Selective Focus Photography

If you have a group of flowers you want to photograph and want some of the sharp and some of them soft all you have to do is use the widest aperture setting on your camera (f/2.8 is good) with the zoom all the way in (200mm). You’ll probably have to step away from the flowers you are focusing on  a bit to get them in focus. You can get a similar effect with a point and shoot camera configures so that the lens is zoomed in at the camera’s widest aperture.

I used the camera settings and technique mentioned above to photograph the flowers to the left. I shot with  a Tamron 70-200mm lens at 200mm with the f/stop set at f/2.8. It took awhile to get the flowers in an aesthetically pleasing arrangement (two sharp flowers at the top of the frame and three soft flowers at the bottom).

What’s interesting about this shot is the out-of-focus flowers are in the foreground, making for a different kind of flower photograph. I selectively focused my camera lens on the two red flowers so that both the foreground and background were soft.

Just in case if you wanted to know, these beauties were found in the garden of a cafe near Big Sur, California.

What’s All This Talk About Master Photographers?

Emulation of Aaron Siskind photo.

How’d you like to emulate a 20th century master photographer?

I created the photo to the left using Photoshop. It’s made to look like one of the photos from Aaron Siskind’s diver series.

I’ve created over 100 emulations in my new book, 101 Quick and Easy Ideas Taken from the Master Photographers of the Twentieth Century.

Not only that: I’ve give step-by-step instructions of how to  emulate the photos of these famous photographers.

When I first drafted the proposal for this book, I had no idea how I could undertake such a feat. Now that it’s done, I’m really happy with the results.

I traveled the world to get many of the photos. The photo to the left was taken in Berlin. The guy’s a street dancer who performed many stunts that brought him up in the air.

The book comes out on December 21st, just in time for Christmas.

SAVE the Century Plaza

Here’s a beautiful image of the mid-century modern Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles.

New owners of the hotel want to demolish it according to Los Angeles Times blog.

Developers want to build a mini-city on the site, a 50 story building filled with the usual chain stores and expensive condos.

This has to be one of the most amazing hotels in the country. Today the Los Angeles City Council will help to decide the hotel’s fate, hoping to save the hotel by making it a historic landmark. The preservationists groups are advocating for saving the hotel. Today the National Trust for Historic Preservation put the hotel on it’s short list of places the United States that need to be preserved.

Please dear developers, don’t demolish the hotel. As a frequent guest there, it’s got to be one of the best designed mid-century  buildings on the planet.

Image Play

When you have two images playing on one another, you get some fascinating communication. Since I’ve never seen a name for this, I’ll call it image play. Image play is found art (art that you find on the streets or elsewhere) where the subjects or objects of one image appear to be communicating with those in another.

In this image taken in Berlin, the what appears to be a Middle Eastern  man depicted in the drawing looks as if he is communicating  with the Western man in the black-and-white advertisement.

Now take a moment to consider what they may be saying to one another. I’d probably guess that they are talking about the dalmatian, or perhaps the drink.

If you have any other ideas about what they may be saying to each other please comment here.

Car Window Reflections

If you happen to be out and about looking for a couple of good photo ops, don’t forget to check car windows as you pass them.

I caught this one in Berlin last summer. It was glaring at me as I walked by. Fortunately I had my camera (I always do when I’m traveling) and I was able to get a good shot at it. Another thing going for me in this shot is that the reflection is on the back window of a taxi cab. That just adds little extras to the shot (like the yellow and black “Taxi” sign on the roof and yellow stickers on the window).

One other nice thing about this shot is I got my background out of focus. I did this because I shot at a wide aperture (f/4).

Do you have any good taxi cab shots? If so, send them over (matthewbam@aol.com) and I’ll post on this blog.

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.

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.

Reserved

What do you think about when you look at this image?

The first thing that comes to my mind is that a tattered place like the area in front of that wall would have so much value that it would be reserved for some special person.

Please share…

Shoot Candidly at Night from a Car

Well then. Here’s a cat in a car. This candid photo op came to me via Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood, CA. This image is a perfect example of what you need to do to shoot candidly at night from a car.

Usually I hate using flash, but I didn’t want to risk not getting a sharp image with this one.

Three things happened here for me to get a good shot:

1. I directed the driver to catch up to the car with the cat in it. He obliged reluctantly.

2. I set my camera ahead of time on auto shoot with flash (I was using a Canon Digital Rebel XT).

3. I asked the person sitting near the window to roll it down.

4. Then I got lucky (luck has a lot to do with candid photography). The car I was in was stopped right next to the car with the cat in it.

5. I shot four images, all of the coming out sharp. This wouldn’t have happened if I used a high ISO speed without flash. The image would have turned out soft because not only I was shaking, but the car was too ever so slightly.

It truly is amazing to find a cat in the driver’s seat (well, almost).

Supergirl

The nice thing about Hollywood, CA is the people who dress up as cartoon characters. There’s a Spiderman, Superman, and, posing in the picture on the left, Supergirl.

I found her not in front of Gruman’s Chinese Theater where these superheros usually hang out, but in the mall next door at Highland Center. She was more than willing to let me take her picture. She posed as if she were an expert.

It was nice to get just her in the frame. You can see every part of her outfit, not to mention how pretty she really is all by herself in the frame.