Well a couple of weeks ago, myself and a friend shot this video, we covered 2 roller derby bouts and rattled off some 24,000+ frames between us and I managed to find the small jpg buffer limit on a 1D2n. Editing these has been a real nightmare, I have a lot more respect for the patience of Keith Loutit and his wonderful work over on Vimeo.
Enjoy! 
I thought putting together a new website would be tricky, getting the wording right, putting together packages for things like portraits, weddings and commercial photography, but little did I realise how hard selecting the photos was going to be.
I’ve decided to aim for the Wedding, Portrait, Autombile and Architecture markets as a starter for 10 – a the former are probably where the money’s at, the latter being things I actually enjoy doing. So you look back through 4 years of work and suddenly realise how much you’ve shot in that time. I got the 5D on the 27th feb 2006 and have probably shot on average 100 shots a day since! So the sheer bulk of what you need to look over is quite outfacing.
Then you realise that your photography has changed over time – both in style, subject and processing. In 2006/2007 I had the saturation slider to the max, lots of landscapes and a few weddings to fish shots from. So do you use shots from the past which you are pretty happy with, but know you’d not shoot any more? It’s tough one to answer, so I’ve copied shots to a new folder ready to get critical on!
I think the next big problem is that the site I’m building is hopefully going to get people to buy stuff off me or hire my services… so you really have to take a step back and look at it objectively, which is something I’ve not really done before. When you’re taking shots as a hobby, even as a semi-pro, I don’t think what you put on your website is that critical as your mortgage doesn’t depend on it – on my current website, I’ve got stacks of shots of people getting drunk, and to my mates that’s the best part of the site! So now it’s case of whittling down to a few shots of each genre that portray where I’m going… so do I just pluck from the last year or last 6 months even? Tricky.
The other thing I’ve noticed, as I’m looking at the older photos as “normal” people see them – moments in time, nostalgia, seeing people I’ve not seen for ages, and it’s quite refreshing as I usually look at shots as a photographer would and am more concerned about the composition and lighting! I remember taking them, it was a period when I was out most nights learning new things every day, trying anything and everything just to see what works. A lot of duffs of course, but I kinda miss that childlike wonderment you get when you’re new to something.
Ah well, the nostalgia must continue I guess – 2007, here I come!
If you are on a PC and a Photoshop user, this handy cheat sheet for shortcuts will help a great deal. The full cheat sheet can be downloaded from Smashing Magazine, for free.
Go on, stretch yourself. The 365 photo a day is a rite of passage that at some point we all attempt, and often people will fail at maintaining it. However, that’s not a failure of the project it will have taught you a lot (ok maybe not if you stop on day2) and opened your eyes to those elusive grab shots and the difficulty of producing a sustained output. I know it has for me.
FWAPhoto is a photo a day project with a difference, it is not one submitter but many, and so has a constant rich vein of photographic talent to draw from. You can even submit your own work to the project. It’s definitely a site worth browsing with a fresh hot cup of Java and some time to kill.
Not quite a 365, but a few of us set up a 31 day photo challenge that we’ve talked about before. It’s coming to a close soon and has been fun to participate in and see what everyone has produced. Seeing how a group event differs from the very personal 365 exploration has been interesting and informatinve. I know a few, including Matt, are hoping to make it a 365 experience.. let’s hope they can. For me, I’m thinking about it again.. maybe this time I will finish the task.
Earlier I wrote about how we interact with emotions in photographs, and how the darker emotions invite more connections and narrative, well here’s a video that is part of Nikon’s Your Day in 140 seconds or less competition in which people submitted 140 second videos taken with their DSLRs.
I really like this video: Today
It has a nice warm feel, and the transitions of facial expression makes you think and is also capabable of giving you a dose of the warm and fuzzies, if you let it. I think it is the transition of emotions and the question of “what made them smile?” that really helps you connect with this, along with the very well selected soundtrack. Watching with and withoutaudio, shows how important the right choice of audio is for pieces like this. The new DSLR cameras with their video capability are going to open up opportunities in portraiture, the moving portrait can be very engaging. Hmmm anyone got a 5D2 they want to loan me? 
Well we’re having a proper winter, like those I remember from being a kid, and it seems that we’re not the only ones either.
Here are a couple of good links for you: cold snap across the globe, from The Frame by the Sacramento Bee and the Harbin Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival, via the Big Picture at the Boston Globe, which also has this Snowy Scenes compilation.
Enjoy the white stuff.
When Rick got his porsche he posted an I Phone photo of the thing on Facebook and it looked pretty decent… for a snap shot, but it gave me the idea of taking some dramatic shots using old iconic Mancuanin locations. He’s from Manchester, that explains the location.
So on my way back from giving a talk on HDR at the Welshot academy night in Chester, we stopped at Castlefield and had a drive around to get some shots.
With all the strobist stuff I’ve been doing I did think about clever lighting, but really, I’d need to practice lighting cars with speedlites before trying it on a proper car, so I relied on old faithful - HDR.
I keep HDR simple these days – use Av mode for exposure, meter with Matrix mode, use AEB to get my 3 shots (each 2 stops apart) and rapid fire mode to get the 3 shots out as fast as I can. On a bright day, it takes no longer than single shot.
So that’s what these shots are – simple HDR, a mix of Tone Compression and Details Enhancer tone mapping and a lot of dicking around in Photoshop.
Well as it was snowing over the weekend, I thought I’d get out for a bit with the camera.
