PhotoshopScaresMe
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Tutorial: I finally ‘get’ flash!
Break out the freakin Champagne!! It’s only taken a year. On Wednesday I attended yet another off camera flash course. Just like all the others the presenter (who did a great job) talked about the inverse square law, about f-stops and just photo stuff. This time he said something that no ones else has ever…
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Review (Fuji X-Pro1): Our Fuji X-Pro1 weekend in Calistoga
Ah Calistoga, home of the wine country, heart of Napa. Place where I drank beer. Oops. It’s a truly magnificent area. You should visit. We spent the weekend hiking with the new FujiFilm X-Pro1 brick. There I said it, it’s a brick. It’s a fabulous brick. It looks old-skool and it’s solid enough that you…
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Lessons in battery life at Clear Lake
Shooting star shots takes a lot of juice. Often you’ll find people jacking their cameras in to car batteries, generators, all sorts of devices in an attempt to keep them shooting through the cold nights. Me, I just buy more batteries and keep an eye out for when they’re getting flat. A good fresh battery…
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Tutorial: Light Painting Tools
People stop me in the streets and ask ‘Aren’t you that guy that does those things?’ Once the confusion passes it normally, fortunately, turns out they’re talking about light painting, and the next question they ask is ‘How?’ The exact technique for each picture will be revealed as and when this blog progresses, but for…
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Adobe CS6 is here!
And I don’t care. So what’s in it? A bunch of fixes to Content Fill (about bloody time), some UI tweaks, and er, well, that’s it. Well then, that’s a bargain at ‘only’ $199 Just like CS4, this is another lame intermediate release. What did I miss?
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Review (Nikon V1): Our Nikon V1 weekend atop Mt. Helena
I’m still looking for the perfect camera to carry in my hand as I spend 3 days hiking the Grand Canyon. Having dismissed the 4/3rds cameras as “shit” (read the full review here) I decided to try to the Nikon V1. You’ll recall that I was unhappy with the 4/3rd’s slow focusing and lack of…
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Tutorial: Orton Glowing Poppies
Taking a picture of flowers usually gives you a good starting point for a “glow” effect known as “Orton”. There are many ways of creating this effect. Some produce almost a perfect copy of what Mr Orton would have achieved in his dark room back in the day, others, not so much. My favorite way…
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Josie gets published!
Over at Digital Photography School they’ve decided to publish one of my dog shots. The picture was taken a long time ago and shows how you can get some great HDR like effects simply by using camera raw and pushing the black, recovery, and fill lights sliders too far. I hope you enjoy the picture,…
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Review (Olympus EP-2): Our 4/3rds Weekend at East Brother Light Station
As you know my lovely wife and I are about to hike the Grand Canyon. This epic 3 day walk, carrying all our gear will probably kill me, but that’s OK because I intend to leave some lovely photos of the event for my descendants to quibble over. The problem I have, is what camera…
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Sutro Baths and Bird Crap
The Bay Area Night Photo group met recently at Sutro Baths in San Francisco. Once upon a time the place was magnificent, now it’s just a pile of decaying concrete. Which makes it perfect for setting fire to! One day I’ll show you how we make these fireworks. In the meanwhile I’m sure a…
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Tutorial: Neighing in the rain (white balance)
It’s all about the crop or It’s all about the temperature I posted the below picture last week. I was very unhappy with it at the time but I couldn’t work out how to make it better. Thanks to May‘s version of the image, I now know what I was doing wrong. The above picture…
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Slinging Fire in the Fog
The above photo is not mine. It was taken by May Wong. She kindly allowed me to showcase it here, I’ll explain why in a mo. Here’s her Facebook page. For a while now Eric and I have talked about teaching a light painting class, and while nothing has come of it, we have used…
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