Which branch of that metaphorical tree next?

So. I have finally worked out what I want to do after university. Photography. Excellent. Most of my friends and family are getting used the idea now (although some are making sure I'm being realistic about the likelihood of it happening (it's good to dream (and conveniently I have one (I also like brackets)))).

Now the question seems to be coming along that says "Cool, what sort of photography are you into?"
Ummm,
Errr,
Good question.

The obvious answer, and the one I seem to give at the moment is "Well, wedding and portrait photography mainly".
It seems every man and his dog is doing wedding photography now (well maybe not his dog, opposable thumbs are quite important). It's easy to turn up to a wedding and take lots of photos. But there is definitely something that sets apart your average wedding photographer from your world class photographer. David Ziser is a one of (many) world class photographers and although his website is less than inspiring (weirdly!) His photos are astonishing. He probably doesn't need a website to advertise. I think he's that in demand!

Portraits? Well I've tried my hand at portraits and I like what I see but again there's a huge difference between normal portrait photography and world class photography. Check out Joe McNally or Blair Buntings website.

These seem like the obvious ones to get into because loads of people are getting married and want family portraits (even in the recession) and still pay the money for them.

But what about the other aspects? Wildlife, Sport, Travel, Photojournalism, Fashion, Commercial.

How does one go about getting into those catagories?

Again in my mind it spans that huge chasm between being a photographer and being a world class photographer and I think the guys who fill that gap have found the ultimate combination:
Skill, Luck (right place right time), People, Experience, Natural Talent

You can gain experience, you can (sometimes) meet the right people, you can gain skill. But you can't do anything about luck or natural talent.

If I'm honest I don't know what I would like to do. I think I would love to do any combination of Wildlife, Sport and Travel, Weddings and Portraits. Greedy I know.
But the first three? How do you convince someone to pay you to travel and take photos. Sport photography is a very expensive hobby and it seems like a vicious circle. You can't get the jobs without the kit and you can't get the kit without the jobs. Obviously you could get other jobs to get the kit but it's a steep investment if you don't know if you're going to make it or not! (£2,000 - >£10,000 for a lens).

So where do I go? Who do I speak to? What's the way forward? How does one go about taking the iconic images we all would recognise in a flash. Marilyn Munroe and the floaty skirt? The naked girl running from the Vietnam napalm attacks? The man blocking the tanks in Tiananmen Square?

I'll figure it out. I've decided not to be happy with mediocrity.

Done for now.

Obligatory Photo opp

With all photographers when they get a new piece of equipment they have to try it out. Immediately. If it's a flash you start flashing people, if it's a battery you charge it. If it's a bag you pack all your stuff in it and go for a hike!

I got a camera so I had to take photos. Obviously. I was in the lab all day yesterday so I didn't get the day to play but when I got home (after walking in the monsoonesque rain) I thought it was about time to get "creative". I am disappointingly uncreative. I wish I had more crazy thoughts and ideas that I could then try and photograph.

Anyway, I found a bottle of slightly bizarre wine and thought I'd photograph it! Here's the result

It didn't take long but I thought it was quite funky with fairly minimal post processing.

Done for now

Scam News Websites..!

So in the fine art of procrastination I thought while I was looking at facebook I would click a random rubbish advert on the side for some amusement!

By chance I randomly clicked on an advert saying something along the lines of "Lose 14lb in 2 weeks". I clicked on it and it took me to this website:
http://www.news7daily.tv/ft/index.php?t202id=2246%26amp;t202kw=728

Now I read this webpage and what it appears to do is have a "News Report" where "Julia Miller" the "Health and Diet Writer" talks about how skeptical she was about these acai berries and the stories she has had and so goes on to try them and WOW! they work wonders and she loses 25lbs in 2 weeks.

I am always a little skeptical of such things (as I believe most people are) however this is one of the better attempts I've seen!

The first give away clue is that at the top it has a picture of "Julia" with a little text below saying "Julia investigates the Acai Berry diet to find out for herself if this super diet works". It took me a moment to realise is that this picture of Julia is actually a photo of the rather good-looking french anchor woman - Melissa Theuriau
http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_en-GBGB358GB358&um=1&q=melissa+theuriau&sa=N&start=84&ndsp=21
I just googled images of Melissa Theuriau and on page 3 there is the exact same image!

Don't ask how I knew it was Melissa Theuriau, let's just say I recognise anchor-ladies when I see them!
I wonder if she knows her face is being used to promote such a thing!

Second giveaway - Slightly more subtle,
The comments section has "conveniently" been closed due to spam. (The site should be closed due to spam!)

Third Giveaway
I googled Julia Miller and came up with nothing of any relevance

There are endless giveaways really! Including at the bottom in tiny font "This website, and any page on the website, is based loosely off a true story, but has been modified in multiple ways including, but not limited to: the story, the photos, and the comments."


Anyway enough of that. I wonder how may people have been scammed by such a thing!! 


Done for now!

Photoshop - Saint or Sinner of the photographic world?

I've been pondering recently the joys of photoshop. It can take a distinctly average photo and make it rather wonderful. But does that mean that there's no skill in photography any more?

Photoshop 1.0 was officially released in 1990. It's been around for sometime! And since then newer versions have (thankfully been released (although even if you gave me the very first version of photoshop I probably wouldn't know how to utilise all of the features it had!)). CS4 is the most recent release and is the 11th major version of the program. (Yes all this info is coming from wikipedia!)

It's important to note however that even before photoshop (and digital photography) came about genii in the darkroom were slaving away doing very similar sorts of things as photoshop does now. Techniques such as exposure control, dodging and burning (making certain parts of images lighter or darker) and colour correction. Considering there huge wide spread use of digital photography instead of film photography (almost everyone has a point and shoot camera or at least one on their phone!) photoshop gives them the opportunity to do the things they would have done in the dark room if they developed their own photos. I say this with a sense of (I'm not sure irony is the right word but I'll use it anyway) irony considering it costs just short of £630!

So photoshop methods are not new! Airbrushing has been done for years!

A number of years ago I skimped an ancient version of photoshop (6.0) and my delightful brother taught me the basics. Colour correction, levels, curves, and most usefully layers! This taught me different ways of manipulating images to get them to look how I want.

I thought I would let you (very few) readers into some of the secrets that I use in photoshop. I almost feel like I'm breaking the magic code about telling people how it's done but I want people to understand that my opinion is that there is both a huge skill in taking a nice photo. There is also huge skill in doing things with photoshop (neither of which I have to any great lengths) but put them together and you have a killer combination with some awesome (in some people cases) results.

So example number one.

I "took" this photo at while before Christmas when it snowed at uni.

This photo is actually a combination of two photos:

What you can probably see already is that I've taken the top from the second picture and "overlayed" it on the bottom from the first picture. If you're feeling especially observant you'll notice that the tree on the left of both original photos has been "trimmed" in the final image. This is because it was particularly challenging to "paint" (with a layer - if people care about layers I can chat about them in another blog post) around the branches to get the dark sky to show up only behind the tree so it was easier to remove it altogether. Now there is a way of doing this purely using the camera and that's by using something called a graduated filter. This is a filter you physically put in front of the lens that is darker at the top than at the bottom. So in effect you get a dark sky and a normal ground. But I didn't have one so I did it in photoshop on my own. Does this mean that the final image isn't a good photo? No I don't think so (please forgive my apparent boasting, I don't mean to I just need to explain the difference between what in my opinion is a good photo and what isn't!) But I knew I could get a good photo out of an average photo so I exposed twice (at least!) and was able to create the final image.

Example no 2

This is the "world famous!" (Ha!) BBC News photo, again taken in the snow, of my delightful girlfriends home. Again very similar principle to last time of having a darkened sky and a normal foreground. I only took one photo here because I knew there was detail still in the sky:

Actually this is a cheat... This isn't the original at all... This is:

In case you're distressingly unobservant the difference is the footsteps in the snow! My girlfriends mother (understandably!) needed to get to her greenhouse at the bottom of her garden and so walked through the snow. But no fear! The "clone stamp tool" is to hand! This effectively takes an area you choose and clones it where you want which works great with snow!!

I then darkened the exposure (kinda) so the sky became dark:

But thought the whole thing looked a little dark and so lightened up the lot to get the final image:

Again I could have used a graduated filter had I had one, but sadly I didn't.

My final example is a portrait shoot. Many of you know I did my first studio shoot last week which I really enjoyed. I had great fun experimenting with studio strobes and getting lighting right. The shot I shall explain is this one:

This is a shot from my shoot with Hannah. I like it. However it didn't always look like this!

The original photo was:

The original is still a nice picture but not quite as nice. As you can see there are a few spots on the chin and at the top of the nose, as well as some dry skin around the mouth. I'll let you find any others if you care. So the first step was doing that. The wonders of the "clone stamp tool" (again) and the spot heal tool. Here's what it looked like after those had been removed:

The next thought I had was with beauty shots (which is what I imagined this to be when I shot it) there is a lack of definition/faint blurring of the skin. This is the airbrushed look that everyone sees in magazines! So I won't tell you how I did that because I've already told one person this month and we can't have it getting out now can we!

However this is what it looked like after the skin blurring:

You can see that any bits I missed originally have now been nicely smoothed out and the skin just looks softer.

The only thing left to do was the eye colour. Hannah has lovely brown eyes but I thought they needed filling out (colour wise) a bit. And so the final image was created:

I loved doing the photoshoot I really did, but I also loved doing the photoshopping! (not shopping for photos!) I loved seeing a good photo (in my opinion) become great (in my opinion!).

(Quick self plug if you didn't see them originally the other shots from this shoot can be found at www.macmacphotography.com/hannah)

I'm not going to lie I also love natural untouched shots, and I do use them. But it all depends on what the medium is. I wanted this shoot to be a beauty shoot. Like magazines. This is the sad (in a way) truth. Every single photo you see of a model in any beauty/fashion magazine has been photoshopped to one degree or another. I can guarantee it. I was speaking to a friend a while ago about photoshopping and she said "I want to look like the photoshopped people without being photoshopped!" But even the photoshopped people don't actually look like the photoshopped people! There is a strong argument for photoshopped models being part of the cause of low self esteem in teenage girls (and adult girls!) because they strive towards a body that's only created digitally! You can shrink things, enlarge things, make things disappear etc. It's an unrealistic physical goal to set. However the power of photoshop can also be something to be embraced. It allows more creative freedom to really create the images you wanted to create!

However the start is in the camera. You can't make something out of nothing. (Well actually in photoshop that's not entirely true). This I made out of nothing a couple of nights ago and it's not too bad. Not great either though:

But when editing photos the happier you are with what you have in camera, the less you have to do in photoshop. A good example of this is the photo I shared ages ago:

Final

Original

This guy (Blair Bunting) has got it to a t (tee? tea?) well he's got it to a fine art! He knew what he was aiming for and he only had to do a little photoshop work to get it done. (He did have 11 different light sources and got a GREAT result from every one of them!!)

I would genuinely love to know what you think about photoshop and photoshopped photos. I like what photoshop can do, and I only hope my skills will keep growing when it comes to using it (the genuis of youtube tutorials!)

Done for now.

Let it Snow, Let it… Hold on! Stop it now!

This past week has been an astonishing meteorological event. Britain has had snow before Christmas, not only have we had snow but we have had Big snow (as Mr McIntyre likes to put it). The most shocking factor of all though is that it has stayed for more than 48 hours!

There are two distinct ways to view snow, largely separated by age. On the one hand there is the child like wonder, the absolute sheer joy of looking outside the window and knowing that with the outside sprinkled and your persuasive powers there is no way your mother is going to make you go to school. The snow day is the holy grail of bunking off! You don’t get in trouble but you get to skip school and have snow ball fights/go sledging/make snow angels/do whatever ones heart desires. Snow is the bringer of joy (in a non heathen way). On the other hand there is the adult way of looking. In some cases they can be pleased knowing they won’t get to work, but more often than not they need to and this causes stress. Cars slipping and sliding, hours of queues on normally rapid roads. The fear of making it to work, not making it home, having to sleep in one’s car. These two extreme opposites can cause quite a tension in the country as children often throw snowballs at stressed adults. However there is also something beautiful about many adults in a similar stuck position. That is community. Very rarely do you see complete strangers helping each other out, but when snow appears it brings people together. Strangers will push cars of people they don’t know, people will often offer man power to help out others in need. This I love. I left university on Saturday and drove to my grandparents. They live in their very own weather system. They live right on the coast and right between the north sea and the English channel so they get a mixture of weather often entirely different to the rest of the country.

So when I went, Canterbury had had snow the day before but it had disappeared by the time I had left. Thirty minutes of my journey were flawless, vague traces of snow about but nothing to stop you going 70 on a dual carriage way. Then you hit Margate and it’s accompanying blizzard! The council decided gritters were silly so the roads were suddenly a nightmare! The last 6 minutes of my journey took 30! Anyway my father and I then left for Yorkshire which took about six and a half hours with no issues.

Going back to the age thing… I am in a fortunate position. I am effectively an adult. However I have no responsibilities (really), I don’t work, I don’t need to leave my house. This means that snow warms my heart. I love it. I climb the snow laden hills around my house and admire the white (not in a racist way). It also makes a lovely photo opportunity. I took one while at university.

Since I have been in Yorkshire I have not really had to leave my house, although my parents have . They’ve needed to preach and go to carol services and shopping etc. From what I have gathered Yorkshire is doing rather well in the snow. Amusingly though there is no chance of getting cars up and down my drive. My father has not tried so his car is at the top. My mother did try, her car is now stuck halfway up! I decided not to try so my car is sitting at the bottom. Fortunately however we have our Gator. This is the most wonderful all terrain vehicle ever. It looks like a glorified golf buggy. It is. With a massive engine and huge tyres.

Like this but with bigger tyres!

So when my parents need to go anywhere I act as their all terrain chauffeur. I take them down then pick them up when they come back. When they’re not in it there are a couple of great corners for practising power slides! It’s a riot.

I’m loving the snow because of my lack of need to go anywhere. However I do understand that it is causing chaos for many people. I’ve heard of many of my friends getting stuck on roads for hours. Abandoning their vehicles and cancelling plans.    Obviously there are the issues with the channel tunnel and people not being able to go abroad or come home. Snow is not ideal for everyone. What I would like is for the country’s snow just to fall on my house(!) then everyone else would be ok! I hope you all get where you need to go. I hope the snow doesn’t cause you stress or fury.

I leave you with a photo of the pub opposite my grandmothers.

Done for now.

Melanie Update Dec 09

I realised I hadn’t updated this for a while so here’s the December update:

Dear Prayer Partners;

This is a great season for reflection. I am sitting here listening to some of my favorite music and knowing that the God of the Universe sent His son so that I could be in relationship with Him. What a gift. My favorite Christmas Carol is “O Holy Night”. I have a compilation of that song and each track is different and the same; the same words but with different inflection and tone that makes each track unique, and yet the same.

I think that God looks at us, made in His image, and sees the same thing – each one of us is unique and different, yet the same – each of us has hopes and dreams and needs, wants and desires and objectives and goals, different words, inflections, tones and yet the same, His son or daughter. This season is one of Hope – Hope that the world can and will get better – Hope that healing will happen, sooner and more often – Hope that our dreams will come true – Hope that Peace will reign – Hope that you and Melanie and I will once again share a meal. The things hoped for are never in vain, and we wait until those things come to pass. We wait with Hope.

Each of us have battles and victories, some won in public and some in private -- yet it is in the battle that we find His presence the greatest.

So the update on the medical front:

Melanie needed a rod placed in her right femur because of a tumor there. The doctors were concerned that the leg might break and it is easier to be prepared than repaired. So the operation was a success. She has a titanium rod, inside the bone, from hip to knee. The doctor is very pleased and now Melanie is on to radiation on the femur. That treatment will last 10 days and will end on Friday Dec 18^th. The results of the radiation will not be known for several weeks since radiation is accumulative and the effect will take time to notice. This still goes under the heading of “Who thought this one up….?”

Because of the above detour, Melanie’s oncologist is anxious about the other tumors growing in the rest of her body. The ones in her liver and neck are the most noticeable. So with that in mind, and wanting to attack the cancer as soon as possible, Melanie will be starting on a new chemotherapy on Tuesday Dec 22^nd. She will have a treatment a week for at least 4 weeks, with a review at the end of that time.

We will have scans in January to determine the effect of the Gamma Knife, the radiation on her femur and the new chemotherapy. What a way to start the New Year – however we are still confident that Melanie’s healing is close. We might have a great celebration!!

This is the difficulty we all face -- we know things that are supposed to happen and haven’t yet. We wait and are not discouraged because we really trust God in all things. We trust Him to know when, where, how and through whom or what, that thing we wait for will come to pass. The goal is to know Truth and not worry, fear, doubt, be discouraged or hopeless. The goal is to hang on to Him at all times through all seasons. We know that all seasons end -- and then we will be facing something new. And facing that something new, we will be faced with the same difficulty as before. Will we be good reflectors of Jesus, or not?

Our circumstances will not dictate our response to life, our hearts will. And as for me and my house we will Trust and Serve our God in all things, good or bad.

We wish each and everyone of you a Very Merry Christmas and a Joyous New Year.

Serving a Big God,

Dennis, Melanie, Autumn & Jacob & Jet and Monica

From Melanie: If you are on this list, then it is absolutely true that I am hoping to see you again, and share 100 stories and a meal! I am so grateful for the cards and notes that come from y’all.

AND, some of you have come here to be with us!! To help me walk, feed me soup, get me into the bathroom (double and triple THANKS) You get trophies from me….!

I am 4 weeks past the bone surgery, and graduated to walking with a cane. While the surgery came as a shock to us, we are really grateful for it. It’s not that long ago that I was sleepwalking, and banging into corners and door frames, and we see how easily I could have shattered that bone…..YIKES!! (If you’ve ever had bone surgery, you know how difficult it is to “be grateful for it…”)

GOD WAS WATCHING OUT FOR ME, and doing something He often does, GOING AHEAD OF THE NEED!!

I LOVE YOU ALL, AND MISS YOU – HUGELY!

Melanie

That's what I'm to do?! Seriously?

So weird things have happened recently. Both myself and my dearest, have had minor inspiration about what we want to do with our lives! Both within about 2 months of each other. This is having deliberated and stressed and laughed at how little of an idea we both had before this time.

She shall tell you what she wants to do in her own time.

I however shall mention it in some detail here!
After having completed three years of my course I realised that at the end of this year university will stop (unless I decide otherwise (post-grad rather than failing! (hopefully))). I will be out into the world blah blah blah I've heard this alot from different people. It's something the relatives and estranged family friends ask frequently. Either through poor memory or general poor conversational skills it comes up alot! I realised it was time to sit down and work out what I could do. I had a chat with my brother-in-law who is relatively wise in such things (and is facing a relatively similar dilemma himself) and we discussed the possibility of further education or going back to where I did my placement, it was a useful chat but inconclusive.

So I was thinking, "what is it that I enjoy?" Well, I rather enjoy people and being sociable, I also rather enjoy taking photos of said people! This led me on to the possibly obvious conclusion that I would rather like to become a photographer! I've realised that I have been surprisingly fortunate in three different ways (when it relates to photography). In chronological order the first of these is my brother. I put it down to his influence that I picked up a camera in the first place. His appreciation for it (and his willingness to teach me) helped me start. Obviously at first it was something I did rarely as I didn't have a camera but as he got better and moved into the realms of the DSLR he gave me his previous camera, my first digital camera, a sony cybershot "bridge" camera. (Bridge meaning that it wasn't a small point and shoot compact camera but it wasn't an SLR, a nice "bridge" between the two). However over time I grew out of it and longed for a camera that would take a photo when I pressed the shutter button rather than 2.5 seconds later! I then received a Canon 400D for a birthday/Christmas present which I still have and use frequently. Not only did my brother give me my first camera, he also engineered my second camera (purely by ensuring it was a Canon) so that any accessories and lenses that he bought and I bought would be interchangeable between his cameras and mine. Often I will ask him if I can borrow a specific lens or a specific piece of equipment and more often than not it won't be a problem! So that is fantastic opportunity no. 1.

Fantastic opportunity no. 2 is also my brothers doing! Although only through coincidence. He lives with a lovely girl called Suzie Fields, who, unsurprisingly for this story, is a professional photographer. From the first time I went to stay at her house for a weekend we got on well and talked cameras and photos (you should check out hers http://www.flashfields.com/) and she gave me ideas. She also took a look at my "portfolio" (http://www.macmacphotography.com/) and wasn't particularly encouraging and said she could find something wrong with every photo if she wanted to, but said that I had potential and gave me some advice that she said was pivotal when she was learning that I have taken on board and crosses my mind frequently. She also said that if I ever was in London and wanted to follow her around (as an assistant) then I could, something I'm hoping to try and make use of over the Christmas. Networking in any job is important, often, as the phrase goes: "It's not what you know but who you know." I think in the photography world this is only partially true as you do have to have some kind of vision and skill but it doesn't hurt to know alot of useful people!

Fantastic opportunity no. 3 has only recently presented itself and is something that I fear I should have made better use of when I could. That is the photographic society and university. I've only just started getting involved with them this year because at times I have met some people from this society and they have seemed rather pretentious and a little up themselves. Possibly a bit judgemental I know, sorry. Also from what I have gathered this year is that there is an upper echelon of "in-jokes". However they have been putting on some useful workshops on different topics, many of which I know about (shutter speed/aperture). Many of which I don't though. The other useful thing they do is link up very closely with the modelling society. I was almost put off this idea before I went along because my ignorant nature thinks:

Pretentious photographers + Stuck up "I'm so gorgeous" models = People I don't want to hang around with.

However a friend of mine who I knew at school (from the year below) who came to my uni is part of the modelling society and although yes, she is very beautiful, she is fun and cool to hang around with. So that made things easier. One thing I did have to do is swallow my own pride (and there is an awful lot of it!) when it comes to photography. Yes I may think I know alot and as of recently I have this idea/dream of becoming a photographer, there are still going to be people who know more technically and take better pictures than me! So I have to take a back seat and admit to myself as well as them that I don't know everything (for those who know me you can appreciate the challenge!)
So not only do I think that I can learn from them if I suck in my big head, but they also have some cool equipment! I've been mind-showering what sort of photography I'd like to do and for the moment I thought I'd go generic and say portrait/studio work (weddings if I get the chance!). I've never done any studio work and only know the basics of lighting. However (again! (talk about a broken record!)) my brother has lent me some flashes, some flash stands, some umbrellas and some remote units to use. I haven't yet but within the next few weeks I will have. The other thing is that the photosoc has some (what I believe to be called) strobes. Basically high powered effectively professional studio flashes. The combination of the two of them and then the two "speedlights" that my brother has lent me gives me a good opportunity to come up with some good lighting effects. Now all I need is some vision and experience!

Well, experience is on the way. My friend, the aforementioned model has kindly agreed to give me an afternoon of her time so I can basically try stuff out. Put lights in random places and see what it looks like! I shall start with one light, then work my way up to four by the end of the afternoon! (Photosoc also has a white backdrop that I intend on stealing so they'll be "high key" photos (hopefully)).

Really these are the three great opportunities that I have been given. Although I have been slightly dented to find that my laptop has had a graphics card meltdown so I get funny purple lines down the screen. I took it in to be checked up on and sadly they've said it's had it, so I may need to delve into my vague attempt at a savings account and purchase a new computer. Bye bye dreams of a Mac Book Pro! Although I am planning on spending a reasonable amount of money on a new laptop so it can run all the necessary photographic software.

The other problem is that I'm petrified. Firstly the idea of being self-employed that sometimes money may not come in :S What if people don't like my work, what if this is like a photographic version of the tripe-factor where people tell me I'm great and encourage me and then it all goes wrong and someone honest says you've no hope in this lifetime to make it!
I've been feeling quite photographically inadequate recently. I've been trying to do research on different lighting techniques and found some stunning images that make me think how on earth does someones mind create that! I want to share with you my favourite picture of the moment. It's done by a guy called Blair Bunting and I found it on the strobists blog (http://strobist.blogspot.com/) the photo is this: (http://is.gd/53wQn) There is also a good explanation of how he did it here: (http://is.gd/53wUt) should you care. In my mind it's a truely astonishing photo!

Anyway! Too much ramblidge.
Priorities: New computer, photography session with model, work out life!

"That'll do donkey, that'll do"
That's what I have in my head about this post!
Sorry, it's very long, and not very funny then again they are just my thoughts!
You're the one who's actually read them!

Done for now.