Faulty Drive

Brent Mills has a nice portfolio, mostly of eastern Asia subjects, on his portfolio at Faulty Drive. When you're done looking at the pretty pictures, be sure to check out his Photoshop tutorials and photo tips.

PhotographyBB Number 6

This month's PhotographyBB (a free online photography magazine who's quality seems to get better every month) is jam packed full of goodness! It starts off with an article about developing film, talks about black and white, takes you to Australia and then hits the digital darkroom when it turns to an article about Adobe's Lightroom. I think this is probably the best issue yet, and I really haven't started reading.

New PhotographyBB Issue (Issue 4)

Issue 4 of the online photgraphy magazine PhotographyBB is out and I've promised them I'd read it all this time. The articles in the past issues that I have read have been of great quality and on interesting topics, so when I see stuff like:

Regarding this recent release, Dave Seeram - Editor and Publisher says, “Issue 4 is here and fully stocked on our digital shelves! Although we had to delay this month’s issue by one week, this month’s issue is by far our best issue to date! This month we’re taking it to the next level by including photographic shooting techniques, a trip to Vancouver, and even more tutorials than last month, including Photoshop, Elements, and even a Dreamweaver (for the photographer) tutorial!”

in the press release for issue 4, I know for sure that there is good stuff contained within the digital pages.

Now, if only I had a super fast color printer and ink was dirt cheap, I could start reading it on the bus this morning...

EDIT: Incomprehensible dribble fixed.

If You Put That Picture on the Internet I'll Call My Lawyer

Thomas Hawk reminds us that public space is within our rights as photographers to photograph people within that public space. His post is in direct response to an altercation Jeremy Brooks had with some bozo on the streets of San Francisco.

100 Strangers

If you wanna get good at street portraits, there's no better way to do it than to actually take them. Luckily, 100 Strangers is challenging you. They've got some tips to get you started and as an added bonus, it's actually a Flickr group, so it's relevant to this blog (my attempts at humor are horrible).

Picture This

You're deep within the confines of a government-run camp of football fanatics, deep within the jungle without your camera. Suddenly, you find a block of wood with a small pin-sized hole in it, a roll of black tape, two pieces of black cardboard and a canister containing 1 roll of Kodak Tri-X ISO 400...

It doesn't look like the projects are that extreme, but Picture This sort of seems to work this way. They setup a weekly project, you read the brief summary, grab your camera and interpret it however you want and then upload your best shot. The Picture This community critiques your work and you continue to improve your shot building your portolio in the process.

Oh, and it's powered by Flickr, which makes it even easier to get involved with.

Wedding Photography Equipment

Photo.net has a comprehensive guide about what you really need to photograph a wedding. If you're a serious photog you probably already have at least some of it. But this of course isn't all that you need to be a successful wedding photographer—you still need to learn some skills.

Photoshop Seminar Tour

The Photoshop Semiinar Tour is going on in late August in select eastern US cities. Check out their site for more details.

Philadelphia Dark Rooms

For those in the Philadelphia region, who are still into film photography, or are interested in taking some classes, Yo! Darkroom is a new space in center city. There is also Project Basho, which has been around for a few years now.

A Really Big Show

Vincent Laforet talks about his new found love for Tilt-shift photography for taking sports shots.

You too can fake this technique on already shot images with Photoshop and some know how.

An video about how Canon makes it's EF 500mm F4L IS USMlens.

Top Photography Blogs

If you're just learning about digital photography (or film) in your spare time, as I am, or are a full time studio shooter, traveler, or other paid camera-slinger you undoubtably subscribe to some photography magazines. I for one keep getting Outdoor Photographer even though my subscription ran out; thanks! I also subscribe to ShutterBug. I find that ShutterBug is insightful for thinking about new techniques and equipment to buy, whilst Outdoor Photographer is mostly just inspiring with some sprinkles of technique. Both magazines, I think are geared more towards learning than say, American Photo or any of those artsy or journalism ones. (Note: I love "artsy" photography, I just don't subscribe.)

However, the purpose of this blog isn't necessarily to point out good magazines that you can get in print, although I guess that might not be a bad idea for a future article about off-screen learning, but in fact it is about the numerous resources of the World Wide Web. There are many great blogs out there that update their content much more regularly than I, and in fact with much more insightful and useful tips and articles. That isn't to say that you should stop reading Photub of course. If you've been a reader of Photub for any length of time, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

The blogs that I am listing in this post, are blogs that I consider great additions to your RSS subscriptions—those blogs that probably have enough new content for books or bi-monthly magazines in themselves:

In no particular order...

1. The Online Photographer: The Online Photographer packs a wallop of new commentary, reviews, techniques and personal adventures into a blog that is updated fairly frequently.
2. Photocritic: Perhaps one of my favorite blogs, is this one. The authors always have something interesting to share, and do a good job presenting it. The critiques that are occassionally done are quite helpful to new and upcoming photographers, and the DIY attitude helps create some really useful and fun tools. Of note is the DIY Pringles can macro lens, that I have been wanting to try out.
3. Strobist: Everything you'd ever want or need to know about effective flash photography is right here in this blog. Literally courses of information are contained on the pages of this blog. It's also not all about flash photography. Consider the recent series about Flickr and what it can do for your photography career. Insightful articles, interesting topics and amazing techniques make this truely one of the best photography blogs on the internet.
4. Photojojo: While not really a blog per se, Photojojo's unique style and unique media (email newsletter), make it in a class of it's own. I include it in this list because they do have an RSS feed, making it "blog like." I have just one complaint about Photojojo and that is that they often seem to post stuff late, after it's already been posted elsewhere. Nevertheless, Photojojo has knocked my socks off more than a few times with interesting ideas, it's creative writing style and overall growth.
5. Digital Photography School: Anyone looking for tips can always find something at DPS. Choose a "Random Tip" or read them all. It's easily becoming an encyclopedia of techniques, buying tips, etc. for the beginner, casual student and the advanced amateur.
6. Andy Frazer's Night Photography Blog: Taking pictures at night can yeild some extremely interesting results, but not many will give you insight on creating breathtaking images at night without the flash. Andy Frazer does. You'll see lots of examples of compelling night imagery, if nothing else.
7. After Capture: The only site listed here, that actually is a monthly publication, actually has a decent blog. The blog talks, interestingly enough, about post production of your images. Becomming a "post production prince" might not happen overnight, but it'll probably happen faster with the reading of some of the articles here.
8. DIYPhotography.net: Face it, photography equipment is expensive, and we see time and time again, that a cheap light tent provides excellent results. DIYPhotography.net is all about creating cheap equipment to aide in the creation of great photographs. It's a wonderful collection and continues to grow.

The web is full of great content, and with RSS being used by nearly everyone, there certainly isn't any reason (other than time) that you can't be informed of the latest photography happenings, techniques and ideas every 15 or 20 minutes. Surely there are other great blogs out there that I did not address, but these are the ones I read on a semi-daily basis. If you think your blog should be on this list, please submit it for review, and I'll take a look.

Adorama Workshops May 2007

New York readers might be interested in Adorama's (my other favorite New York City camera retailer) May 2007 Workshops. More information can be found in their email newsletter. The following are the courses:

• ABC’s of Digital Photography and Digital SLRs with instructor Steven Hirsch
• Light, Geometry, Moment with instructor Tod Bryant
• Power Presenting: Create Distinctive Photographic Portfolios and Promotional
• Materials Fine-Tuned for the New York Market with instructor Gina Alyse Lengyel
• Shooting for eBay: Increase Your Sales with instructors Louis and Kitty Jawitz

Open Source Photography

Being a software developer and free software (tidbit: free and open source are not the same thing, but this is a photography blog, not a software blog) enthusiast, I can't help but laugh at Open Source Photography. Not because of it's content, or it's intention, but rather because of it's name. Open Source Photography's goal is to empower photographers to use open source tools to do the work they need to do. The project is promising and I look forward to seeing it's content increase, but I wish the name were different. I don't think their intention is to provide images that you are free to modify and or distribute, as is the normal case in open source software, and that makes their name a bit misleading.

BH Photo Sponsored Events

When BH Photo Video isn't serving up orders, or helping it's customers on 9th Ave, it's sponsoring seminars, and sending emails out to all it's customers regarding them. They aren't just in New York, and there happens to be one in Philadelphia on April 15th, a date I won't actually be in Philadelphia.

This particular seminar,Travel Photography in the Digital World, will "Unravel the mysteries of digital photography with Ralph Lee Hopkins and Bob Krist." Looks interesting to me, and probably would have been helpful for my upcoming trip to Belize from April 1st - 8th. It's always a timing issue.

Morguefile Classroom

When I said earlier today that regular posting would resume soon, I didn't expect to find such a great resource within Morguefile's classroom. However, upon checking it out, I discovered Jodie Coston's 10 lesson course.

The course starts off talking about composition, proceeds through to basics and then tackles portraits, studio lighting and product photography. Great examples and illustrations provide you with the a visual guide to the topics being discussed, and to top it off there's a discussion board for each lesson, which I must admit I haven't tested and it seems to be fairly old (2004ish). However, even if the forums aren't active, or disabled the course is still good.

Creative Shots With Longer Exposures

Dan Heller has some thoughts about longer exposures leading to creative exposures. Slower shutter speeds will obviously blur moving objects, and Heller's article shows some of the creative things you can do with that basic fact as well as introduce a neat piece of equipment-- Neutral Density Filters. Neutral Density Filters allow you reduce the amount of light coming into the camera, without stopping down your aperture.

Update: His tutorial about Fill Flash is also worth reading.

One Light Workshops

Intense, on location lighting crash courses from Zack Arias start January in Denver, CO. You want to attend because you're tired of not knowing enough about lighting. You want to attend because those books you've read about the subject just don't teach you the way someone showing you does. Attend One Light Workshop-- I would if it were coming to Philadelphia.

The Strobist brings us a great article about the challenges and solutions to this holiday pastime of Photographing Christmas Lights

Hyperfocal Distance Explained

Easily forgotten, yet useful for a lifetime, hyperfocal distance allows you to compute depth of field on an for an image based on the circle of confusion, the f-stop and focal length. Read an in depth explanation here.

Getting Rid of Tourist Pixels

Nothing worse than tourists in your tourism pictures. Or, if you live in a big city and would like to just go out and take pictures of it... Same thing goes. Not to worry anymore, How to Remove Tourists from Your Photos takes a look at getting rid of those pixels that muck up a perfectly good shot.

Getting in on the Holga Action

I haven't yet gotten in on this action, but would like to. Squarefrog's Holga page has a ton of useful information ranging from How to load film to How to unload film. There's also great introductions on choosing film and focusing tips.