Author: SiobhanKyle

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Live Show Recap: Long Exposure

Chelsea’s back with a vengeance this week! This show was a blast. We looked at your long exposure shots and got some really great ones. There were so many picks, I’m gonna be drowning in this recap. Next week’s topic is “abstract.” No cats allowed.

Our Lightroom 5 paperback is on sale for $14.99! It’s the older version of Lightroom, but many of you still may be using that, so get it. Make sure to pick the Lightroom 5 version and the Paperback option from the drop-down menus. 

Lightroom 6 now has closed captioning on all the videos! I spent six months of my life trudging through doing that, so tell your friends.

Because of you all, we got to over 100,000 likes on our Facebook page! That’s great.

We put up a video yesterday about how the Sony a7S isn’t as great as everyone said and then Sony fanboys went bonkers so we took it down. But we’re gonna put it back up!

Chelsea taps on everything.

Photo news:

  • firmware updates announced for Fuji 
  • billboard magazine cover was shot with the iPhone 7 and people care for some reason

Chelsea asks me a question, which is “do you have any questions?”

  • are cheap teleconverters worth starting out with? Probably not. Just crop!
  • do you have the next location for Wanderlust? Not yet, we have episodes coming up and we are probably going out with the Lowenbachs in CA again!

Let’s get into your photos! I’ll highlight our picks and notable quotes below:

  • it’s aliens. Or a drone with sparklers attached “that seems super legal and safe”
  • lovely abstract
  • fireworks
  • Kaizen, will you stop harassing us now?
  • lightning
  • wedding kiss
  • Tony talks for a long time about dogs 
  • here’s that video about not needing ND filters
  • pick for two drinks
  • highway, I think Chelsea gives this a pick for her own edits
  • shoreline/skyline (yes, they know it’s New York, they’re trolling you)
  • cityscape
  • Chris Reddy, party with us, make us pancakes
  • stunning sky
  • keyboard “the future is blue, we know this”
  • another shoreline abstract and here’s the video Chelsea made on it
  • smooth water
  • “classic waterfall, don’t go chasin’ um”

More questions:

  • thanks for your super comments! I am the cat’s meow.
  • do we use the new version of Wirecast for the live show? Nope!
  • where should the focus be in a landscape? Wherever the focal point is!
  • the live show is crazy complicated, we can’t and won’t tell you how we do it.
  • my dog is a menace
  • what is one piece of advice you’d give to a young photog to go into it professionally? Tony and Chelsea are not cool and don’t know how to connect with teens. Depends on what you want to shoot, there’s no formula. Shoot what you love and hone your skills.

Time to look at a portfolio. Bev Miller, lovely images. Check your exposures though! Fix your menus, put in a picture of yourself. 

Chit-chat! The part of the show where we reply to your mean/dumb/confusing YouTube comments. 

  • Tiananman Square urban legend?
  • Sony sell outs! Or Sony shills? Don’t slap grey-haired men.
  • LMAO YOUR WIFE WANTS TO GO TO EASTERN EUROPE… I don’t understand 
  • mind your business! 

Super chats! Apparently this is part of our show now:

  • Tony is handsome
  • that car was a Challenger not a Charger
  • do our books and videos apply to video? Yes on the artistic bits, not so much on the technical stuff.
  • Tony, what’s the deal with your shirt? Buzz Aldrin made it.
  • HDR merging in Lightroom or Photoshop? Lightroom is quick and easy.
  • full frame macro on an APSC? Yeah that works.
  • a question for the group: would you pay to come on a shoot with us in an old mansion? “these people pay for questions, they got money flying out of their butts.”

 

Back to photos:

Chelsea keeps wanting to see me:

  • Nikon is better than Canon
  • I would fly from Texas to do that shoot
  • you should slideshow submissions in the background
  • what makes Chelsea cool is she doesn’t care about being cool
  • Tony’s shirt is a quote from Total Recall and he is very upset he missed it
  • my husband wants to know how you feel about the flat earth? He thinks it’s the shape of a tupperware.
  • what does an ND filter do? It’s like sunglasses for your camera. It smooths motion. sdp.io/nofilter

Back to photos:

  • star trails
  • Chelsea just Rick-rolled you all

Back to me for questions for some reason?

  • Tony is a fake nerd! Tony got a letter jacket for being a trombone player and a mathlete.
  • highest end camera with an articulating touch screen? Get a used GH2, or a G7 or a GH4.
  • why use a medium format camera over a full frame? Megapixels for large prints. 
  • lots of love for Rishi from DPReview
  • what does it mean to have a style in photography? You can’t unintentionally have a style, they are honed and rules are intentionally broken.

One more pick. 

And that’s our show! Next week is abstract. Thanks for joining!

 

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Beginner Photography: Long Exposures

Happy Spring for those of you in this part of the world! It doesn’t feel like it yet, but I can’t wait for it to get warmer and drier so I am motivated to get out and shoot more.

This week’s live show topic is long exposures, which I really hadn’t attempted before. But a month or so back we had a party for my stepson’s birthday and our friends brought sparklers. I thought it would be a great time to try out some impromptu light painting. These wound up being abstracts, which I love, not the intentional kind of light painting that you generally see. Those are a bit more complex and you can learn multiple ways to do it from Tony’s video here:

I think my kids would love to try those as well, so maybe we’ll attempt them in the future.

So all it took to capture these photos was some experimenting with the shutter speed. I took some of just the firecrackers burning, but I didn’t find those too compelling. The ones I liked the best had the eerie ghosting of the kids moving through the frame around the light. Others, I chose to pivot myself while the shutter was open to create light trails. 

f/3.6, 5 sec, ISO 640

 

f/3.6, 3.2 sec, ISO 320

 

F/3.6, 5 sec, ISO 1000

 

The first two images I converted to black and white in Lightroom and adjusted the exposure. The colors in the shots weren’t very pleasing and didn’t add anything to them. In the last shot however, I adjusted the white balance to make the yellow lights more blue and thought the abstract look of the whole thing was beautiful.

I thought these were really fun to shoot and I look forward to trying it again, a bit more intentionally next time. 

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Live Show Recap: Lines

We’re back! Well, kind of. Chelsea got sick in Thailand and between that and jet-lag, she had to cut out before the live show. So Tony held it down solo this week, with the help of Justin and me of course. 

We looked at your “lines” photos, and there were some great ones. Next week we’ll be looking at your long exposures.

We enabled “super chat” on YouTube which is very weird. You can pay to have your comment highlighted, and the more you pay the longer it stays up, supposedly. 

Okay, we get into your photos here, I’ll highlight Tony’s picks below:

Over to me with your questions:

  • in short lighting, do you focus on the closest eye or the brightest eye? The closest.
  • how could a beginner get sponsored for travel photography? A beginner could not. You’d need a lot of experience and tens of thousands of Instagram followers.

Now to chit-chat, the part of the show where you say dumb things to us and we make fun of you.

  • why does Tony always look like he just got out of the shower?
  • do you fall asleep to camera overviews? “Tony the living sleeping pill”
  • HDR hate
  • 90’s choker trend
  • Tony should dye his hair

Ok, time to look at a portfolio! Way too long of an intro to that video, but good job bringing in the action. Gorgeous film reel! Maybe try a different layout for your photos, square crop doesn’t work with everything. Beautiful shots. Tony discriminates against left-handed people, so good job leading with that.

We get back into your photos here:

Back to me for some questions:

  • what would be your perfect camera? You can see his answer here. The closest so far is the Sony a99 II.

Back to your photos:

Last questions from me:

  • how much scouting do you do before traveling? A lot! Google Earth is a great resource, looking at other photographers shots from the same place, hire a model in advance.
  • there’s a Northrup Photo sub-reddit, if you’re a redditor.
  • congrats, Jim! 

And that is our show! Whoo, Tony deserves all the beer for that one. Thanks for watching, and join us next week for your long exposures as well as the triumphant return of Chelsea.

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Beginner Photography: Lines

Hey folks! This week’s topic was a fun one: lines. I like these abstract topics, partially because I’m lazy and partially because I just like abstract photography. Not that these images had to be abstract, but that’s what I tend to when shooting something simple.

The problem I came across with almost all of these shots was a lack of focal point. So some of these wound up being more like location scouting for when I have a model (most likely my daughter) to put in the scene at a later date. I actually love simple, stark shots of man-made structures especially. I think it’s something about finding a rare blank space in the city.

As usual, I shot in aperture priority at my lowest aperture. Some of these shots were of repeating patterns, so it makes the most sense to choose a small focal point and let the rest of the image blur. It helps to eliminate background distractions and your brain fills in the rest of the pattern for itself.

I walked around my neighborhood looking for lines and patterns. I first went to the train tracks, but where I live they are just in a straight line, which doesn’t give a very interesting leading line. Those shots wound up being unsuccessful. The sun was high in the sky, though, which made for lots of nice shadows. I sought out a few staircases that I thought would serve as a good subject. There were also a number of stone railings I liked. I converted all the shots to black and white since the pattern and texture were the focus.

This was actually an old shot from my phone that I loved but found no use for.

There is a person sitting at the end, but I wish they were larger in the frame.

 

This is a spot I’ve shot before, in my post on architecture. I think this crop works a bit better.

f/3.5, 1/800th for some reason, ISO 200.

 

This spot you’ll recognize from my “spooky” shots here. It could certainly use a focal point, but I love the zig-zag shadows on the stairs.

f/4, 1/640th, ISO 200.

 

Another old shot from when I was in San Francisco. Pup prints.

f/9, 1/200th, ISO 200.

 

So, there’s lines! I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone’s interpretations for the live show this week. What do you think of my shots? At all compelling, or just boring? 

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Beginner Photography: Street Pets

Ok, so this one is a cheat. I didn’t go out shooting this week, we don’t have a live show and I couldn’t come up with a subject. So I decided to go through old shots and edit some, and turned up a bunch of street photos of dogs that I never had any use for. 

I was shooting street photography in San Francisco at the time, so I had my Olympus E-M10 with me, using live view on the flip-out back screen to conspicuously take shots. But you don’t really have to be conspicuous with dogs, because they have no shame. So when possible, I got down at their eye level to shoot them. Like standard street photography, I tried to get some context to their surroundings and often went black and white to eliminate distractions. 

Here’s a great video from T&C on shooting street photography:

I realized editing these shots how far I’ve come over the past few months. I had NO idea what I was doing when I shot these. My settings are insane and the shots came out noisy even though I was out in natural light. My f/stop and ISO could have been much lower.

And here are some pups:

Sadly, I cut off his front feet which is a no-no, but look at that face! 

f/5.6, 1/80th, ISO 800

 

I love their bodies pointing different directions but looking the same way, and the cool owner leaning against his car.

f/6.5, 1/250th, ISO 200

 

It is hard to expose for a white ball of fluff, and to focus on it’s eyes.

f/4, 1/50th, ISO 200

 

So there’s some dogs! Do they make up for me not shooting this week? Maybe. 

Next week’s topic is “lines” which I’m excited for. I love abstract topics and I look forward to seeing how everyone interprets it, myself included. 

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Live Show Recap: Landscapes

I think I can say that we’re on a roll lately. It might be the whisky. We looked at your landscape photos this week, and you all really showed up. There were some great shots!

Also this episode, Chelsea reveals that she is a part-time ghost. We won’t be on next week as Tony and Chelsea are traveling, but the week after that (March 16th) we’ll be looking at photos on the theme of “lines.” So lines need to be the main compositional element of your shot, not just incidental.

We start the show off with chit-chat, to get Chelsea’s spirits up. It seems to work:

  • T&C should make a baby because they have too much time on their hands? Seems like a reasonable solution.
  • Balki Bartokamous. Cousin Larrying is a real term, we swear.
  • angry Pentax users. I’m sure that person is really a lovely woman.
  • boring focus breathing comment
  • Tony’s dad is a bobblehead
  • very mixed reviews of Tony and Chelsea’s voice
  • Pauline is hella positive

Okay, let’s get into your photos. For some reason they keep putting them in alphabetical order, sorry guys!

  • gorgeous fog over the water
  • “Rock Ness Monster”
  • I think they forgot that picks were a thing for a while here
  • silhouette
  • rolling hills
  • Justin does a great Windows 98 impression
  • Fyn sent us a calendar! It’s gorgeous.
  • Table Mountain
  • “set up a tent, live your life there”
  • “HDR is like plastic surgery, you only notice the bad stuff”
  • don’t Bart Simpson us
  • a gorgeous sunrise
  • “that gets a picture from me”
  • this just in: Nikon Snapbridge still sucks
  • windmill

Over to me for a question:

  • Nikon wants to focus on higher end cameras, what does that mean for consumer cameras? We need better bridge cameras with smooth touch screens and intuitive controls. 

Now for a portfolio. Janis Farhat, we are so so sorry about Chelsea’s pronunciation of your name. It all goes downhill from here. Lovely portfolio though! Turn off auto-scroll, choose a different first shot. Tony’s hair is like a fluffy cloud. “Very slimming to cut your body in half with the sun!” Great work, get rid of your drop menus and have them each be one page.

Hahaha Chelsea is losing it over “Janus” being a name. We all have dumb names.

 

Back to photos:

  • infrared
  • how can we tell what spectrum of colors animals see? Science!
  • “I only see light that bounces off of predators, should I go to a doctor?”
  • “she’s my little goose poop”
  • Taranaki
  • C is not in the middle of the alphabet
  • “I saw that movie, that’s where the demons come from”
  • dad heaven
  • “backbutt”
  • this would be so good without that fake moon
  • dramatic sky “that’s what my soul feels like when I’m going through a spiritual conflict”
  • sun and church
  • foggy road

Now some questions from me:

  • expose for the sky or the foreground? Expose for the brightest part and raise shadows in post.
  • why don’t you use super expensive cameras like the Phase 1? Because they’re intimidating and expensive. We’d love to try one though!
  • a version of this show where T&C are Chef Ramsay brutal
  • if you had to choose, do you sacrifice composition or light for a landscape? Composition.
  • what motivates you as a photographer? The feeling when you get the shot you’re going for. Competition with yourself.

Back to your photos:

Back to me for some reason?

  • relevant to Janus
  • a confusing drone question for Justin
  • which of the new Sigma lenses are you looking forward to? The 24-70 f/2.8
  • Chris Reddy, will you make us pancakes?
  • infomercials for the books? 

And back to photos:

And your last questions:

  • can you bracket with a moving subject? No! But you can shoot raw, make virtual copies in LR and then adjust the exposure and blend them together.
  • how do you make money from landscape photography? Stock photos, open a gallery in a tourist town, get a job at a national park? Education, workshops. Add a model and sell them as ads.

That’s our show! Join us in two weeks for lines.

 

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Live Show Recap: Black & White Part 2

You jerks got an extra show this week because YouTube is the worst!

We reviewed your black and white shots again this week, and we have a new way to submit photos! Straight to Dropbox, no password and we got a flood of images. We also streamed live in 4k this week for the first time!

In a mere 2 days, we’ll have another live show on landscapes.

Chelsea mentioned that I like “ranchos” and if you don’t know what those are, ask me about it. I will extol the virtues of my new favorite show to you.

Photo news:

  •  Go buy our Lightroom book on sale! sdp.io/lr and it’s only $19.99 for the paperback, PLUS 10% off if you use the coupon code YouTube.
  • Fuji X-T20

Ok, let’s get into your photos:

  • lovely portrait
  • “that’s super timely” in response to Tony mentioning Laverne and Shirley
  • bridge and fog
  • film noir
  • “I bet he flips tires at the gym“
  • “you thought you could sneak spot color by us, Pedro! No sir.”

Over to me for some questions:

  • why does lens compression happen? It’s because of the angle of view. I can’t type out this explanation for you.
  • opinions on the new digital medium format system? Tony’s excited to see something new, but wants to give it time to develop fully. Also medium format files are huge.
  • what should we expect from HighRes scanned film pictures? Digital is just better.

 

Back to your photos:

Time to look at a portfolio! Mason Unrau. Gorgeous colors and lighting in your shots. Great full screen layout, not too many shots on the front page. Wonderful portfolio!

Over to me for some questions:

  • one of your top three places you want to photograph in your career? African safari, New Zealand, Iceland.
  • Photoshop composites? Great!
  • mirroless, M6 vs M3? The M6 isn’t out yet!

Back to your photos:

  • face in the crowd
  • storybook
  • oncoming train
  • snow and fog
  • portrait reflection
  • maternity
  • Shanghai
  • illegal miner “what’s he mining?” “From the look of his fingers it could be chocolate?”
  • “that’s why I named our daughter Aardvark”
  • old-timey kid
  • old-timey man
  • environmental portrait
  • “this rope is dope”
  • “mom. give me back my Pokemon Go account”
  • “this makes me want to get new perfume and go clubbing“
  • landscape
  • lake view
  • “oh, I didn’t now I had this fear” “He’s like the ninja turtle that the other ninja turtles wouldn’t accept”
  • spooky baby
  • “this guy’s good“
  • no one knows, but I have a one inch by one inch camera
  • next week, dogscapes
  • lovely urban portrait
  • and another!
  • thoughtful kid
  • izquierdo= left
  • “how do you know no animals?”
  • volcano
  • “like, if someone broke up with me I’d go look at this rock” “someone?”
  • Zach Divine “thanks, dad” “you made me take the last name Northrup, the whitest name for the coolest girl” “I like how he has a military haircut“
  • “Zachary Stoner, now there’s a name you can really get behind”
  • gorgeous overhead shot
  • “and our channel will be so much more popular when it’s called Divine Stoner”

Over to me for some more questions:

  • least favorite gadget? This is a tricky question for us to answer on air…
  • trip to the US for street photography? New York, of course!
  • any trouble traveling with gear? Flying home into Boston once, but no, nothing really. 
  • what is the one thing you wish you knew when you started shooting? That the most important factor of your photograph is the subject, and the art. To shoot what you love, not what you think you should shoot.

Now some speedy photo reviews:

  • kids
  • skateboard
  • Zakim
  • buoy
  • dodgy birds
  • “that’s too much book”
  • bus
  • “Jack Brown, but he also is a cop.” “But not he kind that’s gonna hassle you.”
  • “everything you can’t explain in your picture is ghosts”
  • Hyper-speed round
  • elephant
  • spaghetti slurping
  • “Tony likes old people“
  • “this owl will murder you”
  • happy dog
  • “did you know my dog has his own Instagram, but I don’t know who owns it? It’s not weird.” “It is weird, but you should check it out.”

And that’s all! Our show is called Divine Stoner now. Join us on Thursday for your landscapes.

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Beginner Photography: Landscape

I realized that I started my past three blogs with “hey guys!” so I really need to switch up my intros.

This week’s topic is landscapes, which I took some liberties with. Landscapes in February in the Eastern US are not particularly nice, so I decided to shoot a cityscape. I honestly have no idea how to shoot a compelling cityscape. I think a night shot would have worked better, so I could have eliminated some of the distracting foreground. 

To set up these shots, I first researched “best views of the Philadelphia skyline” and chose my spot. I waited until the golden hour, then went there with my camera and tripod. I set my camera to aperture priority at a medium aperture and then set my camera to bracket my shots with the plan of combining them in post. Here’s a great video about image averaging and panoramas:

Once I brought my images into Lightroom I used the Photo Merge tool to combine them into HDR images. A few of them I combined into panoramas using the same tool. I then went in and adjusted the exposure and contrast, as HDR can flatten images. Here’s what I came up with!

HDR panorama f/5.6, 1/1000, ISO 200

 

HDR f/5.6, 1/320th, ISO 200

 

HDR f/5.6, 1/320th, ISO 200

 

I honestly don’t know how I feel about these shots. They are so busy! That bridge weight sign shows up in almost every shot, so in the last one I decided to just let it be a prominent focal point. They are truly the city as I see it, busy and dirty and complex and beautiful, but I’m not sure how they come across to you all.

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Live Show Recap: Black and White

Hey there! Last night’s show was unofficially sponsored by Jameson and it was a blast. We looked at your black and white (and monochrome) shots and got some amazing ones. Thanks for watching and (attempting) to submit. If you want to know why you’d convert to black and white, read my blog post on it here.

We get into the photo reviews quickly, starting here:

  • street motion
  • “cash me off guard” No, Tony.
  • boots on the ground
  • portrait
  • “I don’t know what he’s about to do, but it’s gonna be dangerous, right?”

Happy birthday Kyle Wolfe! And wow, Rod, thanks for the booze! We need to do things that upset people and make them send us alcohol more often.

A bit of photo news:

  • you can post multiple photos on Instagram in one post
  • Sigma announced 4 new art lenses which we’re excited about

Over to me for some questions:

  • how do you feel about color photography for street photos? Totally fine.
  • any technical advantage to shooting in b&w verses converting in post? Not technically, but there’s an advantage to doing it to teach yourself to see in black and white.

Back to your photos:

  • sport portrait
  • Chelsea coined “the devil’s candy”
  • “I don’t like people being happy in tunnels“
  • guy on a cliff
  • “you don’t feel like there was just too much white in there?” “I feel that about a lot of things, but not this picture.”
  • much talk about the coliseum and aqua battles
  • stair case
  • “damn, sexual selection at work”
  • snow
  • selfie
  • pigeons
  • Tony trolls the nerds
  • scared baby “she had a scary dream about a wiener dog” “it’s a common nightmare”
  • bridge

Time for chit-chat! Our favorite part of the show where you are mean, or correct us a bunch, or say something dumb and we reply for some reason.

  • that’s great, Howard. Also, “nit-pickery.”
  • very disappointed in baby Jesus
  • married or brother and sister? Why not both?
  • “but unfortunately he chose a country that hasn’t existed for several decades.” “That sounds like a terrible, creepy way to separate yourself from your brain.”

Time to review portfolios! Justin picks one for us. “Dr. Fear Co.” Good, good golden-doodle. Good layout, just flesh it out a bit. Put a name and photo of yourself on the contact page.

Then Greg Noel’s portfolio. Lovely shots, nice layout, very well done! Take out the repeats, get rid of the watermarks. Canadian mummers.

Okay, at minute 48 the audio and video go wildly out of sync for some reason! So I’m going to end this recap here, but to make up for it, we’ll be doing a bonus live show on Monday! So keep an eye out for that. Thanks folks!

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Beginner Photography: Black and White

Hey there! This week’s live show topic (and thus my blog topic) is “black and white” photography. I would say that I convert my shots to black and white about half of the time, which I think is more than most people. This week I went out briefly to shoot with black and white in mind, which isn’t usually the case. Generally I end up converting to B&W for a number of different reasons, which I’ll detail below.

First I’ll direct you to watch this video which is relevant to all photography, but is particularly important for black and white photography:

So here are the reasons you might choose to convert your images to black and white:

  • the focus of your subject is a shape or form created by the elements of the picture
  • the colors or background of your photo are distracting from the subject
  • you want a timeless or classic feel to your shot
  • the colors in the image are naturally desaturated and the color adds nothing to it

So I’ve converted to black and white for all of these reasons. I went out and took a few shots while I was at my parents house in Connecticut this weekend and specifically kept an eye out for interesting shadows since there was still lots of snow on the ground and the sun was high.

This first shot is an example of the form being the focus, the tree and the shadow of the tree:

f/3.5, 1/1250th of a second for some reason, ISO 200

 

This shot is also about the form of the shadow, and additionally there was very little color in the image to start as I was shooting a black dog on a grey road:

f/3.5, 1/640th, ISO 200

 

This shot I decided to edit for the mood I wanted. While the sun was high and it was a nice day, I was more interested in the bare trees, the stark snow, and the old wrought iron chairs and table. I decided to convert to black and white, add some grain, and some vignetting to focus attention on the subject and make it look like a dated shot:

f/3.5, 1/1250th, ISO 200

 

While these are certainly not my most successful black and white images (see my posts on shadows and spooky for my favorites) I think they are decent examples of why you’d choose to convert select shots to black and white.

I look forward to seeing everyone’s shots this week, and don’t forget to check your dang histograms!