Book about How to Emulate Famous Photographers

My new book 101 Quick and Easy Ideas Taken from the Master Photographers of the Twentieth Century (see link to the right) is off to the printer. The cover is also done.

I’m posting here. I think the publisher did a great job in designing it (the publisher is Cengage Learning).

I’ve been informed that preorders for the book are brisk. There’s nothing like hearing that type of news.

The cover picture was taken in Paris (isn’t that the place where all good shots can be had?). If you ever get to that city take your camera to the giant Farris wheel. You can get wow shot of it from far away, close up and while you’re riding it.

The nice thing about that city is you can photograph it when it’s cloudy and get gray hues that you’ve never seen before (especially at sunset).

Panama Canal Lock

Going through the Panama Canal ion a cruise ship is fascinating.   This is a lock where water entered to raise the ship, the MS Oosterdam, up one level to prepare it for entrance into the lake, which is above sea level on it’s way from the Atlantic to Pacific Ocean.

You really can’t feel the boat rising, but you can see it. It looks like as if a ship is rising from under the ground. If there was one word to describe it, I’d say that word would be elevator. The canal works like an elevator, except instead of being pulled up or down, you’re pushed up and down by the water entering and leaving the locks.

It really is one of the world’s greatest technological marvels.

People Reading

Andre Kertész spent the better part of his life taking photographs, many of which were of people reading. A book of photographs, On Reading, was published in 1971.

Just as Kertész’s photographs show people totally absorbed in the reading process, so, too, does the image of the reader to the left. The reader’s gaze into the book reminds viewers how engaging such a solitary activity can be. An added element to the photo—a pencil—makes one wonder why the subject is using it to read.

The surroundings—a park in Paris—have story of their own. The trash receptacle, which is a plastic bag inserted into a large metal ring came about as a result of the War on Terror. After Sept. 11, Paris eliminated traditional trashcans because if a bomb were dropped into one, you wouldn’t be able to see it. Plastic bags such as the one you see in the photo are transparent so that if anything suspicious is dropped into the bag, people will be able to see it.

Andre Kertész is one of the photographers covered in my new book 101 Quick and Easy Ideas Taken from Master Photographers of the Twentieth Century.  Check it out (or preorder it) by clicking on the link to the right. The book comes out next month.

 

Droid´s Camera Competes with iPhone´s

The Droid is out, has a 5 MP camera, costs $199, creating stiff compitition with the iPhone GS, which costs the same and has a 3MP camera.

Decisions, decisions.  If you´ve already got Verizon, you´ll be getting a cheaper contract than you would with ATT´s iPhone.

While Apple´s camera has touch focus and Droid doesn´t, Droid has many other options that iPhone doesn´t, like flash, image stablization and 4X zoom.

Personally, I think the iphone takes better pictures, even without the extras.

Take a look for yourself. Some Droid photos are at http://phandroid.com/2009/11/03/motorola-droid-camera-review/

Some iPhone photos are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/rmohns/sets/72157600587133596/

Which mobile phone do you think takes better pictures?

Grand Turk

Now here’s a spot in the middle of nowhere. You might not call it the end of the earth, but it sure looks like it. It’s Grand Turk an island owned by Britain, that’s desolate and downright depressing.

Traveling here on the Oosterdam has been a pleasure, and the island, while downtrodden and bleak, does have it’s photo ops. Take this pair of girls for example. The mother wasn’t phased at all when I asked to take their picture. The little one seemed a bit put off, but the big one was more than pleasant.

Now what would you do if you were an island girl no more than 5 years old if a guy with shoulder-length frizzy hair asked to take your picture with a white rectangular thingy-magiggy that looks as if it came from a spaceship?

The answer is you’d look like the little girl in this picture–freaked out!

Medium Format Digital Camera Is a Whopping 56 MP

I just ran into an interesting article about new medium format digital cameras coming out this month.

Until I read this article, I thought I had a fairly decent camera, a 12 MP Canon D5 with a full frame sensor (35 X24 mm).

Now I read that there is a Mamiya DM56 that’s coming to market this month. It’s one camera I’ll probably never see in my hands. It makes my camera look like a beginner’s.

However it is exciting to know that such a camera even exists. The DM 56 (it has 56 MP) camera has a sensor size of  56 X36 mm. It costs nearly $33,000.

Ouch, I wouldn’t be able to carry that much credit card debt.

Adventures in Photo Gift-Giving

Make a mug gift with your own photo.

If you’ve got thousands of images sitting in hard drives around your house, you can put them to work for you by making gifts with them for family, friends, coworkers and all those other people you feel you want to give those little holiday somethings to.

First, start with family and others you love with a big gift. If you assess the living space in which your family members reside so that you can match a photo with the decor, you can make them a framed photo, getting all the supplies you need from the Internet. You can even have the photo printed to any size you want up to as  big as one of their walls (see BigHugeLabs.com below), all using the Internet. You can do it yourself by buying the frames at FrameDestination.com or have all done for you at Pictureframes.com (click on Print & Frame Images). You’ll begin with uploading a high resolution photo on at their website. That means if you want an 11X14 framed print, you should have taken the image with a digital camera (preferably a dSLR camera) of at least 8 MP. If you print any bigger than that you’ll get pixelization (those pesky little colored dots that appear all over your photo).

At BigHuge Labs you can get moderately priced gifts such as jigsaw puzzles and posters made from your photos. The site has a generator that lets you make posters in different styles, from Andy Warhol art to giant baseball cards. The best feature on that site is their generators, which allow you to upload your photo so you can see how it would look as one of the featured poster styles available on their site. If you like it you can have it printed in high resolution and buy it.

For that little something you want to pick up for the mailman or your child’s teacher, there’s zazzle.com, a site where you can create mugs, t-shirts, greeting cards, calendars and even shoes with your pictures on them. The site has a feature where you can upload your image to see how it looks on the product you are purchasing. Also, there are hundreds of sellers on the site who sell their one-of-a-kind designs. If you feel entrepreneurial, you can set yourself up to sell your designs on their site.

This is just the beginning of a gift-giving adventure. For more ideas check out the book, 101 Quick and Easy Secrets for Using Your Photographs (http://www.amazon.com/Quick-Secrets-Using-Digital-Photographs/dp/1435454375). Happy gift-giving!

How to Make a Collage in Photoshop

As early as the 1920s, Alexander Rodchenko was pushing out photo montages for books, propaganda and advertisements. Rodchenko was an artist who became popular during the Russian Revolution (when the Soviets came to power).

His artistry can be compared to no other photographer of that era. He assembled (cut and pasted) pictures from magazines along with pictures he had taken to make the collages.

In order to do the window montage shown on the left, I first opened each window image and used the Skew (Edit>Transform>Skew) option to make the converging lines vertical.

Next, I created a new document (6X9 at 300 dpi) and made it grayscale (Edit>Mode>Grayscale) Since that is selected, each window image I drag into the new document will automatically turn to black and white. I opened each window image and copy and pasted it from the open document to the new one.

For each image, I then selected it and then scaled it down (chose Edit>Transform>Scale, and then clicked and dragged the image inward) to approximately where I wanted it.

After I was finished with all of the images, I opened the Layers Palette. From there I tweaked each window so it fit together with the one below and beside it so that there was no white space in between.

Finally, I inserted the woman in the same way: opened her up, selected her with the Polygonal Lasso Tool then copied and pasted from the document I was working in to the new document. One more thing—I converted the woman to sepia tone. I made sure she was selected in the Layers palette, then I converted the image back to RGB color (Edit>Mode>RGB Color), then slide the red Color Balance slider (Image>Adjustments>Color Balance) to the right until I got the amount of red I wanted.

That’s it, just don’t forget to flatten your image (Layer>Flatten Image) when you’re finished.

This is an excerpt from my new book, 101 Quick and Easy Ideas Taken from Master Photographers of the Twentieth Century. Hope you preorder a copy!  There’s no book like it on the market today.

Which is Better Film or Digital Photography?

Image taken with 35 mm film.

I’ve gotten to thinking about film—all kinds of film from 35 mm to 4X5 to 8X10. One thing is for sure, no digital camera is comparable to 8X10 film. A 16 MP full-frame camera is the equivalent of 35 mm film.

If you compare 35 mm film with a full frame sensor on comparable camera models, and blow up both image, the digital photograph is going to be better both in the detail and the color (according to a test of both mediums by the Gadget Show).

After viewing hundreds of images of both on the Internet (many of them high resolution), I’d give the award to film, especially if it’s done in large format. It’s the large format film that helped to make the master photographers of the twentieth century great.

Critiquing Obama Family Portrait

Cyberspace is roiling content associated with the new First Family portrait. Annie Leibovitz took the picture on September 1, and the news about it is just coming out now.

Not many people are commenting on the image because they seemed to be obsessed with the fact that Leibovitz is broke. She made some deal with a pawnbroker company and owes it millions.

But what about the picture? Has Leibovitz flunked photography 101? Probably not, but I can point out some flaws in the image that most photographers would avoid. Here’s what I found a bit off in the family portrait:

1. Michelle’s black dress. As a small image on the Internet, it looks as if it’s solid black. It also lies one-third from the right part of the frame (following the Rule of Thirds). I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the first thing I observe in an image to be black. It look’s as if her body has been cut out of the picture with scissors. Leibovitz should consider how her images will look on the Internet.

2. The framed picture behind Sasha’s head. Photography’s number one rule is to not have objects popping out of people’s heads.

3. Sasha’s hand. It looks as if it was cut and pasted and set on Obama’s shoulder.

4. The urn on top of the fireplace. Annie, you should have removed that. It’s too distracting. It takes away from the subjects in the picture.

Okay, so I’ve been ratty enough. All-in-all, I have to say I really like the picture once I look past the flaws, which to some aren’t flaws at all. Leibovitz probably set up the shot so that the picture frame behind Sasha’s head and the urn on top of the fireplace give viewers an idea of how the Green Room looks.

Enough said. What do you think?