Andrew Macpherson

There are a lot of Photoshop Video Podcasts out there, many directly brokered by the iTunes store.  I’m a great podcast fan for storing interesting speech for driving, for the train and tube, but the video podcasts are not such a great idea on any medium other than one’s laptop, or I suppose an iPad, though I’m not sure if the screen is big enough on that.

There are 2 axes they can be judged on beyond the simple quality.  One is how far away from the product they stray — are they about Photoshop, or are we in the 3D effects of Photoshop Extended, are we integrating with Adobe Illustrator.  The other noticeable dimension is the photo to artwork axis, with some of the talks being in a zone delineated by the advertising message, and using techniques that work only in relatively low resolution.

My needs as an aspiring amateur stop at presenting my photographs well, whether for club competition,  or as a gallery wrap canvas of a family portrait that someone’s prepared to pay for.  so I’m only going to point you at ‘casts which meet my needs most of the time, and don’t overwhelm the viewer with advertising — some is OK to pay for the content after all, but some casts are 75% advert 20%chat and 5% content.  I may be missing really good content because I haven’t found it (yet), but there are ‘casts that I’m deliberately not mentioning too.

So what shows am I finding Useful? (continue reading…)

NeoCube

My friend David very kindly gave me a cute toy for the Solstice — a set of Neodymium spherical magnets marketed as the NeoCube — they’re fairly small but extremely powerful. Once one gets over being able to have a handful of ball-bearings that don’t go flying off in all directions,the obvious use is for still life exercises.  One can make rather amazing structures as the photo demonstrates, and the videos on the company’s website are an entree to endless hours of frustration.

So anyway it’s a nice difficult subject to light and photograph.  highly polished spherical items.  I had fun with soft-boxes, and black and white foam boards till I got a set of reflections that I liked,  Then the fun begins, to try to photograph it.  The image will only be in focus for very slightly more than a hemisphere at F11 with a full set of macro tubes.  I’ll be making a later post with some good links about circles of confusion, hyperfocal distance and the digital vs film non-issue triggered by thinking about this. (continue reading…)

What a revelation! There are speakers out there who will entertain and inform, as most do, and still mix in useful photographic, and club competition knowledge at the same time.  Until David Steel came along the overwhealming message from the club had been (continue reading…)

 

The problem a refurbished flat, with plenty of space that just isn’t getting potential renters through the door to look.  The idea is to break out of the mould of sterile pictures, and try to add some aspirational zing to the advertising.

Jessica very kindly offered to do the shoot on a TFP/CD basis to build up her portfolio, with a view to getting pro modelling and film extra work.  I think that the results were worthwhile — have a look at the studio shots in my portrait folder as well — the sepia head shot makes a wonderful canvas.  Jessica was a joy to work with, and made my job much easier.  Life as a photographer is so much better when the subject also wants to look good.

Equipment: Canon 5D, 70-200 f4 L, Elinchrom D-Lite 2 Go, Chinese wireless flash trigger, shooting tethered to the MacBook Air.  Shooting tethered allowed Jessica to get a feel for how the shots were coming out, and, seeing that helped her to work with me to improve the results.

I’m watching the very good series on lighting and related ideas Jim Talkington on ProPhotoLife.com in his video library link.  The link will take you to the main site, rather than the video library as it’s only polite to see what else he have to say.  I particularly liked the very swift demo of lighting glass, and the article on using a single studiolamp to light a model, but those are only highlights for me –I’m sure you’ll all find something good, or a nice way of putting something you already knew.

Thank you Jim!  great series.