Music vs. Photography

Music plays a huge role in my life, and it has affected my photography as well. By music I don't mean the music played during the take of a picture, but the music listened to around the time.

A year ago, my musical tastes were so distinct that if I were to listen to the style I listen to now, I would have been upset last year to know this is what I've come too haha

I started listening to the indie/alternative genre this year, and not only has it changed the the perspectives and styles in which I take pictures, but it has added a certain uniqueness.

As time goes on and the music I listen to change, I'm positive so will my photography.

But for the moment, I'm greatly influenced by these guys: Vampire Weekend, Phoenix, Morning Benders, and the xx

What do you listen to?

the story behind (1)

This photo has a very funny story behind... Interesting if you think about what it does produce to you (See it bigger here or here). So, before I tell the story, It'd be nice if you tell me what does it make you feel. Come on :)

Levitations

Hello hello hello all!

Sooo, recently I've figured out how to make levitation shots... Have any of you done that? It's a looot of fun. So if you don't know how to do it, I'll explain it to you.

First of all you'll need a chair or a stool type thing. That's what you'll be sitting or lying on. If you want to look like you're lying down, you'll have to either use to chairs/stools or balance on one. Then when you've taken the photo, you go on Photoshop or Picnik to edit out the chair/stool. I use Picnik, so I'll explain it with that... You upload the picture on Picnik.com and go on the Touch Up section of the Create section. You then use the Clone tool to "erase" the chair/stool. And ta da, your levitation shot is complete. Now you can continue editing the photo however you want to...

Here are some levitation samples:

love.peace.happiness

DeviantArt and Firefox :]

Sooo. I don't know if any of my fellow photographers here use DeviantArt or Firefox, but as I stumbled upon the internet today, I experienced the most superb art browsing to ever have experienced before. DeviantArt's version seven has made it so that you can see multiple pieces of art at the bottom of the page you are already on. You can browse through the gallery you are in by clicking the arrow keys, whereas before you had to go back to the gallery and click on another link, so on and so forth.

Upon discovering the new DeviantArt, I found out that Firefox has a new full screen mode. This makes it so the internet is your whole screen and the bar at the top is hidden away unless you scroll near it.

Art has never looked so good. :]


<3 Resa

Diana Cam

I had to share this with you guys, because I've been dying to purchase one of these. What do you all think of Diana cams, and lomography in general?

Another introduction... GABRIELLE!

Yep, that's me! XD I'm sorry to hit you all with another introduction but I feel like I do need to introduce myself. :) I look forward to diving into "real" posts!

My name is Gabrielle, and I'm a French-Canadian sixteen-year-old from Montreal. I'm homeschooled online using Keystone National High School, which is positively awesome. I have two younger siblings, and my family and I travel a lot. We split our months between the Laurentians in Canada (as if anyone's heard of THAT), Orlando FL and the Bahamas, plus our other travels. :) I always feel a little uncomfortable telling new people but it's really a basic part of my life. Trust me, I'm a very simple gal. :) In fact, I am still trying to pick up my bootstraps and buy a Canon XSi... Yikes.

So, gear. I use a Canon Powershot SX20 IS, which is technically a point-and-shoot on steroids, also known as a superzoom. Not gonna lie, I do take great pleasure in showing off my 20x zoom.

Still, I have been feeling the limitations of my camera lately and that's why I want to get the XSi. For example, I have a very very hard time getting a shallow dof with my superzoom and it doesn't support remotes either--which doesn't seem like a big deal, but when you're doing a 365 you're bound to do self-portraits even if it's not self-portrait-exclusive. There are a bunch of other reasons why I want a DSLR, of course.

So if any of you have any thoughts or advice on the XSi or many on another SLR I should buy, let me know. :)

I love reading, always have. That is probably my first passion, but I really enjoy photography and it would be absolutely amazing if I could do it freelance someday. (In the FUTURE! Haha, still need to learn a lot...)

One of my favorite things to do is go to Disney World or Universal Orlando, even if just to walk around the park and enjoy.

I speak three languages! French and English fluently, and I'm studying Spanish in school.

Nice to meet you all, and I look forward to reading and writing more posts! :)

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to show you any of my photos! XD Here's a few. I upload everything to Flickr, it's here.

Sorry about that,

So,I havent posted in a while, sorry. I have had such a block, and not had any motivation to keep going, but i trying to change that, I soon need to give my father back his camera and buy my own, I really would like a Canon, but Imnot sure whatkind i would like, any suggestions?
I have been looking at the rebels and the 5D but any suggestions will help me, but theycant be over $900
xoxo,
lexierain

Where is your Focus?

I'm a portraits kind of gal. I love taking pictures of children and families, and my beautiful friends that I make pose for me. I'd also be lying if I said I don't get a kick out of taking self-portraits. It's easy to be goofy or serious (whichever the situation requires) when there's no one watching!

I'm curious. What are your favourite things to photograph?

Why, Hello there general public.

This is as much of my face as I care for you to see. :)

Well, where to start? My name is Tayler, I'm 16 years old and I live in the very corner of the united states, in good ol' Vancouver Washington. I'm not sure what my first camera was so I'll just tell you that I currently own a Fujifilm finepix s-1500. I try my best to make time for photoshoots but school is a life-sucker. however, when I do get the chance, I try my best for some magic. I don't know how I got into photography... Probably ljust like the girl talked about below me, from holding a little digital camera high up in the air and smiling from below, and the occasional flash-filled mirror shot, but that I quickly grew out of and started to dig deeper into ACTUALL photography, especially once I entered High school. Now that I'm ending my sophomore year, things about my future are really comming into perspective, and my dream job I've decided would be to become a national geographic photographer, because I love nature photos, and traveling is a secret desire of mine.

I know I have time to set up my future, but it really is going by fast, and I will document it with as many photos as possible. :)

Here is my stream. Enjoy it, and comments are much desired and appreciated. :) thanks!

PS; I'm still trying to get away from the shots of my face, but hey, at least they're of higher quality these days. ;)

Another introduction, this one's Alyssa.

Well hello. That is me, if you hadn't assumed as much. I happen to be fifteen, and currently experiencing everything being bigger in Texas, which is a weird way of me saying I live there. Pictures, to me, are rather about feeling than specific settings and numbers. But then again, I'm amateur to say the least.

I'm slighly embarrassed by my first experiences with photography. During the awkward years of middle school classified by girls trying to be cool through wearing unflattering lip gloss and too-big-but-name-brand graphic tees, my shiny pink digital camera never left my wrist when going to an outing with friends. The pictures were uploaded by the hundreds, the composition being me and one other, possibly two, making stupid faces with the only creativity involved in the angle (which was always straight above my head, pointed down with our faces turned towards it). When I was feeling outgoing, I'd turn to the camera solo, locking myself in the bathroom and turning out a mirror pic where the flash covers half of the picture, and another quarter taken up by dirty spots on the mirror. For years these were my photography skills. To me, having fun with friends was taking pictures looking like I was having fun with friends. As it was for all of us in those years.

Needless to say, those days are overcome, thankfully.
And what I am now, well, I suppose you're on your own for that story.

This is my stream.

Zuiko on Nikon

DSC_9248, originally uploaded by darbians.

I was lucky enough to get an olympus OM20 and 2 lenses. The lenses are good and I wanted to use them on my nikon. I finally found a way. Cheap extension tubes that thread together I got a nikon set and a 4/3 set which can thread together. Then a 4/3 to OM converter. Now I can use old OM lenses on my nikon dslr. Here is an example I rather like the bokeh.

Just a little test, to see what I'm doing ;)

Oh wait, that picture above isn't me ;)

The test apparently works!

So, let's introduce myself.
I'm Maarten, 16 years old and I live in The Netherlands.
I began starting with photography at a very young age (I was 5 or 6 when I held a camera for the first time.) My first camera was a little red analog camera which leaked light, so the pictures were a bit strange, sometimes ;) My first real camera was a analog Canon Prima BF-8. Just a point and shoot, but I liked it very much. After 3 years, something went wrong with it and it had to be repaired, but that wasn't possible.

After a few years without a camera, I started to save money for my first digital camera. After having doubts between a Märklin train set or a digital camera, I bought the Sony Cybershot DSC-S500. What a bad camera! Noisy in both ways (shutter&ISO way) and not that good.

The DSLR feeling started when I could borrow a Olympus E-420 from a friend of mine. We went downtown, he with a Olympus E3, and me wuth the E420. I didn't have a clou what I was doing,but I liked it very very much. A few days later, my mother past away, which happened Febuary 2009. My whole life started to turn around, but when it was my birthday (may), it all began to change. Still, I was thinking of my first DSLR, I was thinking of 2 cameras: The Nikon D60 or the Canon EOS 1000D/Rebel XS. The thing was, it stood there , in some paper, but I didn't know what brand, or type, or whatsoever. WHen I opened it, I first saw "Canon" I thought: "Whoopie!"(I don't know why, but I thought it was going to be a Sony, and after my first Sony experience, I didn't want a Sony anymore). Then I saw it was the 1000D/Rebel XS, which made me very happy.

About, a year later, I made about 15,000 pictures with it, who all are very different. Pictures of flowers, of Eindhoven, of a very nice classmate ;), of Barcelona, of parties, of concerts, and I love it.

I hope I can grow in Photography, and learn much here!

Let's see if encluding a picture goes the same way as normal ;)

My Photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mphotography1993/

Profile

So I wanted to have a single thread that all of us could look back at to see another members flickr profile link, so yeah, leave your link and any other links you might want to add..

peace and love

my Flickr

Golden Hour

Soo I haven't posted in a while... sorry 'bout that, but you guys haven't been posting much either!!! haha :)

I was thinking maybe we could do something like post your favorite Golden Hour photo you have ever taken! I don't know if you can post in the comments, but we can try :)

Here's mine (I took it yesterday) That's Bailey, my neighbor's dog...

Adventures

While visiting family I always try and go on a mission with my camera. I find it inspiring being somewhere different and not going to the same local locations. I have found some really cool locations outside the town they where they live. Theres quite a lot of wildlife but my best finds were a substation and a what I thought was a disused railway track with tunnels.
It turns out its actually a test track and does get used from time to time.

When I found the substation my camera was set to ISO 1600 I have a d50 so this is slightly noisey. I never checked it so it wasnt until I returned home to find the slightly noisey images. Unimpressed as I really liked a some of the shots I had taken. Then the idea came converting to B&W. Afterall grainy noise and B&W go hand in hand. A brilliant idea I cant imagine them in colour now.

Tips, tricks, techniques!

Hello all. Firstly, thanks to Jayden Dave and the TeamSixteen Family. I am humbled and proud to consider myself a newly acquired distant cousin of sorts. I'm a photographer among many other things living in Portland, OR. I see photography as a passion that happens to pay me from time to time as opposed to a profession that I enjoy.

I had started my own blog, a few months ago, primarily to provide others with tips and tricks that I have developed into my own photographic workflow. From photoshop techniques to lighting set ups, I try to approach it from a technical, but accessible angle. Some tutorials, reviews, software walkthroughs and the like, all done to try and pay back the internet which I have used for so much of my own education. It has grown into its own through a few review articles which have pushed me into a variety of places from various websites to the New York Times. Mainly luck with a bit of tireless self promotion and trying to pay attention to how best to network with others and use various free outlets available. Hopefully I can continue to help others in the same vein that I've so greatly benefited from.

Saying that, here is a snippit from my most recent blog post. Through a conversation on a GF1 specific photography forum, someone had purchased a photoshop action (for around $35 I think) which seemed to me to be one that I could more or less figure out as it seemed to be doing something similar to an action that I had recorded for myself. After a little searching around, I found a nice balance between both a local and global contrast as well as sharpening to create a strong effect for most any image.

The basic idea comes out in two parts, first using an 'unsharp mask' layer to help boost local contrast throughout the image. I borrowed this particular 'unsharp mask' technique from another blogger named George from phototouchup.net as I'd never thought to use unsharp mask like this. Secondly, on top of that layer, I combine a 'smart sharpen' layer which then has a strong 'high pass filter' blended to overlay applied on top of it creating a sharpened and globally contrasted layer resulting in deep contrast both between highlight and shadow as well as color creating a punch. Without entirely reiterating the process, if interested it lives on my blog under "Free Photoshop Pop Action" and I hope that it can help others. It has been useful for me and now, including George's local contrast, has even further progressed the overall effectiveness. I'd be curious to see how well it works for others. I have a flickr group here and would love to combine it with a team16 approach. Please feel free to join up and promote your own blog, website or others that you find useful. It is in its early development stages, but I would like to see it grow as a good resource for all things (legally) free and provide those of us looking to network, the means.

Here's to seeing Team6teen grow.

All the best,

Tyson

Resa's Great Idea to Post our Explored Photos

Here are my shots that made it to Explore. It is fascinating to me that the largest value of interestingness comes from the camera you used and not the content you shot. I have a Nikon D40 and a Sigma DP1. I've had 10 photos on Explore thus far out of which 7 were taken with the Sigma DP1. I've taken dozens of others with the Nikon D40 that are of similar content quality or better but don't make it to Explore. I am almost certain that part of the algorithm for Explore has to do with the camera you used (40%) + comments (15%) + faves (15%) + views (20%)... or something like that. All I am saying is that if you have a good eye, it shouldn't matter what camera you used.

Check this website.

Hi! I thought it could be a good idea to post, every time by time, some cool websites where you can find tutorials and tips about photography. I discovered this just yesterday, and I think the girl does a cool work. So go and check.

Photography by Jean Fan

Since this is meant to be an interactive blog, I invite you to write in the comments any cool website you've found :)