CCCamera's Expo is this week!!!

CCCamera's Expo is this week!!!
http://www.cccamera.com/expo.html

Photographer of the Week 08

The photographer of the Week this is a photographer that has inspired me since i first discovered his E-book in 2006, His name is Chris Weeks. Because of the work i saw he produced,  it inspired me to try my hand at street photography. It's been six years since i first tried street photography, I can honestly say that it my favorite way of taking(not making) photographs since then. He's a big Leica fan-boy. For years he shot northing but film, although recently he started shooting digital with his Leica M9. While he has/does work/ed for several magazines, That is just to support his personal project, Witch is shooting Street photographs all over the world.


 His free E-book
http://cweeks.deviantart.com/art/Street-Photography-38038974

His deviantart.com account
http://cweeks.deviantart.com/gallery/

His Home-Page
http://www.chrisweeks.net/

?

I've been think lately my photographic process, and I've come to the conclusion that I have been using to many cameras and lenses. I haven't gotten to know each of my lenses personalty's very well. There are a Few exceptions, I know my, OMZ 85mm F2.0, OMZ 35mm F2.0, and my Olympus 14-54mm F2.8-3.5 MK1 Very well. But i hardly know or use my OMZ 180mm F2.8 or my OMZ 28mm F3.5. And These are just a few examples. So to fix my problem I've decided shoot the next two-three weeks with only certain lenses. These lenses are, For my FD kit only my Canon 50mm F1.2 S.S.C, For my OM kit only my OMZ 50mm F1.8, and lastly for my 4/3(digital) kit only my OMZ 28mm F3.5. These limitations should force me to come up with creative workarounds to not having the correct lens for the situation. Do you guys think this is Crazy? Because maybe I'm over-thinking this? What do you guys think?

Photographer of the Week 07

Hi Everyone!

My pick for Photographer of the week is, Flickr user YET TO COME (Paulo Moreira). He's been a member of Flickr since 2006. He's Based in Porto, Portugal. His main photographic interest is Shooting Street Photography. He works with combination Digital/Analog workflow. So to cut to the Chase, Here's some links to some of his work that really struck me.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/98922823@N00/6781845739/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/98922823@N00/6918988630/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/98922823@N00/6368781427/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/98922823@N00/6868380278/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/98922823@N00/7079590517/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/98922823@N00/6831235070/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/98922823@N00/6088902212/in/photostream

This is My personal favorite. 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/98922823@N00/5628125078/in/photostream
 
His work makes me want to move to Portugal.L.O.L

Free Photo Software that's AMAZING!!!

Hi Everyone!!!

Here are some links to the best free/ Open source photo development programs. All of these programs except Gimp, natively open Raw files.

http://rawtherapee.com/
RawTherapee is the best Open Source Raw development program out there, also it beats allot of commercial raw development programs out there. It does everything ACR does and more in a 16bit non-destructive work-flow. It also has a fairly basic image liberty function. It's ported to most of the Linux distributions along with Windows, and Mac.

WARNING!!! RawTherapee is a fairly resource intensive program. To run it it at decent speed you need a least a duel-core processor running at 2.4Ghz and also 2gb of ram minimum.

http://www.irfanview.com/
Irfranview is a windows exclusive free-ware program. It view almost every format ever thought of. It's not the best, But it's still pretty good. It has very low system requirements.

http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/index.html
UfRaw is an old open source Raw development program. For a lot of years it was the go to program. It doesn't have a large amount of features, In fact it's very bare-bones. It's not the best, It's just ok. It has some problems dealing with noisy images. It has a tendency to render the noise rather large and blotchy. It's useful to run on older computers because it's has fairly low system requirements. It's offered as ether a Plug-in for Gimp or as a stand-alone program.  

http://www.gimp.org/
Gimp is a excellent program. It has almost all of the feature offered in Photoshop. The features that are not in it are, CMYK support, 16bit editing(It only edits in 8bits currently.), And non-destructive adjustments.  It edits like PhotoShop 7.0(pre CS series). It's interface also reminds me of Photoshop 7.0. Overall a Great program, Especially when you consider the fact that it's free.
P.S. An all in one GUI will be in Version 2.8, which should be released in the next couple of months.(Update: Gimp V.2.8.0RC1 was released a few days ago. This means that we could be seeing a Stable version of 2.8.0 by the end of the month.)
P.S.S 16bit editing and non-destructive adjustments are planed for Version 3.0 which should be out in mid-late 2013.


P.S. I might do a review of Raw Therapee later on. I will have to see how much time i have then.

Just Sharing!!!

Hi Everyone!!!

These are some of the best of a set of image i shot over spring-break. These were all shot at Kawa-Kon(Anime/Gaming convention) during the Rave. Photographing the Rave pushed my Camera to it's limit, the EXIF info on these is ISO3200, 35mm, F2.0, 1/60th. That's pretty extreme when you consider the fact that the E-3 was released in 2007. This is only a Sample of this set, I shot a little over 800 images and it's taking a while to sort and edit them.

Coolest Things Ever!!!

These are Drawings!!! W.T.F

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/realistic-drawings-look-like-photographs-1333124926-slideshow/

Just Sharing!

Hi Everyone!!!

I just wanted to share two of my newest portraits.

Mind you, These are just work edits. They will look mush better when finished.

Photographer of the Week 06

I've been fallowing the Photographer named Kirk Tuck for a year or two now. I originally stumbled onto his blog after looking for a review on Google, and I've been a fan of his ever since. His site is more technical then your normal photography site. He does a lot of studio Portraits. Check him out. He's definitely worth your time.

Homepage
http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/

Photographer of the Week 05

The Photographer of the Week this is week is Helen Levitt. She's a street photographer who began working in the late 1930's in NYC. If you haven't heard about her, i'm sure you've seen her work. See attached image.

There's not really an online galley of her work. here's a link to a Google Images search 

Photograper of the Week 04

This weeks Photographer of the week is Dave Hill. He's based in Los Angeles and specializes in commercial portrait photography. What brought me to his site was his B&W film work. It's very interesting, Check it out.

His website
http://www.davehillphoto.com/

Photograper of the Week 03

The Photographer of the week this time is a female commercial photographer by the name of Jill Greenberg. The image set that brought me to her website is named "End Times". This set is interesting and a little disturbing at the same time. This set consist of toddler in various states of being upset and crying. What makes this set visually interesting is that these are photographed in a commercial studio setup. The lights are setup similar to a fashion shoot.
Check her out!


Her main Web page
http://www.jillgreenberg.com/


The set that i talked about.
 http://www.jillgreenberg.com/Fine-art/photos/end-times#/

Photographer of the Week 02

Hi! everyone 

The photographer of the week, this week is Shinya Arimoto. He's a Japanese street photographer. He's one of the only modern street photographers i know of that still shoots a Rolliflex! Check out his work, it's pretty amazing! 


His Website
http://arimotoshinya.com/


His Flickr (Recommended)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/55411539@N04/

Just Sharing

Hey Everyone!
        I'm just sharing some of my newest photographs and some of last years photographs. Enjoy!!!

These Where all Shot in the last week. I've been on a bit of a Cross Process kick. These are all done in that color style.

These are some of the best I shot over break.

 

And lastly these are some of the best from August 2011 onward. 

Thanks For Looking!!!

Photographer of the Week 01

Photographer of the Week 01 Name: Jay Dickman
Jay Dickman has been an huge inspiration for me for a couple of years now. Mainly his work in the 1960's in El Salvador. This is also the work that won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1983. Pleas spend some time looking at the provide links and be amazed!
His Main Website
http://www.jaydickman.net/
His Nat Geo Profile
http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photographers/photographer-jay-dickman/
His Olympus Profile
http://olympusprogallery.com/prophotos/en/gallery/photographer/jay-dickman/list/
The Website of the book he Coauthored
http://perfectdigitalphotography.com/

Just Sharing

Hi Everyone!!! I just wanted to share some of my work i shot for Assignment 1. So without any further explanation here it is.

Thanks For Looking!!!

Is It Art, or Is It Technique, or Is It just that he's a lucky Bastard?

Is It Art, or Is It Technique, or Is It just that he's a lucky Bastard?

<rant>

Is It Art, or Is It Skill, or Is It just that he's a lucky Bastard? This question has plagued the photographic community for over a century now. This is just a short opinion article on my personal beliefs on the subject. I was born with a very technical mind. And in general I believe that good technique is a base to all great art! Thats not to say that there isn't any great Art produced by people with little to completely no technical skill. I in general try to look at photography though lenses colored with proper technique. Every picture I take I try to maximize every pixel or piece of Silver Halide with the use of proper technique. Unfortunately, this does not always work out. Sometimes no matter what techniques you use or how hard you try, the picture just refuses to work out. If you look at this situation from a purely techniques based viewpoint, it would tell you to abandon the possible photograph due to the fact that none of the techniques work for this photograph. Therefore it must be a bad photograph. This is where your artistic mind comes into play. When you use your artistic mind you can find unorthodox solutions to problems. What I'm trying to say is that Techniques are not rules. They are guide lines meant to be bent, broken, disassembled, and then reassembled to fit the current situation. If you use nothing but pure by the book techniques while shooting you end up with a portfolio of nothing but sterile cookie cutter work. When you first start photographing the world, by the book techniques can become a suit of armor. One thing I failed to realize when I began is that it's ok to wear by the book techniques like a suit of armor but you have to remember to remove the helmet or else it will impair your vision of the world.

Now to change to the purely art perspective. From the purely Art perspective ,all by the book techniques exist purely to restrain your artistic vision and serve almost no practical purpose in this world. The content of the pictures is the only thing that matters. Technical quality is only good when it does not interfere with the picture making process. I have tried shooting this way and I must say that it's refreshing not to be bound by technique or quality standards. Not having my camera glued to the tripod really freed me to move around and explore. Unfortunately, the down side of that way of shooting is that the amount of keepers is drastically decreased compared to when I used proper techniques to photograph my subjects.

And now onto the people who say that great photographs are based purely on luck and how expensive their camera is. These are the kind of people that say that Ansel Adams was just in the right place at the right time and had a VERY, VERY, VERY, expensive camera. They are the people who think that it's the camera not the photographer who takes the photos. They equate the price of the gear they use to the quality of the photographs they take. They fail to comprehend that it's the photographers vision and use of proper technique that takes the photographs, not the camera. Luck on the other hand does play a part in photography, just not as large as you might think. Everyone has the one photograph where everything came together perfectly, and in other words you got lucky. What lots of people fail to realize is that there are infinite chances in this world, that happen everyday that we miss. Unfortunately we fail to see the world with eyes unclouded by distraction. Henri Cartier-Bresson developed the theory of The Decisive Moment which in its most pure sense is how to get the I Got Lucky moment fairly often and increase your luck ratio. Here's a good quote by him. “

The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression... . In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a leitmotif.”

This is how Professional Photographers make all that luck. It's almost all skill, and actually almost no luck.

To have a great portfolio of work, is at best a difficult task. Proper use of techniques can help, as can a proper amount of artistic vision. The main point of this article is to say that Great photography is made by the photographer, not the camera, not the lens, and definitely not luck! Only a small amount of artistic vision is needed. Photography is a technical skill based art form. If you look at history, the pioneers of photography were scientist, chemists and/or people with large amounts of scientific knowledge. Photography has always been a technical based skill, and not all about art. That was added later in history. In the modern day photography has become an art form. However, it is important to remember that it's still a technical based art form. So we all need to find the correct balance between Art and proper technique. This balance is essential to the shooting of great photography.

</rant>

P.S. This was originally meant only to be a paragraph or two long, and some how it grew to a much larger size. L.O.L

P.S.S. If this article seems a little random, that's because it is. This article is me using writing as a medium to help myself figure out my own personal thoughts on the subject. Sorry if it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Introduction

Hi Everyone

My name is Given Zane. I'm 18 years old and in march I will have been studying photography for eight years. For my first blog post I decided to talk about my opinion on what photography is. Is It Art, or Is It Skill, or Is It just that he's a lucky Bastard.

Please read and Enjoy!!!