Official Photography Thread

[wuapinmon]

Would I be racist if I said that I had this exact same problem one year at the US Open trying to take a picture of Vijay Singh wearing a white shirt?

[swampfrog]

I wish someone would have given me the same advice about the puppy!

Next time it climbs on the dishwasher, shut it and turn it on, problem solved.

[swampfrog]

Messing around with intentional blurs. Thoughts?

[clackamascoug]

Messing around with intentional blurs. Thoughts?

Revelation 3:15-16King James Version (KJV)

15 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

[swampfrog]

Revelation 3:15-16King James Version (KJV)

15 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

How about these?

[Katy Lied]

Pic 1: Not sure I like it. How about if you blur it like this scheme below?

Blur2.jpg
Pic 2: Nice background for something else: a motivation statement or something.
Pic 3: Gorgeous
Pic 4: For some reason it gives me a headache.

[swampfrog]

Pic 1: Not sure I like it. How about if you blur it like this scheme below?

[ATTACH]5755[/ATTACH]
Pic 2: Nice background for something else: a motivation statement or something.
Pic 3: Gorgeous
Pic 4: For some reason it gives me a headache.

#1. I'm not blurring them in post production, the birds are in focus, it's just that the shutter speed was set for 1/13 which makes all motion blur, I probably should have cloned out the first bird.
#2. Mostly an accident, I was panning horizontally prior to the tree, but thought it was interesting and couldn't decide whether it was interesting bad or interesting good. The diagonal green lines.
#3. Swimming Pool, shot at 1/2 second. If I had a tripod I would have experimented with longer.
#4. I used to hate shots like these, but I've grown to like them. I really needed a 3 or 5 stop ND filter, I had to stop so far down (1/13 at f/22) that you can see the sensor dust (I need to clean the sensor). I think it would have been better at 1/2 or 1/3 second as I think I would have lost the diagonal lines and they would all be parallel.

[clackamascoug]

I took a phone photo of the pool shot and it's currently the wallpaper on my phones homepage. Was nicer than I anticipated.

[Katy Lied]

I think I would have lost the diagonal lines and they would all be parallel.

why?

do you mean the the slow speed would have caused the diagonal wave curl to close out, thus displaying a fat horizontal white foam stripe? (thus, the thin diagonal lines would converge into fat white wave foam lines?)

Not sure how to describe it, but I've watched a lot of waves in my life.

[swampfrog]

why?

do you mean the the slow speed would have caused the diagonal wave curl to close out, thus displaying a fat horizontal white foam stripe? (thus, the thin diagonal lines would converge into fat white wave foam lines?)

Not sure how to describe it, but I've watched a lot of waves in my life.

Almost. The slower the shutter speed the more even the spread of any given element across the frame. At 1/13, and as I panned from right to left, any given point in the ocean probably only was recorded in 1/8 of the frame. If it's timed right, a white wavelet or crest of a wave that started on the far left, by the time both shutter curtains have crossed the sensor, will have completely passed across the whole frame. That would evenly distribute the whiteness as a line instead of just affecting one segment of the diagonal lines. The same affect can be accomplished with fields of flowers as shown here:

http://www.birdsasart-blog.com/baa/w...se-holland.jpg

I'm trying to figure out the right combination of shutter speed and panning speed to create the effect I want, which was strong horizontal lines with varying blue and whitish tones. Even at half a second, the wave forms won't have changed that much.

[PaloAltoCougar]

Yet another advantage of being an empty nester is our ability to skip town on a moment's notice. Work has been unusually busy of late, but it eased up a bit Wednesday and we found a nice deal at a Monterey hotel so off we went. We took a whale-watching trip yesterday (today, hiking around Big Sur) and Mrs. PAC has been having a great time, snapping away.

We saw about 200 dolphins:


Several Orcas (Killer Whales)



And a dozen or more Humpbacks.





She hasn't retouched or edited these. She uses a Nikon D750, a 70-200 mm lens with a polarizing filter.

[Katy Lied]

Great pix, PAC's wife.

Hey Swamp, it just hit me that you were taking pictures of your daughter after she should have gone to the MTC, no? Did she have a change of plans?

Also, it cracks me up when you refer to "wannabe fashion photographers." He hasn't earned your respect yet, eh?

[swampfrog]

Great pix, PAC's wife.

Hey Swamp, it just hit me that you were taking pictures of your daughter after she should have gone to the MTC, no? Did she have a change of plans?

Also, it cracks me up when you refer to "wannabe fashion photographers." He hasn't earned your respect yet, eh?

She's in Nauvoo now. Went into the MTC in March. If I said something different in the past about the timing, I misspoke. I'll try to remember to post the blog that my wife is maintaining in another forum.

As to the wannabe, it's a she. I don't consider myself a photographer, just a hobbyist with a lot to learn--but I keep trying. I'm probably overly snarky, but modern gear has gotten so capable technically, that it's difficult to take a bad technical picture. Ridiculously good focusing systems, fantastic metering systems, beautiful color and in camera jpeg processing, etc. Then the plethora of software that's capable of so many different effects and looks. We had a go at the fashion industry with the missionary daughter, as a model, not a photographer. It's a very odd world. Not recommended. So I look at anyone looking to get into that world with a bit of a jaded view.

I took on the technical side of the camera first, now I'm trying to figure out what makes a good photo. Instagram and other photo sharing sites are not doing these wannabes any favors. 80% of this girl's photos have the subject dead center. She has thousands of followers and they 'like' everything. Someone has to be critical of your work if you want to get better. She has been improving though, but she has a long way to go still. Many wannabes get caught up in location, props, and posing. I think it's useful to start with trying to make something ordinary into something interesting. And it's all about the light and composition. Some very good bird stuff I've seen is people having a feeder in their backyard. Then they make a common bird into art, or at least interesting.

Reading reviews and scouring photographer websites for information has provided a look into the struggles of the modern professional photographer. No one can sell prints anymore. Wedding photogs are undercut by the random relative who just bought "a nice camera" (usually the lowest end kit Canon/Nikon) willing to shoot for free or less than $100. And the buyer doesn't complain, they usually get decent results. How much is the extra "wow" worth of the bokeh created by the higher end glass shooting at 2.8 or wider and somebody that knows how to use it?

I just shot my niece's wedding for free (the mission daughter has been close to her since they were babies), but this is just the typical Mormon wedding--group shots, family shots, coming out the of the temple, take the bride and groom around the grounds, etc. The schedule was 10:00 wedding, so I was shooting from 11:00 am until around 1:00 pm. Not a normal Spring day in Seattle, not a cloud in the sky. Almost everyone was commenting on how lucky I was for having such a great day for pictures. A few of them I took the time to educate on how it was actually one of the worse situations you can have, strong overhead light is never the best shooting conditions for any subject, but throw in a white dress and a dark colored suit... Luckily, we found some shade, the pacific northwest has real trees, though not as impressive as the redwoods.

[Katy Lied]

I know what you mean by the cameras are so good that everyone takes good shots. There are tons of websites for photographers who bought a DSLR to take pictures of their babies and now do other babies for a fee. They get good results but don't know who Margaret Bourke-White is, or Dorothea Lange, or Edward Weston is. Or what these photographers were trying to do- what stories their pictures were trying to tell. Most of them have never see an Ansel Adams print before he applied his post production magic--utterly pedestrian.

You also forgot that digital camera output is so cheap that everyone can shoot 100 pictures to get 1 decent one. Actually, this is kind of my strategy. I'm still very picky, so now I have to shoot 200 to get one decent shot.

When I got my entry level camera, a Nikon D40, I spent so much time with it that I could make it sing. I shot a lot of manual pictures, to make up for deficiencies in the camera. I shot HDR manually, by actually changing the speed/app. I shot in raw a lot too. I finally saved up enough money to buy a better camera, a Nikon D300, but I got it the day before I adopted my sons, so I havent spent very much time with it at all. Even now, I will shoot with the D40 because I just don't know the D300 very well.

[swampfrog]

Most of them have never see an Ansel Adams print before he applied his post production magic--utterly pedestrian.

I've tried to make this point before, but probably not strongly enough. The software post processing work that photographers do today is at least as, if not more important, than the original capture. Ansel Adams was a master of using the darkroom to create art. With time and experience, you learn to look at a scene, not just for what it is, but what it can become based on the techniques you have applied previously on other images. This has always been true to some extent, but the resources available for digital manipulation have exponentially multiplied. It's this ability that made Ansel Adams a true master.

I used to be stuck in the "it's not a photograph" if it's been digitally manipulated--it's no longer real. Like PAC's post: "She hasn't retouched or edited these". Editing in the basic sense is nothing more than telling the software things like, "take all pixels that are dark and make them darker, and take all pixels that are light and make them lighter". This is contrast. Almost all software has variations on some kind of contrast manipulation. You can also look inside your user manual for any digital camera (including smart phones), and you will likely find a way to change the contrast.

If you choose to not "retouch or edit", what you are in fact saying is use what the camera manufacturer thinks is good for this scene. This will usually result in good images, sometimes great ones. But the camera doesn't know you are shooting a bride, or a bird, or landscape, or a sunset, etc. It won't necessarily know to emphasize the right things. The camera manufacturers have done their research and have programmed into their cameras "smart software" that evaluates the picture and makes adjustments that are applied to the resulting jpeg that gets produced. In this sense all digital photos are edited. Most people would be quite surprised what came off the sensor before this editing took place.

You also forgot that digital camera output is so cheap that everyone can shoot 100 pictures to get 1 decent one. Actually, this is kind of my strategy. I'm still very picky, so now I have to shoot 200 to get one decent shot.

This is true, I used to do more of this, and in some situations still do. Part of getting better at the craft is to learn when not to press the shutter button, because you're going to end up tossing it anyway. I shot over a thousand at this weekend's wedding, if I'm lucky, I'll keep 200, more likely is 75-100. That means I've got to examine and delete 800+ because I pressed the shutter button when I shouldn't have. Some of it's unavoidable, especially when shooting group shots of people, you need the volume to minimize the risk of yawns, closed eyes, distractions, and other things. Plus it gives you the option of swapping heads or otherwise combining multiple exposure to get the best composite.

I shot in raw a lot too.

At this point I never shoot anything else. Once it's been compressed to jpeg, you have less flexibility for processing. This is true of video, music, etc. You capture the original at the highest resolution and with as much information as possible. You then reduce to the quality level required for the delivery medium. This allows the best final product to be produced while mixing, editing, cutting, adding transitions, etc.