New Digital Era

Thinking

Yesterday I drove to a nearby lounge to meet one of my good friends, Mr. Senti, and enjoy a good conversation and some frostys.

When I arrived I was introduced to one of the people hanging out at the lounge, a man named Bob.  We were sitting next to each other.  Bob was a grown man, with a family, a son and a great sense of humor. We just started talking.  It was a short but very constructive and nice conversation.

We talked about several things, but a few things he said were so true, they will be with me time and time again. He said, and I am trying to quote: In life “It’s always about who you know.  Now, Always and Forever”  And for the most part that statement is true. As much disposition, aptitude, attitude, and perseverance you have, its just about that person that can give you the shot, opportunity, break or chance.

Read carefully, I am not saying it’s always that way, but in most cases it is. It is just the way the world turns!!

The other thing he said was: “The world is full of takers and not many givers”  People that say: what is yours is mine and what is mine is mine.  People that just takes everything you give or share and hardly give back in the same way or quantity or quality.  And the takers will take until they cant take anymore.  So true.!

We talked for no more than 20 minutes but the things he said, the way he said them and the meaning they had in that precise moment in time are priceless.  The rest of the evening I hanged out with my friend Mr. Senti, one of the best dudes around. Enjoyed the football games, had a few frostys, shared a few jokes and remembered Bob’s words.

So people of the world, never loose your faith and keep pushing toward your goals until your break or opportunity comes.  And beware of the takers of this world.

@biggaboss

Doorway Icicles

It’s January 1st.  It’s New Years and along that line: Happy New Years to all!

I have told myself I will blog more and continually this year.  I want to make it one of my goals, as I also set a few more for 2010, trying at the same time not to overwhelm myself with too much to do or too hard to achieve commitments.  It’s customary for a lot of people to make New Years resolutions.  If they keep them, achieve them or neither is totally up to them.  But as I read an article today from a link posted on twitter, many of those new resolutions never grow past the first few weeks of the year because they are too many and too hard.  Have you ever tried to do a lot of tough things all at once?  Draining right!

For that sake I am keeping my resolutions simple and in low numbers.  Stick to them and accomplish them is my goal.  If you read many more posts this year then you know I am accomplishing one of my goals.

Enjoy my icicles.  They greeted me on New Years eve while I was opening my door that evening. All tangled with my Christmas lights they surely created a dramatic, cold and pleasant look I wanted to share with you all

Half Me

JpgMag is a famous (online and printed) photography magazine. Each month they have competing themes where regular and professional photographers, upload images and participate to get their images published in the printed version of the JPG Magazine.

It’s very interesting to see all the images posted by all photography enthusiasts and the imagination they use to participate in all the different themes which change every month.  I have uploaded my share of photos and browse the site regularly.

When you upload images, other members get to view and vote on them.  (Sorry, only subscribed members are able to vote on the images.  Subscription is FREE!)  They give you “props”, or they write comments and they even give a “yeah” or “nah” as a way to vote for the winning image of that specific theme.  If your image wins you will be posted in the printed version of the magazine and even earn a little cash!

The site also allows you to send email between members of the site, which all happen to be photography enthusiasts.  You can contact your favorite photographers, see who else has HOT photos and also see who was able to win theme competitions and get their images printed.  It’s a great way to learn, ask questions, get tips and interact with other photographers.

So after a few months I noticed today that one of my photos finally got HOT.  So what is hotness?  Quoted from the JPGmag site:

“When a photo is submitted to a photo challenge or theme, the photos that the community likes best become “Hot.” Hotness is determined automatically by factors including number of votes, comments, views, and favorites. A photo’s hotness is not permanent, but can change based on how the community is responding to other photos in the theme, and we recalculate hotness daily. That’s why even if nothing changes on your individual photo, its hotness could change based on the popularity of other photos within the theme.

On the JPG homepage and the first page of any particular theme, we also show a selection of the hot photos in order to highlight the best photos from the site. The photos that display on these pages are pulled at random from the hot photos that we have selected to display. Hot photos also have a banner that links to more hot photos within the theme, along with tools that make it easier for other people to promote your photo on sites like Digg, Facebook, and StumbleUpon.”

So I will enjoy the hotness of my image for whatever amount of time it remains hot!  And keep shooting and improving my skills to get more hot photos on the site.

What do you think about the photo?

R.

For every photographer its important to have an example of their work for others to see.  Having your own website with all your photos published is a way of doing it.  Having your photos published on several websites, developed for this purpose, is another way of promoting your work.  But what if you have a meeting with someone where you have no web access; or someone that does not use computers!  Your solution is a Book Portfolio.

This way any meeting you have you can take your work with you and your clients will have a hands-on, direct, immediate view of your work.  You can discuss about each and every photo you took and tell the story behind it.  How you could make it different and how you could make it work for that particular client.  It’s more than a promotional tool, its a selling tool.

Find your best images, your best portraits, landscapes, senior photos or whatever you like shooting and create a good portfolio with some nice prints.  Get at least 20 different photos going and prepare to sell the story behind your photos to all your clients.  Slowly it will start working in your favor.

RW

Fireworks

Weather wasn’t coincidental with that of a summer day in Central Illinois on the 4th, still it did not prevent the people from celebrating their country’s independence day as they usually do.  BBQ, family get-togethers, fun, laughs and games were all over the place and people were enjoying even with the rain and gloomy day. Friends and visitors were all having fun on the weekend.

That made way a bit later to the accustomed fireworks, which all wait for with great anticipation. Here is one of the shots of that night!

Horizon Sun

Finally Summer is here and also the warm weather that comes with the season.  It makes it more comfortable to walk around and fix your mind on subjects to photograph when you don’t have to focus on how cold or chilly it is.  Or how far you can go for a good shot,  taking into consideration the height of the river, for example.  It’s nice not to think: is it going to snow or rain?

That said, walking around I just found a great cloud composition over the river.  Here is the photo.  Feel free to comment about it.

RW

Dramatic Sky

In photography, the success of many photos depend a lot on the composition, with the addition of a correct ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture balance.  All of these components lead to a successful exposure and hence, an eye pleasing elegant photo.  But balancing all these elements doesn’t always add the necessary drama to our captures.  It sometimes leaves our compositions with less of a “hit”. Without that special something that makes the photo stand out.  I like to call that special something the Drama or Dramatic effect.

You can get this effect with expressions and correct light, if you are shooting portrait photography for example. Or you can also get these effects with a great sports action shot. But when shooting landscapes it becomes a little more tricky.  You can not ask a landscape to smile in a specific way to produce a more pleasing result. Neither can you ask the landscape to move to make better use of the light in your images.  But what you can do is try to look for the drama in your scenes from different sources and sometimes, or most of the times, this source comes from the sky.

Been able to capture dramatic skies allows your composition to be filled with an added drama that is always well appreciated in the final composition.  It adds that effect, feeling and eye opening “wow” that you can miss simply by taking the same photo with a different sky composition.  So when you get an opportunity try it out on your own.  Try to take similar captures of the same landscape or area; one with clear skies and another with conflicted, cloudy, strange or dramatic clouds. View them side by side in your image editing software and make your own conclusions.

Ricky

The Modern Executive Woman

I was approached by a very good friend about a photo shoot she wanted, obviously about herself.  She is a previous model and a joy to be around, so I gladly agreed to help her out in any way possible.  It wasn’t meant to be any professional shoot but classy and casual at the same time.  I suggested her place and gave her a heads up to pick several different styles of clothing and moods to work with.  We all agreed on a day and time and scheduled on the calendar.

After that conversation, I had my own ideas of a specific photo I wanted to shoot.  In my mind I called it  “The Executive Woman”.  It’s the classy portrait of the modern working woman in her own comfortable natural environment.  It’s not an office shoot, it’s not a home, less than casual shoot either.  It’s a combination of professionalism and natural attitude in display.  It’s a way to show that a professional executive woman don’t always need to have the neat, clean, highly detailed look of having everything under control; but that she can look as casual as possible and still look as professional and classy as she really is.

With that in mind we met for the shoot.  I had my assistant with me (my wife which is really cool at playing the role), and we took the few rounds of shots. After about 45 minutes of shooting I got my idea out of the next shots I wanted to take.  She got what I had in mind, changed, sit and “voila”.  We were all very very happy with the result.  She told me she would change nothing about the pic, except for my logo which is too big.

I think I got to work on making that logo smaller.

Ricky

Let’s start this off with a little definition of RAW.  The RAW format (or NEF in Nikon literature = Nikon Electronic File) contain all the image data required by the camera sensor.  This image information is saved completely with the file which allows a more extensive use in post-processing.

After a lot of shooting in JPG  and a lot of hearing about RAW images I decided to give it a try.  I was reluctant. My pictures were very good in JPG and I was still able to do a pretty good job with them in Photoshop (or Gimp when the budget won’t allow any other thing).  So I though being economic on Disk Space, plus software was a good idea.  At the same time I could double the amount of images I could shoot and hold in any given SD Card by shooting in JPG even in its larger and finer settings.

Then I switched to RAW.

I was definitely introduced to a new wonderful world of digital imaging mastery and digital photography adjustment options.  Having all the digital image information saved without loosing anything by compression (which is what JPG automatically does) is just too nice to move away from.  Yes its true that files are larger and you can hold less images on your SD card.  But then it’s also true that Storage Units are cheaper by the day.  The benefits of shooting RAW totally outweighs any idea of saving space, which is the one of the only benefits of shooting JPG.

So next time you are preparing to shoot that special portrait, landscape, senior prom, or that simple house party, remember RAW always gives you a lot more options to correct your final photos without loosing any information in post editing.

Think about it, doesn’t it make a lot of sense?!

Ricky aka @biggaboss

Clouds

I have been shooting photographs for a while now and consider they are 3 very important things to keep in mind when taking any kind of photos, anytime.  Even though the automatic settings do a wonderful work (depending on your camera), never underestimate making the correct adjustment for your pictures to show the best vivid colors, brightness and contrast.

WB

The White Balance helps ensure that your pictures have a natural look.  Most cameras nowadays include an Auto WB option where the camera attempts to automatically set the correct option depending on the time of day/type of light you are shooting with.  After shooting for a while I noticed there is a noticeable difference between shooting with AUTO WB and selecting the correct WB option depending on the light that is available.  Choosing the correct light source for while shooting increases the natural look and vivid colors of your final photograph.  So the next time you shoot make sure you have selected the right light source for the type of shots you are taking (Daylight, tungsten, fluorescent, Clouds, Evening, etc).  You will notice the difference the next time.

ISO

ISO stands for International Standardisation Organization and its the rating for the speed of the film, or in digital photography, how sensitive is your sensor. These numbers all follow a specific Standard which allows you to know and be sure that if you are shooting at ISO 200 you will get the exact same results no matter what camera you are using.  Although Auto ISO selects the best option available depending on your surroundings it prevents you from challenging yourself and getting an optimum result depending on your personal preferences.  At the same time sometimes allowing and Auto ISO can create photographs with a lot of noise and not the same dark contrasts you want at a specific time.  Allow yourself some time to master your ISO decisions, but then later, reap the immense benefits this will provide.

EXPOSURE

The exposure is basically determined by the Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO.  And it allows you to have the correct amount of light entering your camera sensor to reproduce and image that is well balanced. Sometimes depending on the effect you want for your photograph slightly underexposing of overexposing does a wonderful job for your final results.  You don’t need to always expose perfectly to get the results you want. Also taking the same shots with correct exposure, underexposed and overexposed allows you to create some nice HDR images.

So when taking your photos always remember what you want the final product to look like and adjust your settings correctly to address that result.  Remember a great photo is the one that you like (or your client likes) and not always what is the best according to your camera settings.

Ricky