No. 10000

I didn’t let up much after taking over 6,500 photos last year I’m already over halfway there this year. The photo below is the 10,000th photo to be taken with my Sony F717. It’s rather unremarkable except that I learnt a lot today about using the histogram, and the GIMP distort tool is very handy for correcting uneven horizons!
More to follow, maybe.

Purely by coincidence, someone asked on STF about the lifespan of a 717 camera. It looks like there’s plenty of life left in mine!

Photo Essays in Spain

Two articles on Luminous Landscape with photos taken in Spain:

  • Minolta A2 on Location – A review of the Minolta A2. I was pleasantly surprised when I read the author’s comment on the EVF of the camera. Electronic viewfinders simply aren’t good enough to display a scene properly. After learning about histograms previously I put it to use a few days ago and it certainly makes a marked difference to the exposure of a photograph!
  • The Seville Fair – Great photos and commentary. I want to go travelling again!

Purely by coincidence. the photo of the day is from one of the train stations in Madrid.

Bill Biggart's Final Moments

It was two weeks after two jetliners had plowed into the towers of the World Trade Center. His good friend, photojournalist Bill Biggart’s body had been recovered from the rubble. His personal effects, including his cameras had been released by authorities to his widow, Wendy.
Some of his images are amazing and all the more real to me today as I spent a few days in New York last August.. He was really very close to the buildings.
(Via Ryan)

Photography Links and stuff

The May issue of the Digital Journalist is now available. Unfortunately they don’t have a direct link to that issue but delve into the archives for past articles.

Digital to Analog – an essay exploring the transititon from film to digital. The author laments the attitude novice photographers have these days – it’s digital, it’s somehow “better” than film, but we’re “picture builders”, not “takers”.
I agree with him to a certain extent, but the freedom afforded to me by the digital medium and a half-decent camera has helped me get much better in my art.
I understand completely how choosing a simple camera, without automatic controls of any sort, will force a photographer to learn “how” to take photographs properly. When I want to experience that I simply set my camera to Manual mode and I get a lot more control over the camera. That doesn’t help my technique or eye of course. That comes with time and practice and I think I’ll never stop developing that!

If you consider a picture as a frozen moment in time… Can you alter that moment? Yes and no. Yes, you can tweak the image in a darkroom or in Photoshop… But more importantly: you can never capture THAT moment again.