Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Being a photographer is not something that you do, it’s something that you are.
I get emailed a lot by people about equipment, settings, photoshop editing and all manner of ‘technical stuff’. I also get asked a lot about what my top advice is for taking better pictures and the answer is not in a plugin or a shiny new camera…
I’ve had a Nikon Z6 mirrorless camera for a while now, and I’m less than impressed. We photographers are a funny breed. We obsess over detail. It goes without saying that dust removal is not something like to retouch. We have enough work as it is. Back in the day (and by “the day” I mean ‘last year’) we had cameras with mirrors. Those mirrors, along with a shutter curtain, protected our delicate sensors from all manner of dust and grime. In the transition to mirrorless, it appears Nikon have overlooked this. Take a look.
I get asked a lot by people about equipment and settings, photoshop editing, and all manner of ‘technical stuff’.
I also get asked a lot about what my top advice is for taking better pictures, and the answer is not in a plugin or a shiny new camera. I find it funny that as photographers, when somebody outside our trade asks about a great picture that they have seen that as photographers, we often answer, stating that the camera is just a ‘tool’. No camera can make you take better pictures. However, when I see photographers discussing images online, I often read people banging on about ‘what settings were used’ what model of that camera did you use. What lens, what F stop and chewing on about if they had used this or that, and why don’t they use this or that…
My thoughts on this are simple, and after reading one such exchange earlier, I just wanted to write something here, I guess on what I think personally.
Tim Wallace is a top-notch photographer, he has shot for McLaren, Peugeot, Lexus, Aston Martin, and a bunch of other global clients. It’s always fascinating to me how some “potential clients” approach Tim Wallace for free work. It fascinates me, even more, when Tim takes the time to converse with them. The result of Tim patiently explaining to the client why he will not work for free is absolutely hilarious. Other than that, it serves as a good reminder to always be aware of your value.
Risking to sound cheesy and cliché, I must say: I couldn’t live without music. It adds flavor to my everyday life and a soundtrack to most of my memories. When I go to a concert, it’s the best night out I can imagine. But, concerts in the 21st century come with a phenomenon I rant about whenever I can: smartphones.
Every time I go to a concert, I feel like I’m the last of the Mohicans: someone who has come to a concert to enjoy the music, sing along, dance, cry, laugh, and clap my hands until my palms are numb. Other than listening, I’m there to watch the performance, too. But it seems that most people prefer watching the entire show through the tiny displays of their phones. And this time, I won’t even bitch about how those people are blocking everyone else’s view. I wanna discuss whether or not they can even enjoy the show if they watch it entirely through a smartphone screen.
Tim Wallace is a high-end car photographer, while he is not restricted to cars, you’ve probably seen his work with Porsche, Lotus, Ford, Aston Martin, and others on one media or another. I’ll admit, I stalk him on social media, because he produces stellar images, but also because he is a witty guy, and his insights are fun to read.
This rant of his, caught my eye and I think it’s spot on to the point of epic, so I asked Tim’s permission to share it with DIYP readers:
Last week, as I walked from Liverpool street station to meet some friends, I idly started to muse ‘Where is photography going?’
As a medium, photography has enjoyed a remarkable trajectory, from heliographs to hypo, roll film and Brownies, colour film and instant cameras, and SLR to digital in under 200 years. And the last 30 thirty years have seen a tremendous advancement in photographic technology, from the release of the first commercially viable digital SLR camera and a transition through terrific cultural changes associated with the medium. But it now feels as if we might be stuck in some form of holding pattern. This is especially true after what I felt was a particularly disappointing Photokina last autumn.
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In this photokina we’ve seen most camera makers making it bigger and better. But not necessarily faster. The new Fuji GFX medium format may be the prime example of that. Both camera makers and lens makers are putting full focus on developing features that relate to photos hard qualities: dynamic range, more megapixels, low light performance. But is this what their customers want?
Haje Jan Kamps over at Techcrunch suggests that workflow speed may be more important to photography consumers than almost anything else. As an example he shows the image above taken by our own John Aldred. Rather than downloading the photo from the card, processing it and uploading, John just snapped an image of the LCD so he can get it out there fast enough.
I am a firm believer in the power of the tripod. Tripods let you do wonderful things. You can easily composite, take long exposures, do light painting, it is just an awesome tool. When it comes to video tripods are even more essential, at least if you want to take a static shot.
But tripods don’t all match. And that would have been ok, only switching from one tripod to another is not as easy as it should be.
Most tripods have a separate head, and that head usually connects to a tripod via something called quick release plate. While there are some standards (RC2 from Manfrotto, Arca Swiss), the need to swap quick plates is not that rare. In fact, I own (and use) 4 tripods (6 if you count Gorilla pods), and almost each and every one of them has a different plate.
And I swap tripods quite a bit. I use one for stills (with an RC2 Rapid Connect compatible head), another for video (with a Manfrotto 501PL Rapid Connect Sliding Plate) and sometimes I just need to mount my DR-70 between the head and the camera.
Over the last two years adobe has made significant push to move our creative flow into the cloud and into mobile. In fact, it seems that moving to mobile is a core part of Adobe’s strategy and understandably so.
Creative Brad Colbow took a good hard look at this strategy and his deconstruction of Adobe’s (over 30) new mobile apps is an eye opener. In essence Brad complains that the move into Adobe’s iOS app is nothing like the experience that you would get by using the desktop apps. This is a very interesting claim. Especially with the new iPad Pro coming out. You would expect the iPad pro to give you a smooth desktop-like experience, however, according to Brad, you are stuck with many apps, each only good for one task. In fact, Brad goes as far as saying that Adobe is experimenting on their users, with the iOS apps driving a completely different workflow that their desktop “brother apps”
If opt for a Microsoft’s surface for example you will get similar to desktop experience while retaining a tablet form factor.
Brad does recognize that this experimentation may be good for evolving the way we create using new interfaces, he just wishes he could still use the Adobe Suit the way he likes and used to.
[Dear Adobe, Your Mobile Apps are a Mess | Brad Colbow]
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