DPReview attended the Photokina trade show last week in Cologne Germany, and as well as stand reports and hands-on looks at the major new products we also sat down with executives from several of the major camera manufacturers. In this interview, we speak to Toshihisa Iida, Senior Manager of Sales & Marketing in Fujifilm’s Optical Device & Electronic Imaging products division. Click through to read more
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Building modern digital cameras and lenses is an exacting business. Each product is made up of sometimes hundreds of tiny components, assembled to meticulously narrow tolerances and if one piece is out of alignment, the whole is compromised. But you want to see what stuff looks like when it’s been cut in half? Yes. You do, you know you do. It’s OK, we won’t tell anyone. Click through for a look at things that we found at CP+ that have been cut in half.
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
by Lynsey Peterson.
I am incredibly lucky. It’s taken me a decade, but I have built a portrait photography business that depends solely on word-of-mouth marketing and stays plenty busy that way.
If there was a magic 3 step process for this, I promise I would share it.
I’ve learned a ton along the way: treat your clients like gold, be generous whenever you can, and everyone should blow their nose and empty their pockets before a single picture is taken. Yet……..I still learn every day. Which is odd because every day I am also pretty sure that I couldn’t possibly know more than I know now or be presented with a situation I have yet to encounter. Then again, sometimes my ego and I have trouble fitting thru doorways together.
See that? It’s a house. It’s actually my house – which I am putting on the market soon.
My wonderful realtor who knows I’m a photographer, asked if I wanted to go ahead and take the pictures myself to save time and money instead of bringing in the trained and experienced real estate photographer she usually uses.
Now, I am asking a little more than my hourly rate for this house. In fact, I am asking like a thousand of my hourly rates for this house. 999 of them are going to pay off the note with the bank, but I’m pretty excited about that one I might get back – and I don’t do real estate photography. I’m not even really sure how to go about it if we are being honest. But, hey, I have a fancy camera and an expensive lens and how hard could it be, right?
If you have those fore mentioned things, you are going to be asked at some point to shoot something that you don’t have any interest in shooting. Maybe it’s a house. Maybe it’s food. Maybe it’s dirt in a fetching abstract pattern. And it’s tempting to say yes, because after all…..how hard could it be? The answer is hard. The longer answer is that every time you shoot something subpar, if only because you don’t have the experience, training, and interest in shooting that, you are taking away from the work you do want to shoot. I get it. I really do. Favors for friends, good money in the off-season. But it’s rarely worth it.
The lesson: Stick with what you know. If you don’t have any desire to do it or learn how, don’t take it on.
I love photographing people upside down. It’s unexpected and quirky and different and fun. And, and, and. It’s also complicated and only works when the rest of what the viewer’s eye has to process is simple and easy. If I had stopped for a moment and viewed it without my camera, I would have seen how hard it was to take it. Why is one kid upside down and the other not? Who’s arms are those? How did they get like that? The cuteness of siblings rolling around in grass and beautiful light gets lost trying to understand the whole picture.
The lesson: Simplify. If it takes you a second to process what is happening, it will take the viewer of the future photograph much more than a second and your concept could be completely lost….no matter how “perfect” the shot itself is.
When a plane went by, causing most everyone in this family to look toward the sky, I though I had hit pay dirt. I quickly envisioned them all looking up in amazement and excited baffle. Instead it only served as an interruption to what we were doing. At the moment I remember thinking I should encourage them to watch the plane. But I was so caught up in the moment passing us by that I didn’t think I had time.
Even if the plane had long passed by the time I conveyed what I meant, I still could have gotten the shot I imagined. But I didn’t say a word about it and therefore didn’t allow them their own moment, which would have produced an amazing shot. Instead I have this: everyone a bit thrown off by the interruption because I didn’t ease the situation.
The lesson: Take your time. No matter how tight the schedule, you always have 30 extra seconds to make a fun situation into a great shot.
Oh this picture. It was such a beautiful shot…………two hours of Photoshop ago. I love MORE. I’m a fan of bigger and better and faster too. When this cutie showed up with this adorable hat,
I got an idea. A crazy/complicated/fun idea.
I. Was. Going. To. Get. This. Shot.
We were going to stay here all day if that’s what it took. And I got a great shot (without the whole day bit luckily). However left to my own devices, I wanted to do everything I could to make it THE shot. What’s post-production, if not to enhance right? I felt it was a Gap Kid’s moment, what with the cute kid and fun hat and all. Deserving of the kind of “enhancement” ready for a catalog cover. Never mind that I don’t shoot fashion, that I rarely shoot commercial, and that for this shot I was being paid to shoot a portrait and nothing more.
The lesson: Less is usually more. There’s a fine line between giving an image a little editing love and turning people into plastic.
Now I knew going into this shoot that I was photographing a large family and 8 dogs and you’d think that I would have come with my pockets full of dog treats and spent the hour and a half drive there practicing my whistle. But, alas, I did not.
This particular client was a referral who lived really far from me and was willing to pay me a significant travel fee to come to them – and their 8 dogs.
Admittedly my ego got the best of me here. There are hundreds of photographers closer and cheaper. Maybe even some with experience shooting 8 dogs. But they wanted me. And instead of saying, “do I really want to shoot this?”, I happily fed my ego a big serving of “I’m So Wanted” with a side dish of “How Awesome Am I? Answer: Really Awesome”.
Here’s the problem with that: this shot is forever my body of work. Even if I had never shown it to anyone, the client might. And it’s not my greatest work. Yet it may be the only work of mine someone sees.
This isn’t the shot I want to hang my hat on or be known for. I’m not embarrassed about it, but I do get a little bummed about the idea that a viewer may see this and think it’s the best example of my skills.
The lesson: Get over yourself. This shot doesn’t need to be in my body of work, but it is. I could have done more research and come in with better ideas for this 8 dog craziness and by not, the take-away is a shot that could have been so fun and different and interesting and…… isn’t.
Check out more of Lynsey Peterson’s work on her website.
Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.
Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.
Learning From My Mistakes: 5 Okay Shots That Could Have Been Great
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You tried running your DSLR photos through phone apps.
But the details got lost, and you were left with a tiny photo!
Cole Rise’s Litely might just have made the perfect preset actions for your digital photos. And it’s no wonder, have you seen Cole’s photos?
Each set comes with twelve presets that gracefully adjust the color and tone of your photos with a look reminiscent of film.
But what makes these so different from all the other presets out there?
They’re impressively subtle and keep the skin tones of your subjects looking natural, all without washing out the detail. Plus, they’re pretty as heck!
The best part is they were each made to work with nearly any kind of lighting. So you can use use them whether you shoot outside, in low light, or in a studio.
We might just call Cole Goldilocks ’cause these presets are just right.
You can check the presets out in action at Lite.ly’s blog. They’re available Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, or Adobe Camera Raw.
Litely, Simply Beautiful Photo Presets
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True artists don’t need anything fancy to make awe inspiring works. These ballpoint pen artists can come out with something that’s photo realistic and vibrant in color (or equally vibrant in contrast).
These works look like heavily-filtered photographs, but they’re actually drawn by hand using simple ballpoint pens. Spanish artist Juan Francisco Casas (pictured above with one of his works) has mastered the art of creating epic and realistic murals with one of the simplest materials. You can find more of his work here (some nsfw).
Amanda Ortiz has some truly epic artwork on her site, including this great ape showing his angry face. Portugal based attorney Samuel Silva creates gorgeous and colorful ballpoint pen artwork as a hobby. These two animals are based on photographs, and look almost too real to be true (but I promise, they are).
Artist Mark Powell uses nothing but a ballpoint pen and an envelope to do his art, and the choice of medium works incredibly well at giving it a transitive feel. Vanessa Prager’s “Love You Too” series is full of colorful pen pieces that illustrate a slightly abstract emotional landscape.
Juan Francisco Casas was mentioned earlier in this post, but his work deserves further exploration. The camera man likely much prefers this portrait over the one he took with his camera, and Juan has done an amazing job at capturing every shade and wrinkle of these two girls.
Arguably Samuel Silva’s most stunning work, this piece is based on the photograph of a fiery redhead and does her real justice. Dave Archambault created this piece of a young girl wearing a shawl and does a fantastic job at recreating the threads and folds of her headwear. Finishing up is an action shot by Juan Francisco Casas.
Would you believe that none of these pictures are photographs? It’s true – the ten artists featured here specialize in amazingly realistic works of art.
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The Mona Lisa is one of the most famous historical paintings of all time and, as such, has spawned a great many look-alikes, fakes, copies and other derivative works.
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We’ve kept it under wraps for over a year. But now the secret is finally out! If you haven’t heard by now, we are releasing the first full blown educational fashion photography DVD ever made! We have pulled out all the stops to leave no stone unturned, no question unanswered. And I am honestly very pleased with the results!! Initially we wanted to base the format of the DVD loosely around what I teach at my workshops: a chance for photographers to work on a real fashion shoot with top models and professional hair stylists, make up artists and fashion stylists. And that’s great for a seminar when you’re in the room with me so I can show you what a difference it makes when you work with a pro team. But then we took a look at the bigger picture and realized that the real challenges that most young or up and coming fashion photographers face is inside knowledge on how to break into the industry. On Fashion Photography Exposed, I show you how to produce better fashion shoots with better lighting and then I show you the importance of promoting yourself and your business so you can compete in a very competitive and unpredictable industry. There is so much that the DVD offers but I’m not going to go into all of the specifics here in this post. You can find out all the information about the Fashion Photography Exposed on the website.
What I will say is that we take you on a journey and I’m with you every step of the way. For over 3 hours, you get a completely honest inside look at the elusive “club” that the fashion photography industry truly is. This DVD is not only for education, it’s for inspiration. While we go into a lot of technical information, I emphasize that the most important component needed to being a fashion photographer is the love and passion for it.
Putting together a 3 hour film is a ton of work! But you know what? I am incredibly grateful to my readers on this blog and to my fans. For the past 3 years that I have had the Fashion Photography Blog, I have received thousands of emails from people all over the world and you all have touched my heart immensely. So this is my gift for you.
I’m not selling you on any camera gear or equipment on this DVD. I am not sponsored by anyone. You don’t need a lot of expensive gear to take great photographs. In fact, I’m going to talk you out of going out and spending a fortune on gear. What you need to take great photographs is a real passion for fashion and an undying love for taking even better pictures, every time you shoot! And this DVD speaks loudly to those of you who have that love and passion. So come into my world as a working fashion photographer and see how this all works!!
Fashion Photography Blog – A Resource for Fashion Photographers, Created by One.
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