Adding Blur – and some more Photo Walk News

Sometimes, no matter how careful you are with your setup, the in-camera limitations simply cannot compensate for a vision you have, whether it be the color range of an image, its tonal range, or even the depth of field you want to achieve. A perfect example of this was posted in our regional clubs photo site www.scphotogs.com last week. I shared a technique for adding blur to an image. While normally you wouldn’t think blur is something you want to add, as intuitively we are trained to think of images as sharp and crisp subject matter that is in focus. blur is something that can really enhance an image. I shared a technique I learned with the photog-friend, and in light of the tip, decided it would make a good tutorial as well. Check out the link for it at the end of this post. Here’s the web-version of the finished product, and a link to Jon’s photo site if you’d like to see more of his work.

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Don’t forget to vote on the poll to the right, asking how many cameras are in your house? We’re still a long way from the 100 mark, so it’ll be staying up for a while…unless we start “rocking the [proverbial] boat”. Another thing I always like to remind people about is that I am offering up some of my own imagery for sale on the artist site, Redbubble. Click the link to visit my profile and see the images I have for sale (at a steal too – just wanted to share a few with the community!) Lest we not forget, B&H is also the place where pretty much everyone gets everything photography-related, so if you visit their site, use one of the banners here. It’s the same price to you on all gear but B&H does help off-set the hosting expenses with each purchase made through these links, so help a fellow photog out! 🙂 Continue reading “Adding Blur – and some more Photo Walk News”

Westward Ho!

On this last full day of our travels through Colorado and Arizona, I must say there is something about the South and Southwest.  In Denver the mountains were as breath-taking as I remembered.  The sunshine, the skyline, and everything about it was just amazing.  The same could also be said of Arizona with its clean fresh air, the beauty of the landscape, and the sheer vastness of the scenery.  It revealed to me that the West has been and always will be in my blood.  As we endeavor to find career paths that take us to our goal of Colorado, we’ll have to enjoy it from the pictures I have taken while on vacation.  I’ll share a few of these at the end of this post. Continue reading “Westward Ho!”

Wednesday news and info – lots about light

Back into the cockpit today for the typical Wednesday news and information…

In the interests of full disclosure, and sharing news across the photography spectrum, there is a full review out for the Nikon D60, which is the Nikon equivalent of the Canon Rebel XTi – the entry level SLR for each vendor.  They seem pretty happy with it overall.  Check the review out here, and thanks to the Digital Photography Show for pointing me there.

Strobist offers some sage advise today on it’s most recent post, where David reminds us to not think of lighting as the be-all, end-all, but to use it as a tool for accomplishing a goal or to solve a problem.   Always a good read, but particularly useful for me since I have a model shoot coming up soon, where I hope to take this advice to heart.  Stop over and read the latest when you have some time.

Another useful lighting scenario played out over at Scott Kelby’s blog the past few days.  Scott had a shot set up and a couple of us asked to see the setup, and he shared that today.  Pretty useful info and further solidifies the idea that moving lighting of camera and diffusing it is the ideal route in any shoot setup.  I guess that means I need to get a diffuser too.  The gear quest never ends…*sigh*

In a little self-pimping, I’ve got a new poll up – how many cameras do you own.  Forget about SLR versus P&S versus medium format, wide format, film, working, non-working, or any other caveats.  Grand total, all-in, how many cameras do you currently own?  I’ll reserve guesses on results this time as in the past I’ve been famously wrong.  Also, stop over and view some of the photos I’ve put up for sale on Redbubble!

Here’s a short slideshow of some of what’s available:

Some of my photos for sale

Until tomorrow, happy shooting and watch those apertures.

Monday Morning Travel Recap

Well, the weekend was a cornucopa of Denver tourism. We left SC at the not-so-bright hour of 5am and arrived in Denver by 10. That gave us time to make the last tour of Invesco Field. As a dyed-in-the-wool Bronco fan since pretty much as long as I can remember, this was the epitome of the entire 7 day trip. Needless to say, my camera pretty much clicked non-stop for the entire visit. I’ll share some shots later this week when I can get some time to work a few up.

Yesterday we visited the Celestial Seasonings tea factory. After Invesco I owed my wife that, but I have to say it turned out to be much more interesting than I would have thought. No cameras allowed in there, and just as well – the powder from the herbs and roots and spices in the air sometimes made my eyes water. If you’re ever near the Boulder area, I would highly recommend a tour – it was free and well worth the time.

Back to the real world of photography Continue reading “Monday Morning Travel Recap”

Thursday Throwbacks

Okay…let’s throw things back two days and pretend it’s Tuesday again. Why, you ask? Because I finished the tutorial I had started. It’s just a quickie, but does explore some often missed elements from the Tools Palette – particularly with the Options bar for each tool. While there clearly wasn’t enough time to go into great detail on all tools – I did give the crop tool and the Lasso tool a run for their money. Watch me screw up too and blithely ignore it while powering through! Rather funny stuff – but hey, if we take ourselves too seriously, then we’ve stopped having fun, right?

Anyway , here’s the links to the Flash and Download versions of the tutorial.

The Options Bar

Enjoy the weekly shenanigans, happy shooting and keep watching d’em apertures! 😉

Top Ten Tuesday

Sorry folks, not much to do today.  My busy weekend and a rather odd chain of events from Monday night has set me back a we bit in the sleep department.  I spent last night catching up a bit – will try to piece together a tutorial after work today, but no promises.  It may be a day or two before I can get things together again.  In the meantime, here’s another of the “Top Ten Things” for Tuesday to add to your daily hit list.  This week I take a look at online print labs.  Remember, these are not in any rank order,  they’re just the most popular and ones that get the best reviews from what I’ve read and heard.  No links today on each, so Google to your hearts content!  Without further ado:

Top Ten Online Photo Labs

  1. Whitehouse Color
  2. MPix
  3. Shutterfly
  4. Sam’s Club
  5. Adorama
  6. Dot Photo
  7. Costco
  8. Kodak Gallery
  9. EZPrints
  10. Snapfish

For the photo fiends, I’ve added a few images to my Red Bubble account, so stop over there to get a larger view of the ones for sale.

Muscle Failure Monday – and the “sweetness” factor

As the weekend fades into the recesses of time, it leaves a reminder with me in the form of muscle failure from the screened in porch project. For regular readers (the half dozen or so)…you may recall me having posted in passing about the porch before. Well, enough was enough for me and I went full bore to finish the dang thing this weekend. I did (for the most part), but am paying the price today. The remaining false studs were put in place, and the panel trimming began in earnest. I never realized how tiring it can be to bend over a miter saw, hammer away (manually) at paneling with chincey nails that bend with the slightest off-center tap of a hammer, manually cut metal rebar for shelf hanging, finishing painting trim work around a counter, re-paint a contractor f***-up, rip paneling boards to exacting measurements, hang paneling boards with one hand while holding the paneling in place with shims and another hand all while running back and forth to Lowe’s every three or four hours. Starbucks saw almost as much money from me as Lowes did on this project!

It’s done though (for the most part – still a little trim work to do, and some cosmetic work here and there), and I’ve got a few shots to share of it.

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After all was said and done, I retired to the couch for about half the day to surf, watch HGTv (that channel is addictive), and catch up on my photo reading materials. It was a pretty sweet feeling to get all of that completed. Speaking of sweet, check out the new softbox I made this evening from the DIY’er perspective. Should be interesting to see if it works when I get back in my “studio”. Here’s a shot of that too:

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Not the most professional of softboxes, but it should do the job well enough, once I get the inside spray painted with white. (Without it the can itself cast a nasty yellow glare on shots.) For anyone who is thinking of doing this, all you need is an empty container, a piece of paper, a utility knife and a little spray paint. If you want to forgo the spray paint, you could always use something like a Clorox jug (empty and rinsed of course…) cut in half. Ultimately, I’ll likely put some cloth on there and rubber band it around to act as the softbox rather than a sheet of paper but you get the idea.

For more lighting ideas, try getting an empty cardboard roll from a carpet store – you can get them dirt cheap (as in free) and cut to size. Spray paint a little white paint on the inside and you’ve got yourself a neat little snoot! What’s a “snoot” you ask? Go find out at Strobist – where you will find everything you ever needed to know about lighting but were afraid to ask!

Tips for Photo Walks

Hey all, sorry for the late posting today – in the middle of the week I don’t have as much time to put material together. However, a few weeks ago Scot Sherman and Michael Stein took a photo walk with some listeners from their Digital Photography Show while in Vegas. That, in conjunction with a new site developed specifically for photo walks, made me start thinking about the keys for success to photo walks, and what our local group (The South Carolina Photography Guild) does on a regular basis. Since I had already offered to share those thoughts with Scott and Michael, I figured it’d be an interesting subject for a “Thursday Thoughts.” So, I starting putting pen and ink together for a PDF supplemental post this week, and that’s been completed. In the interests of keeping the post short so everyone can enjoy the two-page diatribe on “Keys to Successful Photo Walks”, I’ll bid you all a thoughtful Thursday. Happy Shooting and remember to watch those apertures!

ETA:  Jeff Revell was interviewed on the DPS which was released yesterday. He does a write-up on the subject today (3/20), so I am going back into this post to add this link to that post.  Congrats Jeff!

Woot! Another Wisdom-filled Wednesday of Web Wonder!

As promised, here’s another set of things to inspire, amaze, and tantalize your senses from what I’ve been reading and seeing online in the last week or so. In the interests of keeping things from rounding out to increments of fives and tens (Sports Night reference – anyone know it, or am I alone in my vagaries?), here’s 6 links for Wednesday:

  1. Joe McNally’s Video on creating a shot of the Empire State Building (Although I think I posted this before – but worth a second watch anyway…)
  2. Earthbound Light – Very good site – particularly the photo tips archives
  3. Action Central – probably one of the best resources for Photoshop actions (and they’re all free!)
  4. A History of Photography – everything you could want to know (from an historical perspective that is…)
  5. NAPP Member Portfolios – some of these will take your breath away!
  6. Happy Belated Birthday to Photoshop (yesterday)! The first version ever shipped on Feb 19th, 1990!

Well I’ve wasted enough of your Wednesday, so happy shooting – just remember to…(wait for it)…watch those apertures!

Tuesday Tricks and Treats (and a tutorial)

This Tuesday, I’d like to share some neat tricks I came across online. First, How to Light a Shot on Two Planes – this came courtesy of The Strobist (one of my regular reads) – plus it includes a really cool-looking shot of some Turkish Delight! Apparently he (David Hobby, Strobist author) did this workshop in Florida last weekend with industry folks like Scott Kelby and others from NAPP in the room – no, that wouldn’t be at all intimidating!

Another neat treat I read about through PhotoJoJo was a blog where two friends who live a fair distance (3191 miles to be exact) from each other and they each share an image a day on their blog, one from each region. A definite cornucopia of inspiration as sometimes it’s the regular snapshot-types while others it’s truly breathtaking scenes…and when the two complement each other, it’s just too cool (February 7th is my favorite day so far)! Stop over when you get a minute and comment on their work – they deserve the accolades. The blog name, coincidentally, is titled 3191!

And last, but not least, the tutorial for the week – my inspiration for this came from (surprise surprise), NAPP contributor Matt Kloskowski. He had done this trick on the show (and in the NAPP member space) for Macs, with a little verbal instruction set at the trailer for Windows users. After sharing a few msgs with him – I decided to do the counterpart tutorial this week for Canon Blogger – the Windows version of creating a Desktop Calendar. So…to Matt, thanks for the creative idea, and to the rest of the world, here’s how to create a desktop calendar for Windows. Enjoy!

Windows Desktop Calendar