Malaysia Part 2

Also in this issue:

• O Canada!  (and O Boston!)
• Two New Products (and one revised one)
• DRM Conundrum - Part 2 
• More insights from the Sony team

Last month I spoke about my romp to Malaysia, and that although I was there for a week, I only had ONE DAY to actually go out shooting and try to capture a visual taste of this large and widely differing country in a photojournalistic style.  How can you possibly capture the essence of a country in just one day?  Even more challenging, how can you do it “National Geographic Style”, where photographers often spend months in a country, getting to know it and visiting a gazillion nooks and crannies?  Let me share with you some of the techniques I used to try to tackle this difficult challenge.

Malaysia - Part 1

Alpha 55, HDR level 4, handheld.  I love this camera!

I’m writing this blog entry on the plane back from Malaysia (which in itself is remarkable – I remember a time when there was enough room to use a laptop in coach.)  And the trip was a blast!  There’s so much to share, in fact, that I’m going to split this across two different blog posts.  This week will talk about the event at which I was speaking; next week I’ll talk about some of the stories behind the Malaysia shots that ended up on the FriedmanArchives.com website.

What was I doing on this trip?  I was invited by Sony Malaysia to speak at the Sony Alpha Convention 2011, held at the ritzy Kuala Lumpur Convention Center.  The event was pretty lavish – one entire convention center hall housed a lecture stage, several performance areas, and lots of Sony’s products were on hand for people to try – including some of the more exotic equipment like the 70-400 G lens mounted on an A900.  The 3-day event had continuous lectures by 21 guest photographers.  I have to say I’ve attended many such corporate events in my day and I was very impressed by what Sony had done here.  You can get a feel for the event from Sony’s own video from the event here: http://www.youtube.com/user/sonymalaysia  and a longer version here: http://www.youtube.com/user/sonymalaysia#p/a/u/1/BMMwDg7MHxs 

Shooting for Yoga and Wedding Horror Stories

In this issue:

• Shooting for Yoga
• The Sony Alpha 33 and 55 book is out!
• Seminar update (Boston, Lethbridge, and Ottawa open for registration!)
• A week in Armenia?
• Wedding Photography horror stories

Shooting for Yoga

It’s always nice to see your work appear commercially.  Last year I was asked by Ida Unger, an amazing Iyengar yoga instructor, to take photographs for a very interesting project she was working on – a poster and forthcoming book connecting two of her spiritual worlds, Yoga and Kabbalah (ancient Jewish mysticism).  The assignment was to take hi-res pictures of her in yoga poses which correlated with the shapes of Hebrew letters.  You can see the first fruits of this effort in the poster image above.

Top 10 Most-Licensed Images

Also in this Issue:

• An unexpected seminar in Malaysia
• Best Gloves for Winter Shooting
• (It's a short issue, folks!)

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Top 10 Most-Licensed Images

Funny thing about stock photography.  You just never know what's going to sell.  Oh, you could guess - but you'd be wrong!!!  Here are my Top 10 most-licensed images of all time - the majority of which I would not consider to be my best work:

Image #10: LAX Theme Building

The iconic building at the Los Angeles International Airport; designed in the 1960's when everyone was optimistic about the future.  The building was covered with scaffolding for years during a renovation, and so this "clean" image was quite sought after.

How I took these Pregnancy Shots (and other stories)

I’m writing this blog post from Boston, where we’re expecting the arrival of Grandchild #3.  And of course we expect to take family portraits immediately afterward, so I packed a very portable studio with me (which I’ll detail below).

And of course we took a few token full pregnancy shots, but I really wanted to do something a little different.  Like the shot above, which I had never tried before.  And it took me a few tries to get it right.  Here are all of my mistakes in getting there, in glorious color. 

A Thanksgiving Blackout (plus other stories)

So here we were hosting a traditional Thanksgiving Day feast.  Just our luck we had a power outage that day, starting about noon and lasting until 10:00 PM, just about the time people were leaving.

A brief panic ensued; after which time Plan B was amassed: Our kids live about two miles away, and they still had power.  We moved the entire feast over to their ovens, and started getting out the candles and camping lantern.  Baked desserts were completed on the BBQ.  Whipped cream was whipped via a battery-powered drill retrofitted with a beater.  And Thanksgiving was held, successfully, by candlelight.

Being the family photographer, it’s my job to document everything, and the worst thing I could have done on this night is to use a flash to take pictures.  When you’re dining by candlelight, you want to be able to capture the emotional warmth that the candles can provide.  So I set my A55 to 12,800 (it’s second-highest ISO) and shot in RAW, knowing that my new copy of Lightroom 3 would be able to quash the noise better than any software I've owned previously.  (Click on any image to make it larger.)

Printed books now on sale! 10% off at Lulu.com

Printed books are now on sale! Buy one of my printed books at Lulu.com and enter the code "TURKEY" during checkout to receive 10% off. Hurry before the sale ends!

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Love your camera, but hate your pictures?  Learn the secrets of the Kodachrome shooters at www.FriedmanArchives.com/seminars

Faster Flash Recycling Times - Another Set of Family Portraits

I can't believe it's been two years since I took studio portraits of our children and grandchild.  Only now the family is larger - our 2nd grandson is starring in this set.

I'll go into more details about how I made these in a minute (including how I got around the flash recycling requirements when shooting an uncooperative 2-year-old), but first here are a few of my favorite shots from the session (and as always, click on any image to make it larger):

Lessons from Shooting Radioactive Tomatoes

The shot above is a stock shot, using tomatoes taken from our garden out in back.  (Must have been the soil mix responsible for the largeness of the left one...)   Below is the identical shot, taken on a tripod with a cable release, using just the ambient room lighting:

Deleting Images Forever / Screen Saver for Photographers

Dear Gary,

I am very much enjoying your posts, and as always, they inspire me to pick up my camera (aging but still wholly capable KM-7D) and get snapping.

Now, then ... given the deluge of shots the digital age imposes on us, a blog post on post-processing workflow to get things down to a manageable number would be VERY much appreciated!!!  I know, I know ... start with a glasses off, thumbnail view and take it from there.   But WHERE to take it?  Thumbnail view gives a good starting point with respect to composition & lighting, etc., but so much can be done in post production (especially with RAW files) that I wonder sometimes how to select between a half-dozen very similar shots.  What should a basic keep/discard-rank decision heirarchy look like to make this efficient and unplug the front end of the post processing workflow ... and unclutter my folders?  I've heard that stacks are useful, but then aren't you simply keeping second rate photos that should simply be discarded?  I haven't managed to develop an effective, cut-throat process to help me let go of the also-rans.  I'm sure that other readers face this same hurdle, where you probably do this in your sleep. 

Nova Scotia Artifacts

I remember thumbing through a National Geographic magazine back in the 1970’s, and came across what I thought was an insanely phenomenal picture: A two-page spread of an ocean scene; with a boat on the left page and the tail of a whale on the right half.  “Wow!” I said, “What are the chances of that scene happening just when the photographer’s camera was pointing in that direction?  And the camera just happened to be focused at the right place!”  (This was the days of manual focusing, folks…)  “This is an amazing once-in-a-lifetime shot!”