Proud Photography Blog

If you’re the proud owner of an amazing point and shoot style camera, this article might only be of informational value to you. But if you’ve got either a film or digital SLR camera you’ve already been confronted with the sometimes dizzying array of lens choices. Do you want ultra-wide angle, super fast action, or detailed macro prime glass? What does all of that even mean?

Well lens choices all come down to what you really want to take pictures of, because each lens has various features that are better for one type of photo or another. So what are the biggest features and things to look out for? Well, to answer that I’ll try to organize everything by not feature, but by type of photography. Read the rest of this entry »

I ran across a mention of this interesting artistic venture in a photography forum, and felt that it’s novelty, along with it’s rather nebulous technology, warranted a mention in the blog this week.

Though definitely not on par with the professional Canon 1Ds Mark III, the Telectroscope combines bulbous 19th century-ish, brass, scientific instrumentation with the ability to view people in life-size from another continent. Yes, I said another continent. The story of the Telectroscope claims to begin when an inventor back in the late 1800’s who had the idea to dig a tunnel underneath the Atlantic Read the rest of this entry »

Scenario: You’ve just spent an hour and a half culling through your photos, picked your favorites, doctored them up in photoshop, and are now waiting those few glorious moments as the printer spits out your prize-winning photos.

As you expectantly peek inside the printer and get a glimpse of your adorable pet photo, you realize you are the proud owner of a purple tinted dog, that typically is a stark white labrador retriever. You start jamming the cancel button hastily, your blood pressure rising with every extra spit of purple ink the printer keeps churning out till the memory buffer is emptied in the printer. You want to scream and cry and yell at everything within earshot. (Ok, so maybe that last part is just about me)

In any case most people who have tried printing their photos out on their own printers have gone through Read the rest of this entry »

These days there are more and more options for displaying your digital photographic work. There will always be the die-hard film enthusiasts who want to make their own prints. And you know, they do amazing work. But for those of us who have left the world of film for the ease and beauty of digital, we are faced with a few more options than dropping off our film at the developer, or doing it ourselves.

For digital photographers there are basically two options for displaying our work; print mediums, or screens. More and more people have been turning to a variety of LCD displays, all the way from high-definition big-screen displays, down to the $100 8-inch displays that fit in a nice little frame on our desks. These LCD’s are getting sharper and sharper, and their biggest advantage is in their versatility; they can display hundreds of images in one thing. No purchasing of mattes, frames, or printing costs. Just great colors, and a slide-show capability. They even have a much higher resolution capability than other print mediums.

So what’s the down-side to LCD displays? Well, the biggest one is that you’re probably only going to buy one, maybe two. That really cuts down the number of photos you can put around your house at any given Read the rest of this entry »

So you’ve gotten yourself a spiffy new camera, and you’ve been out taking some shots and getting more and more into it. Suddenly you realize that your little 512 mb card that came with the camera just isn’t going to cut it anymore. Where should you go to get the best price on something like this? Or perhaps you’re looking to add to your lens collection, or are in the market for a tripod but are working on a rather tight budget?

Have no fear, as usual, the internet is here! You could always go down to your local camera store and see what they have in stock, but if you’re looking for the BEST deals on gear, and you don’t mind used equipment you have lots of other places to choose from. Mind you, a lot of the time there are no warranties and other such things that can give you a lot of peace of mind when making purchases, but that’s how you get deals right? Read the rest of this entry »

High Dynamic Range photography is something has been looming on the digital photography seen for a little while, and is gaining in popularity. The images are surreal looking, and at the same time sharply detailed and strangely lit. Just try typing HDR Photography into google and see what I mean.

But is this all just a photoshop trick? Actually no, there’s more going on than just your average retouching wizardry. HDR photography is actually an ingenious answer to a problem that has vexed many a student, as well as masters, in the field. The problem is this; when shooting a photo with both a brightly lit and shadowed object, only one or the other can be exposed for correctly. This means you either get the really bright sky to look right, or the shadowed person in front of the sky. Can’t have both because of the physical limitations of how a camera works. But with HDR photographic techniques, you suddenly can get both. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever marveled at those pictures of close-up objects where you can’t hardly even tell what it is you’re looking at? Or what about those amazing shots of the rainbow colored insects that seem almost as if they were a life-size animal caught roaming the underbrush of some far away jungle. All of these types of photographs fall into the special category of Macro Photography.

Macro photography is somewhat of a diverse selection of photographic tastes. You’ll find one group of people that shoot primarily smaller bug-type things or water droplets on flowers. Others like to zoom up on seemingly mundane household objects (pencil erasers, burnt match-heads, etc) and see what they look like magnified by 20x. Still others like to capture miniature scenes in doll-houses or mock-ups of battles with tiny little toy soldiers. Basically, though, if it’s small and you can somehow capture it with your camera, it’ll fall under the heading of macro photography.

So if you’re interested in trying out a little bit of this kind of photography, where do you start? First of all, you have to decide if your Read the rest of this entry »

At first you might be thinking, why in the WORLD am I writing on a photography website about Hannah Montana. Good question, and one that I hope will keep you interested enough to finish reading this particular blog. Since I’m ending the week here on my side of the world, and since there’s lots of crazy news stories out there this one in particular caught my attention because it also involves another house-hold name (at least in the photographic world); Annie Leibovitz.

You might have heard of her, she has been a veritable institution at the Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair Magazines since around 1970 and 1983, and has shot so many celebrities it would make your head spin. Her style has spawned so many copy-cats it’s almost been forgotten that she even started it. She’s famous for a rather risque portrait of the late John Lennon (completely naked) and his then-wife Yoko Ono (completely clothed) back in 1980 only 4 hours before Lennon was shot and killed. She also shot an oft-copied pregnancy photo of Demi Moore in the nude. So Annie is no stranger to the naked celebrity scene. The Read the rest of this entry »