Camera make bias

Photographers are all gear heads and if you’re denying this then I name thee not a photographer. So we’re forever buying gadgets and gizmos which aim to make our life easier/calmer/more profitable. At least 90% of said items end up being recycled!

One thing we do tend to stick with though is the brand of camera we use and become fiercely loyal to said brand and some resort to slagging off the other brand(s). I have only one comment on this. It’s really silly!

Why do you care what camera brand someone else is wedded to? I’m often asked for advice in buying a camera and my response is always this. Go to a good camera store. Ask to try cameras from all the different makes. Which one feels best in your hand? Which one has a menu system that you think you can understand? Buy the best camera you can afford of that brand!

I would agree that today it’s difficult to get a read on the menu systems of a given brand in the few minutes or so you’ll have with the camera. As the feature list has ballooned so has the number of menu entries. My Sony has a huge number of menu pages and sometimes it is hard to find the one thing you need but mostly that happens when I’m in an extreme situation. It’s pretty easy to set up for everyday shooting! Canon and Nikon users… go for it. I’m game!

Endorphins and Meaty

A while ago I had an awesome morning coffee meetup with @paulcarpenter and @margaretanthony at @moonbird this morning, then some errands.

On the way home I had a tune buzzing around in my head. Bat out of Hell. No idea why? My head often plays tunes all on it’s own and I have no idea where they came from. Often they are old and really obscure… I digress.

Having the album on my phone I think, what the heck lets play it. Well that stuff they tell you about music releasing happy chemicals in the brain… it is right! I must have been spewing out as many dopamines as nitrous oxides as I traveled.

If you’re of a certain age, go throw some Meaty on your music playing device and tell me it doesn’t make you happy (you can be any actual age if you like Meatloaf).

Annie Leibovitz Can't Take A Picture: Again!

I saw this post this morning…

https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/annie-leibovitz-photos-blasted-yet-again-she-cant-photograph-black-women

So many points to pick up on. On one hand, there is the statement I adhere to which is photography is art, the end result which is shown to the public is precisely what the artist intended. Thus, the images of new Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson must be what was intended, therefore we shouldn’t criticize the photographer, especially when it’s Annie Leibovitz, right?

Okay, well yes. There’s a but though isn’t there. A pretty big one. When the photographer is a documentary photographer, or photographing in a documentary environment then art goes out the window? Are you with me? 

There are far too many stories of photographers working documentary style, who’ve embellished the shot with extra explosions, smoke, death etc. This isn’t acceptable. This leads to being discovered and then a further erosion of citizens trust in the media. 

Regarding the controversy over these pictures, does it boil down to whether these are art pictures or documentary style pictures?

I’ll leave the discussion on “exposure for extreme dark and light and the 18% grey” for another day. 

Comments?

#annieleibovitz #photography #photographer #art #vogue @vogue #controvesy  #twitter #LincolnMemorial 

Is it the end of the road for the DSLR?

Own story first. I had been in the Nikon camp since the mid 1990’s. I appreciated the lens mount continuity, the bullet proof reliability and overall ‘feel’ of the camera and controls. I honestly can’t remember the model I started with but I progressed through to an F100, which is still a gorgeous camera. Then came the early 2000’s. I got my first digital camera, a D100 in 2002. There was no looking back and I added a D2x and D4 to that collection. 

There was one problem, they are HEAVY! From about 2015 I’d been checking out Sony and these “mirrorless” camera designs. By the time they got to the a7iii I decided to jump ship. Any photographers who’ve changed make know the pain. It isn’t the camera body that is the problem, it’s the glass! Anyway, change made. I’m happy with the glass that I have right now and I have a camera that is more capable than the D4 and half the weight. 

My story is far from unique. There are many other advantages that a modern mirrorless camera gives, notably focus peeking, exposure zebras and the ability to flip the viewfinder to B&W if that is how the final image is intended. 

There is news dribbling out from Nikon and Canon that they hare pretty much finished with DSLR development, the D6 is likely the last flagship DLSR (but I wouldn’t be too surprised to see a D7 with slightly upgraded specs). Canon appear to have at least hinted that they also will not be devoting too many development dollars to DSLR’s. 

We’re heading for a new mirrorless age! How do you feel about that? 

Guess which profession ranks worst in income vs. education?

https://fstoppers.com/business/guess-which-study-photographers-ranked-1-worst-610720

Yes, of course it is photographers. Hardly a surprise really as photographer=artist=starving artist of the 21st century. Painters must be doing better than photographers now. 

Here’s something I don’t really understand. Why study photography at university? As stated previously photography is art and I guess I have never understood art classes at university either. You either have an eye or you become an accountant or a lawyer! Not that I have anything against accountants or lawyers… oh who am I trying to kid! 

There are some basics of photography, how a lens works, structure of a sensor, effect of ISO (or as I sometimes and fondly refer to it, ASA!). You can learn that through YouTube these days. You learn photography by doing it. Take thousands of pictures, review, compare yours to professionals you admire. Rinse and repeat. 

It takes years…

I also can’t help think that the only people who make money out of photography degrees are for-profit universities though the failure of the Santa Barbara based Brooks Institute in 2016, the most prestigious photography school in America, might show that even they can’t make money out of photography. 

My advice to anyone thinking of taking a degree in photography is to go out and buy the camera you’re most comfortable with, and can afford, and take 100,000 pictures over the next 3 years. To fill in the time between taking pictures you should take a business or marketing degree. When you’re done you should have a better chance at surviving as a photographer!

The FAA Part 107

The Part 107.

Who knows what that is?

Formally it is the Code of Federal Regulations Title 14, Part 107…. I think I got all that in the right order.

More simply it is the thing you have to have to charge money for drone video or photos. To get the certificate, which says that the Feds think you’re sane enough and intelligent enough to fly drones for money, you have to take a test. This means you have to do things like learn how to read sectional charts, learn about weather, drone operations, etc. etc.

Why do I mention all this? I took my test Monday and I PASSED! Yeah baby! I can drive-a-drone!

I’ve been fascinated by drone video footage for a long time. What I really love is slo-mo stuff and someone who often has some excellent video in her YouTube videos is @christianschaffer. It helps that her video is usually some gorgeous location in the South West like Canyonlands National Park. If you’ve not been there you must, it is an astonishingly beautiful and desolate location. Check out her channel as she has a very interesting lifestyle.

What happens now. Well I have applied for my actual certificate. There’s a TSA background check and then you get the actual certificate! Drone footage and pictures appearing here, very soon.

Now who in #Peachtree Corners, #norcross and #dunwoody needs aerial imagery?

The Sneak Peek, Good Idea or Disaster?

The “sneak peek”, good idea or client experience disaster?

If you don’t know what the “sneak peek” is it refers to the practice of sending a few, probably lo-res, images to a client immediately after a shoot with the intention of generating some post-shoot buzz for the photographer and some tantalizing teasing to the client.

I’ve done this myself in the past but now find myself questioning the practice. Instead of creating some buzz does it actually kill the post shoot sales experience? Imagine the flip side of what the sneak peek is supposed to achieve. Instead of the photographer being able to control the post-sales experience, that being a large sized monitor, tv, or projector in a calm and carefully controlled environment where the clients only focus is on their images and how you, the photographer, is coaching them through a sales path the client gets to see their picture on a cell phone screen while navigating the dairy section of the local Albertsons? Not such a nice experience, right?

Or is it?

If you only allow one or two images of the shoot, perhaps not the best ones, to be released are you actually increasing the chances of making a large sale at the client sales session? Are clients so used to seeing images on cell phones, horrifically distorted and filtered “influenza” shots on Insta that to them, the perfectly color balanced shot presented on your best display is unrecognizable to them?

I hope we’re not that far gone. I hope that real photography, like vinyl records, can make a come back. Unfortunately at the moment the signs are not good!

Messing About in a Darkroom

I’ve always been a little curious about photographers who’ve come into the business in the digital era and have no memory of or experience with film.

They miss the ol’ Joe’s Basement days where couriers on all kinds of bikes would be flying around London with test rolls of E6!

That said, does anyone wonder why the Photoshop dodge and burn tools are named as they are? Given what they do you’d think they should be “make brighter” and “make darker” right?

If you have never experienced the joys of working in a darkroom with little pieces of paper or even your hands hunched over an 8x10 under and enlarger you have missed a formative experience.

You would mask off parts of the print in order to “burn in” the bits you wanted to increase exposure in. Areas you wanted less exposed were areas you “dodged”, often using your hands or pieces of card to protect the dodged areas!

This completes Friday’s history lesson:)

#photography #photographer #darkroom #photoshop #fashionphotography #beautyphotography

P.S. Random Friday beauty shot.

The Social Media Thing and Photographers

I saw this story on Petapixel https://petapixel.com/2022/07/20/instagram-is-never-going-back-to-the-way-it-was/

Question photographers, you’ve chased the social media “thing” from MySpace to Facebook and Instagram, probably 500px as well.

Where did it get you?

A while I go I really decided that chasing likes on social media was a pointless exercise? Do you get work via it? Some will say yes but can you be absolutely positive that your presence on social media got you that gig? I’m betting not. I think there is one corner of the internet you can control and that is your personal web site. I’m more and more trying to emphasize my site (it’s www.museandcreator.com if you were wondering). Stop by and say hi.

A Taker of Pictures

I’ve been a taker-of-pictures for many years. In that time I’ve been honored to shoot just about every photographic genre there is. Also I’ve had time to muse on what it means to be a taker-of-pictures.

I regard my camera as a kind of time machine. Every time I press the shutter button a 1/125th of a second or so is recorded, forever. When you’ve been doing this a while you find you have those frozen split seconds that can go back many years. So that is what I do. I don’t take pictures, I preserve time so that people in the far future can look back at us now and say… “what were they thinking with those bell-bottom jeans”… 

Okay at that point it all breaks down but you do know what I mean, right? Ironically we need more pictures in the world, we need more prints and albums in the world… and less Instagram!