at the performance of the Nikon D700 at high ISO’s. Here is an example of what I mean. This image was shot at a recent AAU Karate tournament in a gymnasium with moderately good lighting. The lack of significant noise and decent white balance made this a very saleable image and appeased the tournament staff by allowing us to not use flash.
ISO 6400 @ 1/160th
I’m definitely ordering another D700 soon.
Some of you may be familiar with Eye-Fi cards. For the sake of argument let’s review. The Eye-Fi card is an SD card with a wi-fi transmitter built in. It looks something like this …
These things are pretty cool and relatively inexpensive and can be quite useful to the photographer. I recently used a couple of them at a karate tournament where I needed to cover both the floor activities as well as photograph the Gold, Silver and Bronze medalist as well as man the photoprinter and sales booth. To say I under-manned the ship is an understatement. But we managed to make it work… here is how we managed to do it.
In my opinion the process was a little clumsy, but the hardware and software performed very well. We will be using a similar setup this month at the state tournament. I’ll let you know how it goes.
photography for my business. I’ll just buy some royalty free micro stock and be done with it. Here is why http://fairtradephotographer.blogspot.com/2010/03/microstock-why-would-reputable-company.html
Yes, I have neglected this blog and thus my on-line presence for the past month and a half. Lots of things have been going on and I will be sharing those stories and some new technology I have had the chance to use in the field.
when it was all over the sun came out and here is what I saw.
Ode To Snow
or at least a GIMP user. If you are unaware as to what GIMP is check out this site here. I’ve been spending more time with this tool over that past few weeks as I try and transition from Photoshop to this tool for most of my daily work.
This week I ventured into to area’s that I have often not even considered when using Photoshop those being Color Overlays and Layer Blending Modes. Gimp recognizes only 8 bits per channel the photographer must consider less destructive ways to modify the image and preserve detail. In Gimp I have turned to Layer Blending Modes to adjust contrast and Color Overlays to create color correction filters (like we did in the olden days) that I can then apply to the image. I have included a sample before and after shot that came from my cell phone. The shot is of a turbulent sky.
Before
After
I think it turned out great. Anyone care to comment?
This podcast, that I’ve provided a link to, from Rolf Steinort over at Meet the Gimp website is one of the better explanations on the curves tool that I can remember ever receiving. As the name implies the site is dedicated to the Open Source application GIMP. Which like it’s better know counter part, Photoshop, is an image manipulation and editing tool.Both tools include a version of the curves tool, which is used by photographers to adjust image color and contrast. I hope you get as much out of it as I did.
Life hands you a beautiful moment. The image you see here is a simple shot of a six year old’s imagination and innocence. My daughter had to use 100 objects to create a presentation in celebration for the 100th day of school. She came to her mom and I and informed us that she wanted to use “nature” to make a peace sign. Being that it was due tomorrow and it was already dark outside we convinced her that beans were a natural thing. She accepted are arguments and went to work on her little poster. Sometime later I asked her what peace she was representing here and she replied “I pray for world peace.” I’ll let it go at that…
I have to admit to being in a rut as of late. I have been working on a lot of projects, few of which involve me going out and actually shooting. Though they all revolve around some aspect of photography, mostly on the technology side, unfortunately they haven’t required me to go out and actually make images. It’s a frustrating place find oneself, especially as I launch my own brand of photography.
This frustration puts my head in that place where I am lamenting at the lack of shooting. So I decided to just take an image. Nothing fancy… just a clean simple image to remind me of what photography is about.
My collection of stemware and bottles.
The image featured here is an odd collection of glassware that I had finished unpacking from our July’09 move. I quickly through it up on the shooting table where I had an old piece of tempered glass. Lit it via the standard bright field method and looky what came out. Like the image my mood is so much brighter.
Now back to the other side of photography.
The title of this post seems appropriate for my current situation. Yes it is pathetic and very unoriginal, but appropriate none the less. Let me explain.
It is my goal to break out in 2010 into the brave new world of professional photography. I’ve gone to school, understudied, assisted, been to the prerequisite seminars and industry group monthly meetings, read all the right blogs (David Hobby, Joe McNally, Zack Arias), been to the necessary websites like photo.net, B&H, Midwest Photo Exchange, spent precious funds on camera and other gear and so now it’s time to hang out the shingle and declare to the world… “Hello, my name is Robin and I’m here to take your damn photo!”
Okay so I did that on January 1st, 2010 at 12:01 in the am. And by 12:02 I was having reservations and my to-do list got much longer and the anxiety crept in. My usual buyers remorse was edging up into my throat and I reviewed the sales agreement for SmugMug and my web hosting company to see if I could cancel and get my money back. So here it is four days later and I am still alive, a little less anxious and more than ready to get started.
I hope this blog becomes a way for my clients to get to know me as a photographer. I don’t know that I have the talent to blog daily, I do know I have lots to say about photography the art as well as photography the business some of which might be useful to others while most posts probably will end up as some sort of soul clearing for me. I hope you enjoy it and Farmville Virginia you have a new photographer in town.