F-16 Isn’t Magic

June 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I’ve been giv­ing photo courses lately and I’m com­ing across a few points that peo­ple are reg­u­larly hav­ing trou­ble with. The lim­its of depth of field (or how sharp objects should be in gen­eral) is one of the things that many pho­tog­ra­phers don’t com­pre­hend. This is often because they are aware of only one of the three fac­tors that deter­mine depth of field, namely the aper­ture. Many of us know that when we use a small aper­ture we get good sharp­ness from fore­ground to back­ground ver­sus large aper­tures. But this is true only up to a cer­tain point because two other fac­tors are miss­ing.  A small aper­ture like F-16 isn’t a magic one that will give you great sharp­ness from fore­ground to back­ground in all cases.

Take the fol­low­ing image called Rust for exam­ple. It was cre­ated by Crash­cat from our forum for our monthly assign­ment called - June 2012 — f16 or smaller– Shoot­ing with a small aper­ture. Thx Crash­cat for the use of this image.


This image was shot at ISO 1600 f/16 at 1/20 using a 105mm lens.
As we can clearly see the depth of field here is shal­low and this is because there are two other fac­tors besides the cho­sen aper­ture that influ­ence depth of field. These fac­tors include the dis­tance from the object we are pho­tograph­ing and the focal length we use.  As we  approach an object, depth of field dimin­ishes. The longer the lens we use the less depth of field we will have ver­sus using a shorter one.

The image we are look­ing at is a macro image and so the cam­era is very close to the object. Had the cam­era been far­ther way, we’d see more sharp­ness from the top of the screw to the bot­tom of the screw. Not tons more sharp­ness mind you, but more. The side effect is that the screw wouldn’t have the mag­ni­fi­ca­tion that it does and would look less ‘close-up’.

Had this lens been wider, we’d also see a small increase in sharp­ness from the top of the screw to the bot­tom of the screw, but again the screw’s per­spec­tive would seem smaller.

There is no easy answer here. It’s just a mat­ter of prac­tis­ing and know­ing what to expect.

For those that are look­ing for fab­u­lous pre­ci­sion, feel free to use a depth of field cal­cu­la­tor which will show you the depth of field you can expect under any shoot­ing condition.

 

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

107 — Photo Realistic HDR — Interview w/Royce Howland

June 1, 2012 By 11 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #107  fea­tures an Inter­view with Cana­dian Nature pho­tog­ra­pher Royce How­land. In this pod­cast we talk specif­i­cally about how to get real­is­tic colours using the HDR process. HDR (high dynamic range) is a process that allows us to cap­ture details in the high­lighs and the shad­ows of our images by shoot­ing mul­ti­ple frames of the same image at dif­fer­ent expo­sures and then blend­ing them in software.

Many HDR images that we see on the web have really wonky and unre­al­is­tic colours. We pass no judge­ment on these types of images but this pod­cast is ded­i­cated to get­ting real­is­tic colours using the HDR process. We sum­ma­rize the process from why we do this, to cap­ture, to gear,  to using the soft­ware to cre­ate the images. We also dis­cuss the dif­fer­ences between the HDR process and using grad­u­ated neu­tral den­sity filters.

Old Prairie Church & Storm Front, Mundare Alberta Canada © Royce Howland

 

That Hal­loween Mood, Glen­more Reser­voir Cal­gary Alberta Canada © Royce Howland

 

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Royce How­land web­site
Royce Howland’s fea­ture on Photography.ca
Older HDR arti­cle by Royce How­land
HDR­Soft — Mak­ers of Pho­tomatix
Olo­neo — Mak­ers of Pho­to­Engine
Red Giant — Mak­ers of Magic Bul­let Pho­toLooks
HDR Labs — HDR infor­ma­tion resource
Topaz Adjust
HDR Efex Pro

If you liked this pod­cast and want to review it on Itunes, this link gets you to the main page

If you are inter­ested in writ­ing for our blog please con­tact me photography.ca (   A   T  ) G m ail  Dot co m (using stan­dard email formatting)

Please join the Photography.ca fan page on Facebook

My Face­book pro­file — Feel free to “friend” me — please just men­tion Photography.ca
My Twit­ter page — I will fol­low you if you fol­low me — Let’s con­nect — PLEASE email me and tell me who you are in case I don’t rec­i­p­ro­cate because I think you are a spammer.

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :)  Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks to Benny and Del­ben­son­pho­tog­ra­phy who posted  blog com­ments about our last pod­cast. Thanks as always to every­one that sent com­ments by email about our last pod­cast. Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks as well to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board. Most of the links to actual the prod­ucts are affil­i­ate links that help sup­port this site. Thanks in advance if you pur­chase through those links.

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. |Sub­scribe with iTunes|Sub­scribe via RSS feed |Sub­scribe with Google Reader|Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

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

Photography forum image of the month – April 2012

May 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Every month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum mem­bers nom­i­nate images that they like. Then at the end of the month I choose an excel­lent image and talk about why it rocks. The photo I choose is not nec­es­sar­ily the best one of the month. I’ve come to real­ize it’s not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That’s why there are cat­e­gories in photo con­tests. I just choose a photo that has extremely strong ele­ments that we can learn from.

Weeds yet to be by JustinRyan215

Weeds yet to be by JustinRyan215

This month’s choice is weeds yet to be by JustinRyan215

I chose this image for sev­eral reasons:

Per­spec­tive — The per­spec­tive here is not what we are used to see­ing and it totally works. It gives the dan­de­lion an abstract feel (for a sec­ond at first look, it looked like a jel­ly­fish) yet we know what we are look­ing at. I really like the “star­like” wisp pat­terns that we are see­ing here and this is wholly due to the perspective.

Pro­cess­ing — The pro­cess­ing makes the image pop with­out draw­ing too much atten­tion to itself. I also like the vignette which helps frame the whole subject.

Expo­sure — Very well han­dled and this is a dif­fi­cult sub­ject. The whites (espe­cially around the perime­ter of the weed) have just enough detail to be as del­i­cate as the dan­de­lion itself.

For all these rea­sons, this is my choice for image of the month. Since we all have opin­ions, some mem­bers may dis­agree with my choice. That’s cool but THIS thread is not the place for debate over my pick, NOR is it the place to fur­ther cri­tique the image. The pur­pose here is to sug­gest strong ele­ments in the photo that we may learn from.

Con­grats again JustinRyan215 for this see­ing, cap­tur­ing and pro­cess­ing this cre­ative image.

Filed Under: Image of the month, Photographs

106 — White balance and why snow is blue

May 3, 2012 By 2 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #106 dis­cusses the often con­fus­ing topic of white bal­ance and why some­times the cam­era screws up our images like giv­ing us blue snow. Cor­rect­ing this is really easy and it just requires a bit of under­stand­ing of what is going on in the back­ground.  In a very tight over­sim­pli­fied nut­shell, when we see some­thing that has colour, it has that colour due to the colour tem­per­a­ture of the light source illu­mi­nat­ing it.

Light a can­dle in a dark room and look at a white base­ball; it will look orange. The same thing hap­pens with white snow that looks bluish under cloudy over­cast con­di­tions because cloudy light is bluish. Our eyes might not notice the blue because our brain com­pen­sates for the cast because it “knows” that snow is white, but the cam­era often gets it wrong. In this pod­cast we talk about white bal­ance, auto­matic white bal­ance, the white bal­ance pre­sets that your cam­era comes with and set­ting a cus­tom white bal­ance. If you’ve ever wanted to improve the colour accu­racy of your images, this photo pod­cast offers up some fast tips.

Colors and color temperature in photography

Left image — When we see an object that has colour, it has that colour due to the color tem­per­a­ture of the light source illu­mi­nat­ing it. This is why if we take a white base­ball into a room lit only by a can­dle, the base­ball looks orange. The same thing hap­pens when we take a pic­ture of white snow on a cloudy over­cast day and it looks blue. Right image — White light (the kind we see at noon on a sunny cloud­less day) is actu­ally made up of equal parts of Red, Blue and Green light. These are the pri­mary colours in photography.

 

Blue snow in photography

Left Image — The camera’s AWB (auto­matic white bal­ance) didn’t ren­der this scene prop­erly and the snow looks bluish because the day was cloudy and cloudy light is bluish. Right Image — I cor­rected this in post pro­cess­ing and the snow looks more nat­ural to the eye.

 

AWB and 2 presets
If your image has a colour cast, to neu­tral­ize it, you add the OPPOSITE colour of the cast. 

 

Mixed lighting in photography

This image was lit with 2 light sources; the light com­ing from the stove AND over­cast light com­ing in through the win­dows. AWB does a very good job here but is a hint too warm. The cloudy pre­set adds yel­low to com­pen­sate for cloudy light which is blue. In this case it repro­duces too warm. The Incan­des­cent pre­set adds blue to com­pen­sate for incan­des­cent light which is warm. Here it added way too much blue. The cus­tom set­ting, where you take a quick read­ing from a grey card or use a tool like an Expodisc was the most accu­rate and best repro­duced the scene.

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Spin­rite - To recover crashed hard dri­ves
Allan Lev­ene is run­ning for con­gress!
Grey cards at B&H — Expodisc at B&H — Color meters at B&H
Pho­tog­ra­phy tours in Mon­treal — One to one pho­tog­ra­phy instruc­tion by yours truly

- Wide open aper­ture is our reg­u­lar forum assign­ment for May
– Tex­ture is our level 2 forum assign­ment for May

If you liked this pod­cast and want to review it on Itunes, this link gets you to the main page

If you are inter­ested in writ­ing for our blog please con­tact me photography.ca (   A   T  ) G m ail  Dot co m (using stan­dard email formatting)

Please join the Photography.ca fan page on Facebook

My Face­book pro­file — Feel free to “friend” me — please just men­tion Photography.ca
My Twit­ter page — I will fol­low you if you fol­low me — Let’s con­nect — PLEASE email me and tell me who you are in case I don’t rec­i­p­ro­cate because I think you are a spammer.

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :)  Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks to Rob vE, Yise­haq and Robertv in Edin­burgh who posted  blog com­ments about our last pod­cast. Thanks as always to every­one that sent com­ments by email about our last pod­cast. Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks as well to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board. Most of the links to actual the prod­ucts are affil­i­ate links that help sup­port this site. Thanks in advance if you pur­chase through those links.

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. |Sub­scribe with iTunes|Sub­scribe via RSS feed |Sub­scribe with Google Reader|Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

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

105 — Four tips to improve your bounced flash photography

March 28, 2012 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #105 offers up tips on how to improve your bounced flash pho­tog­ra­phy. Bounc­ing your flash off of walls and ceil­ings is easy and really soft­ens the light which is often desir­able espe­cially in por­traits. You can also achieve a much more inter­est­ing light­ing pat­tern ver­sus direct on-camera flash. You can often achieve great results with min­i­mal effort and min­i­mal help; I often use bounced flash when I am shoot­ing alone and need a quick light­ing setup.

The images below of my wife Carmy were shot in about 5 min­utes against a slightly green wall in my liv­in­groom. The tones in the face and back­ground wall are sim­i­lar but not iden­ti­cal in all images and I delib­er­ately chose not to match them to see the sub­tle dif­fer­ences. These dif­fer­ences are due to the dif­fer­ent ways that the light bounced around the room. There were win­dows in the room but the day was cloudy and no direct light was shin­ing through the win­dows. Images are unretouched.

Direct flash versus bounced flash

The image on the left shows direct flash. Note the harsh shadow on the wall and the rel­a­tively even light­ing on the face. The shot on the right, bounced the flash off the ceil­ing. The shadow is still on the wall but it is softer. The light­ing pat­tern on the face is less even but more inter­est­ing to the eye.

 

Bounced flash photography

The image on the left used flash that was bounced off of the wall about 12 feet behind me. The image on the right used flash that was bounced off the side wall about 6 feet from me. Note the absence of any shadow on the back wall com­pared to the left image in the first set. When you try this for your­self make note of how far the bounced walls are from your flash. The far­ther the walls are from the flash, the harder the flash has to work and you may need to increase the flash’s output.

 

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Spin­rite - To recover crashed hard dri­ves
Photo pod­cast #4 — Fill flash
Photo pod­cast #47 — Flash sync speeds
Photo pod­cast #71 Portable flash

- Bright Colour is our reg­u­lar forum assign­ment for March
– Sil­hou­ettes is our level 2 forum assign­ment for March

If you liked this pod­cast and want to review it on Itunes, this link gets you to the main page

If you are inter­ested in writ­ing for our blog please con­tact me photography.ca (   A   T  ) G m ail  Dot co m (using stan­dard email formatting)

Please join the Photography.ca fan page on Facebook

My Face­book pro­file — Feel free to “friend” me — please just men­tion Photography.ca
My Twit­ter page — I will fol­low you if you fol­low me — Let’s con­nect — PLEASE email me and tell me who you are in case I don’t rec­i­p­ro­cate because I think you are a spammer.

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :)  Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks to Neil Speers, Stephen Kennedy, Ken Wolter, Jonathan Rams­dell and Allan Lev­ene who posted  blog com­ments about our last pod­cast. Thanks as always to every­one that sent com­ments by email about our last pod­cast. Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks as well to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board. Most of the links to actual the prod­ucts are affil­i­ate links that help sup­port this site. Thanks in advance if you pur­chase through those links.

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. |Sub­scribe with iTunes|Sub­scribe via RSS feed |Sub­scribe with Google Reader|Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography lighting, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting

Photography forum image of the month — February 2012

March 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Every month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum mem­bers nom­i­nate images that they like. Then at the end of the month I choose an excel­lent image and talk about why it rocks. The photo I choose is not nec­es­sar­ily the best one of the month. I’ve come to real­ize it’s not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That’s why there are cat­e­gories in photo con­tests. I just choose a photo that has extremely strong ele­ments that we can learn from.

Jump - behind the shot by Richard

Jump — behind the shot by Richard

This month’s choice is Jump — behind the shot by Richard

I chose this image for sev­eral reasons:

Colour — Light­ing — Expo­sure — The cool colours in this image work extremely well with the sub­ject mat­ter. I really like the bluish qual­ity to the light­ing in this image as it is in sync with the with colder sea­son. The over­all light­ing which Richard gra­ciously explains is also well done and I like the hues of the gelled speed­lights. The speed­lights high­light the child’s move­ments very well and cap­ture an excel­lent ges­ture. In terms of the expo­sure, Richard con­fesses to to using an ND fil­ter over the lens to bal­ance the strobes and ambi­ent light and this makes the shut­ter­speed longer. This was a very smart move that allows us to see a hint of blurred move­ment in the feet and dif­fer­ent posi­tion of the hat.

Ges­ture and Story — The child is caught in mid-jump, play­ing and smil­ing. Even though the child is basi­cally told to jump, Richard catches a moment that looks com­pletely nat­ural. For me this is a suc­cess­ful image of a child hav­ing a great time just being a child.

Post pro­cess­ing — the added wisps of smoke in the post pro­cess­ing are a lovely touch and blend in really well with the image and the intended con­cept of the image. The vignetting keeps our eyes well focused on the child and the child’s activity.

For all these rea­sons, this is my choice for image of the month. Since we all have opin­ions, some mem­bers may dis­agree with my choice. That’s cool but THIS thread is not the place for debate over my pick, NOR is it the place to fur­ther cri­tique the image. The pur­pose here is to sug­gest strong ele­ments in the photo that we may learn from.

Con­grats again Richard for cre­at­ing this won­der­ful image!

Filed Under: Image of the month, Photographs Tagged With:

Sneak peek invitation — New personal work by Marko Kulik

February 28, 2012 By 2 Comments

Hi every­one!

I’m Marko, the owner admin of the Photography.ca web­site. Nor­mally when I post from the Photography.ca blog it is to pub­lish a pod­cast, an image of the month or to fea­ture pho­tographs from dif­fer­ent pho­tog­ra­phers. This post though is to invite you to see some new work that I have pub­lished on a new per­sonal site called markokulik.com.

One of the rea­sons I started this new site is because I feel this Photography.ca web­site is devoted to the pho­tog­ra­phy com­mu­nity at large and not my own per­sonal work. But I have been shoot­ing A LOT of per­sonal work lately and wanted to fea­ture the work in 1 place. In par­tic­u­lar, I have been pho­tograph­ing cities at night using inten­tional cam­era move­ment and long expo­sures. You can see those images in the new gallery called Impres­sion­is­tic Cities at Night. This is an ongo­ing project, and I will talk about and post new pho­tos to that gallery reg­u­larly. I also intend to upload and talk about older work.

Although I almost never ask for favors.….I have a favor to ask if you enjoy my work. Please go to any page on markokulik.com and enter your email address at the top of any page to sub­scribe to updates. These updates will talk mainly about the work being pro­duced and I will never sell, trade, share or pimp out your per­sonal infor­ma­tion in any way. You can can­cel at any­time. Thanks so much in advance and here is a peek at the open­ing image on the site. Thanks again, Sin­cerely — Marko Kulik

Carré Jacques Cartier - Montréal by Marko Kulik

Carré Jacques Cartier — Mon­tréal by Marko Kulik

 

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries, podcasting

Photography forum image of the month December 2011

January 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Every month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum mem­bers nom­i­nate images that they like. Then at the end of the month I choose an excel­lent image and talk about why it rocks. The photo I choose is not nec­es­sar­ily the best one of the month. I’ve come to real­ize it’s not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That’s why there are cat­e­gories in photo con­tests. I just choose a photo that has extremely strong ele­ments that we can learn from.

The Peace Bridge - At Last! by JAS_Photo

The Peace Bridge — At Last! by JAS_Photo

This month’s choice is (click to see the larger ver­sion of this image)  The Peace Bridge — At Last! by JAS_Photo

I chose this image for sev­eral reasons:

1 — Com­po­si­tion — This is a very strong com­po­si­tion and the bridge itself acts as a fan­tas­tic lead­ing line. It guides our eye beau­ti­fully into the image. In addi­tion, aside from the shape of the bridge itself, there are also other “mini-shapes” in the bridge itself as well as all around the image. These other mini-shapes add a lot of inter­est to the image.

2 — Tones and post pro­cess­ing — The bridge itself is selec­tively coloured in this image and I like that very much in this case. I feel it works and offers a new take on what is likely a heav­ily pho­tographed piece of infra-structure. For me it sug­gests ‘some­thing new’ being intro­duced into a city. The desat­u­ra­tion of the back­ground com­pli­ments the bridge and really makes the bridge pop.

3 — Story and per­spec­tive — This bridge is still a work in progress and we can see a crane in the back­ground that sug­gests this. We see the bridge “mov­ing” toward the back­ground which sug­gests to me some­thing new being intro­duced to some­thing older. The angle or per­spec­tive from which the image was taken was very well cho­sen to sug­gest this story.

For all these rea­sons, this is my choice for image of the month. Since we all have opin­ions, some mem­bers may dis­agree with my choice. That’s cool but THIS thread is not the place for debate over my pick, NOR is it the place to fur­ther cri­tique the image. The pur­pose here is to sug­gest strong ele­ments in the photo that we may learn from.

Con­grats again JAS_Photo for cre­at­ing this won­der­ful image!

 

Filed Under: Image of the month, Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With:

Photography forum image of the month November 2011

December 21, 2011 By 1 Comment

Every month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum mem­bers nom­i­nate images that they like. Then at the end of the month I choose an excel­lent image and talk about why it rocks. The photo I choose is not nec­es­sar­ily the best one of the month. I’ve come to real­ize it’s not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That’s why there are cat­e­gories in photo con­tests. I just choose a photo that has extremely strong ele­ments that we can learn from.

Fight Club! by Lizardqing

Fight Club! by Lizardqing

 

This month’s choice is (click to see the larger ver­sion of this image) Fight Club! by Lizardqing

I chose this image for sev­eral reasons:

1 — Timing/Decisive moment. You gotta have a quick trig­ger fin­ger to catch a moment like this or you will miss it. We’ve all missed fab oppor­tu­ni­ties like this, or mis­framed oppor­tu­ni­ties like this; good on Lizardquing for this fab capture.

2 — Com­po­si­tion — I really like the com­po­si­tion here. It is espe­cially impres­sive given the speed needed to catch this image. I really like the faun at the right side as well as the posi­tion of the trees.

3 — Exposure/lighting/colour — Expo­sure looks very good here and could eas­ily have been missed given the light­ing. Good choice of shutter-speed to keep things fairly sharp but still reveal motion in the deers’ front legs. Lovely colour palette as well. The light­ing is won­der­ful in this image, good on Lizardqing for being there early enough to capture.

For all these rea­sons, this is my choice for image of the month. Since we all have opin­ions, some mem­bers may dis­agree with my choice. That’s cool but THIS thread is not the place for debate over my pick, NOR is it the place to fur­ther cri­tique the image. The pur­pose here is to sug­gest strong ele­ments in the photo that we may learn from.

Con­grats again Lizardqing for cap­tur­ing this won­der­ful moment!

Filed Under: Image of the month, Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With:

102 — Layering images with interesting elements

November 25, 2011 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #102 dis­cusses lay­er­ing your pho­tographs with inter­est­ing ele­ments. This involves seri­ous atten­tion to the over­all com­po­si­tion of every frame that you take.
If you are tak­ing a shot of a moun­tain for exam­ple, there’s always more to the shot than just the moun­tain. When you are aware of what’s around the moun­tain and take the time to “layer” the image with inter­est­ing ele­ments, the com­po­si­tion as a whole gets much stronger. We also touch on how to refine those “lay­ered ele­ments” in post processing.

 

Athabaska River Reflecting Pools at Sunrise - Banff National Park - Alberta., Canada

Athabaska River Reflect­ing Pools at Sun­rise by Marko Kulik — Banff National Park — Alberta, Canada. As you can see this shot is about more than just the moun­tain which is in the back­ground. The fore­ground, midground and back­ground “lay­ered” ele­ments all con­tribute to the over­all com­po­si­tion in this scene.

 

Sometimes you feel like a nut - Image by Lisa Couldwell

Some­times you feel like a nut — Image by Lisa Could­well. Even scenes using larger aper­tures ben­e­fit from “lay­ered ele­ments”. Here, Lisa focuses on the nut medal­lion but the tire in the back­ground is a repeat­ing shape that adds inter­est to the image. The diag­o­nal lines in the image help to guide your eye. The com­po­si­tion here is very deliberate.

 

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
– Improv­ing bor­ing land­scapes
- Images that com­pli­ment SONG titles or Book titles is our reg­u­lar forum assign­ment for Novem­ber
– Inten­tional cam­era move­ment  is our level 2 assign­ment for November

If you liked this pod­cast and want to review it on Itunes, this link gets you to the main page

If you are inter­ested in writ­ing for our blog please con­tact me photography.ca (   A   T  ) G m ail  Dot co m (using stan­dard email formatting)

Please join the Photography.ca fan page on Facebook

My Face­book pro­file — Feel free to “friend” me — please just men­tion Photography.ca
My Twit­ter page — I will fol­low you if you fol­low me — Let’s con­nect — PLEASE email me and tell me who you are in case I don’t rec­i­p­ro­cate because I think you are a spammer.

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :)  Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks to Scorpio_e, Melissa Dorner, Josh G, Math­ias,  Avi­tal Pin­nick, Henry. b, and Jill bayer who posted  blog com­ments about our last pod­cast. Thanks as always to every­one that sent com­ments by email about our last pod­cast. Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks as well to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board. Most of the links to actual the prod­ucts are affil­i­ate links that help sup­port this site. Thanks in advance if you pur­chase through those links.

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. |Sub­scribe with iTunes|Sub­scribe via RSS feed |Sub­scribe with Google Reader|Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

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

Photography forum image of the month October 2011

November 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Every month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum mem­bers nom­i­nate images that they like. Then at the end of the month I choose an excel­lent image and talk about why it rocks. The photo I choose is not nec­es­sar­ily the best one of the month. I’ve come to real­ize it’s not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That’s why there are cat­e­gories in photo con­tests. I just choose a photo that has extremely strong ele­ments that we can learn from.

Autumn Web by Richard

Autumn Web by Richard

This month’s choice is (click to see the larger ver­sion of this image)  Autumn Web by Richard

I chose this image for sev­eral reasons:

1 — Plan­ning and exe­cu­tion — This strik­ing image is the result of plan­ning, it didn’t “just hap­pen” and it wasn’t a quick snap. The light­ing, comp and post-processing are all well thought out here. The result is a strik­ing moody fall image.

2 — Com­po­si­tion — details — post­pro­cess­ing — Lovely ren­dered details like the spi­der as well as the spider’s web all con­tribute to the com­po­si­tion here. Spi­der is framed nicely between the red leaves and against the back­light. The post­pro­cess­ing includ­ing the vignette and pos­si­ble selec­tive sharp­en­ing are guid­ing our eyes thought­fully with­out distractions.

3 — Light­ing — Mood — Back­light­ing is a chal­leng­ing light to deal with, but Richard bal­ances it well with off cam­era flash. The end result is an image with a lovely mood that would likely have felt too dark with­out the added light.

4 — Selec­tive focus — A wide aper­ture is well used here to get the dreamy back­ground bokeh. It adds another ‘layer’ to the image.

For all these rea­sons, this is my choice for image of the month. Since we all have opin­ions, some mem­bers may dis­agree with my choice. That’s cool but THIS thread is not the place for debate over my pick, NOR is it the place to fur­ther cri­tique the image. The pur­pose here is to sug­gest strong ele­ments in the photo that we may learn from.

Con­grats again Richard for cre­at­ing this strik­ing image!

Filed Under: Image of the month, Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With:

101 — Intentional Camera Movement — Interview with Michael Orton

October 12, 2011 By 10 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #101 fea­tures an inter­view with one of my favorite pho­tog­ra­phers, fine art pho­tog­ra­pher Michael Orton. In this pod­cast we talk about delib­er­ately mov­ing your cam­era dur­ing the expo­sure. Nor­mally, this is FORBIDDEN and you do every­thing in your power to keep the cam­era as still as pos­si­ble while shoot­ing. But Michael has a very unique way of see­ing and has again bro­ken the rules. He has cre­ated a unique and fab­u­lous new port­fo­lio of one-of-a-kind abstract land­scape images, by way of inten­tional cam­era move­ment. This pod­cast dis­cusses inten­tional cam­era move­ments for cre­ative effect.

Michael Orton is a fine art pho­tog­ra­phy pio­neer. First he cre­ated Orton Imagery, AKA the Orton effect some 30ish years ago.  This tech­nique has been used by tens of thou­sands of pho­tog­ra­phers and has become so pop­u­lar that Adobe Ele­ments 10 now fea­tures an action called the Orton Effect. I’d bet hard that Michael’s tech­nique involv­ing com­pound cam­era move­ments also devel­ops a cult-like fol­low­ing in the years to come. Thanks so much Michael!

 

Awakening by Michael Orton
Awak­en­ing by Michael Orton — The abstract painterly feel to this image was cre­ated IN CAMERA by using Inten­tional cam­era movement.

 

Michael Orton at ‘Work’ — Image by Marko Kulik

 

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
– Michael Orton Pho­tog­ra­phy
- Michael Orton’s fea­ture on Photography.ca
– 67 – Orton Imagery – The Orton Effect – Inter­view with Michael Orton and Dar­win Wiggett — Pod­cast #67
– Pho­tograph­ing Cre­ative Land­scapes by Michael Orton: Sim­ple Tools for Artis­tic Images and Enhanced Creativity


If you liked this pod­cast and want to review it on Itunes, this link gets you to the main page

If you are inter­ested in writ­ing for our blog please con­tact me photography.ca (   A   T  ) G m ail  Dot co m (using stan­dard email formatting)

Please join the Photography.ca fan page on Facebook

My Face­book pro­file — Feel free to “friend” me — please just men­tion Photography.ca
My Twit­ter page — I will fol­low you if you fol­low me — Let’s con­nect — PLEASE email me and tell me who you are in case I don’t rec­i­p­ro­cate because I think you are a spammer.

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :)  Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks to Patrick, Bambi and Glenn Euloth who posted  blog com­ments about our last pod­cast. Thanks as always to every­one that sent com­ments by email about our last pod­cast. Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks as well to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board. Most of the links to actual the prod­ucts are affil­i­ate links that help sup­port this site. Thanks in advance if you pur­chase through those links.

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. |Sub­scribe with iTunes|Sub­scribe via RSS feed |Sub­scribe with Google Reader|Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

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