ThatGraham Photography - Bench HDR(ish)

Hello,

Thought I would share one of my photo's with you.

I shot this bench on the promenade close to where I live. It's shot on old Iphone 3g and processed using the Camera+ app which no Iphone photographer would be without. The filer used is called HDR though it not an achual HDR photo I look pritty good. 

I'd like to encourge you to creque my photo so I can improve. What do you like/don't like about it.

Cheers

G

Photography - Finding inspiration

During last year I started getting a keen interest in photography. I made a promise that as I learn new tips and tricks I would share my knowledge with you good people who take the time to read this site and today i'm here with not so much a tip but a resource.

One of the best things I can recommend to new photographers is to find professional photographers who inspire you. Look for the guys who are shooting the types of shots you want to be able to do. Flickr has one of the biggest directories for photographers and is just one of a tone of places you can find professional photographers as see there work.

There are two photographers in particular I have found to be an enormously helpful source of information and learning in my short time in this world. Both Frederick Van Johnson and Lisa Bettany not only take amazing photo's but they also decidate there time in teaching good photography.

Frederick is host on a number of quality podcasts about photography This Week In Photo and his personal podcast FrederickVan - Photography Industry News, Reviews and Interviews have a wealth of information from tips and tricks to current news and reviews. Frederick has very recently re-launched his website and with it he has begun a new serise called Shut up and shoot which is an audio show for newbies teaching the basics and best practice so I for one will be listening very closely.  

Lisay Bettany is a very well respected photographer and has joined forces with the guys at tap tap tap to create the awesome app Camera+ the must have iphone app for photography fanatics. One of the great things about Lisa is that between her blog and flickr account Lisa takes the time to explain her thinking behing her shots and the technical aspects of how the picture was put together. Each one of her photos is a masterclass in her field. I'm very excited to report Lisa has been linked to a new photography show on the twit.tv network with Leo Laporte, to be launched later in the year once the network has moved into their new studios.

Lisa has set a challenge to photographers to help improve their photography. The concept is simple, you upload 1 photograph a day for a year, hence the name of the challenge mostly365. This is a great way to practice your camera skills and will keep you focus on composition, one of the most important skills in taking great photo's. I'm a little late to the party but starting today I'm getting involved. Click here if you want to see how i'm getting on. 

There's lots of links in this post to a massive amount of information and help for your photography so take a good look around the various sites, make some bookmarks and jump into at least one of the podcasts you'll be surprised how much you'll learn just by listening but remember the best way to get better is simply to keep snapping as many photo's as possible.

Hope you find this post helpful. Please comment bellow on your thoughts and any link for your photography. 

Happy snapping 

Graham (http://www.flickr.com/photos/grahamroyston)

Review of Canon's S95

Check out this review of Canon's new PowerShot S95. I'm thinking of picking one of these up for when i'm out and about. 

Review curtosy of the team over www.digitalrev.com. Check out their other great reviews for all things photographic on youtube.

G

Miniature Video's by Sam O'Hare

Check out these video's by Sam O'Hare. In both cases they look visual stunning and with simply sublime editing to work with the soundtrack. Such great pics for the music btw. 

All the elements mash together to make truly beautiful video. I could watch these over and over

BTS Domino's Pizza

Sorry I know just one more from Fstoppers.com. The pizza maker is great!

Enjoy

G

BTS Funny shoot

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In my bid to learn more about photography i've been following a few websites to gleen info. One of my favourites is called fstoppers.com which is an online resource for professional photographers. You'll find loads of info on the site such as photographer profiles and product reviews but also they have lots of behind the scenes video's (BTS) of photo shoots submitted not only by the founders of the site but its users to. There's a ton of video's to watch here covering just about any type of photography you could want so dip in and enjoy.

I don't want to make a habit of just posting video's that are put on Fstoppers.com here, that would just be pointless however I had to post this one for two reasons. 1) The video has some great basic info on lighting and 2) Klaus is hilarious, although I suspect he's not real and maybe not even a photographer.

If you're into photography and looking for inspiration or just want to see how other photographers do it I would suggest you take a look at Fstopper.com

G 

Video - FStoppers, full photoshoot on an Iphone 3GS

Check out this video on Fstoppers.com where photographer Lee Morris proves that you don't need a fantastic rig to get great photo's buy using an Iphone 3GS to do an entire fashion shoot. There was some retouching done after the shoot but the photo's look great and spurs me on as an Iphone photographer. Read the original article here and the how the images came out. My favourite are then two with the lights behind the model.

While your on Fstoppers.com take a look around there's some interesting video's to watch.

Happy Snapping 

G

A snapping I will go, but it's all about the composition baby!

Earlier this year I decided to take up photography. Let me be clear... Before I made this life changing decision I knew very little about taking pictures, all's I was concerned about was weather or not the photo was blurry. I'm still very much in the early stages of learning about photography but I thought I would share some of what I learn as I go, maybe you may find something useful for when you are taking your snaps and I will have some 'study notes'.  

Unfortunately i'm not exactly cash rich at present so I can't run out and buy myself a nice SLR camera and start shooting. However i'm not going to be letting that stop me. Fan's of my personal blog will have read that I recently got my hands on the Iphone 4 which, as part of its many excellent features, has a very nice 5mp camera. The added benefit of using a low end camera such as this or a 'point and shoot' (none SLR camera's or pocket cameras) is that I can focus on one of the most important elements of photography... Composition.  

Composition, the best way I can explain it, is how you line up and frame your shot. In photography there are many rules which can help guide you, but it is important always remember that these are NOT set in stone and when taking some photo's these rules will not apply. The 1st rule I learnt is arguably the most important and has had a dramatic impact on how good my photo's look. The rule is called the rule of thirds. Put simply it explains that as you are getting ready to take your photo and you are looking through the view finder or screen imagine it is split up into a grid of 9 squares. Then you use this to frame your shot. Rather than me attempt to explain this further and probably confuse you more I would suggest you google it, there are a crazy amount of articles on this and the rule of thirds is such a big topic you could talk for hours about it and when and when not to use it. By using the rule of thirds you photo's composition will look 10 times better without the need to run out and buy any expensive camera's or equipment, cool ay? I'm still very green in the world of photography but if there's one thing i've learnt it's that no matter how good your equipment is if you can't compose the shot your photo will look like you handed over your camera to a 5 year old to take the picture.

So there you have it, my 1st lesson in photography. As I go I'll share good sources of info that i've learnt from. To kick you off i'd like to direct you to where I started, it was a podcast on the pixelcorps.tv network called This week in photography. I started from the very 1st episode, each focuses on a different topic, I leant a lot from listening these and i'm only through about 20 shows.

As i'm mainly using an iphone to take photo's i'll also be using a number of iphone apps to aid my photography so keep an eye out on this blog for my reviews on thoughts and I'd love to hear if you are finding any of this usefully or if you have any hits or tips please comment bellow...

Happy Snapping

G