After the Battle

Mar 302012
 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/picture/2012/feb/23/remi-ochlik-syria

The above link is a fantastic photo that I saw on eyewitness, a Guardian app that every photographer should have on their phone or tablet. If you cannot get the eyewitness app on your phone or tablet then visit this website instead http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/eyewitness

This is a great example of when to break the rule of one-third that I waffled on about in a previous post: http://www.evejam.co.uk/rule-of-one-third/ .

It is difficult to describe what I like about this photo, the depth of field is shallow to bring focus on to the subject, but at the same time you can still work out what is happening in the background. It makes it clear that it is a war zone and even if you didn’t know the title of the photo you could probably work out that it is after the battle with the burning smoke blowing across the background, and the apparent lack of alertness of the soldier.

I am drawn to the soldier in the middle, looks as if he is wondering whether the war is worth it, is he thinking about his comrades who have died in the previous battle or questioning if he should continue.

The rich colours of flag contrast against the sparse sepia-like landscape behind him. If the flag wasn’t there the photo would have had a significant difference.

The saddest thing about the photo is the photojournalist was killed, I assume he was killed doing his job as the article says he was killed during the shelling of the Syrian city of Homs on 22nd February. This bring a certain poignancy to the photo and makes you realise the risks that some photographers take in order to bring a visual picture of what is happening around the world so we can better understand the world around us.

Thought about adding the image to the post, but think that would be in breach of the copyright? so if you want to see the picture go the link provided in the article.

Rule of one third

Mar 302012
 

The rule of one third is one of my favorite rules of composition and every photographer whether they are seasoned professionals or “happy snappers” using their mobile phone should be aware of this rule.

The rule of one third is basically about dividing the scene you are taking a picture of into 9 equal spaces like a sudoku puzzle.

Basically you should put the focus of the scene on one of the horizontal or vertical lines. For example if it a landscape photo put the horizon on one of the horizontal lines. If it a portrait put the subject on one of the vertical lines.

This will give the photo a more natual feel and can grab the viewers attention.

However rules are made to be broken and sometimes it can be good not to follow the rule of on third for a dramatic impact. An example of this is a straight road shooting off to the diatance, putting the road in the middle can make it look more extreme.

For more information on this check out the following links:

http://www.digital-photography-school.com/rule-of-thirds

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en-GB&redir_esc=&client=ms-android-samsung&source=android-browser-type&v=133247963&qsubts=1333108559420&action=devloc&q=rule+one+third+photography&v=133247963

Have fun and happy snapping.

Goresedd Stones

Mar 292012
 

 

The Goresedd Stones

The Goresedd Stones

This is a sunrise landscape photo at the Goresedd Stones near where I live. Up at 5:45am to get to this location and it was a beautiful damp morning. I use two 0.9 Neutral Grad filters to tone down the contrast of the sky and a long shutter speed of 3 seconds. The mist in the background was coming down in between two mountains which I feel added depth and mystery. The aperture was small (f25) to try and keep as much of the scene in focus.

There has been no post processing done with this photo and the dust marks on the filter can be seen, I am assuming this could easily be removed using Photoshop and I’ll have to give it a go one day.

The one big disappointment with this is that when I was packing up there was condensation on the filters, which might account for the slight haze? I don’t know or it could be the conditions weren’t quite right for the perfect photo.

Lessons learned here is to make sure I keep cleaning the filters and lenses against condensation and make sure there are no dust marks!!

But I enjoy those hours in the early morning when all is still and calm and watching the sun rise.

Setting up a website

Mar 292012
 

Using my knowledge of IT thought it would be useful to share my thought processes on how I designed/built my website for photography.

First of all there is no need to build your website from scratch anymore unless you have a specific task to perform that cannot be done by the Content Management System (CMS)

Traditionally when I build websites I nearly always use Drupal CMS, but for my website I am using WordPress CMS. The reason for this is as follows.

The biggest benefit of Drupal is its powerful permissions system, which makes it very useful if you want to allocate different people different permissions for building the website. There is also an excellent community out there to help and support you. But on the downside it is a steep learning curve and I haven’t found a suitable app to allow me to make posts from my mobile phone.

WordPress has a fanstastic app for Android phones and I dont need a powerful permission system as I am going to be the only one to edit and manage the website. I am sure WordPress has a good permission system but this is the first time I have used wordpress for nearly 2 years. So I am still learning loads.

What I like about word press is the mobile phone app which is what I am using now to type this page up.

If you are thinking of having your own website for photography I strongly recommend WordPress, to set up is fairly easy and there is a fanstatic community available to support you.

There is a wealth of themes you can use to find the style you want, I am using Suffusion for the desktop website and WPtouch to allow my website to display cleanly on mobile phones.

Let me know if would like a more in depth tutorial on setting up a website to display your photos or for setting up a new business, having said that there are plenty of tutorials out there for wordpress just use google or go to http://www.wordpress.org

One final note you have two options for hosting, you can either use wordpress own hosting facilities for free or you can buy your own domain name and hosting space as I have done.

Have fun and happy snapping.

Camera Exposure Modes

Mar 292012
 

The following link is a fabulous post that explains the balance between the different aspects of photography for recording light

http://photo.tutsplus.com/articles/hardware/camera-exposure-modes-explained/

However Mark Cleghorn at his training took the triangle one step further and prefers to use the analogy of a see-saw. He explains that when you approach a shot you need to think which is the most important of the three:

  • aperture
  • ISO
  •  shutter speed

To give an example, if you are doing a portrait photo you might want to blur out the background as much as possible, in which case the aperture become the fulcrum of the see-saw (The bit in the middle) you then need to balance the shutter speed and ISO to achieve the desired effect. Another situation is possibly rally car racing, or sports where you know you will need a fairly fast shutter speed to capture the action, in this case the shutter speed become the fulcrum and you then balance the ISO and aperture as appropriate.

In some cases the lens might be the aperture is fixed in which case you have no choice to balance the ISO and aperture, or if you are still using the traditional film camera, it could mean the ISO is fixed which means you need to balance out the shutter-speed and aperture.

There may be occasions where you will have two fixed points for example in the studio you will probably use the lowest ISO possible (usually 100 or 200 depending on the camera) and the lowest aperture which could be anything from 1.0 to 5.4 depending on the lens you have which means you can only adjust the shutter speed. In a studio environment this is ok because you can control the light. If it too dark which means the shutter speed needed is slower than 1/30 you can boost the power of the flash until you get a more respectable shutter speed like 1/125 to keep the image sharp.

If you use this approach then a light meter is a must.

A different way of thinking, I am sure there are more ways of thinking about how different people approach photography and if you know any then please let me know.

Sample poses – Women

Mar 292012
 

This is a fantastic article

http://www.digital-photography-school.com/21-sample-poses-photographing-female-models

If you are interested in portrait photography I would recommend printing out these poses and showing them to friends who may want to have a portrait done. I think the fact that they are drawings and not actual photos means it is easier to relate to the actual model, I think there is a danger that if you use real examples the subject may say, “yeah but she/he is a professional model and absolutely stunning, nothing like me”, by using the sketches it removes that peer type pressure.

What do you think?

Update: There is now a page for Male poses Sample Poses – Men

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