New Digital Era

Ask and it will be given; Seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened.

Sometimes the connection from a problem (or an opportunity as others call it) to a solution is just a little way ahead, a bit further.  Just like a bridge hidden behind some trees and bushes.  It takes determination and perseverance to search for it, to get to it, to find it. And that’s where we are all lacking.

It’s not an easy task as people makes us believe.  It takes insurmountable amounts of energy to maintain the right approach and attitude; to not falter or weaken; to not give up.  It takes not only yourself, but more.  It takes your friends support  and dependability; it takes your family strength and protection; it even takes the humble smile of that unknown person in the mall or grocery store, and it takes that higher strength that nobody understands and that different people explain in different ways. I will let you define that as whatever you please for your beliefs.  What I am trying to say: it takes more than yourself!

At times we may feel we are lost in the middle of nowhere; a desert, jungle, forest, sea, mountain.  With nowhere to go or turn, and the exit could be just a few steps away.  Just like the bridge in the photo hiding behind trees and bushes.  Sometimes you can hear the cars, the noises, the bikes, the trucks but you cant see the bridge until you move in the right direction.  And sometimes that little step, that move can’t be achieved without the help of people that care, friends, family and that extra energy that exists and aids us all in a different way.

So whatever you do and wherever you are, don’t forget to ask, knock and seek,  to guide yourself to the bridge that will connect you to the other side you are looking for.

RW

Michelle Photo Shoot on Water St.

It’s not rare for a photographer to schedule a photo shoot; but it’s not very common that the model of your photo shoot is funny, professional and prepared.  That’s what happened when Michelle and I got together for this photo shoot.  Michelle is a beautiful, tall, smart, professional real estate agent. We had already decided beforehand what would be comfortable and fun for her photos, and decided to meet at Water St. for the photo shoot.   Little did I know that this photo shoot would be so easy and so much fun.  Michelle, besides been fun and outgoing, had previous modeling experience.  She was easily directed for posing, came up with good poses on her own, and was just a natural fit and mesh for ideas. The camera loved her and she loved the surroundings.  The result was a great evening of natural brick wall backgrounds, barefoot shots and sitting on barrels!

Besides that Michelle is also a good conversationalist.  Talented professional with a lot of goals and a great sense of life and humor.  It was nice to be able to talk with her over several different topics and discuss the possibility of later photo shoots that she has in mind with her kids and family.

As a photographer the stress of a photo shoot doesn’t always change no matter how experienced you are.  A lot of things can go wrong and a lot of things can interfere with your shoot. (weather, wind, people, surroundings, etc).  But when you do have a great model or great people to work with it makes everything that much easier.

Now there is another person I would like to schedule a photo shoot with, but I haven’t been able to convince her yet…. and am not sure if I will.

But you never know!

Ricardo!

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