Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Brian Auer has a passion – old skool film photography. His passion, as most passions are, is contagious. If you have not caught the Film virus yet, Brian came up with a project to help you get some film inspiration going.
The $50 Film Camera is one of those projects that is real easy to get involved in. all you have to do is shoot some rolls of film with a film camera of under 50$, post your pictures, and a camera review and you are in. (Don’t forget to submit your review link).
If you, like me, have little money to spend on big expensive lighting, you can start up your flash photography with a small flash (AKA strobe).
Actually some of those are so cheap, you can start off with a few, or add strobes as you go along. I started with 1 small flash: The Nikon SB 28, added the Nikon SB 800 when I got my D70, and when I needed more light, I added the Nikon SB 26. The SB 26 sells for about 100 USD on eBay and other small flashes like the famous Vivitar 285HV sells for about 50 on eBay and about 80 for a new flash.
If you indeed choose this path (which from now on will be called the strobist path) there are several very useful resources on (and off) the web for you to learn how to perfect your small strobe lighting technique.
I have deep appreciation for all photographers listed below, they all helped me learn and grow to the photographer I am today.
This is why I am shamelessly promoting sharing their recent and not so recent projects.
The last week was very interesting week on my professional career, I was attending a software conference in Toronto called The Agile Conference 2008. The conference was all about making software better. (Any Agile practitioners here? Give me a shout).
I find that there are plenty of similarities between Agile software development and striving for photography perfection and style, and I intend to share this in an upcoming post. (Don’t worry, this will not be a geeky-techie post).
While being away from home I had the pleasure of watching the DIYP Flickr group grow. We are now 2751 enthusiastic photographers, and sharing 2653 picture. Great work. While it feels great to be part of such a striving community, I noticed that the number of photographer is smaller then the number of pictures. That means that some of us are missing on the great opportunity to share our pictures and get ideas, critique and standing ovations from group member.
Here is my suggestion, if you did not submit at least on picture to the group, submit one picture now, and pick one of the other images on the group and make a comment. This is turn will encourage other to comment on your images.
Thanks for making my day great! Below are some of my favorites from the last month.
More Photodumps:
– Having Fun @ The Pool #3
– Having Fun @ The Pool #2 – What a Splash
– Having Fun @ The Pool #1[Read More…]
As part of my ongoing exploration of portrait photography in general and flash studio photography in particular, I wanted to examine the effect that a large light source will have on light fall off. This was a great chance for me to produce a new cheat sheet to companion the portrait lighting cheat sheet and reflector cheat sheet that are already out there. (And this time we have a special guest, read on…)
UPDATE2: For a Flickr picture to be eligible to participate it must
have a short (or long explanation on why you took the portrait / the
person means something for you)
UPDATE1: See some Q&A at the bottom. I’ll update those as more questions come in.
A little while back, Alasdair Townsend, one of the makers of Portrait Professional, sent me a copy of Portrait Professional 8 to play with. Apart from the great fun that I had with the software (review coming soon), he also suggested to give three copies of Portrait Professional 8 as contest prizes.
– No Way!
– Way! And to make it even better, I’ll make those giveaways the studio high end version. (Valued at 239.95 USD).
So what do you have to do to win one of those three copies? You have three options to submit an entry:
A few weeks back, I did a post about lighting a portrait from different angles – the portrait cheat sheet card. As part of the project I also posted the setup shot for creating the card allowing DIYP readers into my leaving room.
If you went supersize into my studio my wife’s living room, you could see two pictures on the right corner. This, of course besides the usual mess and child goo left all over the floor.
Tuffer who is apparently moving to Brussels got intrigued by the mystery of my living room and asked what those pictures are. (Feel free to ask more questions about my living room. it is a wondrous place)
Those are pictures from a photography album called Fruits by Shoichi Aoki which deals with a Japanese fashion called (surprise, surprise) Fruits.
This is another fun project from the factory of reader Jerry Hamby.
It is a reflector holder from a $9.99 tripod, a 3ft long piece of PVC pipe, an elbow to fit, and a small clamp. (The Tripod is 9.99$ on July 26th on Amazon, but I bet similar tripods are always on sale somewhere). Like the previous project from Jerry, the Green Bean Hair Light, it’s a short and fun project, and you don’t have to make it in whole, if you like the idea, you can expand it to things other the tripods…
Reader Jerry Hamby just sent in this great hair light project. It is made from a cheapo 45 ws ebay flash and – believe it or not – a green-bean super value can (the kind you don’t want to eat too much of at one time). Just before sharing his tutorial with you, allow me to extend two small tips:
1. Empty the bean can before using it.
2. Do not empty it alone.
Now, to the tutorial. [Read More…]
Anthropics is a company that develops a portrait retouching software called Portrait Professional. Tony Polichroniadis who is the chief scientist over there is looking for some feedback on the package.
If you have any ideas, thoughts and wish-lists from this kinda software you can influence the next version of Portrait Professional.
Use this flickr thread to share any thoughts you may have. If you just want to play round with the software and get the idea of what it can do (quite a lot), you can download a trial version here.
In my two previous posts I discussed eleven reasons why you would ever want to use manual focus, and six ways to help you get a good sharp manually-focused picture.
As I said, it takes some practice to get sharp results, and in this wrap up post I’ll discuss practice. One type of practice it easy and can be done a home. The benefit of this practice is that it is very technical and needs little preparation.
Here is how it’s done:
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube.
His videos have over a hundred million views, have been extensively published by news outlets, and has even received recognition from a few film festivals, such as International Ocean Festival
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