RSS
 

Posts Tagged ‘Hill’

Photographer Brandon Hill shoots portraits with the Sony Xperia 1 and Xperia 5

23 Dec

Sony’s Xperia 1 and Xperia 5 smartphones offer powerful photo and video features, including advanced face and eye-detection autofocus technologies inherited from Sony’s Apha-series mirrorless cameras. Sony’s Eye-AF works by analyzing the scene in front of the camera in real-time, and identifying and focusing on human eyes. If the camera or subject move, detected eyes and faces are tracked within the frame. A green square shows that an eye has been identified.

Portrait and commercial photographer Brandon Hill took the Sony Xperia 1 and Xperia 5 to House Studios recently, here in Seattle, to see how they performed. During a busy portrait shoot, Brandon worked with model and athlete Krista Armstead to put together several shooting scenarios, including indoor and outdoor lighting, and even a trampoline, to test the phones’ high-speed shooting and 4K video capabilities.

Sony Xperia portraits – pictures by Brandon Hill

$ (document).ready(function() { SampleGalleryV2({“containerId”:”embeddedSampleGallery_4314198486″,”galleryId”:”4314198486″,”isEmbeddedWidget”:true,”selectedImageIndex”:0,”isMobile”:false}) });


This is sponsored content, created with the support of Amazon and Sony. What does this mean?

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
Comments Off on Photographer Brandon Hill shoots portraits with the Sony Xperia 1 and Xperia 5

Posted in Uncategorized

 

Capitol Hill photographers asked to delete protest images, claim journalists

27 Jul
Photo by Phil Roeder, licensed under Creative Commons

Journalists photographing a protest in the US Capitol building report that they were told by Capitol Police to delete photos and videos of arrests. The events unfolded yesterday in the third floor Senate wing of the building as demonstrators protested the vote that would begin an effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

As police handcuffed and removed protestors from the hallway outside of the Senate chambers, journalists were reportedly told by police to stop taking photos, and were instructed to delete photos and videos they had captured.

Official policy for press in the Senate Gallery states that photography is indeed prohibited in that area. However, the ACLU spoke up to remind press that police may not force anyone to delete a photo or video without a warrant, no matter the circumstances.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
Comments Off on Capitol Hill photographers asked to delete protest images, claim journalists

Posted in Uncategorized

 

Rice Hill: Shooting in Riisitunturi National Park

15 May

$ (document).ready(function() { SampleGalleryV2({“containerId”:”embeddedSampleGallery_1500727350″,”galleryId”:”1500727350″,”isEmbeddedWidget”:true,”standalone”:false,”selectedImageIndex”:0,”startInCommentsView”:false,”isMobile”:false}) });

Riisitunturi is a national park in the Posio municipality in Finnish Lapland. It is situated in the south of Lapland and sports a sub-Arctic climate, but due to its inland location it can get extremely cold. I spent a few weeks scouting the area in early 2015 and 2016 to prepare for my workshop there, and I have to admit I fell in love with it.

Covering an area of 77 square kilometers, the park is in a mountainous area and lies almost entirely at an altitude of over 300 meters above sea level. It is most known for its twin hills (Riisitunturi means ‘Rice Hill’ in Finnish), home to a forest of spruce trees, the main (winter) photographic attraction in the area. There are also multiple swamps in the park.

‘The one-hour, mildly-strenuous hike to the top
is very rewarding’

In winter, due to heavy precipitation and a very humid climate, the spruce trees are covered in a thick white blanket of frost-snow. When climbing up the trails to the hilltop, the snow gets deeper and the trees shorter and more sparse. And that is exactly the point: while the trees at the bottom are full-sized and usually too big to capture, the hilltop trees are more manageable and beautifully isolated, and retain their white cover even when the lower trees are stripped bare on a windy or warm day. The one-hour, mildly-strenuous hike to the top is very rewarding.

The spruce trees typical to Lapland’s forests are tall and close together, making them impossible to isolate and hard to photograph.

Due to the unending variety of both the trees and the weather conditions one can witness on the hilltop, I’d definitely recommend spending multiple days exploring the park. The snow-laden trees assume a myriad of shapes and forms, often imitating worldly scenes incredibly accurately.

A completely different atmosphere on a gloomy day. The snow-laden spruces barely stand out from the similarly-colored background, contributing to the magical feel of the image.

The trees look very different during a clear sunrise compared to a foggy day, changing their appearance once more under a cloudy gloom. And once the sun comes out, it’s a whole new ballgame. The colors change – no longer pink and red, but a new element enters the equation and your images can benefit from it.

The star-burst works best when located in small openings – and the snow-laden trees have plenty of those.

I hope you agree the park is amazingly beautiful and photogenic. But what do you need to know and be prepared for in order to shoot there? First of all, be ready for extreme cold. It may not be the case (global warming takes its toll on Lapland, with weather conditions ever more volatile), but early in winter temperatures can sometimes plummet to -30 degrees Centigrade or so.

‘Several thermal layers and
a heavy down jacket are essential’

It is indeed very, very cold, so make sure you’re well dressed. Several thermal layers and a heavy down jacket are essential. Warm gloves and good thermal boots are also needed if you’re to spend several hours shooting the trees.

Secondly, you have to have either snow-shoes or skis. The snow might be packed at the bottom, but the higher up you venture up the hill, the deeper and fluffier it is. Without a way of spreading your weight, you’ll simply sink down to your waist, which makes walking utterly impossible.

Yours truly struggling up the hill. If you look carefully, you can see snow stuck throughout the length of my trousers, remnants of sitting (and occasional sinking) in the snow. Image courtesy of Tiina Törmänen.

While I tend to shoot ultra-wide most often, in Riisitunturi I found myself mostly shooting with a 24-70mm lens, for several reasons.

Firstly, the sheer effort of moving. Snow-shoeing is physically demanding, and sometimes good conditions come and you simply don’t have the time to move to the right location – a task which would require long minutes. A longer focal length gives you a bit more flexibility and the opportunity to get closer without wasting precious time. Please note that I’m not saying that a 24-70 can replace an ultra wide lens – just that it can sometimes be more practical when time is of the essence and movement is problematic. I do use my 16-35mm in Riisitunturi, more and more as time passes.

‘Shooting from farther away gives you the ability to better balance the image’

Secondly, while the spruces on top of the hill are much shorter than the ones below, they are still often higher than a human. This means a lot of perspective issues if you shoot them up close, and potentially having a large part of your image as empty space. Shooting from farther away gives you the ability to better balance the image, and produce more realistic, less contorted shots.

Regarding technique – Riisitunturi has a very special trait which makes shooting with a tripod hard, sometimes impossible. The snow, in some places, is just too darn deep, and tripod legs sink in and can’t be stabilized. The simple solution is to shoot hand-held (or use a monopod), which works pretty well most of the time, especially if you have a stabilized lens. It’s not the end of the world if you need to use higher ISO and a wider aperture to get the shot. It obviously doesn’t work at night or at other low-light scenes, so sometimes you’ll have to fight with the tripod.

All in all, Riisitunturi is a wonderful location for winter photography. It’s not too hard to access, there are decent accommodation options in the area and you can easily spend a few days exploring it, either alone or with a group. I hope this article gives you the needed motivation and knowledge to do so. Enjoy!


Erez Marom is a professional nature photographer, photography guide and traveler based in Israel. You can follow Erez’s work on Instagram, Facebook and 500px, and subscribe to his mailing list for updates.

If you’d like to experience and shoot some of the most fascinating landscapes on earth with Erez as your guide, you’re welcome to take a look at his unique photography workshops around the world:

White Wonderland – Lapland
Land of Ice – Southern Iceland
Winter Paradise – Northern Iceland
Northern Spirits – The Lofoten Islands
Giants of the Andes and Fitz Roy Hiking Annex – Patagonia
Tales of Arctic Nights – Greenland
Earth, Wind and Fire – Ethiopia

Selected articles by Erez Marom:

  • Behind the Shot: Dark Matter
  • Mountain Magic: Shooting in the Lofoten Islands
  • Behind the Shot: Nautilus
  • Behind the Shot: Lost in Space
  • Behind the Shot: Spot the Shark
  • Quick Look: The Art of the Unforeground
  • Behind the Shot: Watery Grave
  • Whatever it Doesn’t Take
  • Winds of Change: Shooting changing landscapes
  • On the Importance of Naming Images
  • Hell on Earth: Shooting in the Danakil Depression
  • Parallelism in Landscape Photography

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
Comments Off on Rice Hill: Shooting in Riisitunturi National Park

Posted in Uncategorized

 

18 September, 2013 – Tree On The Hill

18 Sep

Today Kevin Raber shares Tree On A Hill  a how to article on taking an ordinary image and dramatizing it.  This is an image made and published on the Home Page recently.  

Also, continue reading the updates on the Olympus OM-D E-M1 in Michael Reichmann’s continuing blog as he tries out this new camera while traveling in Paris.

On Saturday, October 5th Kevin Raber will lead a Worldwide PhotoWalk in Indianapolis. If you live in the area and would like to learn more then please Click Here.

 

 

"Having been to Antarctica with Michael and Kevin, I would say after having traveled the world and shot nearly my entire life as an exhibiting photographer,  it was one of my highlights in my life and I talk about it, all the time.  The images and experience of seeing something visionary and nearly extinct from the world, to see and experience the wildlife and scenery that does not fear humans is amazing.  The images I shot there won me two Smithsonian awards and nearly 18 other international awards". – Tim Wolcott

 Find Out More Now
These Expeditions Will Sell Out Quickly. They Always Do

 

 


The Luminous Landscape – What’s New

 
Comments Off on 18 September, 2013 – Tree On The Hill

Posted in News

 

‘over the hill’ – canapes #1

24 Dec

A few nice visual art images I found:

‘over the hill’ – canapes #1
visual art
Image by the|G|™
:

www.flickr.com/photos/the-g-uk/6991143682/in/photostream/…

:

i was recently lucky enough to attend the opening of a superb exhibition of photography entitled ‘over the hill’.

the exhibition constitutes a visual and conceptual photographic ‘journey’ featuring tim andrews.

tim was a practising lawyer when diagnosed with parkinsons disease in 2005.

less than a year passed before tim could no longer practice law due to his ongoing illness.

the photographic journey began after tim answered an ad calling for subjects willing to pose nude for a series of work involving ‘real’ people and not models.

subsequent to that shoot, various photographers, from professional to amateur, have made work featuring tim.

the 55 photographs that make up the exhibition are as varied and eclectic as the photographers themselves.

the work that i am posting here is not necessarily meant to be a visual representation of the exhibition itself, rather, it constitutes incidental and accidental images that reflect my experience of the exhibition opening.

i am personally familiar with julian holtom and solarixx [see links below], two exceptionally gifted photographers whose work is included in the exhibition, and i had the distinct pleasure of attending the opening with jules [my thanks to you sir].

the exhibition is taking place in the wayfarers arcade [southport – north west england].

go if you can, the work is exceptional and the cause is extremely worthy.

links:

tim andrews blog:

timandrewsoverthehill.blogspot.co.uk/

donations can be made here:

www.justgiving.com/tim-andrews2-overthehill

:

jules work:
www.flickr.com/photos/spaz-winchester/6437312901/

jules stream:
www.flickr.com/photos/spaz-winchester/

:

solarixx work:
www.flickr.com/photos/solarixx/6427828713/

solarixx stream:
www.flickr.com/photos/solarixx/

:

parkinsons disease foundation:
www.pdf.org/

parkinsons uk:
www.parkinsons.org.uk/

parkinsons disease [wiki]:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson’s_disease

:

please make a donation if you can.

:

g

 
Comments Off on ‘over the hill’ – canapes #1

Posted in Photographs

 

Dave Gruentzel Photography | 2009-10-13 Kelly Ruth – Holy Hill

20 Dec

Photo shoot with model Kelly Ruth and photographers Dave Gruentzel, Alvin Arzaga, and Rob Gustafson. www.davegruentzel.com
Video Rating: 5 / 5

See and buy my Photos at: www.momentsofnaturephotography.com This review is mainly for DX camera users deciding between these two lenses. Comparison of the nikon 14-24mm lens and the nikon 10-24mm DX lens. Which one is right for you?
Video Rating: 3 / 5

 
 

Two Minute Review: Digital Macro – Green Hill Camera

21 Oct

Photographer Rishad Mistri explores the mysterious anomalies of the Macro mode on a Canon PowerShot Digital Elf. Some of Rishad’s work can be seen at gallery.me.com Filmed at Channing Daughters Winery, Bridgehampton New York www.channingdaughters.com (c) 2012 Green Hill Camera blog.greenhillcamera.com Produced by Kozak Films http
Video Rating: 5 / 5

We often get asked questions about street photography, so we’re going to answer some of your questions in this quick little video. Photos on Flickr: www.flickr.com Got a question? Why not hook up with us: DigitalRev on Facebook: www.facebook.com DigitalRev on Twitter: www.twitter.com

 
Comments Off on Two Minute Review: Digital Macro – Green Hill Camera

Posted in Photography Videos

 

Silent Hill 2 – HD Stereoscopic 3D (Anaglyph) – Various Cutscenes

12 Apr

READ THIS BEFORE COMMENTING NOTE: Must have anaglyph glasses (red/cyan lenses) to properly view this video. Made possible with use of the IZ3D 3D driver. The IZ3D driver makes DirectX 9 and higher games in stereo 3D whereas Silent Hill 2 PC uses DirectX 8. Unfortunately I cannot adjust the seperation/convergence for the 3D depth with this game. It’s lucky this even worked but there are various glitches while using it: Anywhere James can and does use his flashlight “blacks” out the entire environment. An example of this is near the end of the video when James is shooting Pyramid Head through the closet. The light caused by the pistol flash glitches out whatever the light is touching.
Video Rating: 5 / 5