Blog Review Monday

There’s one interesting blog that shouldn’t be missed, especially if you like history and photography. The blog is AmericansuburbXCALIFORNIA.

The blog is a creation of Doug Rickard, a son of a preacher as he states on his author page.

The blog features articles and essays about photographers that were published in the past few decades, galleries of famous twentieth century photographers, videos of famous  photographers’ work,  photography theory essays and photographer interviews.

The Home Page is set up more or less like a blog, except there aren’t visible dates on the entries. You can find an interview with Diane Airbus with images, an article about Henri Cartier Bresson and other photographers of the 20th and 21st centuries from around the world. 

Finally, the site has a great page of links. From 1000 Words Photography to Art Forum, the websites you’ll find here are at least a day’s worth of reading (if you like art, that is).

Smiling Horses

Now how often do you think about horse teeth, or horse dentists even? I played around with these animals for a couple of minutes until I finally caught them smiling at each other (I guess that’s what they’re doing).

You can never second-guess animals. They do what they do, and we as humans will never figure it out. That’s what baffles me. I want so bad to know what animals are thinking, if they even think at all.

Since these animals were moving quite a bit I used my trusty ole fast lens (yeah, that one you’ve read about here before, the f/2.8).

If you’ve got a pet, I’m sure you can relate to this post. You’ve probably thought about how your pet thinks and whether he is smarter (or dumber) than other animals, or even if he’s part human or takes on human qualities. I know I do, and just as I know that these horses are happy.

Bicycle Home

Can you imagine having all of your belongings on a bicycle? We’re the only country in the Western world where you’ll see something like this.

In Europe there’s a social safety net so there aren’t very many homeless people, much less homeless people whose houses are their bicycles.

This shot came out sharp because I used a wide aperture (f/2.8) in aperture priority mode.

I had run to catch up to the bicycle. I then stopped completely so I wouldn’t get blur from camera shake. (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten a blurry shot because I was still running with my camera while I took the shot) When I shot, I panned ever so slightly so that my camera focused on the same spot on the  bicycle while the shutter was open. This helped to ensure that the bicycle would stay sharp in the frame.

Street Prayer

Buddhist prayer.

Caught this image a couple years back in Bangkok. I like it that people pray on the streets there.

One great thing about traveling the world is that you get to see people participate in prayer in all of its various forms and styles.

I’d have to see that prayer is very photogenic. Some of the greatest photos of all time have been of people praying.

What religion do you think has the most compelling prayer photo ops?

Over-the-Shoulder Shot

There’s one type of shot in photography that’s rarely discussed in terms of portraiture.  It’s a method of shooting that’s ubiquitous in film and television production.  It’s the over-the-shoulder shot.

The over-the-shoulder shot adds life to portraits. When you take a head shot of one person, you get very little in terms of the relationship of that person to other human beings. When you add a subject to the foreground of your shot, you get all of the facial expressions in your main subject that come when one person interacts with another.

I have to say that the over-the-shoulder shot is one of my favorite ways of composing a portrait.

Frame the Bottom of People’s Legs

Lisette Model was one of the great twentieth century photographers. One technique she used to photograph was to set the camera on the curb and photograph people’s legs walking by. In Legs Walking, 42nd Street, New York, 1940/41 Model creates a scene of just legs walking. The blurred legs of a woman appear in the foreground with the crowd’s legs sharp in the background. In another image of the Running Legs series, one woman’s leg shows up in the frame with a 1930s style black car in the background. At the very top of the frame is part of an American flag.

In order to get a similar shot to Model’s you have to set your camera on the curb next to the street and aim it at the people walking by on the sidewalk or set your camera on the sidewalk close to a storefront and aim it toward the sidewalk. When people walk by you keep snapping your camera to get a series of fascinating shots.

After I followed the steps just described I came up with the image of one leg you see here. It’s kind of a modern version of Model’s—a man instead of a woman and a modern black car. When I saw that black car (in the background) I immediately set my camera near a storefront so that the foot traffic was in front of the car. That’s how I got the picture of the man’s leg in front of the car.

This is an excerpt from the new book 101 Quick and Easy Ideas Taken from the Master Photographers of the Twentieth Century.

Writing a Persuasive Message to Sell a Book

Anyone who’s written a book knows that it can be a hard sell.

I believe if you craft a message that persuades people they have to click on the link to buy the book, you’ll sell thousands.

Composing an effective message needs to be thought out carefully. You have to plan a purpose and then keep focused on it and define your audience.

When you know the characteristics of your audience (ages, gender, nationality, needs and wants) you can then be creative in drafting your message.

Your creative strategy can be asking an open-ended question, making a statement which your audience will agree with and/or complementing your audience.

Finally, you must recognize beforehand objections our audience might have with your pitch (tactic used to sell something or persuade someone). People will come up with time and money constraints or may just be complacent. You can state in your messages that by buying the book, your audience can save time and money, and then specify how.

Take a look at the following pitch. Can you see how I’ve included some of the techniques described above?

Some of the best times of my life are when I’m out photographing the world. There’s so much going on, and much of it can be captured by the camera’s lens. You just have to look carefully at everything around you to get a compelling composition.

In the book 101 Quick and Easy Secrets to Create Winning Photographs there are a multitude of techniques given to assist you in developing an artful eye. From becoming cognizant of the shadows around you to blending multiple interesting elements in a frame, you can become a photographer who takes winning photos.

The techniques you learn in the book makes photography artfully fun, entertainment that can last hours as you seek out all of the imagery life has to offer. Please order the book and enjoy the 101 secrets that will make you a brilliant photographer.

How to Photograph the Liberty Bell

The liberty bell isn’t atop some building. You don’t have to climb stairs to get there. It’s on display on the ground floor Liberty Bell Center from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.

In order to photograph it without blasting highlights in the background, you have to shoot it so the large floor to ceiling window isn’t included in the background.

In order to get a sharp shot, shoot in aperture priority mode. Use the lowest f-stop your lens has.

When I shot the picture on the left, I used a very wide aperture (f/2.8).  Since I was shooting in Av (aperture priority) mode at a wide aperture, substantial light entered the lens quickly so that the shutter didn’t have to remain open long. Since it wasn’t open long, I had minimal camera shake and thus a sharp shot.

Mapplethorpe Flower Imitation

Robert Mapplethorpe was one of the most controversial photographers of our time. I can remember back in the 1980s when he photographed AIDS patients in the last stages of the disease, covered with the ominous, raised, purple blotches of Kaposi’s Sarcoma on their skin. To my knowledge there are no images of these on the Internet.

Aside from photographing the ravages of AIDS, Mapplethorpe also photographed naked people various poses, some even performing sexual acts. There is one aspect of Mapplethorpe’s photography that is often overlooked–his photographs of flowers.

Robert Mapplethorpe was perfectionist. Everyone of his flower photos is perfect in its detail, color and composition. He often used dark-colored backgrounds, backgrounds that today are easy to make in Photoshop. The background on the flower to the left was created in Photoshop. The contrast is vivid between background and flower. You can see this technique as shot by Mapplethorpe in this flower.

Mapplethorpe is one of some thirty odd master photographers that I’m covering in my book, 101 Quick and Easy Secrets taken from Master Photographers of the Twentieth Century.

Everyone’s Talkin about the Canon 7D

The Canon 7D is here. First the price–it’s $1700. Not bad for an 18 MP camera that shoots HD video. Only drawback is that the camera does not have a full frame sensor (24X36mm). Its sensor is an APS-C (15X22.5 mm). Full frame sensors have better resolution than APS sensors.

When you buy lenses for this camera, you have to multiply the focal length of the lens by 1.6 to get the 35 mm equivalent focal length you are shooting at. For example if a lens is 200 mm the focal length will be 320 mm, quite an advantage if you’re looking to zoom into your subject closely.

One good thing about smaller sensors is that the produce less vignetting (corners don’t darken as much as they do with full frame sensors).

Canon is touting the camera’s iFCL Metering as metering that provides “accurate exposure even in difficult lighting.” The camera shoots at up to 6400 ISO (expandable to 12,800). Just in case if you were wondering expandable means that the camera uses software to determine ISO and not it’s internal mechanisms like it would at 6400 and lower.

The camera also has automatic sensor cleaning, shutter speeds as fast as 1/8000 sec and built-in flash.