Drive-By-Motion

I read a post from Julieanne Kost the other day as a guest speaker to Scott Kelby's Blog. She talked about a motion technique that she had been working on while in a vehicle. After reading this I was immediately inspired to follow this idea and already had a set-up in mind. In years past I've set-up my camera on a tripod on the front seat of my car and captured many images of the oncoming scene. Some images were alright but nothing really hit home. Reading Julieanne's words the other day clicked on a lightbulb to turn the camera to the side instead of the front.

It took some trial and error on which setting to use and how fast to drive the car, but after a few adjustments we spent a few hours driving around and making images. Of the 285 images made that day these 9 are my favorites;

Bele Chere...is about the Music

The City of Asheville Celebrated it's 32 Bele Chere Festival last weekend. It's a three day event filled with music (4 stages) food, artisans, and about 250 thousand people. It became a great opportunity to practice some street photography and try out a few new techniques for shooting live performances I learned from Alan Hess, a very talented concert photographer. I also participated in Scott Kelby's World Wide Photo Walk, with some Asheville photographers.



Cheers

Mark

Own your Images

Keep what you own
So you own a camera and a few lenses, you make decent images and want get better known. How about enter into a photo contest, maybe one sponsored by your favorite photo magazine?
Well first take a look at Pro-Imaging "Bill of Rights for Photography Competitions", http://www.pro-imaging.org/content/view/177/156/ all too commonly these sponsors require you to give up ownership of your image. Be sure to look at their "Rights On List" good competitions, and "Rights Off List" bad competitions.
So keep shooting, enter into competitions, and don't give up what you own.

Thanks to Bob Krist for posting this on his Blog originally.
http://www.bobkrist.com/blog/

Photographing flowers

A technique I happened upon a few years ago, and occasionally attempted with varying success. It's simply a matter of opening up your widest lens, setting the focus to manual and adjusting it to as close as possible, and then "dancing" around and through an object. Yes you will get funny looks from people as you move in, through, and around, your subject, in this case blooming flowers. The technique is improved with the use of extension tubes (which I don't own, but do covet) or using a tele-converter, I used a 1.4x for these images. Of the 400+ images I made that day I am pretty happy with this group. A couple I like very much and will add them to my website (still in the works...).



cheers,

Mark

Non Photographic video

This came from a recent blog post from Scott Kelby, www.scottkelby.com/blog, which you should be following anyway and it is funny;



Mark

Rocky Fork, Tennessee

This is my first attempt to post a blog directly from Picasa Web Albums so we'll see how it goes.

These are a few images, actually the only ones that survived editing, from a hike at the Rocky Fork area of Tennessee. We've been eager to get back there and Saturday seemed to work out schedule wise. Unfortunately it didn't work out weather wise, it was a beautiful sunny day and we arrived around 10am and left around 3pm. Practically the worst shooting conditions, except for maybe the middle of the night with no moon. Surprisingly there are a few images that came out alright, the one impressionistic one being my favorite. Mostly is gave me a gave me a chance to find good access points to shoot from when the conditions are better...like an overcast, misty, late afternoon day.

A new way of seeing

I found out about this photographer from an email by Outdoor Photographer Magazine. I no longer subscribe to the magazine but still receive emails from them, including updates about latest issues. This photographer, Stephen Lang, had a feature article in the magazine. What caught my attention was his unique vision on Bird photography;

http://www.stephenlangphotography.com/photo/galleries/index.php?data[uid]=13&data[gid]=34

this is something that I will soon attempt.

I've been attempting impressionistic photography for 18 months now and still only have about 2 images that I'm happy with. I've seen many images from photographers who have excelled at this technique, but personally, I just can't get the hang of it, although I usually make a few attempts each time I go out. And will continue until I do the hang of it, why? because it's fun, challenging, and continues to reinforce the idea of looking at a subject differently, and from various angles.

From Impressionistic photography