In ep 84, Shelton answers a whole bunch of listener e-mail.
Also, Bruce’s eagerly anticipated EBay purchase.
Mentioned links:
Harbour Digital Design
Digital Photography Review
David Elfering’s flash pics:
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Bounce 8 |
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I’ve had Phil Massyn (my webmaster “go-to” guy) install a WordPress plugin called Lightbox.
This is one really sweet plugin, and it functions as a live slideshow for a series of posted images.
As an example, click on one of these thumbnails.
The screen will go almost black, and the image will load in full size over the top of the page.
You will then be able to use your right arrow or the “n” key to go to the next image, and the left arrow or the “p” key to go to the previous image.
And the “x” key will close the lightbox. As will clicking on the “close” button, obviously.
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Now, personally, I love this! It just looks so good.
However, here on my machine, it doesn’t appear to be working on IE, but it DOES work on Firefox. I’d be keen to hear other user’s experiences with it. If you’re running IE and it works as I’ve described, let me know. Actually, you could also let me know if it DOESN’T work, too.
This week, Bruce and Shelton discuss Bruce’s photos of Tacking Point lighthouse from last weekend’s trip to the Gold Coast.
Shelton then goes on to talk about taking photos of people and maintaining a sense of spontaneity.
Also, as discussed, here’s some of Bruce’s photos from the wedding last weekend:
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (46.1MB)
In the last couple of days, I’ve received 2 more e-mails from listeners with examples of their panning photos.
Boy, this was a topic with legs!
Kayne Simons wrote:
Hey guys,
Thanks so much for the Gorilla pod, I loved it so much i went straight out and bought the SLR Zoom version. I just thought i’d share a tip after listening to the panning podcast. I’ve included one of my pictures i took of a friends new car. I find that whilst looking through the viewfinder with my right eye and keeping my left eye open to track the subject it becomes a lot easier to follow the pan when the shutter opens. Anyway thanks for the podcasts guys, Easily the best on the net…
Cheers
Kayne
Nice tip! Thanks Kayne.
And here’s Kayne’s shot:
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And then I received an e-mail from Ron Coupland, who wrote:
Bruce and Shelton,
I listen regularly and although I’m not an SLR owner, I’ve learned quite a bit from Shutters Inc. I took this shot of my daughter on the backyard swing with my Canon A630 after hearing the podcast about panning. Usually, I listen to the show before going to sleep at night. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve jumped out of bed and pulled out my camera or opened up Photoshop. This was especially true right after I bought my camera back in September. Although I’d taken more than 16 thousand pictures with the Kodak DC220 Plus that I owned since the late 90′s, I knew nothing about how more sophisticated cameras worked. Little by little, Shutters Inc. has taught me how to use my new Canon.
For the record, I love my A630. It is easy to use and seems to have a good deal of capability for a compact. I would love to know how it is regarded in the industry.
Thanks!
Ron Coupland
Well Ron, I can’t comment on how the Canon is regarded within the industry, but I’m sure Shelton will have something to say about it.
Here’s Ron’s panning shot:
File Name IMG_5171.JPG |
Nice work, guys!
I received an e-mail from Walt Kippenhuck today with another panning shot that I felt just had to be shared.
This is what Walt wrote:
Hey Shelton and Bruce!
First off, still loving the podcast. Listening to them at the gym 5:30 in the morning really helps me have more fun and forget that (a) I’m at the gym and (b) for God’s sake it’s 5:30 am!!
Anyway, after listing to Shelton talking about the panning technique I remembered a picture I took a couple months back. It’s of two ducks in flight, shot from above (my 16th floor balcony). I thought I would send it your way and you can post it if it is at all applicable (even if you wish to use it as an example of what NOT to do, Shelton (ha!).
Cheers,
Walt
And here’s Walt’s pic:
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On our way back from the wedding, we stopped at Port Macquarie for the night. There’s this quaint little lighthouse at Tacking Point, which we went out to. Not to look at the lighthouse, but to see if we could see any whales migrating north. It’s the time of year for it, and they can quite often be seen with the naked eye from the coast.
But when I saw the lighthouse (and no whales), I couldn’t resist grabbing the 7D and ripping off a few frames. Here’s some of the best:
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In ep 82, Bruce apologises again for the debacle this week over the”panning photos” (see the blog entries if you’re not sure what happened).
Shelton talks about white balance and flash diffusers.
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I’ve been kicking around in my head the question of whether I should link to listener’s pictures on new browser pages (a la the post for episode 81 where every picture is linked), or display them inline (a la the pics from Michael Baxley in ep 80, or the panning shots from Bob Fischer).
I’m actually leaning toward displaying them inline.
I think it’s more immediate. You don’t have to click the links to see the pictures. They’re just… THERE! And given the high quality of images sent in by SI listeners, it makes for a visually interesting page.
So, with all that in mind… one small request.
When you submit shots to either Shelton or myself via e-mail, would you be so good as to resize your images so that they are no more than 700 pixels wide (height isn’t an issue, but width is), and set the resolution to 72dpi?
If you don’t or can’t, that’s ok. I’ll do it for you. But it would just save me a little bit of time if any listener-submitted images were already scaled accordingly.
Thanks heaps!
Oh ye gods, I’m gonna have to wear the blame for this one.
Martin was certainly within his rights to request the removal of his pictures from audio2u.com.
However, I should have done a little more investigation (you’d think I’d learn, wouldn’t ya?) before I accused a listener of trying to pass those pictures off as his own.
It turns out that that listener had e-mailed Shelton asking if we could cover panning as a topic “like in the attached photos” which he had pulled from Martin’s site. Information on just where the photos had come from was not provided, and I jumped to the conclusion that the photos were being passed off as his own.
So, my apologies… again.
I’m just going to go and crawl up under a rock now…
This morning, I was notified by my blog that there was a new comment awaiting moderation. Imagine my surprise when I read, from Martin Bailey, that the photos accredited to a Shutters Inc listener, were actually his (Martin’s)!
I find this extremely disappointing.
As per Martin’s request, I have removed those photos from the audio2u.com site, and I would also like to take this opportunity to publicly apologise to Martin for this oversight on my part.
I should have checked the photos more closely (2 of them were watermarked with Martin’s copyright information, which I hadn’t noticed when I uploaded the images on Sunday night).
You know, if I was so damned pathetic that I was going to try and pass off someone else’s work as my own, I would at least try and cover my tracks.
So again, my sincerest apologies to Martin.
Martin also does a photography podcast, and you can check out his site here.
I received an e-mail from Bob Fischer this morning with these 3 panning photos, and thought I’d share them straight away.
Bob wrote:
these three photos I have sent on panning are some of the best i’ve shot. the “Little russian Drama” is probably one of the most incredible photos I have ever taken. It’s truly a cartier-bresson “moment” photo. I was on a tour bus in st. petersburg on the way to the hermitage which I looked out the moving bus and shot this image. The narrative drama, complete with body language, the woman’s shoes pointing up, the man’s stance, is truly a Chekovian play in a single magic shot that I got off as I panned as the bus went by. how I ever had the skill and foresight to get it continues to confound me. I’m not good at panning but I’ve taken a few good ones, particularly the balinese funeral shot of two people who are speeding by on a motor scooter with the funeral center pieces in their hot little hands. the “funeral” photo is larger with more information but i couldn’t get it all on the scanner. the middle photo of the little boy and his mother was shot this last february in ubud, bali.
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Nice work, Bob!
Hi all.
I’ve just renamed the “podcasts” category on audio2u.com to “!podcasts”. This makes the podcasts category (and it’s sub-categories “Building the pod”, “Shutters Inc”, and “Sine Language”) appear right at the top of the categories list on the right hand side, rather than down in the “P’s”. Hope that makes sense.
I just think that it will make it easier to locate items specific to just one of those feeds.
In ep 81, a discussion on the importance of water, followed by Shelton continuing his discussion (from last week) of tripods.
Tripod heads mentioned include:
Manfrotto 058
Manfrotto 322 (what Shelton uses) and the 222
Manfrotto 141RC (what Bruce currently uses)
And then Shelton moves on to this week’s topic of shooting effective “pan” shots.
Some of Shelton’s examples:
Plus one from Bruce right here,
Also, those pics from Bob Fischer that Shelton referred to:
01 – 02
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Shelton sent me those photos that he mentioned (in the podcast) this morning… and here they are.
Boat girl
Soldier
Dancer
Holy man
Window
Monk
Steps
Moose
Street woman
Sponsored by Joby.
This week, Shelton responds to a couple of listener e-mails. One from Will McCandless about his experiences with his Gorillapod, and one from Young asking about tripods (how appropriate!).
Shelton also talks about the Gorillapod SLR, and about how handy that can be, especially if you’re into camping or hiking or the like.
And finally, he talks about the use of “positive and negative space” within an image. (And although he promised us some images, I’m still waiting. Stay tuned!)
We did however receive some images from listener Michael Baxley who has been concentrating on his use of light (and nailing it quite nicely, too!).
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Nice work, Michael!
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