Thursday 22 March 2007

Vulture photo

I have read an article that is not about techniques or filters. I am almost sure you all can recognize the photo of a vulture behind a near death girl in Africa. It gained a lot of prizes (Pulitzer for example) and it showed a real situation in that continent.

But reality can have several faces. In this article we can see a bit about... ethical photography? It is lawful to show only what you want, or should your photos reflect the real situation?

In this case, the photographer decided to show a terrific, but not very truthful, photo. Instead of gimp/photoshop he used a "legal" camera technique.

It is up to you to decide.

Link - Enlace



PS: The articule is in Spanish

Tuesday 20 March 2007

So true...

Thursday 15 March 2007

Always looking for inspiration...

This has popped up on a few different photographic blogs this week and if you really like people photography and are striving for that contemporary look with feel-good factor and have 3 minutes to spare, go and check out this flipbook presentation by George Lange.

It will leave you with a smile on you face and have you thinking how can you apply his techniques to you own images. Just look at the wonderful quality of light that the images exude...

...and if you still have the time afterwards, and are suitably inspired, take a look at the rest of his website.

Tuesday 13 March 2007

A box with a hole... the fascinating world of the pinhole camera...

With the modern digital camera its very easy to become complacent about making images... the camera can focus, meter, judge colour temperature, sharpen, add contrast etc.. etc... perfect photo's almost all the time no..???

How about a camera that uses film (oh no not the f word..!), has no shutter button, you can't focus it.. hell... it doesn't even have a lens... just a very small hole... welcome to the world of the pinhole camera.


Exposure times in bright sunlight with a slow film can be measured in tens of seconds and as the sun goes down you could be talking hours to expose the film correctly... issues with Reciprocity failure, colour shifts, grain... and you can't even see what you got until the film comes back from the lab...!.. Why oh why would anyone use such a god forsaken contraption... Because you can create wonderful ethereal images, images that no amount of photoshop trickery can produce, they are not perfect and that's exactly their beauty...


If your a bit of a DIY expert you can even make one yourself (like this guy who built one from a 150 year old child's skull !!), if not, then you can go to Zero Image who have an entire range to choose from...


And for those of you who can't bear the thought of having to use film, you can even turn your digital SLR into a pinhole...

Recommended Galleries and reading :

Isabelle Lousberg...
Zeb Andrews...
Mackeson...
The Pinhole Resource...

Wednesday 7 March 2007

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's stunning imagery...

I highly recommend that you go and take a look at the 'Turkey Cinemascope' portfolio of Nuri Bilge Ceylan, a film director from Istanbul, whose panoramic images capturing both landscapes and portraits exemplify the stunning use of light to create a three dimensionality that is so difficult to achieve and often the holy grail of many photographers.

I draw a lot of inspiration and motivation from viewing outstanding images from other photographers and then trying to achieve the same. I personally think that to become a better photographer you have to look at photographs, understand what you like and don't like and try and put those feelings back into your own photography...

These images must look stunning in print (you can get a idea from the photo below of his exhibition in Thessaloniki)... looking at his website I see that he will exhibit in Granada during the Cines del Sur Film Festival which is from the 9th-17th June...

Should we organise a club trip..??


Lens Hoods...

Lens hoods are good... they keep that straylight out of your lens and prevent something called 'flare', which is even more important to prevent if you permanently have a UV filter stuck on the end of your lens (we'll leave the filter or no filter debate for another time)...

If you lens comes with one already... great... make sure you use it... but with a lot of lenses nowadays its an optional extra... and often an expensive one... well.. lenshoods.co.uk comes to the rescue with free printable lenshoods which you can make out of paper or thin plastic... I'm certainly going to give it a try... I'll let you know how I get on...

Thursday 1 March 2007

Virtual collages...

A few people have asked how I did the collage effect on the Torres Kio image I presented recently.

Basically, you have to choose a spot where you see the entire scene you want to capture. Select a focal length, not so long that you need 200 photos and not too short that you only get 3. Set your camera to manual (if you can) so the exposure doesn't differ between each photo and start clicking away.. but don't change your position and try and move the camera around a bit so the images are not all on the same plane (and don't forget to re-focus as you go along).

Then you need any image manipulation software that allows you to resize, rotate to any angle, and change opacity of your images... and then you basically start overlaying the images on top of each other to build up the complete scene... adjust contrast and saturation to taste and there you have it...

It can be a bit time consuming depending on the amount of images you have and how precisely you want to match them up... but it can make an otherwise touristy shot turn into something a bit move interesting...

There's a tutorial over at Photojojo that describes the technique in detail that you should take a look at, there also other examples that may inspire you further...