Podcast/posting delay for 1 week

October 26, 2008 By 5 Comments

Dear sub­scribers and fel­low learners/sharers,

Pod­casts and posts are on hold for about 1 week due to a per­sonal fam­ily tragedy (my mum passed).

I have much to post and share includ­ing a fan­tas­tic inter­view with a fine art pho­tog­ra­pher I met at Photo Expo in New York. It’s all on hold for about 1 week though. To those that have emailed me and posted on the forum giv­ing me con­do­lences, I am deeply touched and your wishes mean so much.

Sin­cerely,
Marko

Filed Under: Photography blog entries

56 — How to photograph smoke — Photography podcast

October 18, 2008 By 9 Comments

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

Incense smoke by Marko Kulik

Monk in outdoor smoke - Image by Marko

Monk in out­door smoke — Image by Marko Kulik

Scary theme using Liquid Nitrogen - Image by Marko

Scary theme using Liq­uid Nitro­gen — Image by Marko Kulik

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

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

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

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

Portrait from the Plateau — L’il Pigeon Feeder

October 17, 2008 By 1 Comment

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

Pigeon Kid

Pigeon Kid

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

Portrait from the Plateau — L’il Pigeon Feeder

October 17, 2008 By 1 Comment

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

Pigeon Kid

Pigeon Kid

Get these posts by email:

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

Photographing words

October 11, 2008 By 1 Comment

We have a new addi­tion to the 2 mon­thy assign­ments already going on our forum. Pho­tograph­ing words is an assign­ment where you find let­ters made by ordi­nary objects. Then you shoot them and put the images of the let­ters together to form words. The word this month is Love. Many thanks to kiley9806 and mor­gan for their sug­ges­tions to start‚ this up on our forum. The first Pho­tograph­ing words assign­ment is Love and the thread is here. Here’s my con­tri­bu­tion from that thread. Hope to see more peo­ple sign up and contribute!

Hey I took my wife shopping today - Thats love. So what if I hung around the parking lot?

Hey I took my wife shop­ping today — That’s love. So what if I hung around the park­ing lot?

Filed Under: Photographs Tagged With: ,

55 — Using Photoshop Actions — Photography podcast

October 9, 2008 By 4 Comments

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

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

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

Left shot straight; Right shot uses Anime soft action

Left shot straight; Right shot uses Anime soft action

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

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

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

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

Montreal in the Fall

October 4, 2008 By 2 Comments

A few months back we started an assign­ment forum on photography.ca and this month the 2 themes are fall and Halloween-horror. Each theme lasts for 2 weeks and the Fall theme is first. I took this shot just yes­ter­day on Mount-Royal in Mon­treal. I tried to go for some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. Did I succeed?

Please feel free to join our forum and sub­mit your own assign­ments. It’s fun and a great way to get creative.

Oct. 2008 assignment on the Photography.ca forum

Oct. 2008 assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum

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

Polarizing filters reduce reflections

September 29, 2008 By 3 Comments

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

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

polarizing filters reduce reflections

polar­iz­ing fil­ters reduce reflections

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

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

54 — Making the eyes sing — Photography podcast

September 28, 2008 By 5 Comments

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

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

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

The bulldogs eye sings because the iris is sharp and bright

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

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

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

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

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

Abstract images in photography

September 22, 2008 By 5 Comments

I’m quite a big fan of abstract pho­tographs. I love the way these pho­tos engage the viewer in a game of “What is this? What is going on here? I’d be curi­ous to know if any­one can fig­ure out what’s going on in this image? and…do you like it?

Can you guess what this a photograph of?

Can you guess what this a pho­to­graph of?

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