The area near Brussels Airport is easily accessible. They are many roads, bike roads, fields, etc. and the place is very interesting for some creative shoots. But my attention quickly turned over to the airplanes. I was amazed how low they get when approaching the airport and I couldn’t stop taking the pictures. The feeling of a low-flying airplane together with the enormously loud sound of the engines was simply AMAZING! I can’t wait to go there again!

So what does thinking outside the box mean for me as a photographer? Ohh it can mean so many different things. I think it comes all together to a combination of various things: the ability to break the rules of photography, creativity and the potential to see the world around in a unique way.

How can you learn to think outside the box? Well, I really can’t give a definite answer to that. I can definitely tell you that you don’t have to be born with it (although it can be helpful to a certain extent) but you can learn it as well. i can tell you how I try to think outside the box: I look around at the world around me from different angles and various perspectives. I keep trying to see it in a way others don’t. It sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t. It’s important to train yourself, your brain and your eyes and not to give up. The more you try to see the world around you from different perspectives, the easier it becomes.

The 3rd Brussels Photo Walk will be as spontaneous and unplanned as the 2nd one (which was a really nice one) – we will meet and keep on deciding where to go as we’ll progress. I think the photo walk will take between 2-3 hrs but there is nothing fixed. The more spontaneous, the more fun! Hope to see you there!

Where to find us and how to know when we meet? We have two groups: one on Flickr (click here) and one on Facebook (click here) . Feel free to join these groups to get announcements when & where we meet next time.

Having a break from taking pictures can be a form of re-gaining inspiration and I do it often myself: I put away my camera for a week or two just to be able to grab it again soon with new ideas and inspiration. However, I think it might be dangerous for some of us – we might forget to take the camera again and this can result in months of no photo activity at all. It applies especially for those who don’t have photography as their main source of income. But how come we can give up on photography and art? We can’t! But we tend to forget about it and only later we realize how many great opportunities for great shots we missed and how much joy it brings us to take and make pictures!

Well, as I mentioned before, May 2010 (last month) was a horrible month for me when it come to photography – I had no inspiration, no motivation, almost nothing. I was looking at my camera and thinking, thinking and doing more thinking: how? what? when? and even ‘why?’. Yep, it was definitely too much of ‘thinking’ and not enough of ‘doing’! The lesson I learned is that taking a short break from photography is as important as grabbing your camera again and just go shooting, even when you’re still not inspired and you’re not motivated (or even lazy). In some cases, motivation and inspiration won’t come to you, but you have to reach out for it!

The idea: Photowalking is quite straightforward: you grab a camera and walk around taking pictures of things you see and you find interesting to take pictures of. However, it is much more interesting and even educational when you do it in a group. Anyone interested in photography comes to photo walks: amateurs, people just starting with photography, professionals and semi-professionals. Thanks such diversity of the participants, there is a great potential of not only exchanging views and opinions about photography but also of learning from each other!

Who can come to Brussels Photo Walks? Anyone interested in photography, talking about it, taking pictures and learning from each other! Even if you just start your adventure with photography and you have a point-and-shoot camera, you’re more than welcomed to come. Remember: equipment doesn’t play a role at all! And if you just know how to turn your camera on and off, come to a photo walk and we will be more than happy to teach you more about photography and assist with any problems and questions you might have! Brussels Photo Walks are about sharing experiences, knowledge and passion to photography while having lots of fun.

Where to find us and how to know when we meet? We have two groups: one on Flickr (click here) and one on Facebook (click here) . Feel free to join these groups to get announcements when & where we meet next time.

I took these pictures during Brussels Photo Walk #2 which took place on 13 May 2010.

However, assisting is so much more than learning how to take pictures. While you learn, you also observe things that you might have already knew before, which is also a great thing to remember these for the future. Basically, the things you knew before get better embedded in your memory and the likelihood that you will forget them in your next photo shoot gets much smaller.

But assisting is so much more than that. You also learn how to talk to and approach a client during a photo shoot (especially because every client is different) and you can learn much more than the photo shoot while talking with a photographer after a shoot. Although I was just shooting behind the scenes pictures and I helped Bert with preparing the sets a week before, I learned a lot! Make sure to check Bert’s website and portfolio at http://bertstephani.com.

It took me awhile (being so deep in digital cameras nowadays) to realize that film cameras limited me by certain number of pictures a photographic film roll could contain (not like digital cameras, which can take from few hundred to few thousand RAW pictures, depending on the capacity of a memory card). The limitation of a number of ‘exposures’ (in photographic jargon of course) in film cameras forced me to spend some time and think about a composition of a picture, how to frame a subject, inspect closely foreground, background, double check the lighting and any other details that could improve a picture so that no film and frames would be wasted. This limitation of a film camera was (and for someone who uses a film camera still is) a very important step in the learning process of the art of photography and I personally believe that it still should be a part of the learning process of photography.

I think that digital cameras with their huge memory cards give us the freedom that actually does more harm than good for those who want to learn photography – we don’t take that extra time and effort on checking composition of a picture like in a film camera because we know that we can re-take a picture countless number of time and delete easily ‘bad’ pictures without any financial costs (as it wasn’t the case in the photographic film roll era).

I think I have found a solution for those who own only digital cameras and who want to learn composition in a way it was done before. The solution is quite simple: next time you will go for a photo walk, do an assignment for yourself or just take pictures, leave your 8 or 16 GB memory card at home and take with you only one memory card of 1GB or even less (the less capacity, the better; I just checked that 1GB for shooting 12.1 MP RAW will give you about 68 exposures). Depending if you shoot RAW or JPEG and how many megapixels your camera has, you should find a memory card that enables you to take not more than 30 exposures. And remember to leave all other memory cards at home! This way you will limit your gear but you will definitely expand your knowledge and experience in composition!

I strongly encourage you to try it out few times and I guarantee that you will see improvement in your photography soon.

Happy Shooting!!!

Exposure is NOT the same as shutter speed!

I won’t go in detail but I will just give a quick summary to those of you who are still confused a little: exposure is the total amount of light that passes on a film (or a digital sensor). That total amount of light depends on the aperture and on the shutter speed.

Note: Some photographers use ‘exposure time’ as a ‘shutter speed’. Although this is correct (shutter speed defines for how long a film or a sensor are exposed, therefore ‘exposure time’), I personally don’t use ‘exposure time’ because it’s very much different from ‘exposure’ itself but can create much confusion.

- lighting conditions (how much there is natural and directional light from sun and how much equally distributed artificial light);
- your position in relation to the subject(s);
- type of sports;
- your preference on the subject and the focus of photography.

Indoor and Outdoor Sports Photography Tips:
- Burst Mode – because there are lots of fast movements and action in sports, it’s good sometimes to shoot in the burst mode to capture the most interesting and thrilling moments. In order to increase the rate of frames per second (FPS), do the following: shoot in JPG, turn off VR (Nikon) or IS (Canon); turn off in-camera noise-reduction; get a fast memory-card; having a battery-grip attached to your camera with AA batteries also increases FPS (but you need to change settings in your camera, the best is to refer to the camera manual);
- Focusing – set up focusing mode to continuous (Nikon) or AI Servo (Canon); also activate to automatic all the focusing points in the camera and subject-tracking if available. Extra tip: make sure you’re in the AutoFocus Mode;
- ISO – set up ISO to Auto (so the camera can determine the best ISO based on your shutter speed and aperture, especially if you shoot in one of those priority modes). Remember that in poor lighting situations, your camera will likely use higher ISO. ISO above 800 tend to have higher noise and visible noise than ISO below 800. If you want to keep noise minimum, you can also specify the ISO range your camera will use in the Auto ISO mode.
- Shutter Speed – fast shutter speed is essential when shooting indoor or outdoor sports in order to freeze action. To freeze action and motion, shoot in Shutter Priority Mode and set it up to 1/1000sec. However, don’t be afraid to play with it as it might depend on sports you shoot and especially when you want to achieve the optimal results for combining shutter speed, ISO and aperture according to your needs;
- Perspective – get low on you knees to get more interesting and unique perspective of your photography. If possible, lay even on your stomach. Remember that this tip might not apply to some sports and it also depends when you want to have a subject and focus in your photos.
- Use Fast Lens – a fast lens is crucial, especially in poor indoor lighting situations and when you want to freeze motion with high shutter speed, while avoiding high and noisy ISO. F/4 or lower f (higher aperture) is recommended;
- Long Focal Length Lens – long focal length lens is also crucial because it allows you to nicely zoom to a subject and ‘get closer’ to it so to speak. It depends on the type of sports you shoot and your location on the field but I would say that -200mm- lens is a minimum;
- Both Eyes Open – when shooting and looking through the viewfinder, keep your other eye open (so keep both eyes open). This way you don’t limit your view-angle to what happens in the viewfinder and you also see what happens around and where the action is as sometimes fights break somewhere in the field, coaches go crazy, etc. and it’s a pity to miss such great and unique shots;
- Expect Unexpected – this actually applies to many things: your main camera or lens breaks, your run out of space on a memory card or it starts raining during an outdoor sports game. Always have a backup, especially when you’re shooting for a customer;
- Protect Your Gear – be careful with your gear when it comes to weather and other circumstances – there is lots of action during games: players concentrate on the game and fans drink beer and alcohol. Neither of these people worry about your expensive camera and gear when they bump into you or hit your gear – be extra careful with it and position yourself in a spot that looks the safest for you. Also watch for your gear or ask a friend / an assistant to come with you to watch it for you because pickpockets love crowded places.
- Monopod – not mandatory but often useful because holding a camera and pointing it towards the field during the whole game can make your arm feel really tired. However, if you don’t point the camera towards the field all the time, you might miss some very good and interesting shots. Therefore, putting a camera on a monopod allows you to point the camera towards the field all the time and manipulate camera, move it, etc very easily because monopods are much better than tripods when shooting sports when it comes to portability and maneuverability. In addition, there is not always space to set up the legs of the tripod, people are walking around and can bump into your tripod with a camera on it and believe me: you don’t want to be in a situation where camera hits the floor. If you don’t have a monopod and you can’t afford to buy one, you can use your tripod but don’t set-up the legs. Extra tip: having a camera on a monopod, instead of holding it, also speeds up focusing.

Feel free to leave any additional tips in the comments below.

Again, the answer is quite simple (at least at first): The inclusion of video-making in Aperture 3 is because of the changing trends in the photography world and among photographers! Aperture’s developers have noticed (which actually it’s hard to miss) that more and more photographers start including video-making into their portfolios and services. I won’t elaborate too much here on the reasons for that and the specifications of this changing trend because next article will be specifically devoted to the changing trends in photography. However, I will mention just 2 reasons for the moment:

1) Market Saturation - the photography market has started to be more and more saturated with “wanna be” photographers thanks to the falling prices of semi-professional and professional equipment as well as to its growing availability. I think I should clarify what or rather whom I mean by “wanna be” photographers before people start jumping on me: I don’t mean young photographers who know what they do (although they still learn the art of photography) and know how to behave like a professional photographer towards clients. If you still wonder what I mean by a “wanna be” photographer, watch this video of Judge Joe Brown – Cheap Wedding Photographer.

2) Video becomes a standard in DSLRs – yes, if you’re a photographer and you’ve bought a DSLR in the last couple of years, there is a pretty good chance that your camera records decent videos. There is no need to buy an extra video camera. So why not getting new customers for video-making (and earn extra money), while you can keep using existing gear which you’ve been using for taking (or rather making) pictures?

Few real-life examples of photographers who have started or plan to include movie-making into their services:
- probably the most obvious is Chase Jarvis. I have no idea when he has started making movies… but he does and does it often with DSLRs;
- Scott Bourne from PhotoFocus.com – to me, he is a photography veteran (of course in a very positive sense). He’s been a long time photography-only Nikon shooter (at least to my knowledge) and only recently he decided to get few Canon DSLR bodies and add-ons to make movies;
- Eric Roy – a photographer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota (US). I spoke with Eric just last week and he confessed to me that he is going to start making movies very soon as well and include movie-making in his portfolio and as a part of his services.