Other/Artistic

Until just recently, whenever someone talked about pictures of a person taken in a mirror, I only associated this kind of pictures with Facebook profile pictures of teenagers (I think you know about what kind of picture I talk about). But I have discovered the great advantage of mirrors during my recent photo shoot in Poland – mirrors are great to frame a subject. There are other ways to frame a subject, for example with door frames, windows, trees, etc. but I never used a mirror to frame a subject before.

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I have to admit that I haven’t tried taking abstract pictures before and if I did abstract photography it was purely coincidental. I have discovered lately that my portfolio and photography library don’t have any abstract photographs. I honestly have no experience in taking abstract pictures and I’m not even sure if you need experience for this type of shots. So I decided to give abstract photography a try during a walk in my Brussels’ neighborhood (it was a great weather that day so how could I miss probably the very first feel of sun this spring).

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You’ll hear that every time you talk with a photographer: “Take a camera everywhere you go”. I have mentioned that already a couple of times on my blog already but I’ll add something this time. Therefore, “take a camera everywhere you go, EVEN BOWLING!”.

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I love working with people, professional or aspiring models, people who want their portraits taken, people who look for specific type of photography for their businesses, commercial or promotional purposes. However, it’s not always possible to prepare some of these photo shoots and often it’s necessary to improvise… actually you can never be confident that you’re 100% prepared for a photo shoot as a photographer. There are almost always unexpected things happening: bad weather, people not showing up or showing up late limiting your time for a shoot, location turning out different than you expected, etc (the list can continue forever).

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Little I knew about pen tablets, not to mention how useful they are, when I was starting my adventure with photography few years ago. A pen tablet seemed to me as an unnecessary tool at that time, which was used only by very (emphasis on VERY) professional photographers and graphic designer only – and oh boy, how much could I be wrong. I underestimated the value of a pen tablet for my post-processing job and photography workflow that I can’t believe I did when I think back to those times when I didn’t use one. I got my pen tablet from Wacom over a year ago and it’s been an integral part of my workflow ever since.

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I heard two opposite opinions in the past few years whether it is better to overexpose or underexpose pictures. Obviously, the best condition is when you expose a picture correctly, but you might find yourself in a situation when you might need to underexpose or overexpose a picture and you will have to choose which one is better: to underexpose or overexpose. I heard Scott Bourne (at least I’m pretty sure it was him) saying that you should underexpose by one stop to ‘naturally’ saturate the colors already in a camera – this apparently saves you some time in post-processing. However, this tip is more applicable for film photography rather than digital photography, because saturating the colors in post-processing can be done nowadays in a matter of few seconds.

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I’ve recently read a very interesting blog article Less Gear, More Character? by Bert Stephani and I have to credit him for giving me the idea on the following article. I completely agree with Bert’s opinion that gear can stand in a way between a photographer and a subject, especially when too much gear is used or the focus of a photographer is on the gear and not on the subject.

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If you have just started your adventure as a professional photographer or you plan to do that, probably the most often and important question you ask yourself is on how to have (new) customers. I won’t explain you here on the importance of a good portfolio, an appealing website and using web 2.0 tools (like Facebook or Twitter). However, I would like to point your attention to the importance of networking as a photographer, which some photographers (especially those new professional photographers) tend to forget about. Networking is actually much more important for having customers than anything else. YES! Even your thousands of followers on Twitter and hundreds of ‘friends’ on Facebook won’t give you as much opportunities for new customers as networking and word of mouth.

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I was recently browsing through tips & tricks for Mac OS X and I ran across a trick for inverting colors on a display and a monitor. You can use the ‘inverting colors’ function as a photographer on Mac OS X during editing and post-production. For example, if you have a bright picture or a picture with a big area with bright colors (for example the white color) and you need to locate, edit, heal and clone out dark spots (sensor dust, airplanes, birds, etc.), inverting colors can be very handy, especially when your eyes feel tired in finding these little spots. Inverting colors in post-processing in such situations is just perfect because its much easier to find bright spots on the dark background rather than the opposite.

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I just want to give you a quick nudge about Brussels Photo Walk #5, which took place on Sunday, November 21, 2010. We were lucky again having pretty good weather without rain. I think this was one of the most exciting Brussels photo walks so far because we went to the part of Brussels that wasn’t discovered by anyone of us before. We went to the industrial part of Brussels – it was exciting and a bit scary at the same time. We run across many abandoned and squat buildings but I think that the most joy gave us an abandoned warehouse where we spent most of the time. Destroyed windows without glass, wires sticking out of the walls and floor, plants growing inside the warehouse and many other things became the photography subjects and inspirations for Brussels Photo Walk #5 in this amazing abandoned warehouse. It was a really inspiring walk and thank you all for participating!

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I don’t know how many times photographers repeat it to their students but I’m sure that you’re already familiar with it: take your camera anywhere you go (when possible of course). I think it was the very first thing I learned when I was starting my adventure with photography few years ago and so far it’s the easiest thing to remember. Probably because I really can’t move anywhere without my camera anymore. My friend once said that a camera has glued onto my hand.

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A photographer should not only know the rules of photography but he or she should also be able to break those rules and know how to do it in order to create something new, creative and unique. Why you ask? I have recently read a very interesting article titled “Your photography needs to be like Facebook” over at New Media Photographer’s blog, which explains very well how important it is for professional photographers to develop and update their style and photography in order to be able to maintain their position on the market. If you follow the photography market at any parts of the world, you have probably already noticed that it definitely is not enough to shoot good pictures in order to make living out of photography.

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