The final result - GOGroove Blyesync SRC Bluetooth Speaker

Product Photography - Shooting and Editing GOGroove bluetooth speaker

June 1, 2015

There are days when it’s really slow in the photo studio and you have nothing to shoot. There are also days when you want to practice what you’ve learned from workshops and online course. It was exactly such a day a few weeks ago. I looked around in the studio and I saw GOGroove BlueSYNC SRC bluetooth speaker next to my desk. This bluetooth speaker has been in our studio for almost a year and it was time for me to practice some lighting techniques for product photography with this item. I will walk you through my process from shooting and setting up the equipment to post-processing.

Hiking Shoes Promo & Catalog Product Photography

May 12, 2015

I challenged myself recently - I had to produce hiking shoes' catalog photograph within 24 hours (this included pre- and post-production). At first, it sounded pretty easy: one photograph in one day. But as I started working on the assignment and I started adding new ideas and trying out different setups, time started to be a commodity which I didn’t have in this particular case. While the setup I used is fairly simple and post-processing wasn't too complicated, I thought I would share with you my process.

American robin (Turdus migratorius) looking for earthworms

A Little Zoo In My Backyard

April 19, 2015

When it comes to wildlife in my own backyard, I’m very lucky to live very to forests and parks. A variety of animals visit me on a daily basis but I had a bit of spare time only last week to try to photograph them.

[VIDEO] My Passion: Ride

February 21, 2015

Many people have passions for something, a hobby that s/he spends countless hours on learning, creating and perfecting. But a passion doesn’t have to be a hobby, it can be your work, an activity, a thing or a collection of things; as long as you put your heart and soul into it. I’ve been always fascinated with other people’s passion and I love to listen to their stories. Therefore, I have decided to start producing short videos - the series titled ‘My Passion’.

This is the first video about Kevin, a guy living in the mid-south of the USA. Every weekend he wakes up before the sunrise to pursue his passion - to ride.

My Disappointment with Lexar SD Cards (Errors and Corrupted Files)

February 3, 2015

My recent experience with errors and corrupted files on Lexar's SD memory cards made me to share my experience with you. This was the first (and the last time) I bought Lexar's SD memory cards because the unforgiven corrupted files and error occurred on two of their memory cards.

January 2015 in Snapography

February 1, 2015

For those of you who don't know yet what snapography is, it is a term I developed about 2 years ago for my little personal photography project. Snapography is the combination of 2 words: 'snap' and '(phot)ography'. It is slightly different from typical 365-day projects, although it forces me to take pictures and practice, it doesn't force me to take them every day and therefore I can focus on the quality and not the quantity.

I have to admit that by looking at my Snapographs from January 2015, I'm extremely pleased and happy with the photographs I took in the past month and I hope that the whole 2015 will be similar. I think that I was able to take photos in January that are creative and they forced me to look at the world around me in a unique way (a way a photographer should look at it).

Look for the Snapography section on my website if you want to see photographs from other months.

Snapography - January 2015

Why I am hated - a short documentary edited with free software

December 21, 2014

Those of you who follow me on social networks are probably aware that I was working for the last 3 months on my very first movie - a short documentary. I'm stoked to announce that the movie is finished and I'm very excited to share it with you.

I think that one of the most interesting things about the movie is the fact that I used only free software to put it together. I used Audacity to edit audio, iMovie to cut and put the video together and Blackmagic Davinci Resolve (Lite) to color grade it.

The short documentary is about Kelsey Hayes who is a special effects artists and a prop master based in Jackson, TN. He also attend on a regular basis various comic cons around the US.

(Almost) Free DIY Photo Rope

December 14, 2014

Magnetic photo ropes are nice but they cost about $12 each and you end up buying only a piece of metal rope and a few magnets. I've come up with a very simple and a very cheap (almost free) to make your own photo rope.

qDSLRDashboard - free tethering software & app with live view

November 27, 2014

I like to shoot tethered sometimes (especially product and food photography) and to have the live view mode displayed on my computer's screen. Lightroom has a built-in tethering mode, which works just fine but it doesn't have the live view mode. I had been using free software 'Soforbild' for tethering with live view on my iMac until I discovered it wasn't updated for over a year and I couldn't get it to work with my Nikon D610. After a very extensive research and almost losing my hopes for a free alternative, I finally ran across qDSLRDashboard (dDSLRDashboard.info).

qDSLRDashboard is not only a tethering software but it also gives you a live preview from a camera on a computer's screen. Before you download it, be aware that it is in early development stage (currently in version 0.2.3) so it might have some bugs and it occasionally performs slow. However, its rich features and the wide range of cameras it supports clearly outgrows any bugs it might potentially have. What's also important is that it's regularly updated by the developer.

Here are some qDSLRDashboard's interesting features:
- support for Nikon, Canon and Sony cameras
- available for MAC OS X, Windows, Linux
- available on mobile devices - Android and iOS
- tethering and live view using a USB cable and camera's WiFi connection
- timelapse function
- focus point control
- full manual control - shutter speed, aperture, ISO, exposure compensation, white balance
- manual focus tuning
- video recording from within qDSLRDashboard with live view preview and audio monitoring

These are only some of the features from the top of my head but I have to admit that they're quite impressive, especially for free software (and when I say free I mean FREE - no ads, no malware, etc.).

If you like the software, it would be great if you could donate some money to the developer. You can find a Paypal button on the software's website (I'm not affiliated with the developer and he didn't ask me to say it but for such a free software, I think donating is appropriate).

qDSLRDashboard - dslrdashboard.info

October 2014 in Snapography

November 3, 2014

There is no way I can summarize my snapography project for October 2014 in just a couple of words. The reason? The reason is simple - there is a great variety of photographs in October 2014 Snapography. I would rather divide the month of October into 2 parts: (1) most of the color photographs are from my trip to Poland and were edited on an iPad; (2) most of black&white photos were taken with a point-and-shoot Nikon P7800. Let me elaborate a bit more on the latter one.