Canon 5D Mark II

Yes I was a very good boy this year and ended up getting a Canon 5D Mark II with the 24-105 f/4L kit lens! I haven’t had a ton of time to play with it yet, only a couple hundred shots, but it’s definitely an improvement over the XTi… I’m impressed with it, and the quality of the video from it as well. Hope to get more up soon - and back to regular posting, it’s been far too long!

Tags: 5d, 5d mark ii, camera, canon, me, mirror, reflection, self-portrait

10 More Tips for Stunning Portrait Photography

To follow up the 10 Ways to Take Stunning Portraits post from the other day, DPS has posted 10 more tips:

11. Frame your subject
12. Go with a wide angle
13. Play with backgrounds
14. Change the format framing
15. Hold your camera on an angle
16. Take unfocused shots
17. Introduce movement
18. Experiment with subject expressions
19. Fill the frame
20. Find an interesting subject

Seems I’ve managed a couple of these in past self-portraits, good tips for the future!

Check out the 10 More Tips for Stunning Portrait Photography for more details!

Tags: DPS, Portrait, self-portrait, Tips

10 Ways to Take Stunning Portraits

Being part of the 365 Days/threesixtyfive self-portrait a day for a year project, I found this article over on the DPS Blog today very interesting. Always looking for different ways to shoot myself, and I’m sure this will come in handy for portrait shooting as well!

How do you take Portraits that have the ‘Wow’ factor?

Today and tomorrow I want to talk about taking Portraits that are a little out of the box. You see it’s all very well and good to have a portrait that follows all the rules - but it hit me as I was surfing on Flickr today that often the most striking portraits are those that break all the rules.

I want to look at some ways to break out of the mold and take striking portraits by breaking (or at least bending) the rules and adding a little randomness into your portrait photography.

In a nutshell here are the ten points from the post today:

1. Alter your perspective
2. Play with eye contact
3. Break the rules of composition
4. Experiment with lighting
5. Move your subject out of their comfort zone
6. Shoot candidly
7. Introduce a prop
8. Focus upon one body part - get up close
9. Obscure part of your subject
10. Take a series of shots

My favorite technique, as you can see, is playing with and experimenting with light (photo above). I also find some of my best portraits are when shot candidly - as can be seen in the two photos below.

Be sure to head on over to the DPS Blog and read in detail 10 Ways to Take Stunning Portraits!

Tags: 365, DPS, People, portraits, self-portraits, threesixtyfive, Tips

Ghetto lighting…

I often receive comments and questions about low lighting in my self portrait shots. The Ghetto Lighting group over on Flickr defines ghetto lighting as:

If you use desklamps, your window, candles, whatever else I have not mentioned, then you my friend, use ghetto lighting.

I never really thought of this as “ghetto lighting” when I first picked up my Canon Digital Rebel XTi/400D back in November of last year, I was just using what I had on hand. Because of the season and the early sunset I really had no choice but to use what I could, and my favorite weapon of choice was, and still is, my IKEA Expressivo desk lamp. And it’s cheap!

Initially, the basic process I followed was to set up my shot, take a couple shots on the default setting to see what the camera “thought” I should be shooting at. Based on that, I’d crank up the shutter speed and/or the aperture setting until I received the desired level of dark/light that I was after. In other words, if the default settings took the shot at 1/8s at f/1.8, I’d adjust the shutter speed to 1/20s and go from there, increase to 1/30s if needed or decrease to 1/13s as desired.

Sure I could use Photoshop curves and levels, but I find more satisfaction in trying to do as much as I can in camera.

Tags: flickr, ghetto lighting, lamp, low light, self-portrait, tip

Good Samaritan…

Just wanted to say thanks to Magda, a friend of Mike’s. Mike was with me when I accidentally dropped my Canon Digital Rebel XTi/400D about a week ago. His friend Magda offered up her backup Canon Digital Rebel XT/350D as a loaner while mine was in the shop. Mucho gracias, I really can’t thank her enough!

My buddy Sime used the above image on a DPS poll pondering insurance… in my case, this was covered under my house insurance - I have an accidental damage rider on my policy - but with a $250 deductible, it wouldn’t have been worth it in this case…

Tags: 350d, 400d, broken camera, canon digital rebel xti, digital photography school, DPS, magda, mike, xt, xti

6 Million People…

There are a ton of flickr groups out there - a ton! Came across this one through our threesixtyfive group - it’s called 6 Million People.

During World War II, Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered approximately six million Jews. According to the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, the Holocaust is the name used to define a systematic, bureaucratic, and state-sponsored campaign of persecution and murder. Beginning with racially discriminatory laws in pre-World War II Germany, the Nazi campaign expanded to the mass murder of all European Jews by the War’s end. The goal of this group is to collect 6 million pictures of different people, with one person in each picture, as a representation of the massive number of Jews the Nazis murdered during World War and to help remember both them and the other victims of Nazi Germany.

Although Jews were the primary victims of Nazi racism, others targeted for death included tens of thousands of Roma (Gypsies) and at least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled people. As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, the Germans persecuted and murdered millions of other people. More than three million Soviet prisoners of war were murdered or died of starvation, disease, or maltreatment. The Germans killed tens of thousands of non-Jewish Polish intellectual and religious leaders, and deported millions of Polish and Soviet citizens for forced labor. From the earliest years of the Nazi regime, homosexuals and others deemed to be socially unacceptable were persecuted. Thousands of political dissidents (including Communists, Socialists, and trade unionists) and religious dissidents (such as Jehovah’s Witnesses) were also targeted. Many of these individuals died as a result of incarceration and maltreatment.

The United Nations General Assembly reaffirms that ‘the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people along with countless members of other minorities, will forever be a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice.”

Please help us remember the holocaust dutifully and respectfully by adding your photos– of you, your loved ones and others– to our pool. Add as many photos as you want, but please submit no more than 1 picture of any person, so that in the end we will have close to 6 million pictures of people, with a different person the subject of each picture. It’s going to take a long time to add up to 6 million pictures—that’s 200,000 Flickr pages with 30 images each—but our goal is 6 years or less. When we complete the project, it will be a memorial to those who died, and will provide us a with a way to visualize all those people. Thank you for helping and supporting us in our goal.

Sources: www.ushmm.org & www.un.org

The rules are simple:

1. Please respect the tone of this group and its members.
2. Post as many photos as you like.
3. Each photo should include exactly 1 person
4. Please submit no more than 1 picture of any person.
5. Only pictures taken of you, by you, or by friends & family
6. No porn
7. At some point, pictures in this project may be used non-commercially outside of Flickr to help promote the group and in keeping with the spirit of the group. No one’s photo will be prominently used without their explicit permission.
8. (Optional) Tag your photos “6 Million People” or 6MillionPeople.
9. (Optional) Please add lots & lots of photos that fit the group rules. We’ll need 60,000 members to add 100 pictures each; it’ll be hard, but we can do it.

Sounds awesome, I’m in. If I’ve taken a photo of you, chances are I’ll be adding you to the group. You can view the photos I’m adding at my 6 Million People set.

Tags: 6 million people, flickr, portraits, self-portraits