Why I Didn’t Put Some Of My Favorite Photos In My Portfolio

Last year I participated in an air-to-air workshop with Moose Peterson. I wrote about it here, and I think it gives a good perspective on what it was like to experience the workshop. But that’s not the point of my post. Just a couple weeks ago, some one had mentioned that they loved the photos I took from that workshop, and asked why I didn’t have them in my portfolio. To me, it brings up a great topic of whether or not “workshop” photos belong in your portfolio.

I Love The Photos Too
I actually love the photos from that workshop. And I’d love to put them in my portfolio, but I have a very specific reason why I didn’t. And it could totally just be me – I recognize that. But to me, although I may own the copyright to those photos because I’m the one who pressed the shutter, I don’t feel like those photos are really mine. I mean, Moose set up the workshop. He hired the pilots, planes, coordinated everything and simply placed me into a spot to get great photos. I don’t feel like those photos are representative of something that is mine. Some one simply placed me into a position and basically said press the shutter. It wasn’t quite that easy, but it wasn’t much harder either. And if some one hired me to produce something similar I wouldn’t be able to because I don’t have the contacts, nor know the logistics in producing such a photo.

Or let’s say you go to a wedding photography workshop where some one hired professional models (who already know how to pose themselves), picked a great location at a really fancy hotel or church, and set up lighting for you to step in a take a photo that 20 other photographers are taking next to you. Is that representative of something you could produce? If some one hired this person to shoot their wedding, would they be able to reproduce photos like this? I guess only the photographer really knows if they could set up the lights, pose the couple and pick great locations like the leader of their workshop did.

One more example. I’ve seen people post photos in their portfolio, from the live shoots that Westcott has at Photoshop World (using the constant lights so nobody needs triggers for flash). Heck, I’ve even seen people win awards at photo contests using those photos. Here’s an example of a Photoshop composite that I created using one of these setups.

These shoots are already pre-lit, pre-planned, pre-stylized, and basically pre-everything. Don’t get me wrong. They’re fun and it’s always interesting to see what you can get from those shoots. But I never quite think they belong in people’s portfolios because they’re not representative of what that person can shoot. If some one hired them to produce something similar, they may not be able to because some one else set the entire thing up.

So What About Landscapes?
Here’s where it gets interesting. What about landscape workshops? I mean, you can go to Moab for example, and look on a map of all the photo spots that some one else has found and go there too (with a workshop or alone). Do those photos belong in your portfolio? It’s definitely a gray area. To me, composing the landscape is one of the hard parts. Figuring out what to put in the foreground, what lens to use, what to focus on, f-stops, exposure, etc… So it’s not just about location, it’s about much more. Trust me, I’ve been to many landscape workshops and seen people walk away from the same location with drastically different photos. But everyone in my air-to-air workshop or the Photoshop World pre-lit shoots I just mentioned have photos that look nearly identical.

But with the air-to-air workshop, I think the leg-work ahead of time is one of the hardest parts. For the pre-planned photo shoots I spoke about at Photoshop World, I think the lighting, stylizing, posing, and overall ideas of the characters they use are the hardest part. That’s where the creativity comes in. When you have a guy that looks like the samurai above, it’s hard to mess it up. But when you’re standing in front of, say, Mesa Arch in Canyonlands NP, I think it’s easy to mess it up.

A Gray Area
Anyway, I thought the original question I was asked about the air-to-air workshop photos raised a good point. It’s definitely a gray area, and I’m not sure there’s a right answer. In fact I’m sure there’s not and mine is only one opinion here. I think it’s a very personal choice and different for everyone. For me, going back to the original question I was asked, putting those air-to-air photos in my portfolio isn’t something I would personally do. But after all, it is my portfolio and my choice and I’m sure what some one else decides to do could be very different.

How about you? What would you do? Thoughts? Comments?

Thanks for stopping by today. Have a good one!

When the Weather Doesn’t Cooperate: Corona Del Mar Photo

You’d think I’d be used to this lesson, but for some reason I seem to get it over and over again. I must be a slow learner
Anyway, last week while in Los Angeles, I did some research on 500px.com and found a great place called Corona Del Mar right along the coast about an hour south of LA. So I headed out there for a sunset shoot only to be greeted by large bank of clouds that engulfed the sun about 60 minutes before sunset. I tried to make the best out of it and concentrated on the rocks in the foreground as well as the large (naturally brighter than the rest) rock in the top left. It really caught my eye because I knew it would jump out of the photo since it was lighter than the rest of the rocks around it. Plus, with the drama of the clouds and gloomy skies I knew this would be a very different style of photo for me, since I usually like vibrant colorful sunsets.

(click to see the photo larger)

If you follow my photography you know that I’m never a fan of choppy water, so I threw a 3-stop ND filter on to get a longer 30-second exposure to smooth out the water. The photo was captured with my Nikon D800 with a 16-35mm lens. Processed in Lightroom 5 and onOne’s Perfect effects for some finishing touches.

Have a good one!

Inspiration: My 500px.com “Favorite” Photos

Happy Friday everyone. I’ve probably mentioned it before, but 500px is the website I go to for my photo inspiration. During my usual 500px.com surfing, I tend to “favorite” a lot of photos and I figured I’d post them here every now and then. Rather than taking the photos from the website or linking to each one, 500px has a “favorites” link under your account. So I figured I’d share them with you as a little weekend inspiration. You’ll find all kinds of photography in here, but mostly landscape and outdoors since that’s my favorite. And I’ll warn you now, if you click the link below you’ll not only get caught up looking at the photos I’ve favorited, but you’ll end up spending another hour on the site just surfing around looking at all the great photography

Here’s the link to my current 500px.com Favorite Photos.

Enjoy and have a great weekend!

Getting It Right In Camera

I came across an article the other day, from a blog called Jonas Hellsen Photography. It made such an impact on me, and struck a chord that I wanted to share it. See, he touches on the topic of getting it right in camera and poses the thought that retouching is actually part of photography and, in a way, always has been.

For me, I’ve always kinda thought this: In this digital age, with all of the tools we have both before and after capture, I don’t care where you get it right? All that matters to me, is that you get it right. Whether it’s right in camera or whether it’s right in Photoshop (or any post-processing) does it really matter? As long as it’s right, isn’t that what counts?

So, as you’re surfing around this weekend, I think his article is definitely worth reading.
I’m off to chaperon my son’s field trip to Disney today. Wish me luck! Tomorrow I leave for Adobe Max for the weekend, so I’ll make sure I report anything cool that happens here next week. Enjoy and have a great weekend!

Nikon D800 12-Month Review (Would I Buy It Again?)

So I’ve been shooting with the D800 for about a year now. At first I was borrowing/renting one for selective shoots, but I pulled the trigger a while back and bought my own. Most of the reviews I read about the D800 were all written within a month of having the camera, so I thought it’d be cool to write one a year later.

NOTE: I wrote a post here a while back about my choice of the D800 over the D800E

Things I Like
Overall, I’m really happy with the D800. The settings are simple to operate and having been a Nikon shooter for many years I don’t have many issues with the menu system, button placement and getting around.

For starters, one of my favorite improvements (over the D3 that I was shooting before) is the auto timer mode. See, the D800 is primarily a nature and landscape camera for me. It’s almost always on a tripod and I’m almost always bracketing with 5 photos (I don’t do HDR with them though, but more on that in another post). With my D3, I had to press the shutter 5 times or always have my cable release with me so I didn’t have to continually touch the camera between photos. But the way the timer works on the D800, I can set it to take 5 photos, two seconds after pressing the shutter. So I just press the shutter once, wait 2 seconds and the camera will fire off the 5 shot bracket automatically. It’s great because I don’t have to worry about having the cable release with me all the time (I usually just carry it for long exposures beyond 30 seconds).

I also love the way the camera feels. I actually like the smaller form factor (compared to the D3 and D4). I do have a battery grip for it, but I usually only use it when I’m shooting portraits since it has the vertical shutter release.

What About File Size?
Another thing I love is also one of the things I hate too – the file size. The 36 megapixel sensor is awesome. The files look amazing on my display. Aside from the obvious advantages of being able to print large, I think there’s more to it. I mean, it’s just plain cool to have that kind of file size and detail available to zoom in to. Let’s face it, if you’re a photographer then you’re a visual person. Aesthetics and visual experiences matter. Even if you’re not printing the photo that large, editing a photo with that kind of detail is just fun and visually stimulating. I may not always print the photo as large as I can, but it’s sure nice knowing that I can.

Another advantage of the large images is that it let’s me shoot a little more “loose” than I normally would, because I know I can crop the photo and still have plenty of resolution to work with. Don’t get me wrong, I do like to get my crop right in camera, but I’m also shooting a lot of wide angle stuff (landscapes, cityscapes, etc…). Images that will need some lens correction in Lightroom/Photoshop. Because the perspective fixes we do to our photos typically means you’re going to lose a lot of the area around the edges of the photo, it’s nice to know I can still use the lens corrections without giving up important parts of the composition.

However, it has wreaked havoc on my storage. If you go out and shoot 200 photos you’re talking about taking up around 10 gigs of space. So I’ve had to buy hard drives a little sooner than I normally would have. It’s also been good at forcing me to delete photos too though. I find myself going through older photo shoots more often and deleting the rejects a little more thoroughly than I normally would have.

Things I Don’t Like
As I just mentioned above, the file size is a little hard to get used to. Not just from a storage space perspective, but they also take longer to edit since you’re waiting on the progress bar more. I find myself doing a “quick” edit where I reduce the image size from 7000 pixels wide to 3000 px and running my filters and plug-ins just to see what I like. It only takes a couple extra minutes and then I’ll go back and edit the full size photo from scratch once I know the direction I want to go. If I had to get through hundreds of photos a day, this would definitely be a slow down in my workflow. But I don’t. I typically walk away with only a few keepers from a landscape shoot, so it doesn’t take me too long to experiment.

Another thing that ticks me off is that the D800 doesn’t have the ability to separate my bracketed photos by two stops. So my only choice is to shoot 5 frames (all separated by 1 stop) and later delete the +1 and -1 photos so I only have the +2 photo, the metered shot, and -2 photo. Other Nikon cameras have this feature, and Canon has had it for years now, so I’m a little annoyed that the D800 doesn’t have it. It seems like it would be such a simple firmware update right?

Would I Buy It Again?
There’s the magic question right? Knowing what I know 1 year later, would I buy the D800 again? The answer: most likely. My hesitation lies with knowing that there’s the D600 out there. The D600 is an awesome camera. It’s still got a huge 24 megapixel sensor so you could still print really big. It’s cheaper than the D800 and I think it’s just about every bit as good.

If I were given the choice today though, I’m pretty sure I’d still go with the D800. The only reason is that from time to time, I may need the extra resolution. For starters, I teach and am constantly zooming in to photos to show people certain areas that I’m teaching about. It’s nice to have that extra resolution, so people can see whatever I’m talking about large on a projector screen. I also sell prints now and then, and it’s nice to be able to deliver a very large print should some one need one. But if you’re not teaching and showing large photos on screen and you’re not selling prints, the D600 is a REALLY attractive alternative.

So there ya have it. A 1 year review of the D800. It really is an extraordinary camera. Shooting with it has made me want to go reshoot some of my favorite photos so I can print them even larger. It’s great to edit, and when you see the photos you’ve taken in all of their 36 megapixel glory on your display, it makes you glad you own it.

Thanks for stopping by today. Have a good one!

Announcing My Latest Landscape Photography Workshop Update

I’ve had a new workshop added to the schedule and a change to another one so I wanted to write a quick post to update you in case you’re able to attend any of them.

First, last month I wrote about a workshop I’m doing with Bill Fortney in Washington state (the Palouse region and Olympic National Park). The workshop was sold out almost as soon as it was announced, but a few people cancelled at the last minute, so there’s a few open spots. I think there’s two, but if you call and beg Bill I bet you can squeeze a third out of him, but that’s it. There’s simply not enough “personal” time for each person in the workshop if we take too many folks. Also, I just found out we’re going to be making a stop at Mt. Rainier for a day too. Can’t wait! Here’s a link to Bill’s site to find out more and contact him if you’re interested.

Next, I’m going to be helping out on a workshop shooting Colorado in the fall with Tom Bol and George Theodore. This area is supposed to be beautiful this time of year, and any workshop with Tom and George is a great workshop. There’s only room for 15 photographers total, and it’s very close to being full so jump on it if you’re thinking of going. Here’s the description from their website:

“Glowing aspen and blazing scrub oak, clear crisp days, snow in the mountains as background, Colorado’s fall is spectacular and its greatest show is the San Juan Range in the Southwestern part of the state. You’ll be dazzled by the colorful display of foilage. At this time of year, with the lower angle of the sun, we can shoot almost any time of the day. Using the small community of Ouray – surrounded on three sides by 13,000 foot snow covered peaks – as our base, we’ll cover several shooting locations in all directions including the ever popular Last Dollar Road to Telluride.”

I hear over and over again that these multi-day workshops really help catapult people’s photography and post-processing skills so I hope that I can meet you at one of them. Thanks!