Save Silvershotz if You Must and Use Pinterest to Find Yourself

Photo by Patrick Horsefield

I used to be a subscriber to the paper copy of Silvershotz magazine at home but let my subscription go last winter in one of my more budget conscious moments.  I've actually let a lot of my paper and electronic magazine subscriptions go, but truth be told I've added some as well.  Silvershotz was one of my favourite inspirational photo art publications and I still keep all my back issues for occasional browsing.  The demise of a lot of bookstores though has really hurt their bottom line and it looks like the publication is on the ropes.  While they transition to the virtual world of iPad publication they are looking for crowd sourcing investors.  So if you are one of the many that would like to save this publication follow this link to contribute.  Myself, I'm just not sure.  I didn't subscribe to the virtual copy because for me, art publications are so much better on real paper.

I'm sure you've all heard of Pinterest by now and many of you have been using it.  For me, I have a few different Boards for different reasons (a Wedding Board for inspiring my Bride's, a Food Board because I'm a foodie and a Random Board because......well, I'm random) but one Board I created for a particular curious purpose.  I was trying to find myself.  Photographically that is.  I've always felt that over time we all find our photographic identity or personality.  We naturally start to shoot what we love and what inspires us.  I thought Pinterest presented a nice opportunity for me to see in one place just what I really loved about photographs.

Photo by Dave Nunez-Delgado

What I did was create a Photographs Board where I kept images pinned that I liked.  I didn't give too much thought to it, but on my regular internet travels if I found an image I loved I pinned it to that Board.  Sometimes I even went searching for images to add.  The important thing was that I never went back to my Board to revisit my pins.  Why?  Well I didn't want to skew my pins in any direction.  What I wanted to do was visit the Board several months later and look at what I've pinned to see common themes.  I wanted to see if I could see myself in that Board.  And most importantly I wanted to see if I was photographing today, what I actually loved.

And so over the past week I've been visiting that Board and looking at my results.  There are two different types of photos, both landscape and people photos.  The people photos don't surprise me, but the landscape did.  I knew I had some, but it turns out I had several.  Mostly in colour too, which also surprised me.  I thought my people photos would be largely black and white and there were a lot of them, but it was actually a pretty even mix.

Canon 5D Mark iii with 85mm f1.8 lens, really I have no idea why I don't use this lens more, it's awesome.  Photo by Adam Collishaw

I like heavy contrast, but occasionally very low contrast.  I like subdued colours or black and white, but it does not appear I enjoy realistic colours.  I like unusual composition and cropping and I don't always need eyes in my portraits.  I can see an influence of shapes, especially in my people photos.

I was surprised by the content in some way because I thought it would have content that would be different from what I knew, but it really just reaffirmed my taste and inspirations.  The real trick is now to be firmly aware of those photographic loves and to stick true to them for my work.

I hope you can do this little exercise yourself.  It really is very cool.

Thanks again for visiting the blog.

Please Hold, Your Call is Important to Us

Spencer Brawn made this animated gif image where I'm leaping across a pond after setting up a Bride dress on a shoot for him about a year ago.  I thought it was hilarious, but I'm not sure it will animate on this web page, but here is hoping.  It kind of suits this post as I'm busy right now neck deep in weddings which is my way of explaining my absence from the blog.  Trust me, I have several posts I'm dying to write, but the Brides come first.

In the meantime I'm enjoying my new Canon 5D Mark iii for wedding work, which moves my Mark ii to a backup roll.  My Mark ii died and had to be repaired at Canon through CPS and that prompted a quick decision to buy a Mark iii.  A close look at the Mark iii is coming, I promise.

I'm also still very much enjoying my OM-D E-M5, which is an awesome little camera though I'm having trouble getting accessories for it still.  A blog post on that little gem of a camera will appear one day soon as well.  For now I'll just let the shine fade a bit as everyone else is still reviewing the camera.

And finally, on a bit of whim I bought an old used Olympus E1.  Yup a 10 year old 5 megapixel DLSR.  Why not right?  I've always wondered what all the fuss was.  And it's pretty cool.  Quirky, old school, but cool.  And I got a great deal on it.

Olympus E1 and 35-100 f2 lens at ISO 100 f3.5 and 1/320 of a second

I'm not sure I'll write a proper review of the E1 as it's so long forgotten in most of your memories, but I do have some first impressions which I thought might be fun as a look back for some of you since I'm looking at this camera for the first time 10 years after it appeared on the market.

First up, it's smaller than the E3 or E5 and I like that.  Even with the grip on it feels compact.  I'm not sure why Olympus sized up the later versions of the camera. They had a size advantage which they kind of squandered.  I'd have even liked it a touch smaller with possibly that battery grip built in.  The camera feels amazing in your hands and the sparse buttons and dials are a bit of a relief over today's busy cameras.  Simplicity in a tool.  You have to love that.

Olympus E1 and 35-100 f2 lens at ISO 100 f4 1/320 of a second

The tiny little LCD on the back is pretty useless, probably the worst I've used.  I basically used it to see if I had the framing I wanted after a shot and took a peek at histograms.  Forget checking focus on it.  You'll never decipher it.  It's really one above using a film camera for seeing your image later,  I can't emphasize enough how bad these early LCD screens were.  The viewfinder itself though is fantastic, much like I enjoy the ones in the E3 and E5.  Olympus always did their viewfinders in their top of the line DSLR's correctly.  Big and bright and awesome.

Olympus E1 with 35-100 f2 lens at ISO 400 f4 1/320 of a second

The 5 megapixels might seem sort of alarming for some of you.  And they should I guess, but I have one of the photos in this set as my desktop on my iMac right now and it looks fantastic.  Truth be told, 5 megapixels is more than enough for most of what we shoot isn't it?  As a fun camera it certainly is.  I was also shocked how much I enjoyed ISO 800 on this camera.  It's grainy, but certainly useable with a nice film like grain that doesn't hurt the image in my opinion.  The E3 really didn't improve on it much. I've always liked the E3 up to ISO 1250.  The E5 I'm happy with up to ISO 3200 if exposed properly.  But I'm not a grain hater so your mileage may vary.  As with all four thirds cameras, you really want to hit your exposures as the dynamic range of the image suffers if you don't and have to push the file in post production.

Olympus E1 with 35-100 f2 lens at ISO 800 f2 1/125 of a second

Now on the night I shot the photos in this post I was out with some friends and their Nikon D800E cameras.  Talk about an enormous shift in capability.  But I didn't at all feel out of the game.  The E1 did just fine thank-you in it's own quirky way.  In fact I had a blast using it.  I wasn't being paid, I was goofing around with some friends, so enjoyment was the key.  The biggest challenge was focus.  The E1 doesn't exactly overflow with focus points and as the light dropped focus was hard to achieve.  But I managed.

The metering system worked well to a point but I eventually reverted to manual exposure to get what I wanted as it tended of overexpose the sunset scene in any automatic mode.  I also started shooting in jpg but switched to RAW as I brought the ISO up expecting to have to do heavy noise reduction.  Fact is, the colours in the jpg were so nice I used a lot of them over the RAW's and I didn't noise reduce a single file.  It was kind of nice to manipulate such small files on my computer too.  It almost seemed unfair as my iMac laughed at them pushing them around with ease compared to the 21+ megapixel files of my Canon 5D Mark ii and Mark iii.

Over the years I've read from photographers how much the loved their E1's and wished Olympus brought out a current version of it.  Frankly I thought they were out of their minds, I love my E3 and the E5 is pretty nice too, but now I can see what they mean.  The dials are nice (much less button intensive), the grip is heavenly, the simplicity of the camera is a joy and all the little touches and build are just really great.  Give it a bigger screen, dual card slots and better focusing and it would be a real treat of a camera.  OK, maybe a couple more megapixels.  I'm only going to say one bad thing about the design and that is the off-set mounting of the lens on the left of the camera, or far right if you're looking at the front.  With a  big lens like the Olympus 35-100 f2 it makes it feel a little lopsided.  Especially if you don't have a grip on it.  But really that's me digging for a minor gripe.  I'll get used to it, and I'm glad I have the camera to play with.  As Jerry Ghionis would say......should be apples.

Anyway, that's it for me.  Back to editing.  We had a great wedding today and I'm backing it up as I type this.  I love this season.  I love being busy with my work, enjoying the craft and living life with my hair on fire.  I hope your summer is going well too.

Olympus OM-D Diorama Video

I just returned home from a night in Vancouver where I had the pleasure of going to Joe McNally's "One Light Two Light" seminar at the conference centre.  It was really fun and enjoyable and Joe was just like you see him in the virtual world in person.  He was energetic, quirky and a treat to watch.  I'm pretty sure he won't forget us Vancouver Island photographers as we made a point of having our laughs while we were there.

That's me peeking over Joe's shoulder as he sat beside me.  Photo courtesy of Rachel Kirk

If you get a chance to go to this seminar on the other dates during the tour, it's well worth the $99 ($79 for NAPP members) admission.  Despite not really seeing too much I didn't already know, I had a great time and did pick up two specific lighting tips that were totally new to me.  One of those will be coming into my regular rotation of studio lighting setups, I really loved it a lot.

While there the night before the seminar I took advantage of some "Me Time" and had a walk around downtown Vancouver with my Olympus OM-D E-M5 and my old kit lens that came with my E-PL1.  I just love walking around Vancouver, it's such a pretty city and feels alive and urban at the same time as relaxed and west coast.  Just a perfect balance for me.

OM-D with 14-42 kit lens and in camera grainy black and white filter of Vancouver Skyline

Back at my hotel that night I popped on the baseball game and relaxed while I propped my OM-D up against my 11th floor window pointed down at the street doing a diorama video.  If you've never seen one of these, they are really mesmerizing.  Kind of like watching a toy model city come to life.  They have that tilt shift look and the whole video gets condensed into fast forward so you can't take your eyes off all these little toy people and cars jetting around.  The video quality on the OM-D is really great too, by far my favourite camera to date for video.


Thanks again for dropping by the blog!  If you are so inclined, and are feeling generous, please click through on one of my B&H links.  I don't think many do, but it makes me feel important.  The music is by Kevin MacLeod.