Take a Hike
In a couple of days I’ll be part of the Third Annual World Wide Photowalk. I’ll once again be a walk leader this year and I’ve chosen to use Tanglewood park as our backdrop this year. The only problem will be it’s going to be really hot so I’ll need a lot of water, ice and shade for all who attend. Each year I like to try to come up with something that’ll be a twist. Last year we did our walk at a winery. We got to do the full tour, have a tasting and photograph a bunch of grapes and a whole slew of other nifty things.
This year I wanted to make sure we could do some amazing photos. Tanglewood Park is wonderfully scenic, but what will make it better is having people to model and pose for the photographers. So I was shooting for at least a few and now I may have a small horde. This is going to be so much fun. There’s still time to register, you don’t have to be a “professional” to go, just enthusiastic about photography.
Read MoreI need a break
Careful what you wish for… I got a break yesterday, a broken lens. One of my favorite lenses is now broken, my 50mm f1.8. I like it better than the 50mm f1.4 because it’s much smaller and less expensive. Being smaller it’s easy to carry around in a pocket. And it’s almost as good as the f1.4 for a quarter of the price. So I have a broken lens and a replacement on the way. I’ve been meaning to replace it for a while. Somehow it had gotten a piece of lint inside the lens. I suspect it worked it’s way through the focus mechanism to make it’s way to the inside of the lens. On a really small f-stop you could see the log in the field of view, but since I used this exclusively for it’s large aperture, it wasn’t that big of a deal.
So an order to B&H Photo using the NAPP member free shipping code saves the day and some aggravation. So if you are looking at a great lens to buy, the 50mm f1.8 is a wonderful buy. They are inexpensive and if you break one… it’s not too expensive to replace. Once the replacement is here, I may be able to finish taking the broken one apart so you can see what’s inside.
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Can’t afford it? Rent it.
I had the opportunity to rent a lens from LensRentals.com and I must admit I’ve had nothing but a great experience with the whole process. I needed a lens for a wedding this past weekend. So I rented the Canon 70-200mm f2.8 for seven days. I wanted to to have the lens a few days before the event to get used to it. And much to my amazement, it arrived a day early and I got started.
Photo by Chase London
I didn’t get the Image stabilization version since I was going to be on a tripod for the wedding with this lens. On all of practice shots, I didn’t see a need for the IS even at the full 200mm. I’m using a Canon 7D so the effective zoom is 112-320mm since the 7D has a 1.6 crop factor. This is one of the reasons I love crop sensors. I love that added zoom factor.
The other really nice thing is setting that aperture all the way down to 2.8 during the day. You can blur foreground and background elements to really focus on your subject. There is no question about the subject in the image below and having the added foreground and background elements adds to the image.
I’m really going to miss that lens. I shipped it back yesterday. All-in-all a very easy process. I will continue to use them in the future.
Continuing Education for Photographers
My wife is a massage therapist. You have to be certified to be a licensed massage therapist. In order to maintain your certification you have to have so many continuing education hours on a regular basis. To become a professional photographer, you don’t need to be licensed. In fact you don’t need an education, you just need to have people seek you out for your ability and expertise. But as you know photography is a very dynamic and changing field, so what do you do to stay up to date? Here is some of what I do to stay current and up-to-date.
Blogs are a great source of information. One of the reasons I do this blog is to help photographers learn from the mistakes I’ve made. I also learn a lot by teaching. But I do read blogs of other photographers, these are a few photographers I follow for various reasons in no particular order.
Scott Kelby – Scott has a really nice pattern/schedule to his blog. It’s not too wordy and he has weekly guest bloggers so there’s a wide range of information from various sources.
Knows Photos – Mark travels a bit for work but makes time to do some really nice photography. What I like is that his photography isn’t something he squeezes in. You can see it in his images, they aren’t rushed or an afterthought.
Stuck in Customs – Trey is the man when it comes to HDR. I’m not overly fond of the surrealistic style he has in many of his photos, but lately he has toned down from the extreme. Yes, the pun was intended.
Podcasts are especially great for photographers, because you can easily listen to them while doing something else. Or if they are video instruction that show you step-by-step techniques. You don’t need an iPod to watch them. Just use iTunes to subscribe and watch on your computer. All of them have some sort of associated blog or supplemental material.
DP Experience – I hate Rick Sammon because he’s … grrr … he’s great at what he does. I’m envious. I keep trying to find something about him to even remotely dislike… I can’t, he’s perfect. He’s so nice an very giving.
Photoshop User TV and the associated podcasts Photoshop Killer Tips, Lightroom Killer Tips, and Ask Dave. These will give you all your post processing tips. I also watch D-Town and Layers TV.
Photo Focus – Scott has a guest each 5th, 15th and 25th for a Q and A show. It’s about an hour long but packed with a wide variety of information from photographers in different fields.
TWIP – This what I call background music of photography. It’s almost like you are listening to a bunch of guys (and sometimes women) talk around the water cooler about photography.
Workshops are a great way from learning from a professional. But you don’t have to go to workshops to have hands-on learning.
Meetup – You have to find some local photographers. In many cases they will get together for various themed events. It doesn’t matter if you are a better photographer than them, you can learn from anyone. And it never hurts to help other photographers. You learn a lot by teaching.
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Backdrop stand on the cheap
Photography as a hobby is one pretty expensive hobby. As a business it’s a pretty expensive business if you really need some of the specialty gear. I love the fancy new gear, but when it gets right down to it, how much of it do I really NEED. So when I look a purchasing some new camera equipment, I look at it’s function and determine two things.
1) Do I really need it. Not want, but actually have a need for it.
and if so
2) Do I need that particular product to fulfill that need or can it be achieved some other way.
I have several little construction projects I’ve done to create some of the things I needed. I’ll show you some of them, but for today I’m going to show you my portable backdrop stand. I really need this for portrait shoots. But since I’m a “mobile” photographer I wanted something that was sturdy, transportable and didn’t require a ceiling for support. So for about $12 I made my own out of PVC. Couple that with a $9 set of clamps and I have a complete backdrop stand that breaks down into something I can easily carry and fit in the trunk of my car. Here’s how I built it:
Required parts:
3/4″ PVC, enough to create 14- 3′ sections, 8-1′ sections and 4-2′ sections.
4-3/4″ elbow joints
12-3/4″ ‘T’ joints
This will make 2 3′x7′ grids that are sturdy enough to hold a full sized canvas backdrop and can be easily reconfigured to be portable light modifiers using standard twin sized fitted sheets.
Two stands bundled up. Nerf Sword not necessary to construct stand.
One stand laid out on the floor.
The base setup. There are several ways to make the feet, this is one of the simplest. If necessary I weigh down one of the leggs to make the stand more sturdy.
Two stands side-by-side are 7′ tall by 6′ wide. But they don’t have to be right next to each other. You can easily put space between them to accommodate really wide backdrops.
The final setup. The hand clamps are great because you can easily use them to pull out most wrinkles (not shown here.)
A Photographer’s Timely Resolve
Happy New Year one and all.
Thirteen years ago I made a New Year’s resolution that I have kept to this day. That was simply that I wouldn’t make “New Year’s Resolutions” in the classic sense. If I found something that I needed to change, I wasn’t going to wait until an arbitrary date like the first of the year to enact it, I would do it immediately. This has served me well for the past thirteen years and I’ve gotten a lot of things done in a timely manner.
I’ve recently discovered that there’s a second piece to this that is just as important. This recent addition to my resolution is that all elusive “stick to it.” All depending what needs to be done, I have to add a repetition clause. In the case of the Photography Tip of the Week podcast I needed to do at least twenty podcasts on schedule. This turned it into a habit. I’ve doubled that required goal and I have no intention of stopping until I run out of tips.
I’ve recently decided to add a little extra to the site. It’s taken me a while to figure out what I want to do, but I’ve finalized on adding two regular blog postings a week along with the photography tip. The blog post will fit into one of the following categories: Texture Photo (Photo of an interesting texture), Old Photo Critique (digging through my old photos and tell what I whould have changed), Photo Philosophy (marketing, what to take pictures of, why we take photos), Photo Technique (how to get that certain look), or Photo Processing (using the software to it’s fullest.) So I have to get 20 regular blog postings in the next 10 weeks to make this a habit.
I do have other things I intend to do in the upcoming months that I’ll enact as I’m ready. One thing about resolutions is that you can have too many to work on all at once. So they need to be spread out over time. This makes it easier to turn them into habits. But keep in mind that the most important thing in your life is Time. Time is your most valued asset, it is non-refundable, non-reusable, and most of all you will never have an unlimited supply so use it wisely.
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