Month: January 2013

Categories
Blogs Reference

Blogs I Read

Here is a list of photography blogs that I read on a regular basis.  Maybe not daily, but they are all linked to my  Reader so that I can easily read every post that they make.  Some post more frequently than others, and some post more on the art, business, technique or state of photography.

 
Blog Name Subject Matter Work Safe
Andy Beel Black & White Photography Yes
Art In Nature Beautiful Nature Photography Yes
Awake the Light Nature Photography with an Artistic Flair Yes
Beautiful Landscape Fine Art Photography, Business Yes
DIY Photography Do-It-Yourself photography accessories Yes
Fotoblur The Best of Fotoblur.com No
Inside Glamour The Business of Photography Yes
Joe McNally’s Blog Joe’s Life and Times Yes
Joshua Taylor Photography Gardens and Landscapes Yes
The Joy of Photography Matthew Jordan Smith’s Life Yes
Lighting Essential for Photographers Photography as a Business, Home of Project 52, a 52 Week Online Photography Business Course Yes
Photography Improvement Photography Technique Yes
Pretty Girl Shooter Glamour Photography No
The Slanted Lens Jay P. Morgan’s Blog on Lighting. Videos are VERY ad heavy Yes
Smoking Strobes Portraiture and Lighting No
Speedliting Syl Arena’s Blog on Canon Speedliting Yes
Strobist David Hobby’s Blog on Off-Camera Flash Yes
Zen Through The Lens Tuan Pham’s blog on Zen Insights and How They Relate to Photography Yes

 

Some of these, like Andy Beel, Joshua Taylor and Ed Knepley I read primarily because they are friends or acquaintances whose work I like and I read their blogs to keep up with them.  I also read a lot about lighting and portraiture, some of which includes nudes, like Pretty Girl Shooter and Smoking Strobes.  Read at your own risk.

Categories
Blogs Books Lightroom Photoshop Reference Techniques

Tim Grey

Tim Grey is responsible for accelerating my grasp of Photoshop.  He does a good job of identifying common issues that people have with photo processing in Adobe’s applications and writing well thought out answers to address the problems.  His Digital Darkroom Quarterly (now called Pixology) and his Ask Tim Grey newsletter provide easy to understand answers to questions you might not have even thought to ask.

Tim is an expert in Photoshop and Lightroom, with extremely good access to Adobe for questions that involve “why does this Photoshop filter work this way?”  He is also a published author, with several books on color management and digital darkroom workflow, including both Photoshop and Lightroom workflows.

Categories
Blogs Lighting Portrait Reference Video Workshops

Zack Arias

Zack is famous for his OneLight portraits.  I read about Zack in someone’s blog a long time ago and followed his blog for quite a while.

In this video from Creative Live, Zack discusses the relationship between flash power and aperture.

Zack and Creative Live have produced a series of videos that can be purchased based on his 3 day workshop.  Almost like being there, but you get the added flexibility to repeat any portion of the workshop that you didn’t quite catch, or that you are having difficulty grasping.

Categories
News Workshops

“Illuminating Creativity – A Photography Seminar”

I just received the following email from the Baltimore Camera Club:

Nationally acclaimed photographer John Paul Caponigro is conducting his unique one day photography seminar

“Illuminating Creativity – A Photography Seminar”
Saturday March 9, 2013 8:30 AM – 4:30 PM
Kelley Hall on the Goucher College Campus, Towson, MD
sponsored by the Baltimore Camera Club.

You can see more information at http://www.baltimorecameraclub.org/Caponigro_redirect.html

For more information please contact: Karen Messick at 410-337-2939 or karenskier AT aol DOT com

Information about John Paul Caponigro is available at:
http://www.johnpaulcaponigro.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Caponigro

You may or may not know, the BCC had scheduled John Paul last year, however he had to cancel at the last minute due to a family emergency. The BCC rescheduled him again this year.

Categories
Abstract Blog Visual Design

Abstract Photography

Image of Composition VIII by Wassily Kandinsky
Composition VIII – Wassily Kandinsky

For the longest time I had no appreciation for abstract art.  I could not understand what it was that people saw in it.  Certainly I was familiar with and even liked Wassily Kandinsky’s Composition VIII pictured above, but it didn’t have any real meaning for me.  I could not understand it.

Over the years my wife, a trained graphic artist and now high school science teacher, would try to convince me that I did not need to like something just because it was a “famous” piece of art.  And that just because I liked something, didn’t mean that I actually had to understand “why” I liked it.  It was OK to just appreciate the work that I liked and ignore the work that I didn’t.

CRW_1272_cropWith that foundation laid, when I met Joe Miller and was able to spend some time discussing photography, and that led to Joe’s preferred subject matter, abstract photography.  Joe was very patient with me, spending lots of time describing how lines, shapes, colors, textures and perspective all affect the way that we perceive a scene.  He spent a great deal of time explaining how Dave Carter, Joe’s longtime friend whom I met briefly before he passed away, would apply the psychological implications of visual design to his critiques of images.  Joe encouraged me to explore design-based, rather than subject-based, photography in a Portfolio Project for NVPS, for which I decided to work with the stained glass windows in Joe’s studio, but took all of the photographs in InfraRed using my converted Canon 10D.  The lack of color forced me to concentrate on the lines, tones and textures of the glass, however with the IR camera I got unexpected (for me) results.  Blues became translucent and bright, while reds became opaque and dark, frequently pure black.

All of this helped me to develop not only an appreciation of abstracts, but a greater appreciation of images in general.  It greatly improved my ability to abstract an image into its component shapes, which has improved my visual design.  I now find that I am framing images based on principles of visual design, even when I am shooting sporting events.

Categories
Reference Video

Dean Collins

Also known as the “Dean of Photography” was the very first person to present lighting in a way that I could grasp.  His explanations of 3 Dimensional Contrast lighting, describing specular, diffuse and shadow areas of the subject got me thinking in whole new ways about photography and how the light affects what we are seeing.

Sadly Dean was gone before I had ever heard of him, but his videos are still available from Software Cinema and I have watched a number of them.

His videos allowed me to develop new ideas about how I might light and shoot different subjects.  It was amazing to me how he would produce drastically different images outdoors by simply using a reflector and a scrim.  Subject on one side you get a high-key image, move to the other side and get a low-key image.

He also wrote a booklet about Do-It-Yourself scrims, reflectors and flash modifiers using schedule 40 PVC pipe called Tinker Tubes.  I have seen this booklet on the web, but it is copyrighted work so please do not download it illegally.  There are plenty of copy-cat productions on the web like this, but Dean’s designs are better, in my opinion.

It is well worth your time to watch more of his presentations, especially if you are trying to learn lighting and exposure.

Categories
Books Lightroom Photoshop Reference Websites

Scott Kelby

kelbytraining_titlelogoScott Kelby is quite the entrepreneur.  He turned a graphic arts business into a multi-million dollar per year enterprise, largely by working closely with Adobe to develop extensive training videos on nearly all aspects of photography and Adobe’s products all available at Kelby Training.

He also created the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, a professional organization of graphic designers and photographers where people share tips and effects that can be accomplished with Photoshop and its associated Creative Suite applications.

I initially purchased a few of the Kelby Training videos on DVD, which I loaned throughout my camera club for a couple of years.  This was shortly after Photoshop CS4 was released, and the CS3 videos all went on sale for 1/2 price.  But they convinced me that the video training would work for me, and that I had a tremendous amount still to learn.  For a couple of years I used their online training videos.  At $200 per year, it was about what I expected to pay for a 2 day seminar with no personal interaction.  This gave me access to the hundreds of videos that Kelby Training offers, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  Over those couple of years I learned a great deal about Photoshop, Camera Raw and Lightroom, as well as watching numerous photography oriented videos from people like Joe McNally, Frank Doorhof and Jay Maisel.

I have also read a number of Scott Kelby’s books, however I found them to be somewhat trivial for my taste.  Everything that I have read by Scott is a cookbook photography methodology.  That is, you are given a recipe of such and such a lens, at such aperture and exposure.  If you have a reasonable grasp of exposure, depth of field and focus I believe that you will find them too basic as well.

But give the Kelby Training site a spin, I think that you will find at least something that piques your fancy.