The air cleaner on this classic Vette speaks volumes.

350/370

Film: Fuji Acros 100

Developer: Kodak HC-110, 5 minutes

Check out the blog: www.marksphotographyspot.com

Mark's Photography Spot - Sharing life and the world around us through photographs, cameras and equipment

During our time visiting Great Smoky Mountains NP we stayed in Gatlinburg, TN which is right outside the border of the park. Needless to say, it is a VERY “touristy” town with all kinds of stores, shops, etc. to entice people to separate themselves from their money. Towns like this are a like/dislike thing for me. I like them because of all the things there are to photograph, especially neon signs, which are quickly becoming a favorite subject of mine. I dislike them for pretty much the same reason, all the shops,signs, and over-the-top stuff. I guess I’ll just have to learn to balance things out (and bring my camera) whenever I visit these types of towns.

Speaking of neon signs, here’s an image I shot of the Hard Rock Cafe’s neon sign while walking back to the hotel after dinner and a few tasty craft beers:

Hard Rock Cafe Neon Guitar-Gatlinburg, TN

On second thought, I probably won’t do that,….WARNING!: POST-PROCESSING PHILOSOPHY MUSINGS START HERE…. since I’m finding that I enjoy keeping the images as close to what I actually saw with my eyes. And since I saw that light when I made the decision to compose the image the way I did, I can’t very well clone it out and say “that’s the sign I saw while walking back to the hotel from the brewpub after a few tasty craft beers!”, which is exactly what happened.

Good thing the camera had image stabilization then, I guess

That’s not to say that I do zero processing on my images. Far from it. I’m finding that my “prime directive” when it comes to post-processing images is to try and get the image to match what I actually saw with my eyes. I think I’m sort of in line with Trey Ratcliff’s philosophy of photography (though not 100% completely on everything) which is basically that your eye and brain see far more than the camera can capture. So, in order to really communicate what you saw, you need to make adjustments to the image. In many cases that means that I must adjust the color, contrast, sharpness, etc. in order to get the image to match to what I saw before I pressed the shutter button. Oftentimes that means that I use “image enhancing” software like HDR Efex Pro, Topaz Adjust, Lightroom or any number of other apps, in order to get the final image to match what my eyes saw.

What it doesn’t mean (at least to me at this point) is that I can’t just fire up editing software and delete/clone-out, severely crop out, any object I find objectionable in the image. The way my thought process goes is that it’s my job as photographer to get the best composition I can, given the circumstances, before I press the shutter. Do I do this stuff (crop/clone out objects) some of the time? You bet I do but I try not to as much as possible. I think that sticking to my self-made rule will help make me a better photographer in the long run.

What do you guys think? Do you substantially alter an image (remove objects, severely crop, ect.) or do you tend to keep things basically the same (outside of adjusting color, contrast, sharpness). You can enter your comments below and/or record your answer in the “Photography Poll” on the right sidebar. Remember, there are no right or wrong answers, it’s just photographic opinion.

I’m really interested to see what y’all think!

Mark's Photography Spot - Sharing life and the world around us through photographs, cameras and equipment

Both Pam and I are suckers for a good waterfall. Here’s an image I shot of one of the many beautiful waterfalls we saw while in Great Smoky Mountains National Park:

Ladder Falls-Great Smoky Mountains National Park

1. The composition- I managed to place the various cascades in a line moving from upper right to lower left, with the final cascade flowing out of the image
2. The shutter speed-This image is at 1/15 of a second, which gave just enough motion to the water.

I am very happy with this image and I hope you enjoy it as well. If you really, really like it please feel free to purchase a high quality, affordably priced, print. Just click the “Buy Print” link at the top of the image

Mark's Photography Spot - Sharing life and the world around us through photographs, cameras and equipment

 Hello everybody. After a too long break, I’m hopefully back to regular posting here on the blog. Work has settled down and I have a bit more free time.

I’m getting back to using the camera and we recently took a trip up to Tennessee and Great Smoky Mountains National Park with one of our photography meetup groups, The Decatur Digital Photography Meetup, and spent a few days in the mountains. Both Pam and I took a bunch of images but it was a bit of a challenge because the weather was more stormy than not.

On Friday, we were driving West across the park on Highway 441 when we stopped to photograph the mountains and valleys below us. The sky was threatening rain but the clouds were pretty cool. I decided to braket my shots and do an HDR to see what I could come up with. Here’s the result:

Storm Clouds Over The Smokies

That night we met for Dinner in Gatlinburg and I shot this sign with my Canon Powershot S95:

Mellow…

I’m still working on images from the rest of the trip and will post some of the results here in the next few days so stay tuned…

It feels good to be back shooting again. We have some trips planned for this Summer so I hope to be able to get some “keepers”.

Mark's Photography Spot - Sharing life and the world around us through photographs, cameras and equipment

I review the Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens, which is a great upgrade from the standard Canon kit lens that offers a fairly wide focal length range, crisp optics and good build quality. I’ve used this lens for nearly a year and have shot over 2500 photographs with it so I wanted to share my experiences with this lens and give you an idea of how this lens works in everyday shooting situations. I also show you some images that I’ve shot with the lens to give you an idea of the image quality:

Here are the lens specifications (from Canon USA):
Focal Length & Maximum Aperture: 15 – 85mm 1:3.5-5.6
Lens Construction: 17 elements in 12 groups
Diagonal Angle of View: 84° 30′ – 18° 25′
Focus Adjustment: Inner focusing system with USM
Closest Focusing Distance: 1.15 ft./0.35m
Filter Size: 72mm
Max. Diameter x Length, Weight: 3.2 x 3.4 in./81.6 x 87.5mm, 20.3 oz./575g

The Canon USA page on the lens:

http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/products/cameras/ef_lens_lineup/ef_s_15_85mm_f_3_5_5_6_is_usm#Overview

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As far as price goes, the lens is somewhere between $600 and $750 purchased new. If you are looking to purchase used, expect to pay $550 to $600 for a good quality version. As I said in the video, I purchased my lens used for $550.

Here’s the lens On Amazon

Here’s the lens On Adorama

Don’t forget to join the Mark’s Photography Spot group on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/marksphotographyspot/

In addition to this channel, you can also follow me here:

Mark’s Photography Spot.com: http://www.marksphotographyspot.com
My Google+ Page: https://plus.google.com/u/0/101061915862182396523/posts
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Thanks for watching and Happy Shooting!

Mark's Photography Spot - Sharing life and the world around us through photographs, cameras and equipment

Yashica Lynx 14E, a photo by Mind the Mix on Flickr.

This classic car looks buttery smooth and sexy courtesy of some Kodak T-Max 400 and HC-110 developer. This image goes to show that an “old” film camera can take some fantastic shots!

Way to go and thanks for sharing this on the MarksPhotographySpot flickr Group

Mark's Photography Spot - Sharing life and the world around us through photographs, cameras and equipment

This episode of Mark’s Photography Spot is the third in a series of videos I’m doing to help you get your camera out of “Auto” mode. I call the series “Snapshots to Photographs” This episode addresses the “big debate” in digital photography, RAW vs JPEG:

I have a definite opinion on this and that opinion is: “Shoot RAW when you want to get the most out of your image and shoot JPEG when you want to be able to quickly share an image or don’t have the desire (or need) to actively post process the image”.

In terms of my photography that equates to me shooting RAW about 90-95% of the time and JPEG the rest. In terms of your photography, only you know what those percentages will be.

Here is why I shoot RAW the majority of the time, and why I recommend that you do the same:

If you are new to photography and want to take the best images possible I would encourage you to shoot RAW as much as possible and use software (Lightroom, for example) to fine tune the image out of the camera.The reason is because RAW files are essentially a “digital negative” and have pretty much all the information that is available for any one particular image. You, as the photographer, will have a lot more latitude to adjust and refine the RAW file to create the final image that you can then save as a JPEG or other format. Shooting JPEG’s, on the other hand, results in a file that is created using in-camera processing. This process often times sacrifices quality for speed, smaller file size and portability. Once the camera creates it’s interpretation of the image and writes that to your memory card as a JPEG file, there is no going back. You won’t be able to recapture the original image and make anything more than basic adjustments. That’s the biggest downside of JPEG files.

Now that you know to shoot RAW whenever you want to get the most out of your photography, stay tuned for the next videos in this series as I dig a little deeper into Aperture and Shutter Speed.

You’ll be able to find all the videos in this series in the playlist “Snapshots to Photographs”.

If you like what you see here, Please Subscribe to the channel!

http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=marksphotographyspot

Don’t forget to join the Mark’s Photography Spot group on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/marksphotographyspot/

In addition to this channel, you can also follow me here:

Mark’s Photography Spot.com: http://www.marksphotographyspot.com
My Google+ Page: https://plus.google.com/u/0/101061915862182396523/posts
My Flickr Site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marksinderson/

Thanks for watching and Happy Shooting!

Mark's Photography Spot - Sharing life and the world around us through photographs, cameras and equipment

Ok, this isn’t really a photography related post. But, I’m a bit of a gadget as well as fitness geek so anytime I find something that fits in one of those categories I might review it.

If you want to increase your activity, lose weight and monitor your sleep, the Fitbit One might just be for you. The Fitbit is one of the many “activity trackers” that have recently become available. It is a small, inconspicuous device that easily fits in your pocket or on your belt. You wear it wherever you go and it tracks your activity then syncs with your laptop, phone or tablet. Here’s my review:

My wife, Pam, purchased the Fitbit One a few weeks ago and really likes it. She finds it easy to use and motivating. The syncing is painless and the software is intuitive and comprehensive. The sleep monitoring function has given her some valuable insight into just how well she is sleeping each night.

Based on her positive experience using the fitbit every day for the last three weeks I can definitely recommend it. I think it is a great tool to keep track of your activity and hold you accountable to any health or fitness goals you have set for yourself.

If you want to get one for yourself here’s a link to their site Fitbit

Mark's Photography Spot - Sharing life and the world around us through photographs, cameras and equipment

Welcome to the Friday Photo Share for January 25! This week we’ll review the results of the photography poll question “Do You Shoot JPEG or RAW?”, discuss a few images that were uploaded to the flickr group and reveal next week’s poll question:

Remember to join the flickr group and share your images. I’ll discuss some of the images each week as well as every once in a while post one to the blog. I will link back to your flickr account which could get you more views. You can find the group at:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/marksphotographyspot/

Over here on the blog : http://www.marksphotographyspot.com/ I have set up a weekly Photography Poll that you can answer (on the right sidebar). I will change the poll question each week and discuss the results each week her on the “Friday Photo Share” video. This week’s question is “How many photographs do you think you’ll take in 2013?”.

I am also still soliciting your feedback for a new design of the blog. Please leave your comments here or on the blog about how I can improve the look of the blog or any WordPress themes that I might want to check out to improve the look and functionality of the blog as we build our community.

If you like what you see here, Please Subscribe to the channel!

http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=marksphotographyspot

In addition to this channel, you can also follow me here:

Mark’s Photography Spot.com: http://www.marksphotographyspot.com
My Google+ Page: https://plus.google.com/u/0/101061915862182396523/posts
The Mark’sPhotographySpot flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/marksphotographyspot/
My Flickr Site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marksinderson/

As always, thanks for your support and feedback. Happy Shooting!

Mark's Photography Spot - Sharing life and the world around us through photographs, cameras and equipment

This episode of Mark’s Photography Spot is the second in a series of videos I’m doing to help you get your camera out of “Auto” mode. I call the series “Snapshots to Photographs” This episode is about one of the key components of exposure-ISO, which determines your camera’s sensitivity to light.

Here’s a more detailed description:

ISO-This determines your camera’s sensitivity to light. The higher the number, the more sensitive, the lower the ISO, the less sensitive. ISO is expressed in numbers, usually something like 100,200,400,800,1600,3200. Each larger number indicates a doubling in sensitivity. So, going from an ISO of 100 to 400 means that the camera is going to be four times as sensitive to light at ISO 400 then ISO 100. Higher ISO can help you get an image you might not be able to get, especially in lower light but it comes at the price of increased noise in the image.

You can use ISO to give you more shooting options. By increasing the ISO you have the ability to get images in conditions you might not be able to otherwise. Here are some examples:

1. You can increase ISO in order to be able to capture an image in a lower light environment such as a concert. By bumping up the ISO you can compensate for a darkened room and still be able to capture images.
2. A higher ISO can allow you to use a higher shutter speed-Each “bump” up in ISO allows you to use a shutter speed that is ½ as fast. So, for example, going from ISO 100 to 400 will allow you to increase your shutter speed from 1/250 to 1/1000 (all other things being equal), which might be needed in order to stop action effectively. This is one of the ways that many sports photographers are able to get the shots they do, by using a high quality zoom lens along with a camera that does well at higher ISO.
3. If you are looking to increase the depth of field in a photo, shooting through a smaller aperture (ones with a bigger f/number) is needed. Sometimes the only way to accomplish this is by increasing the camera’s light sensitivity (ISO).

There are other ways that ISO is used in photography but the three I mentioned above seem to be the most common. As you gain more experience with your camera you will learn what ISO settings work best, given the capabilities of your camera and the lenses you own. The key is to not be afraid to experiment and see for yourself the differences in using a high or low ISO make in your images.

While setting a high ISO is often a recipe for increased noise i an image, the software tools we have available to us today can clean a surprising amount of that noise up. My recommendation is to always use the lowest ISO you can, just to reduce the amount of noise in your images as much as possible.

As I have mentioned in the previous videos, a great resource for learning more about exposure is the book “Understanding Exposure”, written by Bryan Peterson. It is well worth reading and explains how ISO, Aperture and Shutter interact to create a final image. Here is a link to the book on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0817439390?ie=UTF8&tag=photographyblog-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0817439390

Stay tuned for the next videos in this series as I dig a little deeper into Aperture and Shutter Speed.

You’ll be able to find all the videos in this series in the playlist “Snapshots to Photographs”.

If you like what you see here, Please Subscribe to the channel!
http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=marksphotographyspot

Don’t forget to join the Mark’s Photography Spot group on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/marksphotographyspot/

In addition to this channel, you can also follow me here:

Mark’s Photography Spot.com: http://www.marksphotographyspot.com
My Google+ Page: https://plus.google.com/u/0/101061915862182396523/posts
My Flickr Site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marksinderson/

Thanks for watching and Happy Shooting!

Mark's Photography Spot - Sharing life and the world around us through photographs, cameras and equipment