Tag: projects

Spring Photo Projects

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With Spring in the air (if not already sprung), many of us are out and about brimming with photo ideas after being couped up for a chilly winter.  What’s that you say?  No photo projects brimming yet?  No problem – here’s a few to get you started:

1.  The Call of the Birds: Avian photography has always been something of an art form, with many of the hard core, die hard types venturing way out into the boonies of mountains, hills, lakes, and other far-reaching places.  For the rest of us though, it’s tough to find the resources (time and money) to go to the birds, so another option is to bring the birds to you!  Buy some bird feeders and see what comes!  My folks have several bird feeders in upstate New York, and every time I visit, there are birds flying everywhere.  Pine cones with peanut butter, humming bird feeders with sugar water, and even just a plain old bird bath with feed from your local DIY store can bring a bounty of birds to your doorstep!

Avian Photography 1

Avian Photography 2

2.  Join a photo group: We’re everywhere!  From ASMP groups to NAPP groups, Meetup groups, and WPPI, you can find groups for pretty much anything ranging from professional development, to studio lighting, and just groups of photographers that like to get out and shoot together for the love of the craft and the camraderie of it all!  I’m a member of several local groups, all via the site Meetup.com, and I don’t have to pay a cent to participate!  (I do contribute though, just because I like supporting such efforts…)

3.  Shooting in a park:  Get some photographer-friends, family-friends, or just some friends to join you in a park.  Set up a blanket, a few light stands, and have some park-type food available:  (crackers, cheese, water, whatever).  Add an ipod with some speakers for a little music.  Offer gag prizes for people who dance, act silly, or pose for the camera.  Process the photos and post online so they can share, download, add to Facebook, Twitter, or print!  Low cost, fun, and helps to build your portfolio!

The ideas are only limited by your creativity!  Got your own ideas for photographic opportunities this Spring?  Sound off in the comments to share, encourage, and inspire others!  Happy shooting, and we’ll see you back here next time!

P.S.  Don’t forget the April photo contest on Flickr – win a BacklitBox of your favorite photo!  Flickr Contest Thread


Meeting Your Goals…with help!

Jason1 Comment

Did you meet your goals in 2010 photographically speaking?  It’s an interesting question, especially for me because as I started to move in toward the holidays, with a new job ramping up, had felt as though work in the photography arena had stagnated for me to a degree.  It really was not the case actually – and the back story here is what is important.  None of us are an island – we all need help to both keep ourselves motivated, and to keep the fires and energies burning.  Sometimes we recharge from a break other times it’s from a good kick in the…well, you get the idea!

The Back Story

Colleagues, mentors, tutors, and others in the field can be a hugely helpful influence, and one sage such associate recently told me to shoot more and talk less.  The whole idea of “shut up and shoot” had come back to haunt me!  This is advice I give to others when they approach me – how dare he suggest that.  But then I considered…and in all honesty, the last month or so of photo production had not been as productive as I had wished.  I had excuses of the new job, sure…but the bottom line was that my colleague was right!  I needed to get out and shoot more! So I did just that.  In doing so, I got a few good decent photos together, including one for the desktop download series…

Then, another industry association (although I use that term lightly), is none other than Mr. David DuChemin.  You may recall he paid a visit to the podcast a while back, and occasionally we have had a few exchanges on Twitter, but it’s definitely a one-sided relationship where I learn from him and not vice-versa! 🙂  (There I go again with the self-deprecation – someone needs to shock me so I stop doing that!)  Anyway, he reminded me that the whole point of our craft is to share our vision and work with others.  It came through a Twitter exchange when I was giving a compliment to his work by also using my well-known tactic of self-deprecation.  It stuck with me so much, that I’d rather just share his exact words:

Sage Advice from David DuChemin
Sage Advice from David DuChemin

– and that is exactly what I had not been doing photographically.  Oh sure, test shots from lens reviews, a few sample photos here and there…but nothing really from the inner core that had apparently been needing some voice.  So, with that I decided to go ahead full force – not only with capturing more images, but completing the last of the Desktop Downloads for the year!

The 2010 Desktop Downloads

What’s that?  You don’t know about the Desktop Downloads?  Of course not, because I had been neglecting to share the information with everyone on the regular monthly basis that a new photo for inspiration and enjoyment had been uploaded.  For many months of the year, I was capturing photos and  content to share, and not sharing it!  The legwork behind it was lost in the business.  So, I owe the audience an apology and 12 downloads for the year!  No worries though – you know why?  Because I met my goal for the year!  In going back through each month for the image I had selected, I realized that this was also tied to a “project” I gave myself for 2010 – to shoot more often, and take on more projects.  The goal was one a month, and I did it!  With my personal success finally realized, it’s high time to share that success with everyone else.  For the monthly desktop image for December, you can get click the appropriate link and download for your own inspiration and enjoyment!

Colorado Sunset
Colorado Sunset

1280×1024 px

1024×768 px

To get the rest, simply hit the Downloads page and save for your own desktop wallpaper or screen saver as you prefer… As an aside, there are a couple months I had done the download as a calendar, thinking it would be more functional (May and June), but after toying with the idea for 2 months, decided it detracted too much from the image for my tastes (all due respect to Jeffrey Friedl and his PS plugin that helped produce those months though.).  Nevertheless, with the year far from over (most of December is left for us), I can officially say I met my goal for the year with 12 photo projects.  Already, I’ve shot nearly 20% more than I did last year, because of directed projects and diligence.  Have you met yours?  There’s still time, so get out there and shoot!  Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow…

Editor Note: (Who am I kidding, that’s still me…)  I know the Monthly Newsletter is still not out as promised and I expect that to be out tomorrow as well, so if you’d like to still sign up for that, there’s still time!

How to build a star tracker!

Jason4 Comments

Rather than go through another hardware review today, I thought I would share a different kind of hardware with you – the DIY kind!  Over the weekend I embarked on a little project on building a device to track stars as they move across the sky (even though it’s really the earth that’s moving and not the sky).  Now granted, there are better ways to build star trackers, but many involve electronic motors, are more complex (in my mind anyway), and can get kind of costly (at least from what I’ve read).  So, I figured I’d start simple, and go from there.  Join me in this adventure in building my first star tracker for under $20!

It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot in doing it, both about other methods, some of the short comings of this approach, but for the cost, figured it’d be a good entry into doing these kinds of things for comparison sake.  Check out the main YouTube video that gives a narrative on the process and my finished result:

The reference material I used for building this leaf-style star tracker came from a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology (sounds impressive enough to me!), so figured I should give credit here as well:  http://people.rit.edu/andpph/text-star-tracker.html

If you have thoughts, comments, feedback, or suggestions to either improve this one, on how you’ve made your own (or plan on making one), and even if you have shots to share made from DIY star tracker kits, please feel free to et me know via either the comments or email!  I will start a photo gallery for all shots shared and plan on updating that monthly with all the photos received, either via links in the comments or via email!

Happy (star) shooting, and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

P.S.  Don’t forget, we’ve still got the Wacom Bamboo Fun Giveaway going on all this month!  Share your shots in the Flickr thread and you’re entered to win this prize worth $100 retail!  Thanks go out to the folks at Wacom for contributing this awesome tool for blog readers and podcast listeners!

Grab the Feed

Come on Ride the Train

Jason5 Comments

It’s somewhat fitting this week that yours truly is making serious use of the mass transit in Denver because a project that has finally come to fruition is a photo-themed shoot of trains.  I’ve always found them quite interesting, and only recently did I come into possession of a very high quality model train to pose as I desired for specific types of compositional and focal impressions.  Since the podcast isn’t quite finished, I figured now would be as good a time as any to share with you a sampling of my Train project…

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So, there’s the “Train Series”.  I tried various lighting scenarios, depth of field, and compositional approaches to see the effect each has.  I know which one(s) I like the best – what about you?  Any favorites, thoughts, feedback, criqitues?  What about your own themed projects?  Any sources of inspiration?  feel free to share them in the comments section!   Happy shooting, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

An Interview with Peggy Dyer…

Jason3 Comments

As you may recall, a few weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting up with Peggy Dyer, a professional photographer here in Colorado, and I got to learn about her latest project – One Million Faces.  We got a chance to sit down a second time and I learned a lot more about her creative energy, where she finds inspiration, and about where the One Million Faces project found it’s genesis.  In addition, we also got to talk in more detail about the Lensbaby series of lenses, starting with the first one ever,  going through the most recent Lensbaby Composer, and even a sneak peak of an upcoming lens from them.  Best of all – I actually was able to put together a video of it to share with the community.  It all looks very intriguing and with her creative energies, I am really getting motivated to get out there and try some shots with this gear.


An Interview with Peggy Dyer from CBJason on Vimeo.

A couple links from the interview, including some local charities and other resources that readers may find interesting are also included below:

Until tomorrow, Happy Shooting!

Feedback and More Fodder

JasonLeave a comment

First off, I’d like to thank everyone who has been taking the time to share their thoughts and feedback both in the comments and via email – it’s always fun to get the insights of others. A few people had mentioned some loose threads though that I’d not tugged on in a while, so I thought I’d give an update as to the activities and status of those projects. (As an aside, I am probably becoming famous for starting projects and never finishing them – I do eventually, it’s just that I keep adding more projects so the others start to fade as new ones come into focus.)

1st – The How-to’s of Website design: I did take a leave of absence on this primarily because there is an area that I am not as fluent on that I was hoping to find some help in the form of a second contributing author, and that has not come to fruition yet. So, if anyone is interested in co-authoring a book on the subject, feel free to let me know!

2nd – The Online Photography Test: The Basic test is complete, and the Advanced test is about 90% complete. I’d like to get some ideas and more feedback before taking that phase to completion, so again, if anyone has some suggestions on good questions for an advanced online photography test, I am all virtual ears! As for the Expert Test – I am nowhere near getting ready to even put that one out there. I am of the old school variety in that I don’t think it’s right for someone to pose a question for others to answer if they cannot provide some basis of an answer themselves. (The idea is that how can one teach or offer knowledge if one does not have that knowledge themselves.) Although higher education and high schools are rife with examples of this – I, in good conscience, cannot pretend to be an expert when I have so much more to learn on the subject of photography.

3rd – The Weekly “What’s This?” series saw an abrupt halt a few weeks ago, and I never came forth with the answer. The last shot was this:

What’s This?

And the answer is: the grill from the front of our microwave. Unfortunately, we are no longer in the house, so I can’t capture a full version of the appliance to show you a zoomed out perspective. But anyway, thanks for those that waited patiently to discover the answer. I should have a new “What’s This?” back up and running tomorrow.

Finally, as I endeavor to get back into a steady routine of tutorials and regular writings, I have a video tutorial put together for this week. Since I did get a few questions from people who asked if I could show the method for achieving a panorama rather than just writing the methodology out, here is the “outtro” for how to post process a series into panoramas. Since the podpress plugin is still misbehaving, I’ tried an alternative means for feeding things for the time being, but that doesn’t seem to work either.  So, I am going to have to go another week with a link to both the Flash and the Quicktime!  Sorry again for the continued inconvenience.

I’m not adjusting the iTunes feed just yet as I have confidence that the podpress developer will have an update coming sooner rather than later, but if people wish to add the secondary feed to their readers, that will be in play until the original feed comes back online. I am posting it to the podpress feed link too though as a test to see if it comes back online, so if you subscribe to the original feed and it shows up, let me know. Otherwise, continue to visit the blog (which is preferable anyway) to catch the flash version. Hope you all enjoy it!

I’ll be back tomorrow with a Wednesday Walk around the Web, and a new installment of “What’s This?”! Until then, happy shooting, and watch those apertures!