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How to think about composition

There’s a great article over at Digital Photography School about how to approach composition. We’ve all been there – you see a scene that attracts you, and you know there’s _something_ good there, you’re just not sure how to bring it out.

Photographer Neil Creek talks you through his thought processes as he assesses a potential shot, and works out how to say what he sees. Good examples show how things turn out.

For experienced photographers, I’m sure much of what he talks through happens at a non-rational level, but it’s valuable to be given some step by step illustrations.

I guess it’s like writing – I’ve been writing articles so long now, that I don’t ask myself a lot of specific questions as I’m working. I follow a feeling of what has to happen when, and how things should work. A little more like uncovering than creating.

But much of that comes from inwardly absorbing a lot of very small decisions about things over a long time. Thinking hard so I don’t have to think so hard any more. If someone asked me, I could plausibly explain why I’d done things the way I had, even though I hadn’t really been thinking about that at the time.

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Personal

In a non-shooting rut

ComplementaryIt’s been a busy week in Duckbell Towers – my wife was in a car crash that totalled the car (thankfully, she was fine), our daughter’s been sick, and I’ve been slammed with work.

So I’ve had little time to take photos, read the photo sites or make much progress with the photography book I’ve been reading.

And I’m getting antsy. If a few days go by and I haven’t taken any photos, it makes me irritable and resentful. Of course, it’s largely me that’s stopping me shooting – there’s always time to shoot if you look hard enough.

So I’d welcome some suggestions on getting me out of my rut. I know the obvious answer is just to go and take some pictures, but I’m pretty good at not doing the right thing sometimes, so I might need to get sneaky with myself.

And meanwhile, here’s a shot from the last time I really took pictures – on our visit to California a couple of weeks ago.

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Inspiration Links

Lee Miller – muse and artist

There’s a great article in the Jan 21 issue of the New Yorker about American photographer, model and all-round amazing person Lee Miller.

She went from being a model, muse and lover to Man Ray and Picasso to being a great surrealist photographer in her own right, before becoming a photojournalist during the Second World War (she was one of the first photographers into the Nazi death camps after their liberations).

Hers is a staggering and fascinating life, and an exhibition of her work has just opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Unfortunately, the New Yorker article’s not available online, but they do have a brief slideshow of her work.

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Links Reviews

New Canon Rebel Xsi/450D

Looks like my XT is a thing of the past. Canon have announced the 450D, or Rebel XSi as it’s annoyingly going to be called here in the US.

According to PopPhoto.com, a very nice feature list includes:

• a 3-inch 230K dot LCD like the 1Ds Mark III.
• a Digic III processor.
• 14-bit A/D conversion.
• 4% spot meter (hooray!)
• The burst rate jumps to 3.5 fps for 6 RAW or 45 JPEGS.
• It’s the first EOS to take only SD cards — no CF cards here!
• Like the EOS 1D Mark III, EOS 40D, and 1Ds Mark III, it has Live View Mode
• Of course it’s got a self-cleaning sensor.

Note that it only takes SD cards, so if you’re upgrading from another Rebel, you’ll be stuck with a bunch of CF cards. But the spot metering, larger LCD, 12.2 megapixels and Digic III processor look like winners. Not sure I’d use the LiveView much, but I guess for some it’ll be handy – like macro photographers, for example.

And it’s available for pre-order (with an April 15th release) at Amazon for $799 body only, or with the 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens for $899.

(sorry for the lack of posts, by the way – we were away in LA, and then I’ve been swamped with a work backlog since my return)

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Links

Does Canon support shooting whales?

Shoot-whales-with-a-CANON.jpgMy friend Dave Walsh is currently on the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, having spent the last two months chasing Japanese ‘scientific’ whaling shapes around the Southern Ocean.

He’s a great photographer, and when it dawned on him that the ship contained a bunch of Canon gear he wondered what Canon’s stance on whaling is – especially given its commitment to other conservation efforts.

Here’s the upshot:

Here at Greenpeace, we support shooting whales… with cameras. But we’re surprised to learn that Canon, the world’s number one digital camera producer, isn’t willing to condemn using harpoons — despite their high-profile advertising and sponsorship programmes dedicated to wildlife and endangered species.

We wrote to Canon headquarters in Japan asking their CEO to speak out against Japan’s whaling programme. But Canon declined to take a stand against the killing of thousands of whales.

As a Canon user I’m not very happy about this, so I dashed off a quick letter to the CEO. Maybe you should think about doing the same. There’s more information here.

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Links

100 strangers – challenge yourself

I’m a shy person in many ways, and the prospect of stopping strangers in the street and asking to take their pictures fills me with dread.

But I can see that it would be a great way to extend my photographic range, and get some great images.

So the Flickr Group 100 Strangers might be just the place for me:

This is a contact photo group to inspire you to practice taking portraits of people you don’t know. The ultimate challenge for the members is to take 100 portraits of 100 strangers. Candids are not allowed. Little by little, learning by doing you’ll get better results. You might even find that taking contact with strangers isn’t as scary as you thought it would be.

Here’s how it goes: Stop people by the street, talk with them, ask if you can take a portrait. Post the picture to Flickr and 100 strangers pool. Try to get an idea who they are. Write a caption that tells something about the person in portrait. Describe how you got the photo.

Don’t post archive photos. Get out on the streets to take new ones.

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Reviews

MacBook Air for the photographer?

product-air.jpgApple’s announcement of the new tiny MacBook Air gives Mac users a new alternative if they’re looking for a subnotebook. But does it stack up for digital photography use?

Display – passable

The LED display is only 13″ but has a pretty good resolution: 1280 x 800 – slightly less than a 15″ MacBook Pro but the same as a regular MacBook. The video card is the same as the MacBook too, which means it shares some of the main memory.

Together, this means that on its own, it’s only OK for graphics intensive activities. The good news is that it can power an external monitor up to 1920 x 1200 pixels (an Apple 23-inch Cinema Display, for example).

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Inspiration Links

Death and life in Photography Education

Darius Himes (from Radius Books and elsewhere) has a good article in this week’s Santa Fe Reporter looking at the issues facing photography education – and by extension, photography in general.

The questions currently being debated in academia are just as important for serious amateurs to be aware of:

In short, what constitutes the bedrock of an education in photography has been called into question; it begs to be redefined and reconfirmed. What students should learn in a Photo 101 class is precisely what is up for grabs. Should they learn how to process film or how to parse pixels? Should they learn how light objects or how to emulate that effect in Photoshop? And when should students learn how to think and talk about the conceptual underpinnings of the medium?

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Links Tips/Tutorials

Submit your travel photos and stories to ‘Everywhere’

everywhere_bigcover.gifThe folks who brought you the very successful website/magazine combo JPG have a new venture.

Everywhere‘ is a website where you submit your travel photos and stories, creating a huge online travel guide. The extra twist is that the best articles and images on a number of topics are selected and published in a beautiful print magazine (and you get paid).

I”ve just received a trial version of issue 1 – I’m a contributor to the sister website JPG (and had an article published in issue 13) – and it’s a lovely object.

So if you have some good travel photographs and like the collaborative nature of the website, this is a good one to check out. ‘Everywhere‘ is here, you might say.

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Tips/Tutorials

Why you should buy a prime lens

Lock timeIf, like me, you graduated to digital SLR photography from digital point and shoots, you’re very familiar with zoom lenses: they’re flexible, easy to understand and mean you get tightly-framed shots (or expansively wide landscapes) without swapping lenses or having to walk back and forth to compose your shot.

This sounds good, but for SLRs this flexibility comes at a very high cost in image quality, low-light ability, creative control, price and stealth capabilities.

The truth is, unless you’re completely loaded, most of the time you’d be better off shooting with lenses that don’t zoom – prime lenses.

Let’s look at the benefits: