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)

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If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
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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: , , , ,

100 — Shoot in any light

September 20, 2011 By 5 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #100 cel­e­brates our 100th pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast and focuses on the tag line of the pod­cast which is ‘keep on shoot­ing’ in any light.

I’d like to take this moment to thank all our lis­ten­ers! Your sup­port and encour­age­ment dur­ing these past 100 episodes has been awe­some. Thanks for all the feed­back, all the com­ments and all the con­tri­bu­tions. Spe­cial thanks as well to all the guests that have shared their knowl­edge so freely. More inter­views are planned for the future.

In this pod­cast I offer up tips on how to shoot in any light so long as it suits the subject.

 

I shot this image at about 2pm. The light that most of the ducks were rest­ing in was bright and harsh. Had I shot this duck in that direct light, the shad­ows would have been too harsh. This par­tic­u­lar duck though was rest­ing under a shel­ter that soft­ened the light and the soft light suited this sub­ject far bet­ter and holds details in the blacks and the whites. Straight shot — No flash was used here.

 

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
– How to pho­to­graph with hard light — Pod­cast #97
– Rain pho­tog­ra­phy — Pod­cast #88 
– Stu­dio light­ing for begin­ners — Pod­cast #33 
– September’s reg­u­lar assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum — Yel­low
– September’s level 2 assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum — Macros of any kind


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, Rich, Anuj, Photo art cafe and Best 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: ,

99 — Controlling brightness in photography

August 25, 2011 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #99 dis­cusses how to con­trol bright­ness in your images. Our eye tends to fol­low or rest upon bright objects in a pho­to­graph and very often these objects or ele­ments are not the focal point of the image thus caus­ing our eyes to wander.

Con­trol­ling the brighter ele­ments in a scene takes some plan­ning dur­ing shoot­ing, and some work in post-processing but ulti­mately your images will be stronger. You’ll also have way more con­trol over the final image where you the cre­ator of the image guide the viewer’s eye purposefully.

Bright­ness is well con­trolled in this image. Along with com­po­si­tional curves, part of what makes this image work is that other bright ele­ments in the scene are not com­pet­ing with the bride. All eyes are on her as she makes her entrance. Image by Dominic Fuizzotto

Image by Richard Sparey — This lovely image of deli­cious pears suf­fers slightly from what I call weak edges. This causes our eye to wan­der out of the frame. It’s more notice­able on printed white paper or on a pure white background.

The same image with the edges burnt in (dark­ened) quite a bit to show the effect. This helps keep our eyes from wan­der­ing. Thanks to Richard for allow­ing me to use this image.

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
– August’s reg­u­lar assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum — Num­bers — Pho­to­graph some­thing with a num­ber
– August’s level 2 assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum — Cre­at­ing coun­ter­points
– Bright­ness prob­lems and dis­tract­ing ele­ments — Pod­cast #44
– Neu­tral den­sity fil­ters and grad­u­ated ND fil­ters — Inter­view with Dar­win Wiggett —  Pod­cast #77
– Dominic Fuiz­zotto Pho­tog­ra­phy
– Richard Sparey Photography


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 forum mem­bers North­stone,  Scorpio_e, Howard J, Yise­haq, Bill Sorensen and use­akme 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: , , ,

98 — 3 reasons you SHOULD crop photos

July 5, 2011 By 8 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #98 talks about why it’s OK to crop pho­tos.
Many pho­tog­ra­phers on the Net and through­out Photography’s his­tory seem to be against crop­ping and in this pod­cast I explain why I am NOT one of them.

Guer­rillero Hero­ico by Alberto Korda — The cropped pho­to­graph of Che Gue­vara is one of the most rec­og­niz­able pho­tos on planet earth. Although the orig­i­nal is still a strong pho­to­graph, unlikely it would have become the icon it is with­out the crop.

Pablo Picasso by Arnold New­man — Arnold New­man was a strong believer in doing what­ever worked to improve his pho­tographs. This obvi­ously included crop­ping out about 65% of this very famous portrait.

Igor Stravin­sky by Arnold New­man — Most peo­ple would agree that the cropped ver­sion of this pho­to­graph is much stronger. In this case, less is WAY more in this unusual but extremely effec­tive crop.

Woman at the Door by Marko Kulik — This crop is uncon­ven­tional and delib­er­ate but I feel it helps the image and that’s the only rea­son it’s there.

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
July’s reg­u­lar assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum — My city OR my coun­try
July’s level 2 assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum — Cre­ative use of my country’s flag


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 forum mem­bers Jimmy, Scorpio_e, and Bren­dan 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: ,

97 — How to photograph with hard light

June 11, 2011 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #97 is a primer on how to use hard light. Hard light is trick­ier to use than soft light but there is NO rea­son to avoid using it. It just needs to be used appro­pri­ately. Part of using hard light and shadow in pho­tog­ra­phy is being very aware of where the shad­ows will fall and chang­ing your posi­tion or your light­ing if you don’t like where they fall.

Here’s a cou­ple of basic points when using hard light in photography:

- Hard light comes from a small light source rel­a­tive to your sub­ject. The sun IS a small light source in this respect because it is 93 mil­lion miles away from the earth.
- Hard light pro­duces hard shad­ows which are good in many cases espe­cially to reveal form.
- The far­ther the light source is from the sub­ject, the HARDER the shad­ows.
- The far­ther away the light source is from the sub­ject, the SHORTER the shadows.

To prove this to your­self take a flash­light into the bath­room and shut off the lights. Shine the light on your fin­ger in front of the wall. Move the light around and you will learn a ton about shadows.

Hard light demo

Hard light demo — The image at left shows a shadow from direct hard sun­light. Moments later some very light clouds dif­fuse the sun­light to cre­ate a softer shadow at right. Had the sky been com­pletely over­cast (very soft light) almost no shad­ows would be present and this image would lose its punch and be totally bor­ing. © Marko Kulik

Image by BzdegaPhotography

Image by Bzde­gaPho­tog­ra­phy — The hard light totally works in this image despite the flare.

Carmy Working

Carmy Work­ing by Marko Kulik — One hard light at cam­era left cre­ates a shadow that adds to the gritty flavour of the shot

Their Objects by Marko Kulik

Their Objects by Marko Kulik — Can­dle light is hard light. This shot took quite a while to set up due to think­ing about where the shad­ows would fall.

Judy Garland by George Hurrell - 1944

Judy Gar­land by George Hur­rell — 1944. This strik­ing por­trait was shot 67 years ago by light­ing mas­ter George Hur­rell. The very dark shad­ows attest to the hard light used here.

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
June’s reg­u­lar assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum — Break­ing the rules
June’s level 2 assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum — Cre­ative self portraits


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 forum mem­bers North­Stone, Wicked Dark, Howard J,  KawarthaBob and Jonny Hot­shoe 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: , , ,

96 — Tripods for photography (the good stuff)

April 26, 2011 By 14 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #96 is a primer on how to buy a great tri­pod, what to look for in a tri­pod and why you should buy a great tri­pod. (In the lon­grun, if you stick with pho­tog­ra­phy long enough, you will be buy­ing a great tri­pod even­tu­ally anyway)

If you are seri­ous enough about your pho­tog­ra­phy that you save money to buy great lenses, then this pod­cast won’t scare the crap out of you.

If you are into the cheap stuff, and are more con­cerned about over­all price ver­sus over­all qual­ity, be afraid — be very afraid.

Tripods and heads for photography

Tripods and heads for photography

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Tri­pod arti­cle by Thom Hogan — a must read
Gitzo GT2540LLVL tri­pod at B&H
Man­frotto 055 Tri­pod plus 3-Way Pan/Tilt Head w/ Quick Release at B&H
The fol­low­ing com­pa­nies make rec­om­mended ball­heads — Arca Swiss — Acrat­ech — Really Right Stuff - Markins — Gitzo — Man­frotto
Cheaper Car­bon fiber tripods by Induro — Benbo (Remem­ber to research and TRY spe­cific indi­vid­ual mod­els)
April’s reg­u­lar assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum — Geo­met­ric shapes
April’s level 2 assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum — Cre­ative underexposure


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 forum mem­ber Benny who posted a blog com­ment 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: , ,

95 — Larry King family portrait — Interview with Laszlo of Montreal

March 21, 2011 By 1 Comment

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #95 fea­tures an inter­view with Cana­dian pho­tog­ra­pher Las­zlo of Mon­treal. In this inter­view Las­zlo talks about a recent por­trait ses­sion with Larry King and his fam­ily. In an effort to illus­trate how keep­ing it sim­ple can yield great results, Las­zlo decon­structs this pho­to­graph while talk­ing about light­ing, com­po­si­tion and technique.

Larry King family portrait by Laszlo of Montreal

Larry King fam­ily © Las­zlo of Montreal

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Show us your parks is the reg­u­lar assign­ment this month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum
Macro — closeup  is the level 2 assign­ment this month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum
If you liked this pod­cast and want to write a tes­ti­mo­nial, it’s a great way to say “Thanks” and it’s super-appreciated

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 forum mem­ber Glenn Euloth (AKA Igua­nasan on our forum) who posted a blog com­ment 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: , ,

94 — Turning day into night

March 3, 2011 By 2 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #94 teaches how to turn day into night or late after­noon for por­trait pur­poses. This tech­nique is often used by wed­ding, fash­ion and por­trait pho­tog­ra­phers. The goal of the tech­nique is to make the sky look darker so that the model pops against the sky. This often adds mood and/or drama to a shot. We dis­cuss 2 tech­niques; using flash and cam­era in man­ual non TTL (Through the lens) mode as well as TTL mode. We also touch on flash sync speeds.

This image looks like it was shot in the late after­noon but it was shot at 1pm. Cam­era mode was aper­ture pri­or­ity using TTL flash. Expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion was set to –3 on cam­era and +2 for the direct on cam­era flash. I would have taken the flash off cam­era for a bet­ter light­ing pat­tern but it was minus 15 C and my model only had 5 min­utes in her.

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Show us your parks is the reg­u­lar assign­ment this month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum
Macro — closeup  is the level 2 assign­ment this month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum
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

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

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 kat, Wicked Dark and Shant M who posted a blog com­ment 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: ,

93 — Black and white photography — qualities that make good bw images

January 31, 2011 By 6 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #93 is based on a thread in our pho­tog­ra­phy forum by mem­ber asnow where he asks about the qual­i­ties make a good black and white photo. A num­ber of other forum mem­bers help answer the ques­tion and I offer up some per­sonal opin­ions as well. One‚piece‚of good advice involves learn­ing to see in black and white using a dig­i­tal cam­era. Most dig­i­tal cam­eras can cap­ture the image in colour but SHOW it to you on your camera’s screen in black and white. This allows you to learn how coloured tones under a given light look in black and white. (Look up the word mono­chrome in your camera’s instruc­tion man­ual for instruc­tions on how to do this). Live view is also fan­tas­tic as it shows you how the scene will look in BW even before you click the shut­ter. (Many thanks to asnow, raven4ns, Wicked Dark and Andrew for their con­tri­bu­tions to the thread and podcast.)

Snow Tracks - Marko Kulik

Snow Tracks — Marko Kulik

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

The Zone Sys­tem — Wikipedia | The Zone sys­tem on Lumin­ious land­scape
Wicked Dark’s arti­cle Black and White 101
Emo­tion is the reg­u­lar assign­ment this month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum
Back­light­ing is the level 2 assign­ment this month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum
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

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

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 kawarthabob, and kat‚who posted a blog com­ment 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: , ,

92 — My damn lenses keep vignetting — solving vignetting problems

January 10, 2011 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #92 talks about solv­ing vignetting which is the unwanted dark­en­ing around the edges or cor­ners in your pho­tographs. We talk about 2–3 very com­mon rea­sons why even pro­fes­sional lenses that cost a for­tune, STILL suf­fer from vignetting in cer­tain cases. ‚We also talk about why many peo­ple never notice the vignetting in their pho­tographs even though it’s often there.

Mechanical or filter vignetting

This is mechan­i­cal vignetting of a shot of the sky on my F2.8 24mm wide angle lens and is due to too many fil­ters in front of the lens. Shot at left at F2.8. Stop­ping down to F 5.6 (right shot) ‚helps slightly. A bet­ter solu­tion here is to sim­ply use less fil­ters, or wider ones.

Optical vignetting

Opti­cal vignetting on neu­tral sub­ject. Shot at left is at F-5.6 focused on infin­ity using the 300mm end of my 28–300 zoom. Shot at right is at F-11 focused on infin­ity using the 300mm end of my 28–300 zoom‚and the vignetting is almost gone. Both images shot with­out fil­ters of any kind. This type of vignetting can occur in some cases on almost any DSLR lens regard­less of price.‚Listening‚to the pod­cast explains why this happens.

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Cam­bridge in Colour arti­cle on lenses
Wider Cokin Z fil­ter hold­ers at B&H
Step up rings at B&H
Adapter rings at B&H
Emo­tion is the reg­u­lar assign­ment this month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum
Back­light­ing is the level 2 assign­ment this month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Please join the Photography.ca fan page on Facebook

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

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 Jack Label and Sevenwords‚who posted a blog com­ment 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.

Happy New Year every­one and only the best for 2011 — thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

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

91 — 3 ways to reduce noise in photography

December 24, 2010 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #91 dis­cusses 3 common‚reasons‚we get noise in our pho­tographs and we offer tips on how to beat that noise. For the pur­poses of this pod­cast, noise is the appear­ance of coloured‚specks, ‚monochromatic‚specks or bands/lines that appear in your pho­tographs (often in uni­form areas like the sky or in the shad­owy parts of the image) that should not be there.

Scene from Oka Parc Quebec Canada

Scene from Oka Park Que­bec Canada

This image from OKA Park looks pleas­ing enough and look­ing at it here you might not know that the image was under­ex­posed. I boosted the lev­els in Pho­to­shop so at first glance it looks pretty good.

HOWEVER, this 100% crop from the same image reveals the noise (colours in the snow) due to underexposure.

Snow detail crop at 100% shows colour noise

Snow detail crop at 100% shows colour noise

TIP — Don’t auto­mat­i­cally under­ex­pose. Under­ex­pose the scene only when necessary.

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Cam­bridge in Colour arti­cle on noise
Noise Ninja
Dfine
Topaz Denoise

Shiny‚is the reg­u­lar assign­ment this month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum
Ton sur Ton is the level 2 assign­ment this month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Please join the Photography.ca fan page on Facebook

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

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 rabs, Lee Sacrey, Las Vegas Wed­dings, Charles binns land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy, and Michael Van der Tol who posted a blog com­ment 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.

Happy Hol­i­days every­one and only the best for 2011 — thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

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

90 — Tilt shift lenses for landscape photography — Interview w/ Darwin Wiggett

November 24, 2010 By 16 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #90 fea­tures an inter­view with Cana­dian land­scape pho­tog­ra­pher Dar­win Wiggett. It was recorded on a photo tour in the Alberta Rock­ies led by Dar­win. In the inter­view Dar­win dis­cusses why he often uses a tilt shift lens in land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy. For those that have never heard of a tilt shift lens, it’s a lens that has the abil­ity to tilt and/or shift while attached to your cam­era. The tilt­ing aspect of the lens allows you to get amaz­ing depth of field (REGARDLESS‚ of aper­ture) because the lens can tilt in the same direc­tion as the plane of focus. The shift aspect of the lens allows you to cor­rect non par­al­lel lines in cam­era when pho­tograph­ing a build­ing for exam­ple. It also allows for easy panora­mas. Dar­win is a fab­u­lous teacher so take a lis­ten and it will all make even more sense. We also talk a bit about test­ing your lenses, res­o­lu­tion, aper­ture, depth of field and image circles.

An exam­ple of a tilt shift lens

Note how the image on the right has SUPERB depth of field because the tilt shift lens was TILTED into the plane of focus. Image at left uses a regular wide angle lens.

Note how the image on the right has SUPERB depth of field because the tilt shift lens was TILTED into the plane of focus. Image at left uses a reg­u­lar wide angle lens. ‚©D. Wiggett

Note how the lighthouse is straight in the shot at right due to the shift correction on a tilt shift lens

Note how the light­house is straight in the shot at right due to the SHIFT cor­rec­tion on a tilt shift lens. Image at left uses a reg­u­lar wide angle lens. ‚© D. Wiggett

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Work­shops and photo tours with Dar­win Wiggett
Jay Maisel Doc­u­men­tary for inspi­ra­tion
Show us where you live is the reg­u­lar assign­ment this month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum
Time (No clocks) is the level 2 assign­ment this month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum
Nikon’s 24mm tilt shift lens at B&H
Canon’s 24mm tilt shift lens at B&H

Please join the Photography.ca fan page on Facebook

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

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 Ice­Cream­Man and Benny who posted a blog com­ment 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.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

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