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Book Review: Light Science & Magic

Nelya often gets upset at me because I often prefer to buy books rather than get them from the library.  With the exception of technical books for work – which go out of date quickly – I prefer to buy books and read them over long periods of time than have the books for only a few short weeks.  In addition, I often refer to books in the future.  Still, a number of times she does have a point.

However, Light: Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting is not one of those books.  This is a book that you will refer over and over to and is well worth the investment.  In fact, in my opinion this book is required reading.  It is not for beginners, but anyone who hopes to understand light at all should have it.

First, let me stress again that this book is not for beginners.  It assumes that you already know the basics of photography and how to properly expose a picture.  What it doesn’t assume, however, is that you know anything about light.

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Book Review – The Photographer’s Guide to Light

Understanding of light is crucial to any photographer – from beginners to experts.  Therefore, some time ago I purchased The Photographers Guide to Light in order to get a better understanding of it.  The book is well organized for beginners and each chapter covers light in a different aspect of photography.

The book begins with an introduction into the kinds of light and some of the scientific aspects of it.  The language is very easy to understand and is accessible to almost anyone.

He then goes into more detail on the following subjects

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Book Review – Carpenter Ants of the United States and Canada

OK, I have to admit that this book is not for everyone.  Who should read this book?  Hmmm… Well, if you’re not interested in carpenter ants, you can skip this review.

I happen to find carpenter ants quite interesting and one species of them – Camponotus Modoc, is very common around here.  Therefore, when I saw Carpenter Ants Of The United States And Canada on sale at a used book store, I decided to pick up a copy and learn more about them.

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Book Review – A New History of Photography

I usually make a point that I do not review a book until I have turned the last page, but given the size of this book I think that will be awhile.  The book A New History of Photography, is simply enormous.  However, there’s a lot of info in these pages.

Before I go further, I would like to explain why I bought this book.  As I seek to take better pictures, I thought it would be worthwhile to learn about the photographers that preceded me.  What made their work stand out?  What traits did the photographers who have survived time have in common?

In a sense, I am looking for inspiration and ideas on forming my own creative style.  There is a saying that one cannot write without reading.  I feel that the same is true about photography.  You can’t take good pictures without examining others’ pictures.

I saw this book on sale in a local used book store and decided to try it out.  Although only 775 pages, each page is huge and as a standard version book would probably be around 2000 pages.  The book is roughly chronological, starting with the techniques preceding photography and the invention of photography itself.

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Introduction to Microstock Photography – Some Last Examples

This is the last post of the Introduction to Microstock Photography series.  I hope that this series has been helpful.  In this post, I will go through the final set of examples.

This is a panorama of the Jerusalem city walls at night.  The taking of the shot has an interesting story itself.  I took this with my Sigma 80-400 4-5.6 OS at 400mm and 5.6.  When I first submitted the shot, it was rejected due to softness.  I was quite surprised at this because I used a tripod, mirror lock, and a remote shutter release.  The tripod itself was on sturdy concrete.  How could it be soft?

To my surprise, when I examined the shot at 100%, it was soft.  The simple fact was, the Sigma was too soft at 400mm and 5.6.  As a result of further investigation, I sold this lens because I could no longer depend on it.  Eventually I will buy a new telephoto, but right now I rarely need one and I’m waiting for Canon to improve on their 100-400mm lens.

The next step I did was shrinking the size of the picture down.  This often works when the shot is a bit out of focus.  Shutterstock accepted the picture and it is a good seller.  IStockPhoto rejected the shot – and it is an interesting point why.

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Introduction to Microstock Photography – Continuing with Examples

In this post, we will continue with the examples we started earlier.  We will start with what most people want from microstock photography…

This image was rejected for poor lighting.  It is a complete isolation that took me some time to accomplish.  I took this picture explicitly for stock.  The result… I wasted my time.  This is an example of why you should only take the pictures you like, rather than take pictures just for stock.  If you take only the pictures you want to take, only the extra time spent adding keywords will be wasted if the image is not accepted or does not sell.

Interestingly, some time after this shot was rejected I post processed it a bit more and it was accepted.

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Introduction to Microstock Photography – More Examples

In this post we will continue the examples that we started yesterday. 

Remember, the questions to consider for each image are

1. Was it accepted?
2. If accepted, was it accepted on all sites?
3. Did it sell?

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Introduction to Microstock Photography – IStockPhoto

IStockPhoto is perhaps the most widely known and widely respected microstock site.  In conversations with graphic designers, this is the site I most often hear from them.  For anyone wishing to get started in microstock photography, it is certainly worth your effort to contribute here.  In my experience, earnings at this site are significant but less than with Shutterstock.

IStockPhoto is most well known for their per download pricing.  Clients pay more for larger sized images.  The photographer receives a cut from these costs – though that cut is much less than it is on other sites.  Still, each download should earn you several dollars on IStockPhoto.  They also recently started a subscription plan similar to Shutterstock.  Downloads with their subscription plan earn significantly less but are not yet as common.  Finally, IStockPhoto offers enhanced license sales that each earn you a bit less than the equivalent sale on Shutterstock.

The overall review process and sales are much more difficult on this site than on Shutterstock.  Only the best pictures will sell and average pictures will generally earn nothing.  Most likely because of this, the reviewers are much tougher.

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Introduction to Microstock Photography – Shutterstock

Shutterstock was the first microstock site I signed up on and I must admit that I have mixed feelings about it.  Regardless of my views on it, it is probably the best microstock site for earnings available today.  Shutterstock was the first to pioneer a subscription plan.  The basic principle is a customer purchase a ‘subscription’ for each month, several months, or an entire year.  During the subscription period, customers can download up to 25 images a day.  Initially, Shutterstock would pay twenty five cents to the owner of the photograph for each download.  Over time, as the subscription fees have increased so have the payments.  Nowadays, your earnings depend on how much money you have made at their site – starting out at twenty five cents and moving up to thirty eight cents.

Recently, they also added an on demand service for customers that do not need as many images.  This is closer to the model at IStockPhoto and other sites.  Downloads of this type pay several dollars each to the photographer.

Shutterstock also supports enhanced license sales, the payouts for which depend on your earnings level at Shutterstock.  Generally though this is $20-$30 – though these sales are far less frequent.  Finally, they offer an archiving service that pays the photographer five cents for each image archived (in addition to the payout when the image was originally sold).

Shutterstock’s success is based on a rather simple principle that I and a number of others have disagreed with.

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Book review – HDRI Handbook

Recently I have begun to do quite a bit more HDR work, particularly in the area of real estate.  I currently have only hotshoe flash – the 580EX – and I can only take it off camera as far as my sync cord will let me.  With some properties, this has forced me to rely on HDR in order to get the lighting right.  In general, I like the effect of HDR on certain landscape shots but dislike it for real estate – my opinion being that it makes the light too flat and the shots lit with multiple flashes look more dramatic.  Nevertheless, I decided that it was time to learn more about HDR so I found a copy of the The HDRI Handbook: High Dynamic Range Imaging for Photographers and CG Artists +DVD at my company’s library and took it home to read.  Originally I planned to buy the book online but then decided it was better to preview it first.  To be honest, I was very glad that I did this, because overall I do not plan to purchase it.

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