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Tag Archives: photos
Colin Gallagher: Winter in Central PA
This shot was taken after the only real snowfall this year in Central PA. Failure to set an alarm led to a late start, missing sunrise by a good 3 hours. Grumbling that I may have missed and frozen beauty before the sun did its work, a friend and I hopped into his Subaru and headed out of town towards Poe Valley.
© Colin Gallagher
The road into the valley looked pretty well-plowed, which worried me. I wanted fresh snow. Untouched. My fears were soon dispersed as we made a right onto a side road and clearly left our mark as the first ones there since the snowfall. A mile drive through snow drifts and sagging, snow-laden evergreens later, we pulled off next to a bridge. Strapping on the boots, I headed out into the woods towards the lovely stream cutting through it. The first few shots were nice, and served their purpose in getting my juices (and warm blood) flowing as I stepped carefully from rock to rock, trying to get a shot down the stream towards the bridge. The game of cat and mouse with the sun was growing frustrating, the dark midday shadows cutting harsh lines through most of my pictures.
Enter Solstice, my friend’s adorable dog.
Crashing through the trees off the right side of my shot, a few of the smaller, bare trees brushed up against the evergreens towering over them, sending dusty snow sprinkling down through the sunlight. And just then, a breeze blew through. From the very tops of the pines, snow crystals began raining down all around me. The light from the sun softened, glittering as the cloud of snow diffused the harsh rays. I stood there, mesmerized for a moment while I got a second helping of falling snow in my own little part of Poe Valley. Then I remembered something…
Push the button, Colin.
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Colin is a 27-year-old Bellefonte photographer from Pennsylvania. His uncanny ability to completely destroy any piece of lighting equipment that he touches continually drives him outdoors to capture the breathtaking scenes Mother Nature has to offer.
Website: http://colintgallagher.com
Posted in Behind the Image, Landscape
Also tagged Colin Gallagher, photographers, photography
8 Comments
Dipayan Bhattacharjee: Human Rights
A man crossing one of the busiest streets in the city with a load on his back which he has to deliver at a shop on the opposite side of the street, and that probably weighs ten times more than his own weight.
I was out on the streets trying to get a subject to shoot for an exhibition on “Human Rights”. It would be unfair if I took all the credit for this image. It so happened that I was looking in exactly the opposite direction from this subject when all of a sudden a friend of mine who was accompanying me in the shoot, pointed her hand right over my shoulder (reaching behind me) and shouted “human rights! human rights!” I immediately turned back and saw what I saw and a part of what you are seeing right now. I barely had the time to make any adjustments on the camera (luckily I had done that before). I just raised the camera to my eye and in less than a second I had released the shutter and the moment had also passed away. Would I be a milli-second late, I could have never got this shot. Because just as I pressed the shutter and even before I could remove my eye from the viewfinder, a big car went past right across my frame, and by the time the traffic emptied out, the person had already crossed the street.
Now about this person, it would be very unfair to say that he is doing it because he can. No! He is doing it because he has to. So that he can feed his family. Employment is a major problem in India, and so people literally do/have to do anything to earn a meal. But we can clearly see that the job this person is doing is inhuman. The smallest mistake and he could get crushed under the weight. Or maybe even run-over by a car.
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Dipayan Bhattacharjee is a passionate Street & Portrait Photographer who loves to show posed beauty as well as candid truth.
Website: http://50mmstreettog.blogspot.com/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/xedmundian
Posted in Behind the Image
Also tagged Dipayan Bhattacharjee, photographers, photography, rights, street photography
6 Comments
David Bellis: Wedding in Historic Merchant Adventurers’ Hall
It was January, late afternoon, where the couple Tom and Katy were concerned about the low light and had pretty much given up on any chance of the outside shots they had wanted post ceremony. Not wanting to disappoint them, I was mulling over the options prior to the wedding with Barry, a photographer friend, when he offered to assist by holding an umbrella, opening up the possibility of getting some very nice off camera lighting. I’d never worked with an assistant before at a wedding and was intrigued by the creative options, so agreed.
This was an image that won me a Bronze Bar from The Guild of Photographers recently.
The building in the background is the historic Merchant Adventurers’ Hall, in the center of my hometown, York, which dates from 1357 and is a popular location for wedding ceremonies in the city. York is a very photogenic city generally, with many wonderful locations to photograph bride and grooms!
I positioned the couple on the left-hand third of the frame and then did a test shot for the ambient light, which at this point was fast disappearing. The ironic thing about shooting at dusk, is that if you want to capture the lighting that you see in front of you, you need to underexpose. This is because the sensor does its best to render everything it sees in front of it as if it was shot at two in the afternoon. I then used the pop up flash on my Canon 60D to trigger the Speedlite that Barry was holding, pointing into the umbrella at camera left. The pop up flash was used as a trigger only, and did not throw any light onto the scene. The Speedlite did a fantastic job of rendering Katy’s dress and didn’t need any compensation.
The image looked good straight out of the camera, but I took it a little further in Lightroom. I decided to darken down the background some more, so used the adjustment brush to reduce the exposure of pretty much everything except the couple and a patch of lawn in front of them. Then there was just a trip into Photoshop to clone out an intrusive sign that was sticking out of the lawn to their right, and that was job done.
Vital statistics: Camera: Canon 60D with 17-55mm F2.8 lens, Canon 580EX Speedlite, manual exposure, F3.5, 1/100 sec, 1250 ISO, evaluative metering.
David Bellis is a professional portrait and wedding photographer in York, UK, a historic and photogenic city.
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Website: http://www.bellisweddingphoto.com/
Posted in Behind the Image, Wedding Photography
Also tagged adobe, Canon, David Bellis, Flash, lightroom, photography, Photoshop
6 Comments
Hummers at High Speed
Humming birds can be a difficult subject to photograph. The rate of speed they move makes it almost impossible to photograph while in flight. Your best photo opportunities present themselves while these fast flyers are feeding or they land to take that rare break.
Over the years, I have anticipated their seasonal arrival, and with camera in hand, I begin taking advantage of some great photo opportunities. The first time I attempted to photograph hummingbirds, I was not pleased with the results. My images were not in focus, and often times came out grainy and overexposed. Learning from these photos, a different approach was used in an attempt to improve the image quality.
After reviewing my errors, it was determined that first off, I was in a rush; I did not take the time needed to properly dial my camera into the environment I was shooting in. Secondly, I used the wrong lens for the situation. A super zoom lens was used and I did not need to employ such a lens for the situation. Based on these mistakes, I wanted redemption, and would not be denied.
On an early Saturday morning, I set up my camera near the hummingbird feeder and proceeded to patiently wait for these fast flyers to start their morning feeding frenzy. Surprisingly I waited almost an hour for some action and when the birds started to feed, they noticed my presence. Every time I would move to focus on the subjects, they would immediately fly away. To capture the images I literally had to be in position and motionless to snap the images. Over the coarse of the morning, the hummingbirds became more comfortable with my presence and even began to land on some of the existing vegetation’s we had planted in years prior to clean themselves. Although I was able to capture some nice images with their long tongues out, my position had some obstructions in place that took away from those photos. My advice when trying to photograph hummingbirds is simple. Patience and time, Allow them to become comfortable with your presence. Doing so will benefit you greatly.
The shots: Canon camera and Tamron lens combination. 270mm focal length with an aperture of f-8. ISO setting at 400 with a shutter speed of 1/500 to 1/800 of a second.
Michael Sargent is a top wildlife outdoor photographer in the eastern United States. See more:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/M.SargentPhotography
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/msargentphoto
Blog: http://msargentphotography.wordpress.com
Posted in Photography Techniques, Wildlife
Also tagged birds, Michael Sargent, photographers, photographs, photography, techniques, tips, wildlife photography
5 Comments
The War on Photographers
PopPhoto has a great article on photographers falling foul of the police and security guards for taking pictures called The War on Photographers
amateur and professional photographers all over the country are being stopped and harassed with no legal basis. As digital cameras proliferate wildly, so do attempts to restrict what you can shoot and how you can use the picture. And not all attempts to quash photography have to do with national security concerns. Some invoke copyright and trademark protection, others the privacy both of celebrities and ordinary people. But you can fight back. Knowing your rights and restrictions as a photographer is a good first step. When cases reach the point of legal proceedings, they’re usually settled in the photographer’s favor, according to lawyers who have represented photographers in court. However, sometimes your own understanding of the law isn’t enough. According to his suit, when Jim McKinniss told the police officers that he was on public property and thought it was legal to photograph, “One of the officers asked if [I] had heard about September 11 and asserted that, since the terrorist attacks…it was illegal to photograph bridges, airports, and refineries.”
This is a crock. There’s no law in California or anywhere else in the U.S. that prohibits shooting such places from a public locale. You can even photograph inside airports, if you don’t point your camera at security checkpoints.
“These laws just don’t exist,” explains McKinniss’s attorney, Robert Myers, who took his case pro bono. “A law that attempts to prohibit photography from places open to the general public would be unconstitutional.”
The piece features some great, quite scary, stories plus some tips on how to handle the situation if it ever happens to you.
Technorati Tags: photography, law, tips, news
Posted in News and Commentary, Press Freedom
Also tagged infringement, laws, news, photographers, Press Freedom, public places, rights
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Crop Circle Photographs
Wired is showing a gallery of crop circles in a feature. Some of the designs are really cool.
I say “designs” because a few years back I worked for an agency where we hired some guys to create one for us. All illusions of this being an extra terrestrial phenomenon were shattered there and then. Even more so when so-called experts declared to all that it was real, couldn’t possibly be a fake and that it was exhibiting strange electro magnetic properties!
Here is a quote from my old boss
Remember, the truth is out there … just maybe not what you hope the truth is!