Finding Balance (In Our Image Making Approach)

One of my more artistic impressions. Power-lines in Namibia marching over the sands

Psych tests. If you haven’t already completed one, you are likely going to find it in your social media feed in the next few days. I’m referring to the current fad to take the left/right brain tests that seems to have cropped up on social media of late (in between the even more vocal accusations, assertions, and excuses for racism and bigotry…but that’s a different post). So I took the one presented to me by my wife at 5:30 in the morning. Bleary eyed, I completed it and moved on. Then more people started to talk about and it got me thinking a little more about the results and whether they have a meaningful insight into my life as a photographer. My eventual conclusion: they explain what kind of a photographer I am, not whether I am a photographer, or a even a good photographer at that.

Colour Shifts and Working Without Gels

I found myself on a photoshoot a few weeks back without my lighting gels. The horror, the brief moment of panic. Not my finest moment admittedly. However, there is a very simple fix in Photoshop that probably does an even better job than using gels in the first place.

Where the *%*k are my pictures!?!? Synchronising files in Lightroom

If you have been using Lightroom since it’s inception it might seem absolutely natural to you and finding images is as simple as using the efficient and simple filters. If like the 90% of photographers I have worked with, Lightroom seems to have it’s own nascent (and petulant) brain that apparently throws your images away, then this article below might make some sense of Adobe’s enfant terrible and its unruly behaviour. At any rate, it might at the very least stop you from throwing your iMac through a window.

In The Mood For A New Camera - New (Important) Toys

 

In the mood for a new camera? Despite the camera industry being in turmoil and sinking wherever one looks, there are some truly spectacular cameras that have just been announced. Will they improve your photography? doubtful. They will take a sizable chunk out of your wallet though, all so that you can have the latest greatest iterations out. That, is what these new cameras are: iterations. However, they are extremely important iterations that set new benchmarks. I’ll check my sarcasm for a moment and make the point that they are quite likely some of the most important iterations in cameras that we have seen in almost 5 years.

Quick and Dirty Layers Mask Tutorial

In collaboration with Nature's Light (a photographic expedition company that I partner in) I have just uploaded a new video tutorial on layers and masks. The tutorial can be viewed on Vimeo at this link

Giving It The Finger - A Photoshop Layering Technique

As much as I am a fan of the single capture approach to image-making, there are times that the opportunities that digital photography and multiple image capture offer, open up a whole new realm of picture possibilities. I don't mean that Dali-esque images are possible - which they admittedly are - but that we are better able to create images that match our experience of the scene. A case in point is photographing into the sun. When we look into the sun we are able to take in a lot more of the scene's tones through our naked eyes than through any kind of camera, be it digital or film. A solution that has been used extensively by digital photographers, but also by film photographers of yore, is to shoot multiple frames as different exposures and then blend the images to create a result with a wider tonal range than is possible from a single frame capture. Than are other complexities than the tonal range though. A particular issue is that of flare. 'Giving it the finger' is my solution to this.