113 — Six essential photography day trip accessories

December 19, 2012 By 1 Comment

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #113 dis­cusses what I feel are six essen­tial acces­sories for day trip pho­tog­ra­phy. I just came back from a super-quick trip to Nevada where I did solo day trips on 2 days to Red Rock Canyon and Val­ley of Fire State Park.

For now, my day trips to national/state/provincial/local parks and other cool places are easy ON-TRAIL day trips and the acces­sories that I’ve cho­sen to talk about reflect this. I go into detail about why these 6 acces­sories are essen­tial in the pod­cast. The list I’ve come up with includes a tri­pod, polar­iz­ing fil­ter, hik­ing shoes/boots, polar­ized sun­glasses, a lens cloth and knee-pads.

Of course I’m SUPER-CURIOUS as to any other acces­sories lis­ten­ers may sug­gest, so please feel free to let me know if you think I missed something.

6 essential accessories for day trip photography
Pharaoh Rock — Val­ley of Fire State Park, Nevada, USA  ©Marko Kulik

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

REI Las Vegas - Awe­some sport­ing store — Ask for Tommy, he’s awesome.

Tripods for pho­tog­ra­phy Pod­cast #96

Polar­iz­ing fil­ters and other impor­tant fil­ters Pod­cast #77

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

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MY APOLOGIES THAT THE WEBSITE FIELD TO COMMENT WASN’T THERE, PLEASE JUST CONNECT WITH ME TO ADD IT. I’LL GET THIS FIXED FOR THE NEXT PODCAST.

Thanks to Mac Sokul­ski, Dave John­son, Enrique Waizel, Bernard Dal­laire, JP, Bret Far­ris and Syl­vain Raci­cot who posted  blog com­ments about our last pod­cast.. Thanks as well 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: ,

112 — Why camera bags suck

November 8, 2012 By 14 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #112 addresses a ques­tion posed by Gor­don Laing on Google+
The best cam­era bag — what do you use?

I replied to that ques­tion say­ing that these days I usu­ally shoot bag free and keep my lenses that are in lens hold­ing cases, attached to my belt as per the pic­ture below. In case peo­ple are inter­ested, here is a list of the items that I carry with me most of the time with­out a bag. Gitzo car­bon fibre tri­pod (2540LLVL) also referred to as ‘my baby’. That’s on a Gitzo tri­pod shoul­der strap slung diag­o­nally around my shoul­der. It’s an ‘OK’ strap, no bet­ter. I’m still hunt­ing for the per­fect tri­pod shoul­der strap. Usu­ally I carry 3 lenses;  Nikon 14–24, Nikon 28–300, Nikon 50mm and 1 flash, the SB-800.

More details on the exact lenses and lens hold­ers are listed in the affil­i­ate links below from B&H.

I also carry in my pock­ets a cable release, spare bat­ter­ies, lens cloth and a hex key for my cam­era bracket plate. Not shown is the flash­light that I’ll often have with me for night shoots. Not shown are the cokin fil­ters that I some­times keep in a pouch around my neck.

Obvi­ously this setup will not work for many peo­ple car­ry­ing very large lenses and heav­ier gear — but this will work for most peo­ple that shoot with lenses that are about as large as an aver­age 70-200mm  F-2.8. This setup is also meant to give peo­ple new ideas on car­ry­ing gear.

I’m also seri­ously into know­ing if other peo­ple have alter­na­tive gear car­ry­ing meth­ods so please feel free to share by commenting.

No camera bag

Although it’s no fash­ion get up, this set-up allows my back to feel great and it allows me to change lenses quickly.

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Lowe­pro S&F Lens Exchange Case 200AW at B&H - My favourite lens hold­ing case. It’s FAB!

Pear­stone Onyx 60 Lens Case — In the pod­cast I talk about the Lowe­pro 2S but it seems to be dis­con­tin­ued. This model seems to have sim­i­lar specs.

Lowe­pro 50mm lens holder at B&H

Lens Changer 75 Pop Down V2.0 from Think tank for larger lenses like a 100-400mm or for shoot­ing 70-200mm with the lens hood attached. You may need to buy their belt to use this though.

Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5–5.6G ED VR Zoom Lens at B&H — I just love the ver­sa­til­ity of the focal range.

Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF Lens at B&H - This lens and I are hav­ing a won­der­ful rela­tion­ship, I love her.

Gitzo GT2540LLVL Lev­el­ing Car­bon Fiber Tri­pod at B&H - This tri­pod works well for me. Fairly big but not too big.

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 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: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With:

111 — My shit weather photo vacation

October 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #111 is a per­sonal account of the worst photo vaca­tion I have ever taken and the steps I took to make the expe­ri­ence more enjoy­able. I’d love to know how oth­ers have dealt with this issue in the past.

The Road to Nowhere - Yukon, Canada

The Road to Nowhere — Yukon, Canada
9 out of 10 days had vis­i­bil­ity sim­i­lar to this — Seren­ity now was my mantra

 

Due to all the bad vis­i­bil­ity in the moun­tains, I looked to the fore­ground instead which was often clear. Here I caught logs and tree stumps reflect­ing in the water at a small unnamed lake in Inu­vik, NWT, Canada

Lake Logs - Inuvik, NWT

Lake Logs — Inu­vik, NWT

 

Details are another fun thing to shoot when the grand scen­ics are bask­ing in obscu­rity.
This is the back of the sil­ver pick-up truck  we rented after cov­er­ing 400 KM on the muddy Demp­ster highway.

Dempster Highway Truck - Yukon, Canada

Demp­ster High­way Truck — Yukon, Canada
This truck was sil­ver before it got com­pletely caked with thick Demp­ster high­way mud.


Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Rain Pho­tog­ra­phy — pod­cast #88

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 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:

110 — Crash course in black and white film photography

September 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #110 gives you a full on crash course in black and white film pho­tog­ra­phy in around 30 min­utes. Black and white film pho­tog­ra­phy is not at all dead. Many cre­ative pho­tog­ra­phers are get­ting their hands wet in a tra­di­tional dark­room.  If you’ve ever wanted to know what’s involved in black and white pho­tog­ra­phy, I take you through the entire process. We talk about film cam­eras, film, devel­op­ing film, print­ing con­tact sheets and print­ing a final print.
Thanks to John Vales from our photography.ca face­book group for sug­gest­ing this topic. Please feel free to “Like” that page. :)

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Apug.org — Ana­log Pho­tog­ra­phy Users Group
keh.com
Film pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast with John Mead­ows
Ilford Delta 3200
Kodak Tri-X film
Kodak T-Max film
The neg­a­tive by Ansel Adams
Photo tuto­r­ial on devel­op­ing film. Shows nor­mal, under, over­ex­posed negs
Load­ing film onto a reel

- Cir­cles is our reg­u­lar forum assign­ment for Spetem­ber
– Self Por­traits in a Mir­ror is our level 2 assign­ment for September

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 Lucille B and Michael Van der Tol 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: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: ,

109 — Flash photography tips — Interview with Joe McNally

July 23, 2012 By 2 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #109 fea­tures an Inter­view about flash pho­tog­ra­phy with well known pho­tog­ra­pher Joe McNally. Joe has been shoot­ing for decades for well known mag­a­zines life Life, Sports Illus­trated and National Geo­graphic. He was in town giv­ing a sem­i­nar on the vari­ety of light­ing tech­niques you can achieve by using just one or two flashes. After the sem­i­nar I sat down with Joe for this quick inter­view  to talk about flash tips. In this pod­cast we talk about dif­fus­ing your flash, trig­ger­ing your flash and Joe talks about per­sonal projects.

© Joe McNally

 

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Joe McNally’s blog  — Joe McNally’s Dance Port­fo­lio
– Cold Bev­er­ages is our reg­u­lar forum assign­ment for July
– Oppo­sites is our level 2 forum assign­ment for July

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 Lucille B and Julian 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 podcast Interviews, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting

108 — Film Photography Rocks — Interview w/John Meadows

July 4, 2012 By 2 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #108 fea­tures an Inter­view with fine art pho­tog­ra­pher John Mead­ows where we talk about the advan­tages of shoot­ing on film. Although it’s true that film pho­tog­ra­phy is slowly being replaced by dig­i­tal, it con­tin­ues to remain VERY pop­u­lar with fine art pho­tog­ra­phers for a bunch of rea­sons. One of these rea­sons is the incred­i­ble qual­ity of the cam­eras and lenses avail­able to film pho­tog­ra­phers that can be pur­chased these days for peanuts.

In this pod­cast we talk about the advan­tages of shoot­ing on film, film char­ac­ter­is­tics, buy­ing film, devel­op­ing your own film, print­ing your own images in a dark­room, the hybrid approach of using both film and dig­i­tal and more.

Dur­ing this phone inter­view recorded by Skype, the qual­ity of my voice is mediocre and I apol­o­gize in advance for this —  Luck­ily John Meadows’s voice sounds great.

Bro­ken and Unbro­ken © John Meadows

 

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Royce Howland’s fol­low up com­ment on the photo-realistic HDR pod­cast
John Mead­ows web­site
John Mead­ows on Flickr
apug.org — Ana­log Pho­tog­ra­phy Users Group
Freestyle film pho­tog­ra­phy sup­plies
Pocket light meter
Mar­shal Oils at B&H
Film at B&H
Photo tours in Mon­treal — Pri­vate pho­tog­ra­phy instruc­tion in Montreal

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 John Starmer, Lucille B, chris f, Rob S, Royce How­land, Mike Lang­ford 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:

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: ,

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

104 — Backing up images like a pro versus a bonehead

February 15, 2012 By 5 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #104 dis­cusses strate­gies for back­ing up your images. One of my exter­nal hard dri­ves that held tens of thou­sands of images failed recently. Even though I had a dupli­cate of the images on another drive, the dupli­cates were poorly arranged. This got me think­ing about bet­ter and safer backup strate­gies. I’d DEFINITELY appre­ci­ate hear­ing about YOUR backup strategies.

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
– Crashplan.com
– Backblaze.com
– Carbonite.com
– Ama­zon S3 ser­vices calculator

- “Trans­porta­tion” is our reg­u­lar forum assign­ment for Feb­ru­ary
– Inten­tional Over­ex­po­sure is our level 2 assign­ment for February

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 skcazador, amber, cartman75 and Glenn Igua­nasan 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: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: ,

103 — Photography umbrella for rain and snow

December 29, 2011 By 5 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #103 talks about a wet weather pho­tog­ra­phy umbrella con­trap­tion that I recently put together. Basi­cally it’s a GIANT golf umbrella and a sling.
I’ve been shoot­ing a lot in the rain and snow lately and some­times you need to have both hands free. This umbrella con­trap­tion allows you to keep both hands on the cam­era and works well in heavy rain or snow so long as it’s not too windy.

This giant 68″ dou­ble canopy Gust­buster golf umbrella in a sling gives you close to 30 inches of dry shoot­ing when it’s not too windy.

 

A close-up of the sling I pur­chased from brellabag.com — It’s pricey at $30. but works well when the sling is loaded with heav­ier items like a long lens or bot­tle of water.

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
– Golftown.com
– Gust­buster umbrel­las
– Brellabag.com
– Pod­cast #88 — Rain pho­tog­ra­phy
- “Lights” is our reg­u­lar forum assign­ment for Decem­ber
– Ugly duck­lings — look­ing for beauty in every­thing  is our level 2 assign­ment for December

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)

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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 cartman75, Benny and Gale 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: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting 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: ,
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