Is "Getting It Right In The Camera" Even Possible?

Is "Getting It Right In The Camera" Even Possible?

This is not an editing how-to post. But it is a little bit of a wake up call to remind us all that with a very slight bit of what I call "polishing", we can make improvements that we simply were never able to do in my film days. There were the usual filters we could stack in front of our lenses but we had no control over the amount of any filtration effect.

The Power of Connections

The Power of Connections

My message this week is a simple one. Get connected. We all live in neighborhoods where we have good friends, nice family members, community connections and none of them share our concerns, fears, celebrate our wins or help us mourn our losses. However, when you walk to the registration desk at a local camera club, local or regional PPA, ASMP, PSA, or other association or group, you may be pleasantly surprised that you are surrounded by people just like you.

The "Weirdness" of a Lens, Any Lens

The "Weirdness" of a Lens, Any Lens

Fast forward to a great little DIY fix for this situation. Can’t read a label? In the hotel shower and you can’t read the labels to know which is the shampoo and which is the conditioner since they look exactly alike? 

Here’s the trick: Make yourself a small aperture to view through, even without your glasses.  Make one of those “A-OK” signs with your hand, a loose fist, with your finger closed inside of your thumb. Then make the hole smaller and smaller and smaller, until there is barely an opening to see through….then look through that as you read a label, newsprint, or the like. Put your eye right up against the tiny little opening and you won’t believe how sharp things will appear to you.

Perspective - A Distorted Tale

Perspective - A Distorted Tale

Put a wide angle lens up to your eye and things look farther away and some objects look distorted. Do the same with a telephoto lens and objects look closer. They seem magnified and objects appear compressed. This phenomenon is called perspective distortion and some folks would say that each lens provides a different perspective. But how’s this for shaking things up?

Perspective is not controlled by the lens.

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The Portfolio - Never a Second Chance

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The Portfolio - Never a Second Chance

Regardless of your method of presenting your work, the fact is that nothing you can do is more important than your content. No one cares how much trouble it was for you to get a specific picture and nobody cares about the story behind the image. They simply care about the quality of the image. 

One Light Fun

One Light Fun

Cinematographers have often shown that it is the shadows that are as important, if not more important than the light in creating a mood, feel, evoking an emotion or setting the scene.  For decades we have had great examples in art and cinema of a strong single-directional light from a window in a beautiful portrait, a streetlamp in an old black and white movie, and many of the most well known photographs of all time.