Cell phone triptych
A few quick cell phone photographs for you today. These were all shot using the Vignette App on Android and edited within the App, although the layout of the photos for this post was done in the Print module of Lightroom. Until I discovered this app, while I was impressed with the camera on my phone, I wasn’t too enthused by the Android photography apps available. They seemed to definitely be lagging behind the offerings for iPhone. That changed late last year when I came across Vignette and since then, I haven’t used anything else. In fact I deleted all the other Android photo apps off my phone. There are still a couple of iPhone apps that I’d love to see ported over but Vignette pretty much fulfills my cell phone photo needs.
Here are the other couple of layouts of recent cell phone photos. It seems (with a couple of exceptions) that I mostly take food, behind the scenes or other location shots. Going through the gallery to choose the shots to use here, 90% of them fit these three categories. I should start using it more on everyday life.
Food, food, food. Clockwise from top left, vegetable fried rice, salad, falafel, vegetarian pad thai.
Behind the scenes.
Buddha at Baguashan
This months calendar is a night view of the great Buddha at Baguashan in Changhua, Taiwan. Built in the 1960′s, this 22m high statue was once the largest Buddha statue in Asia.
As always, there are a number of different sizes, including an iPad sized version. Choose the appropriate link below for your screen size.
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Portrait of Taiwanese folk opera performer from the Sho Qing Opera Grou
It’s time for another free desktop calendar. May 2010 features a masked performer from the Sho Qing Opera Troupe. If you’re in Taiwan, late May sees a number of free Taiwanese opera performances take place along Dihua St in Taipei. Traditional opera is an important part of Taiwanese and Chinese culture and is a must for any travel and cultural photographers.
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April 2010 calendar - Hungarian bellydancer
It’s once again time for another free desktop calendar. For April we have a shot from a recent studio session with Eszter, a Hungarian bellydancer. Choose your size according to the links below. Following those is a slideshow featuring other images from the session.
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Eszter – Images by Craig Ferguson
Coffee and chili
Following on from yesterday’s home studio tip, with the addition of a macro lens, some extension tubes or close up filters, you can create some very cool shots. I’m a lover of fresh coffee and so always have a healthy supply of coffee beans in my home. This is what we’ll look at today.
Before we continue, professional photographers as well as those who aspire to be shouldn’t miss out on portfolio consultant Selina Maitreya and her audio series The View From Here. It’s available at a 50% discount using the code FOSCFI.
All of the photographs in this post were shot with a macro lens. In this case, I used a Tokina 100mm f2.8 macro shot at ISO400, f11 and 1/200. This produces tack sharp images even if you’re not at full 1:1 macro. To light them, I used a very simple two light setup. One speedlight was connected to the camera via one of Canon’s off-camera shoe cords, and the second was triggered by way of an optic slave.
I added the chili pepper in for some extra color. Personally, I really like the way the colors of the pepper and the beans mix together. All in all, it was a very simple shoot to put together, taking less than thirty minutes from start to finish. Give it a try sometime – it makes a great rainy day project.
Coffee and chili
That was the 58th Daily PhotoTip. If this post was useful to you, why don’t you subscribe to my feed, leave a comment and share it with your friends. You can also get access to exclusive content and special offers by subscribing to my newsletter. Sign up today. Thank you.
Portrait of young African-American woman.
Most photographers are familiar with rules of thumb such as the rule of thirds and suggestions like “don’t cut people’s heads off”. For the most part, these are pretty good tips to follow. You should definitely have a grounding in and basic understanding of them, even if you don’t always abide by them.
Before we go any further, let me remind you that my eBook Tips, Tricks and Pics is available to purchase for $5.
What’s that? You can break the rules?
Sometimes throwing those rules of thumb out the window makes for a much stronger photograph. Face it, if every portrait filled every frame, or every landscape followed the rule of thirds, it’d introduce a sameness to the images that would end up looking a bit boring. As a creative artist, stepping outside the normal bounds is often where your creativity can shine. You can develop your own style and vision in the way that you want it to exist, not in the way someone else tells you it should exist.
For the image above, I had this particular shot in mind from before I’d even set the shot up. I knew I wanted her to be cut in half on the very edge of the frame, looking back. I knew I wanted it toned this way. To me it works, it’s a strong image. To others it may not be. Each to their own. So take the time to try a few things in a slightly different manner. You may surprise yourself.
That was the 51st Daily PhotoTip. If this post was useful to you, why don’t you subscribe to my feed, leave a comment and share it with your friends. You can also get access to exclusive content and special offers by subscribing to my newsletter. Sign up today. Thank you.
Food vendor in Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown, Malaysia
How do you get that one great shot, particularly when you don’t have time to set it up or when you have constantly changing situations or a dynamic subject? One solution is to shoot a lot of frames one after the after to ensure that you capture the perfect shot.
Before we go any further, let me remind you that my eBook Tips, Tricks and Pics is available to purchase for $5.
As long as you have a decent-sized memory card, there is no reason why you can’t take multiple versions of a scene. You might simply press and hold the shutter button down and let the camera’s high-speed motor drive do the work. At 5 frames per second (or whatever your camera is capable of) it’s a quick and easy method of getting a lot of images.
Alternatively, you could be more deliberate and take the images singularly but all as variations on the same theme. The photo above is a good example of this. The vendor’s smiling face and busy movements caught my eye from across the street, so I crossed over, positioned myself in front of the stand and took a number of frames one after the other. Later, I simply imported them all into Adobe Lightroom and selected the one I liked best. Here’s a couple that didn’t quite work.
That was the 40th Daily PhotoTip. If this post was useful to you, why don’t you subscribe to my feed, leave a comment and share it with your friends. You can also get access to exclusive content and special offers by subscribing to my newsletter. Sign up today. Thank you.
Texas-style calamari for dinner at Yuma Southwestern Grill, Taipei.
Dinnertime is a great time for photography with both your food and dining companions making good subjects. Here in Taiwan, it sometimes seems like there are more people in a restaurant photographing their food than there are people eating. And by far the majority of those taking photos are doing so with their cell phones and various pocket sized digicams. If you’re out for some kind of celebratory dinner or other special occasion, taking pictures of your meal can be a good way to preserve memories of the dinner.
Obviously, when you’re taking photos of your dinner, the main point is not to take photos but to enjoy the food. Family and friends will usually be patient with your photography to a certain extent (and may well be taking photos themselves) but you don’t want to cause them to delay eating for too long. So get your shots quickly, put the camera aside and dig in to the feast. Here’s a couple of suggestions to help you get good photographs quickly.
Know your settings on the camera in advance. Restaurants and the like are often dimly lit, so set your ISO to 800 or 1600 before the food comes so that you’re ready. Use available, natural light. The in-built flash on your camera may cause the food to have a greasy, sweaty look to it so be sure to avoid using it. Try and use a shallow depth of field where possible – set the aperture wide open if your camera offers an Av or M mode, otherwise try the macro setting. Pay attention to your white balance as restaurants often have fluorescent or tungsten lights that cause sickly looking color casts. You may need to experiment a bit with different settings to achieve a nice look. In terms of composition, remember the rule of thirds, and try shooting at different angles. Finally, before you go to the restaurant, take a look at the work of a few professional food photographers to give you some inspiration. I can highly recommend the photos of Adriana Mullen, a food photographer and chef in the New York metro area.
That was the Daily PhotoTip number 23. If this post was useful to you, why don’t you subscribe to my feed, leave a comment and share it with your friends. You can also get access to exclusive content and special offers by subscribing to my newsletter. Sign up today. Thank you.
]]>2009 is fast drawing to a close so today’s post brings you the final desktop calendar for the year. Don’t forget that my 2010 calendar Renegade Beauty | Taiwan 2010 is available to buy for the low price of $24.99. It looks great on any wall, so if you haven’t already done so, place your order now. They’re selling fast.
The image below is one of the featured photos in the 2010 calendar so think of this as a little preview. As always the links are below for each of the sizes. Cmd click (Mac) or right click (Win) on the size you want and save it to your desktop. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the calendars, so drop me a note in the comments below.
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December desktop calendar
The title of today’s post is Simply Food and that’s pretty much what it is. A series of photographs of food in various forms and states. Food has been written about, celebrated, eaten, photographed, thrown, cooked and plenty more for centuries. I’m just going to share a few photographs.
A little bit of housekeeping before we get to the images though. Firstly, my 2010 calendar is available to buy. Titled Renegade Beauty | Taiwan 2010 is features 12 months worth of Taiwan’s beauty.
Secondly, I’m putting the final touches on a competition for you. Prizes include Steven Pressfield’s book “The War of Art
Okay then, on to the pictures. There may be one or two images that weak stomachs may not like, so consider yourself warned.
Fresh fish in a Taipei market.
Fish pieces.
Choose, buy, kill, prepare, cook.
Chicken parts.
Candy market.
Dry goods.
Jingmei Market, Taipei
Octopus in a market.
Freshly prepared food.
Collection of raw vegetables.
Pumpkin Soup
Japanese barbecued salmon.