Fiesta Latina Festival in Brussels

I met with Norbert Sokolowski (www.norbertsokolowski.com), a fellow photographer, in Brussels for a short walk to Fiesta Latina Festival in August 2010. The day started a bit rainy but soon sun came out and it really felt like Fiesta Latina Festival! :-)

Fiesta Latina Festival takes place in Brussels each year and is a unique opportunity for everyone to get away from her/his culture and start discovering the traditions, rhythms, colours and flavours of Latin-America. We spent there with Norbert about an hour but we experience almost everything: music, dances, food, cheerfulness and the great spirit of Latin cultures.

Announcing Brussels Photo Walk #4

Holidays are over, which means it's good time to have another Brussels Photo Walk. Our Brussels Photo Walk  #4 will take place on Sunday, October 3, 2010 and we will meet at 2:00pm (14:00) outside of the metro entrance Porte de Namur on Bolwerksquare (click HERE to see the map). The plan is to walk down to Flagey and possibly even further, then making a turn and ending up for a nice drink close to Louise Metro Station. Let's keep our fingers crossed for good weather! Hope to see you there!

Remember, everyone is welcomed to join a photo walk - you don't need a fancy camera or photography knowledge. As long as you enjoy photography, you're more than welcomed to join and have fun with us!

Remember to join our Facebook Group and the Flickr Group (links below) to stay up-to-date!

Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=290912725588&ref=ts

Flickr Group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/brusselsphotowalks/

A Photo Shoot at the Polish Seaside

I was going to update you on this photo shoot already a couple weeks ago but because of an extremely busy calendar and lots of photography assignments recently, I'm able to publish these pictures only now.

As some of you might already know, I spent my summer 2010 holidays in Gdansk, Poland, which is actually not only a beautiful town in the north of the country, but it's also my hometown (surprise, surprise! :) ). I managed to convince my friend to model for me (it actually wasn't so hard to convince her) for a photo shoot at the seaside. I always wanted to do a photo shoot at the seaside :)

Although the shoot was in the evening, the light was still quite hard so we did few shots under a pier and then we moved to a little forest just next to the beach. I used Nikon's SB-900 speedlight for all the pictures taken in the forest and also for few of them under the pier.

Back from holidays, back to work

It's been a while I posted something on the blog since last time and I thought I would just give you a quick update what was and what will be going on in my photography life. Let's start with the past events then, shall we? :) I spent 2 weeks in Poland in August visiting my family and friends. Besides taking some snapshots at the countryside and while traveling a bit around, I also had a photo shoot at the Polish seaside. The pictures from this shoot are ready to be published but I think I'll put the online next week or so.

Why so late? Well, I've been quite busy recently and I'm actually going to be pretty busy with various photography assignments for at least next couple of weeks. Having said that, let me tell you what I'll be doing this weekend: I was asked by the organizers of Antwerp Diamond Triathlon 2010 (www.adt2010.be) to be an official photographer for the event. The triathlon will take place on Sunday 12 September 2010 and will start at 14:00, so come over if you're around!

How to Increase the Frame Rate in Burst & Continuous Modes

I was playing with my NIKON DSLR some time ago after buying a new ultra fast SD memory card and I discovered few things that will the frame rate in the burst mode or continuos mode. Burst mode or continuous shooting might be very useful when taking sports pictures or kids for example. So how to make your camera take pictures faster in burst mode or continuous shooting and how to increase the frame rate? You have to consider at least few things:

1) The File Type (JPG vs. RAW) - whether you shoot in JPG or RAW has a tremendous influence on the frame rate  in the burst mode or continuous shooting. Because RAW files are much bigger in size due to the additional information they contain, it takes much longer for a camera to save them and to process them. Therefore, if you want to shoot faster in the burst or the continuos mode, you should choose JPG as a file type;

2) Memory Card's Speed - I'm not a memory card guru and quite honestly, my knowledge about them is limited. However, what I can tell you is that SD memory cards vary when it comes to their saving and reading speeds. Buying a fast SD memory card will ensure that camera will be able to save faster pictures. IMPORTANT: your SD memory card's speed is not as important as your camera's buffer!

3) Camera's Buffer - the size of camera's buffer is actually more important than the speed of your memory card. Buffer is a specific amount of built-in memory in a camera that serves to store the image while it is being processed. Once the image has been processed, it is sent from the buffer to the memory card.The size of the buffer is important and the bigger the better because when using burst or continuous mode, and the buffer is filled, the camera may slow down the speed of which it takes photos, until the buffer is sufficiently empty to increase the frame rate;

4) Turn Off Noise Reduction - some cameras (NIKON for sure) has a built-in noise reduction function. This features automatically reduces noise for ISO 800 or higher and there are different levels of noise reduction. I noticed that when noise reduction is turned on, it heavily influences the frame rate in the burst or the continuous modes. Therefore, remember to turn noise reduction off in your settings in order to minimize the image processing time and to increase the frame rate;

5) Turn Off VR (Vibration Reduction) / IS (Image Stabilization) - both Nikon and Canon have their systems which help in minimizing the possibility of blurry images in situations when shutter needs to be opened for bit longer. In Nikon this is called VR (Vibration Reduction); in Canon this is IS (Image Stabilization). If you ever used these, you might noticed that the period between pressing the shutter button and the actual movement of the shutter is much longer when VR is turned on. This would also decrease the frame rate in the burst and the continuous modes. Therefore, turn VR / IS off;

6) Shoot in low ISO - I noticed that the camera works a bit slower and the frame rate is much lower when taking pictures with high ISO. Therefore, I would suggest to shoot in ISO 200 or even lower because higher than that, the frame rate will decrease;

7) Autofocus off or in continuous / continuous servo modes - a camera needs some time to set up focus in the autofocus mode. Thus, depending on the measuring method, autofocus may decrease the frame rate. The best way to increase the frame rate to the maximum when it comes to autofocus is to turn autofocus off. However, there might be situations (for example when taking pictures of a moving object with a small aperture value) when you need autofocus on. Then you can switch the autofocus mode to AutoFocus Continuous on NIKON and Continuous Servo on Canon. This way, the camera will track an object and adjust the autofocus continuously, which reduces the time for adjust autofocus from 'scratch' and increases the frame rate in the burst and continuous modes.

Garage's Bricked Wall as a Background

I moved to a new apartment with a garage last month. I think the very first thing that crossed my mind was: "that could be an interesting place to take portraits". The old bricked wall in the garage caught my attention immediately and I thought it could be a very interesting background for pictures, especially because of the pattern they give. I took few test shots in the garage after a photo shoot last time. The background made out of bricks looks as I thought - pretty good. I came up with few new ideas for portrait photography and lighting setups for them while doing the test shots and I hope I'll have an opportunity to take few more test shots soon again.

Goodbye Aperture 3, Welcome Lightroom 3.

It's official: I've switched over to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3. I know that some of you followed previously my experience with testing Apple's Aperture 3 when it came out. Unfortunately, the processing speed of RAW files in Aperture 3 became simply unacceptable for me - waiting for 4 minutes for a program to process some adjustments within an image can be painful and a big time-waster as you can imagine.

I gave a try to Lightroom 3 a week ago and I edited the latest photo shoot with it. I have to admit that I'm very happy with Lightroom 3 - it's fast, intuitive and it didn't take me as long as I thought it would to learn it. Therefore, I advice to anyone having problems with Apple Aperture 3 to at least try Adobe Lightroom 3 (there is a 30-day free fully functional trial version) - you might be as positively surprised as I was.

Finding the balance between the theory and practice.

Many aspiring photographers try to find their ways not only on how to enter the photography market, but also on how to effectively and efficiently learn the art of photography. Some of these people find themselves in a rather deadlock - they have the basic knowledge but they can't progress anywhere from there. Such situations quite often occur when we start by reading lots of articles about photography and learning the theory but we forgot the most important thing about photography: it's about taking pictures!

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I believe that only taking pictures in order to learn photography is not enough. The same apply when talking about theory - let's face it, you can't be a photographer without taking pictures. But both theory and practice are required to be a photographer, add passion and creativity and you won't only be a photographer but you will have pretty good chances in becoming a good photographer.

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So where should be the balance between the theory and practice? In general, I think there is no definite answer to this question. However, I would say that every person who wants to do photography either as a hobby or make living out of it, needs to know at least the minimum of theoretical knowledge. I believe that practice and practical knowledge without the theoretical knowledge can limit an aspiring photographer because for me theory helps you in understanding how various things work, what can be different connections and relations between settings, etc. Such knowledge helps in boosting creativity for sure.

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Therefore, I think that everyone should find his and her own balance between the theory: don't let lack of theory limit your photography and don't let practice forget about the theory.

Article Pictures: Marika is a young and aspiring model from Poland. We meet in July for a quick and spontaneous photo shoot in Brussels, Belgium. I have to say that working with her is pure pleasure. We had lots of laugh and fun while shooting.

Photo Location Hunting around Brussels Airport

I went to the area near Brussels Airport with my friend Lourdes (her photo website) in May 2010 to hunt for interesting locations for the upcoming photo shoots and assignments. We found some really interesting spots for portraits and creative pictures in the area of Brussels Airport. I ended up taking few portrait test shots with Nikon SB-900 speedlight but I have to admit I was much more fascinated by the airplanes.

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The area near Brussels Airport is easily accessible. They are many roads, bike roads, fields, etc. and the place is very interesting for some creative shoots. But my attention quickly turned over to the airplanes. I was amazed how low they get when approaching the airport and I couldn't stop taking the pictures. The feeling of a low-flying airplane together with the enormously loud sound of the engines was simply AMAZING! I can't wait to go there again!

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Thinking outside the box in photography

Being a photographer is not only about knowing the rules of photography and applying them. It's also about being able to break them and to think outside the box. I think that the latter is particularly important for those who try or want to be creative - without the ability of thinking outside the box will make it very hard to stand out in the crowd!

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So what does thinking outside the box mean for me as a photographer? Ohh it can mean so many different things. I think it comes all together to a combination of various things: the ability to break the rules of photography, creativity and the potential to see the world around in a unique way.

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How can you learn to think outside the box? Well, I really can't give a definite answer to that. I can definitely tell you that you don't have to be born with it (although it can be helpful to a certain extent) but you can learn it as well. i can tell you how I try to think outside the box: I look around at the world around me from different angles and various perspectives. I keep trying to see it in a way others don't. It sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. It's important to train yourself, your brain and your eyes and not to give up. The more you try to see the world around you from different perspectives, the easier it becomes.

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Article Pictures: I visited my friend Ada in Den Haag, the Netherlands in June 2010. I think the pictures correspond pretty well to how you can think outside the box in photography.