58 — Lenses — the basics — Photography podcast

December 10, 2008 By 8 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #58 talks about lenses and what lenses new pho­tog­ra­phers should be look­ing to get. We talk about nor­mal lenses, wide angle lenses, tele­photo lenses, and we even touch on ded­i­cated macro lenses. A good lens is MUCH more impor­tant than a good cam­era because it is the lens that focuses the image. Put a cheap lens on a $1000–2000.00 cam­era and you’ve made a BAD over­all invest­ment and your images will suf­fer. Put a good $500‑1500.00 lens on a good cheap cam­era and you have made GOOD invest­ment. Thanks to danalive for sug­gest­ing this podcast.

Assorted lenses for photography

Assorted lenses for photography

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
dpreview.com
Macro on the cheap podcast

Thanks as always to‚ Steven K,‚ Susan, Michael Van der Tol and aophoto who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast. Thanks also to Jes­llo, Gem, fallinto­col­ors, Ryan Mor­gan, spleisher, Marta, johnc24, bleaches,‚ mcnay55,‚ Matt2682, fan­gelico, Moghe­dian, danalive, kear­n­ey­ca­tion, mno­ble, ludovic slight­ly­im­per­fect, len, V-Town, outty, walasy, Ban­dit, and herr_andersson. 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 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, podcasting Tagged With: , ,

LIFE photo archive hosted by Google

November 19, 2008 By 1 Comment

Time and Google have teamed up to make a huge archive of his­tor­i­cal pho­tos avail­able online. Great body of work, worth perus­ing when you need inspi­ra­tion of just want to look at great and time­less pho­tos.
http://images.google.com/hosted/life

Hat tip to Acadieli­bre from our forum for bring­ing this to my attention.

Migrant mother Flo­rence Thomp­son & chil­dren pho­tographed by Dorothea Lange — 1936

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

Picpockets by Jerry Ghionis

November 13, 2008 By 2 Comments

I met Jerry Ghio­nis at the 2008 Pho­to­Plus Expo/conference‚ in New york and he has what I think is a great teach­ing tool. They are sets of cards called Picpock­ets and they are the same size as play­ing cards but they con­tain pho­tos or pho­tos with notes writ­ten on them. They come in a sturdy pack and can be taken on loca­tion and used for inspi­ra­tion. The ‘Ordi­nary to Extra­or­di­nary’ series is nice because it shows you the sim­ple back­grounds plus the fairly sim­ple light­ing and Exif data that were used to cre­ate the many strik­ing pho­tographs that make up the set. Each set of cards cur­rently sells for about 80 dol­lars and con­tains about 50 cards. In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure, Jerry was kind enough to give me sam­ples of his prod­ucts for review.

Ordinary-Extraordinary Vol 2

Ordinary-Extraordinary Vol 2

Ordinary-Extraordinary Vol 2

Ordinary-Extraordinary Vol 2

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

57 — Interview with photographer Phil Borges — Photography podcast

November 9, 2008 By 5 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #57 fea­tures an Inter­view with pho­tog­ra­pher Phil Borges at the 2008 Pho­to­plus con­fer­ence and expo in New York. (That conference/expo was excel­lent and packed full of cool new prod­ucts and world renowned photographers/instructors includ­ing Phil Borges as guest speakers/lecturers — Very much rec­om­mended and I’m going back in 2009).
In the inter­view Phil very briefly dis­cusses his career and some of his bod­ies of work in pho­tog­ra­phy, talks about his artis­tic style and tech­nique, and shares the way he cur­rently prints his work.

Chema, 77 of Bulava, Siberia from the series Spirit of Place - Siberia

Pho­to­graph by Phil Borges — Chema, 77 of Bulava, Siberia. From the series: Spirit of Place — Siberia

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Cur­rent exhibits by Phil Borges
Phil Borges’s fea­ture on photography.ca
HP Z3100 printer
Hah­ne­muhle papers

Thanks as always to Jen, Steven K, Clusty, JD and‚ Susan who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast. Thanks also to dmag­ick, wdaw­son, Lisa Scott, blove­less, dudley206098, Soft­ServeCo., Duane, Saarto1221, Elle, jmay­off, krpho­togs, jason­high­tower,‚ omhub­bard, aophoto, Ama­ranth, bar­bi­epurl, jill­ca­t­rina, johnyy­mathew, jayps, fsendel, Mike Guil­bault, jecky55, and DAVIS125 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 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, podcasting Tagged With: , ,

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: , ,

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: ,

Presenting photography to galleries — Photography podcast #53

September 19, 2008 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #53 talks about how to present your pho­tog­ra­phy port­fo­lio to pho­tog­ra­phy gal­leries. There’s a right way and a wrong way to approach gal­leries with your work and this pod­cast offers up a few tips on what the right way is. One cru­cial tip that I’ll men­tion right here is to make SURE your work fits with what the gallery is show­ing. If it doesn’t, don’t waste your time and choose another gallery.

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Robert Miller gallery (New York) — Thanks Karl
Stephen Bul­ger gallery (Toronto) — Thanks Jes­sica
Bul­ger gallery port­fo­lio sub­mis­sion guidelines

Thanks as always to Benny who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast and to Spriter 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: Photography podcasts Tagged With: , , ,
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