In the Photojournalism, Event and Editorial category, I placed both 1st and 2nd.
And in the Architectural, Design and Still Life category I placed 1st.
On top of that, my winning image in the Photojournalism, Event and Editorial category received the Best in Show award for the competition along with an award of merit!

Here are my entries (click for larger views), after which I will give some detail on what I was doing when I took them and what results I was trying to obtain as I adjusted my camera.

The second image titled “The Chase” scored 2nd place in the Photojournalism, Event and Editorial category.  This was taken at Auto Club Speedway in March for the Suzuki AMA Superbike race.  Not having a press pass should not keep you from finding a good picture. In this case, I found a good hole in the fence looking straight down a chicane. I had taken quite a few photos here, but none had the feeling of this one. My goal on this set was to get the rider in front in sharp focus while creating just enough depth of field to give you a sense of distance between the riders. So I set my aperture at f9 using my 28-300m at 300mm F3.5-5.6L lens. Shutter speed was 1/640 sec.

The third image titled “Scotty’s Castle” was taken at Scotty’s Castle in Death Valley (nice original name, huh?!). This was on the same trip that I took the first image, just a couple of days later.
This photo received 1st place in the Architectural, Design and Still Life category.
Having gone to the castle in the middle of the day, the sunlight was quite harsh so it was hard to get anything from the outside without having harsh shadows. However I walked into this tower just to see what was in there, and this is what I saw when I looked up. I intentionally lined up the railing in the lower left corner in order to lead your eye into the image. This was taken hand held at 1/250 sec at f2.8 using my 16-35mm f2.8L lens.  Using Photoshop and Lightroom, I darkened and lightened some areas to give it better balance.

Ironically, one of the local photographers that I know came across some software yesterday and sent the link to me without knowing that I was even looking for this info (Thanks Garry!).
The software he informed me of is called The Photographer’s Ephemeris and is currently “free” software being developed by Stephen Trainor.
While sunrise and sunset information is readily available on the internet, the location of where the sun will rise and set is not so easily found, nor is the ability to have all of this information in one easy to use application.

Using this application’s Google Maps interface allows one to pinpoint a location on a topographical map and be able to find the times and locations for the sun/moon rise and set.
Some more advanced features even allow you to find out when they will rise and set behind mountains, in the case of my wedding for instance.

Here is a screenshot of the software that I took while checking on our wedding location.

The software works on PC, Mac and even Linux. Stephen is also working on an iPhone version as well.
Find out all of the details by visiting Stephen’s site at http://stephentrainor.com/tools

OnOne software’s DSLR Camera Remote.
For the low price of $1.99 (or $19.99 for the professional version), you can have a powerful tool which allows you to:

• Remotely fire your Canon or Nikon DSLR Camera
• Remotely control your camera’s settings, like shutter speed, aperture, white balance and more
• View images saved on the camera from your iPhone or iPod touch
• Look through your camera’s viewfinder remotely (requires a camera with LiveView)

To make it work, you need to plug your camera into a WiFi enabled computer and run the DSLR Camera Remote Server software. Then you simply connect your iPhone or iPod Touch to the WiFi and run the DSLR Camera Remote app.

For the extremely low price, this seems like a bargain for the amount of cool stuff you can do with it. The remote wedding ceremony camera certainly comes to my mind.

The software can be found here

The Station Fire at this point has burned someplace around 144,000 acres, and destroyed over 60 houses. It really is a tragedy!
I decided yesterday that I would take a drive over to the fire line and get some photos.
I must say, after being close enough to have one of the water dropping helicopters drop half it’s payload on my truck; those firefighters really earn my respect!
As you’ll see in some of these photos, the wall of fire completely dwarfs these men. Though I was standing some 500ft away from it, I could definitely feel the heat and hear the roar of the flames.

So without further ado, here are some of the photos that I got.
May hat goes off to the firefighters who are fighting this blaze!

This news clip borrowed from the Associated Press:

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) — Jeremy Lusk, an American freestyle motocross rider, died of head injuries Tuesday after crashing while trying to land a backflip in competition. He was 24.

Jorge Ramirez, chief of the intensive care unit at Calderon Hospital, said Lusk suffered severe brain damage and a possible spinal cord injury.

Lusk won a gold medal at the 2008 X Games. He was injured Saturday night when he failed to complete a full rotation while attempting a Hart Attack backflip and slammed headfirst into the dirt. Lusk crashed in almost identical fashion in the freestyle semifinals at the 2007 X Games but was not hurt.

He had a successful 2008 season, winning Freestyle gold at the X Games and silver in Best Trick when he landed the first double-grab Hart Attack backflip. He won a bronze helmet in Freestyle at the Moto X World Championships in his hometown of San Diego.

“Jeremy motivated me to be a better person, he was my best friend,” said Brian Deegan, the founder of Lusk’s riding group Metal Mulisha. “One day, we will all be reunited and will ride together again.”

Chris Stiepock, the vice president and general manager of the X Games franchise, said Lusk “had emerged as one of the world’s best freestyle moto riders.”

“He was a tremendous athlete and competitor and represented the sport of freestyle motocross very well,” Stiepock said.

Ramirez said Lusk died with his parents and his wife, Lauren, at his side.

“He was in a medicine-induced coma as a protective measure, and the medicine was being reduced to see how his body responded,” he said. “That didn’t mean he was going to wake up. He was in shock and that got worse last night, until he stopped responding and entered into cardiac and respiratory failure.”

Lusk lived in Temecula, Calif.

A trust has been set up in his memory, and donations can be made through the Athlete Recovery Fund, http://www.athleterecoveryfund.com.

Lusk was declared dead on Tuesday Feb, 10th.

R.I.P. my man.
What you’ve done for the sport will not be forgotten!

So with that in mind, these rules are only intended as guidelines to help you to begin composing your photos better. They are very useful as a learning tool and the majority of the basic photography classes that exist will quite likely teach you them as well. However, once you feel comfortable with them, by all means, I urge you to bend them in your own unique ways and create something that hasn’t been done before.

Rule 1: The Rule of Thirds

This rule is based on the theory that the eye naturally goes to a point two thirds up the page. This basically means that you should try to imagine the photo that you’re taking divided into thirds both horizontally and vertically. The goal here is to place the subject of your photo where two of your lines intersect, or to place your horizon on one of these lines.
Examples below:

The joshua tree is in or near the intersecting lines

The horizon is on the line and the camp fire is on the intersection

Picking out your camera

First off, it goes without saying that you will need a camera to take your photos with. Cameras generally fall into two main catagories, Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras and what I like to call “point and shoot” cameras. Point and shoot cameras are the simpler of the two because they are intended for just that, pointing and shooting. They don’t have interchangeable lenses (most of them at least) and when you take a photo, the camera tends to do most of the work for you, behind the scenes. For these reasons, they are the easiest to take photos with, but they are also the hardest to be creative with. SLRs on the other hand do have interchangeable lenses, and when you look through the viewfinder, you see what your lens sees. Having these capabilities, along with full control of your camera, truly allows you to be as creative as you possibly can be with your photos. However, do know that having a top-of-the-line camera will not instantly make you a great photographer!

For those of you wondering what exactly “Single Lens Reflex” truly means, I must refer you to this wikipedia page for a thorough explanation. I could explain it here, but let’s be honest, it is some pretty boring reading for the majority of people starting out with photography!

Point and shoot camera samples

SLR camera examples

At the time of writing this, film cameras have all but taken a backseat in the photography world in lieu of the digital era. But, for those of you who insist that film is still the best, or only have film cameras to work with, a lot of these tips will work for you also. However, the main focus will be on digital technology.

When picking a camera, one of the main things that you want to consider is how far you want to take your photography. If your goal is just to learn how to take better photos, but you’re not interested in learning all the technical mumbo jumbo; then you may be better suited to purchase a smaller point and shoot type camera. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this! It is quite possible to get great photos using a very simple camera.
However, if you want to take your photos to a whole new level and make those around you say “wow” when they see them, then I highly recommend an SLR for you.

When looking at digital cameras, some of the things to consider are:

• How good are the quality of the photos that it takes?
  Since digital cameras don’t have film in them, they use a sensor to capture light. The size of these sensors is measured in what is called “mega pixels” a.k.a. millions of pixels. The higher number the better here, but unless you’re planning on printing poster size prints or larger, there’s no need to break the bank on the highest mega pixel containing camera that you can find. As you can guess, the more mega pixels a camera has, the more expensive they tend to be. You can use the following table as a general guideline in deciding how many mega pixels is suitable for you.

  Number of Megapixels	Acceptable Print Size (Inches)
  2.0	4 x 6 [standard]
  3.0	5 x 7
  4.0	8 x 10
  5.0	9 x 12
  6.0	11 x 14
  8.0	12 x 16
  10.0	16 x 20
  12.0	18 x 24

  Keep in mind that this table shows you at what size your images will begin to degrade in quality when you print them. There is nothing stopping you from printing a billboard sized print from a 4 mega pixel camera, it only means that it won’t be as sharp when you look at it closely.

• Does the camera have a manual override? And will you ever use it if it does?
  Having the ability to manually override what your camera is doing is a key factor in taking your photos to a whole new level. For most SLR cameras this is a given, but a lot of point and shoot cameras don’t let you have much control. And some that do, hide it deep within a menu that makes it not so easy to use.
• How does the camera feel in your hand?
  It should be pretty self explanatory that you want a camera that feels good to you, however it is frequently overlooked when picking out a camera. Are the buttons that you need to adjust your photos easily within reach while shooting? Having a camera that requires you to hunt for buttons, can easily cause you to miss a shot that you otherwise could have had.
• Can you afford more equipment than just the camera itself?
  In the case of SLR cameras, it is quite common to spend much more money on lenses and accessories than the camera itself. So when you’re picking out your SLR, keep this in mind! If you can find a camera with a lens or two in a kit, it can usually save you a little money.
• Do you feel that you need the latest cutting edge technology?
  Since you’re reading the “Photography Basics” section, I can only assume that you probably don’t. So with that in mind, don’t rule out any cameras that may be a couple of years old and used. Purchasing older and\or used equipment can definitely save you a lot of money.

Picking out your most important accessories

With any camera, there are certain accessories that are almost mandatory. Some of these include:

• Memory card(s) to store your photos on
• A tripod
• Lens cleaning cloths\wipes
• Screen protectors to keep your cameras LCD screens from getting scratched
• A bag to carry everything

With an SLR, you will likely want the above, plus:

• A range of lenses to cover what you will shoot most (more on this below)
• An external flash unit
• A comfortable neck strap

Of course, every person develops their own needs, and you quite likely will as well.

Picking out your lenses

Without lenses, your SLR camera would be pretty much useless unless you have a need for an expensive paper-weight.  When beginning with an SLR camera system, you really only need the camera and a single lens to start out with. Then, over time or as funds permit, you can add on to your system to get it to a point that you are happy with.

A lot of SLRs these days come with a kit lens that covers the wide to normal zoom range, and this lens alone can yield some very nice photos. However the clarity and build quality of these lenses can sometimes be rather questionable. This leads us on to better lenses.

SLR camera manufacturers generally have a huge selection of lenses to choose from. As well, there are plenty of third party manufacturers that make lenses to fit the vast majority of different camera brands. Therefore it would be impossible for me to explain every different lens to you. However, lenses are generally classified in only a few types. These types are:

• Wide-Angle – Lenses that have a substantially shorter focal length than that of a “normal” lens making your images appear as though taken from further away.
• Normal – Lenses that generate images that look “natural” to the naked eye. Or, depicts a scene in the same way as you see it.
• Telephoto – Lenses that have a substantially longer focal length than a “normal” lens making your image appear zoomed in or magnified.
• Zoom - Zoom lenses are lenses that have a range of focal lengths, such as 18-55mm. Due to this, zoom lenses are the most common and usually the most useful lenses to the majority of photographers. When picking your first lens, you will want to try to find the one that matches the type of photography that you intend to do the most of. For beginners, I highly recommend a zoom lens with a wide to normal zoom range, as you will be able to use this single lens throughout the majority of your learning process.

The multiplier factor

In the days of 35mm film, most SLR cameras came with a 50mm fixed focal length lens. This is because the image that a 50mm lens projects onto a 35mm piece of film would record your scene closest to the way that your naked eye sees it. In other words, it wouldn’t appear zoomed in, or of a wider angle. This is why lenses as such would be referred to as “normal” lenses.

However, today’s digital cameras use a sensor that is generally smaller than the size of 35mm film. What this does is create what is called “multiplier factor” or “crop factor”. Most digital SLRs as of current have a multiplier factor unless you get a “full frame” camera, which essentially means that the sensor size is equal to the size of 35mm film.

What this means to you is that if your camera has a multiplier factor, a 50mm lens will be zoomed in farther than it would be on a camera without one. For instance, my primary camera has a multiplier factor of 1.3x. So a 50mm lens on my camera would need to be multiplied by 1.3 to give me the equivalent focal length of the lens on a 35mm film, or full frame digital camera.  In this example, it would make that 50mm lens the equivalent of a 65mm lens on a 35mm film or full frame camera.

I’m sure at this point you’re probably slightly confused and asking “How does this affect me?”. Well, the multiplier factor is what you need in order to figure out what a “normal” lens would be for your particular camera. Since a “normal” lens would be 50mm on a 35mm film or full frame camera. You can divide that 50mm by your cameras multiplier and it will give you the approximate focal length of a “normal” lens on your camera. Using my 1.3X multiplier example above, this means that a “normal” lens for my camera would be approximately 38mm.
Another way in which it will affect you, is in getting ultra-wide angle lenses. Essentially, having a multiplier factor can make a zoom lens, zoom in much further than it would on a 35mm camera (great for sports or wildlife photography!). However, it also means that going ultra-wide can be much more expensive since it takes more precision ground glass in the lens in order to go that wide. However some camera manufacturers have combated this problem by specifically making lenses for these smaller sensor sizes, which can certainly ease a little of the confusion, while at the same time, saving you some cash.

Buying Tips

As I mentioned previously, don’t rule out purchasing used equipment. Buying used equipment can definitely save you alot of money. Since people seem to upgrade their equipment quite regularly, it means there is always a lot of it to be found online and in your local camera shops. One of my favorite methods for finding used equipment at a lower price is to search eBay for it. However, before I search for the exact item I’m looking for, I search for common typos that people would make while posting. For instance spelling “Canon” as “Cannon” or jumbling two words together like “CanonLens”. A lot of the time, doing this will find auctions that aren’t as easilly found by the majority of the people searching eBay. So if less people find them, less people bid on them. In the end, it means that you can usually get the item for less! Since I am primarilly a Canon person, I found a great resource that searches the most common terms for me, without me having to type in each term individually. This is by going to www.lensauctions.com/canon and clicking “Bargain Bin\Typo Auctions” on the left. The beauty of this method is that it can be used for other items besides camera equipment. Try it sometime, it may just surprise you!

In the posts following this, I will attempt to teach you the basics of photography. I will teach you how to pick your basic equipment, and I will teach you how to use it effectively, and creatively, to acheive some beautiful results. My goal is to not confuse you with too much technical jargon up front, but instead ease you into it with visual examples in order to make you understand what it all means.

In the end if you have a better understanding of how to take a pictures, then that’s all I can ask for!

Continue to Part 2 – Picking your equipment

We started out with a basic assignment: take some photos of a local historic area, convert your favorites to black and white, and return later to present them to the group with a description of what you had done to achieve your conversion. Some of the people that presented images spent literally hours on one photo. To me, thats way too much time to be spending on a single photo unless your intent is to sell that photo for millions (which likely isn’t going to happen). Other people, who seem to be more like me, believe in more time taking the photos and less time tweaking them. One of the members is even known for setting an egg timer at 4 minutes to remind him that he’s spent too long on one photo.

Sure there are special methods to enhance your image, like adding extra grain, textures, burning and dodging to enhance contrast, etc, etc. But thats not what I’m touching on here. Instead, I’m speaking of the simple task of just converting your color image to a black and white image and getting certain parts of your images to “pop” without spending too much time post processing.

So with that being said, I presented the following image to the group:

And the converted sample:

First, let me explain a little about this photo. It was taken at about 11am, on a sunny and, as you can see, nearly cloudless day. In its original state, it is a very basic photo that you would glance at quickly without a second thought and not really remember much. Therefore, my goal with this photo was to give people something actually worth looking at. For those of you that are curious, I took it with a 15mm fisheye lens exposure time was 1\60th sec at f\16, ISO 100.

As you can see, the difference between the two images went from dull to something that’s considerably more interesting. Granted there’s still more I can do to enhance the image in many ways to make it even better, but the important thing to remember here is that I spent only about 2-3 minutes on this image.

Now, on to how I did it!

I am and always have been a big fan of Adobe Photoshop, but lately I must say that Adobe Lightroom has become my software of choice for the post-processing of my images. Lightroom is available in both Mac and PC formats and is certainly a lot cheaper on the pocketbook than Photoshop is.

First off, I shoot primarily in RAW format. Mainly because it allows me to fine tune my images with more control, the way that I want to, without my camera’s software adjusting them however it thinks is correct. Secondly, because it’s a lossless format, it allows me to do all the tweaking to my images that I want to do without losing my original data. There is and always will be controversy on whether shooting in RAW or JPG is better, so please, save those comments for later!

In Lightroom’s develop module, about half-way down on the right you’ll see this panel:
Simply clicking “Grayscale” at the top, you will see your image desaturate and become what by all definition is a “black-and-white” image. But, it’s still lacking something. So let’s fine tune the image a bit!

If you press the Y key in Lightroom, you will be shown a before and after preview of your image. Using this view, compare the original (color) image to your grayscale image. You will notice that some of the more neutral colors like blues, greens, and reds tend to lose their contrast once adapted.

To get that contrast back, look at your color image and decide which colors that you would like to see represented as lighter and which colors you would like to see represented as darker.

Now, go back to the grayscale panel on the right, and find the first color that you want to lighten or darken. As you move the slider side to side, you’ll notice that anything in your image that matches the color on the slider you’re adjusting, will go from a black (left side of the slider) to a white (right side of the slider). Do this for each of the colors that you want to adjust until you achieve the contrast that you’re looking for.

Keep in mind, however, that you can only ask for so much adjustment before you start seeing some undesireable effects. For instance, moving the slider too far to the right can create some artifacts in your image that may not be desireable. Or, alternatively, moving them too far to the left can create an unnatural looking haze on the colors surrounding the one that you’re adjusting.

Therefore, you should always keep an eye on other parts of your image other than the part that you’re adjusting. Doing so, you may catch another part of your image turning for the worst when all you’re trying to do is darken the sky, etc.

For my sample above, I darkened the blue channel, in order to add more contrast between the sky and the rest of the image. I darkened the orange channel in order to make the “Repair” sign on the left side of the building stand out. And I darkened the red channel to make the bricks on the ground stand out a little more.

After adjusting the colors, I darkened the corners of the image using the “vignetting” sliders, this helps lessen some of the surrounding distractions. I then made a small contrast adjustment, and sharpened the image. As you can see, this isn’t a lot of work to get a good looking black and white conversion.

Aside from Lightroom, this can also be done using the Adobe RAW Converter that is built into Photoshop CS3 and newer. As well, it can be done using actions or plugins in Photoshop (More on those in the future!).

This is mine…

My goal with this blog is to publish for the world, any photography tips, samples, news, ideas, etc, that I find interesting or that have helped me out on my journey as a photographer. My goal for these posts are to give you, the readers, something that may help you out in some way or give you some insight to something else that you may want to expand upon.

Some of you may turn up your nose at my posts, yet some of you may genuinely appreciate them. Either way, no offense will be taken on my part. I feel that photography is a definite artform. True artforms can sometimes only be seen by the artists themselves. Therefore, everyone is entitled to their opinion here, and I welcome any comments or suggestions that you may have.

This site, though geared for my fellow photographers, is also intended to be a place where people looking for a photographer can learn more about me, see the kind of photography that I do, and of course hire me to do a shoot for them.

At some point I also plan on posting desktop wallpapers of some of my photos. These wallpapers will mainly be for those people who are like myself and use multiple monitors on their computers. Generally wallpapers that are meant for these large desktop resolutions that span across multiple monitors are quite hard to find; hopefully I will be able to provide content which everyone can appreciate. However, I do also plan on providing some of these wallpapers for the majority of the world that only use a single monitor on their computer.