Natchez Trace Bridge at night (nightscape)

Turning a business trip into a small photo adventure

November 15, 2015

I had to drive to Nashville the other day for a business meeting. Unfortunately, I don’t travel much these days, especially to central and western parts of Tennessee so I wanted to take this opporunity to do some photography. I remembered that the Natchez Trace Bridge is close to Nashville. I googled for images of the bridge to get a sense of how it looks like, what’s around it and what opportunities it gives for photography. Next step was to research using google maps and street view. I knew I would arrive to the bridge after sunset so I wanted to take a nightscape / astrophotography photograph. At the end, I narrowed it down to 2 options: shoot the bridge from the road that runsunderneath it or take pictures from the bridge.

After I arrived, it turned out that the road that is under the bridge is much busier than I thought it would be so I immediately headed to the bridge. I rather quickly found a good spot, I put on a high visibility reflective jacket on (for safety), grabbed a flashlight from the car and started shooting long exposures. I also met a fellow photographer, Scott Dubose of Photographers Artistry. Scott does astrophotography (something I have very little knowledge about) and we talked for about 30 minutes or even more.

In a nutshell, it was an extremely good day because I ended up with a picture I like and I made a new friend!

Oktoberfest Gemutlichkeit from Wiseacre Brewing - Memphis, TN

Sometimes it just doesn’t work, and it’s ok but draw conclusions

November 5, 2015

Sometimes a photoshoot just doesn’t go well; sometimes you think it goes well, you wrap everything up but when you want to edit the image, it just doesn’t feel right. I think that’s exactly what has happened in the case of my ‘Oktoberfest’ photoshoot last month. I don’t know what exactly went wrong and what mistakes I’ve made during the photoshoot.

I had started having an idea about shooting a beer and an Oktoberfest-themed image for my portfolio a couple of weeks before October. I really wanted to use a local brewer from Memphis and I saw Wiseacre Brewing’s Oktoberfest Gemutlichkeit while doing grocery shopping. It was exactly what I was looking for because Wiseacre Brewing is a local brewery and the beer was themed with Oktoberfest. The next step was to think about the specific idea and how to shoot it. Since it’s the 'harvest season' here in the US, pumpkins and hay are in every store. Few more flowers and leaves from my background and I had all of the props I needed.

I wanted to have the shoot outdoors and I needed to shoot it in shade in order to control the light in the photograph. I used a garden umbrella to have shade and I wish I could also have everything in the shade, including the background far behind the shoot location - I think this is one of the things I don’t like about the photograph but I only realized it after I wrapped up the shoot and here comes the second lesson learned: I shot it on my weakest day of a week - on Sunday. I don’t exactly know why but I always feel tired and unmotivated on Sundays. Naturally, I felt extremely worn out only after 2 hours of setting everything up and shooting so I wanted to finish the shoot as soon as possible. Nevertheless, I was pretty sure I liked the final image when I was wrapping the shoot up but I think that the 'Sunday fatigue' influenced my judgement.

I don’t like the photograph enough to have it in my portfolio but the whole experience and the lessons learned are great for the future.

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

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.

Sunrise - why I love it as a photographer and as a non-photographer

August 21, 2014

I think sunrise is my favorite part of a day, and I'm not talking only in terms of photography. I love this warm feel of orange sun streaks on my face and the smell of freshness all around me. It's not too warm, actually a bit chilly and it gradually becomes warmer and warmer - that's how I feel sunrise.

As a photographer, I love sunrise because the light is low and it creates a beautiful texture on whatever it illuminates. That's why I was able to force myself into waking up at 4am on a Saturday morning, drive over an hour to a location I found a week before. Do the pictures look exactly what I had in mind when I found this location? Probably not. Was it worth waking up so early to take them? Definitely yes! Why? For the experience of taking these pictures and for experiencing the sunrise.

Herb Parsons Lake - a short (10K) hike with way too much photo gear

July 13, 2014

Let me make a statement first: I'm NOT a camera gear addict. In fact, I've been trying to reduce photo gear, or at least not buying anything new. Nevertheless, no matter how little photo gear I take with me, it's always way too heavy. After all, it's not my fault that DSLR gear is so heavy, right?

June 2014 in Snapography - Summary

July 5, 2014

June is already behind us and when I look at my June 2014 Snapography photographs there is clearly a celebrity - it was Thabo's month. For those of you who don't know who Thabo is, please read THIS blog article. In a nutshell, Thabo is a joyful and an adventurous teddy bear.

My thoughts on Lightroom iPad Mobile Subscription

June 7, 2014

This post could be very short and summarized in one sentence: I had Lightroom iPad Mobile trial subscription and I didn't use it even once.

When I got my iPad a couple of years ago, I really wanted to be able to edit pictures on it. In fact, I thought it could substitute my laptop for quick edits and I was really disappointed that Adobe didn't have Lightroom for iPad back then. Well, they finally released Lightroom for iPad a month ago (more or less) but I think it was too late for me at that point.

My main concern was about monitor calibration - there is no way to calibrate your iPad display. I don't want to edit pictures on an iPad and then go back to my desktop to correct the edits because of mis-calibrated iPad's display - it's like doing the same work twice. Of course, I tried Lightroom Mobile during the trial period but I didn't use it to edit pictures in a more 'serious' way. However, I was quite surprised that the picture I played with looked almost the same as on my calibrated desktop monitor.

So why I didn't edit anything on my iPad? I guess I got used to separating 2 different workflows: a desktop and a mobile workflow. The former one is for photos I take with my cameras and I prefer to edit those pictures on my computer. I feel I have much more control over the edits and I spend more time on fine-tuning these edits. The latter (mobile workflow) is for pictures I take with my iPhone and iPad. I also edit these pictures on my mobile devices and upload them to social networks. I don't have a need to have so much control over editing these pictures because they don't have such a great photographic/creative value to me as my camera pictures have.

I guess it's a matter of personal preference.

Making the Most of Smartphone Photography (Guest Post)

May 28, 2014

It might not be enough to go pro, but it’s definitely good practice.

(Guest post by Samuel Cole*)

Fracture Raises Prices for Photo Glass Prints - May 16

May 15, 2014

Fracture is a company, based in Florida, specializing in printing photographs directly on glass. I published a review of their glass photo prints a few weeks back (click here). I tried to point out all the prons and cons of Fracture's photo glass prints in my review. One of the things I praised Fracture for was their pricing. Unfortunately, I've just received an email from the Fracture's team - they'll be raising their prices starting on May 16 2014. So if you've been considering trying them out, you have less than 24hrs to order a photo glass print before the prices go up.

They haven't mentioned in the email by how much the prices will go up but they said they will go up for 4 out of 8 sizes that they currently offer. They provided 2 (typical) reason's for raising the prices: (1) the company's growth and (2) costs of making Fracture's glass prints. I honestly hope that there are many more reasons or at least side effects of the price change. I would love to see the new and more advanced online photo editor, as well as the improvement in the print quality and the foam core mounting. I wasn't too happy about these two things in particular, which I explained in detail in my Fracture's review.