Posts Tagged ‘Photography’

Here are some great examples of iPhone photography. Really, check them out, they are terrific considering it is a 3MP camera phone.

iPhone Photography ~ The Mobile Frame.

When I look at my Flickr stream at the moment, I see mainly Polaroid photos and experiments with pinhole camera obscuras. When I lose my Phojo, I start experimenting.  Here is a quote from the website below.

Here’s a common story: one day you become enthusiastic about photography, and find yourself jumping at every opportunity to take photos and to improve your work. You keep this up for a while, but slowly the enthusiasm you once had starts to fade. You start feeling like you’ve stagnated in your growth, and that you’re just doing the same old thing, over and over again.

How can you rekindle the passion you once had for photography? If you haven’t hit the wall yet, how can you avoid running into it?

Sound familiar? Yes, it does to me. I hear people say it all the time. People lose their Phojo. Well check out the link below, Michael Zhang has some very good ideas.

13 Tips for Staying Motivated in Photography.

Time to go to the pantry, and drag out this old chestnut. I am not going to make a case for either side, I think most people know where I stand, but I have seen the debate pop up on quite a few blogs, websites and Twitter in the past week, so I thought I better jump on the bandwagon. I have grabbed links to two sites that have mentioned digital manipulation in the past week that I have read. Both are well written, and make some great points. Whether you like it or not, digital manipulation is here to stay. Whether it is right or wrong, who knows. If you like wildly glowing pinks and purples in your sunrise, then you might like it. HDR might well float your boat, but it does nothing for me. Madly dodging and burning might be your thing, but I still don’t know how to use it.

I suppose my biggest beef with it at the moment is there seems to be an ever increasing amount of people who buy a DSLR, take a very ordinary photo, then go crazy in Photoshop. I think it makes it to easy to polish a turd. Most beginners would be better served not using it, and actually learning how to use the camera to produce a better image.

There you go, despite me saying I wasn’t going to argue a case for either side, I just managed to.

Have a read of the articles and let me know what you think.

Despite what I say above, I do occasionally use Photoshop to tart up a photo myself.

Are digitally altered photos photography or art? | Factoidz.

Is it live or is it Photoshop? — Photocrati – Photography Blog, Digital SLR Camera and Lens Reviews.

I fully expect a bun fight, but discussion is good. I also fully expect to be going over the same topic in another 6 months time.

More fantastic shots from this years Tour de France. This time, it is the fans that are in front of the lens.

Tour de France Fans – Photos – SI.com.

If there are two words in the English language that excite me more, I don’t know what they are. Actually, that is a slight exaggeration. Jaffa cakes, Monica Bellucci, free beer, free anything, the list goes on. But, if someone says road trip, my heart tends to accelerate. Who’s road trip? Where to? How long? What do you plan to see? I turn into Michael Parkinson. The sad fact is, I have only heard two, maybe three people ever talk about road trips. Given the amount of photography sites I visit, it seems a very low number indeed.

Now I realise I am in an enviable position as far as actually being able to take off for 2 weeks at a time. I am a contractor, so I can pretty much have holidays when I please. And, I have an understanding wife, who knows a couple of weeks away on my own does me good. So I am fortunate that I can actually do these trips. The biggest obstacle I have to get over is the coin it costs to do a trip like this. It usually takes me about 12 months of saving $5 notes and all the coin I get to save up for a 2 week trip. It usually costs roughly $120 per day to do a trip like this. Accommodation, fuel and food are the big costs. I don’t make it a habit of staying anywhere luxurious.  Actually, I have stayed in some pretty rough places. I eat pretty cheaply. The price of fuel is something I can’t control, but I am lucky that my car is reasonably efficient, well, for a large car. The last trip I did, which was 3400kms, I averaged 8.6 litres per 100km. That is still close enough to 300 litres to not care, which equates to probably $450. I can hear hippies dropping as I type. I am sorry, but a Prius just wouldn’t cut it on the roads I go on.

What is it that excites me about road trips? It is the places and the people. On the 3 road trips I have done so far, I have been to places I hadn’t seen before. As a hack photographer, it is a dream. I feel like an explorer. I go places that are new and exciting. I get lost, I drive dusty and muddy roads. When I am out driving around the outback, I have the eyes of a child, full of wonder and interest. Everywhere is a potential photo. Shots like the damn at Bourke last year (see photo below) were made because I drove off a road an along a dirt track. It is one big adventure.

The people are also a big factor. I am not a hugely social person, but I do like chatting to people one on one, and when travelling, you seem to get plenty of opportunities. Here is an extract from last years blog post.

And Miriam, from Stockinbingal, a tiny town on the railway line between Temora and Harden. I had stopped for a nature break and was walking back to the car when I saw Miriam. As usual, I said “gday” and she said “hello, how are you?” Well, we got chatting and ended up sitting at a park bench for a while. She told me I was the 1st person apart from the storekeeper and butcher that she had spoken to in the flesh for 6 weeks. Her kids, and grand kids all lived interstate, and although she spoke to them quite often, she was desperately lonely. Her husband of 60 years, Bill, had passed away late last year and as you can imagine, she missed him. We chatted about a few different things, then I had to go. She gave me a big hug and I was away. I have thought about her a lot since I got back and I should have got her phone number. To busy thinking about where to next and not about her I suppose.

I have met plenty of people who have a story to tell. I wish I could tell their stories for them through my photos, but I can’t. My photography skills aren’t to a level that I can convey a story through a single photo. I wish I could.

So, should you do a road trip? Bloody oath you should. If you are a photographer, and I assume 90% of readers are, give it a go. I can nearly guarantee you will  enjoy yourself. I do, and thats why I am saving all my coins for a trip in September.

HDR (High Dynamic Range), it is here , there and everywhere these days. I listened to a PODcast (How very 2006 of me) by Jim M. Goldstein the other day where he interviewed Trey Ratcliff from www.stuckincustoms.com/ about his HDR work. It was a very interesting conversation, but I heard a figure of 80% of people like HDR, and it has sort of stuck in my head, like a splinter in my mind. Do that many people really like it?

Here is an example of HDR.

That is a great example of what a normal shot looks like compared to the same scene in HDR. Thats not to extreme a version of HDR. Here is one that is.

So my question to you good reader is, do you like HDR. Is it still photography, or has it crossed that blurry line into digital art?

When do you know the photography bug has bitten? Is it a definite moment, or does it happen gradually? I think it is a gradual progression. I can’t think of a definitive moment when I have thought “yes, I have the bug”.

Is it when you climb out of bed to take shots of a lightning show?

Five years ago, if you had told me that by mid 2009 I would own thousands and thousands of dollars of photography equipment, I would have probably laughed. But now I do, and think nothing of it.

Is it getting up early for a dawn shot?

I take a yearly road trip to places I have never been before, purely to take photos of new places. If I had the money I would travel overseas for the same reason.

Is it waiting hours to get a shot?

When do you know you have been bitten by the photography bug?

Do you take a photo or make a photo? This one has had me puzzled for quite some time. I have always said that I take a photo. Since I have been more absorbed with all things photographic, I have heard people say they make photos. To make a photograph certainly has a more romantic notion, as opposed to taking it.

Obviously the most famous quote with regard to this dilemma of mine is from the old landscape master himself…

You don’t take a photograph, you make it. – Ansel Adams

Hmmm. Now, do we take it as gospel because a so called master of photography say it is so? Obviously not, after all, it is just his opinion. But there may be some truth in the matter if you look at it from an artistic point of view, which I am quite sure Mr Adams would have.

Made or Taken???

My understanding of the artistic side of photography is quite limited, as I am sure some of the readers know. But I do know that there is a lot more discussion about composition and lighting. Texture and form. Leading lines and the rule of thirds. So maybe to make a photo, you are making it conform to some rule or rules. To take a photo is just like it sounds. Like a thief in the night, you are grabbing an image, quickly, with out thought or preparation. An imprint of light on sensor or film with out calculation or premeditation. Most people don’t sit around snap shots pontificating (word of the week it seems) its meaning or form.

Do the artistic people make photographs and people like me take photographs? I look forward to your thoughts as usual.