Tag: light
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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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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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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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My bikini pic on 268 websites!
Back in 2007 I snapped the above picture on a beach in San Francisco. The model was taking part in a professional shoot, there were photographers, lighting people, makeup artists, hair specialists, all sorts of trades randomly milling about, when this cyclist barreled through the scene. His neck was craned so far behind him, I…
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Taking Aim
As you’ll find out if you stick around, I’m terrible at flash photography. That said, I’m trying hard and learning a lot. The above photo has a large strobe in front and to the left of the image to give Deanna the front light see needs, but the scene is mostly lit by the light…
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Pretty Ugly People
In the UK there’s a tradition called gurning. It’s the ‘art’ of making really ugly faces for sport. We even have competitions to find the ugliest face in the village. An old man with no teeth always wins. Anyway, back in July 2011 I worked at a company called LogLogic. The people there were cool…