Whoo boy, action is hard! As you may have guessed, I’m not big on sports which seems like the obvious place to go for action shots at short notice. But I do happen to have children. We were invited to a kid’s birthday party this weekend at an indoor playground, so I lucked into some action. The lighting wasn’t ideal, but I did my best.
This is a great post on how to shoot action on a budget, written by a reader of ours. And a great video on shutter speed from Tony and Chelsea here:
I don’t regularly shoot in shutter priority, but it’s a necessity for shooting action. You want to shoot at the slowest shutter speed possible and still freeze the action, but also get enough light and show a bit of motion. If you freeze the subject entirely, the motion won’t convey. If your subject is moving too much, you’ll totally miss focus (although you can make that choice artistically.)
So I pretty much followed my daughter around for the day and shot on continuous shutter to capture as many different moments of movement as I could. Here’s what I got:
f/3.5, 1/80th, ISO 800
This one doesn’t really convey the motion I want. She’s at the top of the slide so it’s a moment before action, but I liked her expression and eye contact.
f/3.5, 1/125, ISO 1600
The motion is better on this one, the hoop is blurred but she is still. I just wish the background had been better.
f/3.5, 1/160, ISO 1600
Jump! I think this was a good speed, only her hair and hands are moving.
f/3.5, 1/80, ISO 1600
I love the motion in this one of the balls in the foreground and of her hands moving. Unfortunately her face is out of focus.
I think these came out pretty good considering the lighting and busyness of the background (that’s why I went black and white for most of them.) I think I captured some of the fun and focus of a kid at play. How do these work for you?
-what is one of the worst things your camera has gone through and survived? Tony left a 5D Mark II outside in the rain overnight. The drones have gone through a lot, like crashing into trees. Drones: “good images, weird experience.”
-British slam! We accept your money comment war.
-does Tony have odd socks? Yes. Like any human being (which he is, we swear.)
-where will the next Wanderlust be? Somewhere in New England!
-is stock photography a big fat waste of time now? Hard to say, we’re not really in it anymore. You can still make money doing it, but not as a primary job probably.
Hey y’all! This week’s topic is “contrast” and that could mean a few things: contrasting colors, contrast between the subject and the setting, contrast between light and dark. I attempted to capture each of these this week. I’m attracted to contrasting light in general, but I’d like to challenge myself to look for color in my shots more often.
My first idea was to shoot my black dog on my already high contrast black and white rug. He’s a reluctant model. I shot him from above to make the carpet fill the background and used Aperture priority to keep my aperture low to gather as much light as I could in my dim living room and blur the background. Please forgive my dirty carpet.
f/3.5, 1/15th, ISO 1600
His paw looks weird because he hurt it and has a bandage on it. Poor pupper.
Then I went through and found an old shot of some green weeds growing through a grate over a rusty red background.
f/5, 1/80th, ISO 400
And the last one is a shot I took of a safety helmet in the rubble of an abandoned building. Pretty self-explanatory.
f/4.5, 1/80th, ISO 500
These aren’t my most aesthetically pleasing photos, but I think each one properly represents the different types of contrast that Chelsea listed for our topic this week. It’s really just a matter of keeping your eyes open for unusual compositions. I think it’s a great practice to get out of your comfort zone and look at the world around you differently. Are any of you shooting on the theme each week? If so, how has it changed your photography practice?
-what’s more satisfying, a great wildlife shot or a really popular YT video? Wildlife, it takes work and focus to capture. YT videos are fleeting.
-Chelsea, what’s your favorite type of photography? Travel.
-what are your favorite shapes, excluding the rhombus? Hexagon, circle. Tony has a nerd answer. Chelsea doesn’t like octagons cause they’re always telling her what to do.
-what are your thoughts on Nikon working on a mirrorless camera? Chelsea’s into it, Tony hopes they don’t introduce a new mount.
-follow my step-son’s YouTube channel (he went from 9 subs to 182 because of you all!)
Ok, time for a portfolio review. Casper Krohn. Change the arrangement of your pricing page. Change the lead photo for your animals. Don’t have a category with only one photo, pare them down and combine them. Good work, just focus on replacing photos.
Time for chit-chat! Where you say things and we respond.
-Wanderlust, we get it. Tony throws shade on Germany.
-changing the white points messes up skin color, help! Work with your color channels and keep the orange, yellows and reds. Or mask the image first to keep the people out and then adjust the surroundings.
-what character would you be from GoT? Arya for Chelsea, Tony would be the dad that got robbed by the Hound, Justin would be the many-faced god, I would choose Arya or Ygritte
Back to photos with this lovely overhead shot of tennis courts:
This week’s topic is a fun one. I, like Tony, really love geometry in photos. I like abstract as well, the focus on shape and form is really compelling. I’m not entirely sure how you teach something like this though. It feels very subjective. I’ve done two abstract posts so far, the first one is here and then another here where I try Chelsea’s abstract impressionism project:
The way I approached this was just finding an object that I thought had an interesting shape, and then taking shots of it from as many angles as possible. I also zoomed or cropped in really close on the subject to focus on texture.
Here’s my attempt:
f/5, 1/80th, ISO 1000
f/5.4, 1/6th, ISO 1600
f/3.5, 1/80th, ISO 320
f/3.5, 1/320th, ISO 200
I’m not thrilled with these shots. They don’t look as compelling to me on the page as they did in the camera which is disappointing. I would have loved to get some architecture, I think it lends itself to this topic the most, but I wasn’t in the city over the weekend. I’m really interested in seeing what every one else came up with this week!
What about these shots works for you? What doesn’t?
What’s up you cool babies? This week we looked at your night and astro photography and you killed it. Next week’s topic is abstract & geometry, which is Tony’s new favorite thing. I’m excited for that one.
-eclipse plans? Tony’s trying to learn it now and purchased some ND filters and those special glasses. Chelsea throws shade at the eclipse, she doesn’t think that 2 minute cover is worth it. “It’s not Hamilton, I’m not gonna travel cross country for it.”
-Sigma 120-400? No idea. Thanks for the money though!
-if you had to choose between a faster lens and a bigger sensor for night photography what would you pick? The lens is easier to upgrade for sure.
-what’s the most amount of times you’ve visited a site to get the shot you want? Over 100.
Time for a portfolio review! Wood bow tie gets it, Denslow Photo. Maybe change your menu items so they are immediately obvious. Pare down your portraits, but your shots look great! Tony says add a pricing page.
Time for chit-chat! The part of the show where we highlight ridiculous comments on our videos.
Oh man, I probably should have tried to do something more technically interesting, like astro photography. But I’m lazy! And I don’t like to go out at night! So I stayed in my regular wheelhouse (and literal house) and tried some spooky selfies in the back yard.
And you can see my first attempt at night photography here.
So I set up my camera on a tripod and used the app OI.Share for Olympus to remotely control my camera from my phone. I wanted to be holding a light source, so I took a wrought iron owl candle holder. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a candle to stay lit in it, so I borrowed my husband’s phone and used a flashlight app. It was brighter than I wanted, but seemingly still not bright enough to keep my shutter speed up! I shot in shutter priority and got the shutter as fast as I could to capture the image but not so slow that I was moving much. It was not easy.
One thing I didn’t anticipate was how odd the color would be. I had a light on in the yard which was yellow, and the light from the phone was more blue. It wound up doing some strange things to my skin color, but I think it may have added to the weirdness. Also, it’s almost impossible to focus the camera at night. I couldn’t see my face in the monitor, and therefore had to essentially guess where to focus the shot. Anyone have tips on how to work around that?
f/3.5, 0.6 sec, ISO 1600
f/3.5, 0.6 sec, ISO 1600
f/3.5, 0.6 sec, ISO 1600
f/5, 4 sec, ISO 1600
So, the ISO is high, the shots are crazy noisy, and my face is for sure not in focus. The last one was intentionally that way, and it wound up being the one I like the most. I think I should have gone more surrealist with it.
Are any of these successful despite their technical shortfalls? I don’t think I can objectively judge my shots anymore.
What’s up, jerks? We reviewed your travel photos last night, and you really came through! It’s a pretty ambiguous topic, but I think we got some really impressive submissions.
We decided that travel photography was something that captured the unique spirit of a place, or portrayed motion and destination.
Support our Patreon! You can vote on the live show topic each week and even see videos before we post them publicly.
Here’s where we get into your photos, I’ll highlight our picks and ridiculous one-liners below:
-what gadgets have been game changing for travel? Smartphones, USB batteries for smartphones, drones, electric razor? Noise-cancelling headphones.
-what has been your favorite place to travel for photography, and your favorite place not for photography? Peru and Portugal for Chelsea. Japan. Lucerne, Switzerland was great for photography but not much else.
-Roderick! Our generous Irish gentleman friend. Thanks for loving us quietly. Thanks for dating us.
Time for a portfolio review! Fabian Santiago. Gorgeous images, great full-screen layout. Fabian, we’ve seen your photos before and we are fans! Maybe just pare down your “on the line” category.
We very unceremoniously get into Chit-Chat, the part of the show where we respond do your dumb YouTube comments.
-nerd the Jeff out
-“kicking the greasy piglet”
-wait so… are we or aren’t we a paid shill? “You’re wrong, but I’m sure you’re used to it by now.”
-10 years ago would I have imagined I’d be on a YouTube live show? Nope, that wasn’t a thing. I was working retail. “You committed, die with it.”
-T&C love Puerto Rico
-two picks happened in the background, here and here
-we’ve been doing the live show for 3 years!
-thanks for $$$! Can the Nikon D7200 do sports? Sure.
-quick tips for travelling on a budget? Stay in hostels, trade apartments while you travel, volunteer tourism, work travel, fly standby or travel by land, travel locally. Travel on container ships? Don’t take a limo to the airport. “What are we, Hulk Hogan in 1989?”
So, this post is a bit of a cheat. I haven’t traveled since I went to San Francisco in September, so I went through those photos again and chose some shots to edit that I didn’t use in my previous posts here and here.
I’m still not entirely sure what constitutes “travel photography”. While these were certainly shot while traveling, I’m not sure that looking at a shot will convey travel unless you include a mode of transportation, a selfie lugging bags around or in front of some site-specific monument. I just shot the things I liked about San Francisco. Most of my favorites were of surfers on the beach, but I want to include some other bits for a more well-rounded experience of the trip.
I was shooting with the Olympus EM-10 which I think I’d just started working with, and I’m pretty sure I had my camera on auto, because my settings are complete nonsense.
I should have watched this video before I set out:
f/10, 1/400th, ISO 200
f/11, 1/400th, ISO 200
f/8, 1/160th, ISO 200
f/8, 1/400th, ISO 200
f/4, 1/400th, ISO 200
So that’s San Francisco through my eyes! I hardly spent any time downtown until my last few hours in the city and by that point my camera had died (I forgot my battery charger like a rookie) so I’m not sure how recognizable any of this would be. It was my first (and so far only!) trip to California and I hope I can go back and do it justice sometime.
Hey guys! We looked at your black and white photos this week and you came out in force. Lots of great shots.
We just got the LoupeDeck for Lightroom, but we haven’t tried it yet, I’m sure we’ll get a review out soon. Canon released some new cameras, but we don’t have them yet. They don’t like us.
-I was drinking a Yard Brawler which explains my mood
-tips to grade black and white (including video)? Crush the blacks, blown out whites, high contrast: sdp.io/toptip. Adjust by color so that you can make different parts pop.
-is the split between mirrorless and “proper” cameras generational? Not really, it’s either sticking with what you know or trying something new. Generationally, younger people are using smartphones for photography. Watch “Death of the Consumer Camera.”
-Sigma 18-35 for low light with a Sony a6XXX series? Maybe with the a6500 but you’ll need to manually focus. Probably better with Canon or Nikon though.
-how did Tony decide to go from IT to photography and was it a financial risk? For sure, yes. He was doing both concurrently, but he saw the death of his IT career coming since no one was reading manuals for later Microsoft versions. You have to keep up with trends and change your focus to fit them. Google images then killed the stock photo business, so they shifted to writing photography books and making videos.
-how to reproduce the black and white auto effect in Lightroom? Just do it manually, adjust your contrast, follow our top tip.
