Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Getting a digital camera up in the air is something we’ve gotten a big accustomed to. But I believe that getting a Lomography Diana F+ on a copter has not been done before. Till now.
The team over flitetest hooked up a Diana F+ to a tri-copter and sent it up in the air. I thought it would be interesting to go over the list of challenges they faces and break down the solutions to each of the challenges. This, and the video after the jump.[Read More…]
CS6 introduced a new adjustment layer. It’s called the Color Lookup Adjustment Layer, and it is a great tool to create different looks and styles. If used correctly it is a very powerful tool.
For the sake of this demo, I am going to use a photo called “Gentleman Mask”, while it will be the base image for our layering games, there is a the movies at the bottom shows the entire processing done on the initial image.
It is not uncommon to find a photographer who is also a retoucher, it is way more rare, to find an excellent photographer who is also a great model and a talented retoucher. This is why I was so happy to have the chance to interview Renee Robyn, a Model, Photographer and Retoucher based in Alberta Canada (yes, all with capital letters).
One of my favorite scenes of all time is the crazy Bullet Time scene in the bar in “The Other Guys” featuring Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg.
In that scene Allen and Terry go through a whole night of crazy drinking in under a minute with the entire scene frozen in bullet time. Unlike other bullet time scenes, like the one in the matrix, this scene was shot using a single camera on rails. The camera was programmed to repeatedly follow the same path while different elements of the scene were filmed. This combined with stuntmen who can hold pose for a long time and a bunch of CGI effect created one of the best bullet time shots I know.
Here is a behind the scenes look that shows how the final composite was done.[Read More…]
A while back photographer Benjamin Von Wong was invited to the Underwater Realm set to take a group portrait of the actors and crew.
If you cringe at the thought of taking a big group shot, you would probably cry with the added difficultly of managing everything underwater (while being videographed by Erwan Cloarec) I was really unaware of all the added challenges of shooting underwater.
From water safety personal, through using weights to speed up descent to weighting down the wigs so they don’t float. It seems that everything we know as photographer has to be relearned for underwater.
The video and Ben’s post provide an interesting look into that world, as well as to some of the unique features of shooting underwater, like the inability to use radio slaves (which can be solved with optical wires), the “natural” depth of field that water provides and what’s it’s like working in the water in general. The BTS and more photos after the jump.[Read More…]
This is part two of Ming Thein‘s series on Understanding Metering.
In part one we examined why metering is important, and how the basics of how meters work. In today’s article, I’lltake a closer look at the different types of metering, how they differ, and under what situations they should be deployed.
A sample viewfinder – in this case, a rough representation of the Nikon D2H/ D2X finder.
With that background out of the way, let’s look at how the various metering options work, and what typical situations they might best be deployed under. Cameras typically have three options, or some variation upon that. Within these options, it’s also usually possible to fine tune various aspects of the meter’s operation. I’m going to leave out handheld meter operation since this is something that’s almost never encountered today. An important point to note is that all meters can be fooled by situations of uniform luminance, so don’t trust the readout blindly. Remember, meters function by averaging the entire evaluated area out to middle gray; this means if your evaluated area is meant to be black or white, you’re going to need to add or subtract some exposure compensation. For predominantly light/ white scenes, you need to add; for dark scenes, subtract. This holds true for every one of the different metering methods detailed below.[Read More…]
Bokeh, as you must know by now if you are a regular reader is a Japanese word that means blur. In photography the quality of Bokeh usually means how creamy is the out of focus area in the photograph.
Sometimes tough, Bokeh refers to the highlighted circles that we see in nightscape photos. Those out of focus street lights and car lights that turn into beautiful blurry discs.
The folks at The Slanted Lens did a great Bokeh oriented shoot in Times square. But… before that they did their almost scientific analysis run down on what creates a good highlight Bokeh from specular lights, comparing different focal lengths, and camera-to-subject-to-background variations.[Read More…]
Kai and Alambi at DigitalRev has an interesting video series where they conduct photography duels. Not between two photographers, but between a pro photographer and a cheap camera – the series is titled Pro Photographer / Cheap Camera.
For the latest match in this epic series they had David (Strobist) Hobby in the blue corner and Buzz (2MP kids camera) Lightyear in the red one.
To quote from an unremembered origin, “Expensive gear does not make your photography better, it only makes some photographs possible”. I could not agree more, and this video shows this point in a spectacular way. Hit the jump for a video and some thoughts.[Read More…]
This is part one of Ming Thein‘s series on Understanding Metering.
An image from my recent Introduction to Wildlife workshop, and a very tricky metering situation – more importantly, do you know why, and what to do in a situation like this to achieve the desired exposure outcome?
One of the more important – yet almost always overlooked – aspects of camera operation is metering. Simply put, the meter determines what your final exposure is, and how bright or dark your image looks relative to the scene. Unless you are shooting manual – and even then – the camera’s exposure is determined by the meter. Add the fact that the eyes of a viewer tend to go to the brightest and/ or highest contrast portions of an image first (i.e. this should be your subject) – and it’s clear to see why it’s absolutely critical to understand both how metering works as a fundamental concept and any camera-specific peccadilloes that might exist. The last thing you want is to find that your camera drastically underexposed a once-in-a-lifetime shot of some critically important event because you didn’t know (or forgot) that the meter was extremely affected by point light sources*.[Read More…]
I think it is a good question. On one hand, photographers, move, change lenses, operate strobes, look for different POV. On the other hand, editors really pump up some brain muscle which is known to burn more calories than sitting idle. I thought it was kinda like that research about bus drivers vs. conductors by Jeremy Morris. That research concluded that bus drivers are more prone to heart attacks thatn conductors since they move less during the working hours. (of course, if I wanted to stay true to that research this post would have been titled Who Is More Prone To Get A Heart Attack? – but… No drama today)
There were two ways to approach this question. The more methodical way of comparing 1000 different photographers vs. 1000 different editors. Or look at one photographer who spends a lot of time shooting, and then a lot of time editing.[Read More…]
You can find out more about John on his website or follow him on Facebook and YouTube.
can change a lens mid-rappel, swap a memory card while treading water, or use a camel as a light stand.
To see more of his work please visit his studio website blurMEDIAphotography, or follow him on Twitter, 500px, Google Plus or YouTube.
JP’s photography is available for licensing at Stocksy United.
Find my work on My website or follow me on Facebook or My page
