The Discerning Photographer

New Photo Assignment is Posted: ‘Self Portrait’

DiscerningPhotog — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 02:28:15 +0000

I love how wonderful mirrors can be when playing around with self portraits. But you could do this lots of others ways as well, even eliminating the face from the portrait if other telling things about the individual art present....think about it. (Copyright 2012 / Andrew Boyd)

Have you ever shot a really compelling self portrait? You can learn about yourself and your photography by attempting this oldest of artistic constructions. Well, a self portrait is what’s called for with this new photo assignment over in the Forums. Here are the details:

OK everyone, here’s our new photo assignment: ‘Self Portrait.’ Make a really interesting and compelling self portrait. You may shoot it as a reflection, into a mirror, with a tripod and timer, however you want to accomplish this feat…but a self portrait it must be! Remember, like all portraits, your self portrait needs to reveal something of the personality of the subject (that would be YOU). So think about this for a bit before you start shooting.

Also don’t forget: in the proper spirit of this Assignment series, you need to go out and shoot a NEW photograph. (Honor system in play here.) Limit is two images per shooter.

I’ll keep this assignment up in the Forums for about two weeks, so let’s see what you guys can come up with! (Information for posting your image can be found at the top of the Photo Assignments forum, if you haven’t posted before.)

Good luck! –DiscerningPhotog

Hi, I’m Andrew Boyd, a.k.a. The Discerning Photographer, and I hope this post has been interesting and informative. Please leave me a comment about it, let me know what you’d like to see more of on the site! You can also sign up for email delivery of all future articles or my RSS feed. Or subscribe to our Facebook page or our Twitter feed. Thanks!–DiscerningPhotog

Tamron 70-200mm f2.8 Macro Lens Review

DiscerningPhotog — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:30:53 +0000

I get lots of email and comments from readers asking about what lens to buy—how to parse through all of the confusing hype around this fundamental issue. Many readers are on a budget and ask whether they really must buy the ‘name brand’ glass, or will an after-market lens work?

With that in mind, my friends over at Bennett’s Camera in New Orleans let me check out the Tamron 70-200mm f2.8 lens for a few days of shooting and evaluation. This article is the result. The lens is available in lens mounts for Canon, Nikon Pentax and Sony. Since I’m a Canon shooter, I decided to put the lens through its paces and also do a bit of comparison against my trusty Canon 70-200mm f2.8 lens.

As with all of my equipment reviews, this won’t be a ‘scientific’ evaluation, but rather an ‘out in the field’ test and impression from someone who shoots for a living. I’ll let you know what I really think of this piece of glass and whether you should consider it when making a purchase for this type of zoom.

FIRST THOUGHTS

First, the lens is a big, heavy piece of glass—it’s almost as heavy as my Canon version. The lens bayoneted onto my Canon EOS Mark IV smoothly. It also takes the same 77mm filters that the Canon uses. A nice feature is the bayonet lens hood that comes with the lens. (This is something you’d have to buy anyway if it wasn’t.) A soft case is also included, although I suspect if you have a decent camera bag you won’t be using this item.

OUT IN THE FIELD

The zoom function on the barrel feels smooth, no bumps or catches as I rack it from 70mm to 200mm. One thing that’s definitely superior is the close-focus capability on this Tamron lens—3.12 ft. compared to 4.6 ft. on the Canon.

The switch to manual focus is also easy: simply pull the front focusing barrel back towards the camera and you’re in manual focus mode.

THE AUTOFOCUS ISSUE

Let’s cut right to the chase: the BIG difference between this lens, priced at about $750, and the Canon version, costing $1450, is in the autofocus: there’s simply no comparison. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of autofocusing a modern professional telephoto lens like my Canon 70-200, you’ve experienced the almost-instantaneous and silent operation of its autofocus motors: you point your camera at something, hit the autofocus and zip!—it’s there. You hear almost nothing as the lens racks into perfect focus. They accomplish this with something they call an ‘Ultrasonic Motor’ technology—all of the zooming and focusing happens internally, and very, very quickly and quietly.

The Tamron reminds me of an older-generation focusing method: even though it is an internal-focusing lens, you can literally hear the elements cranking and grinding into focus. It’s not terribly slow, it’s simply that if you’ve experienced the other lens, this will seem interminable. 10 years ago, all autofocus lenses sounded and worked this way. But it’s no longer an up-to-date focusing solution. If you plan on using your camera/lens for sports, wildlife photography or anything else that requires lightning-fast autofocus, you’ll need to think long and hard before deciding to go the Tamron route.

Water droplets. The Tamron lens had difficulty focusing on things in its close-in 'macro' range. Even with my focus sensor positioned directly on this twig, I had to swtich to manual focus to render this sharply. (Copyright 2012 / Andrew Boyd)

That said, if you are a wedding or portrait or landscape shooter or just about anyone who isn’t planning on using the lens for a lot of action-based shooting, then this may work just fine for you.

On this red camellia flower against a green leafy background, the Tamron, top, actually produced a more pleasing and accurate rendition of the color present than the Canon lens, bottom. I didn't test this extensively but in at least this case the Tamron was superior. (Copyright 2012 / Andrew Boyd)

So it’s really a question of your priorities and plans. You pay big bucks for the latest focusing solutions in the current generation of Canon or Nikon professional 70-200mm lenses. If that’s not part of what you need for your photography, this lens represents an excellent value.

One other quick note: I found that the Tamron would not couple with my Canon 1.4x teleconverter. The Canon allows this hookup, which effectively turns the 70-200 into a 98-280mm lens (you lose 1 stop of light when you do this). For whatever reason, the connection between the Tamron and the extender does not work. I didn’t get to check this issue out on any of the other camera mounts that Tamron makes for this lens, so be careful and check this if it’s important to you.

Creating panorama photos with Canon’s Photostitch software

DiscerningPhotog — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 03:06:41 +0000

Same scene, two views: bottom photo is a 'straight' shot taken with my Canon 16-35mm f2.8 zoom at about 20mm; the top panorama verson is shot with the same lens but set at 35mm, each image composed vertically and overlapped about 20%. (Copyright 2012 / Andrew Boyd)

I used to use a piece of panorama software by Arcsoft called Panorama Maker but lost the use of it when I switched back to Mac computers about two years ago. It was a great little PC-only utility that allowed lots of flexibility in the merge process. I started using the ‘Photomerge’ plugin that comes inside Photoshop CS5 after that, and it did a decent job. But I found it was far less agile at handling complicated merges, sometimes ‘bombing out’ if I hadn’t created perfect overlaps for it to work with.

Now I’ve stumbled upon Canon’s wonderful Photostitch software, a little utility that comes bundled on the disk with just about any Canon digital camera. The version that I’m using which is pictured here is Version 3.2 from 2009.

I’ll take you through the steps of creating a panorama, in this case from six images shot on a recent foggy morning. I was out on what was turning out to be a very productive shooting trip when I found myself at the edge of a beautiful ‘oak alley,’ as we call these old live oak groupings in south Louisiana. Frequently these trees have outlived a now long-gone plantation house, lined up in two rows to form the ‘alley’ overhead. These stately old trees always seem to evoke a bit of mystery for me and I wanted to create something that gave a sense of that. But simply racking my wide lens all the way out to 16mm destroyed the intimacy and immediacy of the situation. I knew a series of images for a panorama was the answer.

I wasn’t using a tripod at the time, so I simply used my elbows to lock the camera against my sides and rotated my body about a quarter turn for each image. (The key is to remember to provide some overlap between each shot so the software can figure out where to stitch things together.)

Now for Canon’s Photostitch:

Your combined image will appear. Clicking the 'Display' icon will show you exactly where the merge took place between each image, in case you want to make adjustments before saving. In this case, everything was perfect. (Copyright 2012 / Andrew Boyd)

Hit the 'Save' tab. You'll get this dialogue box, asking you to name the new combined file and designate where you want it to go. It also shows you how it plans to crop the image. If you want to save it without the rectilinear crop, you can drag the crop sliders back out to save everything. (Copyright 2012 / Andrew Boyd)

The final combined image. I shot vertically for my six images in order to maximize the file size of my new photograph. This one came in at a whopping 167MB combined, or 187in x 60in @72dpi. That's a lot of data! (Copyright 2012 / Andrew Boyd)

Photo of the Day: Louisiana Brown Pelican in Flight

DiscerningPhotog — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:05:13 +0000

You have to admit: Louisiana does have the absolute coolest state bird. I mean, just look at this guy! Prehistoric, serene, that confident jaw jutting forward, always on top of his game….the Louisiana brown pelican: what’s not to love?

I was out shooting along the shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain recently when I was surprised to run into some of these big, beautiful birds. They are fairly common in this area but typically shy away from people, preferring to stay further out and away from areas with lots of human activity. I think the fog might have made them feel a bit more secure on this day, because they didn’t start when I got close enough to photograph. This one was part of a group of about a half a dozen, fishing from the pilings along the breakwater in Mandeville, La.

How to Choose Your Lens Aperture Explained

DiscerningPhotog — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 03:52:21 +0000

Learning how to choose your lens aperture (the ‘f-number’) can be very confusing for the beginning photographer. The discussion can quickly get into a daunting explanation of the shutter speed/aperture relationship, all of which means absolutely nothing to the novice. Here I’m going to give you all you need to know to make good choices about aperture. Your understanding of the lens aperture/shutter speed relationship will start to become clear as you apply this simple principle.

There are only two things you really need to understand to correctly choose a lens aperture:

If, when you look through the viewfinder, you want everything you see to be sharp in your resulting photograph, choose a small aperture by stopping the lens down. (I’ll explain how to do this in just a moment.)

If, when looking through the viewfinder, you want to isolate your subject from the background, throwing the background out of focus with only your subject sharp, choose a large aperture by opening the lens up. (Again, I’ll explain how to do this in just a moment as well.)

Two more tidbits, neither too complicated, must be understood before we proceed:

First: It sounds backwards, but ‘large apertures’ refers to a large hole for light to pass through to your CCD (charge-coupled device—the thing that captures your image) when you take your photo. Large holes are actually the smaller-sounding f-stop numbers: f1.8, f2.8, f3.5 are all relatively ‘wide open’ apertures.

Second: ‘Small apertures’ refer to small holes for light to pass through. Examples of small apertures (with the lens ‘stopped down,’ as we say in Photospeak) would be f11, f16, f22.

That’s it! Just these two principles will guide you to good aperture choices. Now here’s how to accomplish both of these things:

LARGE APERTURE EXAMPLE

If you’re shooting a football game with a telephoto lens, either indoors or outside on a sunny day, you’re going to want to isolate action shots of players from the distraction of the background by throwing that background out of focus. (Take a look at the current issue of Sports Illustrated and you’ll see dozens of examples of this practice.) To do this you’ll choose a relatively ‘wide-open’ aperture: probably f2.8 or f3.5 or f4. This will guarantee you shots without all of the rest of the commotion taking place in the frame in focus. [Important shutter speed nugget to grasp now: to have that wide-open aperture, with all of that light passing through to the CCD, you’ll need to use a very, very fast shutter speed to keep from overexposing your shot. If you’re using your camera’s ‘Aperture Priority’ exposure setup, it’ll make this adjustment for you. If not, you’ll need to increase the shutter speed until you see your camera’s version of ‘correct exposure’ line up.]

SMALL APERTURE EXAMPLE

Frost-covered mustard greens. The leaves are not all on the same flat plane--some are closer to my lens, others are further away-- so I stopped the lens down to f7.1 to increase the amount of subject matter that I could render sharply. (Copyright 2012 / Andrew Boyd)

Now we’re in a totally different shooting situation. We’re outside shooting plant life details. In this case, we want as much of the information in the frame to be as sharp as possible. So take your lens and choose a small aperture: f11 or f16 or f22 would be good places to start. [Here’s the related shutter speed factoid to absorb: to use such a small, small aperture, which doesn’t allow much light to reach the CCD, you’ll need to slow your shutter speed way, way, down, effectively giving that small aperture the longer amount of time it need to create a correct exposure. Again, either with manual exposure and your camera’s light meter, or with the aperture priority exposure setup on your camera, you can accomplish this little feat.]

Now of course there are twenty other things we could talk about now to address all of the related issues that you may encounter when you go out and try this. But that would just make things more complicated than I want them to be for you at this point. So instead, go out and give these two ideas a try! Shoot something with a ‘wide open’ aperture and see what happens. Then pick something that needs things ‘stopped down’ most or all of the way: check your results. Pretty cool, huh?

Once you’ve got this down, here’s another related article that adds some more pieces of the exposure puzzle.

That’s it! You now know most of what you need to understand about aperture and how to control it….so go shoot some pictures!

Always Carry a Camera

DiscerningPhotog — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:31:05 +0000

When I think about truly great images—the thrill I get from stopping, viewing, and really trying to absorb and experience a great photograph—I’m reminded of this simple but profound fact:

If the photographer that captured that image hadn’t picked up the camera that day, the image would only have been a momentary flash in his or her own consciousness: it wouldn’t have become the amazing photograph before me at that moment.

This is at the heart of all photography, isn’t it? Yet still there are days I forget to pick up the camera. (Or, it’s out of reach, unavailable at the one moment that I actually need it. This is a common issue as well.)

On those rare occasions when I’m out with my gear shooting and magical things do happen—the sudden appearance of an amazing cloud formation, the unexpected shimmer of light on water, or whatever the situation may be that suddenly dazzles and delights—on those occasions I am humbled and grateful just to be there, just to at least have the chance to attempt to bring a bit of that magic back with me as an image.

So it’s the simplest of admonitions: Always carry a camera. Maybe this means you need to pick up an additional, smaller camera. Maybe it means you’re going to be more determined to lug that big DSLR around all of the time. However you decide to approach this resolution, I promise that if you try it for just one week, amazing things will happen! No kidding!

You’ll become more aware of all the photographic opportunities throughout your day. You’ll ‘see’ more images as you are out and about. You’ll find yourself trying new and different experiments. It will change your shooting, and possibly your sensibilities of your world around you.

So carry that camera today. Carry it tomorrow, and the day after. Try this for one week and see what happens! It might just change your world forever.

December Flickr Group Critique: Black and White

DiscerningPhotog — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 02:24:08 +0000

[Note: Once a month we host a ‘group critique’ here at The Discerning Photographer based upon our related Flickr group pool. The idea behind the critique is to try and give a bit of constructive criticism and/or praise for the selected photographers’ work, and then to have a discussion about the images in the Comments section below. Please check out the following images, see what I thought about them, and tell us what you think!]

Black and white photography: do you practice it yourself? How do you find black and white shooting to differ from color shooting? For me, black and white is a wonderful area to explore: stripping color out of the imagery brings forth form, pattern, and the interplay of light and shadow in a way that my brain doesn’t process with color photos.

In our December 2011 Group Critique from our Discerning Photographer Flickr pool, I’ve chosen some black and white images for us to discuss. So, let’s get started!

‘Foggy Morn,’ by Enivea.

'Foggy Morn,' by Enivea http://www.flickr.com/photos/enivea/6498620587/in/pool-1182517@N23/

I think this image works wonderfully in black and white. The fog in the distance is nice and I love the strong diagonal line the tree forms from lower right to upper left, AND how nicely the foreground tree frames the distant tree, with its similar leaning shape, a bit of nice and subtle pattern repetition.

‘Pathway to the Sky,’ by CJ Schmit.

'Pathway to the Sky,' by CJ Schmit. http://www.flickr.com/photos/cjschmit/6482532521/in/pool-1182517@N23/

The strong lines and monolithic composition – think ‘2001—A Spacy Odyssey’ – make this one work for me. The reflection of clouds on the glass surface is great too.

‘White Curves,’ by Joyce445.

'White Curves,' by Joyce 445 http://www.flickr.com/photos/joyce411/6338666661/in/pool-1182517@N23/

We could probably all benefit from attempting to photograph a calla lilly. I always think about Georgia O’Keefe and Imogen Cunningham when I see good examples of calla lilies, and this one is no exception. Nicely done.

‘And Looked for a Way Out…’ by Justin Garofoli

'And Looked for a Way Out...' by Justin Garofoli http://www.flickr.com/photos/justingarofoli/6595753863/in/pool-1182517@N23/

I like the image more than the title. This is a nice image that would be better with a more interpretive toning job, in my opinion: I’d like to see the trees darkened to enhance the sense of foreboding and the foggy vanishing point brightened in contrast to the rest.. Justin, tell us about making this photograph.

‘Guimarães Castle,’ by Ana Matos.

'Guimarães Castle,' by Ana Matos. http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiuinha/6522457811/in/pool-1182517@N23/

So of course my question with Ana’s photograph is compositional: Ana, why did you feel the need to tilt your camera? For me, the tilt adds a sense of the world ‘askew,’ everything not quite right, etc….but I’m always suspect about camera tilts: does it bring so much attention to the act of photography that the actual results are diminished? I don’t know, but I’ll be really interested to see what Ana has to say about the image and what others think as well.

‘Little Lulu,’ by Sarah Tomlin.

'Little Lulu,' by Sarah Tomlin. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahtomlin/6546288285/in/pool-1182517@N23/

This wonderful photograph reminds me of all the joys of childhood: here a little girl proudly shows off her missing two front teeth. Sarah, tell us about making the photograph: what were the circumstances? You’ve captured a great moment—something that would qualify for the ‘Peak Action’ photo assignment that’s running over in the Discerning Photographer Forums right now—and I love the spontaneity of this image. Great job.

‘A single rose can be my garden… a single friend, my world,’ by Mick LeConte.

'A single rose can be my garden... a single friend, my world,' by Mick LeConte. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mickleconte/6284769867/in/pool-1182517@N23/

I had to go google this to find the proper attribution: apparently spoken/written by American-born Leo Buscoglia, who wrote a number of best-selling inspirational books before his death in 1998. Mick, are you a Buscoglia fan? I like the image simply for the layered texture that the rose makes, subtle in all of its black and white tonality.

So please let us know your thoughts about these images in the Comments below, and we’ll see if we can get a conversation going, and thanks!
Hi, I’m Andrew Boyd, a.k.a. The Discerning Photographer, and I hope this post has been interesting and informative. Please leave me a comment about it, let me know what you’d like to see more of on the site! You can also sign up for email delivery of all future articles or my RSS feed. Or subscribe to our Facebook page or our Twitter feed. Thanks!–DiscerningPhotog

Photo Assignment #6 : ‘Peak Action’

DiscerningPhotog — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:15:46 +0000

New Orleans Saints safety Roman Harper (41) manages to get a hand in and stop this touchdown pass intended for Carolina Panthers tight end Greg Olsen (88), 2nd quarter, during the New Orleans Saints vs. Carolina Panthers game in the Superdome January 2, 2012. (Photo copyright 2012 / The Times-Picayune / Andrew Boyd)

There’s a new Photo Assignment posted over in the Photo Assignment Forum here at The Discerning Photographer. It’s all about the notion of ‘peak action’ and what’s entailed in capturing it. This assignment will challenge your timing, framing, understanding of your camera, and more…

Photo Assignment #6 : ‘Peak Action’

Here’s our new photo assignment at The Discerning Photographer’s Forums: ‘Peak Action.’ What exactly does that mean? Well, it’s not just about catching the quintessential sports moment (although certainly qualifies as an example). It can be the absolute split second of surprise on a person’s face. It might be the exact point that a lightning bolt cracks through the sky. It can be the instant a jumping fish’s nose hits the water. It’s all about the true ‘decisive moment,’ as Henri Cartier-Bresson was fond of saying: the point that everything else leads up to, and falls away from.

So: Take your camera gear, crank up the shutter speed (peak action usually does involve some very small fraction of time), and make us some ‘peak action’ photos!

We’ll keep this assignment up live in the Forums for about two weeks.

I can’t wait to see what you guys come up with!

“Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes forever the precise and transitory instant. We photographers deal in things that are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished, there is no contrivance on earth that can make them come back again. We cannot develop a print from memory…”—Henry Cartier-Bresson, ‘The Decisive Moment,’ 1952.

Photography Resolutions for 2012

DiscerningPhotog — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:11:37 +0000

Did you make any photography New Year’s resolutions last year? If you did, how did they work out for you? Successful? And now with the new year upon us, have you thought about any photographic resolutions or goals that you want to attempt for this year?

I think setting New Year’s photography resolutions is a useful thing for any shooter to do, if you want to improve your work—and who doesn’t? Below I’ll revisit my resolutions for 2011 and show you my ‘scorecard’ for how it worked out. Then I’m going to let you in on my new set of goals for 2012…

2011: My Photography Resolutions

1. Introduce a companion site to The Discerning Photographer which will be focused on my own fine art photography. I worked and struggled with this one. I’ve learned a good bit about html and javascript and even a bit of jquery, but I haven’t put it all together into the site I want. The biggest challenge has turned out to be the photo gallery animation, which I haven’t nailed down.

2. Automate my image backup routine. I’m using the Time Machine utility on my Mac now which does an automatic backup every day. I need to purchase an additional hard drive to provide some additional redundancy here. But this goal is pretty well met.

3. Enter at least a half dozen juried photography shows this year. Partial success on this one. I entered 4 juried shows in 2011 and had work accepted into 3 of them. Yowwsirr! This was great and an education for me as well: framing, matting and shipping solutions all had to be figured out, as well as the images themselves. It’s actually pretty damned expensive to pursue this, I’ve discovered: most shows average about $40 for the entry fee; if your work is accepted, you need to frame it ($$) and then provide shipping both ways to the show ($$$). So while I think it’s important to build a show record, it’s not cheap.

4. Continue to shoot for myself every single week. No problem on this one. I stayed in a pretty good shooting rhythm all year and produced a lot of work I’m excited about.

5. For the blog: more hands-on equipment reviews. Some success here. Maybe not as many as I had hoped to do. The equipment reviews are a lot of work, particularly to create all of the illustrative images that I feel I need for the reviews to be as useful as I want them to be. But the reviews I did have all generated interest and traffic for the site.

2012 Resolutions

1. Keep shooting for myself each week. This is the most important goal for all of us, I think.

2. Enter 4 more juried photo exhibitions this year. I’m cutting this goal down some because it looks like I may have a one- or two-person exhibition of work later this year. If this happens, it’s going to be a lot of work to put together. More on this later as it develops.

3. Redesign and reorganize The Discerning Photographer web site. I want to make the information easier to find and use on the site, so I’m in the middle of researching new WordPress themes.

4. Launch the fine art companion site for my landscape work. This will link to the blog and hopefully create new opportunities going forward. I just need to get it done!

That’s it for my photography goals for this year.

So: have you set your own photo goals? If not, I really urge you to stop what you’re doing, sit in a quiet place, and imagine what you’d like to accomplish this year with your work. Then write those ideas down. This is critical because you want to hold yourself accountable. Take that list and put it somewhere you’ll see it once a week or so—on your refrigerator is fine, or as a pop-up reminder in your calendar program, if you use one. (The reminder technique isn’t important, just as long as you set something up that works.)

I’d love to hear what your photo resolutions are for this year! So leave a Comment and we’ll see what folks are thinking and/or dreaming about.