October 19 2007. Spectacular clouds at sunset over Boyd Lake near Fort Collins after a very windy paddling. What do you think about this composition?
Related post:
Sunset over the Boyd Lake – Another Composition Idea for a Horizon in Your Picture?
Where to Place a Horizon in Your Paddling Pictures?
Horizontal or/and Vertical Format in Kayak Photography
Halloween is my favorite holiday and one of the best bits is the undead. Zombies aren’t confined to Halloween but their Fall migration, called Zombie Walks, begin around September and numbers increase drastically until October 31st. Help track the spread of walking undead this season with some great photos!
Like any subject, your photos will improve tremendously if you get the right pose. In this case, that means getting shots that reinforce the idea of a zombie. In other words, the poses should reflect the walking dead. Bodies that are slumped, heads at odd angles, vacant stares, and feral snarls are the hallmarks of a zombie.
If your subject can’t relax and act like the dead thing he is, ask him to imagine that the only thing holding him up are marionette strings between his shoulders and at his wrists. If his eyes haven’t lost all color and turned milky white yet, have him roll his eyes upward so you can only see the whites of his eyes in the photo.
Think about every horror movie you’ve ever seen. The creatures wouldn’t be nearly as scary without the dim lighting, lots of shadows, and the generally dirty feel of the film. Don’t look for soft even light when photographing zombies.
Harsh directional lighting and high contrast brings out the shape of sunken cheeks and will add shadows. Also consider underexposing your shot by a 1/2 stop or full stop to add a more dangerous feel to your images in further intensify angles/shadows. If you are adding flash to your photo, either use off camera flash or turn your camera upside down and bounce the flash from the ground to light the zombie from below to add extra creepiness to the shot. A piece of white poster paper can be rolled up for easy transport and makes a great reflector for ground bounce flash. Swapping to black and white or sepia is also an excellent choice to help bring out details.
Zombies aren’t pretty and they aren’t nice. This is not the time to be looking for beauty shots. Grain and noise are a good thing with zombie photos. The distressed look of the film will add to the dangerous and distressing nature of your subject in the photo.
If you are shooting at night, go ahead and up your film speed. The added grain/noise will actually add to the atmosphere of the image. If you are shooting in the daytime you can still up your film speed to add noise. You’ll just need to increase your shutter speed to make up for the additional light or add a neutral density filter to your lens. You can also add noise/grain when you edit your photos if you prefer.
Pay attention to what is behind your zombie subject(s). The vast majority of zombie migrations take place in urban settings so chain link fences, cars, and even garbage cans are fine in the background of zombie photos. However, one uninfected person smiling cluelessly in the background can completely throw off the feel of your zombie pic. Wait a moment or two until the zombies notice the prey in their midst and then capture the feeding frenzy.
Photographing zombies is one time that the straight horizons rule can be easily discarded. A tilted frame can help translate the lurching motion of a zombie in your photographs. Which direction you tilt the frame depends on how much the zombie is leaning and how much background is visible around the zombie. If you are filling the frame with your subject tilt against the lurch. If plenty of background is visible tilt with the subject angle. If you are unsure which angle to use, remember that when you are shooting over your shoulder while running from the horde you should get plenty of varying angles to choose from later.??Shooting upwards also puts the zombies in control visually in your photos because it makes the viewer feel like they are looking up. So don’t just give up when the zombies surround you, keep shooting until the last moment. You can take comfort in knowing that whomever finds your camera later will be surprised with a great final shot of the zombies closing in over you.
Liz Masoner is a long time photographer based in Alabama with experience ranging from freelance to photojournalist. She is widely published online and in print, including 5 years developing the photography content for About.com. Liz is a co-founder of the Phorum Photographic community and also maintains a personal blog chronicling her adventures and misadventures from behind the lens.
Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.
Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.
How to Photograph Zombies
If you're going to steal from someone, you should have the class to steal from the very best. Which is why photographers so often return to Rembrandt when it comes to nicking someone's light.
Such was the case with Denver wedding photographer R.J. Kern, who we join today for a quick BTS of the portrait above… Read more »
In the past couple years, Responsive photography themes are becoming more popular than before. In this guest article, not only will you see examples of the best responsive photography themes available, but you will learn why they are useful.
Responsive Web Design (RWD) is an approach to web design in which a site is crafted to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones). – Wikipedia
A picture can tell 1000 words, so they say, and when it comes to showing off your photography work, a simple website can really assist in illustrating what you can offer to potential customers.
With this in mind, an online portfolio is an essential part of any photographer’s role, in order to gage new business, and it’s worth remembering that this may be the first impression someone has of you, so you need to make it accessible and memorable.
Before picking your photos for the portfolio though, it’s worth remembering that not everyone views a website on their computer anymore. They may be searching for you on the go on their smartphone, or sat on the couch on a tablet. This is where responsive design can help.
Becoming increasingly popular as responsive themes become more widely available, these themes react to whatever platform your site is being viewed on, meaning it looks like a great website, no matter what the screen.
If you’re stumped on where to start, here are a few great examples of WordPress portfolio themes that are responsive, which could be ideal for your photography website.
This full screen portfolio theme really puts the emphasis back onto imagery. Images overtake the screen to really make your work shine. With drop-down menus and a fully functional blog, this can create a visually stunning basic site if you’re after something heavily image-focused.
This WordPress theme allows for flexible galleries, with quirky animations and effects. The full screen image slider is a particularly great feature for photographer’s portfolios and is a great theme for use on various devices.
This premium WordPress theme is ideal for both photographers who have no coding knowledge whatsoever, and those who may be a bit more into the development of their site. Using sliders to flip through the portfolio, the site provides ease of use with a simple navigation. A full-height full screen slideshow allows for your work to really do the talking.
For those who want to more than just a showcase of work, Evolution provides a simple yet effective theme. It allows for a slideshow preview of work upon the homepage, whilst allowing room for background information and the latest blog post too. A great way to give a taster of your collection.
Gleam is an incredibly sleek and modern theme – an ideal WordPress photography theme for photographers. The theme allows for full background photos, as well as the ability to display your work full screen. Remember, with responsive design this will look great on any device. For a more traditional layout, the standard gallery page uses small thumbnails with popups to view full images. The flexibility is here with all the glamour and simplicity you could want.
With a name like Reponsy, it’s no wonder it caught my attention for a responsive photography themes article. A fantastic HTML5 theme which will have all the tools you could possibly want for your site – whether it’s your social buttons, a blog post, or embedding your Flickr images. The clear layout of the theme pages allows for multiple portfolios if you want to section your work off. Clear, yet quirky, Responsy offers the full package.
A minimalistic theme which makes it ideal for responsive design, the highly customisable options alongside the white space of the theme allows for your work to really stand out. Because it is minimalistic, the theme is timeless and will require little monitoring to remain current.
A premium WordPress theme, JPhotolio has an unlimited size of portfolio housed in an elegant and feminine template – ideal for wedding photography. With a great interactive portfolio that can be narrowed down by category, this site has personality already, whilst being customisable enough to add your own. The navigation bar at the top remains no matter where on the site you visit, allowing for excellent simple navigation.
A responsive and uncluttered WordPress portfolio theme, this is an incredibly effective theme if you want to show off your work without any distractions. The theme provides a more than adequate portfolio for photography, whilst offering flexible colours and social widget, creating focus on getting in touch.
Mixfolio offer a ‘welcome area’ on your page, so you can automatically tell visitors who you are and how to get in touch, before delving into the imagery. The standard black, grey and white structures make for a simple, yet classic design, allowing for selected photographs on the landing page to relly stand out in contrast.
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Brett Harkness is a successful wedding photographer based in Manchester, UK.
If you had to really strip your camera gear back to the very basics what would you do?
This question comes after a chat with a friend yesterday who admitted that he now had 3 DSLRs and 14 lenses for them… in addition to several compact cameras and a four thirds camera body with 4 lenses.
I asked him what he’d do if he had to give it all up except for one camera body and one lens and he almost started to hyperventilate but it led to a fascinating conversation about the merits of different gear.
I know not everyone has that level of gear at their disposal but I know many of our readers have acculated quite a bit of gear…. so what would you do if you had to simplify or strip it back to the basics.
Lets say you can only have one camera body and one lens – which ones would you keep?
Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.
Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.
If You Had to Simplify Your Camera Kit… [DISCUSS]
A work in progress: photographing pain.
It is reasonable to say that a photographer’s style and choice of subjects also depends on the emotional stimuli he or she was subjected to while growing up.
This concept made me look at my visual work from yet another, intimate, self-analytical angle.
© Giovanni Savino
While I certainly love to portray beauty in my photos, whenever I am able to find it and see it, I think it would be honest for me to say that the majority of my subjects depict and portray an array of painful, difficult, controversial, uncomfortable emotions and situations.
I realize that human pain, whether blatantly shouted or quietly whispered, is, and has always been, the strongest conceptual magnet attracting my camera lens.
Existential and psychological pain was always present in my life, since my earliest childhood. I was able to address and resolve some issues while growing up, others are still unresolved to this day, in the sunset of my life.
© Giovanni Savino
So I decided to embark in attempting to visually explore the pain and existential suffering I perceive and detect, at many different levels, in the majority people around me.
My ongoing photographic project has three main objectives:
© Giovanni Savino
These are a few of the field notes I have been taking lately, as I started to build a body of work around this difficult, still under-studied, phenomenon of our lives:
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Giovanni Savino is a New York-based photographer and cinematographer specializing in editorial, documentary and portrait photography.
April 2010. Paddling CLC Patuxent 19.5 kayak with Canon Powershot G11 camera mounted on a telescoping mast assembled from a monopod and sticky pod platform.
Related post:
Paddling with Canon PowerShot G11 Camera on a Monopod Mast
Kayak Video Camera Mast – Sticky Pod Combined with Monopod
A Bird’s-Eye View of Kayaking with GoPro Hero Camera
There are so many photography themes on the market, but not all of them really make your portfolio shine.
In this article, you will see a variety of WordPress photography themes with their own styles. Although they’re all very differnt, they have a very important purpose. To show off your portfolio.
Remained at the top as the best there is for a WordPress photo gallery theme.
Most people sync with a cord, radio or some version of a proprietary system—i.e., CLS or E-TTL. But infrared (IR) remotes are another, if much less used, option.
They are compact, cheap and wireless so there's a lot to like. But they also have some weaknesses. Today we'll be taking a look at whether an IR remote may be a good choice for you. Read more »
