Another competition for all those enthusiasts amongst us and this time the theme is: ‘Festive Season’
Family, Friendship, Food and Fun…yup that’s what the festive season’s all about right?
Free entry, 5 entries per topic (20 in total max), anyone can enter over the age of 14 and with plenty of great prizes to be picked up – get snapping!
Be quick entries close 14th December!
PhotoArtgallery.com/Competition
Lola
After a great year and many photographic ventures, I am fighting for space in my office and am growing way too big a bicep carrying the large collection of images I now have to the markets each week so…
I have decided to discontinue some older lines with the benefit going to you with 20% off!!
You can view the images I am reducing and discontinuing on my website here: Discontinued Gallery
Sizes and quantity are limited and once this stock is gone, that’s it!
So get in quick, come down to see us at THE ESPLANADE MARKETS, St Kilda to grab some for yourself or for someone special for Christmas!
Lola
Lola’s new line of Christmas cards are in and will be ready for launch this Saturday 14th November at the Gardens Market, Royal Botanic gardens, Melbourne.
Make sure to come along to the beautiful gardens and check out the many boutique styled stalls, seasonal produce, food, music, craft, art, garden sculpture and more! The Markets in the Garden will also be the launch of the latest Spring Collection which I’m naming ‘Portraits in Bloom’. A fine collection of wild australian flowers taken in the breathtaking location of the Grampians, Victoria, just a few weeks ago and artistically created to resemble a series of portraits; mood, colour, detail and simplicity to bring you a divine collection of our homelands beautiful natural landscapes.
The Christmas cards will be on display from this Saturday and then every Sunday at the The Esplanade Markets, St.Kilda. We have 8 different images and styles to choose from and will be selling them in packs of 4 for $15 with a selected few as individual cards for just $5 each!
G et in quick and come to see us this weekend!
Lola
Attention: Those of you who want better output from your DSLR, those who don’t but just looking for inspiration, as well as those that can’t find a composition to save their life (I know some so believe me) and even those who don’t need any of the above but just have nothing better to do 
As a result of a recent poll where I asked ‘What percentage do DSLR users actually use Auto-Mode’, 23% of users would use it 75% of the time and these such users are precisely the ones who should be reading blogs such as these (well I have to sell myself somewhere) to help them gain confidence and just, give it a go! Granted there were a large majority of DSLR users who do actually use manual mode, or the ‘priority’ modes such as shutter and aperture priority and I think the projects cater to everyone. Use it as inspiration, a tool, a means to get you outside and excited!!!
Mussells on a Pylon
‘TEXTURES’
But first to digress – A lot of photography is about the eye; what you see. I know I know, textures you can feel…but not in this case. However hold onto that thought, because we ‘do’ want to create an impression that gives our viewer the feeling they can actually feel.
But back to my point on the eye for a second. Just ’seeing’ something isn’t enough as you may or may not have realised by now. As an example, when I bring a friend / someone along with me on a photographic venture, (like my mum to the Grampians last month- loved your company btw ma!) they catch sight of things with their natural eye and ’see’ what could be a good or sometimes great photograph. Except, it doesn’t work that way. I’d have to say 25% of those they pick out are potentials, but majority of them are, well, not. You see not everyone looks at something with an end product (being the photograph) in mind. They see a ray of light shining over and through some trees which to the natural eye can make you go, oh wow, however when proven when captured through a camera, it just doens’t quite have teh same impact.
Likewise it can also work in the reverse…when you see through the eye of the lens something not so grand to the natural eye and show your friend then, I think they soon discover that what I’m saying to be true. Not everything makes a picture. It is up to us as photographers (yes even hobbyists and amateurs and so on) to capture a frame by seeing patterns, lead in lines, colour, lighting, movement and texture. We need to know about composition, what makes it and what doesn’t.
Question: How do your compositions work for you? Do your images have the ‘wow factor’ in them?
To the project
You may have seen me write previously (if not do so now!) on lead-in lines, looking up, foreground interest and location location location (right now I’m thinking of the guy on the simpsons ‘ Hi I’m Troy Mclure, you may remember me from such things as…’) ahem, and so in conjunction with those ‘tips’ lets make a project on Textures.
You don’t really need a location specified or researched for this, in fact for this project just take your gear and look out all day for variations of textures.
You may want to incorporate other compositional techniques such as foreground interest and/or lead-in lines as these may very well be ‘textures’ and if utilised together can make a simple landscape layout superbly strong! Since texture appeals to peoples sense of touch, we want to tap into that and draw people in creating an element of raw association.
An example hear you say…
Don't forget the Sky can be a great texture
Foreground Interest and Texture
As you can see, texture can be found everywhere! From the sky to the sand between your toes and even the water. Remember to look around you (try stopping and looking in just the 1 metre sq surrounding you) and look up and down close and try completely filling a frame with a texture…
Hot Tip: If you feel game, change your settings to shoot RAW! You can really fine tune the way it’s processed and up the ante on contrast for a superb finish. Or if you have the memory space (and ‘write’ speed) and aren’t too confident on processing a RAW file, then why not go both and select RAW & JPEG?
Good luck and let us know how you go…
Be inspired by one, inspire others and in return you will be inspired yourself…what a lovely rhythm to follow.
Lola
With Christmas fast approaching (9 weeks to go!) why not use it as a basis for creating some of your own images for cards and calendars for friends and family?
With many companies out there wanting your business for creating your own cards and calendars, there are some good deals to be had!
Just to name a few..
Here’s what I did in an hour at the beach this morning, added with a bit of time and creativity and ….
Go on, get on out there and be inspired to be creative!
‘Merry Christmas’
Lola
For all of those non-professional photographers out there get in on this opportunity to show your work and win some amazing prizes including a choice of Canon, Nikon or Sony outfit to the value of $5000!
Better Photography Competition
Get in now, be inspired and good luck!
Lola
As a photographer – be it for a hobby, amateur or pro – do/would you buy another photographers work? I mean you eat other peoples food even if you’re a chef and could make it yourself, you read other peoples novels when you yourself are a writer and you probably buy other makes of beer when you can brew your own and we even travel to far away countries when in fact we haven’t travelled our own. Ok that one may be off topic but…just a few thoughts of my own to help you think along the way as to why we can be reluctant, if indeed that’s what we are, to buy other peoples photographic work with the mind-set that we can do it ourselves? But do we? Can we?
I have a wealth of resource ranging from books, magazines, postcards, leaflets, brochures and photographic artwork from other photographers and I use these as inspiration, some are mentors to me and guide me along my path of creativity to learn, open my mind and my eyes to new and exciting horizons.
A lot of my travel and in fact where I am today has come from a many appreciation for another’s work, striving for my own unique position in an artistically eclectic industry.
I’d be interested to know others point of view on using others work, purchasing it, for inspiration and appreciation.
Lola
Shutter Priority!
In Part 1 Chapter 1 of Camera Basics we looked ways of understanding Aperture Priority within your DSLR mode.
I am hoping you have had the chance to understand this feature as it is one I have used many times. The main thing to think about is ‘how’ you want the effect to look, then work out the best way to ensure you can get the effect using simple features of your DSLR. For example know you want to shoot an image of a flower with the background thrown out, so you will need a short depth of field, letting in more light with a larger aperture opening which means you need a small ‘f’ number to do it. It can get confusing but once you’ve tried it a few times, you’ll get the hang of it.
I’l be posting some projects on here relative to each part of the chapter to help along with the understanding.
But for now, lets get onto Shutter Priority.
This is actually the direct opposite of Aperture Priority, where you choose the shutter speed you want and the camera will calculate the aperture accordingly to ensure an accurate exposure. Simple yet taking control over creativity and doing away with auto mode.
So let’s get into it.
First of all let’s explain briefly a little on shutter speed and how best to understand it
I want to refer to the eye analogy like we did for the explanation of Aperture (where the pupil of our eye acts in similar way to the aperture in that it enlarges and shrinks reacting to light) but for this example our eyelids are like the shutter. It’s just a curtain that we hold control of in camera allowing in ‘more’ or ‘less’ light which gives us a correct (or incorrect) exposure. Ok?
Two extremes can occur where a fast shutter lets in only a very small amount of light as well as capturing only a very small amount of an image whereby you can ‘freeze’ action:
Fast Shutter to Freeze Action
Likewise at the other end of the scale a slower shutter speed, allows more light to pass through allowing the film to record more of an image which will essentially blur any action:
Very Slow Shutter to Blur Movement
Shutter speed is essentially pretty easy and perhaps best if we leave it there for our first attempt at taking you off auto mode.
There are a number of techniques once the basics are mastered such as learning how to ‘pan’ a subject such as a car as its going past you. This is where you would have your camera on a tripod, and you follow the moving subject ‘panning’ across whilst depressing the shutter button whereby capturing the subject and blurring the background. Great for track day events – but don’t try it on the Grand Prix cos they just move so damn fast you will need to get a bit more experience before trying this one out!
Few things to bear in mind:
Keep an eye on the Aperture even though the camera will select this automatically for you once you’ve chosen the shutter speed. The reason is that your aperture may be restricted by the type of lens you have and if you choose a shutter speed which the camera wants an f2.8 aperture for (to enable a correct exposure) and your lens has only a minimum of f3.5 then it will be limited by the aperture on your lens and produce an under exposed (dark) image. This is where it becomes a bit of a balancing act where you may have to chose a slower shutter, to allow more light in to ensure a correct exposure.
Tip: A work around for this can be to lighten the ‘films’ (the sensor) sensitivity in this case by increasing the ISO, however bear in mind this may make a grainier/noisier looking image but may just be enough to work.
Essentially if you make the opening smaller (aperture) and make the curtain open for longer (shutter) then you should be near to a good balance of sufficient light and a correct exposure.
But if you have a small opening (big aperture) and short curtain opening time (fast shutter) it wont be enough light coming through potentially and something will have to give. So you then need to get more light in by 1) extending the curtain time or 2) reducing the aperture to a smaller f/stop number which enlarges the hole size and therefore…more light!
Give Shutter Priority a go and let me know how you get on and if this article was at all helpful 
Lola
For all of those who use Adobe Creative Suite then you must check out the latest edition of Adobes’ own Online Creative Festival taking place on Tuesday 27th October.
It takes place, you guessed it, online and yup it’s FREE!
All you need to do is register, check out the agenda and diarise the time slots or block out the whole day (11am-4pm).
This is Adobes’ 4th edition of the festival and can be great to take part in even if you don’t use or have the latest edition of Photoshop.
You can locate useful resources and find out where to go for additional online tutorials, join a user group or perhaps you’ve been wanting to find out how to create a pdf portfoilo…
I can’t vouch enough for how useful these festivals can be to both professional and amateur photographers. The capability to watch online in the comfort of your own desk, whilst being able to interact and chat live with the experts is more than enough to inspire you and get you motivated. You can even have access to Adobes resellers who usually offer some pretty good deals!
If you feel like it, you can upload an image to the Gallery which gets voted on and the winner announced on the day; the topic is iGeneration.
You can find the agenda and online registry here:
Adobe Online Creative Festival
Lola
Yes it’s finally arrived…I am off tomorrow for a round trip to Adelaide and back via the glorious Grampians in Victoria to capture the bloom of spring (whilst visiting the family of course!).
With it’s thousands of wild flower species I will be on the lookout for some spectacular, creative and inspiring images to create the new Spring Collection.
I will be out of the office for the next week and a half but I will be getting online to blog my way through the journey and hope to be able to update regularly.
Have a great week everyone and welcome spring!!!
Lola
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