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Posted by Dominic Sun, 16 Mar 2008 05:00:00 GMT
First off, thank you all for the kind words regarding my fledgling photography. Seems I have rather high standards for myself. :)
As followup to the free trip to Strictly Business 2: I am sad to report that I did not make the cut.
It’s quite alright, perhaps I will pay my own way some day, when the need (or urge) becomes strong enough.
Posted by Dominic Fri, 25 Jan 2008 03:03:00 GMT
Gary Cohen sat down and spent some time creating this bad-ass new Flickr viewing application.
The images sort of float up the screen, you can mouse over them and click through to pop them up on Flickr.
Check it out with my photostream here.
(Via Thomas Hawk)
Posted by Dominic Fri, 11 Jan 2008 06:58:00 GMT
Last weekend, I spent a few hours with Holley, a friend of mine, and her boyfriend Chris.
It actually started with Holley and myself looking for a publically-accessible cemetary for some photographs, and afterwards we went back and picked up Chris, before they headed out on their 1-year dating anniversary date.
If you wish to see more of the pictures we shot, you can find them here.
Posted by Dominic Sun, 06 Jan 2008 21:35:00 GMT
This last week, while visiting Rebecca’s relatives in Georgia, I experimented with a photographic concept called HDR photography
Simply put, cameras don’t have quite the color/luminance range that our eyes have. So when you’re photographing a scene which goes from intense brightness to intense darkness all in the same scene - you either have to sacrifice the dark in order to see the light part correctly - or sacrifice the light part in order to see the dark part correctly.
HDR photography attempts to deal with this issue bracketing several exposures +- some amount of F-stop, and then blending the three-or-more images together to create the finished product.
The downside to this technique is that there is a fair amount of post-processing required. This makes HDR photography ill suited for photojournalism, etc - places where the desired outcome includes no post-processing.
It was suggested during my HDR research that HDR photography was more like capturing a memory, since it closer approximates how we remember a scene, and after some playing around, I am tempted to agree with this - there are certainly ways to get a good shot in-camera without all the fancy tricks, but then again - sometimes you want to capture a mood that is hard/impossible to light.
Posted by Dominic Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:31:00 GMT
This entry might be mislabeled, but that’s entirely on purpose. :)
In his blog, David Zizer talks about forcing you to think creatively. And doing this by picking a single lens, forcing you to find new and creative ways to (ab)use that glass.
This is essentially what I did in my 8mm Project, where I forced myself to shoot with an 8mm fisheye for a week.
And boy was it fun! A bit slow to start in the beginning, but after a while I was loving shooting with that thing.
Now, of course, I want to buy one. I’m thinking of going all Bert Stephani though, and getting a Peleng. (Read: Cheap, quirky and Russian. :)
I’m not sure what my next “project” would be - whether accidental or on purpose. I have a few ideas for shoots I want to take, but I have to spend some quality time scouting locations. (It’s tough when you don’t have a crew to do the work for you, like Chase…. :)
Posted by Dominic Wed, 28 Nov 2007 13:15:00 GMT
Chase Jarvis blew the veil on all the secrets, and reveals all the tips and tricks of packing photo gear.
The video above is the short version (and still 10 minutes long!) - if you follow this link to his blog, you can find the 30 minute going-into-all-the-details version.
And who said (gear) porn was NSFW.
Posted by Dominic Sat, 24 Nov 2007 19:52:00 GMT
This project came about somewhat accidental.
A few weeks ago, I rented a Sigma 8mm/f3.5 Fish-eye lens from a local photo shop here in town. The idea was to actually play around with it more than I’d gotten to the month earlier, when I rented it for a single day.
One of the days I had the lens, was a deck-warming party at a friend of mines’ house. I had recently read about making time-lapse videos online, and decided to take advantage of the 180 degree field-of-view:
In addition to the ~350 images it took to make the video above, I took about 150 other still images as part of this experiment.
You can see the best picks by looking at my 8mm Project set on Flickr.
Posted by Dominic Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:03:00 GMT
Some (many?) of you might wonder, what could persuade a 30-something year old to try to get into photography…. And I don’t just mean photography in the sense of “Oh, I like to take pictures for fun” - but rather “I love taking pictures, and I’d thoroughly enjoy making some money off them.”
That’s a good question - I’ve always had a love for photography - ever since my mother gave me a cheap focus-less cartridge camera when I was in the low single digits.
However, a busy life and a somewhat compulsive attitude made for many interesting years - many of them ignoring photography, though. (Cars, then rock climbing, then scuba diving, then motorcycles… What’s next?)
I have always desired to be artistic in some way - I love using my hands to create things - and I see beauty in situations/scenes that others often don’t notice (or so it seems). Photography feels to me like a good way of conveying this message; showing others what I see - and maybe what they’re missing.
I have been doing a lot of reading, studying and trying to learn…. Lighting techniques, “golden rules” et cetera - all in an attempt at catching up to what others have learned at much earlier ages.
Some of my favorite photographers are Strobist, for teaching us all how to light on the cheap; Chase Jarvis for being badass and honest; Bert Stephani for teaching us about beer goggles; Thomas Hawk for arranging photo walks (and teaching us how to deal with pesky security guards ), and a dozen others. (An aggregate of my photo reading can be found here.)
Since I’m not good with endings, here’s a thanks to all of you photographers out there willing to share your knowledge with us fledgeling photographers…. :)
Posted by Dominic Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:57:00 GMT
It’s always strange when you first start a new blog - you know you have no readers, and yet you have a necessity to write your thoughts, actions and what-have-you’s.
As such, I’m starting this blog, dedicated largely to my journey through the world of trying to become a “real” photographer.
And thus starts the voyage of the fledgeling photographer.
