As another year flies by, I’m standing on a train in Tokyo wondering where it’s gone.

My snowboarding gear had barely been packed away at the end of the season in late February before I was on my way to Cambodia in March. Then came the next nine months, in which I began one of many part-time jobs. Yup, I quit my full-time job in the worst recession since the 1930s. Why? I needed a change from the all too familiar rut I found myself in and I figured since one of the part-time jobs was at a university, the experience would be good on my resume and I would be in a good position to gain a full-time position the following year. It was no doubt a gamble, but as the saying goes, nothing ventured, nothing gained! Trying to balance two or three different jobs at a time and spending a great deal of the time on trains getting from job to job was tiring and often frustrating, but it’s all experience and a large part of it beneficial.

What I haven’t done enough of this year is take photos. On too many weekends this year I just haven’t had time to go out and explore this bizarre megalopolis in the land of the rising sun. With a population in the region of thirty million in greater Tokyo, you just can’t see everything and unless you’re an extreme introvert or flat broke, it’s impossible to be bored here. Sure, the urban sprawl gets you down at times and the pace of life needs constant adjusting to, but once you know enough people and you’re willing to make the effort, things become manageable and life becomes easier.

A number of times that I’ve been out shooting this year have been worthwhile and I’ve especially enjoyed becoming accustomed to my Nikon 50mm f/1.8. Another realization dawned on me a while back – I’ve become addicted to prime lenses. Apart from the ease of use and image sharpness, cameras also seem to like them more than the cheaper mid-range zoom lenses. It’s doesn’t take much to understand why – with primes there is much less ‘thinking’ to do for the camera to get the optimal image quality. It’s just one focal length and minimal interference with light having to pass through one focal plane or piece of glass – I think that sounds right. In my own experience exposure and white balance seems so much more accurate on my D90 using a prime lens compared to a zoom lens such as my 18-200mm VR. Granted, a higher end lens will deliver better results, but with the equipment I use, the difference is distinctly clear.

With Christmas season in full swing and the dazzling displays in store windows designed to woo and part us with our cash, I’ve succumbed once already and bought a 24mm f/2.8. With the Nikon DX crop factor this equates to around 35mm in film or in full-frame sensor camera terms and I liked this lens the minute I started using it. I now have my eye on a 105mm f2.8 (not the VR Micro as this lens is beyond what’s left of my depleted funds!) and I’m seriously considering a high end zoom; either the 80-200 f2.8 or if I can get a good deal on it, the 70-200 f2.8 VR.

I’m hoping to go out once more before Christmas and try out my 24mm, so until then, happy Christmas shooting!

This one is titled “Getting Ready”. This is another one from Vienna. This is a view of the restaurant at the Kunsthistorisches Museum (or the Museum of Art History) at Vienna, Austria as it gets ready for the next set of customers after lunch hour.

I have titled this blog of mine “Photos Happen“. This is as good an example as I need to explain what I mean by it. No, I don’t mean to say that I never ‘plan’ my photographs/photography. In fact quite often I do! I plan meticulous details on what time to go, what kind of equipment to carry (or lug!), what kind of photographs I want to capture etc etc etc. But then if everything were to go by plan, then what would be the fun?! That’s what makes photography an exciting hobby! You can plan all you like. But photos have a way of “happening”. At least to me

We were in Vienna for a week’s short holiday in September 2008. I think on day 2 of this holiday, if I remember right, we decided to go take a look at one of the museum’s of Vienna. There are of course many… in fact Vienna has a “Museum Quartier” dedicated to museums! Just across from the Museum Quartier is the Maria-Theresien-Platz. The platz is of course named after Empress Maria Theresa who lorded over Austria and whose statue now lords over the platz!

On either of the majestic empress lie 2 fantastic museums housed in nearly identical looking (to the casual observer of course!) monumental builds too. One of them is the Kunsthistorisches Museum, or the Museum of Art History for those of us who prefer good old English! Mind you, this is a large, absolutely humongous museum! The collection of art and paintings is phenomenal and takes you many a hour, to just breeze through it. God alone knows how many days one will need to spend to do absolute justice to what these guys have put together! Anyway, lets leave the talk and description of the museum to others who want to talk about it!

What this large collection did do however was ensure that by the time we reached the paintings on the upper level, it was nearly closing time! And as the closing time drew to a close, we literally got pushed out of the chambers. What that also meant was that when I peeped over the balcony of the top floor into the atrium below, I saw the restaurant below being laid out afresh, after having been cleaned, for the next day’s visitors. Now just a few hours earlier, this was exactly the place we had a fabulous lunch and given the number of people milling around, I never gave the place a second look. Not to mention the hurry we were in to get it done with and move on to other portions of the museum!

Then when we were all done and one of the last to leave, it gave me the opportunity to photograph this place with nearly nobody around and the beautiful light and symmetry of this place! Like I say, Photos Happen!

Things I like about this photograph

• The light!
• The symmetry of the table layout which is disturbed by the round table at the top (and that silly little different sized table at the bottom right! )
• The ‘whiteness’ of the tablecloth and the marble (?) flooring offset by the black design on the flooring! Fabulous. Don’t you think?
• The absolute humongous size of this atrium!

Things I wish I could change about this photograph

• The fact that the bottom portion of the table arrangement got cropped off. This unfortunately I could not help! The place was so huge that from eye level, I could not even cover the whole area and I was holding the camera way up in the air above my head and trying to shoot by ‘judgement’!! And this is at 18mm – the widest I could go on the Nikon 18-200mm lens I was using! I tried a few shots till we were bullied out This is the one that came the closest to ‘ideal’

A bane faced by many a photographer is “stealth” of photographs. Pratap (@pixelshooter) has posted a pretty detailed take on this earlier which I read today. At around the same time, I noticed the comment shown below on the above photograph of mine. This got me thinking and led to this posting.

However, before we get into the dilemna I am facing, some basic definitions and understanding.

Copyright

Firstly what is a copyright? I find this article to be a good explanation of what a copyright is. After you read that, you might want to read a little more about copyright myths by the same author.

Photographs taken by an amateur photographer like me as a part of his/her hobby are buy default the copyright of the photographer.

License

A license refers to the act of authorizing use (under applicable intelectual property laws) by the licensor to the licensee sparing the licensee from a claim of infringement brought by the licensor. A more detailed explanation is on the wiki.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation devoted towards expanding the range of “creative” works available for others to build upon legally and share further. In many ways, Creative Commons is to creative work, what “open source” is to software. Creative Commons defines many licenses under which one can license one’s work. Depending upon the license you choose, the restrictions that apply on the licensee when he/she/they use your work changes. The advantage obviously is that while you keep the copyright, you also allow others to copy and distribute your work provide they give you credit under the conditions you specify.

What license to choose?

That of course brings me to the topic of what license to choose. If you are feeling a little lost with all the jargon – I know I was – there is a simple way of deciding using this page on the Creative Commons website. Personally, I have used the following 2 licenses

1. Attribution-Share Alike
2. Attribution-Non commercial-No Derivative Works

Dilemna

As you can see from the 2 links above, the first is far more “relaxed” as compared to the second. After I came across Creative Commons, around 2 years ago, all my photographs where shared under Attribution-Share Alike. Some time in the past I got into this thinking that I while I want my work to be available to others to copy and distribute, I don’t want them to use the same commercially or derive other things from my work. Hence the move to Attribution-Non commercial-No Derivative Works. I am however wondering on the “No Derivative” clause currently. I need to figure out if there is a license from CC which allows me to share my work, enforce a “non-commercial” clause but still allow for derivatives which are further shared alike by the licensee. That would achieve my want to contribute and get the community to grow. I am sure those of you who swear by Open Source, get where I am going with this and what is driving this thinking!

Let me know what you think

This one’s called “Let There Be Music”. I guess it’s not difficult to guess why!

I have been playing with idea of starting a blog for the photos I click and then I finally gave in to the temptation. The question remains as to how long am I going to sustain this though. The previous 2 attempts at blogging have been… er… just that, attempts! So here goes another attempt!

As a first post, I was wondering what to start of with. Then I thought why not merge 2 passions of mine. Photography and Music.

This one is from the archives. Circa 2008. And this is how this “photo happened”.

I was representing my company at Sibos 2008. Sibos in 2008 happened to be in the beautiful city of Vienna, Austria! We were staying walking distance from the venue. On the first day, after the conference, we wanted to catch some dinner and a few of us went around looking for a place to grab some decent food. We found this off-beat looking Italian place a block or two away. It was drizzling outside and there was no hope in hell of seeing anything around. But I was carrying my camera… you know, just in case. Good thing I did I got this stunning trumpet hanging on the equally lovely old wall in the restaurant!

And now for you photographers out there who will not be happy to just stop at this and want the gory details on what went into this snap… sorry, it was an absolute no-brains-used, simple point and shoot affair! But no not on a point and shoot. It was on my trusty old Nikon D70S, with the Nikkor 18-200mm VR mounted on it!

COPYRIGHT BABETTE DE JONG

I kept wandering why I couldn’t get my subject to stand out and after a few clicks with pre sets I realized that the problem is the background.

The most important elements of photography are light, composition, a background and a subject and which catches the eye and will hopefully evoke some type of reaction, whether it be laughter, shock or solace. These elements should all compliment one another and if combined correctly they should make a good picture which is what we aim for in this art.

Very little of my shooting is done in a controlled environment where I can change the lighting or adjust the background. I shoot when I go into the city or to a market and often have to take a picture to capture the moment without preparation and often I can’t plan my shots since it may be a person or dog I’m shooting and they might become self conscious (yes, some dogs do). I was at a small country fair last weekend and walked around the stalls and taking some shots when I saw something that I found interesting. There were a lot of people walking around so I ran through my mental checklist and made sure my camera settings were correct before I walked into the fair. I shot away and when I checked the LCD, I was quite happy with what I was seeing. When I home though, I was as upbeat since most of the pictures looked dull or the the most mediocre.

While I was running through the pictures in Lightroom 2, I noticed in many of the pictures the background was either too dark or too busy – two less than ideal features on any photo. I made some adjustments the pictures and played around with some pre-sets and then I saw just how badly the background was interfering with my subject. It’s strange that after several years of shooting reasonable often, we still make the most basic errors.

So, a quick and valuable tip the next time you’re out shooting – it’s background, background and background! Make sure you know position your subject so that your background compliments it.

In the three pictures, the background detracts from what may have been an interesting shot. In the first picture from the left, your eye is drawn to the reddish-pinkish mushroom thing in the top right of the picture (the eye is drawn to red, that’s a fact). The middle picture is a little better since there is no more red, but now the white stands out way too much. In the last picture I tried to mix the tones but that didn’t help; the white is what you look at, not the Japanese toy dragonfly, which incidentally is beautiful with ornate patterns and the attention to detail only found in Japan.

For those about to go, and those who’ve just returned…you know who you are.

FZB Photography

 Taken a couple of years ago along the banks of the Grand Canal with a D70’s

The limitless possibilities made possible by digital photography do have their drawbacks, most notably time spent editing the pictures when it’s actually a lot more fun being out there and shooting.

I haven’t been able to estimate how long it takes me to complete my workflow from start to finish as there are so many variables to take into account with no two shoots being identical. What may take an hour one day may take several the following day just because you want to try and get those finishing touches which might make the picture stand out on Flickr and believe me, with close to 6000 pictures uploaded every minute your picture does need those finishing touches if you want to make it into the Flickr hall of fame, otherwise known as ‘Explore’.

I thought it would be interesting to see just how much editing time I’m spending versus shooting time and try to work out some type of happy medium. What this would mean is that, if on an average shoot I take in the region of 150 pictures in an hour, and I spend two hours sorting and editing, my workflow would be out of sync. But if I shot the same number of pictures and spent one hour editing, then as far as I’m concerned I’ve managed to establish some sort of balance between shooting and editing, which I think is important, since photographers are supposed to take photos – not sit in front of a computer for hours on end editing.

I got up at 5am on Friday morning and took the train to Tokyo. I planned to shoot a shrine near Ochanomizu, near Central Tokyo, at first light. If you’ve shot in the golden hour just after dawn, you’ll know what I mean when I say the light is truly magic. The afternoon sun can be rewarding too, but as far as I’m concerned, the morning, well say no more! The lack of sleep may ruin the rest of your day though – so be warned.

I started shooting at 6am and gave myself an hour and came away with around 150 photos. As I’ve said before, I use Adobe Lightroom 2 for my workflow and after downloading the pictures to my iMac, I do two or three runs through the batch and clear out the unwanted photos. I’m usually down to about 50 photos at this stage and I then create a catalogue and flag the photos I want to edit. Out of the 50 photos I end up with around ten. Processing involves setting the camera profile, adjusting white balance, cropping, correcting exposure and then some colour correction in the form of vibrance and saturation. In some cases I use a Lightroom 2 pre-set for some weird and often wonderful effects. The entire editing process from start to finish took me around one and a half hours; including editing some pictures in Photoshop Elements. I delete the unedited photos as there is no need to keep them.

As I mentioned, this is the first time I’ve actually timed my workflow and it’s going to be interesting to see how the next shoot turns out. I figured as long as the time spent editing doesn’t exceed the time spent shooting, that could be regarded as a happy medium. If editing takes way longer, then I think you need to make some changes to your workflow.

As always any comments are welcome.

In a post on August 14 I wrote about the need to store vast amounts of digital images when they are rarely, if ever, used or even looked at. Last Friday I took a bold step and ventured into territory few photographers dare to tread and did something we all know we should, but never do; I started deleting.

I use Adobe Lightroom 2 for around 90% of my workflow and what I love about this software, apart from its ease of use and top class performance, is the cataloguing and file organization. The whole process from the time you import the files into Lightroom 2 until the images are processed and ready for export is logical and painless and with a simple key word search or a click on a catalogue you created, you can view all the images you want to keep – and the images you don’t.

I start my workflow after importing the day’s pictures by doing two or three quick runs through images and hitting the ‘x’ key to reject the photos I don’t want. A note here, it helps to be ruthless, if a photo doesn’t catch your beginner or amateur eye, it won’t do the same for anyone else. After deleting around 80% of the images (it used to be a lot less, but I explained my rationale in the August 14 post), I flag the keepers with the ‘p’ key. From here, I create a catalogue first selecting all the flagged images by pressing Command A (on a Mac) Control A on a PC, the Command C). I name the catalogue and make sure I check the little box to include the selected pictures and I’m ready for editing.

When I’ve finished editing the few images I liked, it’s time to delete the rest – remember, there is almost zero chance you’re going to use the unedited images again. If you don’t delete them, they’re just going to take up space on your hard drive and slow down your computer. If you’re hesitant or tired, take a break and continue the next day or when your eyes have had time to rest.

The quickest way to find the unedited and probably unflagged pictures is by clicking on the flag buttons until a pop up display says ‘unflagged photos only’. From here, select all of them and delete. This is a painless process and you’ll be amazed at how much hard drive space will be freed up. I went from 75Gb to around 30Gb or from around 8000 images to 2000.

Am I concerned I may have deleted some images I may want to use again? Not at all, as I said, the images we take the time to edit are the only ones we use. The rest of the images were not edited for a reason. Simple as that. Now Lightroom 2 runs that little bit quicker and I have additional hard drive space should I need it for anything else.

Oops, I remember this post was supposed to be about time management. My apologies, that will be the next post on this blog.

Taken at the Plaza de Armas, Arequipa, Peru

I waited for the birds to take flight, but a little kid assisted by running right at them. I liked the flinching expressions as the pigeons took flight…

FZB Photography

Just a few more pictures of wildlife. I have a new aim though–photographing the wild side of humanity, our urban centers. I’ll still shoot photos of wildlife, can’t get enough of that, but I’m going to work on diversifying my work.

I shot these photos with a Nikon D70s with a 18-70 mm lens. I practically stepped on this bird while I was running to meet a professor so I could make up a quiz. It was just walking along the ground, I think it may have had a hurt wing. I took some photos up close and personal before rushing off again.

Well I finally did it! Last Friday I went out and got myself a new friend. Hopefully he’ll fast become my best friend but for the moment I’m still learning all his odd quirks and what really makes him tick. Who is he you ask? Well he’s not a person but my new camera. Now don’t get me wrong I’m not abandoning my faithful Nikon D70s that helped me get one of the best bird photos that I have ever taken, the Bush Stone Curlew. But the hope is with my new friend, the Nikon D300, that I will be able to get even more great shots and that I’ll then be able to offer them as larger sized prints and even as posters. And even better I start vacation tomorrow for a week, a perfect opportunity to get to know my friend so much better.

I stumbled across video link from another photoblog or should I say, another template containing links to other sites – I had an earlier rant about these wannabe search engine / lazy people blogs. Anyway, Taryn Simon really has something interesting to say and it really hit home that what we see in a photograph is not reality, but merely some person’s interpretation of reality.

My next post is going to be on time management in the workflow. So until then, keep shooting.