Creativity

My last entry was prophetic. After reaching too far and extending my hobby too much I got lost. Life happened and I no longer recognize myself in the photos I take. The long hours spent digging into workflows, minute sharpening details and cropping are not there anymore and the equipment is now used as way too expensive point-and-shoot gear.

And I am much happier.

Photography was an open field to try out my creativity, combining my interest in technology, life and management. I have moved on and photography was an important step on the way. I look back at ~22 000 photos spread over multiple years and it feels... nice. Curiosity, drive and application of the various skills I built led up to them.

What intrigues me now is genuine creativity in the areas that matter most to me. Where the challenge echoes deep and the first fight to simply create a calm space for creativity. Emotions fly everywhere. I find it takes a new approach to planning, to vulnerability and pure damn focus to move the world a step. Daring to stop, to accept and to make something new happen. In photography as well as in life.

Storytelling

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

Winter projects - steel wool photography

I need to try this out. The winter is dark.

Slow photography

Just stumbled on an old article from Slate discussing the concept of "slow photography". It rhymes really well with what I want to try this year. I have used photography to keep a record of everything that happens and it is taking some of the fun out of the exercise. It is time to slow down.

"For most people, including me, photography is most often about documentation or record-keeping. It is about taking a photograph as an effort to grab a moment as it rushes by, to stage a tiny revolt against the tyranny of time. That's why traditionally we photograph at moments you might think of as scarce. Few people photograph their daily commute, but most of us only go to high-school prom once—or maybe twice. A baby soon becomes a child, but humans look vaguely middle-aged for decades."

(...)

"No, the real victim of fast photography is not the quality of the photos themselves. The victim is us. We lose something else: the experiential side, the joy of photography as an activity. And trying to fight this loss, to treat photography as an experience, not a means to an end, is the very definition of slow photography.

Defined more carefully, slow photography is the effort to flip the usual relationship between process and results. Usually, you use a camera because you want the results (the photos). In slow photography, the basic idea is that photos themselves—the results—are secondary. The goal is the experience of studying some object carefully and exercising creative choice. That's it.

He further references an even older essay written by Fred Conrad that includes some examples:

New year, new camera

Got a new camera and inspiration, will from now on be more frequent in posting here. Working on a west coast portfolio for fun.

Imitation

Nature and people - todays crop of favourites. My next project is to imitate the style of some of these shots and explore new editing possibilities. Will be fun! Further, I recently decided to begin building a portfolio. Up until now I have mainly done photobooks of events and it is now time to explore what would happen if I only got to choose my top five or ten photos to show. Challenging to say the least.

Blütezeit by Julia Maier Gone with the wind by Maja Topčagić Off the shelf by Nic B. to build a home by Vincent Bourilhon Sunset Conversation by Mark Gee

Nanning BBQ by Adam Robert Young Attitude by Samrat Mukhopadhyay Ritmo de soleco by Aleksei Skalin Lightscanner by Ildiko Neer Sunk by Manuel Lancha

three by Daniel Camacho

Street photography

Recently got a new iPhone 4S and most of my shots are now made with Instagram or similar apps. The mobility is really nice but you lose the connection to the workflow and it just feels... very different.

Anyway, went out with the real camera today and watched some of the 1st of May protesters (Syndikalisterna). Got a bit interesting but quickly calmed down again. Will try to edit these further!

Vertical 'moment-lapse' of surfing

Really neat effect - 38 cameras tied together and triggered at the same time, creating the same effect as a dolly-based timelapse but for one moment. Seem to recall that this method was also used in the Matrix.

Making of video!

Sunrise

Found the sunrise again using the Photographers Ephemeris. 07.26 is still a manageable time.

Eye-catchers

One of my favourite pastimes is to browse the Interesting or Popular section of large photography sites. It gives me a few minutes of drifting away to situations and moods that might trigger something new. Recently I have begun paying attention to which shots I linger on a bit longer than usual. Reviewing the "keepers" after walking though a couple of hundred shots often reveals a theme or two that together tells a story. For example - here is the result of a Friday morning review of 500px right before work:

None by Ali Shokri	VASPA SUNSET by sarawut Intarob
the song of the whales by piet flour	Fisherman. by Anatoly Sokolov
MakBullu by pink sword	Majestic of Persian Architecture by Abbas Arabzadeh
» The City Awakes by Jeff Krol	Lotus by yuddin tag

Conclusion - looking forward to a calm weekend, water and more colors!

Canon 550D and water

Looked at my full year plan and realized it is going to get warmer - eventually. Saw this amazing video again a few days ago and got a bit inspired:

Apparently there are several different housings available that allows you to use DSLRs underwater with adaptable lens systems. Crazy expensive and I dont even have a divers license but hey - dreams are fun. Shown below is the Ikelite housing.

Just browsed some underwater groups on Flickr - a lot of macro photos. As an example here is a Flickriver link

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New year, new things

Feeling really good about 2012 - something about the even number just resonates. Few updates the last couple of months, but not for a lack of photography. Got myself a Christmas gift, a new 24-70 2.8L lens. Heavy but it delivers simply stunning quality and it will hopefully last significantly longer than my current camera body.

Also really keen on the new free Lightroom 4 beta, particularly the Book-section. I have printed all my books through the Blurb service and I'm really happy with the results. This new built-in integration and design layouts promises to make it even easier.

Good times!

Hiking and photography

Still on my wish-list for next year:

Inspiration

These are all from my inspiration folder - I have unfortunately lost the sources for these images :(

Exploring timelapse

Still exploring timelapse techniques and scouting for good locations. In the meantime - here is a newly released stunning sequence from the international space station. Will be slightly difficult to top that location.

Buying an iPhone 4S... nearly

About 80-90% there now - below an example of a video fully shot with the phone. In the beginning you can sort of tell but later scenes are simply amazing.

Timelapse photography

Did my first technical timelapse experiment this morning. Not feeling too great yesterday so why not spend an early Sunday morning with some coffee and sun?

Doing this video was actually really fun and it tied together many of the things mentioned here before.

First things first - finding the sun
A sunrise is over quickly and it is vital to be positioned at the right place before the first rays enter the picture. The Photographers Ephemeris is a free application that allows you to see in detail the angle of the sunrise and sunset. This allows you to plan the exact location of where you should stand. As an example - below is the plan I used:

Timelapse gear
Once on site a few things are required:

• Camera (duh)
• Fully charged battery and spare (many shots=lots of energy)
• Tripod
• Plan on final video (length/number of frames etc)
• Coffee, newspaper and patience (will take a while)
• Intervalometer

The last component is key - an intervalometer triggers exposures at regular intervals. As luck would have it, the Magic Lantern custom firmware mentioned earlier is now much easier to use (new release in August) and also includes a software version that is sooo convenient. Works for most of the modern Canon cameras.

Editing
This is all created in Lightroom with the support of another free application called LRTimelapse. The homepage contains several great video tutorials on how to use it and timelapsing in general. Basically, it allows for intelligent and streamlined bulk editing of all settings stored in the .XMP-companion for each RAW-file.

There is also several pre-sets for the video encoding that is really helpful once the output is ready. It is a joy to use and it also allows for correcting the "jitter" that shows up. I still havent really learned how to do all of this yet but there is always a next time.

Lessons learned

• Plan in advance how many shots to take - for 8 fps or 12 fps between 480 and 720 shots are needed for one minute of movie
• Make sure the histogram is shown for each shot - very quickly the highlights will begin burning out when the sun appears
• Get a bean bag or something to remove that motion jitter occuring every now and then
• Protect the lens better - used my polarizing filter now which is not really adequate
• Take even more shots or over a longer time period - it is not a video camera..
• For multiple scenes - take a minimum amount of shots for e.g 20 seconds on screen - that would be 160 or 240 shots
• Shoot in manual mode and make sure white balance is not set to "Auto"
• Read up more on timelapsing techniques on the TimeScapes board
• Spend more time in editing :)

The inspiration for this really came from this video:

Fantastic scenery and he also uses a dolly to create the panning effect. Specifically this dolly, which seems really nice...

High-end photography

And since I am walking into the gear territory, here are some shots from the new frickin amazing Canon EOS 1D X. An example shown below:

EOS-1D X / EF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS II USM / 1/1,000 F2.8 / 0EV / ISO51200
That last figure is just.. way out.

Mobile photography

Really keen on the new iPhone 4S with the upgraded camera. This would really allow for some mobile photography in the spirit of the last coupe of posts. Features include:

• 8 megapixels
• 1080p
• “73% more light“
• Faster picture-taking
• Improved lens
• Real-time stabilization

I am particularly interested of the improved lens which is an f/2.4 at about 30 mm. Below a sample photo and here are some more

Point and shoot

Inspired by this excellent post from David duChemin I dug through my old equipment storage and found an Ixus 750 that has seen very little use since my Australia trip many years back. During a run today I shot the photos below as an experiment, quickly and without stopping.





In general, I want to increase both the number of photos I take and the amount of feedback received in combination with a travelling lifestyle. I did the same in the military by taking a small APS camera with me to places where all other equipment would be either too big or too delicate. Further - these smaller, quicker digital shots allow for easy sharing and it's really fun to shoot them off to friends through e.g WhatsApp on the phone.

It is also neat to try out some of the more insane post processing alternatives to simply learn what works and what doesn't. Will most definitely use this as an optional way of bringing photography into the average day.