Tag Archives: potd
Five Ways to Deal with Harsh/Low Lighting
A common question I get here is how to deal with harsh or low light situations. This is a great question, and for event photographers, it’s simply part of the job to recognize various lighting conditions and address them accordingly. Today, I’d like to share Five Ways to Deal with Harsh/Low Lighting: 1. Cranking the ISO and hoping to fix in post With advancements in technology, noise handling both in camera and in post production has resulted in some astonishing results that in previous years would have been literally unrecoverable. While we should always endeavor to make our images shine … Continue reading
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
Where in the world am I?
Thanks to the timely receipt of the Photoshop Guys Q&A sets, I was effectively able to go “off the grid” for nearly a week! That’s right – completely off the grid! No email, no Twitter, no Facebook, no phone, no internet – nada! It was quite the enjoyable experience. While a select few people did have a “need to know” before I left, I did try to keep this on the down low…
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
What Moves You?
The question of what moves us as photographers is one that everyone eventually questions at some point. Whether this comes early in your pursuit or later…at some point everyone considers where their real passion for a particular artistic genre exists. Whether that art form is painting, sculpting, musical, or photographic in nature, the question is one that will always persist. I’ve asked this question before in an essay simply titled “Why?”, and there have looked to answer the question from an esoteric perspective. (Feel free to read the essay yourself from the PDF article here.) However, today it’s more of … Continue reading
Picking a Theme
We all get stuck in creative ruts, and are in search of ways to inspire ourselves. Kerry Garrison (form Camera Dojo) and I talked about this last night while we explored the place that smart phones and their cameras have in the photography marketplace. As the conversation went on (and on and on – we tend to digress a lot when we get to talking), we found ourselves talking about 365 projects, or photo-a-day projects, and ways to challenge yourself and come up with new topics to shoot. The idea of themes presented itself, and while this is nothing new … Continue reading
Photoshop is not a bad word
A lot of photography conversations revolve around the question of how much editing has been done to a picture. Terms like “sooc” (for straight out of camera) or raw, or “minimal editing” are involved. I also have been known to encourage capturing the best pictures you can in camera. But does that mean editing in post process is a bad thing? No, definitely not. For some, it has become a bad thing though, and phrases where “photoshop” has become a verb have been bandied about a lot. I’ve heard everyone from amateurs to pros say things like “We’ll just photoshop … Continue reading
Cultures Colliding – a Podcast with Martin Bailey!
On this week’s show, we’ve got a lot to talk about including a couple of particular news stories to note, with a little insight from the crew, we’ll be taking your questions and answers on the show and the special guest of the week for this show is none other than the well-reknowned Martin Bailey! Photo News 1. 3rd Annual Worldwide Photo Walk has been announced by Scott Kelby, and details are here. 2. Lightroom 3 was announced last week Monday – and is available to purchase and download…you can also download a 30 day trial for free from Adobe … 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.
The Droid Hath Come
That’s right folks – the time has come for an upgrade to my rinky dinky 1990′s flip phone. I’ve gotten with the decade and upgraded to a Droid from Motorola (yes, I am on Verizon). The upgrade was pretty smooth, although the “tech” at Best Buy had trouble migrating my contacts over. Since I use Gmail for most of my contact info anyway, I figured it would migrate in pretty seamlessly once I got online and sure enough, everything pulled down no problem. So, how is this related to photography? Well, I can now take and share 5 MP photos … 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
Thank goodness for the blog!
Ever have one of those days where you know that you are doing something wrong with your gear – but for some reason it’s just not clicking (so to speak)? I had just such a day recently. I still have the DIY-style radio triggers from Cactus I bought last year (still have not upgraded to the Cybersyncs), and I was trying to light something off camera for a macro shot with this little solution. Try as I might, I could not get the transmitter to fire my 580 when on camera. For the life of me, if I tried one … Continue reading
The Rest of the Story…
Last Monday, you learned of my trip to White Pocket, AZ. I met up with fellow photographer/blogger Rich Charpentier of “The Airstream Chronicles”. As we left off last week, he had met me at the Page, AZ airport, and we were heading off into the Arizona desert. The ride was smooth at first, but as soon as we started the off-roading, things got a little bumpy. True to form though, his Nissan Titan handled it with aplomb. Check out this short video footage of the off-roading adventure, with Rich driving and me recording: You’ve also already seen some of the … 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
The Journey Began…
“The Journey” began with a double-stop plane ride on a double prop plane. From Denver to Farmington, then Farmington to Page. Each ride was about an hour, but in this cramped sardine can of a ride, there’s never a dull moment! The pilots did their level best to keep the plane not only aloft, but sailing sans bumps. Given the snow in Denver on Friday, the outbound trip was no picnic. Thankfully motion-sickness is not normally a factor, but alas, no in-flight naps were possible for all but the soundest of sleepers! After the trip, the question was now whether … Continue reading
Sun wind and Frost
A short excursion over the weekend took me down to see Rich Charpentier of “The Airstream Chronicles“. For those of you that follow the blog, you’ll know that Rich has been on the podcast before and we’ve been sharing war stories for a little over a year now about photography. Well, this last weekend, we got a chance to shoot one of his favorite little haunts, the not-so-well-known “White Pocket” in the dunes. It was quite the trip…from a windy trip down in a twin propeller plane, to some nice afternoon sun while there on the afternoon Saturday, to frost … 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
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