guest post: Attitude – a life legacy
One of the side-benefits of maintaining a site such as Tangents, is that I get to meet a wide spectrum of people from across the world, whether in person or via phone or email. One of the most interesting emails I received recently was from a photographer in South Africa - Johannes van Graan. From 1994 to date he has been practising internationally in the fields of nuclear and mining project management in which photography in all its forms plays a pivotal role. For the past five years he specialized in very specific areas of engineering forensics and is currently the CEO of an organisation Read more inside...
Best photography purchases of 2015
Best photography purchases of 2015
Last year's post on the best (and worst) photography purchases turned out to be quite popular. So many responses! Some needed to vent a bit, and also declare their love for favorite pieces of photo gear. In the same way, looking back over this past year, I'm sure you too are happy with some of your purchases, but inevitably, there will also be those purchases you regret. For myself, this was the year I decided I was going to calm down a bit with buying new gear - but then, plans change. Looking towards expanding what I do, I had to acquire some Read more inside...Tilt-shift lens vs perspective correction in Photoshop / Lightroom
Tilt-shift lens vs perspective correction in Photoshop / Lightroom
Using the Lens Correction / Transform tools in Lightroom and Photoshop, you can make quite radical changes to the perspective of a photo. You can change and skew the vertical and horizontal lines easily, and convincingly. Since it is now much easier to to correct for leaning vertical lines when photographing buildings with a wide-angle lens, I thought it would be a good comparison to use a Tilt-Shift lens and optically correct for the verticals, versus doing so in Photoshop or Lightroom. For comparison images, I Read more inside...Video lights for wedding details
Video lights for wedding details
A versatile lighting tool that is always in my camera bag - a video light. With a video light you can localize how you light up something like details at an event. Unlike bounce flash, it doesn't light up the entire scene - just where you point the video light at. Eg: bounce flash vs video light. I love LED video lights (affiliate), since they are compact, don’t run hot, and the color balance can be continuously changed from 3200K tungsten (Incandescent) to 5600K Daylight. Light is produced flicker free at any frame rate or shutter Read more inside...Studio photography – Lighting simply for impact
Studio photography - Lighting simply for impact
This striking image is from a commercial gig, shot in my studio for a company launching a range of hair extension products. For this sequence, one of several different setups we did, the client wanted this view and this look - so I had to decide on the best way to light their suggestion. We really make the hair the focus of the image, so I had to shoot from above on a short step-ladder. The decision on how to light this, was based on the commonly accepted principle of starting with a single light first, and only then building it up Read more inside...More spontaneous portrait photography
More spontaneous portrait photography
A friend of my daughter sent me an email with a few observations and a question, which in turn, set of a much longer train of thought about portrait photography, and making it more spontaneous. My portrait photography tends to be controlled on some levels. I don't strictly pose, but I do control the pose and the lighting and composition - while still trying to retain some spontaneous reaction from my subject. Here's Terry's email (which was titled: Intrinsic Splendor) I was thumbing through one of your books to brush up on something Read more inside...review: Canon 50mm lenses – bokeh
review: Canon 50mm lenses - bokeh
This photo of a street performer in New York was shot with a 50mm lens. That should be fairly obvious from a quick scrutiny - the perspective (which is not wide, and neither tight); and the shallow depth of field. That sort of gives away that a 50mm lens was most likely used for this loosely composed candid portrait. Now, I have to admit that I have this strange love-disinterest relationship with the 50mm focal length. Not quite love-hate, but more a frustration at times with the 50mm as the main lens to use. It feels like it is either not wide Read more inside...The world’s best photographers use Profoto
The world's best photographers use Profoto
I'm super-chuffed by this - a mention in the big fold-out advert by Profoto as it appears in the latest Rangefinder magazine - a big photography industry magazine for portrait and wedding photographers. See if you notice any familiar faces there? I am an obvious fan of Profoto lighting gear. There's just something about the sleek elegance of the equipment, and of course the ease of operation and unfussy reliability. They make me look good when shooting gigs. I also use Profoto gear in my photo studio in New Jersey. Edited to add: I've Read more inside...My best advice for wedding photographers
My best advice for wedding photographers
An interesting conversation I had with another photographer a few years back, had a surprisingly energizing effect on him. At a get-together at one of the photo conventions we struck up a conversation, and he told me how as a newer photographer, he was completely intimidated by the magnificent images he sees on the best photographers' websites and on their FB pages. He felt he would never be able to match those. My comment was that he doesn't have to match those at every wedding. What we are seeing are the cherry-picked "hero" shots. We Read more inside...- « Previous Page
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