Kodak Ektar 100 Film Review - I Still Shoot Film Blog

For film lovers: read the Kodak Ektar 100 film review at I Still Shoot Film: link

History of Nikon Cameras

 Nikon has a long history of cameras. Starting in 1948 with the range finder camera Nikon 1 to the most recent flagship camera the digital Nikon D5.

Scenic Places in Black and White - Tokyo, Shibuya Station

wraiths - jdx (flickr)

One of the most frequented train stations on earth is Shibuya Station in Tokyo, Japan. Most known is the big crossroads on top of the station where every two minutes thousands of people cross the roads from five directions.

Funny are days like the ones shown in the two pictures. When it's raining Japanese are all carrying white umbrellas which gives a very special look to that scenery. Especially when captured in black and white.

The composition of white zebra crossing with white umbrellas and black clothing of people gives interesting texture and strong graphical elements.

Tokyo - Shibuya Crossing - Tanya Nagar (flickr)

last night in tokyo, shibuya at night - (mar cusp) (flickr)

Shibuya is a very colourful place. All the constantly moving billboards.
At night this is a bouquet of electronic fireworks.

Captured in black and white this slows down and adds an atmosphere of calm.

Influential Photographers - Andreas Gursky

German Photographer Andreas Gursky, born in 1955, captures large, anonymous, man-made spaces creating pieces of art larger than the objects photographed.

While in earlier times Gursky was creating his impressive large scale photomontaged prints manually, his later work was created using digital post processing and manipulation techniques.

One example is the picture of the formula one race track in Bahrain. It looks as an original non altered photograph. However, no race car ever would make it around the track.

On the top of this page the formula one pit stop studies. Capturing the dynamics of the short time window of a pit stop during the race overlying frames of action which show how busy a pit crew is.

Underwater Videography - Cenotes Mexico

Cenotes Mexico - Canon 5D Mark III Underwater Video from Backscatter on Vimeo.

Black and White - Modern Architecture Photography

cheese grater - James Drury (500px)

Foot Bridge - Ash Patel (500px)

Looking Up - Gary Clark (500px)

Oblivion Gate - Apostles Mantzouranis (500px)

Hemisfèric to the Palau de les Arts (Darkled) - Dark Reid (500px)

My Underwater Wide Angle Photography - Reef Scenes

Octopus on the reef - Raja Ampat, Indonesia

In underwater photography, taking wide angle pictures is quite difficult.

The main challenge is to find the right exposure balance between available light exposed background and brought in light from strobes in the foreground.

Local boy - Arborek Island, Raja Ampat

A second challenge is to find the right framing of the image. This is not only about spotting an interesting scenery - such as the giant octopus sitting on top of the reef (see left) - but also around framing that scenery in a way not to capture bubbles from other divers, not to have unwanted light effects when the sunlight is shining in from the wrong side, and being able to isolate the main subject in the wide frame of the underwater reefscape.

In order to get the right framing and brought in light it is important to move as close as possible to respective subjects. Since light refraction is stronger underwater than on air and light from strobes is absorbed on short distance through the water there is no way around using extreme wide angle lenses and moving to a very close focusing point.




The underwater photographers challenge here is not to make too much noise and bubbles in order not to scare away the marine protagonists.
While for the boy on the right this was not a topic, the octopus needed to be approached slowly until he adapted to the presence of a scuba diver with big camera gear and making strange bubbles.

Exposure of schooling fish - such as the school of glass fish (see left) - can be difficult too. Given the fact that part of the skin of fish is highly reflective or on the other extreme completely transparent just automatic exposure metering does not work out.
However, in the digital times a series of exposures and varying strobe positions will do the job.