POSTS

Composition - The guys at Digital Photo Experience discuss the rule of thirds.

Top-Ten Must Reads on Earthbound Light – The top ten posts for 2009. Ok, it’s late, but I just found it.

Lego machine printing – A YouTube video of a printer made of Legos.

Photoshop gone bad - An ad with a large Ps problem.

How to Master High Sync Flash – Camera Dojo master Kerry Garrison does it again.

SITES

Brad Peters Photography – A co-worker and a good photographer.

FJ Cruiser Forums – Yes, I know it isn’t photography related, but if you own an FJ Cruiser, it is a great site to bookmark.

Outdoor Eyes – This site has lots of information for the outdoor photographer.

Wildflower Hotsheet – A site dedicated to Southern California wildflower reports.

PopPhoto.com – The online version of the magazine.

Tweet This Post Facebook

POSTS

How to Optimize Your Images for the Web – A quick tutorial on how to get your images on the web.

How to Choose a Travel Lens – Kerry Garrison of Camera Dojo discusses lenses for traveling light.

Lens Positioning Guide – Own a Nikon? Want to know what lenses you own and what you need? Check out this Nikon site.

Ten Tips For Landscape Photographers – ten tips from Patrick De Fruscia on landscape photography.

Letter to George – Why spend more money than you have to.

SITES

De Fruscia Photography – Patrick De Fruscia has some really inspiring images on his site as well as some great tips.

Luminous Landscape – Look on the left column, there are some good essays there.

Guy Tal – There are some amazing images on this site.

One Man’s Blog – John Pozadzides offers a wide variety of interesting posts.

Cambria Photography – If you like the central California coast, there are some inspirational images on this site.

Tweet This Post Facebook

We all know someone who has had their lives touched by cancer. I know I have several. This was an opportunity to give back to them.

The players

Mr. Warren founder and coordinator of the game.

The Field and Crowd

Miss Kline at Bat

Saibrah White at Bat

Mr. Ermert Rips One to Right

The Staff - Winning Team

And for the record: the staff beat the senior 17-5.

Tweet This Post Facebook

Thank You

Tweet This Post Facebook

It was taken during the Morro Bay Bird Festival in Montana De Oro State Park. I wish I could remember what kind of birds these are and when I do, I’ll post that information here.

The image was part of a bigger image that I cropped to eliminate the waves and sand so the focus was on the birds and I thought that the panoramic affect of the image worked well.

Please feel free to offer both feedback and criticism.

Shore birds at the Morrow Bay Bird Festival 2010

Tweet This Post Facebook

POSTS

Top Ten Reasons Photography Businesses Fail – imaginginfo.com gives 10 reasons that most photo businesses fail.

Time Lapse Using Lightroom – Lightroom Blog gives you a great preset that you can use to produce time lapse slide shows in Lightroom.

Making Time: The Most Important Post You’ll Ever Read – How to make time for your photography on Photography BB.com

Is Photography Over? – A short recap of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s symposium on the subject.

Iceland Volcano – This should probably be in the site area, but I like these live feeds of the unpronounceable Iceland volcano.

SITES

Going Pro 2010 – Scott Bourne gives photographers some great advice on going pro in lots of  different areas.

Chuqui 3.0 – Photography, birding, and some hockey.

The [b] School – This is a great place to meet and communicate with other photographers (mostly wedding).

Jasmine Star – I just got done listening to her at EscalateLive. She is fresh, knowledgeable, tells the truf. Plus, her site is well written and helpful.

Jim Goldstein Galleries – Goldstein has an amazing collection of images, both environmental and natural.

Tweet This Post Facebook

Landscape Photography by Tim Fitzharris

If you are looking for a book that covers almost all facets of landscape photography, you should take a close look at Landscape Photography by Tim Fitzharris is published by the National Audubon Society. The book has awe inspiring images on almost every page which is a good reason alone to by the book, but the information offered is some of the best I have read to this point.

Mr. Fitzharris takes the reader from the proper equipment and how to transport it to the site through shooting fundimentals and how to create good images to what to look for and how to shoot different types of landscapes. He finishes with the only weak section of the book, digital processing.

The first part is about equipment. In the first chapter Fitzharris discusses large, medium, and digital formats and gives advantages and disadvantages for all. He also discusses tripod selection and how to best outfit your tripod for landscape imagery. The second chapter is devoted to lenses which, according to the author, should range from 18-200mm. He gives reasons and examples of images taken with each range. The third chapter concerns the logistics of landscape photography including photo-vests, non-photographic “Essential Gizmos” that you might need, and how to dress for each of the seasons that you might be shooting in. His suggestion of dressing with zippers, not layers is good.

The second part of the book, chapters 5 & 6, deal with correct exposure, how to read a histogram, and the affect of shutter speed and aperture have on images. He also discusses the use of different metering methods in the field.

Part three deals with creating the images. Chapter six talks about light and what to look for as well as how different skies affect the image. Different types of filters and their affect on the images are also explained. The next chapter discusses the basics of composition and offers nothing really new for the experienced photographer, but he does give some great examples of composition rules that are worth examining.

The next few chapters discuss finding the art, perspective, and opportunities of landscape photography. My favorite part of these chapters is the discussion of a landscape/nature photographer’s day from early morning landscapes, to wildlife, scouting locations, and finally sunsets.

The last section is VERY weak and discusses the digital processing of images. Devoting a few pages to what requires a book or two is a waste of the readers time.

That being said, the real strength of the book is the fourth part where Mr. Fitzharris’ writing shines. He covers most all of the usual situations where landscape images are captured and describes what to look for and how to capture beautiful images. Some of the situations Fitzharris discusses are autumn color, waterfalls, dunes, floral vistas, and clouds. He describes timing, filters, methods, and composition when visiting each type of landscape. His ideas and suggestions are all very good.

The best reason to buy this book is the images that Fitzharris includes to demonstrate his vision, ideas, and suggestions. Looking at the images will improve your photography. The thing I really like is that not all of his images are from exotic locations. There are many from places that any photographer in the country can visit with very little effort if they are serious about getting nice images.

Landscape Photography by Tim Fitzharris is a book that should be on a photographer’s bookshelf if they are interested in landscape photography and even nature photography in general.

Tweet This Post Facebook

They danced, laughed, and they had fun. For a few hours their lives were “normal” and I loved being a part of it. No, I didn’t regret or have any misgivings about spending my Saturday night shooting this event. Especially after listening to Jeremy Cowart at Escalate Live last week where he stressed using your photography to give back and do something good in your community.

The prom being held in a high school gym didn’t help the photography. Dark and bad lighting. The answer seemed simple to me, grab the SB900 and the 50 f1.4 and shoot away. I also used the Hanson Fong Skin Glow Reversible Bounce Card which was recommended by Hal Schmitt at Light Photographic Workshops. Honestly, at $42 it is the best light modifier I have purchased.

I looked at the night as an experiment and learning opportunity in using speedlights. Remember, when using flash, the shutter speed controls the background exposure and the aperture combined with the flash intensity controls the exposure of the subject. Wanting to separate the subject from the background, I shot most of the images at a shutter speed of 250-300 and an aperture of 2-2.8. I put the flash on manual and shot most of the time at 1/8-1/4.

If I wanted the background darker, I increase the shutter speed. If I wanted the subject brighter, I usually increased the power of the flash by a 1/3 of a stop or so.

I think the technique worked fairly well, but needs a bit of refinement. After I looked at the images in Lightroom, I found that those setting tended to leave the subjects just a little darker than I wanted, but all of the images could be fixed with a little exposure control in the develop module of Lightroom.

Here are some of the images from the night.

Balloons outside the prom

Posing for the camera

Ramona's King and Queen

Poly's King and Queen have their first dance.

King's King and Queen

Honestly, it was a rewarding experience. I hope you have the opportunity to give and experience such an event.

Please feel free to comment or offer suggestions.

Tweet This Post Facebook

As a start for this week, I am going with the presenters from the Escalate Live 2010 that I attended earlier this week. I really think that their sites deserve a look. That means that the posts are not really posts this time, but VERY important or good sites from the speakers.

POSTS

Jeremy Cowart – Jeremy is a visionary in the photography industry. If you visit only one site from this page, make it this one.

Jasmine Star – Her site is a thing of beauty. Well thought out and it lets you see a bit of Jasmine.

Jerry Ghionis – He makes the rest of us want to quit. His images are amazing and yet he is willing to share his techniques.

Help-Portrait – This is one of Jeremy Cowart’s ideas. Take images of people who would never be able to afford to have their images taken and do it for free.

PVC Photography – Ok, she didn’t speak, but she was at the conference and she is an amazing photographer who WILL be a rock star in the near future.

SITES

Dane Sanders – Host and founder of Escalate Live.

[b]ecker – Founder of the [b] school.

Julieanne Kost – The woman is FUNNY and KNOWS (like seriously knows) Lr and Ps. Can you say genius?

Jessica Clair – A very straight forward speaker with some interesting ideas on wedding photography.

David Jay – The founder of the Showit sites.

Tweet This Post Facebook

I spent the last couple of days at a photography conference called EscalateLive hosted by Dane Sanders, author of The Fasttrack Photographer. It was held in a vintage movie theater on Lido Island in Newport Beach. Geared toward wedding/portrait photographers, it featured speakers like Dane, Becker, Jerry Ghionis, and Jasmine Star. All of them are amazing photographers who are willing to share their ideas and thoughts on marketing themselves, and therefore yourself, in a highly competitive market.

Probably the most amazing speaker was Jeremy Cowart. He spoke about the power of photography. How it can be used to make the world a better place for both the photographer and the subject. He founded Help-Portrait; an organization that gives people who can’t afford to have a portrait taken the chance to be made up and get a framed print of themselves. It was an emotional presentation and I’ll be writing more about Help-Portrait later.

The common thread that they all brought into their presentations was that each of us MUST connect with ourselves, our clients, and other photographers. We must make them feel important by sharing and making their experience with you one of the best of their lives. But we need to be ourselves.

They talked about bringing energy, inspiration, and creativity to every shoot. They talked about seeing the possiblities in situation. See the light, the poses, and the solutions in every setting. Know your equipment, how to use it, and what it can do.

Use the equipment and location to shoot what inspires both you and your client. Capture images that may be outside your comfort zone and you can learn from or hone a skill you might use in the future.

Outside my comfort zone and give back to the community. That’s my take away. I need to get uncomfortable and make my future happen. And I need to find a way to give back. In other words, I need to get off my ass and get it done.

Tweet This Post Facebook