Best monitors for photographers

In my previous post I explained the monitor features that I take care of when deciding to purchase a new monitor. Unfortunately all of those good featured can’t be found in a single monitor. Some monitors are better for games, some are cheaper, but some are better for graphics.

But let’s talk about which features best monitors for photographers should have. From the list of the post there are some features that are more important than others to me as a photographer. These are: Black levels, Color gamut and Viewing angle.

To read more about that please check out my post Best monitors for photographers at my new blog.

Seeing the Light

I often get private messages or comments about the light setup that I use during my photo shoots. In one of these comments Stephen asked me about the lighting of this particular photo that I took about two years and half ago. In my response I explained the importance of learning seeing the light in a photo. This is what I actually do all the time.

To read more about that please check out my post Seeing the Light at my new blog.

My first experiment using several strobes at once

Masa 01, a photo by Peter Kremzar on Flickr.

Second photo from the set of an from my Christmas experimental shooting with using several strobes at once.

Read more at http://www.e-fotoportal.com/first-experiment-using-several-strobes/

Three good reasons why the Microsoft Surface is the ultimate tablet for professional photographers

Last Monday Microsoft introduced its first two tablets – Microsoft Surface. They are really awesome devices with many new features not available by its competition. But in this post I’ll focus to the Intel based Surface with Windows 8 Pro and why do I think this is currently the only tablet useful for the photographers.

1. Windows 8 Pro is a true OS (operating system).
   It is not derived from a phone OS like iOS or Android. As such it runs several applications that we already use on our notebooks or desktop machines like Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop and others. You can’t run these on an iPad or an Android tablet. Well you have iPhoto on iPad but I’m focused to professional photography in this post.
2. Stylus.
   We all know that you can’t do any serious photo retouch with your fingers. Many retouchers only use Wacom tablets for that purpose. Well. You can buy a stylus for iPad but it’s use is very awkward. You can’t touch the tablet surface with your hand or fingers while drawing. On the other hand Microsoft Surface has a stylus with the proximity sensor integrated.

   The proximity sensor that the Surface has switches off the Touch functionality as soon as it detects the pen is close to the tablet surface. From that moment the Surface behaves just like a Wacom tablet. And this way you get a cheap Wacom Cintiq tablet worth at least US$1200 but at the same time it offers you much more than just being a tablet.

3. Color management
   It is essential for the photographers to have the correct colors through all the process. Currently Windows 8 is the only widely used tablet OS with the color management integrated. I know that DataColor Spyder 4 Elite offers you some kind calibration when your iPad is attached to your Mac. But again this type of calibration really looks awkward to me and the results are quite questionable. And are you willing to buy another calibrator for your iPad just because you already had X-Rite calibrator before?

These are just three essential features where Microsoft Surface really pops out. But sure there are many more we could discuss about.

Project Vienna. How was it done?

At the beginning I’d like to point out that this is just one of my research projects which is used to explore some completely different styles that I’ll use at my future projects. I know it has some flaws.
The current photo is my most advanced composite photo, made of  four different photos. The different photos I used are for the background, clouds, car and the female model.
The idea was to make a virtual world that you don’t find in reality. It wasn’t my idea to make something real but more something with an epic proportions. This is the line I’d like to continue in the future.
I had several influences and goals I tried to achieve, but didn’t copy them. One of them was Drew Gardner and his Winter Storms I think this guy is really good. The other influence was Jon Paul. He makes amazing photos that look very close to paintings and I really liked them for years.
What I did was to get a photo of the Austrian parliament in Vienna. It was quite a touristic snapshot. I cleaned it of all those electric wires, pylons, various statues, tourists, fences, etc. just to avoid having to many objects on a photo.
Then I added the new clouds that I took behind our house during a storm. I also added a layer of computer generated fog and mist. This is important because without it the background would distract the viewer’s view from the main objects. Without the fog it would all look like an snapshot that anyone can do.

I set this layer that the main objects have 20% of fog and mist, but the background 80%.
The next thing was the car. The car was actually a 1:18 scale model of a German Horch 855 built 1939 I bought on ebay. Horch cars were considered more advanced and superior to those being then built by Mercedes before WWII. Unfortunately their production plant fell into the Russian occupation after the war.
I took a macro photo of that model at my studio using one big soft box and a white reflector. Because the car model was about one foot long it was easier to make a controlled lighting. Thanks to my macro lens from Canon (100mm f2.8 IS) the photo of the model was practically razor sharp. I pasted it onto one layer in Photoshop, draw the shadows and that was about it.
The last layer was the female model. I took this photo in my studio also, cut her out of the studio background and pasted to one of the top layers of my photo.

My photo shootings in Portugal

Maja Malnar at the Praia do Meco beach

The location of the photo shooting

To make photos on some nice sandy beaches was my dream for a long time. White sand, blue sea water and some green palms are something we really don’t have it close to where I live which is why I started thinking of going to Thailand some years ago. But the thing is that I should have a team of assistants with me which is not easy to find.

This is why it was quite handy when Rui invited me to Lisbon, Portugal. He showed me photos of some very nice beaches there. It was true they didn’t have palms, but the rest looked promising.

Equipment

In front of the Nossa Senhora church.

My Initial idea was to take all of the photographs using normal studio flashes (monobloc or monolight) that we usually use at the studio photography. The only problem is that when you go out of the studio you need a battery with 220V inverter (Flash Feeder). This all is quite heavy – 13.6 Kg (30 lbs) especially for a travel with an airplane and it costs money as an additional baggage.

But Rui is a big fan of using small Speedlites like Canon Speedlite 580 EX II or Nikon SB26 or similar. He runs his own blog Lighting moods where he writes about his inventions in this area. Some of his ideas are really good and I already used some of them in the past.

I wasn’t completely sure of his idea because of my bad experiences with low power light sources in the past. My idea was to take photos on the beaches where the sun is quite strong even late in the evening. After a long debate we had with Rui we decided to use Canon Speedlites only.

During our photo sessions we only used one or two Canon Speedlites 580 EX II or 550 EX. They were equiped with 15” x 15” softboxes which we put on portable Manfrotto tripods. But once we only used a monopod which was held by Rui. That was a must because of the strong wind.

All of the Speedlites that we used were triggered with my Elinchom Skyport radio triggers. The reason why I use these is that they are reliable. In the past I tried optical or IR triggering, but that doesn’t work in all of the conditions. I also tried some cheap Chinese radio triggers but they were also not reliable. Then I decided for Elinchrom because my local photo provider just had them on stock.

Getting models for a photo shoot

Maja Malnar at Guincho

At the beginning I was searching for some local models about two months in advance. I used Model Mayhem service for that. I got quite a good response from some of the Portugal models. But because of my previous bad experience from Nova Scotia, Canada I wasn’t completely sure about this idea. The thing is that you don’t know these people and they can or they can not show up and then the whole plans for the trip are wasted. This was why I started thinking of inviting someone I knew from Slovenia with me. One of the Slovene models I contacted was Maja Malnar and she liked the whole idea about taking photos in Portugal.

At the Mario Principe studio

Mario is one great fashion photographer from Lisbon. He is a good friend of Rui who introduced us. Blend magazine is one of his projects and when Rui showed the link to me I really liked his photographs because they are very similar to my taste.

Mario's studio quite impressed me because it was one of the biggest that I have seen until now. While his shootings with Maja there were three stylists, one make up artist and several assistants.

Model video books are very popular last time. You can easily see how a model moves from them which you can’t from a photograph. At the same time photos are usually manipulated in the PhotoShop which allows you can make a top model from one average girl. Well. We had a model so Mario decided to make one video book with Maja.

While Mario had his session with Maja I had time to record a making of video which was actually the first one of this type that I ever did. I totally recorder around three hours of it but at the end I decided to focus to one styling only.

You can see this video at higher quality at Vimeo.

Praia do Guincho

The rocky walls by the ocean coast offered a great wind defense.

When you search photos on Google Earth or Panoramio you can quickly find some very nice places that you can’t find at the tourist guides. Guincho looked like a mini Death Valley with all of it’s nice sand dunes. And it really looks very nice. But all of these photos can’t show all of the wind there which was really terrible. I even didn’t see such sand storms in Death Valley yet. Luckily we found one nice garden with a pool at the Estalagem Muchaxo hotel which looked very nice for a shoot.

Nossa Senhora at Cabo Espichel

Nossa Senhora is an abandoned monastery at the Cabo Espichel.

Nossa Senhora (En: Our Lady or Madonna) is a nice but abandoned monastery at the edge of a high cliff on the coast of the Atlantic ocean. The place was very popular by the pilgrims in the 13th century. The story said that a man saw a light coming from the cape in his vision. When he approached he saw the Madonna riding on a back of a mule at the top of the cliff.

One of my photos published at the first edition of the Strobist trade secret cards

It was a beginning of October when I had a  photo shooting with two nice models Ksenija and Larisa. I had planned that shooting weeks in advance, because I was a bit sick of the standard studio photos with standard paper background. Photos in a real ambient look much better. So Larisa asked her friend who was the owner of this nice bar to help us to make our photos a bit different.

The shooting began with some huge problems. My radio triggers didn’t work. At that time I only had some cheap Chinese triggers that I bought on ebay. I had to trick my studio flashes and trig them optically with my Canon Speedlite flash.

The flash setting for this particular photo was quite easy. I hanged my 650W flash and my largest softbox – a 7 feet wide octagonal softbox – using a portable background holder so that it was just above the girls. And that’s it.

I’m very surprised how popular this photo is despite how simple it was made. It currently has 39 250 views only on Flickr and 571 people selected it as their favorite. It’s my second most popular photo

Last December I was contacted by Zeke who would like to publish it at his first edition of the Strobist trade secret cards. I was quite surprised because this was one of the 24 photos published for this first edition and the group currently counts over 47 000 members all around the world.

You can see a larger photo at my Flickr account.

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