Woah. Text only post? First one. I’ll make it quick then.
Just updated the list of books on my ‘about’ page listed here (at the end of the page). So I finished a couple more of them, and there’s really not a single book on there that I wouldn’t really really recommend. The present-buying season is nearly here, so no need to hang around.
Went to another ‘Evening with Joe McNally’ talk and demo last Thursday in New York. Sat down a couple of mins early and looked at the workshop calendar leaflet in front of me. Was a bit surprised to see a picture of me staring back at me on the top of the page. The pic was taken at the last ‘Evening with Joe McNally’ I went to back in May. It was so good, and such good value that I went again last week. Ok, so the pic didn’t really include my face… and I was pretty much obscured entirely… anyway… red arrow = me, green arrow = Joe McNally….
The workshops at Adorama are pretty cool – this one was only 3 and a bit hours, but for $25, which includes getting a $25 voucher to use at Adorama, it’s incredible value. It’s also Joe McNally – an excellent speaker / entertainer / stand-up comedian. If you haven’t seen him speak, or are wondering if it’s worth doing a workshop with him, I would definitely sign up if you have the opportunity!
The workshop started with Joe talking through some of his previous work, and some of his new work – which included the recent ‘Last of the Neanderthals‘ cover image and article. Joe McNally is definitely one of those unusual photographers who are good at both presenting and entertaining.
After a break, there were some technical hitches – gotta love technology – all were dealt with calmly (threaten camera/laptop with impending death), and then a demonstration on setting up a portrait shoot from nothing. Started with the subject in room light, then added a flash (on camera) then added off-camera flash, then progressed through umbrella-use, positioning, diffusers and c-stands. Finished up with a great shot, and the ‘learning’ process as we went through the whole sequence was well worth the evening.
UPDATE… the man himself has an update on his blog, including the pictures that he took during the demonstration – see Joe McNally’s blog entry here. Enjoy!
A random way to introduce the ‘Blogs I read’ section on the right of the blog here. It contains a load of links, of sites that I visit regularly. Some are news-updates, some are other photographers’ blogs. One of which is ‘Camera Porn’….
It’s ok – it’s work friendly, as long as the url gets past the filters, and a while ago Ryan was running a competition as explained below:
Anyway, check out the original files, and the details behind the project here:
www.cameraporn.net/2008/01/13/cameraporn-project-1-revisi…
What I wanted:
To me the towers seemed ominous and almost foreboding, sitting in place where you’d expect to see small beach huts or palm trees lining the ocean, so I wanted to reflect this in the mood of the photo.
What I did:
1. Took the original files and (yes, cheating I know) HDR’d them in Photomatix to get a baseline HDR that I liked from the 3 original RAW file exposures.
2. Used tone mapping to get to a base HDR that I liked the look of without playing around too much with making it look ‘spiked’.
3. Took it back into the safety of Lightroom (yep, you can guess what I use normally now!) and bled out most of the colour. Removed spray spots. More spot removal. Did I mention spot removal already?
I then boosted the fill light slightly, tweaked contrast, brightness and other levels settings, and darkened the overall picture to get the moody look. Cropped the picture slightly closer at the top to emphasize the depth of the picture and cropped on the left so that the view is straight into the towers. Added vignette.
Please let me know what you think, and if you want the original files or want to have a go at Ryan’s project, please see his ‘Submitting Your Entry’ section on the link above.
So this is it – I’ve finally stopping umming and ahhing about creating a blog, and signed up with WordPress. Hope you enjoy it – the aim of the blog is to share more pictures with everyone, and to let everyone know a little more about what goes on in the making of them.
There’s an about page with stuff about me (really?), and also links to a contact page. Next up is the portfolios section which links back to my main site, with some updated galleries.
Hope you enjoy it, and thanks for visiting!
International Photo Awards 2010 PDN Photo of the Day National Geographic Photo of the day Patagonia Gallery of images Earth Hour NYC