After the blog post on Wednesday, and the number of comments received, I thought that the next podcast would be well served to discuss the idea behind matting and framing in more detail. As luck would have it, that podcast just went live earlier this afternoon! You can catch the podcast over at the Personal Life Media site here: Learning Digital Photography
Here’s the Show Notes:
In this latest episode of Learning Digital Photography, the Grand Prize winner from the September $500 giveaway is announced, and the October contest opens up – ready for your entries. The theme this time is Fall (open to interpretation). Specs, guidelines, and such are discussed including dimensions, dates for submission and more.
Also in this episode, a primer on framing your photos: things to look for and avoid when matting and framing work. I look at what gallery and show fine art venues usually require versus home or personal use.
Finally, the popular listener question and answer segment returns, with some great ones coming from all over the globe! Download today! Happy shooting!
Don’t forget, every time you “Digg” the podcast over at PLM, or subscribe and write a review on iTunes , you are helping others enjoy the fun and thrill of photography. Feel free to also use those venues as well as the comments here and contact with me via email if you have an idea or thought to share about the show. Thanks, as always, for listening and reading. Have a great weekend, happy shooting, and we’ll see you back again on Monday!
Guilt can be a powerful thing – after the internet outage last night, I felt as though dodging a post today was kind of an easy out, and that would be doing the readership a dis-service. So, here’s a creative cram session tip for you…
Try writing on a foggy window, then capturing that in camera. Sounds easy right? I tried it on the commute the other day (I ride a bus to work – easier on the wallet). Best I could come away with from a few attempts follows:
Foggy Blogger
Thoughts on the creative angle? DOes it work? If so, feel give the fog writing a whirl – I thought the effect was kind of neat, but the balance between the shadows can be tough to pull out. Feel free to share links in the comments!
Also, the Noise Ninja contest is underway and the winner gets a free copy of it for the month of October so be sure to share your images of the Fall in the FLickr thread. Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow.
Every photographer, whenever they start or dip their toes in the proverbial waters, starts wondering about their gear, their work, and how to do things. And, in search of answers to questions – we start asking them. One of the classic questions is “What camera should I buy?” Another similar one is “What lens to get?” There are more (of course), but these are two of the most commonly asked questions I’ve had proposed to me (and that I’ve proposed myself in the past. The answer though, is a bit more problematic, because there are qualifiers to everything. More often than not, the answers start with the inevitable “It depends…” The reason is – it does!
For lenses, the “depends” factor relates to what you want to shoot because your subject matter will define the focal range that is best suited to your purposes. Here are some general rules of thumb to follow:
Wide Angle Lenses
Wide angle lenses (in my opinion), are best suited to a few specific styles and subject matter. I’ve found that the wide angle of view is best suited to subjects like landscapes and architecture. Wide angles allow you to capture a greater sense of scale, where clouds, skylines, building lines, and other scenes like this. In general, the focal lengths that I would put in this category range from the low end of 10mm up to around 35mm.
Portrait Lenses
These are the lenses that are really best suited for portrait work. Take someone’s picture with a wide angle lens, and the proportions can be very unflattering. Alternatively, taking portrait pictures with a zoom lens requires to to be pretty far away, which makes for less interaction. I like to really catch the details of people’s eyes, and be able to interact, so certain lenses work better for this. The ones that I like for portrait work range in focal length anywhere from 50-200mm. The 50mm (or nifty fifty) is the classic portrait lens, and when you shoot portraiture with one of these on a low aperture (f2.8 or lower), the results can be very appealing with some nice bokeh yet your subject is tack sharp. You can probably go up to about a 200mm lens, before you are just too far away (for my taste). Ironically, as you go up to the higher range of zooms, the higher focal range will compress things which can be more flattering, but you do so at the expense of being able to interact
Zoom Lenses
The zoom lens is probably the most obvious lens type and function. Zooms are intended to take photos from further away than you normally would be able. This makes them ideal for things like wildlife, sporting events, and things of that nature. While preferences may vary, for me I would define zooms as anything above the 300mm level.
So, those are my general categories for lenses. So, when you ask me what lens you should buy, I’ll ask what you want to shoot. From that, these guidelines can help answer the lens question in better detail. So, there’s my answer to the question of “Which Lens?”…what do you think? Like it? Make sense? What are your categories? Got any favorites? Sound off in the comments, and share your own thoughts on the question of “Which lens”. Until tomorrow, keep those lenses open and Happy Shooting!
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P.S. Tomorrow, the Guest Blogger series is back and we’re going across the pond – literally! So, be sure to tune in to Kevin Mullins, a wedding photographer from the UK. He’s got some great stuff to share so be sure to tune in then.
In lieu of a software review, today instead just a couple news nuggets for you.
First up, the finalists of the $500 giveaway have been determined. These six finalists are being considered to win a pretty impressive package of stuff including a Thinktank Photo Multimedia Bag System and a complete set of the Topaz Labs Photoshop Bundle. View the finalists gallery here.
Next up, a recommendation: Even if you aren’t a subscriber to the Rangefinder Magazine (although you should be), you can read the current issue online here, (it’s a PDF download) which includes in the most recent issue an interview of none other than David Hobby, founder and author of the world-famous Strobist blog.
From Scott over at one of my favorite daily reads (Weekly Photo TIps), there is a new PBS series starting this week on National Parks. I am definitely setting the DVR for this series!
As a longtime fan of DIY-projects, this one on making a tripod for your P&S (or iPhone) out of a paperclip was just too cool to leave out of the list.
And finally, for those that just insist on getting a photo fix regularly, visit former contest winner John Dunne’s blog, My Chi to see a great dilemma as he is torn between a color and a black and white version of a sunrise scene on the Promenade (psst….I like the black and white version!)…
Well, that’s it for today, be sure to stop back tomorrow for another dose of inspiration as we hit the midway point of the week (a.k.a. hump day)! Happy shooting and we’ll see you then…
She is taking the reins tomorrow on the blog, and after uploading the content and photos, I am pretty stoked. She has a naturalness to her writing, and her portrait work really is amazing. Make sure you stop in and give it a read as well as the samples of her work she shares. Then, visit her larger portfolio and enjoy the feast for your eyes- some pretty inspiring work there!
Here’s Andie’s particulars:
Website: http://www.andiesmithdesigns.com/
Blog: http://andiesmithphotography.net/blog/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/andiesmith
And of course, be sure to tag tomorrow’s post for a very special read! Until then, Happy Shooting!
Yesterday was all about light and the way that contrasts or changes in that light can have a pretty dramatic impact on your work when you present it to others. Of equal importance to photography though is the element of color. If you don’t take color shades and variances into consideration, then you have lost an element of control in your photography.
When we think of color, many of us are familiar with the three primaries. Red, Green, and Blue as these are letters of one of the most common color spaces (Adobe RGB). Surely though, even though we may not consciously think about it, there are more than three colors out there. Even the traditional axiom of a ROYGBIV rainbow only indicates 7 colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet), and there are way more than that within the color spectrum. So, let’s take a look at the entire spectrum of color:
The Color Spectrum
Since colors represent particular wavelengths of light, you can see how light and color tie into one another very quickly. Just because you define something as “red”, doesn’t give a complete description of that color, because there can be so many nuances, shades, hues, or wavelengths of red. So, in understanding that color is something we can control for, it’s first helpful to know that you are still controlling for luminance, light, or contrast while also controlling for color, because the shades you let come through in your photos will also be somewhat controlled by the amount of contrast, luminance, or light.
Another way in which color can control how people view and perceive your images is to understand the idea behind complementary colors. Some colors work well together, while others don’t. For instance, take a look at the photo below:
Yellow Flowers
So, in looking at this photo – which do you think the contrasting colors are? A typical kneejerk reaction would be to say the yellow and the black are the two contrasting colors. Black though, really from a visual perspective means a total lack of color (black = nothing, white = everything…remember grade school?). So, really the contrasting colors would probably be the yellow and what? The greens of the stems or the browns of the center? A case could be made for either, but I am going to go with the browns here. If you look back at the color spectrum, you can see that yellow and brown are relatively close together (as are yellow and green) – they are actually right next to one another – so they complement each other nicely. It’s also no accident that these colors are in use with the black background too. Because the colors are of the brighter variety, they look better with a darker background. There’s two elements of color at play here then, complementary colors (colors that work well together due to proximity on the color spectrum) and color luminance (light versus dark colors). If you want a lighter color to stand out, then place it in a scene where the rest of the background is either much darker (or vice versa). To show how this works, look at the same image when I replace the background with white rather than black:
Bad color control
See how brighter colors look with a brighter background? Now granted, the mask job was rather quick and messy, but you can see how the colors and their background can have a huge impact on the quality of your work. While this speaks more to the luminance and contrast factor from yesterday, it can also help in understanding how to position colors in your work so subjects can get the attention they deserve. Pretty cool, eh?
So, which are your favorite complementary colors? Do you like the yellows and greens? Or the red and blues? Or violets and purples? Don’t forget color shades too – as light never really leaves the picture (both figuratively and literally speaking)! Which scenes do you like? Answering these questions in not only the works of others, but also in your own work can help develop your sense of style and define what makes your work unique, so embrace your originality! Sound off in the comments with your take on controlling color in your images!
LIke many other serious hobbyists and enthusiasts, I had heard a great deal about Mpix and their new featured printing options for professional and serious photographers under the umbrella of Mpix Pro. I recently had a chance to sit down and go through the application process. it was pretty painless, and as long as you have a website for photography, and a decent stable of work, you can opt for the Mpix Pro option.
After submitting your name and website for review, you will receive an email with a link to upload 5 images for print. These 5 images are then printed as 8×10 photos and sent back to you – free! That’s right, you get 5 8×10 photos for free. Basically though, these are intended to be used to check your monitor and color work flow for accuracy because they do not do color correction on them. All 5 of the photos I got back printed very well, and I am happy with my color work flow at this point.
So, now the Mpix Pro printing options are available to me which includes many additional printing options for things like calendars, tickets, sports cards, mugs, and pretty much anything else you can think of – at some pretty impressive prices too. This work flow for printing is also excellent if you tend to batch print a lot of photos at once (say for wedding photographers, portrait photograpers, etc.) You can order multiple quantities of any size print you want and any specialty prints all through their downloaded Rhoes printing services.
Another cool part of this is that you no longer have to go through the website – it’s all done through this software download. Think of it kind of like the Flickr Uploader service, as it works on the same principles, but instead of uploading for publishing on a website – it’s uploading for printing. No fuss, no muss, done in record time and you are right back in the studio or on the road, doing your work, and not waiting on websites, and sitting behind a computer when not needed. It was pretty slick – I literally did just what their catch phrase says: upload one night, they shipped the next day, and I received it the following day! (It helps that I am in Colorado and their facilities are in Kansas – right next door!)
Finally, the last neat little feature about the Mpix Pro service is that they send you basically what I would call a swatch wheel of their various paper types, with photos printed on them so you can see what each looks like to get the exact results you want, how you want and when you want. Great products, great pricing, and great service! What else could you ask for in a printer? Check them out today!
On a more blog-centric note, the next week or so I may not be on as much as I do have a few things coming up, but will check in and post when I can (the whole quality over quantity thing…) In the meantime, I’ll drp a few not-so-subtle hints about helping to get the word out about both the blog and the podcast – completing a Digg review at PLM site is always appreciated, as are iTunes reviews. Other ways to help the show including making your B&H purchases through the link on the sidebar and donating through the Paypal link further down. The cool thing about the B&H link is that your price is the same regardless, but a few pennies come back here to help offset the cost of overhead, hosting, and all that goes into putting the CB/LDP content together.
Last but not least, the September contest is underway, and you can win BIG – a thinktank Bag system and a Topaz Labs Plugin bundle all for participating in the Flickr thread, so don’t delay, and join today!
Have a great weekend everyone and we’ll see you back here on Monday!
In the latest release of the LDP podcast, a shorter show this week as I prep for some other ventures, but there’s still enough material to really sink your teeth into. To start things off, Leica released two new cameras in a synchronized announcement including a full frame ranger finder camera for $6995 and a crop factor camera with 12 MP for just under $2K which will release around the holidays. More info on both cameras here
The other big photo news of the week comes to us courtesy of Apple, with the latest updates to iPods not only by adding features, but also by decreasing cost. Find out how this all relates to photography (very cool ways) on the podcast today! You can get Apple-specific details on their main page.
Second up on the show, the contest news which regular readers mostly know about except for the October announcement of two new sponsors! Find out who the new sponsors are and what will be the giveaway for October in this episode.
Finally, I also let you know about the latest project to be looking for from CB and LDP – a monthly newsletter, and let you know how to become a featured artist in a monthly newsletter. Details in the podcast so be sure to tune in and catch all the details today!
We cover the usual spate of listener Questions and Answers, so here’s the links to help answer the issues in this weeks show:
I’d also like to give some special cross-promo props to Kerry Garrison of Camera Dojo last week to talk about the Canon 7D! It was a lot of fun, and I would encourage anyone looking to add photography-related podcasts to their listening libraries to visit Camera Dojo and pick that up today! (Also, while you are there, don’t forget to say hey in his community too as he’s got a lot of great resources available. His website is linked here.)
That’s enough news and excitement for one day, so make sure to stop back in tomorrow for more photography news and info as we head into the tail end of summer weekend photography fun. Happy shooting all! Don’t forget to visit the Podcast site here and Digg it! (Or download through iTunes) and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
Lots to cover today, so rather than banter, let’s get to the news about all the contest stuff going on:
The Comment Contest
Talk about a huge success – had enough feedback and ideas in this one post to really get some great creative ideas in play for the coming months for the blog – after the re-design! Some lucky winner will be announced tomorrow (I am writing this on Sunday, while comments are still being accepted, so a winner cannot be announced right now.)
Win a Wacom Giveaway
The Learning Digital Photography giveaway thread over on Flickr has seen quite an uptick in submissions in the last week. As the deadline approached, more people started getting their “fun” themed shots in, and there’s a lot of creative and fun photos in there. It’s going to be tough to decide this one for sure. Have you got your image submissions in yet? If not, today is the last day to enter, and like the lottery, you can’t win if you don’t play! You have until midnight tonight (Mountain Time), so it’s now or never!
The September Giveaway – Think in Color!
Announced briefly and teased on post #500, September’s contest is a pretty big one. Two significant items are up for grabs this month. First up, the winner of this contest will receive a Think Tank Multimedia Bag System (5 bags total). For more information on this latest bag system to hit the shelves from ThinkTank Photo, you can read the review I did here, or visit their website for the specifics here. The retail value of this set of bags is easily $350!
Second, Topaz Labs has offered up their plugin suite of actions for Photoshop to the winner of the September giveaway. You may recall my review of the Topaz Labs Adjustment plugin here on the blog, and more of the Topaz plugins will be reviewed here during September, so stay tuned to see all the cool stuff this set can do. The retail value of this software set is valued at $150 for the Adjustment, Denoise, Simplify, Detail, Clean and DeJPEG plugins.
So, let’s see – $350 in bags, and $150 in software = $500 in giveaway items for the September run. That’s a lotta loot! This means the setup will be a little more competitive than last months. Here’s a rundown of the guidelines:
Longest side of the image should be between 600-800pixels. This makes for consistency in galleries, and also for equal view-ability in the judging phase.
One photo per person, submitted through the Flickr thread, which will be created tonight at midnight.
Photos must be taken within 30 days of the contest start date. So, if you have something you took just last month, that is acceptable, but earlier archives will not be accepted.
All images must be work-safe/family-friendly.
This go around, the theme is: Think in Colors (for ThinkTank and the color Topaz). Incorporate the theme of the giveaway somehow into your photos.
Since we’re talking Photoshop and plugins, it makes sense to also note that image editing is permitted, so go ahead and punish those pixels!
Image submissions will be accepted starting September 1st, and will continue through Sat. Sept. 26th.
The other cool thing about the Thinktank/Topaz Labs giveaway is that the folks at Topaz Labs have offered to the winner that their photo be displayed on Topaz Labs website (along with photo credit given, naturally). This is, of course, totally optional, but definitely a cool feather to have in ones’ cap. The caveat here is that the submitting photographer would have to be at least 18 years old.
Phew – that is a lot of contest news! In one sidenote about the blog, a little administrative note that the B&H Photo affiliate link is back, so if you are thinking of purchasing some gear through B&H, if you use the link above, though your price stays the same, B&H will send a few cents back this way to help offset the expense of hosting. (It literally is just a few cents per purchase, so go ahead and spend a fortune!) 🙂 So much for a hardware review today…I’ll be back tomorrow with the last post for August, and the announcement of the Comment Contest winner! In the meantime, happy shooting!
As you may recall from the video announcement on Friday’s post #500 – the giveaway product for September includes the newest bag system from Thinktank Photo. You read that right, it’s a bag system! Totaling $320 in value retail the bags include the following: Continue reading “Post #501: Hardware Review – Thinktank Photo Multimedia Bag”→
