Wow! This critique made me sit back and think. I dragged my camera around town on Saturday afternoon and while I didn’t get any great shots Luis’ words were ringing in my ears. Thanks, much appreciated!
There’s lots of “picturesque”, risk-free, sentimental images….that look like a standardized catalog of themes I can only characterize as “safe” and “pleasant”. They confirm, but do not challenge the average viewer’s expectations of the world.
Death in the Afternoon – bullfighting still persists in some areas of Spain, and while I don’t agree with it, it’s a huge part of Spanish culture. Michael Reichmann, the author, has posted some great photos in this article, but please don’t read it if the subject at hand bothers you!
I do love this photo however, and it’s safe material to view!
I must admit I haven’t a clue what the author of this article means when he says, ‘Ever wonder how to turn your $1500 DSLR into a $10 Holga? Well a “lensbaby” is one way!’ but I presume he meant to ask if you want out of focus, soft, photos that show ugly defects? To each his own, and I have to admit the photos of the flowers are pretty! 🙂
I tend to over-expose my photos, especially in bright light as I use the LCD At the back of the camera more than that digital viewfinder. What looks like a dark image there turns out to be a beautiful exposed portrait of a scene!
This article is going to be useful, although I don’t know if I’d have the patience to follow everything there!
I’ve already started shooting at -1 EV and it helps. Many over-exposure problems can be solved in post-processing but when it’s way over-blown, well, bye bye detail!
While I completely forgot about the lunar eclipse on Tuesday night (I remembered at 11:30pm when I was locking the back door and looked out at the clear dark sky!), APOD has a great photo mosaic of the event!
This Slashdot discussion touches on a subject I’ve covered before and is close to my heart. What’ll happen to all my photos when I die? Will anyone be interested enough to look through them? At least they’re in dated folders, many with descriptions, so my grand-kids won’t be wondering if that hot blond in the photos was gran..
Now this is an interesting article, especially considering the weekend just past. I’ll be posting photos later, but there was none of the trouble seen in Dublin down here in Cork. Photos to come later.
I spotted a couple of excellent photos from the demonstrations in the papers yesterday and things looked a little out of hand up there. Anyone outside the Phoenix Park when those 28 protestors were arrested?
That article above is followed up by another with some more tips, advice, and an account of what happened on May Day 2000 in London. Great photos too!
(via Photography Blog)
I just heard on the radio, there’ll be a lunar eclipse tonight and it’s visible from Ireland! Unfortunately, the weather’s turned sour since the great weekend, but hopefully the clouds will clear!
PS. Here’s more about the March 3rd, 2007 eclipse, including some photos and facts and figures!
You’ve probably already seen this review via the mention on slashdot but I couldn’t let it go by without commenting on it. In the usual Slashdot manner I haven’t read the article yet so I’m not going to defend the Mac version of the GIMP.
All I’ll say is that every photo I publish here is processed using the GIMP. It’s not substantially worse than Photoshop for many tasks, just different. Personally, I can’t stand using Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. I don’t like the way they work, they’re not intuitive to me. I like the GIMP right-click to do everything approach. *shrug*
Different strokes for different folks.
Later… This made it to the GIMP User mailing list too. (but the archives are broken.. sorry!)
Here’s an interesting tip I gleaned from that thread:
Well, when you press the TAB key while in Image Window – all other GIMP windows will disappear (except for other image windows if you have multiple images open).
If you press TAB again the Toolbox will appear, after pressing it next time, all previosly hidden windows will come back.
In the last few weeks I’ve taken to macro photography in a big way. It’s a whole different world out there in the microcosm of flowers, insects and strange textures, where depth of field is measured in inches rather than feet and your subject is likely to have 6 legs rather than 2!
For the budding macro photographer, here are links to tips on the subject. I’ll be looking at some of this over the weekend!