Freeman Patterson exhibition — Montreal till Nov.15/09

November 9, 2009 By 1 Comment

If you live in or near Mon­treal and love artis­tic land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy you OWE it to your­self to take a drive to Dol­lard Des Ormeaux to see the Free­man Pat­ter­son pho­tog­ra­phy exhibition.

Sun­rise at Koker­boomk­loof — ‚© 2006 Free­man Patterson

This exhi­bi­tion is AWESOME. Free­man Pat­ter­son has been shoot­ing land­scapes around the world and teach­ing work­shops for many decades. I’ve been a major fan of his for a good twenty years and I con­sider him to be a mod­ern mas­ter land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy artist. Every­thing about this exhi­bi­tion screams qual­ity. The images them­selves are gor­geous and I spent a good sev­enty min­utes look­ing at each and every one. The com­po­si­tion of each pho­to­graph is very well thought out as you would expect. Free­man is a teacher and expert at visual design and you’ll note the atten­tion he has paid to the fore­ground midground and back­ground. There’s excit­ing stuff going on in all 3 of those zones.‚ But every­thing else in the pho­tographs work too; expo­sure, colour and the print­ing. Gor­geous print­ing on heavy water­colour paper that reveals great tonal­ity from pure white to deep black with excel­lent shadow detail in most prints.

Free­man exhibits about 18 large sized pho­tographs that are around 20 X 30 inches. All the prints are for sale in small lim­ited edi­tions. The Gallery is located in the Dol­lard Civic Cen­ter (across the street from Marche de L’Ouest) 12001, boule­vard De Sal­aberry, Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Qc. H9B 2A7 (Gen­eral Tel. # (514) 684‑1011).‚ Look for the LIBRARY, the gallery is in the base­ment of the library build­ing. Tues.-Wed. 12–4 PM, Thurs.-Fri. 2-5PM, Sat.-Sun. 1–4 PM and there are guided tours avail­able. The gallery is closed on Nov. 11th for remem­ber­ance day.

I have seen NO pub­lic­ity for this show…which is a trav­esty as this work is aching to be seen by pho­tog­ra­phy lovers. So take a drive to the West Island and you won’t be disappointed!

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

My new logos — Thanks a ton Sylvain Grand’Maison

November 5, 2009 By 4 Comments

I’ve been want­ing a new logo for my own per­sonal pho­tog­ra­phy for quite some time now. There’s just some­thing about ‘sign­ing your work’ that I feel is impor­tant. For me, a sig­na­ture pro­vides a sense of clo­sure. There are so many ways to tweak/modify/enhance a pho­to­graph that some­times you’re not sure if your ver­sion is the fin­ished ver­sion. A sig­na­ture allows you to say, OK enough now, I’m done with this image, let’s move on.

I’d like to thank Syl­vain Grand’Maison BIG TIME for the great work that he did for me. For those of you that don’t know Syl­vain, he has one of the most pop­u­lar French Pod­casts (even though he’s per­fectly bilin­gual) in Que­bec called le Que­bec en Bal­adod­if­fu­sion. He also helps busi­nesses and indi­vid­u­als get started in the social media space and works as a con­sul­tant in this regard. So why did I ask him to cre­ate my logos?  That’s because his back­ground is in graphic design and he still takes on the occa­sional graphic design gig.

So now I need YOUR help. I really dig both of these logos and I think I know which one I like best but I’d like some opin­ions. Which one of these above logos do you like bet­ter, the left one or the right one?

In choos­ing these logos Syl­vain pre­sented me with a bunch of dif­fer­ent choices on totally dif­fer­ent themes. Here is another design Syl­vain cre­ated. I love this one as well — it has a seri­ous Russ­ian feel. I’m not sure what I’ll use this red design for, but I do know what my next Face­book avatar will look like.

Filed Under: Opinion-personal-rant, Photography blog entries Tagged With: , ,

My new logos — Thanks a ton Sylvain Grand’Maison

November 5, 2009 By 4 Comments

I’ve been want­ing a new logo for my own per­sonal pho­tog­ra­phy for quite some time now. There’s just some­thing about ‘sign­ing your work’ that I feel is impor­tant. For me, a sig­na­ture pro­vides a sense of clo­sure. There are so many ways to tweak/modify/enhance a pho­to­graph that some­times you’re not sure if your ver­sion is the fin­ished ver­sion. A sig­na­ture allows you to say, OK enough now, I’m done with this image, let’s move on.

I’d like to thank Syl­vain Grand’Maison BIG TIME for the great work that he did for me. For those of you that don’t know Syl­vain, he has one of the most pop­u­lar French Pod­casts (even though he’s per­fectly bilin­gual) in Que­bec called le Que­bec en Bal­adod­if­fu­sion. He also helps busi­nesses and indi­vid­u­als get started in the social media space and works as a con­sul­tant in this regard. So why did I ask him to cre­ate my logos?‚ That’s because his back­ground is in graphic design and he still takes on the occa­sional graphic design gig.

So now I need YOUR help. I really dig both of these logos and I think I know which one I like best but I’d like some opin­ions. Which one of these above logos do you like bet­ter, the left one or the right one?

In choos­ing these logos Syl­vain pre­sented me with a bunch of dif­fer­ent choices on totally dif­fer­ent themes. Here is another design Syl­vain cre­ated. I love this one as well — it has a seri­ous Russ­ian feel. I’m not sure what I’ll use this red design for, but I do know what my next Face­book avatar will look like.

Filed Under: Opinion-personal-rant, Photography blog entries Tagged With: , ,

The city and the people working as one — NOT

November 2, 2009 By 3 Comments

Every pho­tog­ra­pher has sub­ject mat­ter that inter­ests them more than other sub­ject mat­ter. For me, what gets me going the most is fine art pho­tog­ra­phy and por­trai­ture. However.….every once in a while I’ll pull out my cam­era to shoot dif­fer­ent sub­ject mat­ter. Gotta pay those bills. This morn­ing how­ever I pulled out my cam­era because I was sim­ply pissed off at my city. Look at what they are doing with our recy­cling. Does THIS look like a recy­cling truck?

I love Mon­treal. I find the city VERY pro­gres­sive, tol­er­ant, fairly clean and great place to live. My wife and I love it here. We are com­mu­nity minded peo­ple who believe in the envi­ron­ment and we ALWAYS recy­cle as much as we can. We wash out con­tain­ers and bot­tles and sep­a­rate papers to make it easy for the recy­cling crew. We used to see our recy­cling going into a recy­cling truck, where it would get sorted on the spot. As far as I know, crunched up mixed recy­cling in a garbage truck is NOT recycling…it’s frig­gin’ garbage on its way to a landfill.

Does any­one know what is going on here? I mean as much as I love to do my part, I hate wast­ing my time, and I hate munic­i­pal bull­crap. If my recy­cling is going into a land­fill, then why am I wast­ing my frig­gin’ time?

Filed Under: Opinion-personal-rant, Photographs Tagged With: , , ,

Is this shot considered cheating?

October 31, 2009 By 4 Comments

You’ve just cap­tured the most beau­ti­ful shot of a rare duck. Every­thing is per­fect — the com­po­si­tion, the color bal­ance, and the sur­round­ings. So do you tell peo­ple that you cap­tured this shot in a bird sanctuary?

Some peo­ple may argue that this shot is not jus­ti­fied because it was cap­tured at a bird sanc­tu­ary — ‘cheat­ing’ if you will. If a pho­tog­ra­pher gets a shot like this from a refuge, it’s far less of an achieve­ment (because it’s eas­ier) than it would be get­ting that shot in the bird’s nat­ural surroundings.

On the flip side, oth­ers stand by the notion that being in a sanctuary/zoo does not guar­an­tee great pic­tures. It just means bet­ter access and more oppor­tu­nity to cap­ture the beauty you are search­ing for.‚ You cer­tainly still need to have skills and a good eye.

So who wins this argu­ment? You tell me! See what oth­ers are say­ing in our pho­tog­ra­phy forum.

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3 days left — Mois de la Photo — Montreal

October 8, 2009 By 2 Comments

There are only 3 days left to visit Le Mois de la Photo (Trans­la­tion: photo month) in Mon­treal. Le Mois de la Photo is a pho­tog­ra­phy event that takes place in Mon­treal every sec­ond year. I’ve been going to this event reg­u­larly in Mon­treal for about a decade. There is always a HUGE vari­ety of pho­to­graphic styles (from pho­tog­ra­phers from around the world) in this event and most exhi­bi­tions (espe­cially this year) are what I would call ‘alternative’.

From Hand to Mouth, 1993. Instal­la­tion view, The Amer­i­can Cen­ter, Paris, 1995. Photo: Jeff Guess. Cour­tesy of the artist

The above pho­to­graph (and this is one of the many exhi­bi­tions that I per­son­ally vis­ited) is a great exam­ple of ‘alter­na­tive pho­tog­ra­phy’ and‚ think­ing out­side of the box. The goal of this exhibit is not sim­ple, it requires thought; active thought. Peo­ple will expe­ri­ence this exhibit in a per­sonal way. Some will like it, some will hate it, and oth­ers will scratch their heads and go “Hmmmm”. Per­son­ally, I dug it big-time. I like things that are dif­fer­ent. I like to think and feel. I’m not into McDonald’s and their freak­ishly annoy­ing main­stream clown.

Here’s the ‘offi­cial web­site’ write-up on Guess’s exhibition:

With From Hand to Mouth (1993), a 22-metre long pho­to­graphic series, Jeff Guess treats view­ers to an orig­i­nal visual expe­ri­ence. The piece takes the form of a cir­cu­lar panorama hung from the ceil­ing of a dark­ened room. The artist assigns a par­tic­u­lar place to view­ers, who are invited to step into the cen­tre of the instal­la­tion. With­out a priv­i­leged view­point that would make it pos­si­ble to take in all the images at once, the work invites view­ers to move about, to cir­cu­late. From Hand to Mouth is shown with a sin­gle, iso­lated pho­to­graph, Fonce Alphonse (1993).

This exhi­bi­tion is just one of many that make up this year’s Mois de la photo. So get your shoes on and get out there this week­end to see the work before the exhi­bi­tion is over. Bring an open mind, your brain but leave your cash at home. The exhi­bi­tions and men­tal stim­u­la­tion are free.

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

Shedding Some Light into Dark Rooms

October 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment

We’re in the dig­i­tal age, so why mess with‚a good thing by set­ting up an ancient dark­room? Well, set­ting up a dark room offers so much ‘hands on’ knowl­edge; it’s far more prac­ti­cal for learn­ing pho­to­graphic print­ing than you may think. The prin­ci­pals and tools of Pho­to­shop were par­tially based on how pho­tog­ra­phers worked in the dark­room. Curves, lev­els, crop­ping, sharp­en­ing, mul­ti­ple expo­sure print­ing, dodg­ing and burn­ing are just some of the things pho­tog­ra­phers have been doing in dark­rooms for generations.

Here’s 4 rea­sons why dark­room print­ing rocks;

1 — There’s that spe­cial ‘some­thing’ that comes from doing the major­ity of the work with your own hands. It is far more sat­is­fy­ing to pro­duce a print in the dark­room than by press­ing the print but­ton on your printer. Ask any good dark­room printer that has done both, they’ll tell ya. It’s true that dark­room print­ing takes longer and its pre­ci­sion is less accu­rate than dig­i­tal; and yet it’s still more sat­is­fy­ing.
2 — Since every­body is going dig­i­tal your work will stand out if you stay tra­di­tional.
3-‚ YOUR work will never be doomed to spend­ing its life on a hard drive or on a few web­sites, you’ll always have beau­ti­ful prints to hold and show off.
4 — I have a sneak­ing sus­pi­cion that dark­room prints printed today will be more valu­able than the same image printed dig­i­tally. Why? Because every dark­room print is some­what unique and tra­di­tion­ally, unique items have more value than mass pro­duced ones.

If you decide to set up a dark­room here’s a few things to be aware of. Before you start your dark­room make a floor plan of the room so you can more or less know how to lay­out the wet side and the dry side.‚ Will you be pro­cess­ing b&w and/or color? Colour print­ing is more com­plex (and requires a dif­fer­ent enlarger) than b/w print­ing so it’s prob­a­bly best to start with black and white. A good exhaust sys­tem is highly rec­om­mended as the chem­i­cals you’ll use (unless you buy a pro­cess­ing machine) are toxic.

What’s great to know is that because every­body and their uncle has gone dig­i­tal, there are amaz­ing deals on used dark­room equip­ment. Ebay is your friend!So get your feet wet! Enjoy a get­away from the dig­i­tal everyday…More on dark­rooms here in our pho­tog­ra­phy forum

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

72 — Exposure compensation

September 22, 2009 By 6 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #72 dis­cusses how to use expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion. It’s a fairly sim­ple con­cept that just means devi­at­ing away from (or com­pen­sat­ing against)‚ the cam­era meter’s rec­om­mended expo­sure to make the image brighter or darker. We also talk about which cam­era modes you’ll want to use expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion with, and I dis­cuss why pro­gram mode sucks and should be avoided. Even though expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion in pho­tog­ra­phy is an easy con­cept, I dis­cuss the rea­son­ing behind it, why I fre­quently use it and why you should too.

exposure compensation
The expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion dial on the Canon G10

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Orig­i­nal sug­ges­tion thread from our forum — Thanks Iggy!
September’s “New Beginnings”‚assignment on the Photography.ca forum
Please join the Photography.ca fan page on Face­book
My Face­book pro­file — Feel free to “friend” me
My Twit­ter page — I will fol­low you if you fol­low me (Hey that’s a Gabriel lyric) — Let’s con­nect

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :) Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks to Nijip, jack­la­bel, jab­ber and Tom Restis 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.

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: ,

Photographing Tattoos — Tatoo photography

September 17, 2009 By 3 Comments

We eas­ily acquire tips to pho­to­graph flow­ers, peo­ple, and still life. Yet one sub­ject that often doesn’t have clear cut tips and direc­tions is pho­tograph­ing tat­toos. This sub­ject is art in itself, and to effec­tively shoot this piece requires not only patience and an eye for com­po­si­tion, but also tips from peo­ple that have already done it.

Tip one: Do not use a tri­pod unless you have a spe­cific effect (e.g blur) in mind. It is likely going to limit your mov­ing around and will take extra time to set up for each shot.

Tip two: If pos­si­ble, shoot out­side if you’re new to the game, or use great win­dow light, it’s so much eas­ier. Pay atten­tion to clut­ter and dis­trac­tions though. Be aware of what’s in the frame, what’s out of the frame, and make deci­sions on what to include or chop.

Tip Three:‚ Eas­ier light to han­dle might be around sun­set time or on a cloudy day with dif­fused light. A reflec­tor like white card­board can help if needed.

Tip Four: If you already know how to work with flash and/or are com­fort­able with your tech­nique, feel free to shoot in a tat­too shop if you get the per­mis­sion. You’ll likely get cool effects if you try slower shut­ter speeds on their own and/or mixed with flash.

You can find loads of fine tat­too pho­tog­ra­phy in the gallery at vanishingtatoo.com

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

Photography.ca winning member images from May 2009

June 16, 2009 By 2 Comments

For the past few months we have added a new fea­ture on our pho­tog­ra­phy bul­letin board where the Admin on Photography.ca (Me, Marko), chooses 1 photo that he thinks is great and talks about the photo. This month I teetered hard between 2 images and in the end decided that they were both win­ners. Wood Duck by Michaelaw and Navy ‘LST 325′ by z-06-jim were my choices for this month. (check the pre­vi­ous link for the explanation).

We have lots of pho­tographs being sub­mit­ted each month on our forum for cri­tiques, assign­ments or just to show the photo. Choos­ing Michaelaw’s and z-06-jim’s photo as the ‹“win­nersž took many hours of care­ful sift­ing. Given that it took so long to choose, I came across many close con­tenders. Seems like a waste of time just to include 1 photo so Ižd like to include 4 hon­ourable men­tions right here.

If you havenžt joined our forum I would encour­age you to do so. We are an extremely friendly bunch that share and learn daily.

Herežs the win­ning photo by Michaelaw:

Wood Duck by Michaelaw

Herežs the win­ning photo by z-06-jim:

Navy ‘LST 325′ by z-06-jim


Here are the 2 hon­ourable men­tions in no par­tic­u­lar order:

Frog/Toad by Michaelaw

First Action Pics by casil403

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

Filters for lens protection

June 12, 2009 By 2 Comments

There is a great debate among pho­tog­ra­phers as to whether or not lens fil­ters need to be used for lens pro­tec­tion. Pho­tog­ra­phers are divided when it comes to fil­ters and image qual­ity. Many believe that adding a fil­ter to the lens reduces the image qual­ity while other pho­tog­ra­phers feel there are lit­tle to no effects to the photograph.



A fil­ter is not only used to‚protect against every day use. UV fil­ters offer pro­tec­tion against UV rays that may dam­age our lenses, and Sky­light fil­ters reduce the haze and clar­ify the photo. But really, are these truly nec­es­sary? Many pho­tog­ra­phers sug­gest that they have no notice­able effect in most cir­cum­stances. Lenses are made so strong today, that the ques­tion remains…“To use a fil­ter, or not to use a filter?”

Feel free to add your com­ments here or join our pho­tog­ra­phy forum and add to the con­ver­sa­tion. Here’s a link to the topic in the pho­tog­ra­phy forum.

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

Quality of Lenses

June 8, 2009 By 1 Comment

What real advan­tages are there when spend­ing extra money on an expen­sive lens over its cheaper counterpart?


When com­par­ing pro lenses to the ‘cheaper’ lenses, the higher priced lenses deliver bet­ter qual­ity for the most part. Depend­ing on the lens you might also get expe­dited auto-focus, sharper images and less chro­matic aber­ra­tion.‚ Per­haps the biggest advan­tage though is with regard to aper­ture. More expen­sive lenses are often faster. This means that their largest F-stop (small­est num­ber eg. F1.8, F2.0, F2.8 etc) is usu­ally larger than cheaper lenses. Remem­ber, the larger the aper­ture, the more room you have to use a faster shut­ter speed. In addi­tion, the larger the lens’s aper­ture, the eas­ier it is to shoot in lower light because when you look through the viewfinder you are look­ing at a scene through the lens’s largest aper­ture. If a lens has a max aper­ture of F2.8, any scene you look at through your viewfinder will look BRIGHTER than if the lens’s widest aper­ture was F4.0. It makes no dif­fer­ence what F-stop you use dur­ing the actual expo­sure. This doesn’t make a dif­fer­ence in bright sun­light, but in makes a huge dif­fer­ence in low light where it is eas­ier to focus if the viewfinder is brighter. On the neg­a­tive side, higher priced lenses with larger aper­tures will often‚ buy you sig­nif­i­cantly more ‘weight’ as well.

When com­par­ing the results of pro lenses to the ‘mid-range’ priced lenses (pro-consumer level), there doesn’t seem to be a notice­able dif­fer­ence to many advanced pho­tog­ra­phers so long as the images are kept small. This is espe­cially true if the images are for Inter­net use only.

If you’re still skep­ti­cal and want to test the waters your­self, you can always take the same pic­ture using two dif­fer­ent lenses to prove a point. Or, an eas­ier route is to search the web for some­one who’s already taken the time to do it — much easier!

As a final point, when peo­ple (pho­tog­ra­phy newbies/hobbyists) ask me what cam­era to buy, they never ask about lenses which is a mon­ster mis­take. I ALWAYS coun­cil newbies/hobbyists to spend MORE on the lenses than the cam­era, espe­cially the first ‘expen­sive’ cam­era. This is because the cam­era is just a box with a flap to let light in. The LENS does all the focus­ing so a poor lens on an expen­sive cam­era will give you a poor result. A great lens on an aver­age cam­era will give you a great result (in the right hands of course ;) )
When you’re just learn­ing though you can eas­ily learn on a used or lower end DSLR that you’ll surely replace as tech­nol­ogy changes. The lenses though, you can keep those for decades. Trust me, spend the dough on the lenses.

Check out the link in our pho­tog­ra­phy forum for more info.

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