Some photo link-love goodness..

July 11, 2009 by chuq · Comments
Filed under: Photography

I’ve been collecting links again. I am hoping this is the last link-post for a while, because I really am trying to commit to getting back on a writing schedule. Real writing shall return to the blog shortly….

Jan Klier: balancing color temperature
Pixsylated: two weeks with McNally. I find Joe McNally’s work — absolutely fascinating. And it is so absolutely different than what I do in all forms it might as well be a different universe. Which is part of what attracts me to it, because I know I need to grow in that direction…..
Photoblog 2.0: touching the rainbow. On the other hand, more and more, I realize the type of landscape work I want to do looks a lot like what Harold Davis does….
MooseNewsBlog: It wasn’t along for looks… I’ve long looked to photographers like Art Wolfe for inspiration in my wildlife and bird photography. The more I look at Moose Peterson’s work, though, the more I see a style that really speaks to me — technically very strong, works hard to bring the personality of the animal out, and really putting the animal front and center. His son Jake isn’t exactly bad, either. (astute viewers of my flickr stream might see the inspiration for my new image framing here…)
Jim Goldstein: 11 must-have photography iPhone Applications. (I’ve been experimenting a bit with Photocalc and Focalware, plus things like GPS locating sites with Compass and I’m currently trying out three different apps for tracking tides because none is a clear winner. All research into what apps I really want to encourage porting to my new phone….)
Online Photographer: Depth of Field Hell, the Coda. This, to me, looks much like the religious fight over whether or not to use a UV filter over a lens. I use one — it’s saved a lens from death for me once, a good investment — and I’ve never seen a photographer with a set of photos be able to actually show which ones did and didn’t have the filter on. Theoretically, yes, an extra filter might soften an image or otherwise modify it. But using good quality filters, if nobody can tell you which pictures were taken with the lens, arguing over the theory seems rather silly. (this all started with this posting)
James Duncan Davidson: sunset along Interstate 5. In which Duncan compares and contrasts his iPhone images with his Nikon. the iPhone 3GS actually does a decent job, but the comparison shows its limitations. Not a complaint — but not a DLSR, either. And because I’ve done the same thing driving up and down the I-5, there’s and . Not sure there’s much worthy of photographing up and down the central valley — it’s a tough capture — but it can get some awesome sunsets and sunrises.
Digital Photography Schoool: Fixing animal’s eyes in lightroom. I do something similar now; more generally, especially with animal and bird photography, I find you simply can’t process a photograph on a global basis and expect it to be a great photograph; too many angles and shadows and textures, so you need to make local adjustments. The eyes are just an important (maybe the most important) feature to evaluate for local enhancement; it’s what draws a viewer into the picture. My adjustments are now primarily done in Viveza as a LR plug-in. Very nice and convenient.
Photocrati: spoiled! — something we forget with modern camera technologies; just how much easier it is to take photographs today because of improvements in capture and lens quality. I routinely shoot at ISO 200 now on my D30, where “in the day” when I was shooting film, ISO 200 scared the crap out of me as far as noise. Heck, I remember shooting high school football with Tri-X,where you reveled in the grain. Today, grain is artificially ADDED to photographs by some as an artistic enhancement. think about it…
Layers: Confession of a compact-camera shooter. Yes, you don’t need an expensive DSLR to shoot quality photos. Laurie’s used a compact for her hockey photography for years because it creates less — angst — at the door. (FWIW, it’s the Panasonic Lumix line with Leica glass and a 35-400 optical zoom…). I’ve used them, too, but these days, I have decided to live with my D30/RebelXT and use the RebelXT and my tamron len 28-300 as my carry-around pack.
Paul Burwell: Secrets of the Photo Workshop Business. A nice cautionary note for those looking to take workshops. Since I’m doing my first this fall (in Morro Bay, where George Lepp will speak)
Chase Jarvis: Photographic Assistants, what I look for. I’ve considered trying to do a few assistant gigs, just to get the experience. Of course, I need free time to even consider that…
PhotoShelter: Michael Jackson Memorial Images and Distribution workflow: fascinating stuff here.
Juan A. Pons: Why I shoot in Av or Ap mode. Yeah, me too, a lot. Nature work is a lot different than studio or landscape work where you can lock in an exposure over time; I find I end up looking for the right compensation, and then needing to trust the camera. When the subject is outside and moving, too much goes out of your control…
DIYPhotography: one. two. three. white background. cute. and nice technique, too.
Steve Berardi: sometimes the view is better from above
Steve Berardi: should you always isolate your subject? I have found I prefer not compltely isolating out from the background a lot of the time. Sometimes that “portrait” look works best. Honestly, if that’s what you want, you can mechanically make it happen in post processing now, too. Which would merely start various debates about the ethics of doing so, I bet..
David duChemin: Your Oh Sh!t Kit. You do carry one, right? Another thing I always carry in my car — a supply of water; if you break down out in the middle of nowhere, having some water can significantly reduce the hassles of trying to be okay until you get found or can hike out…
Jim Goldstein: five reasons why metadata should be part of your workflow. I’m reasonably good about metadata, but I’m not reliably geotagging things yet. That’s going to bite me down the road…
James Duncan Davidson: A sneaking suspicion. Oh, yeah. the airlines have been allowed ot create a situation without accountability, so of course, there are problems. It’s not rocket science. The casinos figured it out decades ago. So why do we allow airports to get away with this?
James Duncan DAvidson: end of the line for Kodachrome. I admit it — I was always more an an Ektachrome shooter. And Tri-X. And Velvia. But film is continuing to fade away, and while I never expect to ever have to shoot film again — this is a bit of a sad milestone.