Results from Boot Camp III, Assignment #4, in which you were asked to create a "36 Hours In…" style travel package about a place near you.
This was a more demanding assignment than the first three (which is why it was saved for last) and that really showed in the number of entrants. To those who completed the shoot, congrats. And I hope that you learned more about your own turf by looking at it through the eyes of a potential visitor… Read more »
I first fell in love with Brooke Snow when she started posting the Inspired by Life video series on her blog and I noticed that she was something I was not: calm. Brooke was chilled out and not frantically running around shooting thousands of images. Now, at this point I’d gotten over the spray-and-pray stage where many newbies begin. And I’d started shooting on purpose. But I still lacked the calm ability to genuinely feel the moment -the millisecond- when, as Brooke puts it, “…composition and emotion reach an apex.”
This is what Henri Cartier-Bresson famously called “the decisive moment”.
The term “decisive moment” is used in countless fields of study. Absolutely everything that relies on human say-so relies on our ability to accurately choose the moment when we act. You can describe these moments in so many different ways. Brooke calls them “the moments in between” the typical shots. Henri said they were “…the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event…” And me? I sum it up this way: “the impetus”. When I began exercising myself to the point of only shooting in those decisive moments, I found that what began as an exercise of my brain eventually became more automatic and finely tuned. It became an impulse or a reflex.
You might be able to call a photographer who clings to the decisive moment careful, circumspect, thoughtful or wise. That is, a photographer whose impulses are so finely tuned that rather than being random bursts of passion, they are truly moments of decision: decisive moments. And although Henri Cartier-Bresson utilized his ability to foresee these moments in high action street photography, I find them in other ways as a portrait photographer. The twinkle in a child’s eye. The moment where a smile turns from fake to real. The moment where a groom is saying everything he feels for his bride on his face. These, too, are fleeting moments that require a calm, decisive photographer.
Here are a few ways I settled myself down in the excitement of pursuing my greatest passion so that I can feel those precise moments milliseconds before they occur:
Breathe. Take a moment to breathe if you find yourself feeling frantic and taking way too many shots.
Restrain. If you’re a film photographer, you probably don’t have this problem because you’re restrained to 12 or 24 frames on a roll of film. Digital photographers can exercise their restraint by giving themselves a set number of frames to get the shots they need. This will force you to slow down and begin feeling the moments that matter.
Restrain more. In addition to not having the luxury of thousands of frames at his disposal, Henri Cartier-Bresson also didn’t have 10 FPS. He couldn’t hold his finger on the trigger and cross the fingers on the other hand, hoping for something good. He could take one shot at a time. Exercise this yourself and you will be amazed at how you find yourself able to eventually make those decisions yourself.
Hunt. Hunters don’t run around with their guns on fully automatic, spraying bullets in the air. Neither should we. Hunt for the moment, the decisive moment. Lay in wait. Hold your focus for as long as it takes.
Embrace the awkward moment. Push past the awkward moments. That’s usually when it happens. Whatever ‘it’ I was hoping for, that’s where I often find it.
My nature is that I can be quite an impetuous person. I’ve had to learn to reign in my shutter finger. In short? Don’t spray and pray. Get to know the decisive moment.
Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.
Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.
The Decisive Moment {from an impetuous photographer}
Image by Daniel Stark
Ever put time aside to get out with your camera and do some photography only to find that the weather turns and the heavens open – spoiling your outing?
Don’t let the rain spoil your day – instead USE the rain – make it a feature of the images that you take. Rainy days can be moody, they present you with wonderful features like reflections, people dashing about with umbrellas, kids playing in puddles, water drops almost every surface and much more.
Here are some rainy day images to give you a little inspiration.
Image by Kevin Morris
Image by WanderingtheWorld
Image by striatic
Image by gaspi *yg
Image by kpishdadi
Image by Cati Kaoe
Image by Pedro J Pacheco
Image by ' m x b c h r
Image by Paul Bence
Image by John&Fish
Image by an untrained eye
Image by Cia de Foto
Image by Ashley Rose
Image by an Untrained Eye
Image by Arianna_M
Image by bitzcelt
Image by Sylvain Latouche
Image by MSVG
Image by tarotastic
Image by VinothChandar
Image by nhussein
Image by Louis Faurer
Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.
Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.
23 Inspirational Images of a Rainy Day
The following quick tutorial is by Vincent Montalbano – one of our wonderful forum members – originally posted in our forum.
I just learned this and thought I’d share this simple procedure. This will also work on color photos, however, I really like what it does for black and whites. Here you go:
Here’s an example:
Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.
Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.
Want your B/W’s to POP? [a Quick and Easy Tutorial]
For those of you who like to tinker around with the art of water droplet photography, the bar has just been raised. Significantly.
Using the hydraulic setup you see above, German photographer Heinz Maier captures the tiny slices of time in which multiple drops of falling water interact with each other.
The lighting tools, which are not shown here, are very simple: a small DIY cardboard softbox with two flashes (cutting the already fast t.1 times in half) some sample gels (complete with spindle holes, no less) and a lot of creative thinking.
The results look like complex glass sculptures… Read more »
So, remember the Sketchy Mondays project, by father/son team Moshe and Eddie Brakha?
A refresher: Totally self-generated, no-boundary work done every Monday by an A-List commercial studio. Just for the creative spark; just for the hell of it. All of this done with a DSLR and few complementary-gelled hot lights. (Yeah, I know it’s not strobe. Just go with it.)
Check out what happens when you say, “What the hell, let’s just shoot something cool on our own, every single week,” by scrolling through a few pages on the Sketchy Mondays website. Awesome stuff.
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From the dieline, a design/packaging blog I read regularly.
A student designed a package for ilford 120 rollfilm, that can be folded into a pinhole camera for said film. Supercool, although it wasn’t clear whether this was an actual product or just a design concept. Check the link for more images and info on the project.
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This is the 500th photo that I’ve posted to Google+. I like celebrating milestones and so I thought I’d post a screenshot of one of my favorite features on Google+, the Google Photos page where you can see your photos in one big long infinite scroll. Here is a link to mine.
I joined Google+ on the very first day that it was open for field testing with the general public. Thanks to +Brian Rose for my day 1 invite. Since then I’ve watched the network explode in the best possible way. I’ve watched photographers flock here and build what is the best community of photographers that I’ve ever seen on the internet anywhere.
Every single day I watch as photographers share the most spectacular work. I +1, I comment and we interact. It’s amazing.
One thing that I especially like at Google+ is that photographers seem to put their best work forward there. I’m on a quest to publish 1,000,000 photos before I die, but I feel like I am saving my very best work to showcase specifically at Google+. I’m proud of every single photo I’ve posted here and I think more carefully about each photograph that I post and how it will fit into this large (now 500 photo) mosaic that I’m building on the site with my “photos from posts” album.
I post 5 photos a day most of the time to Google+ — and I spread them out during the day. This pace feels about right for me here. It feels like it’s enough for me to get a good variety of my work in front of others but not too much to overwhelm them.
The two things I’m most excited about at Google+ are the people and the people.
What I mean by this is that first there is the community. Never have my photos received so much engagement, but this is not just what community is.
Things like Google Hangouts and photowalks have allowed me to get to know so many photographers so much better than I would have otherwise. I’m totally not going to name names because I KNOW I’ll forget someone and then we’ll both feel bad — but you know who you are — and you know we’re stronger friends than we were 90 days ago.
What I mean secondly by the people, are the people who work for Google. Never have I seen a company so engaged with a social product like this. Never have I seen a more excited, passionate group of people building out something with such enthusiasm. The innovation and almost daily feature rollouts blow me away. These people really care about this product — and not just because it could prove financially lucrative to Google, but because they genuinely like using it themselves and as a greater theme see it as a tool for making the world a better place.
The people who work for Google interact on here with us, they share their lives with us, and they share these high points too where this technology is doing amazing things — things like the +Dalai Lama and +Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu hangout, things like doctors using hangouts to talk to each other in Africa.
Anyways, all of this say thank you to everyone on Google+. I’ve enjoyed all of the interaction from the smallest touches to the deepest new friendships. I’m looking forward to what the next six months bring and happy that we’re all enjoying this as much as we are.
If you want to add me as a contact on Google+ you can do that here.
Article by travel photographer Itai Danan, editor of Neocamera. With great controls comes great responsibilities. Unlike Point & Shoot users who often have the benefit of a Panorama Assist mode, DSLR users have to control everything themselves. This is more work, but allows for greater flexibility while shooting images for a panorama. The basic principle […]
DSLRBLOG – Photography Business Blog
Found over at RobertBenson.com. absolutely hilarious, and very true… hits close to home actually!
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