Photography - art for people who don’t do art
Any DSLR or mirrorless photographers on board? What sort of kit have you got? What do you like to shoot?
I’ve got a Nikon D3400 DSLR. I particularly enjoy shooting landscapes and flowers. Transport, especially old buses and trains are a favourite subject as well.
I usually shoot RAW and used to use Adobe Lightroom for post processing, but found the monthly subscription a bit much. I recently discovered Darktable which is just as good as Lightroom but free!
So, anyone else out there?
I’ve got a Nikon D3400 DSLR. I particularly enjoy shooting landscapes and flowers. Transport, especially old buses and trains are a favourite subject as well.
I usually shoot RAW and used to use Adobe Lightroom for post processing, but found the monthly subscription a bit much. I recently discovered Darktable which is just as good as Lightroom but free!
So, anyone else out there?
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My favourite genres are night, vintage, sepia, rain (ever cheerful!), and quirky things. I hate flower photography, but often seem to end up doing it.
I use an old version of Photoshop and I do have RAW capability on the DSLR although in practice I find I don't use it much. It's really annoying that you can't buy Photoshop any more, only rent it, but my old version does what I need it to do so all still good. None of my equipment is recent but I can still get decent results.
I run a photography group at work which caters for people of all abilities. Some use phones, others are semi-pros. We have monthly competitions and people are encouraged to post their own photos whenever they feel like it - we get some amazing ones, mainly from keen nature watchers and birders.
I also have a stupidly large collection of vintage cameras, dating back as far as 1909ish, and with many box cameras, as wot I have a particular soft spot for. Those with a longish memory will recall I've had a couple of articles on using them published in Amateur Photographer, plus one on going back to Stonehenge with a camera that had last been used there 60+ years before.
For these, I develop my own b&w film, and scan the negs. One day I'd like to turn the outside bog into a darkroom...
Here's my babies. Most of these I still have, I think one recent acquisition has yet to be photographed.
https://flic.kr/s/aHsjcPXVc2
I’d forgotten a lot about how a camera works and also realised that digital is quite different from film (for instance, you can choose what ISO to use for each individual shot rather than relying on the type of film you have) so initially I was shooting auto or using the presets.
During lockdown I did an online photography course which was really good. It got me off auto and took me into the realms of RAW photography and post processing editing.
A couple of years ago I entered a competition run by East Surrey hospital for photos of local landmarks. I was delighted to be shortlisted and was absolutely gobsmacked to be announced as one of the winners, so if you’re ever unlucky enough to be in the East Surrey Hospital Fracture Unit you’ll see my picture of Reigate Heath Windmill
I am more into painting. It's not always about literal representation- though sometimes, as with Giovanna Garzoni it is. Sometimes, as in Degas' ballet paintings, it's about the blood, sweat and tears that go into producing beauty. Or Sargent watercolours which are about light.
There are of course very many acres of unremarkable canvas on the walls of galleries, but when you see a stoater you know it. What is it about a photograph?
There's no one definitive answer to that. For me a photograph is good if:
It shows clear skill. I've seen many where the photographer just "got lucky" - in the right place at the right time, to capture an unrepeatable or unforgettable moment. That can be a bit spoilt as it was for me in a recent wildlife photography exhibition which had many stunning photos, a fair few of which had been achieved by the photographer setting up the cameras on auto and coming back a couple of weeks later to see if anything had been captured.
It is good if it tells a story. Visual images can be very powerful. That image of the naked child running down a road in Vietnam as her village was bombed became world-famous with its arresting imagery.
A photo is good if it's unusual in some way, takes the ordinary out of context, makes you stop in your tracks, makes you think.
I think the key here is that it should make an emotional impact. Other than revulsion or boredom.
A little dated. Got it at a clearance sale.
I photograph landscapes, barns, and some people. I had been the congregation's photographer for several years, but retired from it due to privacy concerns of members.
I am on several Facebook groups that share photographs.
I must say most of the my photos are run of mill, but once in a while, I do produce the gem.
Maybe we can set up a Facebook photo group to share our pics.
The key aspect they wanted was composition: no need for cropping because the image had distance, precision and focal points in the 'borrowed landscape' behind the garden or river. They looked for horizons as backdrop, spires for height, sightlines along paths or entrances. Many photographers used stepladders or would even clamber up onto flat roofing to get the overview for a double-page spread. My job on certain shoots was to make sure nothing extraneous was left out: no hosepipes snaking across lawns, fountains that weren't on, no dogs or children, no shutters half-open, no untidy scrapes or tyre tracks on gravel.
Contrast between light and shadow that was not too stark. In gardens, you want backlighting, so that the light is radiant without glare, not looking into the sun. Some preferred to use a slow shutter speed and shoot through soft rain falling because it softened angular designs or bare rock/stone gardens. Most classic photographers preferred black-and-white and hated gardens with blues that never came true, or the colour yellow that foregrounds certain plants. Shots at dusk were crucial for getting creams or whites luminous. We'd split the shoot and photograph after dawn and then in the early evening.
The most expensive photography for lifestyle publications has to be food (though this was a drop in the ocean by comparison to the fashion budget). Because so much food is brown, it has to be made to look glossy or contrasted with vivid table cloths or plates. Silver and glass photograph beautifully on table settings, colourful tableware tends to come out too much of a circus. If a kitchen is to be take n in one shot, you need to have clean reflecting surfaces along counters and shelves, no clutter of jugs, pots & pans etc. It was hard to get photographers concerned with lines and polished surfaces to understand readers might want to see more on a kitchen counter than a bowl of lemons and that readers like to see clutter. This is one reason, IMO, that Instagram foodie shots are so popular, they have the freedom to personalise and dress up dishes with squiggles of 'icing' from toothpaste tubes or have a toddler beaming behind the plate of food.
One big learning curve. Every now and then -- luck played a role too -- we'd get an image that was perfect and it would be reproduced over and over through syndication, win awards.
Real life is one thing but these days I'm inclined to angle shots to display something to its best advantage, unless I'm going for "urban grit". The point of a photo can be lost through distracting and intrusive details like the crumpled carrier bag or other litter.
Yes, that makes sense to me if you want a realistic glimpse of lived reality. Perfection can be the enemy of the authentic, rich, 'what is there' in that moment and time.
What I'm talking about and that was a dying breed of photographer before 2018 or so, was the restrictions and ethos of photography for publication in Eurocentric iconic lifestyle publications, books and magazines. It's artificial in that you are taking rectangular images for a page on a fixed size of glossy paper that is held within page limits, pixellation and colour reproduction and shouldn't date, which is why you don't have people in contemporary clothes or trendy quirks.
In contrast, you might think about Henri Cartier-Bresson, a French photographer who was a master of candid photography and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment, drama or pathos caught in a freeze frame.
The thing about doing photography for a living is quality, consistency and composition, images that personify stillness, accuracy and pure lines. As opposed to suspense, spontaneity, drama. I can look at certain pics and know immediately who took that photograph, as unmistakable as a signature or finger print.
What @ Ariel mentions above is the special unquantifiable element, what can't be predicted and what happens when an image comes together with focus, purpose and magic. That isn't limited to trained or experienced photographers.
She then became the pastry chef she wanted to be, though I get the impression she is getting burned out. I would not be surprised if she falls back to photography for the rest of her career.
I’ve been learning mostly by trial and error with a lot of help from Ms. Marsupial when it comes to learning from my mistakes. She did some photography courses as part of a graphic design program and generally is just more competent with anything visual than I am. Her interests these days are focused on horticulture and garden design which means we spend a lot of time in gardens (including our own).
Otherwise I spend a lot of time walking around cities either here at home or while on vacation and most of my photography is urban spaces. At home generally trying to see familiar spaces in different ways. Photography on vacation can be hit-and-miss (wrong place at the wrong time of day or in the wrong light, etc.) but I find that jet lag is a great enabler of striking early morning city photos.
Is the pastry also getting burned?
Shooting landscapes, flowers, and vintage transport sounds like a fantastic mix. It's great that you found an alternative like Darktable for post-processing without the hefty subscription cost. I'm curious to know if others in the community have similar experiences or if they have additional recommendations for free or cost-effective photo editing tools. Let's keep the conversation going!
Great mix! Darktable's a budget-friendly editing win.
Thank you for that helpful suggestion. I did try the autofocus button yesterday and that didn't seem to make a difference, but your prompt made me have a second look, on which I noticed some dust. So I've given it all a bit of a clean and it seems to have helped. If that happens again, though, I'll try a different lens and see if there's a similar effect.
The MX ran on a couple of button batteries and felt just right and (with that telephoto) balanced held with my left hand and that lovely click when you press the shutter. When digital SLRs were first around I couldn't find one that felt 'right ' in my hand. After a while I sold it. Life moved on.
BTW the camera shop closed leaving a bitter notice in the window saying ' I have had to close thanks to people trying out various cameras here and then going off and buying one on-line ' . Of course I don't know how he knew this but I guess some truth in it.
A couple of weeks ago I splashed out on three rolls of film for my Kodak Brownie Six-20 Model D (mine’s more battered than that, bought for 5p at a Cub Scout jumble sale about 55 years ago).
Today I finally got round to re-spooling and loading the film (Kodak Ektar 100). I used a dark bag which I bought when I used to process my own 35mm slide film. The respooling wasn’t exactly as I expected, but seems to be OK*.
So now I’m ready to shoot.
(*I haven’t entirely recovered from mis-loading film into my Olympus OM10 and losing 36 shots because the film never advanced - 40+ years ago.)