dSLR Dad

Let’s face it, we can’t all have one room devoted to an entire photo studio. However, you can make a bedroom, office, or other spare room serve up as double duty for your photographic interests.  Photographer James Burger does just that in the following video:

Some key points that came to me while watching this: (more…)

As a dSLR Dad, transitioning from taking snapshots to making photographs is our ultimate goal.  However, to reach that point can involve more than just shooting 10,000 frames, it involves some knowledge. The best way to get to that point is to pick up a couple books, but which books should you really choose?  Well, the following are the first two books that I tell every dSLR Dad to buy:

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Moose Peterson, wildlife and landscape photographer extraordinaire, has produced a video on digital Black and White photography techniques.  In the video, he covers not only how he converts all of his images using NIK Software’s Silver Efex Pro, but also how he pre-visualizes the B&W effect while in the field.  You can watch this very informative video on his MooseNewsBlog.

image by michelle.k.

Digital Photography School has a great article detailing fifteen tips to capture a great candlelight photograph:

Have you ever tried to photograph a candle lit scene with your digital camera?

The results can be stunning with the warm glow of flickering flames reflecting off your subjects face (can you feel the romance?) but the shooting in such a low light environment make it can make it a challenging situation.

Here are a few tips on how to get that perfect candle light portrait!

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Photographer David Bergman made this Gigapan image from the north press platform during President Obama’s inaugural address at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC on January 20, 2009.  He details how he created this panorama on his blog:

I made a panoramic image showing the nearly two million people who watched President Obama’s inaugural address. To do so, I clamped a Gigapan Imager to the railing on the north media platform about six feet from my photo position. The Gigapan is a robotic camera mount that allows me to take multiple images and stitch them together, creating a massive image file.

My final photo is made up of 220 Canon G10 images and the file is 59,783 X 24,658 pixels or 1,474 megapixels. It took more than six and a half hours for the Gigapan software to put together all of the images on my Macbook Pro and the completed TIF file is almost 2 gigabytes.

You can view and zoom around the entire 1,474-Megapixel Photo over at Gigapan.org.  You can find out more about David Bergman on his blog.

"Mother and Child" by Julie Falk

Popular Photography Magazine has an article by Julie Falk on how to photograph snowflakes:

Shooting snowflakes is easy — just follow these tips:

Get in as close as the camera will let you — usually about 2 inches. Hold the camera steady, and shoot from as many angles as possible.

Aim for snowflakes that are on surfaces with clean lines and that are positioned at an angle so early morning or late afternoon sunlight can bring out details. And, Falk adds, “It also helps to find flakes in the ‘twilight zone’ areas of the snow — not in full sun nor quite full shadow — so the background of the sunlit flake is the cobalt blue shadow that snow has on sunny days.”

Large, soft flakes photograph better than small, bright ones. Falk has found them at diameters up to 5mm. “You need to have a lot of moisture in the air,” she says, “and it needs to be bitter cold.”

Nearly windless days are ideal for snowflake hunting, to up the likelihood of finding crystals intact. Colder temperatures help “to keep their little arms from melting off before you can get to them.”

You can read the entire article over at PopPhoto.com.  You can also view more of Julie Falk’s photography at flickr.

digital Photography School has posted eleven very creative photographs involving Lego characters from Flickr.

Have you ever met a Lego enthusiast? They can be a lot of fun to talk to and will open up a whole world (or perhaps ‘culture’ is a better word) for you around the little colorful bricks that many of us stop playing with as kids. Many Lego lovers are also keen photographers who love to document their work, fun, humor and creativity. Here’s just a quick sample of some of the hundreds of thousands of Lego Photos on Flickr.

You can view the rest of the photos here.

Zack Arias, a full time editorial photographer, has published an excellent tutorial on how to set up and photograph a seamless white background.  This five part tutorial is one of the best I have seen:

Part 1: Gear & Space

Part 2: Setting Lights And Exposure

Part 2b: Full Length with OneLight (more…)

I mentioned Rod Mar before in this blog.  Rod is a Sports Photographer and is covering the 2008 Olympics for the Seattle Times.  His blog, the Best Seat in the House, has provided great insights into how one prepares to capture these events.  In his latest post, The Usain Asylum, Rod details capturing Jamaica’s Usain Bolt breaking Michael Johnson’s 12-year-old world record in the Mens 200 meter final (A record that I thought would stand for at least another decade):

Gotta love this guy.

A photographer’s dream.

Poses before he races.

Poses while he races.

Poses after he races.

Heck, in the prelims, I think he did more posing than racing.

Really. Dude is ridiculous fast, and photogenic to boot.

You can read the rest of the article over  at The Seattle Times.

Heinz Kluetmeier has been a sports photographer for over four decades.  You’ve recently seen his work in my previous post about the series of underwater photos detailing Michael Phelps victorious finish for his 7th Gold.  He is also the photographer of Sports Illustrated’s only Olympic Cover without a caption, the Miracle on Ice Issue.

Richard Deitsch at Sports Illustrated.com interview Mr. Kluetmeier during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Sports Illustrated photographer Heinz Kluetmeier has covered every Olympics for SI (with the exception of Innsbruck) since the Munich Games. He and his assistant, Jeff Kavanaugh, landed the signature sequence of the Olympics: Michael Phelps beating Serbia’s Milorad Cavic to the touchpad in the 100 butterfly. Below, Kluetmeier explains how he got the shot and the difference between Mark Spitz and Michael Phelps as photography subjects. Click here to see the photos.

You can read the entire Q&A with SI’s Heinz Kluetmeier over at SI.com.

Sports Illustrated also has a collection of Heinz Kluetmeier’s own favorite shots.

You can read and view more about Heinz Kluetmeier at his own website and at Getty Images.com.