The local name is dry stone walls. 'Dry' because they're made entirely without cement or any other 'binding' material to bind the stones together. Some of the walls are 300 years old...
I license more pix of 'everyday life' than landscapes...
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Photo of the day: January 2013
- Thread starter avro707
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The local name is dry stone walls. 'Dry' because they're made entirely without cement or any other 'binding' material to bind the stones together. Some of the walls are 300 years old...
I license more pix of 'everyday life' than landscapes...
It is a 5x7, and it is really common in the US. 5x7 and 8x10 are some of the most popular picture sizes, or at least they are for me. 3x2/4x6 is popular for smaller sizes (like sticking on the fridge or wallet carrying). 1x1 is quite uncommon. Most of the easy access photo printing places, like Wal-Mart or Target, don't have 1x1 sizes for printing. I have to send off to a place like mpix.com to print a square image.
The glasses bit was not intentional. My glasses have a tendency to slide down on my nose a bit, so that's where they tend to naturally fit. Since I wasn't the one holding the camera, I didn't know what I looked like until after it was done. I didn't want to keep doing it over and over too many times since the person holding the camera was not a photographer, but just a friend I instructed on how to hold the camera for that specific shot.
I appreciate the feedback. People photography, and learning to light it, is what I want to spend time learning. I was trying to do some of it while at Disney World, but I was fairly limited without a softbox or some other kind of diffuser since it would have been too cumbersome to carry around the park all day. So I attempted to use whatever I could find, like a wall or a white semi-transparent jacket, to diffuse the light.
Calgary's old City Hall building. Went out with a friend to try my new Canon 5D Mark III. Had a blast with this camera and its amazing autofocusing system.
I happened to glance up through the trees and saw the clock. It struck me as being kind of eerie so I snapped the shot.
The color version came out really well, but since its an old building and has a dark and eerie feel to it, I converted it to black and white using Silver EFEX Pro. I also added a huge amount of grain, despite this being shot at 25,600 ISO (which IMO is completely usable on this camera for small print!).
Settings:
ISO 25,600.
Focal Length: 60mm
f/6.3
Shutter: 1/40
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A Clockwork Sepia by HadrianRobinson, on Flickr
I happened to glance up through the trees and saw the clock. It struck me as being kind of eerie so I snapped the shot.
The color version came out really well, but since its an old building and has a dark and eerie feel to it, I converted it to black and white using Silver EFEX Pro. I also added a huge amount of grain, despite this being shot at 25,600 ISO (which IMO is completely usable on this camera for small print!).
Settings:
ISO 25,600.
Focal Length: 60mm
f/6.3
Shutter: 1/40
A Clockwork Sepia by HadrianRobinson, on Flickr
Thanks! It was probably my favourite shot in terms of lighting and almost my favourite in terms of exposure but all in all one of the best. Thanks again for the feedback.
I license more pix of 'everyday life' than landscapes...
![garage2z.jpg]()
I realise being British that it is awfully rude to ask about money but do you make much from licensing pics? Do you know who tends to use them and for what purpose?
I've never played around with 5x7 before but I will have to give it a go now! Does it not feel a bit strange knowing that you will crop into the photo for ever shot (if that makes sense) i.e. I don't know of many cameras with a native 5x7 sensor?
I think the most fun thing about lighting people is that you can just grab a speedlight and find some interesting walls, areas, reflective surfaces and really move your subject into the light rather than having to create it all and wait for the perfect moment. I think for just a speedlight and limited time you did a great job!
Catching these guys eating out of flowers isn't easy at all. Looks really sharp as well. Only thing I would do is crop it a bit more to get rid of the purple flower on the right. My eye wanders over to it.
First time shooting with a blind. This is only the useable shot in the bunch after 7 hours of shooting. Hope to do it again soon.
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The secret to good wildlife photography is to capture the personality of the subject either through it's expression or it actions. Both of these shots have some real life to them.
Here's the same fountain from a different angle. There were several other photographers next to me set up for this shot as well.
![Disney%20Epcot%202012-249-XL.jpg]()
Rockin' colors, dudes!
Nice photos this month.
Dale
That's very kind of you to say, Puckman.I have a friend who teases me mercilessly for shooting so many scenes with churches in them, so I wondered if you might be picking up on that too. My love affair with well-sited steeples shows no signs of waning, so I hope I'm not wearing out anyone's eyeballs with them!
I have. But it's not just the old churches, specifically that make your photos so appealing to the eye, IMO, it's the lighting and mood you manage to capture.
In addition, I have to add that living here in the US (CA to be exact), we really do not get much of that European old-continent charm that you manage to depict so well. If you're familiar with this part of the country, it severely lacks the colorful vegetation, rolling landscapes and centuries old buildings that you seem to incorporate in most of your shots. And I'm not really phrasing that right. It's not any one of those elements per se, but the sum total that comes across as somewhat magical to me.
Your photos bring something from another continent over, and that's the appeal. (Ditto for Doylem's photos, although in a completely different way).
I get those guys in my backyard all the time and have tried (and failed) to capture a shot I'm pleased with so far. If I may ask, how did you take that? Beyond a fast shutter speed, I imagine. How far away are you standing? What zoom length you using? Is it cropped at all?
Charming pic; makes me smile to look at it. Love the directness and eye contact...
No problem. I wish I could say I make a good living from stock photography, but I don't. The internet first created a worldwide market: it was great to come home after a day's photography (or a night's sleep) to find my pix had sold while I was away. But the ease of transmission overloaded the system, and stock photography has become very overcrowded. The result: prices for licenses have been falling, and only an optimist would suggest that things are going to improve anytime soon. So I'm licensing pix regularly, but the price-per-pic is going down. At least I don't have to market my pix (I'm not a good salesman), or invoice, or chase up payments, etc. I just shoot the pix, then upload and keyword them.
I seldom know where the pix end up, and it's always a surprise to find which pix sell regularly... and which don't. Because of the kind of pix I take, maybe 70% of sales are UK-based, with the other 30% overseas. Fees depend on useage, and can range from 'heartwarming' to 'derisory'. All in all, this is not a good time to be in stock photography...
I don't crop for every shot. I do use other crops, too, but most often for portraits I print they're either 8x10 or 5x7 since those are the easiest, most common, and cheapest to print. In the case of the shot with my wife and I, I also cropped it to 5x7 to remove some of the background on the right. That was brighter because the flash was coming from that direction, so I wanted that removed because it would be too distracting.
Here's one of the test shots I made while figuring out the lighting and framing.
Quebec City, Canada
![k544082.jpg]()
Charming little city square. I like how we have it all to ourselves in this shot.
Am I familiar with CA? Heh...I am a Californian! Born there, partly raised there, and currently present in the state.
Anyway, thank you for the very nice comments about my photos. It's that kind of encouragement that makes me want to dust myself off from recent disappointments (unfortunate weather) and get out there shooting again.
I'll go one further than Doylem did and mention numbers. I haven't been selling stock for very long (only since 2009), so I never got to enjoy the heyday of the business. Stock income is usually reckoned in RPI (royalties per image per year), and mine works out to about $4-5. The math is simple: all photos in the portfolio divided by total annual income (after agencies take their cut). So you need to have a massive portfolio at that rate to make a living. It helps if you're not investing a lot into production costs, but low-investment photos tend to have more competition. The photos I license are not the landscapes that I post here or on my website. They're mostly 'editorial' photos I took while doing assignment work over a three-year period (featuring subjects of interest to Classical archaeologists). Commercial images fetch much better prices on average (some being reported in the tens of thousands of dollars per license); people selling those sorts of images can make double the RPI (or better) that I'm getting, but production costs are typically quite high for them. As for where the photos get published, I have that information for maybe a third of the licenses, and most of those I know about because they were direct sales. Mine mostly end up in textbooks, magazines, and travel guides, but I did have one used in the opening sequence of a TV show, which was kind of fun. Anyway, if you're thinking about doing it, just keep in mind that it's best if you specialize in some niche subject or else if you have a massive output of a huge cross-section of subjects. Either way, it's a lot of effort for meager rewards, but the prospect of a big windfall keeps a lot of us chasing the carrot.
Good to hear that you enjoyed yourself in the desert Phrasikleia. The areas I visited had an incredible beauty that I found very appealing. For me, the morning light was good but I was a bit foggy. Mid to late afternoon was great.
Mine for today...the fountain at the Bellagio in action.
My dad. I have another of my niece for tomorrow.
![8384913401_bc7c62ace7_b.jpg]()
Also, thanks Doylem. She really loves taking pictures. Her older sister? Not so much. Haha.
Also, thanks Doylem. She really loves taking pictures. Her older sister? Not so much. Haha.
Set of Statues in Calgary. Grain added and changed to B&W using Silver EFEX Pro.
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Cheers! by HadrianRobinson, on Flickr
Cheers! by HadrianRobinson, on Flickr
There's been a few selfies posted here over the last month or so, here's mine. It's interesting how you have a picture of someone in your mind from reading their posts here and in reality they are nothing like you imagined! acearchie, Keleko, Phrasikleia, VirtualRain, all completely different to what I had conjured in my minds eye.
I had to do this as an exercise for a photography group, it was the most daunting picture I've taken thus far! Just using a simple 5500K lamp off to one side and slightly in front. I played with a remote flash for it using a small soft box, but this came out better.
![_MG_7746.jpg]( "_MG_7746.jpg")
I had to do this as an exercise for a photography group, it was the most daunting picture I've taken thus far! Just using a simple 5500K lamp off to one side and slightly in front. I played with a remote flash for it using a small soft box, but this came out better.
A little something I took on the way to college. Unfortunately the birds proved to be faster than a 1/50th second shutter.
![8392323840_cf6297ba95_b.jpg]()
Hopefully we look better in reality than what was conjured by your imagination.
Epcot China
