Portrait from the Plateau — Best Friends in Lafontaine Park

August 31, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I shot this just yes­ter­day in Parc Lafontaine in Mon­treal. It was about 1 hour before sun­down and these boys were on a rock feed­ing, play­ing with the ducks and just chat­ting. I LOVE time­less feel­ing shots and I was cap­ti­vated by the scene, their pose and the fad­ing light.

Most times these types of sil­hou­ette shots are a result of error because the pho­tog­ra­pher wanted the main sub­ject to be well lit and the result is the under­ex­po­sure of the main sub­ject due to back light­ing. Not here.
For me the whole scene was the main sub­ject and so I delib­er­ately kept my flash off even though it was already mounted to my cam­era and ready to add as much light as I wanted to the boys. I did add a hint of extra light in the post-processing by dodg­ing the boys’ faces.

Exif data -‚ F4‚ — 1/500‚ — ISO 200 — 50mm focal length

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries

SPCA dog-wash photo

August 8, 2008 By 4 Comments

Last Sun­day I pho­tographed many dogs at the SPCA dog-wash fund rais­ing event here in Mon­treal. It was a cloudy over­cast day and it rained for part of the event. Even so, the SPCA was able to raise $3500.00 dol­lars which is amaz­ing. Of course as pho­tog­ra­phers we know that cloudy skies make for excel­lent por­traits. Here’s 1 of my favourite shots from the day. If you’d like to see many of the other shots you can see them in a thread on the forum on Pets.ca.

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography tips Tagged With: ,

Dodging and burning in photography — Photography podcast #49

July 31, 2008 By 9 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #49 dis­cusses dodg­ing and burn­ing your pho­tographs. Dodg­ing means mak­ing parts of a photo lighter and burn­ing in makes parts of your pho­to­graph darker. Almost ALL pho­tographs require some dodg­ing and burn­ing. The images below by Yise­haq are great exam­ples. Look how much more alive image 2 looks after some dodg­ing and burning.

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.

deliberate underexposure podcast
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.

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcasts, podcasting Tagged With: , , , ,

Portrait from the Plateau — Sunday in the Park

July 28, 2008 By 2 Comments

One of the many amaz­ing aspects of Mon­treal is the reg­u­lar gath­er­ing of dif­fer­ent peo­ple to enjoy what­ever is going on. Sun­day in the Park (at Mount Royal) has been a tra­di­tion for over 10 years. Hun­dreds (some­times thou­sands) of peo­ple get together and play drums, dance, jug­gle, imbibe, play fris­bee etc. The girl in this pho­to­graph (I HAVE to start ask­ing names) looked so peace­ful prac­tic­ing her art that I HAD to take this photo — I asked first though.
Exif data — F-4.0 1/250 ISO 100

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With: , , ,

Portrait from the Plateau

July 26, 2008 By 3 Comments

I recently moved into one of the best parts of Mon­treal called Plateau Mont –Royal AKA The Plateau or Le Plateau. There are so many inter­est­ing peo­ple in this bustling and artsy part of town that I think I may start a new series of casual ‘street’ por­traits just for fun.

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.

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With: , , , , ,

Baby — newborn photography — Photography podcast #48

July 22, 2008 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #48 dis­cusses baby and new­born pho­tog­ra­phy. We talk about what light­ing to use. We also talk about good posi­tions for babies as well as give tips on ideas on how to make your baby pho­tog­ra­phy more inter­est­ing. This pod­cast was inspired by demontecarlo3 a mem­ber of our pho­tog­ra­phy forum. Feel free to join — it’s fun and free! Final note — this pod­cast was recorded on a rainy day in the park. Please let me know if you found the ambi­ent noises too distracting.

Many thanks to Dominic Fuiz­zotto for let­ting me use these images.

Links/topics men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Dis­trac­tions in photographs

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

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , , ,

Brightness problems — distracting elements in photographs — Photography podcast #46

June 29, 2008 By 8 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #46 talks about being really care­ful about NOT includ­ing dis­tract­ing ele­ments in your pho­tographs. The eye nat­u­rally wan­ders toward the bright ele­ments in pho­tographs so being aware of bright­ness prob­lems, unwanted high­lights and other dis­trac­tions will improve your photography.

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Tran­script to pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #1 — being aware of the back­ground
His­tograms in dig­i­tal photography

The 2 images below show how bright­ness issues and dis­tract­ing ele­ments can take the viewer’s eye away from the sub­ject. Shot 1 is unma­nip­u­lated. Shot 2 has the brighter ele­ments burned in (dark­ened) very quickly just to illus­trate the point. Many thanks to mer­man from our pho­tog­ra­phy forum for allow­ing me to use his pho­to­graph as a teach­ing tool.

brightness problem in photographs

brightness problem corrected in photograph


Thanks as always to Cyba­sumo, Chris, Sergey and De3montecarlo for recent com­ments and sug­ges­tions. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , , , , ,

Leonard Cohen Portrait

June 11, 2008 By 16 Comments

A cou­ple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to meet the Poet/Singer/Songwriter Leonard Cohen in Sague­nay Que­bec. I have always been an enor­mous fan and rarely does a week go by when I don’t lis­ten to one of his truly great songs. Although we only spent a few pre­cious min­utes with him, he was gra­cious enough to allow us to take a few shots. This shot was my favourite of the few shots we took.

It was a hot sunny cloud­less day and the sun was still fairly high which meant I had to be on the look­out for shad­ows in the face. I there­fore set my flash to minus 2 which would fill in the poten­tial shad­ows. This shot was orig­i­nally processed in colour and I really like how it turned out (maybe I’ll post the colour ver­sion some­time). How­ever there is some­thing time­less and mys­te­ri­ous about Mr. Cohen’s music and I knew when I took the image that I’d likely process it in black and white. Also, his suit and hat were just scream­ing to be pho­tographed in black and white.

I’d like to thank Leonard Cohen (and his UNBELIEVABLE ensem­ble of musi­cians) for the fan­tas­tic con­cert where he received at least 15 stand­ing ova­tions, and for allow­ing me the plea­sure to take a few shots. My only regret is that my wife (who is equally an enor­mous fan) wasn’t there to meet him with me. She was rest­ing at the hotel since she was tired from the 5 hour drive from Montreal.

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries, Photography tips Tagged With: , , , , ,

Using backlighting outdoors — Photography Podcast #45

May 30, 2008 By 2 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #45 talks about how to use back­light­ing out­doors. We talk about tak­ing that clas­sic photo on the beach in front of a sun­set and doing it prop­erly. We also describe how to take a nice por­trait using back­light­ing and the whole pod­cast and is based some­what on an email from Cindy;

“This sum­mer my fam­ily is going to the beach. Of course, I want to take lots of pic­tures. What is the best time of day? I love sun­set pic­tures, but how do I take pic­tures of the peo­ple with their backs to the ocean (sun in back­ground etc.) and see their faces clearly? ”

The images below (done really quickly with almost no post pro­cess­ing) clearly show the dif­fer­ences you can obtain using back­light­ing and flash at dif­fer­ent set­tings. Per­son­ally I like the Minus 2 shot the best. You best see the dif­fer­ences in flash out­put by look­ing at the face.

using backlighting and flash outdoors

Pho­tog­ra­phy links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Acces­sories that you can use to hold reflec­tors etc. — pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast 35
Pho­tog­ra­phy and the law

Thanks as always to Cindy, Jason and Alex Wil­son for recent com­ments and sug­ges­tions. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries, Photography podcasts, podcasting Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Robert Capa’s legacy

May 29, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Robert Capa (1913–1954) was a world renowned pho­to­jour­nal­ist and many of his iconic images are etched in our minds. The 54th anniver­sary of his death just hap­pened this week. A well known quote of his that rings true for most pho­tog­ra­phers was …œIf your pic­tures arenžt good enough, youžre not close enough‚

Here is a link to some work along with one of his most famous images:

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries

Robert Capa’s legacy

May 29, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Robert Capa (1913–1954) was a world renowned pho­to­jour­nal­ist and many of his iconic images are etched in our minds. The 54th anniver­sary of his death just hap­pened this week. A well known quote of his that rings true for most pho­tog­ra­phers was “If your pic­tures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough”

Here is a link to some work along with one of his most famous images:

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries

Party at the Old Port

March 29, 2008 By 3 Comments

Here’s a shot of a huge ship at the old port in old Mon­treal at night. It was of course the lights and their reflec­tions on the water that made this shot inter­est­ing for me. I nor­mally don’t shoot hand­held at slower than 1/30th of a sec­ond and this shot was taken at 1/15.‚ Exif data F2.8, ‚1/15 at ISO 1600. You can click the image to make it tastier on the eyes.

photograph of the old port - Montreal

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With: , , , ,
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