Photography

[Vince]

True story:

When I coached baseball, one of the kid's parents show up and I gave her a form for the team pictures. It was from TNS Photography.

She read it aloud, dead serious, "Tee. an. es. Pho-toe-graph-eee".

Bless her heart

[Vince]

Last month a local business, Harper's Hams burned to the ground a couple of miles down the highway from me. I went out and got a lot of pictures of the firefighters working. The majority of the fire was out at that point, but lots of steam and some smoke as they hosed down the hot spots. It didn't smell nearly as awesome as I thought it would.

Got this image...



There is a polish photographer named Andrzej Dragan that has a popular style of portrait right now. Kind of a high contrast and almost seems like the highs are blown out. Very stylized as shown here.



I thought that gritty look might be neat to apply to my firemen picture, so I used the tutorial that Corel put out for Paintshop. I kind of like how it turned out. I figured a gritty and dirty look would be appropriate for that shot.

[Troy]

Really like the photo you started with. I think you probably could have gotten it in your local paper if you wanted to.

It seems like that artist is doing a lot of work ahead of time with his lighting. I do dig the style.

I like your post processing work on the background and rubble. Makes it feel way more claustrophobic and grittier. I feel like the firefighters could be lighter if you wanted to show more contrast, the style seems to use it a lot. But then he's cheating.

[Vince]

Really like the photo you started with. I think you probably could have gotten it in your local paper if you wanted to.

It seems like that artist is doing a lot of work ahead of time with his lighting. I do dig the style.

I like your post processing work on the background and rubble. Makes it feel way more claustrophobic and grittier. I feel like the firefighters could be lighter if you wanted to show more contrast, the style seems to use it a lot. But then he's cheating.

Thanks! Yeah, it's kind of weird to try to draw a line for yourself between photography and a stylized art form using photographs. Mostly I think I just like to play with stuff.

Yeah, I liked the dark gritty look of the debris as well. I might go in and lighten up the firefighters some more. I do find them a bit too dark.

[GORDON]

Yes, actually, I prefer the first photo. It tells a story all on its own without anything dramatic needing to be added. Good composition.

[GORDON]

Triangles are interesting to the eye. I don't know if you did it on purpose, but you got some in there. Good job.

[Vince]

Triangles are interesting to the eye. I don't know if you did it on purpose, but you got some in there. Good job.

Thanks! I didn't do it intentionally. I probably got about 50 or 60 pics from that morning. This is one of the ones that I thought looked pretty good. The triangles probably subconsciously play into why I thought it looked better than some of the others.

I was surprised by the number of female volunteer firefighters we have in this area. I can't tell if the fireman in the black hat is a woman or just a young and boyish looking dude. Even in the original 6kx4k picture.

[GORDON]

Examples:

[Vince]

Should have framed the turkey more to the left.

[Troy]

My eastern-NC boys back home are big turkey hunters. If I still lived there I could have gotten into it - one of the few meats I can eat weekly and not grow tired of. Couldn't do that with venison.

I don't know squat about them though. Is that a female?

[Vince]

My eastern-NC boys back home are big turkey hunters. If I still lived there I could have gotten into it - one of the few meats I can eat weekly and not grow tired of. Couldn't do that with venison.

I don't know squat about them though. Is that a female?

No, that's a male. The thing hanging off the chest is called a beard. I think this would be considered a jake (young male). I will have to smoke a breast and see how they taste. Wild turkey tastes quite different than store bought.

You could probably get used to eating venison easier than you think. Especially ground venison. My wife became a believer in just a few weeks after eating a soup with ground beef after weeks of ground venison. She looked at me and said, "this tastes so greasy now."

One of the thinks I do with venison roast in the crock pot is to add 3 tablespoons of butter so the meat will absorb some animal fat.

[GORDON]

Should have framed the turkey more to the left.

Is cropping and framing verboten when talking about... like... professional photography?

[Vince]

Should have framed the turkey more to the left.

Is cropping and framing verboten when talking about... like... professional photography?

Not at all. But the general advice I see over and over is to try to get as much right as you can in the camera and leave the post processing to deal with what you couldn't avoid. Going back to what you were talking about with triangles, there is in photography what they refer to as "rules of thirds". Centered subjects bother us. Sometimes that works for the picture, though. A single tree in the center frame of an empty field can convey isolation. A centered person in a larger surrounding can convey loneliness.

In this shot the bird is pretty good on the vertical. Lower third (roughly). Would look better if he was at the left third of the shot. With a moving subject like this, you want to give them "somewhere to go" in the shot. Even if you aren't conscious of it, you look at a picture like this and want to know better where he's going. I still could go in and crop it, but the picture would have been better served with a better framing at the beginning.