Author Archives: Donncha

Only a few more days left and Santa will be flying around the world. Here he is landing at Cork Airport for a quick look around!

Via Thunderbird’s RSS reader…

• Unphotographable: an account of pictures missed
• Couloir.org: Resizing, Fading Slideshow Demo
• Unrelated News
• AutoStitch :: a new dimension in automatic image stitching
• Chicago Photobloggers
• Fair use of photos on blogs… the photographers speak out.
• Infrared Photography With a Digital Camera
• Near Infrared Digital Photography: A Tutorial
• Make your own recursive picture and animation
• The Atget Rephotographic Project similar to Chicago Then & Now
• Celeb Photos on Flickr
• Freefoto.com blog

Too much of a good thing?

Back in the day, I’d get a CD and I’d listen to it. A lot. A CD was a considered purchase – if I was going to make the effort to go to the store and spend my hard earned money on it, it was going to be worth it. In the car, at the gym, at work, at home – I’d listen to it everywhere. The first few listens usually couldn’t be at work, because I’d be listening. Once my brain knew the album, then it could become soundtrack to whatever else I was working on.

I get that feeling all the time these days, although when I look over photographs I took only a few weeks ago I’m quite often pleasantly surprised at how fresh they are!

Right, a quick check shows I have some 24GB of photos. That’s a lot considering they’re all jpg files and not huge raw images!
Anyway, I have my own system for archiving at home but it’ll probably need to be reworked – I’ve another 250MB of photos to copy over from my camera yet no space left! I think a combination of storing original images on DVD, and smaller images on my PC for easy browsing will be most useful.
For more ideas, About.com published this good article describing ways to sort and archive your photos. His point about re-reading 2 year old media is good, and hopefully in 2 years time, larger capacity DVDs will be widely available! 🙂

The very latest issue of The Digital Journalist is out and includes some great material. Go read!

Ian Warren asked on the Street Photography List about capturing that elusive “face in the crowd”. Here’s some quick tips:

From: John Matturri
Assuming it’s a moving crowd maybe try keeping the camera at your eye as you shoot, shifting the camera and your body (knees are underrated as a compositional device) to get the moving mass framed the way you want. You can pull it down slightly and quickly to scope out who is coming. I tend to shoot like this with a 24 (or digi equivalent). It’s amazing how willing people are to walk around you and even in big crowds. Also amazing how unconfrontational they are with a camera that’s very close to their face: for one thing when shooting like this they don’t have a sense that you are singling them out. When are noticed shooting look up and give a quick smile. If you want to dramatically pull someone out of the crowd look for shafts of light and use a film (lots of it) with alot of latitude (Bauhaus-type photogs from the Chicago seem to have been special masters of this sort of thing).

From: Luis
You have to be fast. Nothing will stand still for you in a fluid situation.
This means you must anticipate the shot. If you see it, it’s gone.

How does one do this ?

Prefocus (whether with manual or AF). Use an ISO that allows you some DOF & a decent shutter speed, and pre-set exposure. Pre-set white balance with digicams. Preset your focal length on your zoom to the wide end. This will reduce the distance between you and your subject, minimizing the chances of someone stepping into the frame. In tight crowds (among other things, people accept you more once you’ve breached their defense perimeter), lenses between 17-28mm work well. Place your attention in wide-field mode (as opposed to pin-point). You need to see everything in the frame, not just a particular figure.

Keep the camera at, or near your eye (unless you have one with an LCD panel, keep an eye on the panel. Scan the visual field around you, learn to pick up patterns in things that interest you.

Spend some time observing people in crowds as you walk through them, and it pays to walk against the grain or along the edge in a crowd. Going with the flow is generally less productive. Watch expressions, how people move and react to your body plowing through. Learning this will later enable you to gain experience in predicting how others will move.

Use a digital camera, or be prepared to burn a lot of film. This is a long & steep learning curve. Be prepared for a huge percentage of misses, and zillions of hours acquiring the necessary experience and skills. The more practiced you become, you’ll hone your 6th sense & the luckier you’ll become.

Luis also suggested going to John Brownlow’s site and I’m just reading over his general tips. Great stuff!