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Modify Your Bokeh
June 7th, 2007
DIYphotography has a tip on how to change the shape of your bokeh that might produce some fun results. Get yourself some thick, black paper and start cutting!
Posts Tagged: how to
Monday Photo Links
May 28th, 2007
Welcome to another week. Hopefully a few morning links may help you ease into work. You wouldn’t want to jump right into it, you might pull a muscle or something…
- DIYPhotography has a couple of articles worth a look. One will help you get a better understanding of bouncing your on-camera flash and another will teach you a few tricks for photographing children.
- For a subject that’s just as challenging as a toddler, try some tips on photographic lightning.
- At Howard Grill’s blog, he reminds us to experiment a little with our photography.
- For US readers with public TV access, keep your eyes open for Art Wolfe’s Travels to the Edge, a 13-episode series that follows Wolfe as he and his camera do some globetrotting in Patagonia, Peru, Bolivia, Alaska, Ethiopia, Madagascar, India and South Georgia Island.
- Lastly, EPUK has a sassy piece on Flickr, Zoomr, photo-sharing, crowdsourcing, stolen photographs and the kitchen sink.
Dear Digg, Reddit and del.icio.us
December 6th, 2006
Thanks for all the traffic! It’s encouraging to have so many people check out the photoshop tutorial I posted yesterday. Thanks also to all the other sites that have linked the article - there’s too many to name here, but I do appreciate it. I’ll have to see about putting together more articles for you.
A few commenters here and on other sites suggested that the technique I posted had alternatives and they are right. Sometimes, it may be possible to use a small aperture and/or a neutral density filter to bring about a lengthy exposure time. The result will be that the people in your photo will be relatively invisible if they are moving - there won’t be enough hitting them in the same place at the same time for the sensor/film plane to pick up their shape.
The difficulty with this technique is that there is a high potential for streaks to appear in your images from where the people were moving. Especially if there is a group of people, you are likely to get a smear where the group moved through your image. And if anyone stops, there will probably be a blurred, ghostly figure showing up in your picture.
Another popular alternative on various sites was to physically eliminate tourists using, baseball bats, guns, or whatever weapon happened to be handy. As frustrating as it can sometime be to wait for people to leave your shot, I can’t endorse this technique. Especially considering the stories I’ve heard about some foreign prisons!
There are also the people decry the removal of tourists from photos altogether. Sure, some people want them in there, but some don’t. I wrote the tutorial for the latter. I shoot both scene with and without tourists. When I want a scene without tour groups in it, it’s nice to have this technique in my bag of tricks.
Lastly, on a non-photo note, I want to say a big thank you to my hosts, Hostrocket for successfully managing a colossal amount of traffic. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my site remained available while getting so flooded with hits.
People Removal Photoshop Tutorial Posted
December 5th, 2006
I have just posted a digital photography and Photoshop tutorial aimed at helping you get tourist-free postcard shots the next time you head out on vacation. It’s a handy trick that has served me well and I hope it can be helpful for you too.
I hope to write more tutorials related to photography and travel photography in particular, so please feel free to send the story to your favourite news and bookmarking sites like digg and del.icio.us. It will motivate me to do more!
How to Photograph Fireworks
June 29th, 2006
Just in time for both the Fourth of July and Canada comes a guide from Digital Photography School on how to photograph fireworks. In addition to the tips mentioned in the article, I would add that finding a good vantage point before the show starts is what will make your photographs truly stand out. If possible, find out from where the photographs will be launched, then do some scouting in the area to see how you might best frame the fireworks in your shots.
Photographing Dance
June 15th, 2006
Harald Heim has an exhaustive article up at luminous-landscape.com on shooting dance performances. This guide covers all sides of a potentially-difficult subject to photograph, so read up before you head to the stage.
High-Speed Digital Photo Workflow
June 13th, 2006
What do you do when you have to shoot, process and capture images of 18 tennis matches in one day with no list of players to guide you? This post on Blue Pixel has a detailed look at how Reed Hoffman overcame the tight deadline for this hectic day with an efficient digital workflow.
Miscellaneous Photo Links
June 5th, 2006
Photographyblog.com has a roundup of their picks for the best cameras in each consumer class that’s worth a look if your planning on doing some shopping.
The Small Object has a step-by-step guide on how to measure and cut a matte. A good do-it-yourself guide for photographers and artists.
World War I Color Photos is an interesting collection of very early colour photography. From the site: “Although color photography was around prior to 1903, the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, patented the process in 1903 and developed the first color film in 1907. The French army was the primary source of color photos during the course of World War One.”
And lastly, something ridiculous: a Flickr set of squirrels with cameras. No these aren’t just run-of-the-mill photos of cute backyard rodents, these critters appear to be amateur shutterbugs.
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