Archive for June, 2009

Picture for today:

Going down the 10 freeway toward Phoenix, AZ. Taken with 1DsII and 17-40L.

Till next time…

Pictures for today:

View from outside the hotel room floor. It was a nice night out. Taken with 1DsII and 50mm f/1.4.

Stairs... to somewhere. I don't remember where I took this so yeah. This was in Solvang, CA. Taken with 1DsII and 17-40L.

Now something “fun”:

Ice in the freezer section of a local market. Taken with my super duper Blackberry.

Chinese Ravioli... yes that is what we call dumplings now. Taken with my awesome Blackberry.

Till next time…

Haven’t really blogged about anything in awhile but I have some interesting (well, hopefully it’ll be interesting) articles that I’m working on. Ok, not working on but thinking of. Now this post is more of a rant so if you’re not interested in hearing my blabbering just stop here. I’m just going to start ranting now so yeah it might not be coherent.PLEASE don’t take this rant as how I truly feel. It’s meant to bring up certain things that has been bugging me a little but also make it an enjoyable read.

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A warning… profanity will be quite abundant in this post and if you are “guilty” of what I’m about to say DON’T be offended because I’m not targeting you. I am guilty of some of these too. It is just things that I’ve noticed recently and I’m in a bitchy mood. Also the majority of the “examples” that I provide are purely fiction (although based on real experiences).

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First up, HDR aka High Dynamic Range photography. Why is every new photographer so obsessed with HDR? It’s not new and it’s fucking ugly if you don’t know when and what to do it on. You want HDR? Look at Ansel Adams’ work. Photogs that use HDR on everything can go FUCK themselves.

Sites like Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook, etc. are inadvertently damaging photography. DSLRs and their relatively cheap price is ruining the industry. People just starting out with no formal training or even a good understanding of photography is setting a “standard” that websites like flickr, photobucket, etc. are “fostering” which makes things worse. People that don’t know a “good” photo from a meh one. Sites like flickr are full of people that don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about and making groups and comments on pics that are shit saying that “OMG this is an awesome picture” and then people see those comments and think “OMFG, you’re right this is an awesome pic!” Causing a fucking bandwagon effect. Then the stupid fucker that took the pic goes “OMG I need to get more pics like this then” (which btw I am guilty of). Instead of learning and going “Ok this pic is meh. I need to do x,y,z to improve” they just fucking stop and go “Must use same settings and processing from now on because everyone says it’s fucking the best thing since bottled farts!”

I’ve seen comments on Flickr that says “this is a great shot!” (not exact words mind you) and I’m looking at it going “WTF, are you fucking high?”. Then there are those people who believe they know more than you. They see the pictures and say things like “Eh, I don’t like this photo” and when you ask them why they can’t fucking explain it “I don’t know I just don’t like it.” Oh thanks, that’s very fucking helpful you dumb fuck. Now you might think from reading this part that these people piss me off the most. You would be wrong… no the people that miss me off the most are those that see a photo, say an environmental portrait, and say “This picture sucks. The person is looking directly into the camera and the pose is so bleh. And look at all the background, you should of blurred it all out.” OMG fucking genius here, oh wait… it’s an environmental portrait not a fucking CK advert!

And now one of the worst offenders IMO, people are too used to the photoshopped looks! I FUCKING HATE THAT! People/models/monkeys have shown me pictures that are OBVIOUSLY no longer in the realm of true photography but graphic fucking design. “Oh can you do something like this?” No, go hire Dave Hill (nothing against Mr. Hill just that I don’t like the look. Good photog too if you take away the processing and look just at the original shots). People just don’t seem to understand what I mean when I say “Anything I can’t do with film in a dark room, I won’t do in photoshop or any other program for that matter.”

Then there are photogs that go by the “spray and pray” philosophy. No I’m not going to take 1000 pics on the photo shoot, I’m not going hold down the shutter button while the model moves his/her ass around because you want to “go with the flow” and “memory is cheap anyway”. No, fuck you. They just take a ton of pics and think that’ll give them more pics to pick from and the greater the likelihood of capturing a good one. They take like 1000 pics but only 10 of them are usable. That’s a piss poor keeper rate. You’re not shooting fucking sports. There’s a model in front of the camera and you’re in a “controlled” situation. There should be no fucking reason for you to switch your camera to machine gun mode and just fire away like your model is an army of grunts and you’re the fucking Master Chief. This gives the models the mindset of “Oh I don’t need to work as hard because we’re going to take a bizillion pics anyway”. My keeper rates are pretty high. For “events” and other PJ style assignments (think weddings), my keeper rate is about 10%. That means if I take 1000 pics, 100 of them are useable or worth keeping. For model shoots they’re pretty close to about 8 or 9 percent. Sports photogs (I’m talking pros here) have a keeper rate of about 0.1% based on stats taken from the Beijing Olympics. If that’s the level of keepers you’re getting on a model shoot, you’re doing it wrong.

Anyway, that was quite a long and hateful rant. I feel better now. Take what I’ve said here and interpret it however you like. It’s not meant to be completely serious so don’t interpret it like I’m going to bolt you to a tree and set you on fire if I ever catch you doing any of the above. I hope you enjoy reading this rant as I did writing it (if this is true you’ll probably about to fall asleep now). Thanks for listening… or reading. :p

Till next time…

Picture for today:

Traditional Danish dancers at Solvang, CA. Taken with 1DsII and 17-40L.

Till next time…

So finally got around to posting the pictures from the Janice shoot including the behind the scenes. Check them out below:

Janice Shoot Gallery

As usual the BTS photos are copyright with all rights reserved to their respective photogs. My watermark is added to discourage unauthorized use.

Janice Shoot BTS

EDIT: Just noticed that I spelled talking wrong in the shot of John on the phone. It says walking… it’s suppose to be talking.

Till next time…