July 2010: elf's Canon 50D Journal

From Friday Foto

Dame's Rocket (Hesperis matronalis) is a plant in the mustard family.

Today's bonus is Nick Onken's portfolio. He's a lifestyle (catalog or ads) and portrait photographer. I especially love the compositions in his children portfolio.

Note: site requires Flash. To see his portfolio, click on "photography" in the menu along the top.

The key to this kind of product photography is to use center-weighted averaging metering and to over-expose the shot (+1.5EV in this case) and have the bowl blend into the background.

Most of the time was spent re-arranging the fruit in the bowl. Since I was going to eat the fruit later, I couldn't use the usual tricks of food photography— gluing the fruit down it doesn't move. The bowl was on sale at IKEA for $1.99.

The whole point of getting an SLR the ability of choosing the appropriate lens for the type of photography you are going to do. With a point-and-shoot, you have only one lens, which has to perform in a range of situations (landscape, sports, macro, portrait, ect.) and so leads to a compromise in quality. So, how do you choose a lens?

The comments make for interesting reading, my favourite being: "Good pictures are 80% photographer, 15% hardware and 5% luck. And 10% nudity."

The article recommend prime lenses (single focal length) over a zoom. I have recently become a believer in that school of photography. Once you decide to go prime, the second choice you have to make is whether you prefer to shoot 24mm/50mm/100mm or 35mm/85mm/135mm.

Choosing the correct resampling algorithm when resizing photographs in Photoshop makes a big difference in how they look. Choose Bicubic resampling when resizing images for the web.

From FridayFoto: Downtown

"Paint your Faith" mural detail on the remaining side the rectory of the United Metropolitan Church. The church hall and part of the rectory were demolished to make way for a condominium.

From Friday Foto

Violet-blue Clematis, from the Greek word klématis, a climbing plant, of about 200 species. The oils are extremely irritating to the skin and mucous membranes; the plant is considered toxic. Taken with the Canon S30 in my sister's garden.

For the past two weeks, I have been photographing the research labs and the researchers in our department, for stock images. It involved emailing all the faculty a request to photograph their lab along with the description of what I had in mind and arrange a meeting with them and their students to see the facilities and arrange a time that they would all be available to be photographed.

Photography was done exclusively with the 24/1.4L prime lens. I used a hot-light with a reflector, mounted on a stand to brighten-up the shadows and give indirect lighting when I switched-off the overhead lights (see photos with the bluish light). I forgot to photograph the lighting setup.

Most of the photos are not post-processed.