures, but they should be viewable over at www.popphoto.com so stop over there to see samples in action.

Basically, the article says that by lighting your subject with one tone and the background with another, you can produce some really interesting results. For simplicity purposes, here’s a chart of what combinations produce what types of results:

Subject Light

Background Light

White Balance

Results

Tungsten lights (like a lamp)

Flash or cool window light

Tungsten

Electric Blue Background

Cool daylight or Flash

Tungsten lights (like a lamp)

Daylight

Orange Glow

Tungsten (like a lamp)

Tungsten (like a lamp)

Auto

White (or grey1)

All light

No light

Auto

Black

1For a high key (all white) effect on the background, throw more light on the background. The more light you direct to the background, the brighter the resulting background will be for your photos. Conversely, as background lights get dimmer, the background itself will be more of a gray.

Just a few reminders Peter gives us:

Use a large space so foreground light won’t spoil the background light

  • Experiment with exposure to get the right glow from the background (typically longer speeds thus necessitating a tripod)
  • Using an old-fashioned fluorescent light can result in the “grunge” look of cross-processed photos

Magical Moments

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wand

Does anyone remember from earlier this week why this post is so momentous? This is magical post # 200 for Canon Blogger. A few days off here and there, but since inception back on August 21st, 2007, I have made sometimes silly, sometimes serious, and sometimes useful posts to Canon Blogger. It’s been a fun ride thus far, and rather than take the kind reader on a blathering journey through some deep, thoughtful, meaningful, and insightful post laden with pearls of wisdom, trinkets of tips, tricks and techniques, I would rather just take a moment to say: Thank you!

Thank you to all the readers who have let me rant on occasion, wax philosophic on others, and bide their time for something useful, informative, or at the very least… entertaining. It truly has been quite the learning experience thus far. I would like to think I have matured a little, learned a lot, and improved the quality of the content that I’ve been putting out into the blogosphere. That judgement though, will reside with the readership. As of today, Canon Blogger (which I now affectionately call CB), is showing some pretty amazing numbers between Google Analytics and PodPress:

  • 55008 site visits
  • 78175 page views
  • 55775 feeds

Yeah, okay, that’s small potatoes when you look at the more serious bloggers, photographers, and other industry pros, but for a small time amateur blogger/photographer guy like me, I am just shattered that my little page has been picked up and read that much. So…THANK YOU! I’m glad you’ve enjoyed it thus far. Hopefully over the next 200 posts the quality of the content will continue to improve, and we’ll be able to look back on this day with a chuckle. Right now, I can’t imagine it – but, as the old saying goes “You never know…”

Today is also especially magical for me because I contributed an article to a free magazine called PhotographyBB which was published just the other day. This is my first published article, so it’s especially meaningful. I would like to thank Dave Seeram over at the PhotographyBB Magazine, and the folks in their forums who have accepted me into their community so graciously and with such open arms. I look forward to sharing many years to come with all of you. Do stop over to their site and feel free to join the community yourself. It’s a great group of people. The magazine, in it’s 5th issue, has many excellent articles (one by my) and an extra treat was to be able to contribute as the photographer “In the Spotlight”. Thne one that had planned to do it had something come up and could not, so I stepped in to help fill the content out for this issue. Very cool to be able to contribute to this work, and it really is a great read, so either stop over to their site and check out all they have to offer, or at least download the article linked below for a fun read when you have half an hour to spare.

So, it’s definitely some magical moments for me, and I just wanted to take today to say Thank You to everyone who has made this such a special day for me. You all rock!

More coffee Monday

Jason2 Comments

Judging from my soreness even today after a weekend of home improvement projects, I would imagine that tomorrow morning will be even more of the same – I will definitely be partaking of more than a few cups of joe to get me on my feet and functional.

I did take some time to do some cleanup work of the weekend on the photo gallery side of things for my website and the project side of things for the blog too though. The lucky readers (lucky possibly being a subjective term in this case) will get a sneak preview of my latest gallery addition as I ran out of time and do not have a link on the site to this yet (or the thumbnail for that matter).

On the blog maintenance, I’ve changed the notice for comments – apparently the spam flag was set a little too severely as people were making comments and it was taking up to a month in some cases before those got discovered and re-tagged. So, your comments should become visible much more quickly now. With that in mind, I thought I’d also share the latest photo gallery that I am putting up on my website with those of you who are tuning in, so now you can comment more easily! Last but not least, I had mentioned an article that was forthcoming both in the video tutorial last week, and in another one of the posts. Well, after going through several re-writes and different takes on it, I’ve decided not to publish that, as it’s just to dense of a topic for a short listen or read. If anyone is interested in it though, the subject is creative development.

I looked at an essay that came out in the most recent issue of Shutterbug Magazine, where Jack Hollingsworth looks at how photographers develop their in the essay The Ladder: In Defense of Imitation . He defines 3 stages or phases of development: imaginative, adaptive, and innovative. While both interesting and logical, it raises more questions than it answers. I found myself in similar shoes when trying to address just a few of those questions ir raised in my mind – more questions, practically all of which were subjective in nature. So, the article will likely not see the light of day here at CB. If anyone is interested in a heavy read, let me know via email and I’ll be happy to forward a copy of that article to whomever requests it directly.

That said, the blog was not a good place for it, so I discarded the idea for CB and went with the photo montage. A sneak peak was done a few weeks ago, and it’s now complete. Visit my photo site for the full gallery here

Hope everyone’s weekends were good ones. Here’s to a new week – happy shooting, and watch that ISO!

Quality versus quantity

Jason2 Comments

“Okay, I’m done.”

“That’s it? You’ve only been shooting for ten minutes!”

“Yep, got about 50 shots, I should have 4-6 proofs for you from that bunch.”

“So we’re done?”

“Pretty much…I mean I can keep shooting, but there’s really no point, it’ll just be duplicates of the same stuff.”

This was the dialog I had with a co-worker a short time ago when I went to take pictures of her son for her. It is indicative of a mentality that exists in society…not only is size king, but so is quantity. If you were to take two photographers and set them side by side, who would you think is a better photographer: the one who took 40 shots or the one who took 400? Many of the general public would probably respond by saying the latter, without giving it much thought. Yeah, I took 50 instead of 40, because I have not been a pro shooter for 20 years, so I gave myself a little bit more of a margin for error. Having checked ISO, white balance and histogram settings though, I was pretty confidant that all that was left was composition – so I went with my instinct for what would make a good composition, took 3 or 4 different angles and was done.

Even photographers fall victim to this mentality of delivering a massive quantity of images. I know of several studios that just inundate their clients with hundreds of shots to choose from. They can’t understand why these clients never get any prints or very few prints from the studio. They think that people like to have a choice, and that the more choices you give them, the better. While the idea is not without merit, (because choice is a good thing) it can go to an extreme… and I think that’s where it’s going. The reason why they’re not getting prints done is because too many choices can also be paralyzing. If presented with 4 options, it is very easy to pick out which one you like best, whether it’s cars, cameras, televisions or photos. Presented with 400 cars, cameras, televisions or photos, the choice becomes more difficult and time consuming, primarily because you become concerned over picking the “wrong one”.

My perspective, in contrast, is to deliver just a select few shots. It makes the choices easier for the client. In a world where time is an increasingly valuable commodity, getting bogged down in sorting through hundreds of images trying to find one or two to print and hang can be more frustrating and lead to inaction. In essence it’s like you are transferring the process of elimination part of the work flow from your hands to the client. This has several downsides with minimal upsides. The one upside is that “Hey, the client chose this, not me.” can absolve you of responsibility for getting a bad shot framed. I would venture to ask though: why was a bad shot among the choices?

As I told a friend via email recently, it also comes to one of work flow management. Which would you rather deal with as a photographer – a work flow where you process 50 images or 500 images? The argument that “it’s digital, so what’s the big deal?” always seems to get under my skin a little bit. For me, the big deal is that some are going out there and not putting much time or thought into capturing the essence of a scene. They just lift the camera, point in the general direction of what they want and just fire away. I’ve actually heard the term “spray and pray” used for such shooters. The idea of slowing down and taking your time to both enjoy the moment and to really take into consideration all the nuances of things like lighting, shadows, and minimizing distractions has benefits. For me, the benefits far outweigh the downsides. Firstly, it is a much more enjoyable situation to be in. Not only do you have fewer images to process, but you can really take your time, pay attention to the detail, and get every nuance of the image pegged!

Secondly, you will probably find that you are less stressed yourself. You’re not worried about missing the shot because you didn’t have time to consider all the aspects – primarily because you are considering the nuances. Third, and most importantly, when you relax and aren’t stressed, your clients aren’t stressed either…a photographer and their subject often feed off each other. I have so much fun when taking pictures of subjects, I often forget that I am there for a specific reason – we’re enjoying the moment.

That’s right…we are enjoying the moment – client and photographer! We’re laughing, and having fun, and I just happen to have a camera in hand recording it. Yeah, the first shots are often always a little awkward for them, but once they see my mug grinning over the camera at them and laughing and joking around, the stress level decreases by a factor of ten! When your client is less stressed, they photograph better! They are more willing to strike goofy (in their eyes) poses! You can capture the shot!

So, that’s pretty much it: taking fewer shots will do three things for you:

  1. Cut down on post processing (both for quantity and quality)
  2. You stress less, and thus, your client stresses less.
  3. You increase your keeper percentage!

Having said this, I realize that there are some situations where you have to mass produce images. Another friend of mine talked about a basketball or softball tournament where they had to take pics of every person on every team over the course of a weekend. With 50 players per team and upwards of 30-40 teams, that is 2000 shots to process – and that’s a small regional event even if it’s only one shot per person. Take it on to a national event, and it just ratchets up another notch. While the quantity is there, it’s also a different shot every frame. This is also not a fine art or a studio environment. This is a very fast-moving, fast-paced environment and is not applicable to the type of photography I am talking about here.

I would venture to guess though that most of us do not fall in that category…we’re shooting far less than this on average, so the quality versus quantity rule does apply in most scenarios. Now, if only I could take that principle and apply it to the writing here on the blog!

Happy shooting all, and watch those apertures! (I’ll be back tomorrow with a video tutorial – had some plumbing issues today that hastened pulling from the archive for a daily post.)

Tuesday Trip around the Web

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There’s been a slight change of plans on the weekly schedule this week. Friend and fellow-blogger Jason Moore is out on “assignment” again (partying things up in France actually!), and a couple of us are filling in for his weekly P&P blogroll post where he summarizes the imagery activities of fellow Photoshop and Photography bloggers as they share them with the world. Three of us share the duties this week, so be sure to visit Andrew’s blog (Visual Realia) and Michael Palmer’s site for the other portions of the P&P. So…without further ado:

  • PhotowalkPro – Jeff Revell had a couple interesting things this week, but the most recurring theme is the upcoming photo walk for the Georgetown area. Make sure you get the dates when you visit his blog.
  • Samuel Barr is out traveling (great travel shots too), but congrats go out to him for being selected for the “Photo of the Week” over at Calumet Photo.
  • Sean Duffy is traveling to, and has some pretty incredible shots of the Eiffel Tower.
  • Strobist – It seems everyone is traveling as David had a few posts left from his trip to Dubai, and as recently as yesterday was sharing shots from Joe McNally’s trip. Pretty incredible stuff, and you can always get your fill of lighting gear, including beauty lights and trash bags for the really hard core.
  • Terry White’s Tech Blog – Read about Snowballs, Snowflakes, and Screenflow, but don’t get him started on DirectTV (I feel ya Terry – had a few experiences myself with large conglomerates).
  • The C Spot – Clayton talks about his visit to Michael Switzer’s open house for Design Works Studio.
  • The Digital Story – Derrick’s podcast talks about the merits and downsides of keywording your photos. Worth a listen, and it seems the best time to do that is on import – *phew! Got one right*
  • travel+ photography – Michael appeases the readership with a weather shot from Arkansas, but has had his hands full with buying a house – stop over to congratulate him on the new digs!
  • Visual Realia – Andrew demonstrates again his creative talents with some great photography and poetic verse. I don’t know how he finds verses that fit the imagery so well. Check out Old Friend, Bloom, and Josh McElwee for some truly inspirational captures!
  • watchThisspace – Steve takes a break but leaves us with a really cool apple abstract – come back soon Steve – your vision and creative talents will be missed!
  • What The Duck – Cartoon + photography + humor = Aaron Johnson – a new chuckle every day!
  • Weekly Photo Tips – Scott is taking his blog down for Memorial day to commemorate the occasion and is asking for readers to contribute imagery for his slideshow. A truly awesome gesture and I would encourage everyone to join in the effort.
  • What The Heck Journal – Martin has some great shots here, but without dates it’s hard to tell what’s recent and what’s been up a while. Lost in the Woods is kind of spooky, but an amazing shot nonetheless. Corridors is also an amazingly unique perspective and presentation of B/W photography.
  • Where is Ben – This week, Ben is teaching a fine art class on nudes at the LEPP Institute (Los Osos, CA). His blog photo is pretty abstract, but just indicative of the breadth of his vision and skills.

You Want Fries With That?

Jason5 Comments

We live in a world of super-sizing everything:

From sodas to coffee, fries, meals, cars, and houses, bigger always seems to be better. This is no different in photography. From larger bodies, to larger bags to more Megapixels, we are constantly in pursuit of something “bigger and better.” The idea behind all of this is that the bigger the camera is, or the more megapixels you have, the larger you can print (or the more you can crop and still get a decent print). This is true for the most part. Higher MP counts translate to higher sensor resolution (note that the sensor size isn’t changing, just the resolution). The higher sensor resolution then ultimately translates to higher print sizes. Serious photo enthusiasts know though, that it’s not in the megapixels, the sensors, the cameras, or even the lenses. Truly great prints come from capturing something unique and wonderful that you see with your own eye. Having said that, we are still obsessed with creating the biggest prints we can – after all, the larger the print, the more we can “wow” our clients, right?

Sensor resolution is, by and large, the single most important determinant of how big you will be able to print a particular image. It’s a simple matter of math, native print size will vary as a function of the number of pixels on the sensor. You may get more noise has MP counts ratchet up on identical sensors, but the more pixels you can fit, the larger you can print.

So, that only makes one wonder – what are the maximum print sizes for various cameras? No one tells you that. You can read all about the Digic III sensor from Canon to Nikon’s CCD sensors, and onto the 4/3rds sensor from Olympus. You can also find out everything from the MP counts to frame rates, lens mounts, and a host of other information, but I have yet to find a vendor that publishes a maximum print size in terms we can understand. Instead, they just give us the sensor resolution. But that doesn’t help. We need to know how that resolution translates into prints! Paper sizes aren’t measured in pixels, they are measured in inches! Well, no fear, I’ve taken care of all the legwork and put together a spec sheet for all the cameras currently listed in Canon’s product line. So, without further ado, here are the current Canon cameras, replete with model, current retail price, MP count, sensor size, and max print size. Enjoy!

Canon Camera Print Sizes
Got a camera other than Canon or an older model? Well then, unfortunately it’s a little trickier for you, because you actually need to know 2 things. First, it’s helpful to know that as a general rule of thumb, your maximum print size is proportional to your sensor resolution. Second, you need to know your sensor resolution. To figure out your maximum print size, divide your sensor resolution by 200. For example, the Nikon D80 has a sensor resolution of 3872×2592. So, the max print size would be 3872/200 x 2592/200, or 19″x12″. This is, of course, only taking into account the native resolution of any sensor. Up-sizing programs can adjust for this, but that would no longer be a native measurement.

P.S. I do have this as a worksheet in a larger Excel workbook…other sheets include the Canon lens list, a sunrise/sunset calendar, and bunches of other goodies. If anyone is interested in that, drop me an email! Good stuff in there…