Photography Blog Talk

Strobist Stuff – An Introduction

Cheng — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:06:11 +0000

Well, strobist or off camera lighting is not a new concept. It means to take the camera from the camera hotshoe and place it in a different position. Sometimes it means using more than one source of light. Digital cameras has made it easier for us to gauge our exposure immediately after taking a shot.

So what are the gear that we need , mainly

A Flash. Personally I prefer a Nikon Speedlights for its portability. The good thing about operating the flash in manual mode means we could still use some of the older Nikon Speedlights models like SB-22, SB-28 etc. However if you have other brand of flash, they are still usable.

Triggers – There must be a way to trigger off the flash. There are the cheap ways (not so reliable) or the expensive way (very reliable). The ones I used are from ebay which are cheap and pretty reliable .

Want to learn more? Enroll for our Off camera Flash Photography Course here

News : THE ONE COMPETITION

Cheng — Mon, 10 May 2010 15:05:52 +0000

THE ONE COMPETITION

The ONE competition, held in conjunction with the ONE Photography Convention, a festival celebrating the best in medium and large format photography in October, kicks off on April 1, 2010.

Calling for entries worldwide from the best emerging talents, the theme for the competition is ONE – interpret it however you want to. The grand prize is a medium format digital back and camera system worth SGD $20,000, as well as opportunities to be noticed by top industry professionals.

ONE stands for Our Need To Express.

The ONE competition, held in conjunction with the ONE PhotographyConvention, a festival celebrating the best in medium and large formatphotography in October, kicks off on April 1, 2010.Calling for entries worldwide from the best emerging talents, the theme for thecompetition is ONE – interpret it however you want to. The grand prize is amedium format digital back and camera system worth SGD $20,000, as well asopportunities to be noticed by top industry professionals.ONE stands for Our Need To Express.

Submissions can be made online at the One Photography Convention website

www.01photoconvention.com

Submitted images will be featured in an online gallery. Updates of the finalists? progress and experiences from the mentorship program can be viewed online alongside with their profiles. The announcement of the winners for the competition will be held during the Grand Opening of the ONE Photography Convention.

Deadline for open call submission is 31 July 2010.

Pro Bono Assignment – Zhoujia QingMing event

Cheng — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:51:26 +0000

I do selective Pro Bono photography jobs. One of them is the Qingming Festival praying event organised by the Zhoujiaquan lion dance troupes. Most of these troupes operated on a non commerical basis. Their main source of income is to go around performing “picking the greens” during Chinese New Year periods. Since I am always interested in lion dance, I have been shooting this Qingming event for a few years.

This year the event was on 11 Apr 10. The weather was great but it got really hot towards noon. Of course the light also got harsher. I shoot mainly with prime lenses, 16mm, 50mm and 90mm with the manual 16mm fisheye lens was my main workhorse that day.
Here are some photos to share.

Beautiful Light

Bowing before going up the clubhouse

Lion Head having a suntan on the lorry

Zhoujia senior conducting the basic routine

5th Ngee Ann Photography Exhibition 2010

Cheng — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 03:48:12 +0000

NAPE

The 5^thNgee Ann Photography Exhibition 2010 will be here this week with the official opening happening on 8 April 2010 at 7pm.

Venue:
Ngee Ann Exhibition Hall
Teochew Building
97 Tank Road

Exhibition Date:
9th April 2010 – 19th April 2010

Personal comments:

Well this exhibition has been held for the past 4 yrs. Except for last year where it was held as an competition with selected themes, it has always been an open theme exhibition. I suppose this is to encourage mass participation. However it lacks a focus for visitors . You could be viewing photographs of different genres placed altogether. You could jump from one landscape photos to a portrait photo suddenly.

Nevertheless it is still a good exhibition to visit and learn from other photographers.

Which DSLR should I buy?

Cheng — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:27:49 +0000

I have been conducting basic photography training for the one year and this is one of the common questions that I get- Which DSLR should I buy? This is the kind of question where you will get 10 different answers if you ask 10 different persons.

Initially I was reluctant to recommend any specific brand or model as I believe most of the DSLRs on the market currently should serve the needs of beginners. I was right to a certain extend. Different cameras capture the color sdifferently. Some of them have good auto white balance (AWB) while some are awful. Some have good decent kit lens while other have kit lens that produce soft images.

Buy from Amazon now

Currently my personnel recommendation is the Nikon D90 with its 18-105 VR Zoom lens. This is slightly more expensive than the entry level DSLRs but has good functions and produces good quality images. The images shoot from the camera using out of the box settings are good in color saturation and sharpness.

I may be biased from the years of using the Nikon D70 which is the pre-pre- predecessor (D70-D70s-D80) of the D90 . However looking at the many camera and kit lens combination from the various brands, I’m pretty convinced that the D90 + the 18-105 lens combination is one of the best at this moment.

Check it out at the stores now

Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3 Review

Cheng — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:17:18 +0000

PaintShop Photo Pro X3

I am always on the lookout for graphic editing software that is not too heavy on the pocket ($). Paintshop has been around for a long time and now it is worth to take a second look at it.

Here are a few of the key features that I found it to be useful for photographers :

Organiser

With the new Organizer we are able to import, manage, search and quickly touchup image files directly into PaintShop Photo Pro X3. Photos can be tagged and rated, making them easier to find and group. The Organizer also displays advanced information, such as EXIF and IPTC data.

Multi-photo editing:
The basic editing I performed on my photos are Levels and Curve and follow by Unsharp Mask. Now, we can save time by copying the editing steps we performed on one image to a batch of photos.

RAW Conversion:

I seldom shoot in RAW but if i do , I want an effective way to convert the RAW files. . The Camera RAW Lab launches whenever a RAW image is opened. Once opened, we could adjust the white balance, exposure, brightness, and saturation before processing. Adjustments made to a RAW image can be copied and applied to other files in the Organizer.

HD video: These days, a lot of cameras including the Panasonic LX3 allows you to record HD video. PaintShop Photo Pro X3 allows us to use the HD videos in slide shows along with photos.

HDR Photo Merge: The HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photo Merge feature lets a few photos to be merged together to create a HDR photo where the details in both the shadow and hightlight areas are retained. When used in conjunction with Local Tone Mapping, truly artistic images can be created.

So if you are looking for a fully featured photoediting software that wont’t set you back by a few thousand dollars, check out Corel Paintshop Pro

Microstock

Cheng — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 07:29:11 +0000

Stock Photography

It used to be very expensive buying a photo from a traditional stock agency before the days of the Internet. Sock agencies had to publish thick catalogs showing the photographs in their library. The fees to license the use of a stock photo is not cheap too.

With the internet and subsequently microstock websites, all these has changed. You are able to license a photo for use for your website, brochure, annual reports etc for a few dollars. For photographers, you will get paid by a certain percentage of the selling price. That means usually in the region of 20 cents or more for every download by a microstock buyer.

As a photographer, this opens another stream of revenue for you. You need to submit your photographs to the various microstock agencies. The most popular microstock agencies are :

The sign up process is usually similar among the agencies :

Filled up the registration forms
Submit an initial set of photos (usually 10) and the agencies will review them. Once approved you can start to upload the rest of your works.
Wait for buyers to download your photos.
Collect your earnings once it hit a certain sum.

So add microstock photography as another revenue stream for you in the Year of the Tiger!

Harper’s BAZAAR & ION Photography Awards

Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3 and VideoStudio Pro X3

Cheng — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:40:17 +0000

VideoStudio Pro X3 and PaintShop Photo Pro X3.

Corel has recently announced 2 new products PaintShop Photo Pro X3 and VideoStudio Pro X3. I also been looking for “lighter” photo editing software and will check out both products soon once I get whole of them.

They have setup a minisite here with some interesting videos. The light painting one is pretty cool. I teach light painting and writing in my Foundation Photography Course but this vido shows how I can create an animated video of the light painting photos. Hope to create one of such video soon

Harper’s BAZAAR & ION Photography Awards

Cheng — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 14:30:36 +0000

Love photography, fashion and shopping ? Then this competition might interest you?

Harper’s BAZAAR will be hosting their first photography awards. Themed along fashion, art or architecture, this project creates an opportunity for new and emerging photographers to showcase their works on an international platform.

You may submit 3-5 digital images and you must shoot on location at ION Orchard (inside or outside). Closing date is 5 April 2010. So start working on your images.

For more information, click on the banner below

Harper's BAZAAR & Ion Photo Award

5th Ngee Ann Photography Exhibition

Cheng — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 03:53:46 +0000

NAPE

Just got this off the mail. (as in snail mail) . The Ngee Ann Photography Exhibition is back in 2010. Seems like they decided they want to hold it as an exhibition rather as an competition as in 2009. Or maybe they are alternating between the 2 formats. We probably hear more later.

The Exhibition will run from 8 to 19 April 2010. You may submit up to 4 entries for selection. Application (4R size of the entries and softcopies) must be submitted by 8th Feb 2010.

As usual Ngee Ann Cultural Centre website is not updated with the details or the application form. I will update this post if their site get updated.