So this is by no means new advice, it is just a lesson I had to recently re-learn. Here at PhotoComment we get the opportunity to review a fair amount of products and to date – in my experiences – there has never been a serious issue with them. This time I was not so lucky. Hence the black frame above to illustrate this article.
Read morePhoto Tip: Don’t Use New Gear for the First Time on a Shoot
Motor sports photography can be one of the most technically challenging types of photography there is. Even when you know the theory behind the right technique, that award winning photo is, many of the times, just impossible to get. Add to that the high speed action and danger of motor sports photography and you have a recipe, not only for photos coming out badly, but also possibly a quick trip to the hospital.
So, you have a bunch of photos you want to resize to email or upload to a website. (PhotoComment’s Photo Friday Competition for example) However you don’t have access to PhotoShop or the like and need to do them in a hurry. Well here is a simple yet often overlooked method for quickly resizing your photos on any PC.
Read morePhoto Tip: Quick and Easy Photo Resizing without an image editor!
The Cape Buffalo has the reputation of being the most dangerous animal in Africa as they have apparently killed more people than any other animal. The buffalo is a placid animal but if cornered or wounded its first instinct is to attack. Buffalo are common throughout the Kruger Park, are a very rare sighting in the Pilanesberg and are not found in Etosha or the Kgalagadi. The biggest herd we saw was at the Mlondozi dam from the picnic site. This herd was huge and numbered at least 2000. We watched them coming down to drink and they just kept coming – the whole area was covered with black dots that looked like ants.
Read moreWildlife Photography on a Southern African Safari – Photographing Buffalo
It has been a rather busy week here as we are wrapping up the August issue of the magazine. There are some great images inside this one with the Student Portfolio coming from an award winning Vega student, a review on a Canon DSLR and… I think I might be saying to much already but it will be out in the first few days of August so sit tight.
With the flu fighting hopefully drawing to an end we can catch up on all the products and other things we have had to review. Look out for our upcoming review on an Olympus camera, The Samsung Galaxy S II superphone, a book or two and that is just the top of the to do list.
I have finally sat down and done it! I have created my ultimate photography bucket list. It is something that I have been meaning to do, but never had the time.
We like it when you – our readers – ask us questions which we consult and work our hardest to answer. Recently we got a question which raised a debate among all that we spoke to. Carolyn Gregorowski asked us:
I thought I needed to calibrate my screen in order to get the best results when editing. So I researched a little about the Spyder 3 Elite and I am none the wiser to say the least. There are pretty mixed feelings & findings about the product. Do you have any advice please? Is it worth calibrating? Why? Maybe you have actually used this devise and can get me a little closer to the “real” experience rather than the “sales” jargon one finds at suppliers.
Well Carolyn, there was a fair debate on this as I said but here if you read on you can see commercial photographer Sean Nel’s feedback when we asked him about it.
So many times I would be driving along various bodies of water- lakes, bays, estuaries, rivers- and I would see a beautiful scene. I’d rush to the nearest place where I could safely pull my car off the road, grab my camera gear, and find the parking bay full of others clicking away or realize I’d already taken hundreds of pictures from the same spot. Over weeks and months the frustration slowly built. I needed to be able to get away from the road and over the water. I’d day dream of my own personal dirigible where I could float above, composing new scenes, arriving at new angles that no one else could access. Alternately I’d imagine the expensive, fancy boat I would have for quickly motoring out there to capture fresh perspectives and angles. I’d be free of the roadside and of all the other photographers.
Professional nature photographers make it look easy don’t they! A giraffe silhouetted against the setting sun; savannah landscapes of acacia trees under deep blue skies and the action sequence of a hungry cheetah catching a terrified springbok.
Yet wildlife photography, which sits next to bird, landscape and macro photography the umbrella of ‘nature photography’, is extremely challenging. Unlike studio photography there is very little that is under your control. To obtain good images you need to have the right equipment, know how to use the various items and have photographic vision. Basically you need to apply what is commonly known as the Five-P’s of photography. I’ll briefly list them here: