Let's put some feeling into it!

My goal in this blog is to educate about photography. I’ve come to realize that learning photography is not just technical. Matter of fact, the technical side can be rather easily mastered in short amount of time.

The artistic aspect of photography such as composition, seeing light, and the ability to capture a certain mood of the scene is the part that makes photography a unique art on its own. To me, without the artistry, photography is just a scientific craft. It is only when the emotion of the photographer is present in the image, the photograph is given “life”.

I dedicate this blog to trying to help photographers understand how to inject the human emotions and our values into the photograph using various tools that is available to us as photographers.

Fuji x-100
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Before the shutter is pressed, either instinctively or consciously, we must answer series of questions. These questions will always lead to serve the one main goal: How can you duplicate what you saw and felt onto a two dimensional rectangular frame?

Canon 5D MKII with 50mm 1.2L Lens
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When I was starting out, it used to always frustrate me when I would see something beautiful in front of me where I would take the photos, just to find out after processing (back in film days...) I would be disappointed that it wasn't what I really saw when I was there on location.

Gaorsi 617 medium format film camera. with 90mm f6.3 Schider lens
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Where did I go wrong? Was it because my camera was crap? Or I used the wrong film? The real answer was it was due to my lack of understanding what photography was about. I had good knowledge of all the technical things like aperture, shutter speed, exposure... But I didn't know how to merge this technical knowledge to go after what touched me as a person.

Fuji x-100
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In this blog, I will use specific photo outings to illustrate the technique and equipment used to achieve the desired effect. Subscribe to my blog and share the wealth to your friends who want to get more out of photography. Also, ask me specific questions about photography in the comment below and I will try to answer them as best as I can.

Canon 5D MKII with 50mm 1.2L lens
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Comments

Large Format ...Slight Return

Took out my Linhof 4x5 field camera out for a spin. Tripod, cable release, focusing cloth, loupe, lightmeter, and film holders! The gang's all here. Linhof Technica III, (circa 1940's) with Fujinon 150mm 5.6 a modern lens design. Bull Run Park near Manassas VA.The camera is wonderfully made with machined aluminum with German engineering. Like Butter. Working with a 4x5 is a whole different world. It takes long to set up and there are so many things that you can screw up. "Did I cock the shutter? check focus?, meter reading, dark slide out? lock the movements?... There are like 13 different steps that you have to make to take a picture. So why do it when I can just point my 5d and shoot in easy one two steps? Reasons may vary, but I do it because of the camera movements. The tilts, swings, shifts. These cameras were made so you can technically control how the image hits the film plane. You can achieve "technically perfect" images, whatever that means.

Polaroid Negative?

I've been wanting to do color large format for awhile. When there were photo labs around the corner, it wasn't hard to do a E-6 process in a day or two. Now that process has gotten expensive and if you're doing sheet film, its even more pain. So my solution... Polaroid! well technically, it should be called "instant film" since Polaroid is trademarked term. I'm using Fuji FP 100c45. But here's the twist. I wanted a different look. If I want true colors, I wouldn't bother with the cost of 2 bucks per shot. I also was fascinated with some surface texture that I saw on polaroids. I recently came across some sites that talks about turning a polaroid into negatives. Its true that Polariod years ago did have those positive/negative film, but they've discontinued all instant film a couple of years ago. The process is simple. you take bleach and take off the black stuff on the part that you throw away. Once the black part is off, you have a negati

Boston: B&W Architecture with Leica Q2M: From a Purist Perspective.

I swear I was going to switch out my black and white ONLY Leica Q2M to a regular Q2 color camera before going to this trip. I"m glad I didn't. Oh, before I forget, take a look at my icandy slide shows . I will be making slideshows that is designed for big screen TV's. Take a look at this one: Ok, back to the topic on hand. So one of the most asked question about the Leica Q2M is, 'why limit yourself to just black and white when you can easily convert color photos to BW?' Very good question. My answer is, if you know with certainty you want the best quality BW image possible, you want the dedicated monochrome camera. Am I being a staunch purist? or is there a practical argument for it? Let's talk about it. Beacon Street Boston, MA One of many beautiful architecture on that hill. First, this camera doesn't have any moire filter on the sensor. Moire filters are on most color camera sensors to get rid of those annoying repeating patterns that loo

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