Fall on the tundra, Chugach Mountains, Alaska
Seeing all the great fall images around the web lately, I’m reaffirmed at how much we photographers love fall.
The color of the world changes so dramatically over the course of a few beautiful weeks when leaves slowly turn from summer green to their bright hues of yellow, red and orange. This wonderful change has us scrambling for our tripods and extra memory cards as we head out the door in droves with our cameras to make autumn landscape and nature images.
Leaves aren’t the only thing to change color. Grass also takes on it’s golden hue which leaves us with entire fields of yellow and bronze. Berries take on their full saturated brilliance as their sugar content rises to maximum levels, which has the birds and bears scrambling to gobble up as many as they can before that first big frost withers them. [click to continue…]
The Light Craft Workshop Fader ND Ultra MK II filter is one of the most cost effective tools available for HDSLR work. When shooting video with a Canon HDSLR, we use what are called “Native ISO’s”. Through extensive testing by many reliable sources out there, myself included, we have found that popular Canon HDSLR cameras like the Canon 5D Mark II, the Canon 7D and Canon 1D Mark IV use a type of gain feature when moving up the ISO scale. This means that ISO 250 will have a greater signal to noise ratio than the native 160 ISO. This is barley noticeable when you are shooting with a 21MP camera, however when the image is downsized to a mere 2K for video, the noise is prevalent. [click to continue…]
The sheer amount of photography related material, links, blogs and fodder that flies around the Twitter world ever day is simply astounding. You could literally sit in front of your computer all day long reloading tweets and still not learn everything there is to know about photography news, events, tips, techniques or see the millions of great images that people post every day.
Of course, no one wants to do that, so what’s the best way to follow along with the pertinent info while still getting any work done and maintaining a life outside of computertwitterworldland?
Simple. You follow the right group of Twitterers. Here’s a list of some of the people that you should be following if you want to stay updated about the world of photography. You’re probably already following some, if not all of them. This list is by no means close to complete, and if you find a great Twitter resource, be sure and post it in the comment section below.
And of course, it goes without saying that you should be also following The Photoletariat.
1. photojack: I put him first because he seems to have earned a place as one of the most prolific photo-tweeters. (The rest are in no particular order.) Travel photographer and social media coach Jack Hollingsworth seems to have his mouse finger on the pulse of the photography world. He posts an astounding amount of material each day, and if you happen to have something retweeted by him, it will be seen by a huge number of people.
2. chasejarvis: One of the highest read photo bloggers and twitterers on the web, Seattle based commercial photographer Chase Jarvis posts a variety of industry fodder, introspective blurbs and inspirational tips that any shooter would find interesting. With over 42,000 followers, he’s probably the most read photographer on Twitter. [click to continue…]
The Litepanels Micro Pro Hybrid is one of the best tools for both stills and video. It is a great way to add a little eye light or kill a shadow. They can be placed almost anywhere and generate almost no heat whatsoever. Litepanels was one of the first companies to make cinema ready LED lights and have crossed over to flash photography with the new Micro Pro Hybrid. [click to continue…]
Over the past two months, I have been shooting a Hang Gliding Documentary. This past week we were in Casa Grande, Arizona for the Santa Cruz Flats Races. When we arrived in Arizona the sunset was gorgeous, providing the perfect opportunity to test out the Reel Moments time-lapse App from Nexvio on my iPhone 4. Reel Moments takes all of the guesswork out of shooting time-lapse photography. The App does it all for you. You simply go to the settings and plug in what you want as the end result. It has some limitations but for the most part it’s dead on. The hotel had these bungee cords to keep the furniture from blowing away; we snagged one and strapped our OWLE Bubo to the railing of the top floor. The wide-angle lens and Polarizer really helped to get the most out of the sky. [click to continue…]
Photographer, computer network administrator and overall tech junkie are all adjectives that accurately describe me. Apple fanboy, however, I am not. While I am a Mac user and have owned no less then three iPods, I’ve never had the urge or need to get an iPhone or wait in long lines during the launch of them over the past three years. This all changed for me, starting June 15th when pre-ordering was available for the iPhone 4. [click to continue…]
For those photographers who have a deep love for wilderness and the outdoors, becoming a professional outdoor photographer seems like a very natural and appealing path. It’s no secret, most of us get into this business because we like to be outside, where we can enjoy the simple beauty and power of nature away from computers, business meetings, traffic, cell phones and other life distractions. Once you hit the trail with your camera, all that other stuff falls away, and what you’re left with is your energy, your creativity and your desire to make photographs that represent the way you feel about being outside.
However, providing that you’re competent behind the camera and are capable of creating great imagery, it’s the inside stuff that really counts. The business part. The computers and cell phone stuff, and depending on where you live, sometimes the traffic. That’s the stuff that makes you money, anyway. [click to continue…]
High Dynamic Range is, in concept, an amazing tool for photographers. The idea that bracket exposing difficult-to-meter scenes and then merging them together for a perfectly exposed photo seems magical. There is a problem with HDR though, it’s often used in a manner that detracts so much from the original photograph that it turns into a completely different medium, one that isn’t really photography but more digital art. At the core, this is not what HDR photographs should look like. It’s just silly. It’s surreal and a nice piece of digital art, but it’s no longer photography. [click to continue…]
