Tag Archives: NYIP

A quick update and a quicky

Photographic journey, , , , , , ,

Dear all,

It still being January, I allow myself to reflect a little on 2012. It has been quite a ride, with a Wild Eye competition mention, a picture on 1x (which also made it into their limited edition yearbook No Words), getting some good air in online Newspaper articles as well as Belgian print versions and getting a shot into the high level Geographic Expeditions catalog. In short, nice things happening (you can check out the concerned shots on my newly created Awards page), yet even more things to improve upon. With Ronja joining our ranks, I havn’t been out in the field as much as I would have liked, nevertheless, besides my non photography related day job, I am enjoying photography through the NYIP course, with now 2 out of the 6 units finalized. I just submitted my projects, consisting of 6 photo assignments (only prints are accepted, which is really nice thing, since it forces you to go the extra mile in delivering a finalized product):

  1. using shutter speed to express a sense of motion/speed by panning, stopping the action or using a slow shutter speed to capture motion in your frame;
  2. use selctive focus to make the subject stand out;
  3. create a feeling of distance by using a great DoF;
  4. emphasize a sbuject by its size and off center placement;
  5. use framing to focus attention on your subject;
  6. use leading lines to draw attention to your subject.

Meanwhile, you may have noticed I finally found a way that works for me in creating nice looking galleries in my WordPress blog, being the NextGen galleries whom blow me away for their actual simplicity amongst a whole bunch of way less user friendly plugins which do the same thing, only worse and without nice widgets, such as the random shots you can see to the right of this post now. And I can tell you that I’ve been trying quite a few of them over the past few months, none of them pleasing me, finally I found something that did please me. Have a look here, I would be happy getting your opinion.

Leaving you with one of my personal 2012 favorites.

Canon 7D, Canon 300mm f/4 L IS USM, 1/8000, f/4, ISO 800
Canon 7D, Canon 300mm f/4 L IS USM, 1/8000, f/4, ISO 800

As for 2013: it promises to be quite a ride for us, yet more about that in my next blog post, which will be up later this week, along with a first guest post for the year (one which I’m really excited about), so keep an eye on this space and my related social media, you can find the relevant links on the right of this screen.

For now, HAVE A FANTASTIC 2013, GREAT LIGHT and PLEASURE in doing what you do!!!

Warm regards,

Guy

 

Back in action, a deliberate attempt to bring my photography to the next level

Photographic journey, , , , , , , ,

Dear all,

After a nice home leave during which I’ve been an offliner for most of the time, we have now settled back in and this is officially the first blog post from the new Mac (with migration from PC to Mac not having been as straightforward as I had hoped for).

The good thing about having been an offliner for so long is the fact that it has gotten me out of the daily habit to keep up with all my social media accounts. What is interesting to notice in this context is that on Twitter people stayed in touch during my absence, while my Facebook page really died down. There’s a few lessons to learn here as per which forum to choose if you want the message about your work being spread, even when yourself you’re less active for some time. That being said, I decided from now on to focus on contributing meaningfully to the more photograhy oriented fora such as G+ and 500px, while trying to get some more shots past the curators on Earthshots and 1X.

The extra time that becomes available in this way, I will use for attacking my New York Institute of Photography (NYIP) course, processing some shots and updating the site.

And while we’re at it, let me say some more about the NYIP course in professional photography. It’s a distance learning programme that uses a great mix of written and audiovisual teaching materials. And I can tell you it’s great stuff, to me it almost works like therapy, keeping me calm and out of trouble while navigating through Nairobi traffic. And then I havn’t mentioned this yet: my proof of payment to this course gave me access to the student versions of both Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS6, with the difference in price (79 vs 249 USD and 149 USD vs 999 USD respectively) actually covering my tuition fee. So while only just having started the course it is already paying off.

One of the things I always wanted to try yet which I never got my head around was the processing of an image in such a way that only the actual subject stays in the frame. With Photoshop at hand, I gave it a go on an image taken in the Bujumbura reptile parc with only ugly concrete as a background. As usual, your thoughts are more than welcome.

Canon 350D, Canon 18-55 mm @ 55 mm, 1/200, f/10, ISO 400

Before calling it a day, I want to let you know I am absolutely thrilled to have my ‘Cheetah Hunt’ image selected as one of the 220 images in the 2012 curated 1X yearbook ‘No Words’. I also entered the same shot for their 2012 photo awards, so while we’re at it and in case you feel like it, your vote is more than welcome, you can do so by clicking here.

All the best,

Guy