5 Lessons Vivian Maier Has Taught Me About Street Photography

20140427-123437.jpgEric Kim presents a fairly in-depth look at the fascinating photographic life of Vivian Maier, ending with some lessons he’s drawn from her work.

He begins;

A street photographer whose work and life I hugely admire is that of Vivian Maier. For those of you who haven’t heard her story, she worked and lived as a nanny her entire adult life– and shot street photography on the side for herself. She created incredible black and white and color work through the 1950′s all the way through the late 1990′s. She shot an incredible amount of images– that amount to over 100,000 negatives.

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AF-ON & Back Button Autofocus: This may just change the way you shoot forever

20140201-205219.jpgFrom Petapixel,

Still autofocusing by pressing halfway down on your shutter release? Well, suppose I told you there’s another way that you might even like better? Sound interesting? Read on.

The technique is called Back Button Autofocus and it can really change the way you use your camera. Rather than autofocusing with your shutter release, you move the autofocus function exclusively to a button on the back of the camera. When you first hear about this technique, it’s natural to greet the idea with a bit of uncertainty, but once you get used to focusing with this method, you may never go back.

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7 Steps to Great Black and Whites in Lightroom 5

From Photofocus;

Great black and white images require more than simply removing the color, and Lightroom 5 is a really powerful tool for making memorable black and white photographs. Take a look at this video to see the seven steps I take to make a terrific B&W image from any color image.

Watch the video, read the full article and find out more about an upcoming Google+ Hangout on the subject here.

Discover Lightroom

(31)Discover Lightroom is a new 6½ hour video workshop series that will teach you all you need to know about Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Whether you’ve never used Lightroom before and wonder if you should be using it, or you’re an old hand and want to sharpen your skils, this workshop might be just what you need.

It is presented by Chris Marquardt, presenter of Tips From the Top Floor, the Internet’s longest-running photography podcast. Chris is a German professional photographer who presents workshops in German in his home country and in English in the UK and USA. He is also the driving force behind the Everest Trek, the world’s highest photography workshop.

Head on over to Discover Lightroom where you can read more about the workshop and view some sample chapters.

Perfect Photos Every Time

20140128-131340.jpgCJ Chilvers, who previously went by the moniker A Lesser Photographer, is an advocate for simplicity in photography. He believes there is no need for the gear phobia and pixel-peeping mania that abounds but that we can make great photos with the simplest of point-and-shoot cameras, or even with our camera phones. That we have seen a number of well-received camera phone images presented at our meetings backs this up.

In this blog post he presents a short five minute video of a talk he gave and also links to another article that the talk was based on. I found it enlightening to both watch the video and read the article. You’ll find them here.

Reasons to Shoot High ISO Images

Perhaps you, like myself, had bad experiences with poor quality from higher ISO images as delivered by earlier generations of digital cameras. Does this still make you cling to ISO 100 or 200 unless there is absolutely no alternative? If so you are probably not getting the best from your newer camera. In this article James Maher gives the reasons why you should now be embracing the use of higher ISO settings.

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The Arcanum

Arcanum-blueThe Arcanum is brought to us by Trey Ratcliff of Stuck in Customs and Stuck on Earth fame. It uses the traditional master and apprentice approach to learning creative arts, but adds a twist. No longer do a master and his apprentices have to be together in the same place; The Arcanum uses technology to facilitate interaction between a master and his apprentices wherever they may be on the globe. Visit The Arcanum and view the video preview then read the rest if you’re interested. Once you’ve viewed the video you might have some questions, like Do I need Google Glass? or How much does it cost for me as an Apprentice?, and you can find answers to these and other questions in the Frequently Asked Questions.

Display Calibration

In the 2014 edition of his Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows, Scott Hanselman points out that Windows 8 and 8.1 include a number of utilities that third-party ones you needed previously. One of these is a display calibration utility.

So if you use Windows 8 or 8.1, don’t have a Spyder or other hardware calibration tool, but still want to get your monitor calibrated as well as you can, follow these instructions from Scott.

Display Calibration – Another app I once had to install, now built-in. Type calibrate from Start, and get all your monitors’ colors correct and clear. Crucial for those who work on the web or in PhotoShop.

Solving for X: Algebra of the Fujifilm X-System

Some of us attended the Fujifilm photo walk in November to try out the new X-M1 camera. A few, myself included went on to buy into the Fujifilm X-System. The rest of you may be wondering what the fuss is all about and this article from John W. Griggs’ blog gives a good overview of the Fujifilm X-System and should help you decide whether you want to stick with your DSLR system or switch to mirrorless; and if so, whether the X-System is the one for you. If you want to know more, or just missed the last photo walk, JJ is arranging another one for us in March.

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