Nobody knows what’s inside artist’s mind, so in order to express themselves and to share their visions with the world artists write music, paint, sculpt and use other means of expression. Mine is photography. Sometimes I have these crazy pictures in my mind, and I want to somehow realize them. Since I can’t draw very well, I am trying to do that by other means, currently it is compositing in Photoshop.

Recently an idea popped into my mind – a crazy magician who wanted to help all the thirsty people in the desert and he wanted to use his magic to create a lake in the desert, but something didn’t work right and he created a huge sink… so he sits on one of the knobs and feels blue

Here’s what came out of this idea:

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It is a composite of five photos – the background, which is the desert, the magician, the sink, the moon (yes! it is the moon ), and the tumbleweeds. I did the composite in black and white because it is easier to blend all the parts together.

And what crazy ideas do you have ?

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Lately I haven’t made much noteworthy photographs… either that or my understanding of what “good photograph” is has changed. Either way I don’t like almost anything that comes out of my camera. And what’s more important, I don’t know how to improve.

I guess I’m just searching now for something… another point of view on the world maybe. This is really confusing for me – to search for something not knowing what it is.

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Nevertheless I keep on shooting and analyzing my work, most of which you will never see here on my blog because I don’t think it is worthy. The photos I included in this post are nice, I like them, but I also think that they are nothing special, just another bunch of seascapes among thousands.

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One of the things that I changed about my photography is that I take much less pictures, and before taking one I stop and think about the composition, about what I want to say with this photograph, what emotions I want my photo to express. And later, when viewing the photo on my computer I try to understand whether I achieved what I wanted or not. Most of the times I don’t.

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Long exposures of the sea and sunsets (just like the one below) simply don’t cut it for me anymore.

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If you have or had similar issues, and have any suggestions, I would be more than happy to hear them.

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December’s wallpaper is here for you to download!

For resolution 2560×1707 (wide screens) right-click here and choose “Save As” option.

For resolution 2560×1440 right-click here and choose “Save As” option.

Cheers!

Greg.

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Recently Craft&Vision published a free e-book titled “11 Ways to Improve Your Photography”. For those of you who are not familiar with Craft&Vision project it was started by David duChemin, pretty well known photographer. In this project he publishes books about photography, some of which he writes by himself, and some written by other photographers. These books are sold in PDF format usually for $5 USD, and you get a discount when you buy a bundle. I have bought about twenty books and read them. Some I liked more and some I liked less, and maybe in the future I’ll write a few of my own reviews on these books.

The special thing about this book though is that you can download it for free and get a taste of the “Craft&Vision type of book”. The main point that David makes in most of his write-ups on his blog and his books is that photographer’s gear is much less important than his vision and in some of his books he suggests ways as to how you can improve your photographic vision. This book was not an exception and you won’t find there anything about photographic gear, except printers in the chapter on “the power of print”.

“11 Ways to Improve Your photography” has 11 chapters (obviously ) written by various photographers, each chapter suggesting a different way you can improve your images. If you want just to quickly to see the contents of the book before you download it, here’s the chapters:

1.Make your images more dynamic 2.Tame your digital exposures 3.The power of the print 4.Learn to direct the eye 5.Understand the stages 6.Create projects and collaborate 7.Refine your composition 8.The power of the moment 9.Forget lens stereotypes 10.Slow down and learn to see 11.Make stronger portraits

In my opinion this book is not special in its suggestions, and if you have been into photography for a while you probably heard most of this advice, but sometimes it is good to refresh your memory. There were two chapters that I liked the most – one is “Understand the stages” by Alexandre Buisse, in which he describes his understanding of the different stages that a photographer goes through from the moment he/she picked up the camera. A very interesting read.

The second chapter that I liked is “The power of the moment” by Eli Reinholdtsen, in which she shares her experience in street photography illustrating the text with her wonderful photographs.

I would also like to mention another chapter, “Make stronger portraits” by David duChemin, not because I liked it, but exactly the opposite. While the advices that David gives in this chapter are ok (nothing special though), the portraits that David chose to illustrate his points are not. In my opinion they are not “strong” as David presents them to be. They are just pictures of people. Some of them are pictures of unusual people, but merely this fact doesn’t make for a  strong portrait.

You can download the book by clicking on the image above (which will take you to the Craft&Vision website). I would really like to hear your honest opinions about this book.

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Hi everyone,

Just a quick note – I updated my portfolio with more photos from Nepal.

You can check them out HERE

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