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Paragon8 posted:that's all anyone does. chase how to do a particular thing you like and then you end up developing a style along the way. “You start out imitating your heroes, and the way you gently caress up becomes your style.” - Elvis Costello
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Jan 21, 2015 19:15
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Ha, that's a great quote. I think more than finding your style in photography it's actually about finding your vision. What are you trying to say with your photos, or what kind of mood are you trying to capture? Or if you don't approach it with artistic expression in mind then do you want to get great photos of your family and friends? Do lots of that. Do you want to make hyper-coloured photos of glowing sunsets? Don't do that. Also buy photobooks (if you have the budget) by the masters of what you are really into. And go to exhibitions if you can.
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Jan 22, 2015 01:37
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unpacked robinhood posted:also alkanphel and sludgetank I almost said Alkanphel but I double-checked his flickr and he's got a lot of stuff that doesn't look like his usual stuff so I didn't but I don't disagree. I don't know who sludgetank is. Also I can't remember who takes the loving amazing photos of zoo animals but add that person too because I've never seen wildlife photography like theirs.
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Jan 22, 2015 01:55
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deaders posted:Also buy photobooks (if you have the budget) by the masters of what you are really into. And go to exhibitions if you can. This especially. Basically find photographers that died before facebook/instagram was a thing. One of the bigger issues I see with photography is how social media has elevated some photographers so hugely that amateurs and enthusiasts end up just seeing those few people rather than digging deeper and finding incredible photographers who are overshadowed by the current culture of photography consumption. The Costello quote is brilliant and it really rings true. Like if you find a guy who tones their pictures just so and you dick around for hours trying to get the curves just right and then you're like hey this is actually pretty cool and I quite like this rather than what I was initially trying for.
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Jan 22, 2015 02:40
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mr. mephistopheles posted:I almost said Alkanphel but I double-checked his flickr and he's got a lot of stuff that doesn't look like his usual stuff so I didn't but I don't disagree. I don't know who sludgetank is. Also I can't remember who takes the loving amazing photos of zoo animals but add that person too because I've never seen wildlife photography like theirs. William Hornady or something similar, sorry for not getting your name right. Also seconding deaders, go to photo exhibitions! As many as you can. Also if it's a small venue/unknown artist. Talk to them!!! And no gear-chat. Gear-chat is fine to break the ice, but you wanna ask them other stuff. Like which photos they like most, why, how they think of this show etc.? Much more interesting. Photobooks are nice, but I find them sometimes to be a bit confining, for the lack of a better word. It's just their best strung together at times. Sometimes that relentless perfection becomes boring to me. I'm curious about the pictures that made them (or us) go "hmm.", too. Keeping that in mind, ultimately you should be taking photos only for yourself. That doesn't mean you should reject outside ideas, influences or suggestions for improvement, but if your pictures do not please yourself -- change something. If you're not shooting for yourself but for an audience or other perceived goals, and are not or -- do not want to become a professional photographer I'd sincerely suggest you try something besides photography. Rilke said it best in his letters to a young poet, if I could make you stop writing and you feel as you would die -- write. If not, maybe you should pursue something else that will give you this sensation.
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Jan 22, 2015 02:45
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Semi related to this: I think I've learned more about what makes a good photo from editing photos out of my portfolio than editing them in.
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Jan 22, 2015 02:54
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dakana posted:Semi related to this: I think I've learned more about what makes a good photo from editing photos out of my portfolio than editing them in. Editing other peoples' photos is a great way to learn things. Also letting them edit your work and seeing how they would do it differently.
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Jan 22, 2015 03:02
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mr. mephistopheles posted:I almost said Alkanphel but I double-checked his flickr and he's got a lot of stuff that doesn't look like his usual stuff so I didn't but I don't disagree. I don't know who sludgetank is. Also I can't remember who takes the loving amazing photos of zoo animals but add that person too because I've never seen wildlife photography like theirs. Haha my Flickr is full of random and experimental stuff, I put most of my usual stuff on my website. I think it's good to keep experimenting even while shooting our usual stuff so that we don't get too stale. And sometimes, what you experiment with do make their way into your established style and that helps to evolve it. And to second what you and Dakana said, curating and sequencing photographs is a really key part of learning. Asking why someone else picked a different photo or sequenced it differently helps to broaden possibilities, even if you don't agree with their choices.
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Jan 22, 2015 03:20
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Ira Glass sums up a lot of the stuff posted here pretty well. http://vimeo.com/85040589
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Jan 22, 2015 03:58
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The Helsinki Bus Station Theory is something that I always like to revisit whenever I'm feeling a bit lost. It hits a lot of the same points that the Ira Glass quote does. And thanks to Mr. M and VOL for the shout out. Personally, I hate the vast majority of the photos that I've put out there. I'm an insufferable perfectionist in most aspects of my life, and even when I somehow manage to convince myself that a photo looks acceptable (sometimes even decent) and end up sharing it, I will still continue to beat myself up over the fact that I'm not 100% satisfied with it and harbor anxiety that those flaws are equally apparent (and displeasing) to everyone else. My hope is that someday that all the photos currently in my Flickr stream will be eventually swallowed up by a flood of even better photos and if by chance someone does dig deep enough to find them, will simply shrug and say, 'well, he was just starting out back then.' The one thing that I guess I can take solace in is the bus station analogy and the fact that at the very least my style is fairly unique. Granted, I'm not at all satisfied with it and it's not really a consistent style, but I feel like I can kinda claim it as mine. I need to work very hard on refining and perfecting it, but it is nice to have an identifiable direction. And it helps that it's a hobby. I don't have to worry about the client satisfaction or cultivating business or keeping my head above water financially; it's mine to do with however I want.
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Jan 22, 2015 17:58
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Who has a 3D printer? http://www.thingiverse.com/tag:Nikon/page:1 Looks like there is somewhat useful stuff in there. Various flash diffusers, flash grids, rear lens caps, lens cap holders, macro spacers, eyepiece caps, some lens hoods, reverse macro adapters, shoulder mounts, a holder for using the camera as a film scanner, pinhole lenses, a welding glass holder, and more. I'll add to the discussion about finding the work of others that you appreciate that I enjoy browsing flickr to look for stuff that is not poo poo. There are some good, curated groups out there. Also, I'll occasionally stumble on a gallery someone has made of stuff I enjoy.
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Jan 22, 2015 18:03
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One thing I like about Flickr is that a user's favorite'd images are right there on their profile page. Other sites like instagram or tumblr kind of hide them because they're mostly used to generate reciprocal likes (#like4like) instead of actually, y'know, liking something. My point is that I enjoy looking through a flickr user's Favorites as much as their own photostream and IMO that's the best way to find 'curated' work outside of group pools. It's the best way of finding new flickr users worth following.
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Jan 22, 2015 18:35
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William T. Hornaday posted:The Helsinki Bus Station Theory is something that I always like to revisit whenever I'm feeling a bit lost. It hits a lot of the same points that the Ira Glass quote does. That's nice I hadn't read that before. Years ago I saw a picture of Great Falls in Virginia done by Don Yoshida. It may have been this one, but he's got quite a few in his set and they're all fairly similar so I'm not sure. Anyway I called up one of my photo-friends and was like "Hey check out this cool picture Don Yoshida took, lets go down to Great Falls and take some pictures". And he came with me because why not but he did initially say something to the effect of "I'm not into taking pictures that other people already took". Which affected me for far longer than it should have and is a total bullshit thing to say. gently caress that. I don't care how many people took a picture already. I can still take a similar one and enjoy doing it. And coming to that realization that picture taking is something I do for me was really important for me. I really don't give a poo poo if my work is derivative and there are a thousand photographers who took a better picture of the same subject that I did. I'm not gonna get any better or produce any pictures by not taking photos because someone else already did.
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Jan 22, 2015 18:41
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I'll take the same pictures as other people as a way to measure myself, get a feel for if I'm improving at all (sad news: I'm not). Also it's a lot more fun to have a picture I took on my wall than someone else's. It makes the conversation when someone asks about it a lot more interesting at least.
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Jan 22, 2015 18:45
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Dren posted:And coming to that realization that picture taking is something I do for me was really important for me. I really don't give a poo poo if my work is derivative and there are a thousand photographers who took a better picture of the same subject that I did. I'm not gonna get any better or produce any pictures by not taking photos because someone else already did. Photography is iterative. You might never get that exact shot again - especially in the realm of nature / wildlife photography that I spend most of my effort on - but you'll have plenty of very similar opportunities in the future to apply what you're learning every time you pick up your camera. Shoot more. Worry less. xzzy posted:Also it's a lot more fun to have a picture I took on my wall than someone else's. It makes the conversation when someone asks about it a lot more interesting at least. Speaking of, who's going to run a print exchange soon?
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Jan 22, 2015 18:50
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Trying a bit of everything within photography taught me a lot of technical skills, but it pretty much just lead to anxiety about how meaningless the results felt. Ultimately, I was trying to entertain others and it just left me feeling empty. I've since been trying to keep everything I shoot as emotionally honest as possible and tossing aesthetics aside when the results don't resonate with me. I really don't know if anyone will like my photos, but the gap of inconsistency has narrowed considerably and I finally feel like I'm making real progress.
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Jan 22, 2015 20:12
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try it with a lime posted:Trying a bit of everything within photography taught me a lot of technical skills, but it pretty much just lead to anxiety about how meaningless the results felt. Ultimately, I was trying to entertain others and it just left me feeling empty. I've since been trying to keep everything I shoot as emotionally honest as possible and tossing aesthetics aside when the results don't resonate with me. I really don't know if anyone will like my photos, but the gap of inconsistency has narrowed considerably and I finally feel like I'm making real progress. I think this is a great perspective. I know personally I feel like my work improved when I stopped trying to shoot what I thought other people wanted me to shoot. Self reflection is really the best way to progress but I think you need to be a certain kind of person because there's plenty of people who genuinely think their HDR polished turds are the best.
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Jan 23, 2015 11:56
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Paragon8 posted:there's plenty of people who genuinely think their HDR polished turds are the best.  Bart
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Jan 23, 2015 15:03
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Sports Illustrated decided photographers are worthless garbage: https://nppa.org/node/69374
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Jan 24, 2015 22:37
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Spedman posted:Sports Illustrated decided photographers are worthless garbage: It's not that they've decided they're worthless garbage just that they can get the same coverage without paying benefits by moving to freelance contracts. Just like a whole hell of a lot of places. This sucks a lot and I hope these guys had some heads up. I honestly didn't realize any magazines still maintained staff photographers anymore. What's frustrating and deeply sad is that there is still huge demand for iconic imagery everywhere, just that facebook, reddit or imgur get the ad revenue when someone scrapes an image from somewhere else for karma or likes. It would be great if these guys refused to cover the super bowl as some kind of protest but SI would just use freelancers.
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Jan 25, 2015 02:52
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Dude points a high framerate camera at an SLR, releases shutter. It's kind of neat to see in action. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmjeCchGRQo
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Jan 29, 2015 22:21
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I don't know if this has been posting anywhere but I was checking Google+ (a once or twice a month affair) and saw this free DxO OpticsPro 8 link being posted http://www.dxo.com/intl/dphotographer
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Jan 30, 2015 16:26
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JHVH-1 posted:I don't know if this has been posting anywhere but I was checking Google+ (a once or twice a month affair) and saw this free DxO OpticsPro 8 link being posted http://www.dxo.com/intl/dphotographer is it worth a poo poo?
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Jan 30, 2015 16:32
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xzzy posted:Dude points a high framerate camera at an SLR, releases shutter. It's kind of neat to see in action. This is really cool. Thanks for posting the link.
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Jan 31, 2015 14:00
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Pukestain Pal posted:is it worth a poo poo? I pointed it at some Nikon raw files and browsed the side by side processing and it seems ok. Doesn't support everything though.
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Jan 31, 2015 16:41
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I still don't know if $100 is too high or too low but this is cool. Somebody in LA pick up some Larry Clark prints. http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/we-went-there-sifting-through-a-career-at-the-larry-clark-100-photo-sale-in-los-angeles/
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Feb 1, 2015 19:32
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Feb 2, 2015 02:54
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Good luck devinthumbs 
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Feb 2, 2015 03:04
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DJExile posted:Good luck devinthumbs
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Feb 2, 2015 03:15
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Good luck!
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Feb 2, 2015 04:41
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thanks y'all! next up: SFAI 
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Feb 2, 2015 04:46
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Some computer nerds codify what makes a portrait good, identifies things that a lot of photographers here probably already know: https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-algorithm-that-sees-beauty-in-photographic-portraits-435ab8064646 Full paper available as PDF here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1501.07304 It's an interesting read because it's a different way to think about the subject. (tl;dr: their basic conclusion is that the actual features of the subject is not all that important for how a viewer rates it, technical competency is more important)
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Feb 5, 2015 20:26
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Yesterday I went to a talk here at the university (I just finished my PhD) in the Biology department by a professor I've worked with on some side-projects over the past few years. He used one of my pictures in his talk, and I was happy he did so. That's the second time a photo I've taken has been used by a colleague in a presentation - the previous one was by a professor at another university who we (my PhD advisor and I) have worked with a little. In neither presentation was I credited as photographer. That's just the presentations I've been in the audience for, I don't know if my pictures have been used by anybody in posters or talks I didn't see. I know the Dorkroom attitude is usually (and quite fairly) PAY THE ARTIST but all I want is a little bit of text in the corner that says "Photo: ExecuDork" (though obviously using my real name). I'm not going to go storming into anybody's office and DEMAND recognition, but I was wondering if somebody had done something like this before. Anybody managed to get an academic to acknowledge a photo used in a presentation? I'm sure these people are willing, but I think they're just unaware of the importance of copyright.
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Feb 6, 2015 23:15
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"Hello pal, please credit me next time you use my picture of X". It's really that simple.
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Feb 7, 2015 01:24
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Yea pretty much, a simple email straight to the point.
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Feb 7, 2015 19:56
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Thanks. I'll bring it up the next time I see him. I just uploaded (most of) a batch of photos to Flickr and it's showing me their new feature, "Camera Roll". This actually looks pretty good, I've been getting annoyed at how their search function works. If I want to go to advanced search and narrow in on a date range because I know the picture I'm looking for came from a particular time and keyword searches aren't doing it, I have to search for some random thing, wait for the results to load, then click on advanced search. The Date Taken / Date Uploaded sort feature in Camera Roll will save me some trouble, I think. Assuming it works reasonably well.
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Feb 9, 2015 02:28
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Why are you searching your drat pictures in flickr instead of lightroom
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Feb 9, 2015 11:49
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I love going all out on lots of things related to photography but organizing my catalog is at the absolute bottom of my list
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Feb 9, 2015 16:28
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evil_bunnY posted:Why are you searching your drat pictures in flickr instead of lightroom ansel autisms posted:I love going all out on lots of things related to photography but organizing my catalog is at the absolute bottom of my list Obviously there are much better ways I could be doing things. But some vague plan to be a better person isn't going to help me find an old picture of my car covered in mud to post in a thread in AI.
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Feb 9, 2015 17:05
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I also use flickr/500px to find photos. From there I can pull the date. I should probably start tagging within lightroom though. The smart catalogs seem handy.
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Feb 9, 2015 17:08
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