Magazine Subscriptions

I’m definitely the type of person who turns to the internet for everything; instruction, critique, reviews, examples, anything I want to learn about. Magazines, however, can make for a nice break from the glow of the computer screen and occasionally offer new angles on old subjects. So, naturally, I took a look at several magazines when I began getting serious about photography. Here are my thoughts about these three I have read over the course of a year or so.

• Digital PhotoPro - Bi-Monthly. This could be my favorite magazine right now. This magazine covers a lot of personal interviews and stories about working photographers. You can find a lot of beautiful photography and discussion with pros in this magazine. It also covers technique and there have been a few good articles about specific techniques and things to try. This is a great magazine to inspire creativity. Gear is covered by the magazine, but not quite to the degree of…
• Shutterbug - Monthly. This is a gear-lovers magazine. I enjoy it because I always like to know about the latest gadgets, new cameras and new photo technology. The quality of the writing is also very good and they do cover technique and some professional photographer pieces which are well worth reading. It’s always packed with information and you are guaranteed to find something in every issue that is of interest.
• Popular Photography - Monthly. The old granddaddy of photo magazines. Chances are, this magazine is quite a bit older than you. This is the first photo magazine many people pick up and it’s good for that audience. I find it’s a bit light weight on content (a product of an aggressive monthly release, I suppose) per issue and the information presented can seem basic at times. There is no question this magazine has value, but I decided to cancel it now that I am fairly confident about most of the established rules and techniques of photography. It’s time to move on!

Next I hope to try out some photo magazines from other countries. Any suggestions? I noticed the other day that David Hobby (Strobist) posted about receiving magazines such as Pix from Australia. I’m sure there is a lot out there to explore!

There is still room in our digital world for physical, printed publications -tho it may seem like digital is overtaking everything.  For example my iPhone can read web pages, discussion groups and even digital books while I am traveling away from the computer, and there are many other ways to participate and learn online without even having access to your home or work system.  Still, there is something about a printed, monthly publication… a deliberate scheduled slow-ness that online resources don’t have.  The process of collecting written articles, interview, reviews, etc for a time and then organizing everything into a complete issue definitely produces something different from rapid fire discussion group posts.

I should also mention a really interesting publication: JPEG magazine.  It seems there was an upheaval among the founders/management of the magazine a while back, but the concept is still the same.  The magazine is comprised entirely of images and articles submitted by readers and then released in a simple style showcasing the work.  Definitely something different!

Blue Blues

I’m not much of a bird watcher or shooter, but when this guy came along, I had to shoot!  I’m glad I did.  I didn’t really notice the color was so intense until I processed it in Lightroom.  Neat!

On Flickr.

Sun Well Drops

In The Air

I’ve been shooting a lot of these type of images as of late… just what has presented itself to me in the parks and plants in downtown DC, where I commute every day. I don’t know if these images have a story or speak to some great artistic movement, but they make me happy and I enjoy taking them.

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n't be gone long. You come too.

I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother.
It’s so young, It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’n't be gone long. You come too. - Robert Frost

I’ve updated the Lightroom preset I use on all of my D300 images to get a good starting point similar to Capture or JPEG settings. I really like these settings and feel that the contrast and exposure are really nice in this preset. Download it right here.

Actually I just wanted an excuse to publish this photo of a fish I shot last year.

Couple of notes:

• I’m still sick
• iPhone 3G launches in just under 6 hours here where I live in DC.
• I like iPhone 3G

Now, some people ask me, “isn’t that just a trendy phone that isn’t actually any better than others?” The answer is no. Here’s why:

• Fast 3G Internet Access (and regular data, and EDGE data, and WiFi)
• App Store - a collection of free and low-cost applications developed for the first time for iPhone. This includes games and fun things, but also useful apps that let you use Twitter, Flickr, view movie listings with ratings from Rottentomatoes, etc without having to use the web browser
• A web browser that actually works and is easy to use/zoom/type in
• Google Maps with GPS
• GPS works with photos taken with the onboard camera, as well as iPhone apps to determine where you are for movie listings, social networking and much more
• Push/Activesynch Calendar, Email and Contacts from Exchange
• It’s an iPod, and that functionality works just as well as it always has, which is to say amazingly well.

The One Shot I Kept Out of Perhaps One Hundred and Fifty

In art economy is always beauty. - Henry James

Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop. - Ansel Adams

I’d like to share a tip that I believe can make anyone a better photographer. It has nothing do to with exposure, ISO settings or even that instant talent-maker HDR. This is an incredibly simple way to improve your photography, yet many people resist it. Let’s talk about deleting those photos you took.

Now, before we get started, there are obviously photos you “have to keep.” Must-haves like your best friend in front of the monument, the big landmark building and the family group shot may not be avant-garde works of genius, but they are neccesary and you will be yelled at if you delete them so, please, do keep them safely stored away before attempting this process.

When we talk about making beautiful photography, however, we should remember that we can say more with a few powerful images than we can with a whole folder full of average snapshots. Sometimes less really is more, and this holds very true for photography. Too often we are attached to our photographs. We assume that if we cull even one of them somehow we have lost work or part of the experience. I’d like to offer the idea that everything from arriving at the location to shooting the scene, importing the images, and then editing down this massive collection to just a few great shots is the work that needs to go into coming up with great images. Which do you think will have a more profound impact on the viewer as they look through your gallery- one hundred shots of a singer, with all sorts of angles, lighting, settings and poses… or a single shot with just the right look and emotion captured at the peak of the action?

I’m not saying we should shoot only perfect photos. I’m saying let’s shoot more and keep less.

I’d like to share my workflow process here. For a given subject I might take anywhere from 10-100 photos or even more. I try to shoot every idea that I can come up with, every angle, and a variety of shutter speeds and settings. By the end of a day I could potentially have a thousand shots saved. Not everyone shoots this volume, but even so the concepts here hold true.

So here it is…

I use Adobe Lightroom which I can recommend to just about anyone. Even if you are already a Photoshop user, Lightroom simply does a much better job than Photoshop or Bridge at organizing and editing down your shoots. If you don’t use Lightroom, I am sure the concepts here can be applied to most image organization tools.

Take all of these shots into Lightroom in Library view. Start at the first image and enlarge it to full screen. From here, use only two keys to start editing photos: right arrow and “P.” The right arrow key scrolls one image at a time in large view. For each photo that could potentially be a keeper, hit the P key to select the “pick” flag. Continue with this until you hit the end of the stream. It’s not a final run, so go ahead and choose any photo that has potential. Typically this might wind up being 25 out of 100 photos.

After this run is complete, select “select by flag - unflagged photos” from the top menu in Lightroom. This chooses anything you didn’t make a pick. Then it’s time to simply hit the delete key and remove them from Lightroom’s library.

At this point, do a second run the same way. Starting at the first image scroll one at a time and hit “X” this time to reject any photo that does not seem as good as the others in some way. It could be a distracting pedestrian, a bad facial expression, less than perfect focus, anything. After this run is complete, choose “delete rejected photos” from the top menu. This might take our original 100 photos, then culled down to 25, down to only 10 or 15.

It’s also important to realize that the human brain works best when given a period of rest between tasks.  Walk away from your photos for a couple of hours before making this next final edit.  When you come back and look at your photos again, you will find at least one or two that no longer work as well as you thought.  You might also see new strengths in other photos.  The time spent letting your brain rest will allow you to see new things about your photos when looking at them a second time.  It’s an amazing phenomenon.

After this is complete, we are left with a set of potentially good photos with no obvious flaws. This third and final review is the most important one, and it’s made easy by the fact that we aren’t looking at 100 photos - only 10 or 15. For this review, stop at every photo and think to yourself, “would I stop and look at this photo if it were just hanging on a wall somewhere with no introduction?” Think about it as objectively as you can and, if the answer is no, reject it with the “X” key. When you are finished with this run, delete all rejected photos once again.

At this point you might have 5 keepers. You might have just 1 or 2. And you might have none. (it happens to me all the time) Not to fret - you haven’t lost a hundred images, you’ve gained a few great ones. These are the only images worth putting the time and effort in for detailed adjustment and retouching. Another advantage - you now have way more time to devote to the adjustment process because you aren’t dealing with so many images. Try it and see if the quality of your final photos hasn’t improved.