GREAT parking spot

March 20, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I guess this is where you park when all the streets are so full of snow‚that there isn’t a park­ing spot in the city. This dude must have sim­ply had enough and jammed his car into a snow­bank. Spring will get here.…eventually.

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With:

Shooting through glass is bad unless…

March 11, 2008 By 2 Comments

Shoot­ing through glass is usu­ally not rec­om­mended when you have a choice, since the glass can reduce the sharp­ness of the final pho­to­graph. There is also the ten­dency to get unwanted reflec­tions. That said, rules are meant to be bro­ken espe­cially when there is a goal in mind. For this shot the goal was to show what’s on the glass and what is beyond the glass in a vain‚effort to vent my frus­tra­tion over‚our relent­less pun­ish­ing win­ter. You can click the image to make it tastier on the eyes, even though all this snow leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

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Low light photography — Photography podcast #40

March 10, 2008 By 5 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #40 talks about low light pho­tog­ra­phy. We‚ try hard to answer the fol­low­ing ques­tion by Andre‚ from Brazil and‚I also add‚a few other‚low light pho­tog­ra­phy tips includ­ing using fast lenses, acces­sories in low light pho­tog­ra­phy and‚the reduced tonal range in low light pho­tog­ra­phy.
Here’s Andre’s orig­i­nal ques­tion:‚ “Hello there, Marko! I just would like to sug­gest a pod­cast on the topic “low light pho­tog­ra­phy”. I’m pretty inter­ested in this topic and related sub­jects, such as tips for tak­ing pho­tographs in bad light sit­u­a­tions, how to pre­serve ambi­ent light when using flash, high ISO vs. dig­i­tal noise, meter­ing modes, tak­ing pic­tures at music con­certs, and so forth.”

You can click all the‚photographs to make them tastier on the eyes.


Roman­tic Walk by Ara­leya


The Dim light of Dusk #2 by Wen­dine

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Images by Marko


Photo of the week
This week, the pho­to­graph is by‚Esther Her­nan­dez AKA Maguapho­tos and I com­ment in the pod­cast on why I think this pho­to­graph is fantastic.


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Thanks as always for the 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: ,

Best Friends Know the Truth

March 1, 2008 By 5 Comments

I took this pho­to­graph the same day I did the pod­cast on 1 light por­traits.
Aside from pho­tog­ra­phy, I am truly pas­sion­ate about pets, so when I get to com­bine the two…well, Yahoo!
This was shot in West­mount Park on a cold over­cast Mon­treal after­noon. Boog the dog started shiv­er­ing pretty quickly so we did not stay out long. I used a faster than nor­mal shut­ter speed because of the shiv­er­ing.
Exif data ISO 400, F-4.5, 1/800 sec.

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Lith printing in photography — Photography podcast #39

February 29, 2008 By 1 Comment

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #39 fea­tures an inter­view with fine art pho­tog­ra­pher Vicki Reed aka hol­ga­girl on Flickr. In this inter­view we talk about lith print­ing which is an alter­na­tive print­ing tech­nique using a tra­di­tional dark­room. For those that only want to try this dig­i­tally, see the links below.


Sumac and Sun — Vicki Reed

Pho­tog­ra­phy links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
‚ Vicki’s fea­ture on Photography.ca
‚ Holga cam­eras
‚ Foto­speed lith paper Do a search for lith on this site to get more lith prod­ucts
‚ Ken­tona paper
‚ 2 Tim Rud­man videos on Lith print­ing
‚ The World of Lith Print­ing
‚ Dig­i­tal lith print­ing
‚ Dig­i­tal lith print­ing action for pho­to­shop
‚ Dig­i­tal lith print­ing by Adobe

‚Is it still art — what is art — thread on photography.ca forum

Thanks as always for the com­ments by‚Gary H,‚‚seyDoggy, Yves Janse and Mikael. 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: , , ,

One light portraits — Photography podcast #38

February 22, 2008 By 6 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #38 talks about cre­at­ing dra­matic por­traits using only 1 light. Using 1 light cre­ates very harsh shad­ows which is PERFECT for a dra­matic por­trait. The fol­low­ing 2 shots illus­trate this dra­matic effect. In the first shot Lorne and Boog are being lit by 1 light located 45 degrees toward the right. The sec­ond shot is side­light. Both these shots use no reflec­tor to bounce light back into the sub­jects’ faces. Note that the light in the sec­ond pho­to­graph reveals a lot of skin tex­ture, so this type of light­ing would not be good for a ‘fash­iony’ shot in most cases. Thanks to Lorne and Boog for being the mod­els. I Love how lit­tle Boog is star­ing me down in the first shot. You can click all the shots to make them tastier on the eyes.

One light portrait

1 light portrait - side lighting
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You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below this image.

Photo of the week
This week, the pho­to­graph is by Zseike and I com­ment in the pod­cast on why I think this pho­to­graph is fantastic.

Photo by Zseike

Thanks as always for the com­ments by‚Gary H, ‚Andre, Tom, Yves Janse, David and Mikael. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

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

Freezing and Melting

February 20, 2008 By 3 Comments

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It’s funny how‚various pho­tog­ra­phy tech­niques can resur­face at any moment depend­ing on what you are look­ing at.…Given the infi­nite vari­ety of things to see, it means that there is never a lack of sub­jects to photograph.

I guess this shot was inspired by the macro on the cheap pod­cast but it’s not a macro shot at all. It’s a sim­ple lower angled shot of some melt­ing ice but for some rea­son its shape intrigues me. When‚I first looked at it, it‚seemed like a mini model of some­thing larger. It was pho­tographed using the long end of my 70-200mm zoom. There was actu­ally water mov­ing through the ice that unfortunately‚I was unable to cap­ture because‚I needed a slower speed and it was too bright…and oh yeah, I for­got my fil­ters like a bone­head. Still, there’s some­thing here that pleases me.
Exif Data — ISO 100 — F-32 1/6. You can click the image to make it tastier on the eyes.

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries

Stairway to Heaven .….…nope

February 15, 2008 By 3 Comments

What is going on here?‚

Where does the lad­der go?

Are there treats at the end of the ladder?

This pho­to­graph is an excel­lent exam­ple of lens com­pres­sion. For those that may not know, longer lenses tend to com­press the fore­ground and back­ground while wide angle lenses tend to do the reverse. I shot this scene on 1 frame from about 50 feet away. The white in the back­ground is actu­ally a mas­sive con­tainer filled with oil and the lad­der is part of that con­tainer. The tree is actu­ally about 20 feet in front of the container.

I shot this scene from my car while snow was lightly falling. Exif data — Shot at ISO (The light was quickly fading)‚1000 F-16 at 1/400 at the long end of my 70–200 zoom lens. You can click the image to make it tastier on the eyes.

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries, Photography tips

2 old bananas huddle for warmth in the snow

February 7, 2008 By 2 Comments

Much to my delight some­one tossed out 2 old bananas. Then I came upon them and decided “hey bananas in the snow, cooool”

The first shot‚shows the real bananas and the sec­ond shot‚shows the bananas after hav­ing frozen to death. OR… the sec­ond shot shows still­born oxy­gen deprived bananas.

Kid­ding aside all‚I did to get the deep blue in the sec­ond shot was push the hue/saturation slider all the way to the right in pho­to­shop. Shot at F5.6 at 1/200 ISO 100. Click the images to make them big­ger, and of course…you are invited to comment.

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Even at the end of the day the ‘machine’ keeps working

January 18, 2008 By 5 Comments

Now that I’ve resolved to take my cam­era with me more often, I’m likely to shoot more city scapes…like this one. This is just a small part of the enor­mous Shell refin­ery on the east­ern part of the island Mon­treal. It was a quick shot since the light was fad­ing fast. It was shot at ISO 1000 at 1/80 at F.2.8.

Shots like these tend to bother me some­what. There is a sense of indus­try here. Things are hap­pen­ing. Machines are work­ing. Machines are polluting.

.…..and yet the colours and the con­trast seem intrigu­ing. What do you think?

photograph of refinery

Filed Under: Photographs Tagged With: , , ,

Even at the end of the day the ‘machine’ keeps working

January 18, 2008 By 5 Comments

Now that I’ve resolved to take my cam­era with me more often, I’m likely to shoot more city scapes…like this one. This is just a small part of the enor­mous Shell refin­ery on the east­ern part of the island Mon­treal. It was a quick shot since the light was fad­ing fast. It was shot at ISO 1000 at 1/80 at F.2.8.

Shots like these tend to bother me some­what. There is a sense of indus­try here. Things are hap­pen­ing. Machines are work­ing. Machines are polluting.

.…..and yet the colours and the con­trast seem intrigu­ing. What do you think?

photograph of refinery

Filed Under: Photographs Tagged With: , , ,

Grab the light now — light waits for no one

January 9, 2008 By 3 Comments

Another res­o­lu­tion I am mak­ing this year (start­ing today) is not to tarry when I see great light. Great light doesn’t wait for you, great light doesn’t give a crap about your sched­ule — You wait for great light and when you see it you must grab it by its invis­i­ble balls.

Yes­ter­day was an amaz­ing exam­ple. I woke up and thick fog was every­where — Everywhere!

I LOVE FOG.

For me, fog is great light. It evokes a rare spe­cial mood and feel­ing.
.…but I’m a busy dude and work beck­ons me con­stantly so I checked the win­dow peri­od­i­cally while I waited until I was ready to shoot. Guess what — once I was ready the fog had almost dis­si­pated. Boy was I upset : (

So as a last resort I got into my car and chased the fog until I found the best patch I could find. It was okay fog and I think this self-portrait is not bad.

Point is — Now I have think about what could have been instead of know­ing that I was shoot­ing at the best pos­si­ble time.….

self portrait fog

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