Месяц: Ноябрь 2007

I just didn’t have the heart to force-feed you another donut. Even Krispy Kremes get old after three days in a row. Logo or not…

I first heard this many years ago when as a young freelance photographer working for AP in southern Europe I suggested to a visiting senior editor that lax security and one of the longest civilian runways in the world made the city’s airport an obvious destination for hijacked aircraft and that the absence in the bureau of any lens longer than an old 200mm would mean that we’d be hard pressed to cover it. ”If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough,” he said but what he meant was, “I have other priorities”.

These questions are really aimed at the digital SLR users, so if you’re a compact camera user some of the questions won’t directly apply. Even so, a good chunk of them can be answered with any digital camera. Film users will probably have even less questions that are applicable.

Photographers Michael Nichols and Brent Stirton explain the significance of the recent gorilla massacres in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

WedPix, the Wedding Photojournalist Association’s (WPJA) Online Magazine, is a complimentary resource for brides and grooms, photographers, wedding planners and all wedding photojournalism enthusiasts. The articles featured in every issue, cover a vast array of topics, including general wedding photography advice for the couple, technical discussions, feature articles on WPJA award-winning members, business/marketing discussions, and many others.

It can often be incredibly tempting to try and fit more information into a photograph. Understandably so – wherever you turn, you find a barrage of information. Minimalism truly is a lost art in photography, and you’d be surprised to find that it’s actually quite difficult to get right.

Gary Fong has become a de-facto standard for speed light diffusion. The accessories made by Gary include the famous Lightsphere and lots of other small flash improvements.I have tried to make some flash modifiers in the past, like a flash mounted softbox or an improvised beauty dish. Zond is following this approach with a Lightsphere solution.

This photo blog was born out of the frustration with photo procrastination between three friends. The best way to improve at anything is to practice, a lot. So we made a pact – to complete a photographic assignment every week, no matter what, on everything and anything. This isn’t a competition – there are no judges, no scores. The goal is to become better photographers, and share ideas while we’re doing it.

That’s right, David Ziser used one off-camera flash to create a record number of light directions on the scene!!! OK – already with all the hype – I just wanted to see what it looked like in print. I don’t know if I set any record or not, but I did managed to light this image with only one flash! So you say – OK, Mr. Ziser, How did you get a back light on the subjects along with that very nice loop lighting pattern on their faces, and get the ambient balanced perfectly as well?? If it’s only one flash, then you must have used some “Smoke and Mirrors” for the shot. Well, you would be half right if that’s what you thought – smoke – NO; mirrors – YES.

National Geographic awards one Grant for Photography annually to a professional photojournalist. The Grant monies go directly to funding the production of a photography project. The project may be considered for publication in National Geographic magazine and/or the National Geographic magazine website or for possible exhibit at National Geographic headquarters or other venues. Individuals who would like to be considered for the NG Grant must submit a Grant Application according to the guidelines described below.

The question rose on dpreview a few days ago “How to shoot sunsets?” and resulted in a very interesting thread of 42 posts.In this article I will try, once more, to summarize this thread while also introducing to it some of my personal knowledge since I’m quite a landscape photography lover.

Right Time, Right Place: The series exploring the history of photography examines how photographers dealt with events like D-Day, the Holocaust and Hiroshima. Some strong language.
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Of the three DSLRs we tested standared high speed and UDMA cards with, the fastest shooter – the Canon EOS-40D – worked better with the slower card. This demonstrates that high speed performance is not always enhanced by the use of UDMA cards – if your camera doesn’t state UDMA card support, it’s almost certainly better to stick with 133x high speed cards, both to save money and to maintain optimal performance. The only exception is if you use large cards and don’t want to wait for long periods when emptying them. Even so, you will need to invest in a UDMA card reader and, most likely, a Firewire expansion port. But if you shoot RAW and your camera does support UDMA, you probably will benefit from using UDMA cards.

Фотокомпозиции нельзя научить в принципе. Это, как музыкальный слух, либо он есть (в принципе наличие “фотоинтуиции” можно элементарно проверить), и его можно и нужно развивать, либо там “медведь потоптался”, и тут уж извините, остается либо барабан, либо рэп…

Before the recent rise of the digital SLR, medium format film cameras were often the tool of choice for night photography. For many night photographers this still holds true. Due to longer focal lengths, and film reciprocity, a standard full moon exposure for medium format film can often run in the 15-20 minute range at f/8. With clear skies, a 15-20 minute exposure produces a star trail length that hits a personal sweet spot for me. I will often push the Canon 5D into the 10-12 minute range to get longer star trails. With noise reduction this ties up the camera for 20-25 minutes per shot, giving you shorter star trails than film, and less productivity.

Итак, пост будет про основы основ фотографии. Это то, на чем базируется искусство фотографии. Это законы, лежащие в основе мастерства фотографа. И, наконец, это принципы, следуя которым, любой новичок может значительно улучшить свои навыки фотографирования.

Mark Galer has delivered an eSeminar for Adobe on commercial retouching. If you would like to download the slides to this eSeminar download them at the jump.

Photographer Jon MacKinnon, like me, he’s an aficionado for the DIY stuff.

He contact me a couple of weeks ago saying the he recently started a Discussion group at Flickr concerning my Lighting Mod posts (do you still remember them?) DIY: 580EX Color Gels Printing Diagram and DIY: Black Straws Snoot Grid (Part 1) and the discussions are all about diagrams for different flash models and you can even add your own model if it isn’t already there.

The hulking Mt. Prospect 90mm lens and the Rodenstock 68mm lens (both are f/1.0) are notably sharper and less “foggy”, despite all lenses being crisp and clear through the viewfinder. A focussing rail would make critical focussing much easier, but at f/1.0 (and f/0.75), there was never a problem with getting a high enough shutter speed to hand-hold the lenses (the 90mm lens is about 2 kilograms!).

All lenses have a limit to how close they can focus. A typical lens, for example, may not be able to focus on anything closer than 30cm. This is because as objects move closer to the lens, the focal point moves further back, eventually beyond the plane of the film or sensor. An obvious way around this problem is to move the lens further away from the camera. That’s what macro extension tubes do.