56 — How to photograph smoke — Photography podcast

October 18, 2008 By 9 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #56 talks about how to pho­to­graph smoke. We dis­cuss pho­tograph­ing dif­fer­ent types of smoke includ­ing incense, out­door smoke and liq­uid nitro­gen. One note right away is that if you want to try this, it’s fun, but have patience. The incense image below took about 90 min­utes from setup to fin­ish­ing shoot­ing. If you want to try this your­self, here’s what I used for the shoot; Incense sticks, black back­ground, 1 portable off cam­era flash (with sync cord to fire it) a CUSTOM (smirk) home­made snoot made on the spot, from con­struc­tion paper that went on the portable flash to keep light off the back­ground and a reflec­tor (not essen­tial, but help­ful and you can use any­thing white). Thanks so much to Clusty for this awe­some suggestion!

Incense smoke by Marko Kulik

Monk in outdoor smoke - Image by Marko

Monk in out­door smoke — Image by Marko Kulik

Scary theme using Liquid Nitrogen - Image by Marko

Scary theme using Liq­uid Nitro­gen — Image by Marko Kulik

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Post pro­cess­ing assign­ment forum
Octo­ber Assign­ment #2 — Halloween/Horror

Thanks as always to‚ Susan who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast. Thanks also to Jlindy, Cap­tureev­er­more, mpykalo, lamar328, pho­to­cell, EJC, CB Photo and jcrys­tall who recently joined the photography.ca forum and posted a few times. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

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

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: , , , ,

Portrait from the Plateau — L’il Pigeon Feeder

October 17, 2008 By 1 Comment

This was a straight shot of a lit­tle girl feed­ing the pigeons on an over­cast day. I actu­ally shot this before I recorded my last pod­cast. Talk about a twofer (two for one) :) . No flash was used and about 5 min­utes of post-processing was done on this one. I really like the intense con­cen­tra­tion on the kid’s face. She’s on a mis­sion. I also like the duck in the back­ground look­ing at what’s goin’ on. I think the duck is envi­ous of all those sweet chee­rios! As always, when pho­tograph­ing chil­dren it’s best to get a parent’s per­mis­sion, which I did. If you wanted to sell a shot like this, you’d need a model release.

Pigeon Kid

Pigeon Kid

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

Portrait from the Plateau — L’il Pigeon Feeder

October 17, 2008 By 1 Comment

This was a straight shot of a lit­tle girl feed­ing the pigeons on an over­cast day. I actu­ally shot this before I recorded my last pod­cast. Talk about a twofer (two for one) :) . No flash was used and about 5 min­utes of post-processing was done on this one. I really like the intense con­cen­tra­tion on the kid’s face. She’s on a mis­sion. I also like the duck in the back­ground look­ing at what’s goin’ on. I think the duck is envi­ous of all those sweet chee­rios! As always, when pho­tograph­ing chil­dren it’s best to get a parent’s per­mis­sion, which I did. If you wanted to sell a shot like this, you’d need a model release.

Pigeon Kid

Pigeon Kid

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

55 — Using Photoshop Actions — Photography podcast

October 9, 2008 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #55 talks about using actions to stream­line your work­flow. Actions are a set of steps that you record to trans­form an image in some way. Once you have recorded the action once you can apply it to any other image file. We also talk about com­mer­cial actions that you can buy that will totally trans­form your images. The 2 that we talk about are Kevin Kubota’s actions and Craig’s actions. I’d like to thank Kevin Kub­ota once again for giv­ing me some actions to play with. The images below were all done with Kevin’s actions.

Top shot - straight; Middle shot uses vibrant glow action; Botton shot uses BW GM Warm2 +snappy action

Top shot — straight; Mid­dle shot — vibrant glow action; Bot­tom shot BW GM Warm2 +snappy action

Left shot straight; Right shot uses Anime soft action

Left shot straight; Right shot uses Anime soft action

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Kevin Kubota’s actions
Pod­cast #52 Kevin Kub­ota inter­view
Craig’s actions
Free pho­to­shop actions search result
Pho­tograph­ing words assign­ment forum

Thanks as always to‚ Susan who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast. Thanks also to gbh59, Michael van der Tol, justin­m­cguigan, pogueca, Fredric, DeepR, mor­gan, JoMama, fante, lily13, SMG, Wymasa, liamm­clen­nan, J & R Par­ent, and malechi who recently joined the photography.ca forum and posted a few times. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

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

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

Polarizing filters reduce reflections

September 29, 2008 By 3 Comments

Most peo­ple use polar­iz­ing fil­ters to reduce the bright­ness of the sky so that it does not get blown out. How­ever another very use­ful thing that polar­iz­ing fil­ters do is that polar­iz­ers reduce unwanted reflections.

This shot below by forum mem­ber Travis is an AMAZING exam­ple of the same shot with and with­out a polar­iz­ing fil­ter. The top image is shot with­out the polar­izer and the bot­tom image uses the polar­iz­ing fil­ter and gets rid of all the reflec­tions. Thanks so much for let­ting me use these images Travis!

polarizing filters reduce reflections

polar­iz­ing fil­ters reduce reflections

3 other links on our forum that talk about how to use polar­iz­ers
– Travis’s orig­i­nal post
– Neu­tral gra­di­ent fil­ter — also talks about polar­iz­ers
– Fil­ters — also talks about polar­iz­ing fil­ters and other filters

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

54 — Making the eyes sing — Photography podcast

September 28, 2008 By 5 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #54 talks about how to make the eyes sing in a pho­to­graph. When we take a photo of a per­son or some­thing that has eyes, we really need to pay atten­tion to what we are doing. The eyes are nor­mally the most impor­tant part of any por­trait and they need to be sharp and bright. Through a few basic tech­niques this pod­cast tells you what you need to do to get your subject’s eyes to ‘sing’.

Even in this medium range shot you can see sharp bright eyes

Even in this medium range shot you can see sharp bright eyes

The bulldogs eye sings because the iris is sharp and bright

The bulldog’s eye (stock) sings because the iris is sharp & bright

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
The eyes have it thread from the pho­tog­ra­phy forum
Acces­sories pod­cast (check image of the light stand hold­ing reflec­tor with magic arm)
A dodg­ing tech­nique for the eyes described in para­graph 2 of the post
Gary Fong dif­fuser at B&H
Pod­camp Mon­treal
CC Chap­man

Thanks as always to Benny and Susan who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast and for her sug­ges­tion that inspired this pod­cast. Thanks also to Ram, Hallow’s maiden, Rabi­aka­ma­ran, Gatepc, BenH, MikeS, Dabow,‚ Inukamori, svant­land & PKMax who recently joined the photography.ca forum and posted a few times. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

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

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: , , ,

Interview with Kevin Kubota — Photography podcast #52

September 16, 2008 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #52 fea­tures an inter­view with pho­tog­ra­pher Kevin Kub­ota. Kevin is prob­a­bly most well known for his pho­to­shop actions but he is also a wed­ding as well as a fine art pho­tog­ra­pher. In this inter­view we talk about Kevin’s work, his gear, and his work­flow. We also talk a bit about Pho­to­shop actions in gen­eral and dis­cuss if using them is cheating.

Here’s a quick snap­shot of Parc-Lafontaine where a lit­tle vis­i­tor came to say hi while I was record­ing the intro and con­clu­sion to this pod­cast. That’s right, my out­door sound stu­dio includes wildlife :)

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Kevin Kubota’s Actions
Assign­ment forum on Photography.ca
Adobe Pho­to­shop tuto­ri­als and work­flow
– http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/tutorials
– http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop
– http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/cs3/pdfs/CS3_Web_Workflow_Guide.pdf

Thanks as always to Susan who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast and to the fol­low­ing peo­ple that recently joined the photography.ca forum and posted a few times; pslove, Joe­Mezz, natal­iey­oung, nekken, bhvi­jayku­mar, ret, swee­t­o­bliv­ion, scale­speeder, mind­forge, bear, seal­hunter, Paula­Lynn, Wayne, reijo, fire209, Dwayne Oakes, trueart­spho­tog­ra­phy, BunD, easyp­ick­ings and Dis­rupt Stu­dios. 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 wanted to review the pod­cast in Itunes it would be most appre­ci­ated. You’ll need to down­load Itunes for free and you can search for the pod­cast if you don’t know where it is. You can search the itunes store for pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — pho­tog­ra­phy blog and you’ll see my name (Marko Kulik). You’ll see the icon with the word photography.ca and under that, you’ll see cus­tomer reviews with a link to post a review. It takes a few min­utes to do this (and you’ll need reg­is­ter for an apple ID) so I thank you in advance for tak­ing the time. If you know itunes well, you can also do a power search from the quick links menu on the front page of the Itunes store and it will be faster.

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: Photography podcast Interviews, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , , ,

Cleaning camera lenses — cleaning cameras — Photography podcast #51

September 1, 2008 By 2 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #51 talks about how to clean the out­side of your cam­era, your cam­era lenses and the inside of your cam­era. I also share some tips on avoid­ing all this dirt in the first place. Spe­cial thanks to Kate from our pho­tog­ra­phy forum who sug­gested this podcast.

NOTE: When I talk about UV lenses I’m actu­ally refer­ring to a screw on UV fil­ters. My bad.

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Kodak lens cleaner
Zeiss clean­ing fluid

Thanks as always to Rifter, Susan, Jon, LanceJ, and scorpio_e, Begin­ner, candyman123, trot­ters, Nata­nis and dclark‚ 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: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , ,

Photography tips (recap) — Photography podcast #50

August 18, 2008 By 5 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #50 recaps many of the pho­tog­ra­phy tips talked about in the past 49 pho­tog­ra­phy pod­casts. Here are some quick tips talked about in this pod­cast cho­sen from pre­vi­ous photo pod­casts; Watch­ing the back­ground — depth of field — fill flash — expo­sure in pho­tog­ra­phy — paint­ing with light — fram­ing your sub­ject — inten­tional blur — polar­iz­ing and neu­tral grad fil­ters — dig­i­tal in cam­era fil­ters — pat­terns — lead­ing lines — the rule of thirds in pho­tog­ra­phy — delib­er­ate under­ex­po­sure — shutter-speeds - using shad­ows cre­atively — wide angle lenses — pos­ing mod­els — using reflec­tors — stu­dio setups for begin­ners — cheap macro pho­tog­ra­phy — one light por­traits — low-light pho­tog­ra­phy — using his­tograms — your rights as a pho­tog­ra­pher — sim­ple back light­ing out­doors — bright­ness and other dis­trac­tions — pho­tograph­ing babies — dodg­ing and burn­ing in pho­tog­ra­phy.

I’d also like to thank Las­zlo, Dominic Fuiz­zotto, Dita Kubin, Ann Dahlgren, Raphael Gold­chain, Vicky Reed, Jolene Mon­heim and Andre Nan­tel for the infor­ma­tive inter­views that they let me record with them. More inter­views are already sched­uled for future podcasts.

Here’s a quick snap­shot of a small part of Parc-Lafontaine where I have been recently record­ing these podcasts.

Thanks as always to Lan­don, Benny, San­dra 543, Man­a­ma­rak, Clau­dia regina, destruc­tivemi­crowave, ratio, kath­leen, taffy, kiddo, dag, trhoads, megster85, langdon9720, Richard Annable, kate and Ash­muddy 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 wanted to review the pod­cast in Itunes it would be most appre­ci­ated. You’ll need to down­load Itunes for free and you can search for the pod­cast if you don’t know where it is. You can search the itunes store for pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — pho­tog­ra­phy blog and you’ll see my name (Marko Kulik). You’ll see the icon with the word photography.ca and under that, you’ll see cus­tomer reviews with a link to post a review. It takes a few min­utes to do this (and you’ll need reg­is­ter for an apple ID) so I thank you in advance for tak­ing the time. If you know itunes well, you can also do a power search from the quick links menu on the front page of the Itunes store and it will be faster.

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: Photography podcasts, Photography tips Tagged With: , ,

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: ,

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: , , ,

Flash sync speeds — Photography podcast #47

July 11, 2008 By 7 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #47 talks about flash sync speeds. We talk about what the flash sync speed is (it’s also called x-sync) and how very impor­tant it is espe­cially when you are tak­ing day­light por­traits out­doors. We also talk about high-speed flash sync as well as answer Sergey’s ques­tion about why the high speed flash sync is not work­ing with the trans­mit­ters that he is using.

Links/topics men­tioned in this pod­cast:
My sleepy dog pho­to­graph
Sunny 16 rule
ST-E2 trans­mit­ter
Canon 580 flash series with the OC-E3 off-camera shoe cord

Thanks as always to Benny, Mer­man, Tmat, Yowzah, Tim 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: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , ,
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