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The 2008/366photos project just hit the 1/4 mark. Just over 91 days in. I’ve been surprised at the number of edu-folk that decided to try the photo-a-day challenge this year. It’s fun, interesting, frustrating, challenging, and sometimes really difficult trying to come up with at least one photograph every day that doesn’t suck (or, hopefully, is interesting and/or good).

So now, we’ve got 40 people in the 366photos group. Currently there are over 1800 photos in the pool. There are likely many photos that are part of the project that aren’t included in the pool (for myself, several are marked as “friends and family” only, because they are photos of my son and/or his cousins).

That blows me away. And there are some really, REALLY good photos in there. It’s pretty cool to see people trying new things. Watching Michael play with off-camera flashes. Jen and Brian getting comfortable with their new toy. Stephen capturing winter in New Brunswick. Alan catching the cool stuff around Strawberry (and beyond). I’m not going to go through and list all 40 members but it’s been very cool watching what people come up with!

To be clear, though, this is not the only photo-a-day challenge group on Flickr. There’s a 365photos group, 366 2008, Project 365+1, 366 of 2008, and any number of other similar groups. There are probably thousands of people just on Flickr doing the project.

But what is so cool about our own little 366photos project, is that it’s composed almost entirely of edu-folks. A little community-within-a-community, of people trying something new and working (intentionally or otherwise) to improve their abilities and contribute content to the group. That’s awesome.

Focal length is the factor determining how much “zoom” you get when taking a photo. Larger numbers mean longer lenses, meaning closer zoom. But, if you have a couple of lenses, it’s sometimes hard (at least initially) to figure out which lens to use for which shot. With a point-and-shoot, it’s easy, because there’s only one lens, and it’s built in. The only control you have is over the level of zoom. With a DSLR, you can swap the lenses out, which gives a great deal of flexibility, but means you need to put some thought into what range of focal lengths you want to have handy.

Here’s an example shot, taken at a playground near my house. I shot a “wide” photo at 17mm (on a Canon 17-35mm L USM), and took corresponding shots at various key focal lengths on the other lenses in my kit.

18mm is the widest that the Canon 18-55mm kit lens will go, and is likely the widest angle most people will have available without spending a whole bunch of cash (which I haven’t done yet). 35mm is the long end of that L lens. 55mm is the longest that the kit lens will do, so that gives a pretty decent walking around range of focal lengths. The 50mm (shot with my Canon 50mm f/1.8 II) is pretty close to the long end of the kit, but the image was much sharper with the 50mm prime. The 75mm was shot with the wide end of the Canon 75-300mm USM II, and the 300mm was at the long end of that lens.

So the kit lens actually has a pretty decent range of focal lengths for regular use and landscapes. It’s not long enough to pull details out of things very far away, but does pretty well. It falls down miserably on its aperture range - it’s a pathetically slow lens, meaning it’s only really good for bright conditions (outdoors, or brightly lit indoor settings).

The Canon 50mm prime lens is actually the one I use about 90-95% of the time. You can see that it is not very wide - you’re not going to capture sweeping panoramas with it - but I love this lens for two reasons. First, it’s great at capturing the central focus point of a scene - the part that you are really looking at when you’re not peeking through the camera. Many people say 35mm is “normal” but for me, 50mm feels much closer. Maybe that’s a hint to visit my eye doctor again… The second reason I love the 50mm prime is that it is a fast lens. In this case, “fast” doesn’t refer to the speed of the lens, but at how it gulps light in through a wide aperture (the opening inside the lens that lets light through), letting the camera take pictures with a faster shutter opening. Yeah. It’s not exactly intuitive. Fast lenses are really “wide aperture” lenses, and they’re called fast because they let the camera take pictures with less exposure. Slow lenses (like the Canon 18-55mm kit, or the 75-300mm) are still great for outdoors, scenery, or even night shots with a stable enough tripod and a long exposure. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, just something to keep in mind when picking the lens to use. I typically pick my 50mm f/1.8 lens because it’s so ungodly fast that I don’t need to use a flash even in relatively low light (especially if cranking the ISO to 1600).

Another lens that I’ve used is the Canon 28-135mm USM IS. It’s a great lens (we picked it up for the office) and I believe now ships as a kit option on the Canon XTi. I didn’t have the lens with me when I shot these test photos, but it should be pretty straightforward to see where the 28mm and 135mm ends of the range fit in - 28mm should be a bit wider than the 35mm box in the image above, and 135mm should be roughly halfway between the 75mm and 300mm boxes.

So, with a bunch of lenses in a photo kit, how does one pick the right one for the job? I came up with 2 handy tricks to help me pick. It should be noted that these tricks are calibrated for the length of my arm and hand, and for the 1.6 crop factor of my Canon XT.

First, if I’m thinking about shooting something far away, I just hold my hand up at arm’s length, like this:

The part of the scene that spans the first two knuckles of my finger are roughly what will be captured at 300mm. Makes it easy to see if a small/distant item will fit, or if 300mm will be enough. 75mm is roughly the span between the thumb joint and fingertip.

For 50mm, I came up with a quick test. Just make a shaka at arms length, like this:

The part of the scene that spans my thumb and pinky is roughly what will be captured at 50mm. Plus, it’s fun to make the shaka when composing a scene. (total aside: when swimming at Ala Moana Beach in Honolulu, a local woman shared the story behind the shaka. Picture the shape of a humpback whale’s tale as they make a dive. It comes out of the water, looking very much like my hand in the photo above. Shaka is the whale’s tail.)

Of course, with enough practice, these tips become unnecessary as you begin to judge what will be captured at various focal lengths automatically. But they can be a very handy shortcut, especially when learning to use a new lens or two.

Just a quick post to say, once again, how much I fracking LOVE Aperture. I shot some sunlight poking through the clouds, in what was an amazing and inspiring scene. But when looking at the RAW files, they looked a bit flat. Dull colours, no “pop” and not at all what I remembered. Less than one minute later, and Aperture 2 let me tweak it very easily to match almost exactly what I remember seeing. Below is the before and after versions of the photo:

My tweaking involved clicking some checkboxes, and dragging a couple of sliders. Easy peasy:

• Auto Exposure adjustment (camera exposure was a bit high because of the directish sunlight, so Auto Exp. dropped it down a bit by -0.27)
• Auto levels (B&W)
• Black point adjusted higher (to 7.56) (crushed the blacks a bit, dropping some of the details in the trees and houses to make them more silhouette)
• Contrast nudged up +0.04 (to give a bit more punch to the sunlight coming through)
• Definition nudged up +0.09 (again, more punch to the sunlight, and helped with the edge definition of the trees, and defined the shapes of the clouds a bit more)
• Saturation set to 1.18 (brought out the colour in the clouds, and some of the orange above the treetops)
• Vibrancy +0.51 (refined the clouds and orange light)
• Highlights +18.9 (dropped contrast in the brightest parts, bringing back some details in the brightly lit cloud portions)

That’s it. 2 checkboxes and 6 sliders, all done as fully interactive realtime adjustments. It took me 15 times longer to write this blog post (and make before/after image) than it did to tweak the photo in the first place.

I want to preface this post by saying that I realize that it will sound like pretentious self-important aren’t-I-great writing. That’s not what I intended, but it’s difficult to write about this without throwing caution to the wind. Although I shoot a fair number of photographs, and at least partially identify myself as a photographer, I have had absolutely no formal training. I have no “expertise” on the subject, aside from that which has been self-taught, and experience gathered from shooting something like 50,000 photographs over the years. People have been asking me to provide some pointers on how to improve their photography, resulting in this blog post. OK. That’s out of the way…

Photography can be both a noun and a verb. It is both the act of, and the product of, capturing images through photographic processes. When someone asks “what do you recommend to help me get better at photography” - I think they are meaning photography-as-noun. They want their photographs to look better. They want to take better pictures.

But, what they really mean, whether they realize it or not, is how to improve photography-as-verb. How to “get better” at taking pictures. How to be a better photographer.

And there’s no easy answer. There isn’t a simple recipe, where if followed dutifully, a person will be transformed into a better photographer. There are two separate but related aspects to photography - the technical, and the aesthetic. I believe that the technical side can be relatively easily addressed - read some books, maybe take a course or two, rtfm, and practice.

It’s the aesthetic side of photography that is harder to develop. There isn’t an easy process to do that. Some sense of aesthetics will develop as you shoot more photographs - whether through trial and error, mimicking other photographs that you like, or through deliberate composition. The most effective, long term strategy that I’ve found to improve my sense of aesthetics has been through what I call “mindful seeing.” I don’t mean in a spiritual sense, although there might be a spiritual aspect to it - mindfulness is a strong component of eastern philosophies such as Buddhism. I mean the act and process of being deliberately thoughtful about what you are seeing. To see what you are looking at. It’s something that doesn’t happen automatically - we go through life filtering what we see, reducing input and stimulus to the point that we aren’t as distracted by visual stimuli. Mindful seeing is the process of turning off the filters, of seeing your surroundings unfettered and unobstructed.

When viewing the world without filtering, even the most boring and banal subjects can become wondrous and interesting. We are constantly surrounded by interesting things that we normally don’t see - textures, lighting, patterns, shapes, objects, groupings, even messages.

Photographers are often described as distancing themselves from their surroundings by “hiding behind a camera” or “viewing the world only through a viewfinder.” I see photography from the exact opposite side of the coin. By mindfully seeing the world around me, I feel as though I am seeing much more than I would otherwise. I see patterns, convergence, divergence, shadows, lighting, juxtaposition, and composition that are likely missed by others. That’s not to say that I am “better” than any other - just that by being mindful of what I am seeing, I am aware of what is around me. And when I am aware, I am better able to take an interesting photograph.

One benefit of practicing mindful seeing is that it doesn’t require a camera. You are seeing things every second you are awake (assuming no visual disabilities). Being mindful can be as simple as stopping what you are doing, and examining what is directly in front of you. How is the light reflecting off the wall? Notice the gradients in the various shadows? How they interact with each other? The caustic refraction of light through curved glass? The texture of the floor and ceiling? From which angles would these shadows line up or be exaggerated?

Once you start to see these details (both micro and macro) you begin to take photographs of them. You begin to use them in composing photographs. And eventually it becomes second nature. I constantly catch myself being startled by seeing something interesting in unexpected places. Most of the time, I don’t have a camera handy, so I just make a mental note and say something profound like “cool.” On the occasions where I do have a camera literally in hand, I take a shot. And some of these have resulted in surprisingly interesting photographs.

The biggest example of this is when I took a series of photographs examining the texture of the back of a bus seat.  I was commuting to and from work on the bus, and kept noticing the patterns on the back of the seat, right in front of me. I put my point-and-shoot camera into super-macro mode, and took a few shots with the lens almost touching the seat back. And the results were quite amazing - textures, patterns, shadows, reflections - all of which were right in front of me every day for more than a year, but which I hadn’t seen before.

Once you start being more mindful of what you see, and taking more photographs, it becomes important to be honestly critical of your (and others’) photographs. Not critical in the negative sense - but able to give an honest evaluation of what is good, what is not so good, and what would be done differently if given the chance. This honest criticism is essential to becoming more mindful of the aesthetics of photography. Eventually, you will be able to separate yourself from your photographs (it isn’t easy) and as a result you’ll be aware of what makes your photographs good or bad aesthetically.

If I say that I took a good photograph - and it’s important that I be aware if I have - I am not saying “hey! I am an awesome photographer! Look at this awesome shot that I took! Aren’t I awesome?” No. Instead, if I am honest about the evaluation, I am saying something like “this is a good photograph. notice how the composition leads the eye, the lighting blah blah blah” - it’s not about me, it’s about the photograph. Similarly, a critique of a “bad” photograph isn’t a comment on me, or my skills, or anything other than the aesthetics of a series of binary bits representing an image.

With that said, how would I recommend someone “get better at photography”?

• start with mindful seeing. it’s easy, because we see all day. it’s hard, because we filter what we see.
• shoot a lot of photographs. Try shooting every day. every. day. If nothing else, it will force you to see interesting things around you. And you will learn the technical aspects of photography because you are doing it often.
• be honestly critical of your photographs. Something that helps with this is to do it in the open - if you don’t have a Flickr account, create one and start posting photographs there. Join a few groups and participate in the community. They’ll help keep you honest.
• be honestly critical of other people’s photographs. This doesn’t have to be in the open, but by critiquing other photographs you’ll learn what you like and don’t like, and you’ll learn what you want to (and don’t want to) photograph.
• expose yourself to a LOT of photography. I follow 26 groups and tags on Flickr - subscribing to the RSS feeds - so I see hundreds of photographs every day.
• expose yourself to a LOT of information about photography - I follow about 50 photoblogs where photographers talk about their craft and post their best work. It’s important to expose yourself to various opinions and techniques - things you can try out when you’re shooting every day.

So, some rambling thoughts from an amateur photographer with no training. There aren’t any guarantees, but this is the rough philosophy and process that I personally subscribe to.

I just completed my “2007/365″ project, where I took at least one photograph per day for the entire year. I didn’t realize going in just how hard it would be, but it forced me to see things differently and I did learn to be a bit more proficient with the technical aspects of photography.

Download 2007/365

Other versions available here.

Taking a cue from Dean Shareski, I’ve put together some of my favorite photographs taken in 2007. I maintain a “Photos I Like Most” set on my Flickr account, where I keep 100 photographs that I personally like. As I add a new one, I have to drop an older one. So, I just selected the photos from that set that were taken in 2007. This isn’t a “year in review” or “my top 10 photos” - just some of the photos I took this year that I personally like. They’re listed in reverse chronological order, with newest at the top and oldest at the bottom. Kinda bloggish that way…

This post is another in what feels like an endless series of love letters to Aperture. I’ve been using Aperture exclusively for a year now. At first, I was in way over my head. A complete amateur, lost in a professional tool. Now, I’m a complete amateur, able to salvage photographs pretty effectively in a professional tool. I’ve dabbled with iPhoto recently (using it to manage the photos from my son’s Fisher Price camera, because sending a 5 year old into Aperture felt like overkill) and I’m positive I could never go back. I’ve imbibed deeply of the Aperture Kool-Aid. It’s entirely possible that other apps (Lightroom?) could do what Aperture does, but Aperture works so amazingly well that I won’t bother to check out the other apps for awhile.

To illustrate just how amazing Aperture is, here are 2 photos I took this week. When posted to Flickr, they looked decent, even passable as non-crap. But that was only after some photo rescue applied from within Aperture.

Photo #1 (12 Mile Coulee Road on Christmas Day) was taken on Christmas Day, as I went for a bike ride around my community. I was booking it down a country road (the first country road you get to in my neck of the woods, and the one that marks the NW corner of the city of Calgary). I saw a pretty breathtaking view of the foothills, including a farmer’s field with scattered hay bales, and the Rocky Mountains off in the distance. I pulled over, and took a few shots. After getting home, I opened them up, and noticed that the photos all looked flat and lifeless. Drab. Dreary. It was a pretty much overcast and flatly lit day. But 15 seconds twiddling bits in Aperture brought the photo back to what I remembered seeing.

The left half of the image was “in camera” without touchups. The right half is after (literally) 15 seconds of tweaking in Aperture. I set the white balance (eye dropper on the snow) and tweaked levels and exposure. Bumped up contrast and saturation. Done. 15 seconds from boring, flat shot to a half decent photo of the foothills.

For the second shot (Santa Ball), I’ve been dabbling with a DIY lightbox. I’m just using whatever lights I have laying around (in this case, halogen and CF lamps collecting dust in the basement), so the white balance is pretty much crap, and not bright enough to make the images pop. I took this photo today to try a new combination (having been thwarted by Boxing Day closed stores and unable to pick up a set of more consistent lights).

While the final image isn’t bad, the “in camera” version is absolute crap. The warm light makes it look orange, almost brown. And it’s not bright enough. This one took a bit longer to clean up properly. I think I spent a whopping 2 minutes. I set the white balance (eye dropper just below the bottom of the ball), bumped up exposure, saturation, contrast, and tweaked levels a bit. Hopefully after picking up some decent lights, the amount of lightbox post-processing tweakage will drop dramatically.

Although there’s no replacement for getting a photo right in camera, there’s also nothing like having the tools available to consistently rescue a photograph with pretty minimal effort.

Evan and I spent the day at the Glenbow Museum, checking out the exhibits and hanging out in the discovery/crafts centres. We were at the museum for a record 5 hours - not a bad way to spend a Saturday.

We started at the top (4th floor) and worked our way down. I hadn’t seen the physical Mavericks exhibit, although I did construct the website for it. It was pretty darned cool to see the exhibits in the flesh. The Glenbow did a helluva job putting the Mavericks floor together.

It was pretty cool to see the old Telstar Drugs sign still working. It was removed last year when the landmark building was yanked down and replaced with a big-box drug store. Yay, progress.

And, in yet another case of “why I fracking love my 50mm f/1.8 lens” - every single shot I got inside the museum would have been destroyed by the use of flash. On a related note, the Glenbow staff are really good about photography. In most exhibits, taking pictures is cool. The only “no photographs” signs I saw were in the Emily Carr exhibit, which I am sure are tied to the terms of the exhibit loan and copyright, and not the museum.

I’ve been using my “nifty fifty” (aka “plastic fantastic”) Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens almost exclusively since I got it a couple months ago. It was cheap, at $100, and it’s been a blast to use. The wide aperture means I can take shots without needing the flash, with a strong bokeh (blurred background with foreground in sharp focus). It really hit me just how awesome this lens is, when I dragged the camera out trick-or-treating with Evan last night. Lots of other parents brought cameras - it’s a natural thing to do. Many even had DSLRs with fancy schmancy lenses. But they ALL were firing the flash. Completely blowing away the spooky halloween ambiance, replacing it with brightly lit subjects with harsh shadows. Ick.

Here’s a shot I took just down the street, at a neighbour’s house that was tricked out as a haunted house.

The flash would have completely killed the effect, destroying the shadows and blowing away the colours in the background.

All of these shots were taken hand-held, with no tripod, monopod, or additional lighting.

The fixed 50mm focal length takes some getting used to, since you have to zoom with your feet, but I find it makes me more mindful of the shot I want to take because I have to think ahead. And, most of the time, the longer-than-normal 50mm gets me a much nicer and closer shot, and compresses distance nicely (something that gets exaggerated with a zoom lens and shorter focal lengths).

Anyway, just a quick rave about the awesome 50mm f/1.8 lens. If you have a DSLR (any make, any model), run out and get one. It’s by FAR the best bang for the buck, and the fast f/1.8 aperture is awesome and addictive.

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