Master Photography

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Master Photography episodes

January 26, 2018 IP Roundtable: Listener Spotlight (EP-261)
Natalie Greenroyd:

www.nataliegreenroyd.com
www.instagram.com/natalie_g_photography

I'm a professional photographer with a small, part-time business with the bulk of my clients being families with young children. I was happy with my clients and the photos I was producing, but I was feeling completely unfulfilled with photographing my own kids. I was getting more and more frustrated with the photos I was taking of my own boys, while I was producing beautiful images of other people's kids. I knew I needed to change my approach but didn't know how so I decided to tackle a daily shooting project in 2016. Shooting daily for an entire year was the best thing I've done for my photography. I learned to push past seeing the “cute” moments, and capture my kids in a way that made me happy as a parent and as an artist. That's my number one goal, to create images that fulfills those two parts of me.

As I grew in my photography, I created somewhat of a mental checklist to go over when I'm not sure what or how to shoot. I know the elements that I need to add to my photos in order to be happy with them, so when I'm observing a scene I will mentally go over my list and see what can be applied. The categories include a fresh perspective, interesting light/shadows, emotion, movement, and photography tricks. I've realized adding at least one thing from this list when I'm shooting prevents me from being bored with the images I'm creating and really transform the images from being cute pics of my kids to something much more.

TIPS
1. Shoot daily. Sometimes the most unique and artistic photos can come when you least want to pick up your camera.
2. Don't shy away from shooting the same thing over and over. Doing this will force you to find new ways to shoot the same thing.
3. Experiment. Try something new!. Ring of fire, prism, double exposure, freelensing, underwater photography etc. They may seem daunting and you may fail miserably, but you may also find that one these techniques stirs something in you as an artist.
4. Find your people. Whether it's members of the Improve Photography Facebook group, a group of local photographer friends or on Instagram, etc. Find a group of photographers that you can grow with and encourage one another.
39 min
January 23, 2018 Portrait Session: Underwater Photography
Erica and Connor talk with Melina Contogiorgakis about her career as an underwater portrait artist. Melina Contogiorgakis is an underwater photographer from Argentina, who is currently traveling and searching for inspiration and the best places to shoot. As a scuba instructor with a degree in photography, she is trying to develop her own style for her underwater portraits, which are ...
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37 min
January 23, 2018 Underwater Portraiture – Portrait Session
Erica and Connor talk with Melina Contogiorgakis about her career as an underwater portrait artist.
Melina Contogiorgakis is an underwater photographer from Argentina, who is currently traveling and searching for inspiration and the best places to shoot. As a scuba instructor with a degree in photography, she is trying to develop her own style for her underwater portraits, which are mostly centered around the relationship between humans and nature.

What led you to begin shooting underwater portraits?
Listener Q: Where have you worked underwater?
Listener Q: Tell us about one or two of the more unusual underwater shoots you've done.
Differences between land photography and underwater
Listener Q: Everything we do is about light. Talk about how light might function differently underwater. Does it, really? What adjustments do you need to make, to work in that context?
Getting the shot, water conditions and visibility, diving.
Pool sessions vs Outdoors
What gear do you use?
Listener Q: What was your first experience like when you first submerged your expensive gear in water? What products did you confidently use for your first time?

37 min
January 19, 2018 KodakOne/KodakCoin and 2018 Predictions
Jim talks with Jeff and Brent about KodakOne/KodakCoin and photography predictions for 2018. KodakOne / KodakCoin Jeff: This is a copyright protection platform where the preferred method for paying to use photographs is a new cryptocurrency. Photographers can register their images on the new KodakOne platform, which will spider the web looking for usage violations and provide a means for ...
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46 min
January 19, 2018 IP Roundtable (EP-260)
KodakOne / KodakCoin

Jeff:

This is a copyright protection platform where the preferred method for paying to use photographs is a new cryptocurrency. Photographers can register their images on the new KodakOne platform, which will spider the web looking for usage violations and provide a means for the photographer to be paid using this new currency.
My view on this can be described in one word – DESPERATION. I see this as a very desperate move for both Kodak and a partner who it looks like came up with all the technology WENN Digital. I spent some time searching for WENN Digital and couldn’t find anything on them except being connected to this announcement so it looks to me like WENN built this platform and went to Kodak to push it out there under a brand photographers are more likely to trust. I don’t see this going anywhere.

There are already services that offer the ability to register photos and search for usage of them, Google image search being one of the biggest. It is free and effective in finding violations of copyright
There isn’t enough information published about the makeup of the cryptocurrency, which if done incorrectly will cause that portion of the platform to fail before it even gets started. I can’t find any published documentation about how this new cryptocurrency is going to work, maybe that is coming, but in the world of cryptography that nearly always means disaster. But let’s assume they by some miracle they do have it right, to me nothing in the information I have seen solves the actual problem photographers face with their copyrights being violated.
If a photographer finds a violation of their copyright the majority are stuck in a terrible place where they can’t really do much to enforce their rights and be compensated. These copyright cases are generally too unprofitable for lawyers to really want to take them on and in the rare cases where they are the violator simply removes the photo and finds another one. Photos just aren’t being paid for these days and I don’t think this platform will fix that issue.

2018 Predictions (Pick from Jeff’s below, don’t have to do them all)

Jeff: Canon talks about / leaks specs but does not release an update to my beloved 7DM2

Jeff: Canon and Nikon release full frame mirrorless bodies but they require adapters to use EF and F mounts (brent: I hope not! On the adapter idea that is but you just might be right)

Jeff: Adobe updates the all new Lr CC so that photographers can use local storage for the majority of their photos and choose which sync to the cloud, but the way they do it is still not something most photographers are happy with.

Jeff: The price for Adobe cloud storage is unchanged or has a one year discount.

Jeff: Skylum (used to be Macphun) releases a version of Luminar that has digital asset management (DAM) and it is really good but there are significant challenges to converting a Lightroom catalog making it hard for established photographers to switch.

Jeff: Jim cannot hold true to his goal of not buying photography gear in 2018, he breaks the goal within the first 6 months.

Jeff: Apple releases the iPhone Xs with a back facing camera that uses the same tech doing Face ID on the front facing camera to do a much better job of mapping faces and increases the effectiveness of computation photography to not only blur, but auto-replace backgrounds in portrait mode. It is released in partnership with Adobe tools that can use that same data to let you replace backgrounds on the computer.

Jeff: There is a significant issue with a drone mishap that results in loss of lives and causes drastically increa...
46 min
January 09, 2018 Photo Taco: Lr Classic CC 7.1 Update and Composite Portraits
Jeff nerds out about the Lr Classic CC 7.1 Update and Composite PortraitsJeff updated his Lightroom Classic CC status with version. 7.1 from “WAIT!” to “cautiously proceed”. He recommends backing up your catalog prior to updating and then checking out the new version at a point where you don’t have a huge client Jon to process and see how it ...
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34 min
January 09, 2018 Photo Taco – LR Classic CC Update
Jeff’s Post-Retreat Workshop: http://www.jsharmonphotos.com/workshop
Jeff updated his Lightroom Classic CC status with version. 7.1 from “WAIT!” to “cautiously proceed”. He recommends backing up your catalog prior to updating and then checking out the new version at a point where you don’t have a huge client Jon to process and see how it works. He also found Classic to be about 25% faster with import and moving from Photo to Photo in the develop module!
Jeff also goes over his process for doing “Composite Portraits” which he will Be teaching and demonstrating at the upcoming Create Photography Retreat (http://createphotographyretreat.com). You can check out some examples of Composite Portraits by following Jeff on social media. find him on Instagram where He is@harmonjeff or on Facebook he is harmon.jeff so you can do facebook.com/harmon.jeff.
Basic process:

1. Get model in front of a completely blown out white (not green) background by using two flashes on the background and two flashes on the model

2. Edit in Lr being careful to keep the background fully blown out

3. Take the photo into Ps and use luminosity masking to select just the model and then the brush tool in overlay mode to make sure all of the model is masked in and the background masked out. Clean up the layer mask with more believable edges using the Select and Mask workspace.
Resources mentioned:
Photo Taco – Is Lightroom CC Classic? https://improvephotography.com/50425/lightroom-cc-classic-photo-taco/

Improve Photography Episode 259: https://improvephotography.com/51407/ip-roundtable-ep-259/

Photo Taco – Flash for Hobbyists: https://improvephotography.com/49729/flash-hobbyists-photo-taco/
1 hr 52 min
January 04, 2018 Roundtable [259]
The post Roundtable [259] appeared first on Master Photography Podcast.
56 min
January 04, 2018 IP Roundtable (EP-259)

56 min
December 29, 2017 Portrait Session: 2017 Reflections and 2018 Goals
Erica and Connor reflect on their 2017 goals and share their goals for 2018 Erica 2017 Reflections Taking time for myself, not overbooking – success! Creating epic multiple exposures – failure! Book 5 weddings at my highest collection – success! Connor 2017 Reflections Become a full time photographer – Success!? Focus more on Commercial Clients – failure/success? Sell tickets to ...
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39 min

About Master Photography

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5 photographers (Brent Bergherm, Jeff Harmon, Connor Hibbs, Erica Kay, Brian McGuckin) take turns covering listener questions, photography news, and the famous photography “doodads” of the week with…