For the past few years I’ve been making holiday cards with my photos for friends and family. This year I’m thinking about testing the water with two limited run products for the holidays:
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Holiday Cards
5×7 (after fold), blank interior,
Premium 14 pt. gloss cover stock 10 card pack – $18.95
(see images to the right)
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20 Amazing Landscapes – a hardcover book
featuring some of my favorite landscape photos
from across the western United States.
13×10 inches, ~50 pages
and personally signed – $74.95
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Note: As always I’m still making art prints upon request
If you’re interested in the cards or book let me know either by email or as a comment to this blog entry no later than Tuesday December 4th. In order to make this happen I’ll need a pre-order of either (10) ten sets of cards or (10) ten books. I’m not convinced I’ve found the most economical print house for the book, but I thought I would give it a shot to see what amount of interest there would be.
I dread falling into a techhead mode, but this Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III Hands-On Review video was too funny not to post. One thing that instantly made me chuckle is the porno music and the visual inspection of the sensor which by appearance clearly demonstrates how great it is. All teasing aside if you’ve never unwrapped a Canon 1 body this is a must see. I have to admit I found the comparison of the 1Ds Mark III and 1Ds Mark II useful. Enjoy…
So what makes a viewer say, “Wow!” about a photograph?
The answer… great lighting. Great lighting is the key to high impact photography. Even the most mundane subject will look amazing with the right lighting to paraphrase Gary Crabbe from my EXIF and Beyond interview. When is the lighting best you ask? For outdoor photography the lighting is best during the “Golden Hour” when the light is warmer and less intense. This is especially true for landscape and nature photography.
To show an example of how the quality of light at different times of day can transform even the most mundane subject I took a time lapse of Sutro Tower here in San Francisco. How dramatic can a 1000 foot telecommunications tower look? Apparently pretty dramatic.
On October 24th, 2007, here in San Francisco, sunrise was at 7:27 AM and sunset was at 6:21 PM. Take a look at the following lighting time lapse (1.1 MB) to see how the light transformed the tower through out the day.
As seen in the image above “Golden Hour” lighting around sunrise and sunset is dramatically different than at mid-day. Taking into account not just your subject but the time to photograph it will be one of the easiest things you can do to improve your photography.
The terms “magic hour” and “golden hour” are often used interchangeably, both describing the same lighting phenomenon. The “golden hour” is the hour after sunrise and before sunset when the light is less intense and fittingly golden. At this time sunlight shines through the earths atmosphere at a more acute angle resulting in wavelengths of light, other than red, being scattered at a greater frequency. The net result is redder more golden light making its way to the Earth’s surface. Additionally the acute angle that sunlight falls at this time creates dramatic long shadows for higher contrast imagery and highlights are less intensely lit compared to other times of day.
The “golden hour” is coveted by photographers as the warm light enhances a variety of subjects from landscapes to portraits to cityscapes.
Curious about the impact of smoke, pollution and/or clouds on the “golden hour”? Then I recommend reading The Colors Of Twilight And Sunset by Stephen F.Corfidi
An example of “golden hour” light falling on the Marin foothills in California.
If there is one thing I’ve learned as a photographer it is always check your seconds. Upon first review of a days shoot I’ll almost always pick out the great shots. There’s a caveat to this though… these great shots are usually in line with a preconceived notion of what I wanted to get from the shoot. Coming back to these same photos later allows me to review my work with a fresh perspective. The end result is usually the discover of a real gem of a photo. Case in point with “Out of the Gloom II: Golden Gate Bridge and Fog” (seen below). Photographed the same day as Out of the Gloom: Golden Gate Bridge and Fog I some how passed this image by looking for a different type of shot.
This photo was taken from a higher vantage point the same day I photographed Out of the Gloom: Golden Gate Bridge and Fog. I wasn’t sure this would come out. The fog was quickly rising, the light was quickly fading and I needed to rush back to my car before the rangers locked a gate restricting auto travel in and out of the area. One thing is for sure time is rarely on the side of a photographer.
I recently came across an article on visual plagiarism and thought it was an excellent read. I’ve not run into this problem personally, but I’ve read about individual examples here and there. This article compiles a good number of visual plagiarism examples and their outcomes.
As the popularity of digital photography grows and more people become exposed to each others work through photo sharing sites I would expect this trend to increase. Flickr being the hotbed of traffic that it is, would be a likely environment for this to happen. I can see this happening with in the community and with commercial entities pulling ideas from photographers in the community. After reading this let me know your thoughts on this. Had you heard of these examples? Do you know of other?
Few photos have eluded me like this one. After nearly 10 years the stars aligned and I was finally free to photograph the fog blanketing the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco at sunset this past week. What makes this photo so difficult to capture? To name a few things; the weather conditions have to be just right, you have to recognize the conditions as being just right, you have to be in a close proximity to the area, you have to be able to break away from whatever you’re doing, you have to fight San Francisco traffic, you have to scramble for limited parking, you have to find the right place to shoot from and finally you have to hope the weather conditions don’t disintegrate before the lighting is optimal. At last it all worked out and to top it all off I got to meet Frederic Larson, the famous San Francisco Chronicle photographer, who was shooting near by.
