My Name in Print!

I'm sure all of you can agree, there is something exciting about seeing your name in print... even cyber print. Just the other day, Ailsa posted "My Blog made the London Observer!" when her name (and status) were shown in an online story about facebook. It's a big day! For most of us, it doesn't happen all that often, and I admit to feeling just a little bit proud of myself - even when there is absolutely no reason to be - just for the sake that my name made it somewhere, somehow.

Well, a while back, I came across this photo competition for photojournalim / photoessay of series up to 12 images called the Leica Oskar Barnack Award. It's been going on for years, and like many contests, it now takes place online. The best part: ALL of the entries were posted ONLINE! (Ok, I'm not yelling... just excited!) I must have perused series posted by photographers from around the world for hours - days really. I was addicted. I absolutely LOVE series work. I wanted to enter.

Finally, I buckled down and worked for two days straight on putting together my series, trying to make it on par with the level shown online. Finally, I posted it. (To top it off, this contest is FREE!)

I'm not going to lie, I was a little nervous when my series didn't show up right away, or even within a few hours, or even the next morning! Did I get CUT??!!

Nah, with the contest closing date quickly approaching (March 1st), I realized that over 50 new series were posted the morning that mine wasn't. I guess they are a little back-logged on uploading! The next morning... there it was:

Dallas Ludwick, Canada

How exciting is that? (For me, very!)

I'm actually NOT going to post any photographs here, because I really think you should check out this site and the awesome series work from all around the world!

http://www.leica-oskar-barnack-award.com/#/en/contest/oskar-barnack-award-2009-entries/

Happy looking!

Posted by Dallas Ludwick, f/action member

Getting back to Something Different

Well, here I am... the lone delinquent member... the last of the mohicans to post! I wouldn't say that I'm generally tardy with my work - in fact, I think most people would say the opposite!

And now that I'm here, I'm going to continue on with what Duncan was saying in an earlier post: "And Now for Something Completely Different". I too, recently found that I needed a little mix-it-up in the photography world. And for me, it had to be something FUN. See, I think I am a little too "particluar" at times. I don't like the word anal to describe my attention to detail! (In school we had to do a metaphorical self-portrait, and I submitted an image of my sock drawer - 4 rows of socks sorted by type, colour and preference. Yep, I needed a little more fun in my life!) Just kidding, I like my socks like that. And I think I am pretty fun. But I needed creative outlet to make some of my shooting especially fun!

In the fall I got two new toys: a lomo diana and fisheye. Oh yes, it was so very exciting. But I found that after the first roll on each toy, I didn't shoot any more. Was it that I didn't know what I was doing, or the fact that only half of my shots came out halfway decent (actually only 4 out of 12 negatives on my diana were even exposed!)... I don't know. But I recently re-loaded both cameras and headed out with them. My new method was to experiment, expect nothing and laugh at the results. Well, laugh I did!

See, part of my renewed enthusiasm was due to my new idea to use my on-camera flash (off my camera and in my hand) to get a better exposure with my fisheye. I thought this was genius and wanted to try out a whole roll of exerimental shots...

Here we have a series of hilarious attempts to use my flash as a main light (synched to the very low powered flash on my fisheye)...

We see my model - nicely lit - and my flash and entire arm clearly in the frame!

Whoops! I forgot just how exremely wide angle that fisheye lens is!







Of course you don't realize your errors right away when working with film, so...

When my model (the lovely Ailsa) offered to hold the flash and dump all that light into her own face, I took her up on it!

Low and behold, now she is clearly holding the flash within the frame! Haahaha...





I was pretty confident that my flash would adequately light the model from a close distance as above. But, I wanted to experiment with the range of the flash and the subsequent exposure with my fisheye.

Here you see me - backed up quite a bit... clearly shining the flash right into the barrel of my lens, rather than on the model! Yet again - whoops!






Apparently my second attept was much better, in that I actually lit the scene... and got a good exposure on my model.

Of course, there is my nemisis... the hand again!

So much for keeping lighting techniques a secret!









Hey, look at this... no arm! Well, not mine anyway!

I guess I got so excited about getting that flash to fire, that I clearly did not wait for my model to be ready.

Wow, there is just way too much to think about when holding a toy camera in one hand and a flash in the other!





Alright, enough with this single model stuff... I was ready for the big times.

Here you see me trying to capture a scene: Gabrielle working her magic with studio lights. What I was trying to find out was if the little flash on my fisheye would trigger the studio lights - and yes, it worked!!

Too bad about... the hand!






No hand!!! Yes!!!

Cool scene too... I love the fisheye effect on this one!









Now I'm getting confident... surpising my new unsuspecting model, Duncan, with a huge flash in the eyes - and a neat play on perspective with the tiny girl beside his face.

Plus, no hand!

No, I didn't get the best images... but I definately laughed my butt off when I saw the negatives!

So in sum... the heck with knowing what you are doing!

Think up something to experiment with and go for it!


Go LOMO!



Posted by Dallas Ludwick, f/action member

The makings of a sweet portrait

I want to share my favorite portrait that I've taken along with a few of the unedited shots from the same shoot.
The end product came to fruition through some crafty post-production work; by exercising some simple tricks in Adobe Lightroom, I transformed an ordinary portrait into something sublime. The first 3 are cute and work on a certain level, but once I changed the colour and gave it a warm tone to match the natural warm background, I ended up with something a little out of the ordinary. I also broke one of the first rules in portrait making... never centre your subject!
This image became my favorite of the shoot because all of a sudden it was no longer just a little girl posing for a nice picture; her gaze along with her placement in the frame suggest otherwise and give the viewer more to contemplate.
She's the centre of the world, yet all by herself.

Posted by f/action member Ailsa Dyson

Fine Grain at a High ISO? It Can Happen!

As a digital photographer I am constantly concerned about the horrendous havoc of digital noise. Because I don’t shoot with a six thousand dollar camera, there is a distinct threshold at which I could risk ruining a picture because I am at an ISO that lends itself to the distractingly ugly mish-mash of oddly coloured pixels in my shadow areas. For a long time I would stay clear of this threshold, no matter the circumstances, and aim to shoot under 800 ISO.

Recently, however, a friend gave me some very good advice that proved the contrary.

He said that it is better to shoot at a high ISO and get a perfect exposure then to underexpose at a low ISO and brighten the image in post production. Anyone who shoots in ambient light must often battle to stay above hand held shutter speed, but I was never prepared to sacrifice my ISO sensitivity and, because of this, often ended up with underexposed images. I had presumed that because sensors at low sensitivity have lots of time to gather light information, Images could be adjusted as needed without falling apart.

So I tried it out.

Here are two pictures I shot of the same scene. One is shot at ISO 200 and is two stops underexposed and the other is shot at ISO 1600 and is two stops over.

Now I adjusted both images in post processing to be of equal density and zoomed in on a portion of the shadow areas. Even brought down two stops, the ISO 1600 image at close detail looks better in terms of digital noise.

The noise is greatly decreased and the pixels are smoother, they don’t have those chunky blue-ish splotches.

The reason for this is that digital sensors are designed to be more sensitive to highlights than it is to shadows. The human eye itself is always more concerned with what is going on in the lighter parts of a scene than the darker. Engineers design sensors to have 50% of their pixel’s sensitivity at the brightest stop of its latitude, 25% at the second brightest, and so on, leaving a whopping 3% sensitivity in the darkest stop. All this equates to more information in the highlights, more information to recover, and an image that is easier to save than one that is underexposed… even at the ‘worst’ ISO I have.

The rule that was drilled into my head in school was to ‘push your whites as far to the right of the histogram as you can without going over’. Now I can add the part ‘even at the expense of your ISO’.

In the race for resolution of today’s digital world, it is much more important to know your camera and how it operates best than it is to criticize it for poor performance. I have been reminded once again that, though my camera isn’t the best on the market, it still can do everything I need it to.

essential eyes

There's something fascinating about the human eye. I won't get into all the clichés and metaphors (the window to the soul! ok, sorry, that one slipped out...). And I won't get into the scientific make-up of the human eye (seriously, I have no idea what it's all about. I do know it has something to do with cones, but not ice cream cones). What I like about the human eye is its glossy-glass colour (blue, brown, grey, green, chocolate), its dark thin rim around the iris, and of course the ever expanding and retracting black pupil. Oh the black, dark pupil, it has so many things to hide, and teases us even more when sparkling with specular highlights! And we have the milky whites and the delicate eyelashes. There's nothing I like more than photographing a human eye! (but I say that about a lot of things...)

Eyes, more than anything, really get me excited about being able to see. They're such an amazing thing to look at, yet you need one to see one. Is that irony?

So when I photograph a person's face, I love using natural light and getting them to look up at me. It opens up the eye and reveals its best.


Posted by Gabrielle Touchette, f/action member.

...and now for something completely different...

Photography is an art form. Like knitting, graffiti or cooking, it is based on creativity. As with all creative acts, it happens from time to time that inspiration flows like molasses, shoots become bland and tasteless and one relies on the true but tried methods.

Scientists aren’t really sure what causes photographer’s block and there are many home remedies for curing the symptoms, but all they really boil down to is shaking things up. Recently I have found what may very well be the mother of all shake ups…. changing mediums and/or formats.

If you shoot digital, pick up a 35mm. If you’ve shot 35 already, find a medium format camera. Already done that? Go Large! If you’re used to shooting with a 5D, steal your little brother’s 3 mp Optio point and shoot and see if you still have ‘it’. Get the cheapest thrift store toy camera you can find (the kind that they don’t even make film for anymore) and mod it. Shove a roll of anything that fits inside and work your magic.

Whatever side of the scale you call yourself… gear head pixel peeper or artistic retro silver snob… go out and grab the favorite tool of the other side and light it on fire (figuratively, of course).

Having shot digital for too long, it took a plastic camera with no settings, no preview display, and 12 shots per roll to shake and bake my creative mind enough to give me the freedom and confidence to bring my camera absolutely everywhere I went and take any shot that came to mind. It was just the spice I needed to see things from a different point of viewfinder.

Wine Shooting!

As graduates of PrairieView School of Photography, you may be able to call some of us photo nerds. But I like to call us passionate. A few of us still get together every so often with a shoot idea in mind. This past weekend, we decided to tackle product photography. With a few external flashes, and a few holding white reflectors, we managed to click off a few shots. The great thing about having a bunch of photographer friends is that you can never get too bored, especially when the weather starts getting dreary. Here are a few samples of our product shots:




Posted by Gabrielle Touchette, f/action member.