Take a picture once a day, whether you need to or not

[MuffinMan]

I like this shot I took in Georgia at my sister's over the weekend. Used an Instagram-type filter on my new phone, please don't kill me.

[apocrypha]

What's happened is that professional portrait photography has become more of a niche market and harder to sell. Well-lit, exposed and composed portraits have become cordon bleu dishes in a sea of ready-meals and hamburgers. Most people don't understand the benefit of good lighting & good lighting gear, of preparation or good knowledge of locations, etc.

And most people also don't understand the amount of post-processing involved, even when the photos *are* correctly lit & exposed. You can spend 5 mins on a image in Lightroom/Picassa/PS and crank up the vibrance and contrast etc and make it look like an Instagram pic, or you can spend 20-90 mins (or more, sometimes much more) skillfully enhancing it, retouching and trying to do the ridiculous things clients ask for ("can you make me look less fat"... "can you get rid of the pattern on that cushion"... "can you make my husband more in focus"). Anyone can run a quick Portraiture plug-in pass and blur out skin tones making people look like plastic kids, but to pixel-level retouch skin to look both natural and flawless (or even harder, convincingly natural regardless of age!) is a laborious and skilled job.

You can view all of this in two ways: you can either moan about it and decry the accessibility of digital photography & manipulation as destroying the business, or you can see it as an opportunity for genuine skill and knowledge to let your product stand out from the sea of mediocrity. Sure, not everyone will value a high quality product, but some will, and that's always been the case with photography - high-end has never been mass-market.

If you have a good portfolio of product/architectural/sport/etc photography then this discussion is completely irrelevant because no iPhone Instagram afficionado will ever compete with studio product photographers or any kind of specialist.

And nice shots Khaldun, particularly like the 3rd one :)

[Signe]

I thought those were really pretty pics, too, Khaldun.  I love trees.  I spent a lot of my childhood in them.  :)   Also, are you from Swarthmore?

[Khaldun]

Yeah, I teach at Swarthmore.

[Signe]

Really? When I was a kid I used to sneak out at night and go to Crum wood with my friends to get high.  Or drunk.  Or whatever.

[Khaldun]

When I first moved here, we lived in these crappy little bungalows that the college rents to faculty and staff that are down in the woods overlooking the creek. On warm fall and spring weekend nights, we were pretty much guaranteed to hear the following:

Screech owls
Barn owls
Crickets
Bullfrogs
Deer getting hit by cars on the road over the west side of the woods
Teenagers and students walking by the creek who were high and/or drunk and talking loudly
Teenagers and students fucking in the meadow

The music of the night!

[Samwise]

Some SF photos.


The last one is a stitch taken from Treasure Island.  I finally remembered to do the smart thing and lock the settings down so the exposures on all the individual photos match each other.   

[Viin]

Nice ones!

[apocrypha]

Nice, loving the early morning (evening?) light!

[JWIV]

really nice series

[Teleku]

Nice, loving the early morning (evening?) light!

Evening.  Sun sets in the Ocean in California.   

[Samwise]

Nice, loving the early morning (evening?) light!

These were mostly on different days, so I didn't even notice until you mentioned it, but yeah, these were all taken around sunset.  One of these weekends I'll get up and out of the house early enough for some shots of the sun rising over Oakland, which I can see from my bedroom window on a nice day.   

[Teleku]

My sister and two Nephews on the beach in California.  Didn't take this, as I'm on the vile east coast, but loved the picture.

[calapine]

Tristesse in Linz as of today afternoon. After a few cold, snowy days it warmed up. Now it's just rainy and gray. :(

[JWIV]

Did the train garden this morning at the local firehouse - really impressive display.


DSC_2901.jpg by jwiv, on Flickr


Highlandtown Train Garden by jwiv, on Flickr

[Pennilenko]

From my son's first zoo trip in November.


IMG_1551 by Pennilenko, on Flickr


IMG_1582 by Pennilenko, on Flickr


IMG_1557 by Pennilenko, on Flickr


IMG_1593 by Pennilenko, on Flickr

[calapine]

As before, pictures in crappy quality due me not owing a cam and using the phone (and me being bad at photography).

Taken on early 1st January, view across the Danube river: Everything is cold and laying behind a mist of fog:





Feeling all introspective that morning this view gave me a sort of "into the unkown - where will this new year lead?" vibe:

[calapine]

Taking the ferry. Thankfully the weather improved since my last post. ^^

[apocrypha]

You live in a very beautiful place :)

[calapine]

You live in a very beautiful place :)

Thank you very much.    I do live 8km down the river though, it looks a bit more pedestrian there.
Maybe I can get a nice panorama from the hills above Linz once. If you care?

I forgot to add this picture. Same scene as before, it's what one would see when turning the head left:

[Paelos]

We don't have stuff like that in America. It's a nice view!

[apocrypha]

Maybe I can get a nice panorama from the hills above Linz once. If you care?

Most definitely!

edit: posting on a tablet is hard.

[Lantyssa]

One thing I really miss about my trip to Europe is the architecture and the scenery.  I live in a reclaimed swamp, where the largest hills are the mounds of dirt emptied out of dump trucks.

[Samwise]

Here's one I took with my phone's panorama app the other day from Bernal Heights.  (Resized with tags, do a right-click and View Image for slightly larger res.)

[apocrypha]

V cool.

[calapine]

Indeed!

Near the left corner, in front of the hills, I can make out some red spires. Is that the Golden Gate Bridge?

[Samwise]

Yup, you can just barely see it peeking out from behind that hill (I think that might be Corona Heights).  The white bridge more towards the middle-right of the frame is the Bay Bridge.

[Samwise]

My brother took this one, but it's of my handiwork.  I had a lot of Amazon boxes lying around after Christmas and decided to surprise him with a craft project outside his bedroom window.

[Khaldun]

Feeling more confident about my images in the last few months--getting a real sense of control over the camera itself, not just composition. I think the digital camera may be one of the most potent revolutions in how people can *learn*--though I don't think much else has the same kind of rapid feedback looping (yet).


blessed by swarthmoreburke, on Flickr

[Khaldun]

This one came out pretty well:


the watcher by swarthmoreburke, on Flickr

[JWIV]

I picked up the Scott Kelby stuff while it was on sale for a huge discount, so I'm hoping to spend some time with my camera this year and maybe take it up a notch.

I love the mood you're getting with these Khaldun.

[Merusk]

My brother took this one, but it's of my handiwork.  I had a lot of Amazon boxes lying around after Christmas and decided to surprise him with a craft project outside his bedroom window.

<img>slenderman</img>

I saw this exact photo on 9gag this weekend, titled "I hate my roommate"


Fantastic photos, Khaldun.   I need to get out and take some again it's been months.

[Engels]

Khaldun those rule

[Merusk]

To bring the quality of the thread down a notch and because I wanted to play with Lighroom's montage stuff, here's some shots I just took of the house's new firepit.

[murdoc]

I had originally bought a Canon T3i, but it was stolen before I could really use it. For Christmas I got a replacement, a T4i and have been trying to take a picture a day with it.

I just grabbed Lightroom and am playing with it - so these pictures haven't had any post-processing, but it's a start for someone who doesn't know very much about photography but is taking a ton of pictures.

This was the 2nd pictures I took with the camera and honestly, my favorite one.


 
The boys and playing with aperture settings:



Brandon watching a movie:



Logan making Transformer sounds:



Right now it's mostly pictures of my kids and my dog since the weather and work have been getting in the way. Hopefully I expand my subjects in the coming weeks.

The link to all of the pictures, feel free to comment: http://imgur.com/a/p2qiB