I’ve had little time to do any very interesting photography in the past couple of weeks. Still, my cameras have been coming out with me and I’ve been grabbing shots when I can. However, with the weather being what it is (I live in Seattle so no surprise – it’s been raining) and work being busy, my images have been mostly opportunistic. When things are like that, I often default to a handful of simple styles and look for images that fit into that mold. Examples of styles might be …

Kaden Kratzer, a super photographer, recently shared his developing process with me for black and white film. We recently became good friends and I had remarked that I regularly found white specks on my scanned film using my original developing technique so Kaden sought out to give me a hand. This post is his instructions, which after I tried, worked flawlessly for me. Kaden is a wonderful photographer (who recently joined us over at www.lostinfocus.org), an expert at film / developing and a great guy who is very willing to …

I’ve always wanted to use an online self publishing / photo book service and recently I finally made time to give it a shot. I wanted to create Akuri a Christmas gift – a photo book of our beautiful dog who left us this year, Ume – so I chose blurb.com’s offering. On the blurb site, they offer a download for their book making software ‘Booksmart’. Once installed on your PC (or Mac), you get to choose from several book styles such as:

Small Square (7″ x 7″)
Standard Landscape (10″ …

A photographer I know recently commented that they didn’t like any of their shots from 2009, and were hoping for a better 2010. I really liked that comment. That sort of reflection is rarely performed by photographers… we take sooo many pictures (usually several thousands per year) that it’s often easy to hide behind quantity, rather than quality. It reminds me of another conversation I was part of previously. A great photographer I knew had come back from New York and said that he was gutted he only had a …

Most people who use Photoshop will already be aware of plugins by NIK software, including Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, etc. I’m generally in two minds about their plugins – on one hand I’ve seen them put to fantastic use, with photographers creating wonderful post processed images… on the flip side, like some Photoshop techniques which are easy-to-use-but-hard-to-master, I’ve seen them horribly overused.
Well the other day I did a quick search for a free processing plugins for Photoshop and came across OptikVerve Lab’s virtualPhotographer, a free filter plugin for …

A recurring theme has been coming up a lot recently with photographer friends of mine – about the importance of photo projects.
Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned professional who just happens to be stuck in a slump, my best advice to get things going again is to pick a project. The idea of a project can be extremely simple – even just a single word (e.g. “happiness” or “rain”). Once you’ve chosen it, shoot that, and nothing else, for a month. A project has the effect of constraining what …

This weekend I experimented with a new technique called “Painting with Light”. It involves shooting subjects in total darkness with very long shutter speeds, and then taking an artificial light source (e.g. a lamp) and “painting” the subject with the light. When done properly, the effect is very interesting – more interesting in some respects that what can easily be achieved with regular studio equipment due to the degree of selective lighting.
This is my first serious attempt so bear with me. You’ll see more of this in coming weeks …

“The Holga is an inexpensive, medium format 120 film toy camera, made in China, appreciated for its low-fidelity aesthetic.”

Originally shot with a Olympus OM-4 + Olympus OM Zuiko 21mm f/2.0 lens on Fujicolor Pro 160s. Modified with a Photoshop Holga action
Holga’s really are remarkable cameras. Take everything that is valued in the digital photography world (edge to edge sharpness, contrast, accurate exposure, lack of vignetting, etc), look for the inverse of it, and you have a Holga. But despite the flaws, these are surprisingly popular cameras. What they have going …

I’ve been mailed at least a dozen times by students who have chosen either me or the theme “narrative photography” for a presentation / project / etc. People usually find me either from seeing my previous projects of because I come up as the top result on Google on a “narrative photography” keyword search (www.narrativephotography.com also ends up here). Most emails I get are usually questions of what / who my influences are / were, what gear I use, how I manage lighting, etc. I’m always happy to answer but …

Initially, I was just going to post this image but decided to describe a little about how it came about instead as I thought it might be of interest. Currently, I’m experimenting and photograhing with a Canon G9 this week…