Category Archives: potd
Raquette Lake Rendezvous
Every year, the men in the family (cue Tim Allen-esque Home Improvement style grunts) depart from their women and the rigmarole of daily lives to embark on a quest to re-connect with nature. We build fire, we eat man food, we emit bodily sounds not allowed in most social circles, tell jokes that are decidedly not PC or appropriate for most audiences and all sorts of other debauchery. This year I had the chance to attend (I missed a few years due to work), and with a new generation of men-in-training to initiate, it was quite the sojurn! We also … Continue reading
A bit of Tea, Chap?
A recent visit to the parental units in upstate New York was long overdue for a number of reasons. First off, I’d not been back in nearly 4 years! Second, they had done some pretty extensive renovations and were clamoring for family to come see all the newness of their kitchen (and for the record, it was pretty fabulous), but third, and perhaps most importantly – the maternal unit is quite the avid gardener, and she prides herself on the beauty of her English-style gardens.
Inner Reflection: The What vs The Why
Hello CanonBloggers! First off, I’d like to thank Jason for the flattering acceptance of my offer to guest blog this post. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the most eloquent when it comes to introductions, so for those of you who aren’t familiar with myself or PhotographyBB, I’m Dave Seeram, Editor of the PhotographyBB Online Magazine. As I am sure most of you are aware, Jason has been a contributing author for the PhotographyBB Online Magazine since our first year (now into our third). I thought that after all the hard work Jason has done for us … Continue reading
Nothing But the Tail Lights
In the course of pursuing creative inspiration, I’ve often found that just picking a subject and sticking with it can be a good exercise in creativity. Taking something and focusing (no pun intended) on that subject and only that subject can help you see things differently. The exercise is good whether your subject is flowers, thumb drives, coffee mugs (which I’ve done in the past), or in this case – tail lights! [cincopa 10624678] As you can tell, some of the shots are pretty cool, others – well, not so much. Some are out of focus, some are boring, but … Continue reading
May We Salute You
The May pool of photos that everyone contributed to was quite stunning – the listening and reading audience is quite a talented group and some of the images on here were really incredible. Full of vibrance, vision, color and passion – it was really hard to narrow things down – but I give you here just a few from the wonderful month of May. There really is no better way to say it than: May, We Salute You I’m pretty sure the artist name matches with the description and caption, so be sure to stop by not only the LDP … Continue reading
Can you trust your meta data?
We all talk about tags, and flags and meta data whenever we are importing our photos into Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, or whatever program you use. While there are discussions ad infinitum about the value of adding extra tags to your photos like “2010″ or “Canon” or “family vacation” or whatever labels you like, there is an underlying set of “fixed” data that contains HUGE amounts of information about your picture, and that is the EXIF data.
Beautiful Bokeh
Over the weekend, I was taking some time to review some new hardware (not done testing yet, so gotta wait there) and I was testing in various types of lighting conditions, and at various burst rates. During the course of the testing, I remembered how beautiful the bokeh is on the Sigma 70mm Macro lens.
Creating a Monthly Desktop Calendar
I alluded to it yesterday, and have already had several people inquire about the procedure to create this desktop calendar. It’s really quite clever, and kudos go out to Jeffrey Friedl over on his site for the script: http://regex.info/blog/photo-tech/calendar He does a decent job at the basic explanation, but since we are a visual world, here are some step-by-step instructions on how to run things from beginning to end! Fair warning – this does require Photoshop as the script (I don’t believe anyway) will run in Lightroom because it uses layers… 1. Download the script from the link above (I … Continue reading
The Ides of April
Well, it’s not really the ides of April, more the Ides of Closing. Yup, us nomads are at it again – we just can’t seem to settle down. Our cross-country move into an apartment for 6 months, then another move into our current house for two years was not enough. Nope, we got the itch again. Funny how the moving itch is coincidentally happening within a week of our seven year anniversary. Isn’t that supposed to be the itch? Oh well, I’ll take this itch over the alternative. So, with this being closing date and all, I’ve clearly got a … Continue reading
The Perils of Polarizers
Happy Monday all! My apologies at the absence on Friday – it seems some gremlins absconded with all my time on Thursday, so in the absence of any halfway decent content, decided to make it a legitimate “no blog” day heading into the weekend. But, a new week is here, and I’ve got a cool topic to cover briefly with you…that being: Polarizing Filters Polarizing filters can be a godsend – they can really bring out blues in a sky, or minimize reflections in windows, and can really help to improve the quality of your work. At the same time, … Continue reading
White Pocket, AZ
Many of you have written in, asking when I am going to post some of the photos taken from the Arizona trip over last weekend. Wait no longer, for here are some from the trip! Several of these are potential “portfolio” shots…still debating which ones to include and which ones to leave off. I’ve posted them to Flickr and to NAPP with some pretty positive feedback thus far, but here’s your chance to sound off on which ones to include in the newest updates. Let me know what you think: #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 So, … Continue reading
Accidentally interesting
Last night I was working on a deadline for the PhotographyBB March Magazine issue (check for that to come out shortly – another couple weeks), and found myself trolling through my archives of images searching for examples to help illustrate my point. I came across a shoot I did solo a while back where I was down in South Carolina. I was on a dock trying to catch the fading sun to the west, and catching your stereotypical sunsets in SC isn’t easy because there’s too much LAND in the way…not enough water! This was actually where I first learned … Continue reading
RMNP – The Outtakes
As you may recall, the photo walk group for Denver made another sunrise attempt at RMNP at Bear and Sprauge lake last weekend. Since the sunrise wasn’t what we’d hoped (the weather doesn’t always cooperate in landscape photography), we journeyed on, and stopped at a really nice place for panos. While we were milling around, I did capture a few of the crew and some actually held some promise. Here are a few of the “RMNP Outtakes”: Call me crazy, but I thought the outtakes were rather fun, and the last one for some reason is very compelling for me….what … Continue reading
The Moment it…”Oops”!
We all know the real phrase, made famous by none other than Joe McNally, and his well-received book “The Moment it Clicks””…(and a great read, so go check it out if you haven’t already). However, that’s just Joe… I seem to encounter more blunders than brilliance. For instance, I was working on the photos from the weekend shoot and had a rather good set I wanted to put into a panorama shot. Before taking the good set though, I decided to run a test on some older images on a new program that came which came recommended to me from … Continue reading
Contest News and Announcements
Congratulations and kudos go out to the winner for the February contest – the theme was Height and the winning image came from Sue90ca! To see all the images submitted for February, check out the thread here with all the images. Some really great ones were included, and as always, it was a tough decision. Nevertheless, Sue90ca’s “Crayons” was selected as the winner. You can see the rest of Sue’s portfolio on her Flickr stream here… Before anyone asks, the March contest info is not up on FLickr yet, but I should have an announcement for that later on tonight. … Continue reading
What is it about Bridges?
As the popularity of this theme continues to grow, I am really having more fun culling through my own archives, and have several ideas for actually getting out and shooting even more “themed” sets. However, today, I present to you (courtesy of my wife, who astutely remembered that I shoot a lot of…): Bridges
What is it About Rocks?
Hmmm….seems I have a new series theme going on here – people keep asking when the next series will be posted and are also asking me for specific series sets of photos. I am not sure I have the library of images to accommodate everything, but that just gives me motivation for subject matter whenever I go out shooting again! So, if you have a series that you’d like to see from me – suggest it in the comments or via email! For the time being, here’s another popular set from the library of yours truly: Rocks There’s the latest … Continue reading
What is it about Windows?
No, I am not talking about Operating Systems, rather I am talking about a follow-up to yesterday’s photo post with the theme of “Water”. You see, another recurring theme for me is windows of buildings. Taken from various angles and in various lighting conditions, and all over the place, ranging from South Carolina, to Colorado, Mexico, and various points in between, here’s a random sampling of windows I’ve captured in camera: There you have it – just a random sampling of “Windows” as I’ve seen them over the last 5 years. Got your own archives of thematic images? Anything that … Continue reading
What is it about Water?
Something about water really draws us as photographers – whether it’s the sunrise on a lake or ocean, the beads of dew on a morning flower, the tears or sweat as they roll down a cheek, or even the implied motion of water drops bouncing in the air – water somehow draws us all. Could it be that humans are made up of a majority of water? We do need it to survive – water is one staple we cannot live without. Those two atoms of Hydrogen and one of Oxygen have so much meaning for us, we somehow are … Continue reading
Software Review: PrintKey2000
Many times I have been asked what kinds of software I use to do various things for the blog, especially things like videos, screen captures, audio recording, and all that sort of stuff. One thing that I’ve never really talked about is screen captures…not the videos but actual still shots of things as seen directly on my screen. There are many programs available to do this, some paid for, and some open-sourced, with some being Mac or Windows specific, and a few scattering that cross both platforms. Well, today, I am going to give a little nod to a Windows-only … Continue reading
Pardon the interruption…
but another drop dead date was today as tomorrow we have our first showing after listing the house on the market. My task of the day (it seems I am getting more and more of these)…clean the garage. So, to make it really worth my while, I told Tracy that if that’s the case I needed a Shop-Vac (and a good one) to get all the standing water out that had dripped off the tires onto the garage floor – it just wouldn’t get clean without that. It worked! Not only did I get a clean (relatively) garage floor – … Continue reading
Composition and the Angle of View
We’ve talked a lot about various rules of composition – what they are (Rule of Thirds, Golden Mean, etc) and when to adhere versus eschew them to create dramatic effect. One thing we’ve not talked much about is the idea of changing your angle of view. We have mentioned the concept in the past, suggesting that to get a good perspective to look up, look down, look behind you, and in new directions to get a unique view on things. While this is always a good practice to remind yourself that there are other perspectives, it’s never really been discussed … Continue reading
5 Tips to Better Landscapes
The most common questions I get here on the blog center around the idea of how to take better pictures. Whether those “better pictures” are better landscapes, or portraits, wildlife or events, everyone wants suggestions on how to approach the practice of taking pictures better. Esoteric and creative considerations aside, there are some fundamental “tricks of the trade” that, by and large, will almost always improve your craft in pretty much any genre. So, today, I thought I would take a moment to share 5 “tricks” I’ve learned that always lead to better landscapes:
The value of a sunset (or sunrise)…
We all see them every day – the sun rises and the sun sets. Most of the time, it’s nothing too spectacular, perhaps some pretty colors are cast with various hues of orange and blue, or red and purple hazes…it’s all well and good. We may even see some spectacular ones…a crimson or scarlett red, or fire-y orange ones. They may also have an added impact if they are reflected in a lake, the ocean, or dramatized by their surroundings – palm trees, mountains, boats, or whatever happens to be there. The spectacular ones are typically the ones we see … Continue reading
December Winner!
The trumpets sound! The chorus rings, and the internet shall stop and take notice! Why you ask? We have a winner for the December Giveaway! I am happy to announce that the winner of the December Giveaway Bonanza is none other than: Frank Sammut! Frank’s shot of a childs hand, offering up a gift perfectly symbolized the concept of giving, and his blurred bokeh of the holiday theme in the background was just beautiful! He’s got some great work on his Flickr page too, so stop by and check it out and tell him congrats! Congratulations to Frank for winning … Continue reading
