Just a quick journal entry to wish you all a merry Christmas and a safe break over the holidays. Thanks for the support over 2009, it's very much appreciated.

- Alex

Hi there.

I haven't been on deviantart as much as I'd like recently as I generally haven't been shooting much, but think I'm slowly becoming more interested again. I recently just picked up a Canon 5D Mark II which I LOVE! This thing is beautiful.

Anyway, the reason I'm posting was to share a very inspiring gallery by Michael Anderson ([link] Give this guy a look, amazing.



- Alex

Wow how time flies! I've just compiled a series of some of my favourite shots from the year and thought it may be of interest to some [link]

I wish you a merry Christmas and a prosperous 2009.

Thanks to both John ([link] and aksdareflection ([link] for recently suggesting and publishing my shot as a daily-deviation ([link]. It really means a lot

Thank you to everyone who showed their support recently regarding the theft of my images. I hope other work is removed as it frustrates me to see her claiming and enjoying the kind words that obviously the original photographer deserves.


Thanks again

- Alex

My blog which is updated frequently
[link]

HDR is over-rated.

hello

To me high dynamic range imagery is like turbulence in the sky… We are experiencing it one minute but gone the next. In recent times everyone has jumped on the Photomatix bandwagon and producing over-baked, poorly composed and utter crap imagery. But luckily it’s not all negative with there being those using it to their advantage and you wouldn’t even pick that HDR has been used and this is how it should be. However where do you draw the line?

Just for anyone unfamiliar with HDR then here is a bad example

[link]


At times I have occasionally received comments from people saying that some of my photography is "photoshopped". This is frustrating especially when the photograph isn’t edited and instead the colours and light which nature provides us is the real "photoshopping". I would like to explain my thoughts on editing and the means which I use that are no doubt similar to others.

For those unaware, when you take a photograph with a dslr camera you have the option of shooting in JPEG or RAW. I believe the point and shoot range is also slowly adopting the RAW format. To keep it quite simple, such format allows greater control of your image from colour temperature, shadows, exposure, contrast and so fourth. This format is used instead of JPEG because upon taking a photograph with a JPEG the camera automatically enhances your image with sharpening and other adjustments. For this reason people shoot RAW so they can edit the file accordingly. At times upon taking a photograph in the RAW format it’s apparent that the file may not reflect the scene with contrast, saturation and other things being a little off.  For this reason, photographers in the digital age have no choice but to adjust these things which was also made possible in the traditional darkroom. But it’s apparent to some that this is cheating but in comparison how do we define people who may add and remove objects, change skies, etc which truly don’t reflect the scene which was originally captured. There is capturing an image in camera and calling it photography but capturing somewhere how it didn’t appear is a whole new ball game. This to me is photo manipulation which is fine but please don't pretend your image is straight off the camera as it's a little more obvious then you think.

Here are three of my popular photographs un-edited and straight from the camera.

Before: [link]
After: [link]

Before: [link]
After: [link]

Before: [link]
After: [link]


I understand that we must embrace the digital age and the advantages which it brings but also at the same time we must not neglect traditional photography. Just because you’ve taken a bad photograph, this doesn’t mean running it through Photomatix will somehow make it any better. Work on the composition of the image and then consider how you can use HDR to your advantage. Could HDR be the new selective desaturation? Ride the trend properly and don’t make excuses to use HDR because it won’t make your photograph any better.

I would be interested to hear peoples thoughts? Do you share the same view and believe HDR is getting a little over the top? Or do you differ and love the imagery that looks like it's out of a computer game?

wow that's deep.

- Al

A few months ago I was playing with time-lapse photography and compiled the files but never got around to uploading the finished copy? Just a small crappy version which didn't really do any justice.

Here is the final copy from this series of timelapses around Hobart, Australia.

[link]

(Right click and hit save as)

To make the time-lapses I was taking a photograph every 15 seconds for a period of 30 minutes then compiled them together in Quicktime Pro and voila.  If you are interested in making your own and have any questions be sure to fire away

Have a good weekend,

Alex