71 — Portable flash

August 31, 2009 By 10 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #71 dis­cusses the prin­ci­ples of using a portable, exter­nal flash. We talk about how flash works, the dif­fer­ent types of portable flash, on cam­era and off cam­era flash, using a portable flash as a main light source ver­sus a fill light, bounc­ing the flash, sync speeds and more.

Depth of field guide

Depth of field guide

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Pod­cast #33 — Stu­dio light­ing for begin­ners
Pod­cast #47 — Flash sync speeds
Pock­etWiz­ard from B&H
Peanut slaves from B&H

August’s‚ “Water”‚ assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum

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.

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

Photography subjects that are off limits

August 28, 2009 By 2 Comments

What is con­sid­ered ‘off lim­its’ in pho­tog­ra­phy? Well, the answer of course can cer­tainly vary from one pho­tog­ra­pher to the next.

These days, pho­tograph­ing chil­dren raises a red flag for many peo­ple and some pho­tog­ra­phers steer clear away from them. There may be a sense of ‘intru­sion’ into the lives of these chil­dren, and pho­tograph­ing them may just not feel right. There is also the per­ceived risk that some­one may call the author­i­ties sug­gest­ing that the pho­tographs are being taken for sex­u­ally moti­vated rea­sons. Other pho­tog­ra­phers that pho­to­graph chil­dren do so in order to show the true beauty and inno­cence of who chil­dren are. They don’t care about per­ceived risks as they know that the pho­tographs they take are art­ful and eth­i­cal. Com­pletely dif­fer­ent sides of the story, right?

Another inter­est­ing choice of sub­ject to some pho­tog­ra­phers are street scenes — cap­tur­ing the beauty of sur­round­ings with peo­ple pass­ing by. No wrong doing right? Well again, to some pho­tog­ra­phers, there is a sense of dis­com­fort in shoot­ing com­plete strangers with­out get­ting their per­mis­sion first. Other pho­tog­ra­phers that know their rights (it’s legal to pho­to­graph any­one in a pub­lic place) have no issue with the ‘shoot first and ask ques­tions later’ policy.

There are many inter­est­ing sub­jects to shoot, and which is right depends on the photographer’s pref­er­ence, taste, and com­fort zone. What sub­ject mat­ter are YOU uncom­fort­able shoot­ing and why?

For more on this sub­ject, check out the Pho­tog­ra­phy sub­jects — off lim­its thread in our pho­tog­ra­phy forum.

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

Done to Death

August 25, 2009 By 3 Comments

There are so many sub­jects out there to pho­to­graph, yet accord­ing to some, there are also sub­jects that have been ‘done to death’. Sub­jects such as a sun­sets, or ‘drop of water’ close-ups come to mind. What about flow­ers — why are they so pop­u­lar to shoot? Per­haps because flow­ers are acces­si­ble, beau­ti­ful, and they just stand there and smile. Yet flow­ers ( as well as other com­mon ‘over­done’ sub­jects) are quite good learn­ing tools for sev­eral aspects of pho­tog­ra­phy includ­ing DOF, focus, com­po­si­tion, color, and exposure.

There’s also some­thing to be said for the “who gives a crap atti­tude”. Just because these types of shots are com­monly shot, does that mean you should not shoot them? I mean are you NOT going to shoot the Eif­fel tower or the Taj Mahal or a sea of red tulips just because they are com­monly shot? You’re going to shoot them because these are YOUR shots.

If you absolutely adore these types of shots, but feel as if they are all too com­monly done, chal­lenge your­self. Be as cre­ative as you can with the shot and it will be sure to stand out among the rest.

For more on this sub­ject, visit our photo forum: http://www.photography.ca/Forums/showthread.php?t=4202

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

To crop or not to crop this photograph

August 21, 2009 By 4 Comments

Aside from tak­ing a ‘win­ning shot’ myself, I love to help peo­ple get the most from their images and I try to pro­vide daily advice to those peo­ple that post on our forum. Some­times peo­ple take my advice and some­times they don’t and that’s totally cool. The pho­tog­ra­pher of course decides the ulti­mate fate of his/her photograph.

Here is an exam­ple image that I wanted to share taken by JJelling a mem­ber of our pho­tog­ra­phy forum.

When I first looked at this image, I imme­di­ately liked it. I like the envi­ron­ment and the expo­sure is very well han­dled here. The thing I like about the shot the most though is the expres­sion of the girl on the right. It sug­gests day­dream­ing, veg­ging out or‚pensive thought dur­ing the daily com­mute.‚ What I like least about this shot is the woman on the left. She’s just not doing any­thing that con­tributes to the photo, she is shot from behind and takes up a promi­nent posi­tion in the pho­to­graph. I wish she was not there.

My sug­ges­tion to JJelling was to sim­ply crop her out and MAKE the shot about the girl on the right. Here’s my crop of his pho­to­graph which he gra­ciously allowed me to do.

For me, this image tells a stronger and tighter story, it’s clearer. But what about those beau­ti­ful win­dows on the left that get cropped out along with the girl?‚ Although I liked those win­dows and the light­ing, for me they needed to be sac­ri­ficed to get the strongest image pos­si­ble, albeit a dif­fer­ent image. Crop­ping out extra­ne­ous parts of images is a great way to guide the eye of the viewer and make the image stronger. Some­times the result­ing crop is obvi­ously bet­ter. Other times (like in this shot per­haps) we may be less sure.

What do other peo­ple think?‚ Which shot do YOU pre­fer? here’s the orig­i­nal link to the thread.

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

Thanks Mad Aussie

August 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment

A short while ago a mem­ber of our pho­tog­ra­phy forum, Mad Aussie, toured west­ern Aus­tralia. Dur­ing one of his shoot­ing days, he etched out our web­site address on a beach. I thought that was really cool and just wanted to say thanks!

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries

Thinking Sharp

August 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Have you ever found your­self with a hand­ful of images that just don’t give that ‘crys­tal clear’ or sharp look you wanted out of your images? Well, you are not alone. Many pho­tog­ra­phers run into the same prob­lem. So why the prob­lem and how to fix it?

Along with a high shut­ter speed for mov­ing objects, and good depth of field, the qual­ity of your lens has a lot to do with image sharp­ness. Shutter-speed may affect the sharp­ness of your image if you get to a point where you’re too slow to hand-hold. In gen­eral though, most dig­i­tal images need a tweak in sharp­en­ing. A dig­i­tal photo that was shot with a good depth of field and a high shut­ter speed will nor­mally be blur­rier‚ than the same image shot from a film cam­era. To go about sharp­en­ing, pho­to­shop (or Gimp) have tools (like unsharp mask and smart sharpen) to help you make your images nice and crisp
For more infor­ma­tion on keep­ing your images crispy.. err.. crisp, read more check out this link on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum and this link to a pod­cast on get­ting sharper images.

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

Lens Hoods are necessary

August 10, 2009 By 2 Comments

Out of all the acces­sories to buy for your cam­era, is it truly nec­es­sary to invest in a lens hood? The answer is YES. A lens hood will help pro­tect the front of the lens from bumps and acci­dents, but it is also great for pre­vent­ing lens flare. Lens flare hap­pens when light does not flow through the lens to the sen­sor or film but instead, bounces around the lens ele­ments. This cre­ates unusual and unwanted (nor­mally) arti­facts in the image. Com­mon shapes include poly­gons and lin­ear streaks. How­ever flare can also wash out an image in addi­tion to the weird shapes it cre­ates. The shapes of these arti­facts are depen­dent on the lens ele­ments, the aper­ture blades and the angle of the light.‚ A com­mon sit­u­a­tion where this hap­pens is when you are shoot­ing into a light source like the sun or the light source enters the lens from an angle. Although the sun is the most com­mon thing to cause flare, any light source can cause it if it hits the front of the lens at the right angle.

The sim­ple solu­tion to this is buy a lens hood. They are inex­pen­sive and they help pre­vent stray light from enter­ing your lens. Many pros keep them on their lenses 100% of the time, even at night, since city lights and car lights can cause flare.

You could use your hand to block the light of course… it is cer­tainly a cheaper alter­na­tive! But for the long run, the lens hood will be quite ben­e­fi­cial in both pro­tect­ing your lens (from the wild party hap­pen­ing next to you) and in pro­duc­ing shots with­out the ‘unwanted’ flare.

Check out this link in our pho­tog­ra­phy forum for more infor­ma­tion or to com­ment on this topic.

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

70 — Getting sharper images — common problems

August 5, 2009 By 6 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #70 dis­cusses why some­times our pho­tographs do not appear sharp enough.‚ We touch on sev­eral impor­tant fac­tors that all com­pro­mise image sharp­ness. For new­bies in par­tic­u­lar, we also men­tion the depth of field guide which clearly tells the pho­tog­ra­pher the zone of sharp focus (in feet and inches or cen­time­ters and meters depend­ing on the guide) to expect with a given aper­ture and lens.

Depth of field guide

Depth of field guide

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Portable depth of field guide from B&H
Free depth of field table for most dig­i­tal cameras

August’s‚ “Water”‚ assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum

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.

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

Painting with light

July 30, 2009 By 1 Comment

LIGHT PAINTING
Light paint­ing has actu­ally noth­ing to do with ‘paint­ing’ per say, but rather is an artis­tic form of pho­tog­ra­phy. To go about it, choose a sub­ject to shoot, turn off the lights, and while hold­ing your light source, move it around. Play­ing around with‚your shut­ter speed will affect the out­come of the shot; a good shut­ter speed for this type of artis­tic imagery is 20–30 seconds.

Image by Marko Kulik

Image by Marko Kulik

This is a fun way to exper­i­ment with your cam­era and light­ing, and can pro­duce some fab­u­lous results. Best thing? You don’t need to have much‚patience for it! 20–30 min­utes is all you need and you’ll get a nice hand­ful of shots.‚Nice idea when doing this type of exer­cise is to wear black cloth­ing… oth­er­wise you may become the focal point of your shoot!

For some tips and exam­ples check the link in our pho­tog­ra­phy forum
You can also take a lis­ten to our paint­ing with light podcast

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries, Photography product reviews Tagged With: ,

69 — Street photography tips

July 11, 2009 By 12 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #69 dis­cusses street pho­tog­ra­phy; what gear to use, what to shoot, how to shoot, should I ask the subject’s per­mis­sion before I shoot etc. This topic was sug­gested by TJD of our pho­tog­ra­phy forum, so many thanks TJD! One thing I for­got to men­tion dur­ing the pod­cast con­cerns model releases. If you never plan to sell the image, in Canada and the U.S. at least, you prob­a­bly (I’m not a lawyer so this advice is worth what you paid for it as opposed to 2oo bucks an hour) don’t need one. If you plan to sell the images you shoot, then it makes good sense to bring a release form with you.

Street photography by Henri Cartier Bresson

Rue Mouf­fe­tard, Paris and Behind the Gare St. Lazare, Paris by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Robert Dois­neau

July’s Heat” assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum

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.

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