A couple of weeks ago Ira and I visited a collectible cars show at the Mornington’s racecourse. There were lots of beautiful old cars and we had lots of fun.There were also quite a few photographers taking shots of these beauties. But from my photographic perspective, I didn’t want to simply photograph the cars as I am sure there are already many photos of each model that was showcased there.

So instead I tried to look at the event not as “this is a car show, so I am going to photograph cars” but more as “this is a social event featuring nice cars, so there will be people interacting with them, and I want to capture this interaction”. And even when I photographed only the cars I tried to convey how I see them. For example when shooting the b&w Jaguar in the photo above I tried to show the “facial expression” of that car which was kind of “right in your face”

Hope you enjoyed the photos, and as always – you’re welcome to leave your “creative responses in the comment section below” (© Equals Three)

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In the summer, here in Australia, Red-flowered gum trees start to blossom. This is a very beautiful sight! The whole tree is covered by marvelous, red-colored flowers. These trees have various hues of red, and when you have the whole street planted with them, the view is stunning!

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But merely this fact wasn’t enough for me to set aside some time on weekend and go photograph them. There was one more thing – early in the morning starting about at 7 o’clock and until about 9 the Rainbow Lorikeets (beautiful little parrots) come to feed on these trees. Most of the chances that you won’t see them later in the day there, but in the morning the blossoming trees are filled with these brightly colored little birds. It is quite simply a celebration of colors!

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I couldn’t miss this event, took my 70-200mm lens, and set out early in the morning to capture the nature at its best . You can see what came out of that photo session in this post.

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I needed to have quite a lot of patience as the parrots were restless, kept moving all the time coming out and disappearing in the foliage, but I managed to get a few nice images. Hope you enjoy them!

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Ira and I have a tradition – we always try to spend the New Year’s eve somewhere far from the crowds and close to the nature. This time we spent it on the Ninety Mile Beach in Victoria. There are small pockets of free camping areas in the bush along the coastline, and though we weren’t alone there, when we went for our sunset walk on the beach, there was almost no one there.

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The last Sunset of the year 2011 was beautiful! The clouds slowly changed colors from golden to light pink, and the waves created intricate ever changing patterns on the sand erasing our footsteps as if we weren’t there at all.

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I became fascinated with the different shapes that the surf left on the beach and kept taking photographs, and later I had trouble to choose between them, so in this post you’ll see quite a lot of them.

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I’ve seen many photographers writing their resolutions for the new year. Well I don’t have one other than keep doing what I’ve already been doing, which is “Think and become a better photographer”. And when you think, you might change your opinion on various aspects of photography making your other resolutions obsolete.  But you know, that’s only my opinion

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Whatever your resolution for the 2012 might be, I’m wishing everybody a very Happy, Creative, Productive, Peaceful, and Healthy New Year!

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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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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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I am not a believer in the “straight out of camera” philosophy. You know, the photographers who don’t do post processing at all and sometimes shoot in plain JPEGs. Anything in addition to that, would be “distorting the reality” they claim. My opinion on this subject is that there is no such thing as objective reality. Everyone sees what he sees through his own eyes and his own perspective. Your previous life experience also alters your perception of everything that you see around you. Even when you simply point your camera at a scene and shoot, the light goes through the lens, hits the sensor, gets transferred into electronic signals, then is processed by your digital camera’s own processor, and undergoes even more transformations until you see the photo on your computer screen. I don’t think I need to go further.

So, when I work on a photo, first I usually perform basic adjustments in Lightroom such as brightness and contrast and then, if I feel that it is not enough, first I try to understand why I feel that way. Is it the composition? If it is the composition then there’s nothing much can be done in post processing, and I will probably discard that photograph. But if the composition feels right then I continue my exploration.  Are the shadows too shallow or too deep? Can the colors be improved?

Next, I open the photo in Photoshop and start playing with it, changing color palette, increasing/decreasing lights and darks, and other adjustments. Usually I come up with several versions of processed image, which look good to me, then I compare them and choose the one that I like the most.

Below I have three versions of the same photo, but the thing is that I can’t choose the one that I like the most. If you have an O2 or Three internet bundle installed on your phone and you’re reading this article on it, the images may take a while to load. Each version has its own mood, and I have trouble choosing.

The first image below is the original version with only minor brightness adjustments.

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The second version received quite a bit of processing, and has a warm autumnal feeling to it. I like the purplish glow and how it contrasts with the white of the water.

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In the third version I used the original photo as the base, substantially decreasing color saturation, of all the colors except the yellow of the leaves in the water. I also happen to like this version a lot.

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Which version did you like? Please help me choose, but I also need to know the reason for your choice, and this is what the comment section below is for! You can also leave your comments on my Facebook page – http://www.facebook.com/photopathway

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