Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the ‘ah-ha’.

Ernst Haas, Comment in workshop, 1985

Ernst has hit the nail on the head. The answer to “What’s the best wide angle lens?” isn’t necessarily the  Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM Lens (although it’s very nice) … but which ever lens you have with you at the time.

Why would I say something like that? As a Professional Photographer, sometimes I can’t see the wood for the trees and get fixated about the next generation of new lens with a faster “this” and smaller “that”, and for a couple of weeks will lust after it until the feeling finally subsides.

Photographers in general tend to be “gear hounds”, but at some point you have to use what you have and not make an excuse that you didn’t get the shot – but if you had the best wide angle lens you just paid xxx for, you would have!

When travelling, I can’t take all the gear I’d like to because:

1. I’d never fit it into the small hand luggage size requirements airlines use these days.
2. I’d never be able to carry it all day out and about.

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HDR images are still not completely mainstream since it still takes a bit of expertise to do them properly. There are a few programs out there that can take a non-HDR image and turn it into a HDR, but I’ve yet to find one that has the subtly of the human eye and brain.

The standard way to create a HDR is to bracket you shots with a normal exposure, plus a few of that around a +/- 1 stop minimum, so you end up with at least 3 duplicate shots of differing exposures. You then use software to blend the lightest and darkest areas to provide a reasonable balance.

DPS has a tutorial on using Adobe Lightroom with a single RAW file to create a HDR, which makes life easier if you didn’t take your tripod along to make sure all the shots were exactly the same framing. Have you experimented with HDR, and how do you feel about the images?

25 photos

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What makes a photo news-worthy?

Earlier this year, the Chinese President Hu Jintao whilst visiting Washington has agree with Barack Obama to “build a China-U.S. cooperative partnership based on mutual respect and mutual benefit”. Since this was a historic visit, the press corp. would have been in a frenzy to get news-worthy video and stills of anything they could. A lucky few would have been inside the White House during the initial meetings where they would have taken very exclusive images.

The question is “what actually makes a news-worthy photo?”. Each photo editor is different, and to a certain degree has access to the same shots (unless they had a staff photographer on hand), but do you go with the “officially sanctioned” photos, or go off grid to something different, and how different I suppose depends on the readership for your publication, whether web or paper. The regular readership of any publication expects a certain level of journalism, and gets to expect a certain “type” of photo.

From a web perspective, is it any more news worthy if you have lots of hits on a particularly bad photo over what you (the writer) would consider a good one? Does that make it more news worthy if they both portray essentially the same image?

I took the image here at Kennedy Space Center (American spelling) in the gift shop. I, personally at least, found it funny that NASA emblems have a “Made in China” sticker on them. Is this the face of the new Communism? Will the next shuttle also have a little sticker somewhere? Is this photo news-worthy?

What do you think?

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Over at TechMilieu.com , they’ve shown some excellent examples of underwater photography. I’m actually a qualified PADI Rescue Diver, and find diving very relaxing, but have never taken the step to actually document my dives. The photography kit required for these shots depends greatly on what you want to do.

Basic underwater cameras that are good down to 3m are not really what you’re looking for since all of these photos are taken far deeper. The limit for recreational diver is 39m and you can buy decent waterproof housings for many compact cameras that will be good down to 30m.

When I bought a new digital compact for day to day use I choose a Canon s90, and made sure there was a waterproof housing available should I ever want to use it for diving. If you’ve never seen what one of these looks like, here’s a link to to the housing for the S90 on Amazon – Canon WP-DC35 Waterproof Camera Case for PowerShot S90 Digital Camera

Have you even done any underwater photography, or even thought about it?

Beautiful Underwater Photography

There are many scuba diving sites around the world. Under the water you will find coral reefs, in touch with many fish, beautiful plants, etc. Underwater photography is usually done while doing the scuba diving activities. Here are some of the beautiful examples …

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This is a talk by David Griffin, photo editor at National Geographic on the power of photography to connect us to our world. As well as some superb images, he talks about how we all use photos to tell our stories.

What are photos to you, just something to look at, or do you want to tell a story with every shot? Please leave a comment.

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How secure are your photo backups?

Ok, so maybe the question should be “WHY do I backup my photos?”. As a (digital) photographer, I generate quite a bit of raw data at every shoot. Once it’s moved off onto my workstation to process, I need to make sure that there’s a backup copy. There are many reason for this, but these are the main two:

• If it’s a commercial shoot, then the data I have is worth real money since I’m being paid for it. If I loose it, then I potentially won’t get paid.
• If it’s a private shoot of someone, they may order copies going back over a few months/years, so I need to have the data available.

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Over at Chase Guttman’s blog, he’s gone through how to compose your images for the best photographic composition. It’s a excellent resource for taking your photography to the next level. Although there are 10 rules here, from my personal point of view, the rule of thirds is the most powerful, an easiest to implement.I’ve marked this post as a “Medium” level, because some of the terms may be beyond novice photographers – if that’s the case, please post a reply, and I’ll expand on an sections that may be a problem.

Composition- Composition is the process of visually organizing the essential elements of your image through the unique framing of your camera. Composition serves as an anchor for the eyes of your viewer as they scan an image, and therefore it is probably the most crucial tool a photographer can use to tell a story. A well composed image is measured by its ability to convey the photographer’s message. Even though many professional photographers utilize the basic rules outlined below, the following are simply guidelines. For amateurs, these guidelines are important, until that is they understand when to break them. Read more

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Photos to Sell?

So you had a shiny new camera for Christmas, you’ve taken lots of great images, and now you have a load of photoso to sell, so where can you go, and what’s available to help?

Over at DesignBeep, they’ve listed quite a few Sites to Sell you photos on-line together with a few selling tips for them. Make sure when you join any agency that you’re NOT signing exclusive rights for that agency to sell these images. if you have great shots, you may want to spread them over a few resources to maximise your chances of a sale. Of course, there may be agencies that will give a high percentage return for exclusive images, so read the find print carefully before committing.

Here are the 16 sites to sell your photos. Please contact me with any other sites which aren’t on this list.

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I was reading an article by Elizabeth Halford where she talks about wardrobe choices for child photography (Link Here), and that started me thinking about clothing choices in general for photographic situations. Again, there are a few simple rules that cam make life a lot easier for the photographer.

• Avoid clothes with harsh patterns – vertical/horizontal stripes, herringbone etc. because it distracts the eye from the subject
• Avoid outfits with too much contrast. A black top top and white bottom will mean you either underexpose the top, or overexpose the bottom – either way, too much contrast for the camera to handle
• “Fun” ties or t-shirts with garish patterns? No. Further explanation not required I hope?

In a studio environment, while you can control light, you still have the same problems. I’ve noticed a few things as well.

In Hi-Key environments when you have a very light background, dark coloured clothes will over expose and you’re left getting a dark mass, with no details, so stick to light coloured options. For low key, it doesn’t matter as much, but darker colours come out better as far as I’m concerned.

Ever had major problems with what your subject was wearing, or don’t you even think about it?

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