Monthly Archives: May 2007

What Photography Means To Me

Lens Hoods Are A Good Thing

So last night after dinner, we (the wife and kids) decide to go for a walk. It was super-nice outside — no clouds, a little breeze, and warm weather. It was still light out, but the sun would be setting before we returned. I decided to take the camera and get some shots of the kids running around and playing.

I went with the 105mm macro because it’s my fastest lens at f/2.8. Okay, it’s not the fastest lens around, but it’s MY fastest lens. I figured it would come in handy with the light dropping off as the sun went down. I’m also starting to really like using a prime rather than a zoom — it makes you think a little harder about what you’re doing.

So the camera is ready to go; I grabbed an extra battery, extra memory card, lens cloth, and my flash (in case it got too dark out). Cargo pockets are a good thing, by the way. I thought I had everything, but I also had that feeling that I was forgetting something. I just couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Oh well, we took off and I started shooting.

For the first part of our walk, we were heading to the west so the sun was pretty much in front of us (maybe a little off to the left). I’m snapping away here and there, checking my shots every once in a while. Then it dawned on me — I should have strapped on the lens hood before I left. Nothing bad was really showing up in my shots, but I really wish I had the hood with me. On my two other lenses, I keep the hood on the lens in reverse so I can store them easily. Those lenses have a bayonet style hood attachment, so it’s easy to do. My macro lens, on the other hand, has a threaded attachment, so I can’t store it on the lens backwards.

When we got back, I dumped the photos to the computer and started glancing through them. DANG IT!!! More than one of my shots had a bunch of glare, pretty much ruining the shot. DANG IT, DANG IT, DANG IT!!! I wasn’t shooting straight into the sun, but it was close enough that the front element caught some direct sunlight. It didn’t really show up on the in-camera preview, but it was certainly obvious on the computer screen.

So my point to this whole story is ALWAYS USE YOUR LENS HOOD — it’s a good thing. You never know when you’re going to ruin a shot by not having it, and there’s really no good reason NOT to have it on the lens. Still not convinced? Here are some reasons why lens hoods are a good thing.

They reduce the chance of lens glare and lens flare, as noted above.
They cut out extra ambient light, thus increasing the contrast in your image, thus making it appear sharper.
They help protect the front element in case of bumps and run-ins.
They act as an umbrella in case of a slight drizzle.
The lens comes with one at no extra cost.
Most are bayonet style, so you can turn them around and store them on the lens while not in use.
And finally… they make your camera look way cooler.

So if you take anything from this article, REMEMBER TO ALWAYS USE YOUR LENS HOOD! I know I’ll be a little more mindful about it from now on.

My Favorite Photo and Background Story

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Jim Goldstein at JMG-Galleries is running a photography blog project with the topic being your Favorite Photo and Background Story. The deadline is May 18th, so there’s still plenty of time for you get over there and check out the rules — all you need is a blog, a favorite photo, and a story that goes with it.

I’ve posted this one before (about 1 month ago), but I’ll add a bit to what was in the previous post. Also, you can see how I did the editing in that previous post.

This photo is one of my New York photos that turned out pretty good, and I wasn’t really expecting it to. I took this shot while standing on the Staten Island Ferry as I was returning to Manhattan. My brother was out visiting from Idaho, and I was showing him around the city. I was a little upset because of the weather, but now I’m actually glad it wasn’t sunny and dry — otherwise this shot wouldn’t have happened. It was kind of a cold drizzly day with low cloud cover and a bit of fog and light rain. Luckily it wasn’t too dark out because I was shooting handheld on a moving boat zoomed in at 200mm (that’s like a triple offense or something), but I managed to squeak out a shutter speed of 1/200 seconds with a decent aperture. I was also standing on the front of the boat, kind of tucked back into the overhang to avoid the rain drops trying to get at my lens. I managed to get a few shots off before a gust of wind blew water all over the front of the camera.

I composed the shot in the vertical direction so that the low clouds and the water would occupy about the same amount of space within the frame. This would effectively center the background of hazed out buildings. I did my horizontal composition to offset the boat just slightly from the center, giving it extra room in the direction is was heading. This all took several tries since I was wobbling around on a boat, but I finally got one that turned out just right. This shot wasn’t rotated or cropped in the post-processing — just a black & white conversion.

There are several elements of this photo that make it my favorite. The fog and low cloud cover was just thick enough to fade out the buildings and bring focus to the boat. The long focal length compresses the perceived distance between the boat and the buildings, making the boat appear larger and closer to the shore than it really was. I like the dark tones and amount of contrast in the boat as compared to the washed out background. And I like the small amount of exhaust smoke rising from the top of the boat, just barely visible. Aside from those things, I suppose the main reason it’s my favorite is because I never imagined that it would turn out well because of the conditions — I actually didn’t touch it in Photoshop for the longest time because it just didn’t do anything for me. I gave it a chance in black & white, and I was hooked from that moment forward.

Photo by Brian Auer
06/26/06 New York, NY
Under the Weather
Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Konica Minolta AF DT 18-200
300mm equiv * f/8 * 1/200s * ISO100

Dandelion Dandy

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Big beautiful spring flowers are great for macro photography, with their brilliant colors and interesting shapes. I was in the mood for taking some macro shots, and I wanted a bit of a challenge. So rather than shooting some brilliant spring flowers, I chose to challenge myself by shooting an everyday weed. My goal was to capture the pesky dandelion in a non-typical way. I picked the flower, brought it inside, and set it on a black background. I set up next to my south-facing sliding glass door in order to utilize the available light. I also placed a white foam board on the back side of the flower to get a little more even lighting. I set up the tripod with the macro lens set to full magnification and started shooting away. With the composition of this photo, I tried a couple different apertures to vary the depth of field, but I settled on an f-number of f/32 because I thought it looked better in full focus. I ended up with a couple other compositions I liked, but this one was my favorite.

The JPEG (1) of this photo turned out pretty bright and contrasty, but it was a bit cool on the white balance. You can see the background material actually came out sort of blue rather than black. The RAW file (2) was processed to fix this, though I might have gone a little too far. The first thing I did was a curves adjustment (3) to get some of the contrast back from the RAW file. Then I Isolated the flower from the background by using the red channel to create an advanced layer mask. I applied the mask to a levels adjustment (4) and forced the background canvas to go black. Then another minor curves adjustment (5) on the entire image. I then sharpened the image (6) and masked using a soft brush at 10% opacity along the interfaces between the petals and the background in order to reduce the halo effect from the sharpening. I wasn’t happy with the color of the image (seemed too orange to me), so I applied a yellow photo filter (7) at 100% while preserving the luminosity. The last thing I did was some burning with a curves adjustment and a layer mask (8). I did some very selective burning around the center of the flower to give it more contrast and perceived sharpness.

Photo by Brian Auer
04/29/07 Flemington, NJ
Dandelion
Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Sigma MACRO 105mm f/2.8 EX DG
158mm equiv * f/32 * 4.0s * ISO100

Photography Related Top 5′s

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Darren Rowse put on a group writing project over at Problogger.net, lots of people participated (including me), and now it’s over. I didn’t read every single entry into the project (893 of them), but I pulled out the obvious photography-related entries and gave them a read. All of them offered up different “Top 5″ articles (this was the project topic) and all of them were very much worth reading. So here are the photography entries along with those that I think are applicable to photography, in the order I bookmarked them.

5 Steps to Securing Your Data
Top 5 Reasons Freelancing is a Bad Idea
My Top 5 Future Photowalking Locations
My Top 5 Sources of Inspiration in Photography
5 Tips for Getting Better Photographs
My Top 5 Brisbaine Photos
Photo Kayaker Top 5 Tips for Shooting Paddlers
Top 5 Ways to Get a Good Photo
5 Ways to Improve Your Photography
Top 5 Tricks for Taking Professional Looking Photos With Your Digital Camera
Top 5 Tips for Better Photographs

If you’d like to see the entire list of entries to Darren’s project, head over to the Group Writing Project Full Submission List at Problogger.net. There is a ton of interesting stuff in there.

River Flood

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New Jersey is a funny place when it comes to flooding rivers. It doesn’t take much rain to make every river flood over at least a little bit. The day I took this photo was immediately after more than a little bit of rain though — it was a serious downpour. Every road and bridge even close to a river was flooded out, but I managed to find one that was still accessible. I took this photo while standing on a bridge overlooking the flood plain. I used my wide angle zoom lens set at 10mm to get more of the water in the shot, plus it makes it look a little more expansive than it really is. To give you an idea of just how flooded things were, the river (about 40 feet wide) typically flows to the right of the trees in the center of the frame. Everything to the left of the trees sits about 4 to 5 feet higher than the river, and it’s typically used as a horse pasture. Also, the river was flooded further off to the right of the frame by about another 100 feet. It was a big rain.

The JPEG (1) turned out a bit dark, but at least the shadows weren’t clipped. A little tweaking in ACR, and the RAW file output (2) looked pretty good for starters. Before I did any further editing, I made a mask to separate the sky from the rest of the image so I could adjust each independently. Then I applied a curves adjustment to everything but the sky to brighten it up (3) by pulling the middle of the RGB curve up and to the left. The sky got a levels adjustment (4) with a black point of 71 and a white point of 250, and a curves adjustment (5) by pulling the middle of the RGB curve down and to the right for more darkening. At this point, I fiddled around with the image for quite some time to try to make something more of it — I just wasn’t impressed. I remembered a tutorial at the Digital Photography School called “How to Make Digital Photos Look Like Lomo Photography” — so I thought I’d give it a try. To start, I applied a serious curves adjustment layer with a strong “S” curve to really increase the contrast (6). Then I created a new layer on top of the stack, filled it with black, and set the blending mode to “hue” at 40% fill (7). The last step consisted of applying the unsharp mask (8) at an amount of 50%, a radius of 50 pixels, and a threshold of 0.

Photo by Brian Auer
04/16/07 Three Bridges, NJ
River Flood
Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM
15mm equiv * f/16 * 1/90s * ISO100

My Top 5 Sources of Inspiration in Photography

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Every photographer has some source of inspiration that drives them to take the photos that they do. Your source of inspiration is that thing that tells you what to photograph, how to compose it, what equipment to use, and when to release the shutter. Everybody has different sources, and therefore, everybody has different photos.

I have to admit that my inspiration for writing this didn’t come without the help from a few others. In the same day, two group writing projects were brought to my attention by two of my favorite writers. First, Vivien from Inspiration Bit, asked her readers to write about their “Source of Inspiration“. Naturally, I applied this to my favorite hobby. Photography is an art, and artists run on the fuel of inspiration. Then, Darren Rowse from Problogger, asked his readers to participate in a “Top 5 Group Writing Project” in any category of their choice. So again, I applied this to my favorite hobby. At first, I thought about doing a separate post for each project, but then I figured “why not kill two birds with one stone?” And so “My Top 5 Sources of Inspiration in Photography” post was born. If anybody else wants to participate in these projects, get over there and read the rules — there’s still plenty of time.

So in order of ascending importance, here are my top 5 sources of inspiration in photography.

Accomplishments of Mankind

I’m always amazed at the things we (humans) are capable of. I think people forget how far we’ve come in the last 1000, 100, 10, and even 1 year. Our lives are filled with stuff that was invented and built by other humans. Skyscrapers, bridges, machinery, vehicles, entire cities, and our cameras — all completely unnatural, yet so normal to us. I find this artificial world to be so fascinating, and it inspires me to capture it in my images. The things we know today will disappear and change before the end of tomorrow. I look back at images of our creations from the past, and it helps to give me a better appreciation for what we have today. I hope that some of my images will do the same 50 years from now.

Beauty of Nature

The accomplishments of man are amazing, but nature’s beauty is unmatched. There’s something so pure and innocent about it. Nobody invented it, thought it up, or built it — it just is, it always has been, and it always will be. Sure, things change over time, but that doesn’t make it any less natural. I don’t know what it is about pure untouched nature, but it catches our eye. Beautiful scenes and landscapes are out there waiting to be discovered — and if a photographer is there, waiting to be photographed. You can’t take nature’s beauty back with you to your home, but a good photograph is a close second. Capturing nature in a photo is one thing, but capturing the beauty of nature in a photograph is entirely different.

Other Photographers

I’m a learner — always have been, always will be. I loved school, and I don’t doubt that I’ll end up back in college again some day. If I’m not formally learning in a school system, I’m picking up things from people with a common interest. Photographers inspire me to try harder, try new things, and see things differently. I look though portfolios and galleries, making mental notes of the elements, compositions, post-processing, styles, and subjects that I like. I try to take those things and incorporate them into my own work — not for the sake of copying, but for growth and learning on my part. I also read a lot of articles and blogs about photography. I find these things to be a great source of inspiration when I come across a thought or technique that’s new to me. I usually can’t wait to get out and experiment with these new things. I can only hope that what knowledge I have can be passed on to other photographers through my photography and my writing.

Challenge

I’m so extremely competitive when it comes to the things I’m passionate about — I’ve always been that way. I take challenges and competitions as personal goals in order to better myself in some way. Photography contests are one way I challenge myself. I put my work up against the work of other photographers, in hopes that other people will enjoy my photography. I do it for myself, and by that I mean that I don’t compete using photos that I think other people will like — I use the photos I like. Another way I get inspiration through challenge is to set goals or restrictions on myself in such a way that I’ll have to get unconventional. I might go out for a shoot with just one lens on the camera, forcing myself to find new compositions that I might have otherwise overlooked. I might restrict myself to photograph things or scenes that contain one specific color or shape. In Photoshop, I may force myself to use one specific editing technique, then try to make something of it. Whenever I challenge myself, the end results aren’t always the best, but I usually learn something worth hanging on to for future use.

My Kids

My kids are the whole reason I started taking pictures and getting into digital photography. For several years, they were all I would take pictures of. I still take a lot of photos of the kids, but I’ve expanded into other parts of photography too. At this moment, I probably have around 12,000 photos of the kids. They always inspire me to take more photos of them; It’s such an enjoyable way to spend time photographing — especially when they aren’t paying attention to the camera and just acting like themselves. My kids are also inspiring me in new ways as of late. I bought them a kid camera about six months ago, and they’re both constantly taking pictures. It’s very interesting to see the things that come out of that camera. They aren’t thinking about compositions, shutter speeds, apertures, lens quality, focal length, camera shake, etc. They just take pictures. I’ve actually started a set (Through the Eyes of Children) on my Flickr account that contains some of my more favorite photos taken by my kids or their friends. Check it out, go get inspired.

What is your top source of inspiration in photography?

Interview With Paul O’ Connor

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Paul O’ Connor is the mastermind behind a new photography resource called photographyVoter. It’s a site modeled after digg, but with a strict focus on photography. With his new site now one month old, Paul has agreed to an interview with me. Here is our conversation.

When did the site officially launch? And how long did it take before people found out about it?

The website is up just under one month now. It was something we initially looked at as a methodology of sharing articles/tutorials etc. amongst a group of friends who shared an interest in photography. After a short while and with the knowledge that there was quite a voice for a Photography section on Digg, we decided to make the site available online. To make people aware of the website, we posted on a few forums and were picked up by some bloggers (including Epic Edits). In addition to this, we posted on Digg itself and reddit and the site grew from there.

The site went live under the domain name of diggPhotography.com — then it was quickly changed to photographyVoter.com. What’s the scoop on that? Who shut down the first domain? How long did it take for it to get shut down?

The issue of the name is one I’ve seen mentioned on a few blogs. Basically we had the system designed and ready for use but we hadn’t a name. It was simply a case of going to our registrar’s website and seeing what was available. After several failed searches, we came up with diggPhotography.com, snapped it and and put the website live under that name. This was posted on a couple of forums. It was only later in the day that we discussed trademark implications and indeed, after some research, it became apparent that the people at Digg are quite protective about their domain name (Google ‘Digg cease and desist’). This is fair enough as they are required by law to pursue unauthorized use of their trademark. We quickly took the site down (with only a couple of users registered) and relaunched as photographyVoter.com.

What prompted you to start a digg-like site just for photography? Are you a photographer? Are you a digg user? What made you connect the dots?

I’m probably crossing over on ground covered in the first question but the decision came about as a result of a couple of things. Firstly, I am a photography enthusiast and spend a lot of time reading blogs/tutorials etc. A lot of the time, I’d share these links with a group of friends who shared the interest. I am also a Digg user and saw several requests on there for a Photography section – indeed one of the search terms I spent a lot of time typing into Digg was ‘Photography’. Once we got the initial site up and running, it seemed like a good idea to make it available online. The site is still very much in it’s infancy but we’ve had a lot of visitors which can be largely tracked back to mentions we’ve had from various blogs. Personally, I find it a really useful resource and I think as more users join up and participate by adding and voting on stories, it’ll become more and more so.

So you were a digg user. Are you still? And what other social networks do you favor or belong to?

I am still a Digg user but not on such a scale as I was before due to the fact my main use was for photography articles. I keep tabs on a number of photography forums and subscribe to a number of photography blogs.

You mention having a lot of visitors, and I’ve also noticed many new users in the last several weeks. Would you mind sharing any stats with us (don’t worry, we’ll understand if you don’t)? Things like visitors/day, submissions/day, votes/day, # of registered users/day, etc. Maybe some area or bar charts? You know — eye candy.

I’ll have to come back to you on that one – I’ll dig (no pun intended) up some barcharts. All I can say is that we have being experiencing consistent growth since the launch of the website in both visitors and signed-up members. Mentions on a couple of blogs also saw a spike in sign-ups.

What do you plan to do in the future to help ensure the growth of the site? Ever put any thought into things like vote-count buttons or text links that bloggers can place on their articles to assist with submissions and votes? How about a Firefox extension?

To be honest, the site has grown so quick that we haven’t had a chance to go through future plans. To date, we’ve been making some minor adjustments to keep the website running smoothly. Vote-count buttons are something that have been suggested by a number of users and we will certainly be adding that. The other modifications we’ll be making are behind the scenes to ensure the site will not suffer slowdown as more users visit. We are very aware that it’s a community-driven website and we are always happy to hear suggestions from those same users.

Let’s say this thing really takes off sometime in the next 6 to 12 months and gains some real visibility. How do you think digg will respond? Do you expect that they would open up a photography section? Or, are they already planning on it? And if they did, what do you think this would do to photographyVoter?

It has been rumoured for some time that Digg are planning to add a photography section but to date, this hasn’t happened. To be honest, it’s not something we worry about. Like I said, the website was setup for a reason, that being to provide for something the community has being calling for. I think that if it grows sufficiently, it’ll always have a role to play. All we can do is try to keep the website preforming well and make any additions requested by our users.

Anything else you’d like to share with the readers?

Like I said, we’re always keen to hear from users as regards suggested improvements to the website and we’ll do our best to provide them. There is a really active and growing photography community out there and it’s great to be a part of it.

So there you have it folks — the story behind photographyVoter and Paul O’ Connor. If you haven’t checked it out yet, get over there and pay Paul a visit. It’s free to sign up, which will give you access to vote on stories and submit new stories. There is also an RSS feed that you can subscribe to in order to see all the new stories as they come in. I’ve been involved with the site from day 1 of the public launch, and I find it to be a great resource. I’ve seen the site grow from 3 users up to where it’s at today, and as Paul said, it keeps getting more interesting as the community grows.

Thanks for the interview, Paul! And best of luck on photographyVoter’s success!

April Roundup

Great Photography Websites From My Readers

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On April 26th, I started a photography blog project asking readers to submit their photography-related websites to me for inclusion in this article. With this being my first attempt at a blog project, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I figured I would get around 20 responses, and I was hoping for 30.

I was overwhelmed at the response as the number of site submissions reached 59! Two of those are mine, but that’s still pretty good! A big THANK YOU to everybody who helped spread the word and promote the project. I split the submissions into three groups: blogs about photography, photoblogs, and galleries. There are 23 blogs about photography, which include mostly written works on the topics of photography. There are 15 photoblogs, which include “picture-only” type of posts. And there are 21 galleries and portfolios. In addition to including these sites in this list, I’ve added any feeds to my feed reader so I can continue reading.

I hope I haven’t mis-categorized anyone’s site, screwed up the link, misspelled a name, or anything else along those lines. There were also a couple of sites that walked the line between some of the categories, so I hope I got them mostly right. I did my best to keep the list up to date, double check against the submission emails, and verify the links. But if there are any mistakes, please let me know so I can fix it before sending out the list to the participants.

And now, without further ado, I present the 59 best photography sites on the Internet.

BLOGS ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY

Photowalking.org by Trevor Carpenter
A central place for photowalkers and fans of photowalking

TrevorCarpenter.com by Trevor Carpenter
My personal site where I frequently share stories and photos from life with my family

Mostly Photography by Origin
Daily blog featuring news, editorials, thoughts, theories, and photographs

JMG-Galleries Blog by Jim M. Goldstein
Landscape & nature photography discussions & articles

Down in the Den by Wulf Forrester-Barker
The photography section of my general blog, for my “favourite of the month” and other photography related postings

Bild & Foto by Bengt
A Swedish online photography magazine

Changing Perspectives by Jenni Brehm
My photos plus a bit of info on where I took them and what I did in post-processing

wingerz by wingerz
The photography section of my blog, where I post links to my gallery and occasional snippets of advice

goldengod.net by Andrew Ferguson
Photography tips, related technology, media and advertising

Photos by Jay by Jatin
Comprehensive regularly updated digital photography tips, free wallpapers, and pretty photos

The Work of Daniel Hellerman by Daniel Hellerman
Photoblog covering everything from high contrast shots to abandoned buildings

Sunny 16 rule by Silvia Ganora
The photographic endeavors of an Italian shutterbug

Crabby Horseshoes by Jamie
A collection of vintage, polaroid, digital and creative photography from my view of the world

photographyVoter by Paul O’Connor
A Digg-like photography website

Schauplatz by Claudia
An amateur photographer’s blog conceived as a resource for the amateur photographer: interviews, reviews, web resources, photographs

Photography Tip by Susheel
A resource for photography tips, ideas on how to extend your photography in terms of both ideas and equipment

640pixels by Carlo
I focus on photography and Photoshop advice

Out of the Dark! by Jim Hunter
The periodic, though probably irregular, rants and ravings from Jim Hunter

WORDS: irrational by A Marques
A site dedicated to photography and words and how they complement one another; photography and writing pasted together inspired by ambiguity

joostburger.nl Projects by Joost Burger
The projects of a documentary photographer

Macro Art In Nature by Michael Brown
Discovering the art to be found in the world of macro!

Live From Silver City by Avelino Maestas
A blog of photography, news, and politics

Epic Edits Weblog by Brian Auer
A photography resource for the aspiring hobbyist

PHOTOBLOGS

Clicks On The Fly! by Shreyas
Photography as it happens

(photo)blogging sil by Silvia Ganora
A color photoblog

A C H R O M A T I C by Silvia Ganora
A black & white photoblog

Eyelashed by Jamie
A straight-up photoblog of my experiences throughout the day

Shifting Pixel by Joe Lencioni
A stunning milieu of photographic experiences and techniques by artist Joe Lencioni–from raw to refined, whimsical to thought-provoking, Shifting Pixel highlights the best of subject and photographer

Justin Stephen Photography by Justin Stephen
Just my photography

Neil Creek’s Place by Neil Creek
My photo blog, where I am doing Project 365, and plan to include many artistic and experimental photos as well as some panoramas

The MagnoFalls Project by Joe Gajda
A photoblog of slides from the 1950′s – 1960′s

The Daily Rolograaf by Lourens (AKA Rolograaf)
Personal fotoblog with party pics, portraits, urban, and some macro

Words in Images by Gino Caron
We often say “a picture is worth a thousand words”, so a good vocabulary starts with a photoblog

LIGHT: delirious by A Marques
A site dedicated to photography and words and how they complement one another; photography and writing pasted together inspired by ambiguity

A Visual Treat by Hitesh Sawlani
A daily photoblog from whatever town I’m living in at the moment and my other travels

Street Photog by Mike N.
Street photography in NYC and elsewhere

joostburger.nl by joost burger
A collection of my most interesting images

San Miguel Photo of the Day by Jon of SMA
This is a photoblog of my daily observations down here in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico