Best in Show

Last week I entered some photos into the 2008 Metro Photography Competition. The competition was open to students who had taken classes in photography at Metro college. There were 4 Categories including: People (General, Portraits, Weddings, Photojournalism), Nature (Travel, Landscapes, Flowers, Wildlife), Commercial (Still-life, Fashion, Industrial) and Abstract (General, Macro, Experimental). I submitted six images in total in three of the categories.

The criteria used in judging the photos was as follows:

• Stimulating subject choice
• Strong composition
• Creative cropping
• An awareness of lighting, lighting positions, shadows, etc
• The importance of tonal separation
• Effective exposure with the camera - technical and aesthetic
• Depth
• Selective styling and propping to enhance the subject matter
• Visual and emotional impact

The evening began with all the photos on display. There were some truly amazing images captured by the participants. Going into the competition I wasn't expecting much and after seeing what my competition had submitted I was even less optimistic.

The Cigar Man - 1st Place - People Category. Winner of Best in Show

When the judging began, each photo was displayed in front of the three judges for approximately 30 seconds. Each judge gave their score out 10 and the combined scores were announced. It was very nerve wracking as the scores were announced. Photos that I thought should have scored higher got low marks and some photos that I didn't find that strong received some fairly high marks. It was an emotional roller coaster as my images were being judged. The first few I entered scored in the bottom or the middle of the pack. I started to get a bit disheartened and wondered if I had really learned anything over the past two years. I had to remind myself that this was a learning experience and that these things are very subjective.

Once all of the judging was complete, the judges retired to another room to pick the top 5 in each category and select the overall best in show. I had loosely been keeping track of the scores and was surprised that one of my images had garnered the highest score of the evening - a 26 out of 30. Still, the judges had to review their scores and debate which ones they liked the best so I knew that the score might not be enough to win the competition.

When the final judging was complete, to my surprise my image of the "Cigar Man" that I captured while in Barcelona, Spain won 1st place in the People category and Best in Show. I also took 2nd place in the Abstract category with my image of the shadow of a co-worker playing golf entitled "Shadow at Play" I won $300 in photo finishing from McBain Camera and $175 in Gift Certificates for more courses at Metro. Needless to say I felt very honored to have been selected. It was a nice to receive some confirmation that I had learned something in the past couple of years and that perhaps I do have a good eye for this stuff. Even though many people have told me that I do, often I am my own worst critic and allow self-doubt to get in the way sometimes.

Probably the best part of the evening was the hour or so we got to spend having the judges critiquing images and giving us some insight into what they were looking for and why the scored the images they way they did. It was a valuable learning experience and I definitely picked up a few things that I will try to incorporate into my next shoot.

 

del.icio.us Tags: Photography,Competition,Print Competition,Metro College,Photos

The Lens Collection

If you ask any professional photographer what you should spend your money on when it comes to buying photography equipment, almost all will tell you to buy the best glass you can afford. Glass is just fancy photographer speak for lenses. All the other accessories and even your camera body you will probably replace every couple of years but if you invest in good glass it will serve you well for many years to come.

Heeding this advice, I have begun to build my collection of good glass. I've chosen to go with Canon which means I'll be sticking with Canon bodies for the foreseeable future as you cannot use Canon lenses with a different body (i.e. Nikon). In my collection I have the following 6 Canon lenses and one Tamron lens in order of price from most expensive to the least expensive.

16-35mm f/2.8 L II USM
This is a great wide-angle lens that I just recently purchased so I haven't got a great deal of shooting time in with it yet. It's a nice fast lens and it's also very light. I had the option of going with the cheaper EF-S 10-22mm f3.5 but in the end I decided to give up a bit of a wider angle in favor of a faster lens that could be used on a full-frame sensor if I ever upgrade my body to a 5D or 1DS Mark III.

24-70mm f/2.8 L USM
This is a great multi-purpose lens but I primarily use it for portrait and landscape work. This is a fast, sharp lens which performs particularly well around f5.6. It's a little on the heavy side but it produces some great results even in low light conditions. I purchased this when I upgraded to the 40D so I'm still experimenting with this lens and finding out when it's best used.

70-200mm f/2.8
This is probably my favorite lens that I've purchased so far. It produces great depth of field so I really enjoy using it for portrait shots and catching intimate moments from afar. I've used it to cover sports photography, weddings, travel, and event photography. I also have the 1.4X tele-convertor which extends the range of this lens which is handy when you need to get in that little bit closer to your subject.

Tamron 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3
This mid-range lens is a great multi-purpose lens for the photographer on the go who wants the greatest flexibility in range without having to carry several lenses with them. I bought this lens a couple of years ago and use it quite often when I'm traveling and don't want to bring my heavier lenses with me. It's great in outdoor settings with good lighting but it's not the best choice if I'm going to be in low-light conditions. It's definitely slower and noisier than my other Canon lenses and the auto-focusing system sometimes takes awhile to lock in on the subject I'm trying to photograph.

75-300mm f/4-5.6
Besides the 18-55mm kit lens that came with my Rebel XT, this was the first lens I purchased. At only $300 it's a very inexpensive lens which is great for zooming in on far away subjects or for creating a great DOF for portraits, etc. Unfortunately once I purchased the 70-200 f/2.8, this lens rarely makes it's way out of my bag these days and will most likely be sold off to any interested buyers who are looking for a like-new inexpensive telephoto lens.

18-55mm EF-S
This was the basic kit lens that came with my Rebel XT. I used it for quite sometime until I purchased the Tamron 18-200mm lens. Since then it has sat in my bag alongside my 75-300mm and will most likely wind up in the items for sale pile shortly.

50mm f/1.8
At only $100 this little wonder is fantastic in low light conditions thanks to a nice wide aperture. It is also a great portrait lens producing some tack sharp images - sometimes sharper than my much more expensive 24-70mm. It's small and light-weight so I don't mind throwing this one in the bag and pulling it out when I need it. Being that it's a fixed focal length, it's not the best lens to use in situations where the distance between you and your subjects is changing quickly and you need to get the shot. Having said that, I use it often so I am looking to upgrade to the faster 50mm f/1.4 which is still only around $380 which I think will give me good value for the money.

I'm curious to know what lenses you use and if there are any missing from my collection that you think I should have.

del.icio.us Tags: Equipment,Canon,Lenses,Gear

Creative Design Class Canceled

Well I just was informed today that the Creative Design in Photography Level II class that I was registered in at Metro has been canceled due to a lack of enrollment. The next offering won't be until February of 2009. I was really looking forward to this class as it's been almost 4 months since I completed my last class (not counting the Photoshop class I took in February). The next class I'm registered for is Designing Wedding Photography with Tracy Grabowski which starts in June. Hopefully the enrollment will be enough for them to proceed with that class otherwise I will have to wait until the fall to take some more classes.

New Gear

As I gear up for a very busy spring and summer season it was time to, well, gear up! The first thing I needed to do was expand the home network. Upgrades include a new HP Core 2 Duo desktop which will be used primarily for Photoshop work and a new 22" wide-screen LCD. I also picked up a small Bamboo tablet from Wacom for photo editing.

With the photo collection growing at a rapid pace, backups are more and more important so I added an HP Home Server with mirrored drives along with 2 new external hard drives. My plan is to backup my laptop and desktop to the server and then backup those backups to one of the external drives periodically. This drive I'll leave at my parents so that in the event of a fire or theft I won't lose everything. The 2nd external drive will primarily be used to backup photos only and provide extra storage when I'm traveling with my laptop.

On the software side I decided to make the move to Lightroom. I had been experimenting with Bridge for awhile but after downloading a demo of LR I decided that it was a much better tool and provided much better organizational features than Bridge. I also liked the ability to jump right into the Develop mode and start tweaking photos without having to open them in Camera RAW.

The last big piece of the puzzle was my camera equipment. I contemplated upgrading to the Canon 1D Mark III but just couldn't justify the $5000 price tag yet. The 5D was my next option but it's been out now for a couple of years and is due to be replaced so I didn't want to get stuck buying something that will be outdated the second I buy it so I finally decided to buy a 40D. It has some great new features including Live View, automatic sensor cleaning and it uses the new Digic III processor. Of course I also had to buy new batteries a new battery grip because the one I have for my Rebel doesn't fit the 40D.

In addition to a new body, I also bought a couple of new lenses including Canon's 24-70mm f2.8 and my friend Greg sold me his 70-200mm f2.8 along with a 1.4x converter. Both lenses are great and I'm really happy with how they perform in low light conditions.

My last purchase this spring (for now anyway) was a new ball head for my tripod. Until now I had just been using the ball head that came with my Slik tripod and it was enough for the smaller Rebel and the glass that I had. I quickly realized that it was not strong enough to support the larger 40D and the heavier glass so I purchased the Manfrotto 322RC2 pistol grip ball head. It can hold up to 11 lbs and comes with a quick release plate. The pistol grip is great for quickly adjusting the position of the camera to move between horizontal and vertical shooting. Looking forward to testing it out this weekend on a wedding shoot that I am doing for a couple at the Legislature.

Over the course of the summer I'm sure I'll add some more glass to the collection as well as a portable light meter, a lens baby and a new cable release for the 40D because of course the current cable release that I have for the Rebel wont' work with the 40D. What a surprise.

One Stop Shop at Alltop

I subscribe to several great Photography blogs covering topics from the technical to the artistic and everything in between. Most of the blogs I currently read I found via a Google search and then discovered others by following links from those blogs to other blogs.

Recently, Guy Kawasaki who was one of the original guys at Apple, started a new site called Alltop. It is basically a blog aggregator of all the best blogs on the Net organized by categories. The thing I like about Alltop is that it lists all the top blogs on a particular topic on one page with the 5 most recent posts from each blog. By surveying the most recent posts from a variety of blogs on a related topic, it's very easy to see if a particular issue or news item is bubbling to the surface in the blogosphere.

Of course one of the categories on Alltop is Photography and I have discovered some great blogs to read. Check it out at http://photography.alltop.com/

One of my new favourites that I discovered through Alltop is Scott Kelby's blog. He is the author of a great Photoshop book called The Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers. I highly recommend it if you are interested in photography and deal with an post-processing of images. Read Scott's blog at http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/

One funny side note. I was reading through their About section and found this great FAQ and I thought their response was great:

Q. Couldn’t I build my own custom aggregation using a feed reader, customizable home pages, Netvibes, etc?

A. Yes, you could—knock yourself out. While you’re at it, you could backup your hard disk, bake your own bread, iron your own shirts, floss daily, tune your own car, and bike to work.

Ltd

Three little letters I never imagined owning but last week that all changed. Even though I'm not giving up my day job, I decided to incorporate my business after several weeks of research and talking to accountant and lawyer friends. I had originally intended to hang up my shingle and operate as a sole proprietor but several people I spoke to advised me to setup a corporation to limit my liabilities. Liabilities? What liabilities?

I suppose I am the ultimate optimist and I like to think that nothing bad is ever going to happen. I enjoy photography and I just want to have fun capturing moments for people and sharing my images. I don't want to worry about things like liabilities and legal matters. Luckily I have good friends who help me take off my rose colored glasses and look at the worst-case scenarios.  What if my equipment failed during an important shoot? What if I accidentally photograph someone who doesn't want to be photographed and the image gets out and somehow damages their reputation? Granted, I am describing worst-case scenarios but what would happen if they came to fruition. Is it worth risking one's personal assets over? I think not.

So last Friday I headed down to a local registry office, filled out the paperwork, paid my $297 and presto - Moments in Digital Ltd. is officially born. What started out as hobby has started to get a little more complicated than I first envisioned but I'm having fun with it and definitely learning a lot about myself while gaining some valuable business experience. Where it goes from here only time will tell but at least for now I feel the proper foundation has been laid.

virtualPhotographer by optikVerve Labs

I was browsing around on the interwebs recently looking for some good plug-ins for Photoshop CS3 when I stumbled upon a really great set of plug-ins from optikVerve labs. Their tool is called virtualPhotographer and it is a great plug-in that allows you to apply a variety of effects to your photographs with just a few clicks. Some of the filters include film grain, soft blur, night scope, b/w, etc. Here is a photo I took of my wife playing Rock Band. The original image is on the left. I applied the soft blur filter to the photo on the right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The set includes over 50 custom styles. The best part about these plug-ins? They are completely free and from what I can tell there are no strings attached. I have installed them on my Vista machine in Photoshop CS3 and I haven't had any issues. I can't say this for some of the other "free" plug-ins I've tried which have ended up crashing Photoshop on me.

You can download these great free plug-ins here:

del.icio.us Tags: Photoshop,Plug-ins,Software