Decoys Like Curves – Photoblog of the Week
It’s been a few weeks since our last Photoblog of the week – but today’s is a great one and should make up for it. Today’s Photoblog is Decoys Like Curves – a photoblog by Lee Gribbon. Lee currently lives in Japan (which is reflected in many of his shots) and takes a variety of types of photography from portraits to landscape. I particularly like some of his longer exposure shots like this).
Lee has been kind enough to submit two photographs, a description of his digital camera gear and a quick tip for DPS readers to keep in mind as they shoot.
Lee’s Digital Photography Gear
I use a Canon EOS 30D. I use a Canon EF-S 10-22mm lens for all the landscape shots I take, and quite a few others too! It’s an addictive perspective; I’ve always loved wide angle. I have a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 which I take with my when I’m walking around towns and cities; it’s fast aperture, near ‘normal’ perspective, and compact size make it perfect for shooting candids.
I also have a Canon EF 50mm f1.4, and a Canon EF 85mm f/1.8. I like primes. They really encourage you to walk around and explore perspective. If you’re starting out in photography, I really recommend buying a single prime in the 30-50mm range, and just taking hundreds and hundreds of photos. This will help you find your particular style, and also where your future lens purchases may lie – e.g., if you find yourself wishing for something longer, it’s time to invest in a telephoto.
Other than that, I’m frequently using my tripod and my cable release. These are helpful for taking multiple shots of the same scene to combine later in post-processing.
Finally, I use a Fujifilm FinePix F30 when I don’t want to lug around my SLR.
Lee’s Digital Photography Tip
I guess my piece of advice to anyone photographing (myself included!), would be that whatever you’re photographing, whether it’s people, landscapes, flowers, street, whatever, whenever you think you’ve taken enough photos, take some more
Explore the surroundings a little further, or get closer to your subject, or fiddle with the aperture or shutter speed for creative effect.
Often, the shots where I followed this principle have become my favorites. Also, although digital cameras have LCD playback, those screens are small and often in the midst of excitement we may think we have the shot we want, when in reality the focus may be off, the subject’s expression may not be quite right, or something else might be amiss.
Taking more shots than you think you’ll need can help minimize the chance of these things from ruining your perfect photo op.
16 Responses to “Decoys Like Curves – Photoblog of the Week” - Add Yours
May 3rd, 2007 at 1:23 pm
great photoblog! Thanks for the tips.
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:37 pm
Really nice pictures. I enjoyed the ones with the slow shutter while the subjects moved…
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Nice set of shots and good advice.
- seen at http://www.photographyvoter.com
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Lee’s Digital Photography Tip is spot on – the best bit of advice i have read on this site!
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:28 pm
really amazing stuff but i can’t subscribe to the take many photos tip. i think it’s a bad habit and that when you get good you should really stop needing to take more than the shots you will use. maybe two more for backup but not the hundreds you usually take. i say that because in that sense i have shot since february 2006 almost 25000 photos. and 90% are crap… so shot less with more thought into each is my advice…
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:56 pm
I actually disagree with you eydryan, respectfully of course. Lee Gribbon has a point about not trusting your LCD preview and take more shots using different settings; like double-checking your focal point, maybe adjusting your aperture, or try different shutter speeds.
I’ve had those moments, when I’ve looked at my preview after taking an exposure and thought, “yes! perfect.” only to bring it home and discover it was poorly focused or could have been taken with a different perspective or setting.
In addition, it doesn’t hurt to take more photos (particularly when shooting digital), because it gives you the opportunity to think, “how can I shoot this differently? Is there a better angle? Am I framing this right? Should I be using a wide open aperture or close it down to /16 or /32?”
For me, it isn’t just about getting the right, creative shot; it’s about learning how to see light, lines, relative objects, and understanding what perspective can do in a photograph. Not to sound cheesy, but the world is your classroom and there’s plenty to learn.
May 4th, 2007 at 12:07 am
I totally agree with this blog! I tried that technique over the weekend and got some amazing results!
This is my first time leaving a message on a blog. But I recieve the emails everyday!
Go DPS!!!!
May 4th, 2007 at 1:00 am
well, please do, it would be a boring discussion otherwise. I know all about the damn LCD screen and ever since I’ve been a photographer I’ve never used a screen smaller than 2.5″. Still, indeed it tricks you. While I’ve developed a sense for focusing problems still many arise when looking at the image small rather than large. so many times did i believe i had the shot and walked away only to find at home that it was ruined. i see that’s what you say as well but the approach is different. and what you say is perfectly right except for the approach. i mean you have a very good point and it’s my thoughts exactly but the solution is wrong to me. or flawed at least. you see indeed you could do that, take a million photos and hope for the best, but i like the old school way better. in the film days you would find a subject and explore it. you would ponder how it would look in your mind and you would imagine exposure. you would see lines and shapes and compositions in real time on a real subject. if you do take many photos you will end up with many 2D perspectives of a 3d thing, all of which could be wrong. but when you’re there on the spot, if you know what you’re doing, two shots can get you home better than 200. why i say this is simple: people have a tendency to overshoot these days. no cost, no hassle. but that takes thinking out of the photo. people just snap all the angles and all the exposures and hope for the best instead of choosing just an optimum two.
why do i preach this? it’s first because of workflow issues. cataloguing and tagging and sorting and backup are a real hassle with many, useless files. also, in case of a backup you either waste space with many dead ones or you take a very long time to weed out the crappy ones.
finally i’ll give you a practical example. i used to be a magazine photographer. and i would go to all these places and take photos of people. to be on the safe side, i’d take approx 200-300 photos a shoot just to make sure. thing was i spent more time shooting than adjusting the controls and basically reshooting the same boring and/or wrong thing from different angles. then i decided to cut back on that, since PP itself was really long and i only needed max 5 photos for an article. i started shooting less, like 70, even around 30-40 at times, taking more time to think about the shots and less time actually clicking like a madman. and this was fast, i only had 30min or so to take these so i had to choose more photos or more thinking. in the end shooting less simplified my existence and all my work photos from that mag are sitting nice and cozy on a DVD on some shelf waiting recovery. however, my 8000 normal pics were wiped out when my hard drive died because they were too many to sift through and only archive the good ones. so i delayed it until they were gone.
my point is, shoot only as much as you need. there;s no need to shoot 15 photos of the same thing. envision it in your mind, and if you can’t do that take the 15 photos come home and make sure you understand from them at least how tomorrow to take 14. main thing is, creativity comes from within you, not your camera, so the photos should come from you.
give yourself time but learn. you’ll see, exposure takes little to master. try sunny f16. try winging and bracketing. try guessing. then, composition also takes little. it’s how you see the thing you wanna photograph. look for vantage points. look for other sides and places to see it from. Learn how to see the photo before you take it and not how to take many photos not to miss anything. Don’t go with statistical photography, go with intelligent one. Be a pro who doesn’t need an LCD screen on his camera. Only then will you be able to use it.
May 4th, 2007 at 1:05 am
We need more blogs/articles like this. Not that I don’t like what Darren has to say, far from it, but multiple people bring
additional insight to this wonderful place.
I have become quite addicted to it here.
Thanks Darren!!!
May 4th, 2007 at 2:28 am
@eydryan
I agree with some of your points. You should not just quickly take a ton of a shots of a subject and pray for one to be good. Creativity and artistic styles are what seperates you from everyone else. Finding your own personal style and using that to build on. But the way I see it is I have 2x 2GB memory cards.. Thats gives me 4GB of raw to work with every weekend I go shooting. I must say that many many times I have thought I had the prfect shot. I spent my time setting it up and getting right angle… But get home load it in Aperture and one bit of the subject is slightly out a focus.. This ruins the image therfor making you loose what could have been a great image. I would rather snap off 5 shots of that subject with slightly different apertures and exposure and make off with one that is really great and delete the rest. Sure it can be a little bit of a pain to have to delete them from your database, But I think that is much better than loosing out on what could have been a great photo. Perhaps once your really used to your lens and camera you wont need to worry about shots not being how you expected but for me it is deffinitly needed.
May 4th, 2007 at 7:18 am
you see as i said before i don’t know how but i can tell just by looking at the lcd if something is blurry. and if i have any doubt there’s always zoom so i can check it out closer. so focusing isn’t that big a deal. exposure with raw is simple (you have +-2EV to spare) however aperture may affect DOF so yeah… i don’t advocate shooting just one shot, i’m all for backups but i feel that we should really reduce them to a minimum, and 5 shots for one is not what i’d like to shoot.
and yeah i think that’s the main point here. shoot as much as you need to in order to learn the mechanisms but make sure that your purpose is to see the image in your mind before you shoot it.
May 4th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
@eydryan
I agree, the old adage; less is more is a worthy thing to strive for. I am shooting lots at the moment, but just because i’m relatively new to photography. I guess like you say we should strive to be DOING our best, and not just HOPING for the best.
Another top article, and discussion.
Cheers everyone.
May 5th, 2007 at 3:29 am
This all from edryan is so right-on. Beyond the weight of thousands of pix you never get to, beyond the over-Photoshopped photography everywhere so that nothing seems true — what an ideal this is to go toward!
I’m so far from it, but grateful for the goal. Bravo.
” . . . creativity comes from within you, not your camera, so the photos should come from you. . . Don’t go with statistical photography, go with intelligent one.”
May 5th, 2007 at 6:53 am
i love the discussion as well, forums should be this way. just people sharing nice ideas and experiences about photography.
and let’s all shoot less and work more for it
thanks everyone who participated in this discussion, it’s been fun so far :)
May 5th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Hi,
I just got back from holiday to find this article published on DPS.
I enjoyed reading the comments posted. Perhaps my advice was a little ambiguous in the article, so thought I’d just clear it up a bit:
I wasn’t really advocating taking hundreds of photos and hoping for the best. I’m all in favour of only taking as many photos ‘as you need to’, but frequently this point is a self-imposed limitation.
My point was to when you think you’re done, try to squeeze a little more creativity out of yourself, really push yourself to keep going and often you’ll sight a new opportunity or a new perspective on a scene that you thought you were done with.
Hope that makes sense.
Sincere thanks to everyone who read this article, left their thoughts, or took the time to view my site. Cheers!
May 9th, 2007 at 12:37 am
you do have a point here. basically not to give up when you think you’re done but to try and take a photo and then a better one of the same thing. or something along those lines.
anyway nice site and nice comment
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