Snapping Dreams

Every photographer knows that the word photography came from Greek and simply mean “Painting with light” but I think many don’t realize how true it is that photography is all about painting with light.

I for one, used to give all my attention to compositions, to apertures, to lines and shapes. And I must say yes, great composition and perfect aperture does give us a good photo. But when you learn how to find light and how to see light, it turns a good photo into a great photo. Light makes all the difference.

The one thing I took away from attending Jasmine’s online class 2 months ago was – finding good light. There were many other things she said during the class that were good but somehow, “finding good light” stuck with me.

From that class onwards,  whatever I shot, people, food, flowers (yeah I know, actually those are the ONLY things I shoot! :p), I paid attention to light – whether the light was soft or harsh, whether it was warm or cool and whether the shadow was long or short! Yeah, it sounds a bit crazy but it did make all the difference in my pictures. Whether a picture was flat or whether a picture looked alive, it all depended on light (and shadow)!

“If you learn how to find good light and shoot confidently, that’s all you need.“

… was what Jasmine said. And it is true. Very true. And the great thing about this is, you get to practice this anytime, anywhere cos light is everywhere!

Coincidentally, today’s the festival of lights – Diwali. Diwali’s probably not about celebrating light, but do allow me to celebrate light today from a photog’s perspective. Happy Diwali! :)

1. Food Pixels Food Photography Blog: Because of my 52 Breakfasts project, I’m on constant lookout for good food photography blogs and this is one of them. Not only does it offer tips on food styling, lighting and so forth, for foodies, it also offers recipes!

2. The Best Photography How-To Books: I’ve been looking for photography books to shop for lately and came across this list. I know a few books in the list are really good books, so I guess it could be a good list to refer to when shopping for photography books.

3. Landscape Photography for the Serious Amateur: I was never a landscape photog. Never had an interest for it and still don’t now. But I want to give it a try one day (soon!) and do well nevertheless. Gonna refer to this when I plan for a landscape shoot.

Happy reading!

It’s 2am and I have many other things that many would say I should give priority to, like “rest”. But I just wanted to share with you a little photography project I just started recently. To call it a project might be a bit exaggerating, since it’s not a conceptual shoot nor is it making an album for my portfolio. Anyway, as long as I learn something from it, who cares?

Know how some people cut out recipes from newspapers and paste it all in a little book? I have been “collecting” pictures lately to help me learn and discover my style. To elaborate…

1. On learning:
   Just in case you are wondering… No, I don’t plan to bring the book with me on shoots and say, “OK, we just copy this picture.” It’s all about thinking why I like the pictures I collect. Is it cos of the pose that brought out the feminine side of the model? Or is it cos of the lighting that gave focus to the object? Or is it the moment captured? And after that comes the big question – how did the photographer achieved that?

2. On discovering my style:
   Got this idea from one of the articles I read lately. Don’t remember where exactly, so I can’t share the link. Sorry! But mainly, the author was telling her readers how she found her style through keeping a collection of photos that attracted her. Her rationale was that once you have a big collection of photos, going through them all, you will realize that there are common things that attract you. And from there, you’d find your style.

It’s not a super new project, actually, considering I have been “collecting” pictures from the net but it is quite a different experience when you get to cut pictures out of magazines and paste them in your little book. It makes it a fun thing to do. Definitely recommended for those who are in for some fun learning!

Coming back from a great dinner at a local Sushi restaurant, followed by a late night Skype chat with my parents and a very late shower, I just felt like doing some late night readings. And I just thought I’d share some of the stuff I’ve read with you! :)

1. “How to develop your digital marketing plan” – Doesn’t go much into details on marketing plans but serves as a good general guideline. Good place to start out from if you are totally lost on how to develop a marketing plan online.

2. “Photography by Nadja Wehrwein” – If you are in for some black and white photography inspirations, take a peek at this. Liked how much thought was given into composition, especially the pictures with reflections.

3. “Tips to budget your photography hobby” – Very basic stuff where you might just end up saying, “I already know all this stuff!!” but I think some stuff is good to be reminded of from time to time. By the way, anyone knows where in KL can I rent lenses?

That’s all for tonight! Night, world! :)

Came across this post by Frank Doorhof in Scott Kelby’s blog. It was one of the Guest Blog Wednesday posts. I found some of the points resonating with me and so I thought I’d share it here too. Here they are in short.

1. Even the best Photoshop users can’t make a bad picture really shine.
2. Learn to REALLY look through the viewfinder.
3. To make an image more interesting it’s very important to also invest in the styling and the model.

If you are interested in a more elaborated version, do read on.

Read the rest of this entry »

Morning people! Here’s a quick, short post for you.

For those who missed out Joe McNally’s Manfrotto School of Excellence webinar titled “Effective Lighting With Just One Light”, you can catch a recorded version at http://www.manfrottoschoolofxcellence.com. All you have to do is register yourself at the website and you are on for a class with Joe!

2nd thing is, if you’ve always followed Chase Jarvis’ blog, you should already know by now that there’s something new on the web called creativeLIVE.com. You get to catch free live workshops, seminars, classes there. The catch here is that you have to catch it live, if not you’d have to pay to watch the recorded version.

Perhaps a bit hard for those in Asia to make full use of creativeLIVE.com since most of the classes are held during the time we are supposed to be asleep. But if you are the photographer who doesn’t sleep, then it’s a different story altogether! :)

Enjoy all the learning!!

Many may think that the photography market is an easy one to enter but any photographer would tell you differently. It’s not just plainly a matter of how good you are but like all other businesses, marketing plays a very big role here too.

Sacha Dean Biyan understands this well. His site, Eccentris which took him three years to build is an award-winning site that receives over 2 million hits each month. It incorporates not only big, high resolution images but also clever animation and CD quality sound. Of course, such a rich multimedia site drags through most viewers’ browsers but here’s what Sacha has to say about it.

“The target audience was the art directors and other creatives in the field who were all equipped with fast computers and big screens and high-speed connections,” says Sacha. “[It] was never intended to attract a mainstream audience, although (for good or bad) it has, mostly out of curiosity I presume.”

Sacha’s spot on here. So what if it takes eons to load on an average photography-lover’s computer since they are afterall not the target audience?

Lesson here: Knowing your target audience is very important. If you are into wedding photography, such a site would be a terrible choice cos the average bride or groom to be won’t have fast computers or high-speed connections. A website as light as possible would be the best choice.

You can read more about Sacha Dean Biyan’s portfolio approach on Photopreneur.

As I wrote in one of my previous post “Joe McNally’s Hot Shoes Diaries”, Joe McNally was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in early February doing a series of workshops and a one day seminar. I attended the one day workshop and I must say, I’m really glad I went.

I’m very new to flash photography. So new that people would think why the hell am I jumping into Joe’s workshop right away. To give you a swimming pool analogy, it’d be like throwing myself into a pool when I don’t even know how to float.  But the thing is, I believe that if I threw myself into a pool, it’d make me learn how to swim faster than any other methods out there.

In Joe’s workshop, I learned of course about lighting (e.g. flashes, ezyboxes, trigrips, snoots…) but there was more to it than just that.

It was simply inspiring to see Joe work and to see the kind of work he creates right on the spot with different settings of lights. Joe makes it all seem so simple (and fun!). A flash here, a trigrip there and voila, the image created would be so strong it makes you want to create an image like that too.

It was also a different experience to work with other photographers in groups. We were divided into fours and assigned a model an hour for 2 hours. My group was very lucky to have Tarachin and Ong Tou. Both were very friendly and so easy to work with. Here’s what I got out of a short 15 min session each.

This was shot indoor using a black background. One of the photographers thought it was good to use a black background and create a ‘blend in’ effect’ since Tarachin was wearing black.

Tarachin was very expressive with her hands and had a great eye makeup done to highlight her beautiful eyes which was why all four of us focused very much on her left profile. In hindsight, I should have used lights to bring out more lines in the picture.

This shot of Ong Tou was taken at a spot where Joe showed us a technique to use the grills for strong shadows in the picture. All four of us liked the spot so much, we  decided to stay there throughout the hour. Ong Tou was cheerful and nice throughout the session and kept on saying it’s ok (to work under such condition) even though he was sweating buckets.

I like the red and blue mixture in this but somehow I feel it lacks something. Perhaps more red light on his face would have been better. What do you think?

P.S. Here’s more pics of Tarachin and Ong Tou by Milan Teh who was in the same group as me.

P.P.S Oh! And I heard Joe’s planning another workshop in Malaysia again next year. For those who missed it this year, make sure you don’t miss next year’s!

I’ve always hated the flash when I was still using my old point and shoot canon. No matter how badly lit a place could be, I insisted on no flash. For me, flash pics = blown out pics = ugly pics.

But today, I realized I could have improved the situation easily with just a few very simple tips. Very intuitive stuff but it just never came across my mind.

1. Take a step back. This will decrease the impact of the flash on the subjects.
2. Stick tissue or white tape to the flash, to diffuse the light. Remember that the colour of the material will affect the outcome of the pic. So stick to white if you don’t want blue people in your pics.
3. Putting a small piece of white card at an angle in front of the flash to redirect the flash upwards or sideways (instead of directly at the subject).

So, after blasting up the ISO, increasing the aperture, slowing down the shutter speed and you find out you still need flash, perhaps you might want to try the above tips! ;)

(To read more about avoiding blowing flash blow out with your point and shoot, go here)

It’d be good if I’ve got a picture for Christmas, but I don’t. So, let this be just another normal post.

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During my last trip back in Malaysia, I did a mother and daughter photo shoot for a friend’s friend. It was great fun and I’ve been wanting to blog about it for a long time now but never found time. And still haven’t found time for it yet. This blog post, sadly, won’t be a showcase of the pics from the photo shoot. But instead, I’m taking out one pic from the photo shoot to share with you.

As you will see, one of it is the original pic and the other is one where I added texture to it.

Original:

Textured:

I sometimes like to add textures to certain pictures because it creates an altogether different feeling. Like in this case, it adds a classic touch to it. While in other cases, it could give the picture a dreamy feeling (like the picture below which I found in my archives). And of course with your own creativity, you can just about create any mood you like for the picture.

It might seem like I’ve done a lot to the pic but actually adding textures to pictures is honestly, quite easy. There are many tutorials out there on how to do so, so I don’t think I need to give you a step by step here. Instead, you can check out this, this or this on how to add texture to your pictures. Here’s also a video tutorial, just in case.

And, here are some good sources for free textures online: 1. Texture Lovers 2. Deviant Art 3. Design Reviver

Have fun with the textures! Oh, and Merry Christmas! :)