I hit one of those “moments” that photographers look for. Henri Cartier-Bresson is… OK, I am not going to try to get him summed up here. Instead look here, and here. Look cause otherwise the whole “moment” thing is going to be lost on you. And frankly I think this shot stands on it’s own. This is a moment, and an expression that I have been trying to capture for several years. Totally candid, and yes. Her shoe was wet.
Nikon F5, BW400CN, 50mm
I’m not got to try to even cover what David has managed to do here. Just hit the link, and read his post. Vision, vision, vision, vision. It’s not about what others think it’s about what it does to and does for you.
Missed it…
I missed capturing a great photo a few days ago. Actually it’s pretty typical for me. Really. It seems like I always spot great moments when my camera is either still in it’s bag, at home, or I am zipping along some local road at about 60. Maybe it’s because I’m a guy and am more visually wired. Or because I’m a photographer. Or because I love watching people interact. It kills me too, because I am always looking for the decisive moment… This time, because light was perfect!
Really most of the time when I miss a photo, it’s landscape. I have loads of respect for people like John Cornforth, Lee Mann, Art Wolf, Galen Rowell, Paul Saunders and Ansel Adams. They truly are a different breed. I often see my “missed shots” as I am zipping off to somewhere else at some early hour. These guys would have been up at least two hour before, on site, set up with their tripods and filters all ready to go. And if they know that there is the chance for a moment where the light makes it just perfect, they will come back day after day for weeks until they are there for “the moment”. And they will plan! Plan like you had no idea people would plan for a 1/20th of a second at f11. One of the best examples of this is the famous shot by Galen Rowell of Horsetail Falls at Yosemite lit by the setting sun (Click on this link, then click on page 2 then on “Last Light on Horsetail Fall”). It looks like they are on fire! (For the lazy: My understanding is this only happens for a few days in February, when the water is flowing (normally it’s frozen solid), during like a 20min window of time, very late in the day.) It’s not that I don’t plan ahead, it’s just these folks really plan. Landscape photographers truly are just a different breed.
This time, light light was perfect. The scene- Twisty two lane road, early morning (very soft light), light mist or fog. Lots of old maples covered in moss. No leaves out yet so they look like contorted wire sculptures. As I came around a corner there was one large tree in particular, the patriarch of the forest, just off the road and the sun had just burned through the cloud cover in the valley to back light it very gently. The sunlight that was getting past the tree was lighting the fog with shafts of light, and there was enough light bouncing around that I knew that it would all have been capture-able on a single frame (usually strong back light ends up blowing out to white, or being a silhouette).
I kept driving. I have tried in the past when I see this kind of thing, to pull over, grab my camera and “catch” it. It’s almost impossible. I got lucky a year or so ago (see post here) but that was because of
flooding, bad traffic and the fact that I knew it would be the same all week. Usually when I try to stop for a quick grab, it’s a dud. And somehow it’s easier or better for me to have it perfect in my memory, than frustratingly not quite right on the computer….
Wow this was fun!
My gallery web site is hosted by Smug Mug, and in a brilliant move a few months ago they started setting up SMUG’s all over the US. Smug Mug User Groups have become an awesome way for photographers in a given area to connect, learn and network. They meet monthly, (I think) and typically have some kind of guest speaker. Covering everything from post processing, to composition to the business of the photography businesses, there is something for everyone. I am not sure how they get some of the guests they do, but locally they have had Jamie from Cowbelly Pet Photography and Jon Cornforth from Cornforth Images. Next up will be John Keatley and after that we’ll have to see… Some cities have massive groups, and the first meet up last month with Jamie had about 30 folks (so I was told). I was not able to go, as the “domestic emergency monster” grabbed me and pulled me back to the ranch to deal with a house full of, well, snot. Like you wanted to know.
Last night we had the pleasure of some seeing some wonderful images from local nature photographer Jon Cornforth. It was very refreshing to see so many wonderful images that were not of the typical “bla bla landscape” at this well known over shot location, and that well known over shot location. He has made this his career and never shot in Yosemite. Wah??!! I thought, Ansel Adams be still! Instead he has shot in S. America, and lots up in Alaska. Really incredible stuff. I think he tag line is something like, Going where others don’t to capture images that others can’t. With a background in hiking, climbing and other outdoor sports, his images look like what you would expect to see as a cover on Backpacker mag (oh yea, that’s cause he’s had several, covers that is).
After the slide show he gave us a heuge Q&A session. Wonderful transparent time for folks to ask him about his Medium format film days, gallery shows, and the day to day minutia of the fine art and nature photography business. How he views investments like his boat, and how he manages to balance his growing family.
All in all it was a wonderful night, and the only downside was needing to get up for work this morning and having to skip on the beers after event. On the upside I was able to connect with on of my Mother-in-law’s cousins (love Face Book!) who is a Nikon shooter and he and I had a wonderful drive in and out of the city. We were even able to grab a quick bite before the meet up…
Here’s Jon!-
It’s one dark room. Really. Dark.
Not that Ford makes bad cars. But (until recently) Chevy kept them honest. And vice-versa. I posted a while ago that I passed on the D90 for a D300, the thing that held me back was the video. I’m glad I waited. Nikon announced a competition a while ago, any brand of HD-DSLR or video camera, shot film of your life. Winner? $100K. All yours. Have fun!
Today on Vincent Laforet’s blog, he announced the Cannon answer to Nikon. I haven’t read all the deets yet, but I think this hits at something bigger. The merging of video and still photography. From what I hear, at the moment, if you don’t fully understand exposure, DOF and such, the video capability of the current DSLR’s leave something to be desired in the way of “average Joe” usability. It ain’t a handy-cam. But for the artsy fartsy type, it rocks and will get better. I look forward to where this will go. I can only imagine in a few years when my D300 croaks, I’ll be getting into a DSLR that captures video.
Vincent is an incredible artist… Here’s his vid for Cannon.
The Story Beyond The Still: The Cabbie from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.
Long term? The video a DSLR can shoot will only get better. Safe bet? You bet! And it’s always fun to watch two corporate giants try to out do each other!
Or that’s what I said the first time I noticed a dust spot on my sensor. I am the first to admit I am not a pixel peeper (someone who looks the the pixel level detail in a digital photo), although I can get caught up in it. I tend to worry more about exposure then anything else, it’s the hardest to fix in post production. Color balance is not something that typically occurs to me as I am shooting because it’s so easy to fix in post (unless you are blending flash or different light sources then it gets wonky) and because I grew up shooting Tri-X. Black and white film doesn’t really care what temperature the light is…
I first spotted the dust spot when I was reviewing the photos on my computer. It looked like a spot on my computer screen, but cleaning that didn’t help (ha ha got ya!). I though it might be a spot on the wall, but when I compared two or three frames of the same wall, the spot moved. That can’t be good. What brings this all up? An v-mail from a friend over the holiday. Here’s my response…. For what it’s worth.
” I just got your voice mail this morning. I am guessing you thought of me because I have shot for so long with an older DSLR. As far as my sensors go, I have never done anything but clean them off with a blower (not a blower brush). One of the air only ones (without the brush) and big so it pushes a lot of air. I have heard to not use the canned air, as it’s to strong, and can have chemicals that can damage things…
Scott Borne uses the lens pens, after cleaning off the graphite, to clean his sensors, but says himself that he’s a bit of a rogue to use it. I had my D50 cleaned at Camera Techs about a year and a half ago,and they did a fairly good job. I have one smudge on my sensor that they were able to minimize but not completely remove, but it was only like $25 and they did it while I waited. If it’s your backup body, you could try it yourself, or you could convert it to an Infrared camera! That’d be wicked cool! LifePixel.com has kits and I think you can send it to them to have it done…”
Let me know if you have had any experience with that last one. I used to think it was kind of gimmicky, but really like what it does to sky’s and skin tones.
I had to leave before it was done. Ooh that makes me nervous. I got a call from the Boss though and all is good. The files have transferred and outside the last few family snaps between now and the end of 09′ the archive drive is all ready to be sent to the Island for cold storage. It seems like the end of the year is a good time to review/upgrade or (like me) follow through on the backup strategy that makes the most sense for you. (and it needs to make sense to you, or you likely won’t do it)
All you have to do is type Digital Photo Backup into Google and you get some 168 MILLION results. Everybody has a way to backup your photos, or ideas of how to. There are lots of ways to backup your photos. And it’s important. To back up. Your photos. Sorry. I have a friend who had her hard drive die on her Mac this summer. Thankfully, she had a backup and only lost the work (not the images/files) that she had done since her last shoot. A real heart-breaker but thankfully fully recoverable (just lots of time re-doing some photoshop magic). It was her little incident that got me thinking…
Most people (until last night I would fall into this category too) save their photos on their computer’s hard drive. They might load some up to a local printer (Costco), or to Flickr, but in a nutshell that’s it. Until my hard drive filled up that’s what I did too. When it was full I got an external 500 gig hard drive and kept on going…. Any final image for clients were loaded onto my web site, and I can download them (slowly one at a time…) if I had some kind of local file loss, but would only have the JPG’s not the RAW files that are so precious…
How did I rectify my little potential train wreck? First I got all the stuff organized on the external drive (there was just enough room). Then I bought a new internal 1.5TG drive, and installed it. Then I copied all the files from the external drive to the new internal drive. So now I have two copies of everything. One copy on my internal drive, the other copy on the external drive. There is just enough room on the external drive to fit the rest of ’09 on the current external drive. On New Years eve, it will get on the bus to the island. Where it will live in safe obscurity with everything I’ve shot up till the end of the decade. And this leaves me with the working copies on my local hard drive, so I don’t have to get my hands on the external drive unless I have some kind of equipment failure (insert screaming, sobbing, and hair pulling). So if I want to work on another family photo book, I can do so with no worries.
As I move forward I will continue to add new files to my new internal drive, at the end of each month (or contract job) I will copy them to the new external hard drive (didn’t tell you about that one did I?) that will live on the Island, unless I am actively backing up… This might be a little simpler if I had DSL or what not, as I could utilize an on-line service for my archiving, but frankly I like the ability to control my costs, and am not a fan of monthly charges…
Besides my time what did this all cost me? About $300. Could I have spent more? Oh yes, and how. But. I didn’t need to, and if I didn’t see a big ol wave of RAW files headed my way I would not have gone with the larger internal or external drives. That might have saved me $80. My peace of mind now? Priceless.
Well Merry Christmas to you and yours! I’m having a wonderful day with my family and in the spirit of the season felt like sharing some of my favorite sites with you. Some of these I hit for inspiration, for direction or because they are fun. Motor on through, add a few as favorites and then get back to celebrating this special season with those closest to you.
In no particular order….
http://www.pixelatedimage.com/blog/
David is awesome. His is the kind of gig I would like if it didn’t take him away from home so much. I’ve met him and he is the real deal.
http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/
Do you want to learn about flash photography? Go here. And no where else. It’s all here. It is all about the light.
http://www.chromasia.com/iblog/
Another David (mr. strobist is also a David). His photography is wonderful, with some really nice B&W. He also sells some tutorials…
http://www.jasminestarblog.com/
Wedding photographer in the OC. I like her style, and approachability. She’s also a relative newbie, only in the biz for about 4 years…. Her FAQ’s are very nice.
http://www.digitalprotalk.blogspot.com/
Another David, and a wedding photographer who is world known. He’s on here because of all the time he spends letting the world see how he does business. I real boon for folks who want to get into the industry. His tutorials are free and he has his arms around light they way only a film shooter can.
http://worldfoto.blogspot.com/
Local guy. This would be one of those, start at the beginning of his trip and read through the story with him. His writing is very funny and his photos are great.
http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/
Same link as I posted the other day. His guest blogs are wonderful ways to see some other photographers and he has links to lots of resources…
This makes me wish I had an iPhone. Best rated, most highly acclaimed iPhone photo app by every pro photographer.
http://www.nikonians.org/index.php
If you shoot Cannon I am sorry. Not that I have anything against Cannon. I just happen to have a Nikon and boy are there LOTS of web resources for Nikon shooters. And lighting, and on and on …..
Tips, and links, also a podcast that’s entertaining.
Wana know all the nasty little details on a particular camera? This is THE site. It has a really nice side by side comparison tool, as well as some pixel peeping reviews that almost require a degree in engineering to understand. It’s also one of the first sites to break industry news, and get pre-production equipment.
http://digital-photography-school.com/
Haven’t poked around here much, but what I’ve seen is great! They tap the photo-genius brain trust collective for lots of tutorials and such.
The last. First a word of caution, this is a really artsy site. Some of the models are ‘gasp’ nude. It’s art, totaly not my thing, but it’s art (hello Michelangelo “David”???) you can set the default to block nude content, oh thank you so much! HOWEVER- this site has some of the very best photographers in the world. Many are not household names, nor will they ever be, because they are artists. I especially love the Architecture, Landscape, Humor and Portrait sections. If I want to see something that’s not well lit, the exposure is not “technical” this is the place to see that done. And done well. The images on the site are judged by members. Only about 40% of the images submitted get posted. There is lots of black and white, with lots of stuff super-unsaturated.
Here’s an easy one. Read. There’s lots out there on the ol’ innernet. However, any monkey with a keyboard can say just about whatever they want and “publish”. Like me. So when I really want solid advice/techniques, I look for the printed word. I finally “followed the crowd” over to Scott Kelby’s blog and it didn’t take me long to look for a used (I’m cheep er frugal) copy of his first book “Digital Photography“, now he has two more, which I have not read but I am sure they are top notch. The book didn’t really affect the way I shoot, but it’s full of little tips and tricks (Oh that’s how they shoot fireworks!!) so It was worth the evening I spent with it. Helpful for many would probably be the section in the back, where he talks about specific settings to achieve specific results. It would be a great place for folks who want to step off the edge into manual or semi manual exposure to start. He has another little thing called Kelby Training, it’s an on line video learning library. He has some folks “teaching” are just incredible, real top notch, you’ve seen their photos, even if you don’t know it, Pros. The content is always growing and although I don’t use photoshop enough to pay for a membership (I have kind of a big anti-photoshoping-something-to-death thing). So I’ve stayed away. They do have some stuff on lighting, I keep thinking I should look in that….
I was listening to my current favorite podcast of all time yesterday. “The Image Doctors” by the Nikonian group. The guys spend more on camera gear in a year that I could imagine. They basically have everything, but it typically doesn’t get me into full blown NAS (Nikon Acquisition Syndrome). Thank goodness. They have great tips and such, as well as guests from time to time. They were interviewing Thom Hogan who travels a lot. The tidbit I got out of this that I think warrants bringing up at this time of year is not getting new gear just before a big trip.
Producing quality images, take familiarity. The camera needs to be as much second nature as a bicycle. Most people opening imaging equipment this holiday season will get that idea on Christmas morning. They will pull the new camera out of it’s box and not expect to be Jay Maisel. As long as they shoot it a bunch before the trip this summer that the will want to make some great images on.
And with that last bit, I plan on “gasp” pre-posting some content for the holidays. Hopefully aimed at folks who are wanting simple pointers, get started stuff that they can apply with their shiny new precious. Most of it will point you elsewhere. Although I’ve been told I should teach, I’m not. At least yet. I do however (sorry honey) spend lots of time scrounging the web for inspiration/technique/skills. And I’m going to open my FireFox favorites and pick some gems.
Stay Tuned!
Well kind of. I was torn a few months ago with the imminent birth of our second kiddo. I desperately wanted to get a newer video camera, but also wanted to upgrade my DSLR. The D90 seemed like a good call, the body was about the price of the HD camcorder… and it shot HD video! Or at least HD resolution. Sort of. I ended up deciding to get the dedicated camcorder (Canon HF10). I love it and it works really well for what I want to use it for. I ended up picking up a D300, not the D90 but that’s a discussion for a different day.
So where am I going with this? There was a post the other day over at ProLost (video site) about shooting video with a DSLR. While some truly great photographers have managed some incredible stuff with some of the video DSLR’s there is a bit of a hole in their armor, and although workable is one of those pixel peeping issues that warrants a link (IMHO). So here’s the link, http://prolost.com/blog/2009/12/3/you-didnt-believe-me.html. Interesting and although I don’t think I’ll ever shoot a zebra standing on it’s head in the savanna, it’s worth understanding how the gear we use affects the final product.
Oh and as a side note, I got the HF 10 just after the HF 20 came out, (which is my norm, to buy just behind the tech curve) so I got a “$1,200″ camcorder for ~$600 as the HF 20 was at the time listed for $1,200. And what do I shoot with my camcorder? All the normal boring dad stuff. And it works great. Even lets me adjust the f stop for shallow depth of field shooting (sort of).
I have a long list of blogs I hit on a semi-daily basis. Here’s a new one I found last week and really like. His photos are super clean, with some really nice lines. Interesting difference between his commercial and personal work. I like the personal stuff better. Oh, and I found him through Scott Kelby’s blog. It’s another good one. So here’s the link. Love the site name http://www.ivegotfriends.com/ So far looks totally G rated too. Nice.
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