At the Movies
Canon 5D, Canon 24-105 f/4L lens – 1/100 second, f/5.6, ISO 100
RSS: Be a Friend, Subscribe!
Through the spring and now into summer the number of readers of LeggNet’s Digital Capture that subscribe through RSS has been steadily in the mid-600′s. On today’s post I’m asking for more.
On the many blogs, photography and otherwise, that I follow I rarely visit the site proper. Instead, I read their posts in Google’s RSS reader. It is much more convenient for me to have a one-stop-shopping solution than going to each individual website. I encourage the same thing on my blog, which is the reason I include full web posts in my RSS feed instead of just a headline or snippet.
If you are at least a semi-regular reader of my photography ramblings, then please take a moment and subscribe to my RSS feed. Here’s the subscription link:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeggnetsDigitalCapture
Additionally, if you want up-to-the-minute ramblings rather than daily updates, you can follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/leggnet.
Now maybe I can at least crack 700 subscribers :)
Stock Photos: Part of a Bigger Picture
One hurdle that photographers often encounter when selling stock photos is that (in many cases) their image will become part of a bigger project. Unlike portrait and fine-art photography where the photographer creates a final product, stock photos are frequently incorporated into a larger design.
One change I had to make to my workflow was to minimize the post-processing I did on images that would be included in my stock portfolios. Initially this was difficult, since I felt the images needed a bit more punch. I am now comfortable with the process and always think about the “bigger design picture” when processing my stock images.
Todays image is a perfect example of this. Designer John Kicksee uses stock images in his designs of book covers. For the cover of Aces High, John incorporated my image of a crime scene victim into the design.
When looking at the original image, you can see the vast amount of changes he made to it for inclusion into the final piece. In addition to a crop and horizontal flip, John took a lot of effort to transform the photo into pseudo-artwork. The final product is incredibly better than it would have been if he had used my photo un-edited.
This is just one more thing to consider when shooting, editing and ultimately selling stock photos.
‘In the Park’ Photo Shoot
Last night we did an “In the Park” photo shoot to create images for my stock portfolio. In this example from the series we used a single silver reflector to light Kylee as she sat with her back to the evening sun.
Canon 5D, Canon 70-200 f/4L lens – 1/200 second, f/4, ISO 100
Photowalking the Great Salt Lake
Saturday evening’s Photowalking Utah event at the Great Salt Lake was a lot of fun. We had over 40 photographers join us for a few hours of capturing the lake at dusk. It was especially great to see so many first-timers among the shooters.
The group met at Saltair for a short welcome session before following the evening’s guide Charles Uibel out to the lake. Charles has been photographing the lake for quite some time and has an impressive body of work. He knew the place and time to be at to capture some great shots and really made this outing a success.
The highlight of the evening was undoubtedly our model, Heidi. She’s a friend of David Terry who graciously volunteered to do a Trash-the-Dress session with an old wedding gown. She literally spent over two hours in and around the water being photographed.
The recap wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the fatalities from the evening. I had the embarrassing misfortune of slipping into the water in front of 25 photographers. While I saved my camera gear, my Blackberry is down for the count. David Terry, in search of the perfect light placement, had a Speedlight (along with a new Radio Popper) fall into the lake. And lastly, I didn’t see it happen, but Mike Calanan’s phone took a swim as well and last night I saw him on Twitter looking for anyone with an extra Verizon phone.
As I write this there are over 225 images in the Photowalking Utah Flickr group. It’s amazing to see the different variations of the same subject that the photographers captured.
The details for the July Photowalking Utah event are still being gathered, but the plan right now involves blue sky and hot air balloons. It promises to be an event that you won’t want to miss. Stay tuned to here (and photowalkingutah.com) for details.
Rock Climbing Redux
Today’s low-effort blog post: another image from yesterday’s Rock Climbing Shoot.
Canon 5D, Canon 24-105 f/4L lens – 1/125 second, f/4, ISO 250
Rock Climbing Photography
We (Michelle and I) spent this morning photographing rock climbers on some sport routes near town. The purpose of the shoot was to add to the climbing images in my stock portfolio. I’ve photographed climbers a few times and the challenge for me is to capture the feel of the sport.
To shoot the climbers I tied myself off to an anchor about 1/4 the way up one of the routes. By being in close to the climbers on the rock, I was able to overcome the typical “looking up” rock climbing photo. We invited several members from my daughter’s climbing team and some other climbing friends to model for us as they climbed.
In the featured image Andrew is straining to complete a climb (which he completed). I focused on his bleeding hand and positioned myself to have his face in the out-of-focus background. My original plan was to post this image in color, but the bright red blood on his middle finger was too distracting – so black & white it is.
For lighting I used a diffused 580EX Speedlight mounted on camera. I set the strobe to a -2/3 f/stop setting to provide fill light to the scene without making the shots look artificially lit.
Canon 5D, Canon 24-105 f/4L lens – 1/160 second, f/4.5, ISO 160
