While roaming around Venice in 2009, we found one of the top Masque manufacturers and shops in the city, Tragicomica. This is a cornucopia of artistry applied to carnival masques. Sometimes its easy to get overwhelmed by choice in subjects to shoot! Nothing like being spoilt for choice! Just walking around this place is amazing. The artistry that is present is remarkable with some unique pieces. Below is a selection that caught my eye…. and… and….. and…… and…. These are beautiful works...
read moreI’ve been doing a little housekeeping, going back through older material looking for stuff from Italy that I liked but wasn’t happy with. This is a useful exercise as there are often images that I couldn’t process to my satisfaction, but with upgraded software I can do a much better job of getting what I want from the image. This image from the Vatican Museum exit ramp is a good example.The original images (3 bracketed shots) were hand held and out of register. Not just a simple shift, but rotated and my HDR processing...
read moreEvery photographer is on a journey with no end. This is a given that we are constantly learning and improving. To that end I’m going to share two resources that I’ve recently become familiar with, that really hit a chord with me. The first is an e-book on composition. I’ve read lots of books on composition, one of the staples being Grill and Scanlon as an example. A lot of the books hit the same notes, rule of thirds etc., but nothing has ever really resonated with me. I get the rules, I’ve applied the rules, but...
read moreEarlier this year, I was in Vienna Austria. As I’m on a break from traveling, I thought I’d share some of the images. The first image is of St.Charles church. We arrived there in good time, but the small lake in front of the cathedral was drying up. It was screaming for a head on shot, but I had to go for this composition to get the reflection. It also gives a nice contrast with the modern buildings to the left of the cathedral, and the sweep of the steps draws the eye. I think it works, but I welcome criticism in the...
read moreI had to go to Kuala Lumpur last week on business, which was my first time visiting the capital city of Malayasia. I’ve heard a lot about the place, and really wanted to spend a lot of time exploring it, but as so often happens the day job gets in the way. This meant I only had a limited opportunity to get a shot for the cities project. As per the remit of the project, I wanted to try and capture an image of the city that is iconic. This always starts with an idea of an icon of the city. For KL that has to be the twin Petronas...
read moreThis kind of takes me back to primary school (except I wasn’t allowed scissors). A perennial issue is using gels on flashes to either balance the light with ambient or to provide a warm glow to skin tones. The issue is how do you attach gels to the flash. Nikon provides a gel pack with the SB800 flash and you can buy extras – the SJ-1 filter set, but it’s an expensive set when all I really want is a couple of 1/2 cut CTO gels. The Nikon design is rather fiddly use, sliding into the slot the wide angle diffuser fits in. It...
read moreAfter an interesting and productive first day, the weather conditions stared making life challenging. A day of hiking didn’t yield any interesting images, just exhausting in really hot and humid conditions hiking in difficult terrain. We took a break in the afternoon, then had arrange with our tour guide to shoot a cormorant fisherman, a cultural icon of the area. This didn’t quite work out as planned. We knew things were not quite right when the fisherman turned up on a plastic boat! The chap we got did a demo for president...
read moreNicole has just placed first in a local photography competition, landscape catagory. She also got a commended for a second picture in the same catagory! http://tanglewoodbuzz.com/2011/07/the-buzz-magazines-2011-photo-contest/ The image above is being used as a cover for a local magazine. To see more of her work, go visit www.janapitcher.com More to...
read moreNational Theater This phrase is guaranteed to piss off any photographer, professional or rank amateur who tries to make good images. Just for grins, this post is about how I create an image. From capture to approximate final output, this hopefully shows the process I went through for a “nice picture” and I hope it show that just having a good camera is only a part of the story of trying to make an image. While it’s true that having a “good” camera helps, it’s not essential to making an interesting...
read morePing’an to Guangxi….. After waking up to a cloudy, foggy day, patience was rewarded by the weather clearing a little, allowing a lovely view of this impressive landscape with wisps of cloud sifting through the valley…. Then it was time to hike back down to the waiting taxi at the entrance to the park. This was a pleasant stroll, culminating in meeting our porters at the base of the hill. I relieved the little old man of my backpack (he must be 80 if a day) that he gleefully ran down the hill with, and got firmly ensconced in...
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