Here’s what looks like another fun event put on by my friends at Gangpank,in Chandler, AZ. (If you don’t know about Gangplank and their importance to the tech/creative community in Arizona – please read this article.)

The Chandler Photo Throwdown is a photo competition where Downtown Chandler has been divided into 20 small areas. 20 photographers (professionals and amateurs) will shoot photos of designated areas and post to Flickr – tagged with Chandler Throwdown. (I believe the initial concept for the Chandler Photo Throwdown came from James Archer of FORTY Agency – I didn’t want to not mention that.)

One winning photo will be selected from each area. Plus 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place awards will be given to the best photos overall at the conclusion of the contest on September 25th.

I was honored to be selected as one of the 20 photographers whose work will be juried for this photo competition.

The above photo is an example of my submission for Grid 19. This photo was taken during Desert Bloom Phoenix Two. (Here’s a cool video of some time lapse photography I did during the same session.) With my camera on a tripod across the street, I set the camera at f11 with a 4 second exposure. I wanted to capture the essence of what was happening inside plus the stream of cars traveling down Arizona Avenue. It was almost as if the cars were passing by not even knowing about what was happening inside or what happens at Gangplank.

I will continue to post updates here as I make progress with my Chandler Photo Throwdown photos.

What do you think about photo competitions? Leave a comment and share your experience. Thanks.

I do not do a lot of studio photography, I’m not sure why. It’s a part of  GRT2 Studios‘s business mix but we seem to get pulled in on live evenst or location photography/video projects.

Saturday night at Gangplank, I booked a session to shot the fellas from ASH (Arizona Stronghold) Music. Ten guys – individual photos and group shots.

I tested everything. Made sure the lights were positioned approximately where they needed to be. White balance set. Flash Set. The shoot was all systems go from the photographer’s point of view. (Remember that sentence.)

I photographed the first three guys as a group and then let them get comfortable and “mug” for some individual photos. Repeat two or three times and everyone is photographed including many group shots. (I got the shots I need to deliver a great product to the client.) I sent for the next group of guys when I knew I had the photos needed.

As a photographer, I know when I capture an image that works. I see the shot on my camera’s LED display or on  a monitor when I shoot tethered and know when I have the photo.

I get a call the next day saying that some of the guys felt rushed through the shoot and didn’t feel like they got their money’s worth. I listen to the client, I understand his point of view, I recognize where I went wrong and I agree to re-shoot anything if they are not happy with the photographs delivered – all I want is a happy client.

This is where I went wrong. Sometimes people want to get the photo shoot over with and just want great usable photos delivered. Other times, clients want the experience of getting their photo taken. I FAILED to recognize who I was working with and that’s entirely my fault.

I knew however incredible the images were I deliver the client still wouldn’t be happy. In their mind I cheated them of the experience. They were paying me for the experience as well as the delivered photos.

This week I’ll schedule time and re-shoot any one who is unhappy because I want everyone I work with to have a great photo experience from GRT2 Studios.

If you take anything away from this post take this with you: Recognize who you are working with. Are they there solely for the images or are they there for photographs and the experience. We are the professionals and it’s our responsibility to meet the client’s needs and expectations whatever it may be.

Any other photographers ever experience this? Leave a comment and let me know how you handled it or what  you think of this situation.

In the spirit of the 4th of July, here are some tips to help you get some great fireworks photos.

1. Think SLOW. Slow the shutter speed to get the trail effect of the fireworks
2. Use a Tri-Pod or anything to stabilize your camera. This is probably the most important tip.
3. Anticipate the apex of the explosion.
4. Use the lowest ISO setting possible
5. Use the Live View feature of your camera if you have one
6. Enjoy, Have Fun and be Patient. (More often than not great photography are an exercise in patience.)

Have a happy and safe 4th of July. Here’s a link to another article How To Get Fireworks Photos from Digital Photography School. ~ Enjoy

Many people have asked what’s going on with me professionally, so here is the announcement. On Monday, June 1, 2010 I launched my own company – GRT2 Studios, LLC.

GRT2 Studios is a Digital Marketing Agency that specializes in creating relevant digital content that gets brands noticed. We actually do more than that, we help brands rise above the noise and clutter of the digital world.

As part of our business model we offer Photography / Video Services. Commercial product photography, event photography, music photography and studio photography along with various video applications. Not everything is suited for my photography or video style, so I am partnering and collaborating with local photographers and videographers who specialize in different subject matters.

We are a conduit of creativity, collaboration and connection by being Digital Content Agents.

GRT2Studios.com is still in its infancy and will be up 100% by next week. In the interim, please email me any questions at grt2@grt2studios.com or leave them in the comments section. This blog is not going away and will continue to be a hub of photography information and observation. Thanks everyone for the support.

Confidence is the mark of the true professional. You’ve taken the time to study, appreciate and execute your vision through photography. When you are in the field taking photographs there is no doubt you will walk away with your shot.

I also find that the confident photographer is pretty transparent about his work. They hide no secrets. There is no reason to hold back information in conversation. He is interested in helping others elevate their craft.

The confident photographer allows his images to speak for themselves. The photographs left behind are a part of the photographer’s legacy – but so is how we treat others.

There’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance or ego – what side of the line are you on?

(A few months back I wrote an article about HDR photography and how I wasn’t a fan. (Click here for post) In all fairness to the readers of this blog and photographers who enjoy HDR I invited Mike Olbinski to write a guest post. Mike is a photographer from Phoenix who excels at this style and is extremely passionate about his work. More of Mike’s work can be seen at www.mikeolbinski.com.)

Not too long ago I stumbled across Greg Taylor’s blog mainly because I recognized him as a fellow photog living in Phoenix and I wanted to make a connection. I enjoy his stuff, his passion for concert photography and thus I added his blog to Google Reader to keep up with his work.

One day, a day that will live in infamy (okay, maybe not, but I remember being a little upset that morning), Greg wrote a stern entry about his Anti-HDR movement and why he felt it wasn’t really photography. He felt it was more computer generated images than anything else.

Somehow, magically, almost unbelievably, we’ve come full circle and Greg asked me to convey to his readers why I enjoy HDR, what draws me to it and perhaps why he shouldn’t necessarily reject it so quickly.

What is HDR anyways?

I hesitate to get into the major details of the way you create an HDR photo, mainly because I don’t want to babble on so much that you lose interest before I actually come to my main points, but a brief overview is necessary:

HDR, or HDRI stands for high dynamic range image. Essentially it’s a combination of multiple exposures of the same scene blended together using software to create an image that has much more dynamic range than your camera can capture in one exposure.

When you look at a scene with the naked eye, you see way more F-Stops, or light range, than your camera can. So sometimes the photo you end up processing just doesn’t convey the shadows, the textures or the brilliance of what you actually saw.

Enter HDR. Google it to find out more of the gritty details.

The Sloppy, the Bad and the Ugly.

Greg’s argument against HDR was that it doesn’t look anything like the scene in real life. It looks fake, fantasy-like or computer generated. Sadly, he’s right on that level when it comes to a great deal of the HDR photos out there.

Over/under-saturated,glowing halos, over-colorized, fake, ugly, nasty looking…I see some HDR photos out there and just cringe. Granted, I was probably in that same place about 8 months ago, but I’ve learned, grown, discovered new techniques and my own style for processing.

It’s hard to defend Greg’s point when yes, in fact, there are so many bad photos out there. They end up looking like any bad photograph: No planning, no composition, poor execution and bad processing.

But isn’t that all of photography really? You have your bad and your good in just about anything in life.

The photo in the example to the right actually has some decent framing and composition, but the HDR is so awful, you may want to vomit right where you’re sitting.

The Good

I follow the work of a great many fantastic HDR photographers. All of them could shoot non-HDR and create beautiful images.

That’s the real key.

When I take photographs, whether or not I intend it for HDR, composition is my first priority. In fact, I make sure to mix up the kind of photography I produce because I really don’t want to get stuck with thinking HDR is the only way to create a shocking image, a mood, a feeling or a scene that speaks to people. Once you think that way, you’ve limited yourself too much.

On a recent trip to Grand Falls in northern Arizona, I captured two of my favorite photographs to-date, one was HDR, one was black and white. The HDR is below, if you wish to see the B&W, click here.

(click on the above photo for the larger, more detailed version…I think the color is a little better in the large version)

I’m using the above image as an example of why I love HDR photography so much. First off, I used a 3-stop ND filter, added a CPL to bring out the clouds as much as I could and shot 5 different exposures at varying lengths.

The clouds were amazing that day, but look at the shadows creeping up in the foreground and right edges of the image. A fairly dark area normally. The sun was setting (which was why I was there, I waited around 90 minutes for this shot) and I was hoping to get some great lighting up in the clouds and some amazing colors against the waterfall.

The shadows and bright areas pose a problem for a normal exposure. When I remember looking at this scene with my naked eye, the clouds had darker shadows underneath them, the rocks and water around me had textures, but the camera couldn’t see it all.

Here’s a sample one-second exposure with a little enhancement just with the RAW editor.

You can clearly see the rocks in the foreground lacking details and the clouds in the sky are washed out almost too white. That’s not how I remembered seeing it with my own two eyes.

Now some man prefer it straight out of the box. I get that, I applaud that, I even love to do that. But I also like to create an image that captures a lot of what I remember.

Certainly the HDR version has some details/shadows in the clouds and rocks that are going to be a little MORE dynamic than perhaps reality, but in essence the photo is a good representation of what I saw.

Is it Photography? Is it Art?

The short, Mike-answer is of course yes. Duh.

What is art anyways but a conveying of an image, an object or thing to a viewer that was created by a photographer, painter, sculpture, etc.

Let’s say five people were sent to the location in the photo above, at the exact same spot and time, and were asked to create art from it. You might get a painting, a photograph, something carved from wood, who knows. It’s all about how the artist wants to interpret what he saw and how he felt about it.

Whenever I hear people attack HDR photography, they always bring up the name Ansel Adams like he was a pure shooter who would roll over in his grave at the sight of a photo like mine above.

On the contrary, from what I’ve read in a few articles from people that seemed to know him, he did whatever he could to change his photos in the dark room to get them to look just right. They go as far to say he’d LOVE the idea of Photoshop because he’d have endless possibilities of what he could convey.

Photoshop is the new darkroom. Sure, it makes things easier, but it’s not really that much different from what photos used to do with film processing back in the day.

The bottom line is that you still have to compose the shot.†The one unique strength of HDR is it’s ability to bring out the beauty in what may be a normally dull or ordinary scene. That’s a definite benefit of HDR.

My own personal philosophy when it comes to HDR is to attempt to make it as “real” looking as I can. It’s very easy in Photomatix to go so nuts with the sliders that you lose the original composition to ugly colors and tone mapping. †That’s not my style. Sadly a lot of people don’t know much better.

And HDR sometimes is too much. There are other ways to bring out shadows and clouds, like exposure blending, a simple masking of two exposures together, polarizers, graduated ND filters, etc.

The skill comes into knowing when to use it, when it will be great, and when to hold back and save it for later.

Parting Examples

I’ll end this with two more examples of what it can do. This first shot below was one of my earlier HDRs, but it’s a photograph that has been well-received by people who follow my work. I shot the brackets around noon, as you can probably tell from the lack of shadows. Bad time for lighting.

I had a CPL on the lens, but even then…a normal photograph would have had a tough time pulling in all the textures of the clouds and contrails, and at the same time show the details of the train tracks. But with HDR, I was able to capture a fairly dynamic scene, with all kinds of lines from the train tracks, to the power lines to the clouds, cris-crossing, disappearing into the horizon, whatever.

This next one really requires a click to see it bigger to get an idea of the detail in the clouds and foreground. It’s just another example of what HDR can do for a sunset scene where the foreground is normally going to be too dark to see any textures and details.

The Last Word

Hopefully this article accomplished what I set out to do and that was to present HDR as simply another style in the art of photography. There are a bazillion different methods to capture a scene with your camera…be it digital or film, dark room or Lightroom, filters, tilt-shift lenses, black and white, HDR or zero processing whatsoever.

The bottom line is that we are all artists trying to convey something through our photographs. Choose your style, choose your weapon and be proud of it!

Follow Mike on Twitter: @mikeoblinski

(Mike thanks for taking the time to write this article and articulating your passion. One day we may need to sit down and discuss over a pint. Now that both sides have been presented – it’s your turn. Leave a comment and let both of us know where you weigh in on HDR Photography.)

Photography is my passion. I can talk about photography, shoot photos and learn about other photographers all day long. I like capturing a moment in time and upon viewing the photo being brought back that moment as it was.

HDR Photography (High Dynamic Range) is laying a series of exposures over one another to produce one computer rendering of the images. (Full Wikipedia definition here)

Here is a blog post that cites “85 Examples of Beautiful HDR Photography” – I think a better title should be “85 Examples of Beautiful Computer Renderings”. HDR images, to me –  are something you would see in a science fiction or fantasy comic book.

I am drawn to photography because of the emotional connection I feel when I see a great photograph – and that connection is magnified if it is a photograph I’ve taken. To me, I have no emotional connection whatsoever to HDR imagery. The HDR rendering produced does not look anything like the object photographed – which is one of my complaints with HDR.

It seems that the HDR photo theory is If a little post processing is good, A lot will be better.

So my plea to photographers – Please Stop Making HDR Images that look like science fiction. Please for the sake of the art and the people who came before us and before HDR and digital processing and digital cameras and…

Weigh in on this – Am I the only one who hates this stuff? Together we can stop the madness.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Webisode THREE of my FOCUS series. This webisode highlights a photo of Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers on New Year’s Eve 2009 at The Celebrity Theater in Phoenix, AZ

If you have a photo that you would like featured on FOCUS please contact me a via Email

Previous webisodes:

Focus #1: Kristina at Snake river Overlook
Focus #2:  Self Portrait at Papago Park

To view my complete photography portfolio please visit www.grtaylor2photo.com

I think photographers are gear heads by nature. What’s the newest most tech piece of photo equipment I can get my hands on that will make me better a better photographer? What can I purchase to make that great photograph? How can I get an edge?

Rather than discussing the latest, greatest equipment the market has to offer - I want to take this conversation in another direction. I want to share the equipment that I use and debunk a couple of myths…

Camera Body: Canon 1000D
Primary Lenses: Canon 50mm 1.8 / Sigma 24-70mm 2.8 / Sigma 19-35 4.0 /Quantaray 28-200 5.6 / Quantaray 100-300 5.6
Flash: Canon Speedlite 430 EXII

Video: Flipcam Ultra – HD

Nothing fancy, nothing too expensive – right? Still great photographs…

Myth #1: I need expensive photography equipment to take great photos.
WRONG: Great Photographs are MADE by practice and experience NOT by the gear you own.

Of course there are many advantages of high end equipment. I could compile a long list here and bore everyone to death with it. It’s my belief that the photographer makes the photograph. Hours of practice, research, learning and taking photos is what makes the artist not the hardware. Do you know what kind of paintbrushes Michelangelo used to paint the Sistine Chapel?

Behind the scenes:

Computer: MacBook
Digital Darkroom: Aperture 2 / Photoshop
Website: Powered by PhotoShelter
Blog: WordPress Hosted by Pagely

Social Media:

Twitter
Facebook
Flickr
LinkedIn
YouTube

If you have read this blog before you know I believe in transparency as an artist. I will let you know exactly what I do to capture a particular photograph if asked. I view this equipment list as an extension of that transparency.

Myth #2: Photography is really expensive to start.

WRONG: The principles of photography (lighting and composition) can be learned with just a point and shoot camera. As you enjoy the art and advance you will want to invest in a DSLR Camera. If you do some research and ask questions you’ll be able to control the costs and find something in your budget.

I want people to be better photographers, I want people to push the envelope and make great art – I want to help them in their pursuit. All I ask in return is that you help another photographer out along their journey. Simple.

Question: How are you helping or encouraging other photographers or artists? Think about it and share in a comment.

There are moments when I am shooting photos that I lose track of  my surroundings. Let me clarify, sometimes I am so engaged with my photo subject that I don’t realize who or what is around me at that moment. A couple of weeks ago my brother Kevin came to town. Just like every other visitor Kev came to Arizona with a list of things that he wanted to do and see but I didn’t expect landscape photo shoots to be one of them.

Kevin and I took to the road and headed to the Four Peaks Mountains and a couple days later Kevin, Kristina and myself went to Sedona. Two great locations in Arizona for landscape photography.

After our photo trips back at the house in Tempe we sat down to compare images. Kevin surprised me with a couple of magnificent photos of me taking what I consider key landscape photographs for my portfolio. How cool is that! Now I have photographs of me taking some of my favorite photos.

Check out more of Kevin’s photos on his Flickr page by clicking here – Thanks Kevin it was great having you visit and it was a lot of fun shooting photos with you.