Dia de los Muertos And Me
Dia de los Muertos from TheCameraForum on Vimeo. I’ve photographed Dia de los Muertos in Mexico for seven of the past eleven years. It is one of those long term photography projects that just snuck up on me. I didn’t even realize it was a long term project until I was, pardon the pun, dead in the middle of it. It was my third Dia de los Muertos, my first trip to Pátzcuaro, deep in the Mexican state of Michoacán del Ocampo when I first got hooked. The Purépecha (endonym P’urhépecha [pʰuˈɽepet͡ʃa]) are an indigenous people centered in the northwestern region of the Mexican state of Michoacán, principally in the area of the cities of Cherán and Pátzcuaro.
Read moreUnderstand Music?
Understand Music from finally. on Vimeo. Music is a good thing. Without it, few of our film projects would work. Music is one of those absolutely foundational elements in good cinema. Music can be, and often is, fitted neatly into the background of a film as a trigger to subliminal emotions in the viewer,most often without the viewer’s attention. One of the great mysteries revealed of successful cinema is mixing the once secret sauce of focusing the audiences attention wherever the director intends. Music is a major tool in directorial misdirection; the emotional river for the sub-concious to follow. With
Read morePeter Hurley Makes A Beeline To The Jawline
It’s all about the Jaw from Peter Hurley on Vimeo. Peter Hurley explains how he accentuates the jawline of his clients with a few simple tips that you may want to add to your bag of tricks whenever you have a subject in front of your lens. Peter has an unusual style, real laid back and casual, but don’t let that “surfer dude” exterior fool you, Inside Peter Hurley beats a heart full of pure enthusiasm for head shot photography matched by few, and mastered by fewer. I photograph people, so can personally attest to Peter Hurley’s techniques having a
Read moreSony A7R Image Samples
The rumors are true. Sony has started shipping the A7 & A7R in Europe and here are the first Sony A7R image samples from a production camera. No doubt, these will become only the first few of the upcoming 1,000,000 or so Sony A7R Image Samples that are going to be shot with this camera and posted up online in the next couple of weeks. These Sony A7R image samples are all the work of German based photographer Phillip Reeve, who wins the “First Photographer To Impress The Editor With Sony A7R Image Samples” award. Phillip, you may claim your prize of authoring an
Read moreLeica Buys Sinar!
Psssst… want to buy a Larger Format? Astounding as the news may be to some, the world of high-end cameras just got a little smaller, with Leica Camera AG purchasing Swiss large format camera maker Sinar. Details are still very sketchy, as neither company is willing to discuss the terms of the deal. It is also unknown at this time what it will mean for either brand. I will be doing some asking around for sure, and will update this story as I find out more. For those of you unfamiliar with the history between these two companies, this is not
Read moreVolocopter VC200 First Flight – This Drone For Me!
e-volo Crowdfunding bei Seedmatch from Volocopter on Vimeo. Der Volocopter von e-volo ist eine Luftfahrt-Revolution made in Germany. Sicherer, einfacher und sauberer als je zuvor ändert er die Art, sich fortzubewegen. Sie wollen Teil dieser Innovation werden? Investieren Sie bei unserem Crowdfunding: The Volocopter of e-volo is an aviation revolution made in Germany. Safer, easier, and cleaner than ever before. It changes the nature of locomotion. Want to be part of this innovation? Invest in our Crowdfunding: http://www.seedmatch.de/e-volo In the spirit of keeping up with the latest developments on the Quadcopter scene for making movies from somewhere up
Read moreA7 vs. A7R vs. 5D Mark III – Which one is right for me?
The A7 is near. Very near. We are about a week from the release of the initial shipments of the new Sony A7/A7R cameras. With only a few days left until the release, I need to decide the hard decision – will I be an early entry into this new Sony A7 full frame system, and take delivery on a new Sony A7? Or will I choose to sit this first round out, leaving braver souls with deeper pockets to explore the wonders of pocket sized mirrorless cameras with full frame sensors? Any of us who push the edges
Read moreSony A7 Video – A First Look
When it comes to testing a DSLR video camera, there are few whose judgement I trust as much as Johnnie Behiri, one of the owners of Cinema5D.com. Johnnie has consistently great insights on the entire world of video and video production. He is a master of the necessary craft skills. When Sony first introduced the A7 & A7R, my question after seeing great still image samples was “How is the A7 Video?” Of the two cameras, it appears to me that the A7 video should be the way to go, given it has an anti-aliasing filter which always seems to
Read moreSquinching Your Way To Better Portraits?
Squinching. To Squinch, or not to Squinch, is never the question. Not in photography anyway. Squinching is a technique long used by professional portrait photographers, professional models, actors, and most every vacuum cleaner salesman on the plane. But like one of those magician tricks, it was kept so secret we never even used a name for it. Until now. Thanks to professional portrait photographer Peter Hurley, “Squinching” finally has a name and, unless I miss my guess, a face. Peter dubs this mysterious portrait juice “Squinching” and you know what? Its a pretty great name for it! About halfway
Read moreAn Interview with Kim Weston
To many, including some close photographer friends, Black-and-White is the very definition of photography. Kim Weston is an iconic master of the Black-and-White photography art. Kim has been a fine art nude photographer for over 30 years. He is a third-generation member of one of the most important and creative families in photography. Education Kim learned his craft assisting his father Cole in the darkroom making gallery prints from his grandfather Edward’s original negatives. Kim also worked for many years as an assistant to his uncle Brett, whose bold, abstract photographs rank as some of the finest examples of the art form.
Read moreTissue? I Don’t KNOW You!
I know the opening “Tissue” line is an old West Virginia play on words, but it is an accurate description of this story. This is one of the best time lapse animations I have seen put together, a monumental execution task for a masterpiece outcome. It goes to show that once in a rare awhile, even the stodgy old Advertising Agency creatives get to cut loose the juices on a soul feeding project, vs. their steady diet of soul stealing ones. “Tissue Animals” is the recently completed time lapse tissue animation by Dentsu for Japanese client Nepia. Who knew that
Read moreOTUS 1.4/55. Just Hype, Or A New Standard?
In the above, an obvious sales piece for the new Zeiss OTUS 1.4/55 published on Oct 7, 2013, Zeiss makes some strong claims about this new lens. Statements like “Experience a new dimension. The Otus 1.4/55 is the pinnacle of over 120 years of expertise and experience in optical and mechanical excellence. Only the best materials and the highest quality glass were good enough for a lens that was designed, at every stage, with one single thought in mind: to offer the highest possible performance. Achieving the simple goal of offering you something that is truly perfect. The best standard lens
Read moreSpecular Reflection
Most of us as photographers have heard the term “Specular Reflection.” Certainly all of us have seen examples of it. But just what does “specular reflection” mean in a technical sense, and how does it impact our photographs? Reflections on still water, as in the above image of Tso Moriri Lake, Kashmir, India, from Wikipedia or my own “Yellow Sunrise Over Campeche” below are excellent examples of specular reflection in a positive sense. However, there is a darker more problematic side. Specular reflections are also responsible for some older film lenses not being suitable for use on modern digital cameras.
Read moreThe Fox – Over 217,517,128 Million Views?
Once a generation maybe, pressures for change combine with forces for a better, fresher future, and a generational musical event like “The Fox” happens. That vision satisfies better than an image of a stodgy, smoke filled back room of cigar aficionados deciding who the next music “superstars” are going to be. Or the possibility that such viral events are simply whims of chance; fate taking hold of an otherwise uninteresting career. Whatever the actual case, once in a blue moon some strange brew of creative energy triggers a formidable collection of rag-tag artists to combine their talents to launch, then
Read moreLightroom 4: Using the Adjustment Brush in Auto Mask Mode
Uwe Steinmueller | 11-11-2013 The Adjustment Brush in Lightroom is a very powerful tool. Using the Auto Brush mode allows you to get even more precise results. If you select Auto Mask the brush tries to only cover areas of your image that are close in color to your starting point as long as your brush center does not cross edges. Best we show the principle with a sample. Starting point The first time we have Auto Mask off. We use a brightening brush (about +1.8EV) and brush inside the light blue square so that the center cross of the brush does
Read moreDroplets: Using Photoshop Automation For Lightroom
Uwe Steinmueller We are currently working on some new scripts and this reminded us to share the use of Droplets with our readers. We like to streamline our workflow as much as possible, and droplets are a good way to do that. Lightroom is very powerful but yet there are tasks that you may want to perform in Photoshop (we use CS6 and CC). For example we integrate our commercial “OptimalSharp V3” script into our workflow. We want to use the script without any interaction in Photoshop. There is no direct way to call a Photoshop script from Lightroom. But we
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