It's That Time Again...

Once again, I'll be entering the Guardian's monthly travel photo competition and, once again, I'm having a hard time deciding which photo to enter. The theme this month is "Journey", and I have several travel photos that I think might fit the bill (below), but I can't decide which is most appropriate. As always, any thoughts/feedback are greatly appreciated!

Option 1: An old helicopter in the botanical gardens in Volta, Ghana.

Option 2: An airplane at the edge of the lake in Alaska.

Option 3: City directions from the Belfort in Bruges.

Option 4: On the boat ride to Ganvie stilt village in Benin.

Option 5: From the bus on a road through the Volta region in Ghana.

The Polls Are Open

The time has come, once again, for me to enter a photography competition. Of course, this means that the time has also come for me to be indecisive. So, dear friends, I ask you once again for your opinions. The polls are open. I would be very grateful for any thoughts you have on which photo you like best. The theme for the competition is water. Feedback is greatly appreciated!

Keukenhof in the Netherlands:

Wli Waterfall in Ghana. Note the person in the lower right corner of the image, next to the tree. The waterfall is about 60 meters high.

A building in the Ganvie Stilt Village in Benin, West Africa.

National World War II Memorial Water Fountain in Washington, D.C.

The Washington Monument.

Am I a Jelly Doughnut?

In a famous speech in Berlin in 1963, John F. Kennedy said "Ich bin ein Berliner," leading to decades of controversy over whether he gave the citizens of Berlin a good chuckle by calling himself a Berliner, which is a kind of jelly doughnut. In his Dress to Kill sketch, Eddie Izzard, suggests that JFK did, in fact, call himself a jelly doughnut, while David Emery swears that JFK, using perfect grammar, asserted that he stood with the people of Berlin. Of course, with my ridiculously rudimentary knowledge of German, I'm hardly able to weigh in on this debate. However, during my time in Berlin, I couldn't help but think--am I a jelly doughnut?

I only had 3 short days in Berlin, but I loved every minute--it is such a historically rich, unique city. From the Berliner Dom to the Reichstag, the people on the tram to Darth Vader at the Brandenburg Gate, the schnitzel to the doner, the whole city is such an interesting amalgamation of old and new, funky and classic, eastern and western. I had my camera in hand the whole time, but I feel as though I did not--could not--adequately capture the character of the city. I would love to visit again with a focus on shooting candid portraits; as this was my first time in Berlin, I was obviously caught up in the sites, and my photos were focused primarily on the architectural elements of the city, but I feel like so much of what makes Berlin interesting is its people. I can't call myself a Berliner (or a jelly doughnut) after one short trip, but I would love to spend some time photographing some true Berliners. Still, I managed to take a ton of photos. I hope you enjoy the one's I've shared below!

(In)decisions

Most of my time lately has been devoted to shooting portraits (see my previous post) and some new travel photos in Germany, France, and Belgium (below), but I also have some exciting news to share. In early March, I decided to enter the Guardian newspaper "Been There" travel photo competition. Much to my surprise and pleasure, I was selected as a finalist for the March competition, and my photo was published online (click here to view my photo, entitled Solitude on Stanley Lake). Needless to say, I'm feeling pretty motivated to enter the April competition, so I need to make some decisions.


Unfortunately, as usual, I'm having a hard time deciding which photo to enter, and the photo is due tomorrow (the 23rd). The theme for April is "Street Life"--anything which captures daily life in an urban setting. I think I have a few shots which capture urban life from my recent trip to Paris. While I'm drawn to the photos of the performer climbing the lamppost with a soccer ball, perhaps the Parisians lounging on the banks of the Seine does a better job of capturing daily life? I also feel that the film grain on the performer pictures is a little distracting--it was a very dreary day, and the ISO settings combined with the high humidity mean there's a lot of noise in those photos.

Suffice it to say I'd be grateful for some external opinions. Is there one that strikes you as fitting the theme particularly well (or badly)? One with more striking composition as compared to the others? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

My Latest Gig

I am finally back from my whirlwind adventure (more on that soon), and one of my first tasks upon my return was to shoot some portraits for a friend. She was particularly interested in resume photos, but we also had some fun doing more relaxed photos outdoors. The idea of a resume photo was a new concept to me--as I've applied primarily for jobs in the U.S., I've never been expected to submit a photo with a job application. Obviously the idea is to select a photo which is professional, but hopefully also conveys a bit of your personality. In order to make sure that I shot at least a few that would serve the purpose, I shot a wide variety of photos, ranging from extremely serious to happy.

In addition to shooting several hundred photos in different settings, with different clothing and hairstyles, and featuring different expressions, I also applied a variety of editing techniques (black and white, sepia tone, vignetting) to add variety and really make the photos stand out from the pack. I did the majority of my editing in Adobe Lightroom 4--I'm using the free 30 day trial, and trying to get a feel for how the program differs from (and is similar to) Lightroom 3. Rather than having a simple fill flash slider, as was the case in LR 3, LR4 allows you to adjust highlights, shadows, whites, and blacks all independently. As a big fan of the highlight recovery feature in LR3, I'm pleased to see these additional features in LR4. However, the added control does also mean that adjusting the light in the photo takes a bit more tweaking than in the previous version of the program. I also found that adjusting the luminance--both the overall luminance and color-specific luminance as necessary--really helped to even skin tone.

At any rate, below are a few of my favorite photos from the shoot. As always, I'm grateful for constructive feedback!

Fun with Filters

As you probably already know if you've been following my blog, I've been invited to contribute a photo collage to a calendar for charity (if you have no idea what I'm talking about, check out my previous post). The theme of the calendar is what peace means to each artist, and everyone else is contributing either a painting or a drawing. In order to make my collage fit with the rest of the calendar stylistically, I decided to teach myself all about filters for this project. For those who are reading my blog to pick up a few tips, you may find the next few paragraphs to be handy. For those who just want to see some pictures, this entry is particularly full of them! Below, I've posted the original photo (some with tweaks such as slight overexposure to make to make the filters work better), followed by the version I edited using filters. I've also posted two versions of the collage--same photos, arranged in different ways. I would really love some feedback if you have a strong initial reaction in favor of one versus the other. Finally, there are a few photos that aren't related to the collage--I just edited them for fun!

So, now to the technical tips. GIMP didn't come with some of the filters I was interested in applying, so I had to search around on the GIMP registry for a bit before I found the scripts I was looking for. I found these to be particularly useful. You'll need to have Python properly installed for these extra scripts to work, though (if you're confused by that statement, check out this entry). Download the second file (_246c.zip) and follow the instructions in the enclosed read me file. I will say, the scripts folder was not exactly where he said it would be, so I had to dig around a bit. I promise, though, it's there! Just snoop around in the GIMP files until you find it. If you're already running GIMP, you'll need to restart it before the scripts show up.

Ok, so you have your script installed. Now what? If you have a photo you're interested in editing open, take a look in the Script-fu menu option--you should see a bunch of new options under Photo Effects. There are also a few hidden in the regular filters menu for some reason--for example, the Stamp option, which gives you the ability to make a photo in the style of the iconic Che Guevara image, is hidden in Filters-->Decor-->Photo Effects-->Artist. No idea why. At any rate, just start playing around with all of these filters--me describing them in painful detail will never be as good as you fiddling around until you figure out what each little slider button on each filter does. A few pointers before you begin, though:

1. Don't save over your original! Give your experiment a new file name. Hopefully this is an obvious tip, but it's worth repeating...

2. One filter is probably not enough. On some of the photos below, I applied 10+ filters before I arrived at a photo I was happy with. For example, pastel, unsharp mask, oil painting, unsharp mask.

3. Don't be afraid to fiddle with the colors and really crank up the saturation--obviously it depends on the look you are going for, but I found that some of the images still looked way too much like photos until I started applying more vibrant colors. I actually did some color adjustments in Lightroom and then moved back to GIMP between filters for a few of the photos. The photo of the street below is a good example of this.

4. As you may have guessed from tip #2, I like to apply unsharp mask a lot. Turn the threshold down and the radius up quite a bit and it can really help to define the subject of the photo if applying an artistic filter made it look like a big ugly blob. Doesn't always work, but give it a shot.

5. I occasionally needed to edit a photo for color/contrast/exposure before editing to get the effect to work in the desired manner. The filters will be particularly uninspiring on low contrast or dark images. Don't be afraid to slightly overexpose or underexpose an image so that it will pop when you apply a filter.

6. I often use the smudge tool to remove some detail. Likewise, you may want to clone out some of the details. The photo of the children on the grey background and the buildings on the pastel street below are two good examples of this. Sometimes too much detail gives it away as a photo--try ditching some detail.

Alright, enough talk! Time for some photos.

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Collage version 1:

Collage version 2:

And some extras, just for fun!