Lyndsey Wasson went to the Emerald Downs Racetrack in Auburn Washington to capture the T-Rex Racing Championship.
Tag: photography
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Portraits of famous New Yorkers in their homes
The New Yorker with a great photo essay with portraits of famous New Yorkers in their homes.
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Forever March 2020
Five years ago, the onset of Covid cracked a schism in time. CNN goes long, detailing stories of iconic photos from those early days.
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Wikiportraits
“ No professional photographers ever have their photos on Wikipedia, because they want to make money from the photos,” said Jay Dixit, a writing professor and amateur Wikipedia photographer. “It’s actually the norm that most celebrities have poor photos on Wikipedia, if they have photos at all. It’s just some civilian at an airport being like, ‘Oh my god, it’s Pete Davidson,’ click with an iPhone.”
Dixit is part of a team of volunteer photographers, called WikiPortraits, that’s trying to fix that problem.
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A Haiku Garden – Published!
A Haiku Garden: Selections from the Everyday Photo Haiku Project is published on Amazon!
I created the book, which contains 104 of the most interesting photo haiku from the project. All photos and haiku done on an iPhone (4s then 6).
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Book review: The Passionate Photographer by Steve Simon
Steve Simon’s book, [amazon_link id=”0321719891″ target=”_blank” ]The Passionate Photographer[/amazon_link], covers photography as more than a hobby. Â Broken into 10 chapters, he goes from identifying one’s desire to take photographs to using that desire to share a vision. In between, basic technical issues are discussed related to gear, f-stops, shutter speed and ISO as well as elementary composition techniques.
Throughout, he intersperses stories and quotes from other photographers, both historical and contemporary. While some photo books only use the authors images, Simon uses others’ images to illustrate points. Each chapter has an assignment for the reader to attempt and how to assess their ability. Â Also, Simon uses personal stories to cap each chapter in a “lesson learned”.
For beginners, Chapter 2, about practice and persistence, and Chapter 3, about ways to keep seeing the world anew will offer the best value. Chapter 6, about how to see light, really shows how to “see” an image–light and contrast creating interesting shapes and forms that are engaging and pleasing to the eye. Chapter 9, details how to go about creating a photo project and executing it, may help all those with ideas of “this would be a cool thing to do…”
[amazon_link id=”0321719891″ target=”_blank” ]The Passionate Photographer[/amazon_link]Â is a well sourced and well written book. Â Colorful, practical and engaging.
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Review: Creative Black & White Photography by Harold Davis
[easyazon-image-link asin=”0470597755″ alt=”Creative Black and White: Digital Photography Tips and Techniques” src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41%2BUp%2BR-BSL._SL160_.jpg” align=”left” width=”128″ height=”160″] [easyazon-link asin=”0470597755″]Creative Black and White: Digital Photography Tips and Techniques[/easyazon-link] by Harold Davis is an excellent starting point for beginning photographers or a good reference for advanced photographers looking to learn new techniques.
Most valuable to beginners is the first section, The Monochromatic Vision. Davis clearly and concisely discusses basic photographic concepts to make a good picture. These concepts extend well beyond black and white pictures. He gives examples and considerations to take into account for each concept. Also, photographs are provided to illustrate the concept with a detailed caption of how the photo applies and technical information about it, as well.
The second section, Black and White in the Digital Era, introduces the tools and basic processing techniques for black and white photos. The tools are Adobe-centric, detailing Adobe Camera Raw conversion, Lightroom and Photoshop. These processing techniques can be found in other tools, only implemented differently. Davis emphasizes the power of RAW files and how best to work with them to get black and white images that have contrast, tones and impact.
The third section, Creative Black and White Opportunities, builds on the previous section to provide steps for effects and tricks like sepia coloring, duotones, soft focus and more. This is where Davis really shows the art in the process of processing an image. There are numerous ways to go, and it depends on the photo to create the desired effect.
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Photo proof you don’t get it right the first time
Below shows that the best shot isn’t the first one you take. Iteratively and progressively, you build on what worked, and use your knowledge to make it better. Also, stuff happens in post-processing of images. As an aside, I prefer to shoot in aperture priority mode to control my depth of field, and I’ll comment on settings for folks, if they’re into that sort of thing.
This is with a bare flash (Vivitar 285HV wide zoom, 1/16th power and camera at f 8, aperture priority). The flash is too bright, nuking the army dude with light. Need to soften the light a bit.
A few shots later, I put a Wescott mini-Apollo softbox over the flash. The softbox is about 10″x6″ and fits on the head of the flash well. The light is softer and direct, but the image needs something more than an army guy on a table.
They defend stuff, right? So I grabbed the salt and pepper shakers, letting the title of “defending the shakers” float in my mind. Ok, it’s somewhat interesting, but white light seems a bit much.
I took the softbox off the flash and added a warming gel and reattached the softbox. I really like this…
…and let’s punch it up a bit in post-processing, changing the levels, tweaking the curves and upping the saturation.
Continuing on, I added a machine gunner buddy. Cool, but what if I added some light behind them?
I placed a LumoPro 160 (1/8th power, zoomed to 85mm, placed a foot from the army guys). I should have known it would have been too hard (it’s like a flash grenade went off).
I moved the LumoPro to a counter top, so now that flash is about 6 feet away with the Vivitar still sitting pretty. Like earlier, the white light isn’t doing it for me.
I placed a warming gel on the LumoPro, took a few shots, and this is the one I like. Sharp and warm and with a good angle.
…and now punched up in post-processing like above.
