Sofie Dittmann's Photography Blog

First I don’t get to writing in weeks, and then I’m on a roll. But there’s a good excuse. A dear friend (thanks, Rodney!) sent me a pinhole attachment for my Canon today, and I couldn’t help but try it out at once. First experiments are below. I have to admit, they do look a little like “kitsch”, but I was indeed going for the antique postcard look. Obviously, a little post processing in Photoshop etc. did the rest.

Sofie Dittmann Check this out!, Photographs, Technique antique photograph, fine art photography, pinhole photography

So, most of today I was playing with HDR, trying to get it to produce the same awesome results you see all the time. No, not the the gaudy “I fell into a surreal paint bucket” stuff that looks like Nik’s solarization filter on steroids. I’m talking beautifully composed color or black and white photos that just seem to jump off the page. While I’m partial to the grainy photo pioneer stuff, this kind of photograph is definitely extremely attractive. And be it solely for the fact that the contrast, if well done, is just simply stunning.

I’m not sure that the style of photography I gravitate towards is anywhere compatible with what HDR produces, yet I cannot help but admire HDR photographs when they are as well done as on stuckincustoms.com. I’ve seen other results in black and white, and when people had it down, these things looked totally captivating.

As popular as it seems to be, there aren’t terribly many tutorials out there that actually did it for me. But there’s hope. Today, what popped up on page 3 on Google was http://www.stuckincustoms.com/hdr-tutorial/. I just checked again and it’s up to place 2 on page 1, so just google “HDR tutorial” and you should find this no problem. The author, Trey Ratcliff, is not only extremely entertaining (“Friends don’t let friends do HDR on drugs.”), he also provided me with a very useful tutorial on HDR.

The first and so far only that was worth even mentioning anywhere, because it goes beyond the other two avenues I’ve found: “Photomatix is totally awesome” or “Photomatix totally stinks”. “Tutorials” of this kinds are not only NOT helpful, they are pretty ridiculous. I think it’s GREAT anyone can do the stuff you do with HDR, but could anyone PLEASE tell me how you got where you got in a few simple steps??? (That’s what I have to admit I loved about the Scott Kelby books, for example – they read like recipe books, and autodidactics like me can appropriate and expand on what is presented pretty easily…)

Trey explains in fairly simple language how he achieved the results he got, and that’s really all I asked for. I’m still not sure I wanna buy all of this software, but it sure is fun playing with this way of processing RAW files, and the stuff he’s got on his site is stunning to say the least. Right now I’m drilling further into this to figure out which ones of my photographs would actually lend themselves to this technique, as most of what I’ve seen where city and landscape type shots, and I usually shoot portraits.

But anyway, check him out today! http://www.stuckincustoms.com/hdr-tutorial/

Sofie Dittmann Photography General, Resource, Technique HDR, photography, Photomatix, scott kelby, trey radcliff, tutorial

Last week when we were shooting photos (two teenagers, freezing cold weather, shooting all afternoon, pix forthcoming), I was asked about how to take a good picture. We went over the usual stuff – you know, composition, color etc. Until it hit me. What I was being asked was not about the “golden cut” or “rule of thirds”. I was being quizzed about how I find my topics, how I select my shots, how I SEE.

My answer had to be vague. You either see or you don’t. My dad, himself a VERY accomplished painter, calls it “stealing with your eyes”. I do it all the time. Even though right now I might be trying to find time to go out and shoot, then find time to go through what I have shot, I steal with my eyes all the time. I’m not talking about plagiarizing other people’s work. I’m talking about being aware of your surroundings. Or, as my dad likes to say, some folks look, others see.

Of course the challenge will be on how to capture that with the camera, which is where the technical aspect comes in. If you don’t have enough experience, more often than not your pictures won’t turn out the way you envisioned simply because you didn’t know how to capture what you saw on a technical level. By the same token, a good photographer will always be willing to experiment. And in the digital age, that’s virtually guilt-free.

And I’ve been in situations more than once where two people photographed the same thing and came away with two totally different takes on it. That’s the exciting thing about it. Your way of stealing with your eyes will be different than mine. I just wish more people would have that awareness. But then, maybe not.

Sofie Dittmann Photography General, Technique composition, photography

I have decided that I will start to share all the books and other resources that I started to tap into when I seriously got into photography, in the hopes that it will help others get into the medium more easily. Stay tuned!

Sofie Dittmann Photography General, Technique auto-didactic, learn yourself, learn-it-yourself, photoghraphy

http://photo.net/canon-eos-digital-camera-forum/00SDk1

I saw a post today on another website (OK, so it was photo.net) where the author complained that his Canon had rendered 1/3 of his pictures in low light useless, b/c they were out of focus. They had been shot w/ a 2.8 lens in low light. He attributed the OOF to the autofocus of the camera and was ready to ditch it and buy another one.

In the meantime, any pictures that I’ve ever shot where parts that I didn’t intend to be out of focus were (and the othe way round) were ALWAYS operator related. I hate to say it. Autofocus can only do so much in low light, and once I’ve got it to focus, I nowadays usually switch AF off and leave it on manual until I’m ready to, well, change focus.

One time I photographed a theater performance with my Leica v-Lux1. I had it on ISO1600 and in idiot mode (i.e. full program mode), as I’m using that camera for a point-and-shoot. [Of note: the person I live w/ cringes when I say that, as he knows what kind of a camera that is...] Anyway, the entire time it sent a red beam across the stage to meter and focus, and repeatedly I had to switch to MF (manual focus) in order to keep it from readjusting.

Bottom line: don’t ditch the camera, give it to somebody else. Or better: send it to me!

Sofie Dittmann OMG!, Photography General, Technique autofocus, low light photography, out of focus