Finally, spring came up and it’s a wonderful time of the year to start grow your business and improve yourself as a photographer. We do a little search to find the best fresh photography business articles from leading blogs which will help you to thrive in 2015. Here you’ll see 80 online and offline marketing strategies for photographers, the recipe Continue Reading
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Are you seeking some inspiration for getting creative with some new macro photographs? Perhaps you’ve grown tired of taking close-ups of typical macro subjects like flowers and insects. Help is on the way.
There is a whole world of macro photography available to you that doesn’t involve the typical subject matter so often associated with close-up photography. There are some amazing images of insects and flowers to enjoy on the web, but what about going in a different direction?
Here are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing, to challenge your imagination, and direct you to doing more interesting macro photography:
This is a good technique to use when the weather outside isn’t the best for macro work. Your kitchen is the easiest place to start generating ideas. I usually grab a notebook, or a tablet and a pen, and start brainstorming by opening drawers and cabinets and writing ideas down.
You have appliances, silverware, glasses, cooking utensils, and plates to start with. Add food and liquids to your list and you’ve got a great big inventory to work with. Coffee beans, cherry tomatoes, and peanuts work well because of their size and variety in surface and color (see photo above).
A few years back, I gave myself a photo assignment to create some new macro images using bathroom subjects. I don’t consider myself an expert macro photographer, but I did have a good time with the challenge of making a few non-typical macro photos. Cottons swabs, a suction-cup shampoo bottle holder, and a razor became the subjects from the bathroom.
Other locations could be an office, a workshop, or yes, perhaps even the bedroom. You could also leave your house and take a trip into town, visit a junkyard, or go to a local thrift store.
Rather than limit yourself to a single location, take a theme approach. What if you picked texture as a theme to develop? Take a second right now to jot down anything you can think of that has texture. Take a deep breath, relax, clothes your eyes, and let your mind go.
Use a mind map like the one pictured below. This is just a brainstorming method to generate creative possibilities. Here are just four random examples. These can lead to other tangent ideas so write down all of your thoughts and you can edit your lists later.
There are plenty of courses online you can take, or find a live workshop nearby. Not only will you be exposed to the close-up photos from the instructor, but you’ll surely have an opportunity to interact with other budding macro shooters.
You could ask them what their most unusual macro subject has been. They may have ideas that never would have occurred to you.
I started a practice of attending a minimum of at least two workshops or seminars yearly, and it has been a great way for me to recharge my creativity.
One of the most powerful idea tools I use is Google. Try using a variety of keyword searches with “macro” and “close-up”. Search specific categories and those search results will lead you to other themes and ideas.
You can go to big photo gallery web sites that have search boxes to explore literally millions of macro images. Do a variety of macro searches, based on subject, lighting, or location at web sites like 500pixels, SmugMug, or Flickr, just to mention a few.
Challenge yourself to come up with a few completely different ways to light one of your subjects. We know photography is a form of painting with light. Try to significantly change the appearance of your subject by dramatically changing the way you light it.
Change the direction, the size of your light source, and the shadow to highlight ratio in a variety of ways to get new results. This may lead to the discovery of different ways to reveal specific characteristics of your subject like texture, color or compositional lines.
The red pepper photo below was lit with a single speedlight, bounced off of a small white piece of cardboard, above and behind the subject.
The best time for creative thinking is when your mind is fresh and rested. Many personal development books and various brain studies make the point that there are specific peak performance conditions that you can implement to boost your creativity and effectiveness.
For many, certain environments or activities can work. A few minutes of focused and relaxed breathing, time during or after exercise, a walk in the woods, or even brainstorming while in the shower can bring forth great ideas.
Other avenues you can explore can be taking your macro photographs with different lenses or manipulating them afterward with software. The photo below is of a plastic model turbine engine.
I liked all of the details revealed in the close-up, but the original photo had remnants of a yellowish glue from its assembly. I used Nik Silver Efex Pro 2’s Low Key filter to convert it to a black and white image.
In addition to these five ways of getting creative ideas for macro photography, there is a wealth of information available to you for creativity, imagination, and brainstorming techniques in general which you can apply to your photography.
Some of the books by Michael Michalko, Amy Wallace, and Austin Kleon are worthwhile reading if you are looking to apply creativity to your photography or any another aspect of your life.
Have a blast and share any comments or images you have below.
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The post 5 Tips for Getting Fresh Ideas for Macro Photography by Bruce Lovelace appeared first on Digital Photography School.
[ By WebUrbanist in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]
Bringing healthy and organic fruits and vegetables into low-income areas of Toronto lacking grocery stores, this converted bus is much more than a normal food truck – it looks like an ordinary vehicle until it stops and deploys its colorfully-stocked shelves (images by Laura Berman).
As in many cities, there are ‘food deserts’ in Toronto in which it is hard to find fresh seasonal produce. Using a vehicle donated by the Toronto Transit Commission, LGA Architectural Planners helped convert this vehicle to address this issue.
“Even in a city as dynamic as Toronto, there remain neighbourhoods where residents are unable to access the foods essential to a healthy diet. This happens for a variety of reasons, including low-income, lack of access to public transit, and long distances to groceries and markets. Such conditions make it extremely difficult for individuals and families without access to a vehicle to find and purchase healthy foods. Senior citizens who might be less mobile are hit especially hard by this type of isolation.”
Lettuce, berries, okra, yucca, broccoli, apples and more fill the fold-out shelves extending out from the side of the Mobile Good Food Market. Inside, bins of additional veggies and fruits can be accessed by walking or wheelchair, a handy feature for cold and wet weather.
The project was commissioned by FoodShare Toronto in partnership with the City of Toronto and United Way Toronto in a joint effort to help supplement unhealthy local options in neighborhoods starved for good and fresh foods.
“The design also offered the opportunity to shop from the inside in inclement weather,” notes Dean Goodman of LGA, pointing out that as a former Wheel-Trans bus, ramps for ease of entry and exit were already in place. “Good food is beautiful when displayed well, so when we decided we wanted this to be a feature we worked out the mechanism so one person could fold out the shelves, restock as necessary and display the food so it was attractive.””
Drive around any mid-size to large city and you’re destined to find a number of food trucks. In recent years they’ve become almost as ubiquitous as …
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Lip-smackin’ taste sensations are conveniently delivered right to your tongue thanks to the onset of wildly creative and cool mobile food carts.
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These rainbow-colored meals may be pretty to look at, but would you ever eat one? This photography series puts a whole new spin on the way we look at food.
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[ By WebUrbanist in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]
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Give your photography the online showcase it deserves. In this collection, I handpicked 25 best and free WordPress portfolio themes to build your photography website or blog on. There is no need to spend money to create your presence online. If you’re seeking for a free solution to create your first portfolio website, these WordPress themes are the best choice Continue Reading
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This week Corel has unveiled PaintShop Pro X7 and PaintShop Pro X7 Ultimate, two new versions of its image editing software for Windows. This update features extensive changes to the user interface as well as a claimed 30 percent improvement in brush performance, including the Paint Brush, Airbrush and various retouching tools. Speed improvements have allowed for new instant previews of effects before they are applied to images and the 64-bit architecture allows fast performance with larger or multiple images. Read more
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]
Hanging clothes out to dry is a design problem with a long history and many solutions, making it all the more rare to see something like this clever star-shaped approach that addresses the issue with such adeptness.
In some Asian or European regions with more temperate climates, people string their clothes outside to dry, taking maximum advantage of warmth and airflow. Apartment and condo dwellers in colder places often have fewer options – Aaron Dunkerton of Queensland, Australia, but graduate of Kingston University, in the colder United Kingdom, can relate to both sets of conditions.
The clever twelve-pointed-star design allows for maximum air circulation and hanging area with a minimum footprint when the drying rack is folded up and stored. A compact collection of aluminum rods strung between plywood supports are unfolded and latched to form an essentially circular shape with space in the middle – all part of a low-tech spin cycle that takes up less space in your closet, too.
More about this unconventional clotheshorse: “The dimensions of my clothes horse are 56cm long, 32 wide and 23cm high when it is collapsed so it is much easier to store than a conventional clothes airer which are normally awkward sizes and hard to hide when not in use. When in use its dimensions are 56cm deep, 112cm wide and 112cm tall. The shape of my clothes horse when erect allows for good air circulation around the clothes, which will help them to dry faster.”
Most home furnishings are made for flat surfaces, not for those uncomfortable edge conditions we call either ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ corners. But not these! Click Here to Read More »»
Like a giant-sized Swiss Army knife, this narrow column unfolds to reveal everything your bathroom could need – a NASA-worthy, space-age modular design idea. Click Here to Read More »»
In a bid to one-up the traditional fold-up Murphy bed, two companies are switching a wall-based storage approach for a ceiling-centric alternative. For those … Click Here to Read More »»
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We’ve been able to get our hands on the highly anticipated full-frame Sony Alpha 7R again, and have posted a gallery of real-world samples using a final production camera. Follow the link for some shots taken in the Volunteer State – Tennessee.
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]
Making his way through the boroughs of New York, the infamous but mysterious interventionist Banksy is broadcasting new stencils, installations and mixed media work all month as a street-artist-in-residence in America’s largest city.
In Midtown Manhattan, his figures, phrases, plays on words and signage can be found defacing (or at least: refacing) concrete walls and garage doors in Banksy’s typical self-referential style. From there, he has moved onto Williamsburg and otherBrooklyn neighborhoods, and no one knows quite where he will pop up next.
As he often does in new destinations, Banksy is actively toying with New York City culture and tropes, from its stylized graffiti fonts to its world-famous Broadway shows (his contribution to existing tags above: “The Musical” stenciled alongside each).
Branching out from two-dimensional pieces, here is “a New York delivery truck converted into a mobile garden (includes rainbow, waterfall and butterflies).” This piece in particular is also actually moving around the city: “The truck will visit a different location every evening from dusk,” starting in an East Village location.
Perhaps best of all, this time Banksy also provides wonderful faux-vintage commentary on this series (titled: Better In Than Out) in the form of audio tour files you can click to play on Banksy’s website – or by calling a special toll-free number found spray-painted next to a number of these pieces: 1-800-656-4271. Of course, as always and almost as quickly as they appear, many of his works are being erased or defaced by city workers or other street artists – it goes with the territory.
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Yosemite Sunbeams, Yosemite National Park
Today the JMG-Galleries.com Blog jumps into its 3rd major incarnation with a new design. Over the past 18 months my old blog has become increasingly difficult to work with for a variety of reasons and it’s been a driving factor in my blogging less and less as of late. It’s tough to stay in a groove when you’re constantly fighting technical gremlins.
While I consider myself a perfectionist, I can say with certainty that what you see today is not the final design change. I have a lot of fine tuning to do, but in the meantime you should at least see some of the following benefits:
If you notice some bugs don’t be shy in letting me know. I want everyone’s experience with my blog to be a good one so bug fixing will be a top priority this week. Thanks for reading, subscribing and taking an interest in my work.
Copyright Jim M. Goldstein, All Rights Reserved
A Fresh Change On The JMG-Galleries.com Blog
The post A Fresh Change On The JMG-Galleries.com Blog appeared first on JMG-Galleries – Jim M. Goldstein Photography.
JMG-Galleries – Jim M. Goldstein Photography
[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Products & Packaging. ]
A hot black cuppa bean-infused water was only the beginning, but beyond Espressos, Americanos, Cappuccinos, Latte art and creative coffee mugs lies a world of stimulating design ideas for the caffeine-dedicated aficionado. Some are a bit green yet and perhaps worth roasting a while longer, but others are already rich with promise.
Not enough space on your kitchen counter? No worries: Song Ah Lee is developing a wall-mounted coffee maker for one (custom cup included) that blends into the background but remains handy for refills.
No time to wait around while your morning roasts warms up? Consider brewing coffee right on your commute, instead, with Handspresso, sold as the world’s first car-worthy espresso machine – just stick to using it at stop signs and lights, please.
All of these are well and good for getting your caffeinated brew going in the morning, but what happens when the heat starts to dissipate? An obvious but elegant solution when you cannot refresh is to rewarm, with something like this mobile reheating stick by Hyewon Lee.
Now you have made your coffee, kept it hot, and are at the office … where suddenly you cannot find your workday mug. Clearly you forgot to pick up the Lock Mug with a hole specially keyed so that only you can use it!
State fairs are known for putting just about anything on a stick, but coffee sounds a bit far-fetched … at first. Heo Jeong Im took up the challenge, though, and combined instant coffee packets with stir spoons to invent what he has dubbed the Cappuccino Coffee Stick. As you stir to mix your brew, the mass of coffee crystals dissolves, leaving only your stirrer behind.
To give you some more options this collection of coffee and tea mugs features designs that are unique and practical at the same time.
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As a focus for family, friends, football and fun, the coffee table can’t be beat… but it CAN be OFFbeat, as these 15 creative coffee table designs show so well.
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