Why do I do this?

It's not a hard question but it is a rather in depth one. As I have detailed in previous posts I am from the country and love the outdoors, so the colour and serenity I get from being outdoors fills me with zen.

When I leave my house with a camera I find that the constant mish-mash of thoughts that swirl around my brain, robbing me of my sleep, start to slow down and I can relax and focus of what I see through the viewfinder. Sometimes I just like to hike through the bush, find a place to sit and simply visualize and conceive the photo before I even take the camera from my bag.

For me this is not about money. I hate money and what too much of it does to people. I will be very happy to earn enough to feed myself and have a roof over my head. I guess I have begun to embody the "struggling artist" stereotype where the passion for what I do takes over the reasonable actions of reasonable people and I'm cool with that.

I have not nailed down my own "style" but I'm sure that will come with time and at this point I simply enjoy taking pictures and learning from them as much as I can.

What I am most excited about is my very recent venture into film. I have taken some stills and the excitement is killing me because I have no idea how they are going to turn out. I used a hand held light meter and trusted my own ability but I just don't know. 

Honestly I want some of these pictures to be complete and utter failures because with no digital data I have to use my brain and work out why they went wrong, I want to take a better photo in-camera and learning from my mistakes is a good way to do that. I have knowledge, skill and passion, but some luck would sure help things along too, also I can't just run it through Lightroom to fix exposure. What lies ahead after Tafe is very exciting.

Thanks Steve for opening up my third eye and making the other two view things differently. A person who can get me excited about history and has me hanging off their every word is damn decent bloke in my book, you are just so trendy :)

Sean Ray.

Turn around bright eyes

 

Every time I take a picture that I like as much as this one, it reminds me of how much I have learned since I took that camera thing seriously.

While walking in the hills over Hong Kong city I turned around to see the sun coming through the trees and captured this beautiful image.

When ever I walk around I always remind myself to turn around, look up, look down and explore angles all around me.

I put the original next to a black and white version, which looks best? 

A bit of my stuff

Here are a few pictures of mine that I like. I may not be as arty or creative as some of my fellow class mates but that will come with time (about 6000 hours I believe)

A tree in Westleigh where I used to live, I have taken many many many photos of this tree because it's always changing.

 This is what I like to do that most. Landscape stuff. This was taken while floating down the Nile in Egypt, a place I had wanted to go my whole life.

 Again in Egypt. This time I was floating in a balloon over the valley of the kings. I had this image in my head well before I took it, all I had to do was pick my moment. I really like this picture.

 I love to travel the world and while I have not done much I try and take the best pictures I can. I'm a Buddhist and while in Hong Kong in Jan 2012 I visited many temples and managed to take a couple of snaps that I really love.

I think this is a beautiful photo. I love how still she is and how the people behind her are blurred in movement. I also wonder what she is thinking. I really feel at peace when I'm in a temple like this one.

Even animals don't like Nikon.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2012/05/21/Grizzly-Bear-Attacks-Photographer-Rented-Nikon-D4


Now here is a little story with some funny links attached to it. Firstly it made me laugh and it gave me a chance to take humorous swipe at those Nikon people, all in good fun of course.
And secondly it does show the real dangers a guy like me could face in the future. I doubt I will encounter any bears in Wenty (likely some morons in Subaru's) but it pays to check your surroundings while outdoor.


Take a moment to look at the links for more pictures.
Cheers.
            Sean Ray

Tag line perhaps?

When I sleep my dreams are in technicolour.

It's almost over people

So with this year of tafe winding to a close I find myself looking back at all I have learnt and realise it has been a good year for me, while I still crave more education and a better inner understanding of my own skill, I am comfortable with how it has all gone.
What I have enjoyed most has been the people I have met along the way, a mixed bag of personalities and even country of origin all joined by a love of the art and the desire to be better at it.
I hope that in the months and years to come I remain close with all of you. I have been very happy to feed off your skills and share my own knowledge for the greater good.
Also the teachers that have guided me and taught me things I never thought I could do. Expanding my creative side and forcing me to think about things in a whole different light.

Thanks to all I have met this past 12 months while undergoing this tafe course, I feel I'm a better person because of it.

Sean Ray

Part 3 of 3. Phone cameras and their part in history

The Phone Camera.

For all my life my father has worked in telecommunications so being up to date and well informed of new technologies is something that is almost second nature to me.

I was lucky enough to get a mobile phone with a camera in it very early on in their development, in fact I had the first generation that was available to the Australian market and it was amazing (for the time) but since then the technology has been advancing at an amazing rate.

The first commercially available cell phone with a camera in it was the J-SH04 made by Sharp electronics (released in Japan, November 2000) and it had a whopping 0.1 megapixel capability.

It took one month for it to be replaced by the J-SH05, this was a flip phone and the first “modern” style of phone with a compact shape, low weight and colour screen with 256 colours, wow!

Today’s technology has allowed the camera phone to be an extremely useful device, allowing the user to capture images in high definition and upload them instantly to Flickr, facebook, a personal website or simply email them to anyone in the world.

A father can send a photo to his parents overseas of his wife and newborn child moments after it’s born. A detective can maintain discreet observation over a suspect without the need for obvious surveillance equipment.

The sky is the limit as to the applications of this once oddball feature from high end phones way back when Y2K was so 1999.

But the technology does have it’s own limitations. At the end of it all you are buying a phone and you don’t want it to be too big and heavy to fit in your shirt pocket all at the expense of a larger optical sensor and the memory card to support large files, not to mention the decreased batter life.

In conclusion mobile phones with cameras in them are here to stay and I think that’s a good things because they are very useful. I’m massively impressed that my phone has an 8.1mp camera in it, yet is still lightweight, thin & stylish and has a high definition LED screen, oh and it also makes phone calls.

References:

¨     http://gsmserver.com/articles/cameraphone.php - Author unknown.

¨     http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/05/the-evolution-of-cell-phone-design-between-1983-2009/ - Author unknown.

¨     http://www.thefreelibrary.com/A+Short+History+of+the+Camera+Phone-a01073959413 - Author, Neo Nashville.

3 Photos insipred by Jan Groover

3 pictures I took for my paper on Jan Groover, these were influenced by her series using kitchen utensils.

 

 

SmugMug

Hey there blog readers (all 2 of you)
It's time for another installment of what I think of the things I read on the interweb. If you watch channel 44 TVS then you might have seen a show called CNET Australia, this is a great show for nerds and those who like their tech gear. They have a great team of people who review and rate the new gear on the market from cameras, computers, software and the fresh and interesting apps that are out today.

A good little website they reviewed this week was SmugMug. A photo storage website aimed at the pro photographer for less that $40 Aussie gold coins you get unlimited online storage space. Which is incredible value when you consider how many photos you have on your harddrive(s) I have well over 30,000 and if I lost those I would be a crying mess.

Check out the article and the SmugMug website and see if you like it.
http://www.cnet.com.au/get-serious-about-photography-with-smugmug-339336362.htm
http://www.smugmug.com/

Happy shooting.
Sean Ray.

The history of photography part 2. Jan Groover

Jan Groover who died on New Year’s Day 2012 was one of the first people to blur the lines between art and photography back in the 1970’s.

She started out as a painter but soon moved towards expressing her vision through her camera. She is noted for being one who paid incredible attention to colour and film processes. And during her previous work with art she gained knowledge of and frequently used strong compositional elements with line and shape within her pictures

Her work with kitchen items and vegetables that were taken in her kitchen in an almost traditional “still life” style were seemingly boring to the uncouth onlooker but was a breakthrough in the art world showing that photography had a real place in the contemporary art scene and was no longer confined to sculptures and paintings. There was a very keen market to support this movement which these days has been all but forgotten by modern photographers who shy away from extreme modernism in favour of more emotive portraits of humans.

It’s only when you look at the pictures that you realise the art lies not in the object itself but in the shape and form of the photo, the use of line and great attention to colour. Jan worked with colour and shadow in a time where black and white was still king.

I personally enjoy her work due to the strong forward thought that has gone into the composition and the clever use of line and reflections within objects that make the boring “pedestrian” utensils seem larger than life and exciting. Any person who can take a photo of a fork and make it look interesting has a rare skill indeed. A skill that unfortunately is lost these days with popular photography.

References:

Ø  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Groover

Ø  http://www.sauer-thompson.com/junkforcode/archives/2010/11/american-photog-3.html

Ø  http://www.designwonderland.net/blog/?p=7275

Ø  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204257504577150583461782386.html

New Canon "Astrophotography" camera

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2012/04/03/Canon-EOS-60Da-for-astrophotography

New gear for those start gazing nerds out there (like me)

Canon has released a new camera that is aimed at capturing the night sky with better details and low light capabilities.

For those of you that have an interest in photographing the night sky you will know that your DSLR has an inbuilt IR filter that stops you from seeing all the incredible details of the heavens above. This new camera has a modified infra-red blocker allowing more of the red from the astral nebula to be captured by the sensor, giving you a truly "out of this world" photo (I could not help the lame pun)

Other features include a variable angle flip-out screen with incredible resolution, this is very handy as you will be most likely aiming this at the sky on your tripod. So you are now saved a sore neck.

I will keep a look out for some sample/comparison images and post when I can.

For a nerd like me this is a pretty cool bit of kit for the amateur shooter as the previous method of taking such photos was to remove the IR blocker from the camera, which cannot be replaced easily and renders the camera useless in the daylight.

Happy shooting

Sean Ray.

The History of photography. From 35mm to Digital

{Part one of three}

In my world the history of photography started with my Aunt’s film SLR back in the early 90’s. I loved the way the steel body felt and was fascinated by the sounds it made but in 2002 I got given my first camera, a 3.2 megapixel Sony and there were so many wonderful moments captured with it. For me the passion for the art started with that digital camera and I have seen incredible growth in technology since that analogue SLR to the latest 80 megapixel camera used by Ken Duncan.

But as for world history we must go back much further than that.

Eastman/Kodak brought photography to the masses making it simple for people to capture what they saw in the world. 35mm film has shown us all some amazing and unforgettable moments in time. We know the photo by Steve McCurry captured on Kodak kodachrome film in 1984 of an Afghan girl in a refugee camp.

Kodachrome film was the standard amongst professionals and sophisticated amateurs alike since it was released in 1935 till its death in 2010 after a steady decline in sales due to its time consuming developing process and the surge in digital technology. A surge that would eventually be the end of Kodak.

It’s little known that the first digital camera was created by Kodak in 1975 but it was not till the late 90’s that the technology became accessible to the public and the developments since then have been amazing.

Swedish camera maker Hasselblad offer a 200 megapixel camera that’s costs AU$43,000 while you can find spy cameras built into a pen on ebay for $20.

These days almost everyone with a mobile phone will have a small camera in the back of it and they can be up to 8MP that can instantly upload to Flickr. But the new kid on the block is the Lytro “light field” camera. It does not work with pixels but with light vectors and is literally the birth of a new and monumentally mesmerizing technology. The future is most exciting.

So in conclusion.

Eastman/Kodak started it all in the late 1890’s and sadly they are now a bankrupt company that failed to move with technology despite inventing an abundance of it, the same can be said for Poloaroid, a fun and instant way of taking a picture that is now seen as overly expensive and pointless with the new generation. Even optics giant Olympus is having a very public battle with the bean counters.

So will the Lytro camera make it in this new tech world? The film world rejected the digital revolution and thus far the digital world is not warming to this new invention. It remains to be seen but if history has taught me anything it’s that if I don’t keep up with the ever changing utensils of the trade I risk appearing out of touch with the world I have so much passion for, luckily I’m a techno nerd.

References:

ª     Kodak/George Eastman website

ª     Lytro.com

ª     Hasselblad.com

ª     Ebay.com.au

ª     Stevemccurry.com

ª     Cnet.com.au

ª     Smh.com.au

ª     Personal conversations with Ken Duncan

Candice.

New Carl Zeiss wide lens

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2012/03/16/Carl-Zeiss-Distagon-T-15mm-F2p8-super-wide

Well for those of you out there who like to splash the cash, this is the new "must have" item. The super high quality German optics manufacture Zeiss has released their new wide lens with Canon and Nikon mounts (full frame only for both). It has a full metal barrel, with buttery smooth focusing ring and boasts a very wide angle of view with 110 degrees across the face. Now you might be saying "hold on a moment SeanRay, both Nikon and Canon have a lens that offers the same if not higher angle of view" and you would be right. They also have extremely high standards of construction. So will the more than $3000 asking price be worth the bragging rights? I am unlikely to get my hands on one to make a comparison but while it does look very posh I will stick with my L-series lenses and leave this for the posers.

Cheers.

SeanRay :)

An incredible photo from Australian contemporary photographer Robyn Stacey. It’s simply called "Monkey" and I can’t stop looking at it.

Adobe Lightroom 4

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/7481161037/lightroom-4-review

Well the new version of the much loved Adobe lightroom has been released and this 4^th version looks to be a great improvement over the previous versions I have been using.

The biggest addition has been the new Book feature. Using elements from other Adobe programs such as Indesign to allow the user to create layouts for photobooks and either export them as a PDF or directly to an American book printer called Blurb. This is great for those who want a simple way to create amazing looking books using their own work in the same programme they used to edit it. I like this full circle way of doing things as you don’t need lots of programs for the same thing. Of course it is not as powerful as using Indesign for layouts and overall features and it never will be.

The Adobe website as always has a raft of new tutorials to help you explore and understand what is new and exciting with this update and they are very easy to understand for those that may be new to the software. A bonus for the non computer savvy like myself.

I have been a big fan of lightroom since I started using it last year and will have no hesitation getting the new version once funds permits me to do so.

Happy photographing,

Love SeanRay.

Canon 5D Mark III!

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2012/03/02/Canon-5D-Mark-III

Side by side. The new heavy hitters.

The long awaited 5D MK III is now out and it looks to be an interesting time for the much favoured camera from Canon. With the new Nikon D800E boasting a far higher megapixel count it on paper has the goods over the 5DMKIII.

The biggest problem ahead of it’s Australian release is the price. Pricing information was taken fromwww.teds.com.au and have the 5DMKIII body only listed at $4200 with the Nikon D800 (also a new release to the Aust market) is listed at $3800! and it should be noted that at this point the 5D MKII has not had a price reduction…. Yet.

Now without going in depth to my normal extent. I believe this will cost Canon greatly in sales because Megapixels sell and unless you are going for the top of the tree from these 2 manufactures (Canon 1DX or Nikon D4) it will be a hard sell to the untrained consumer to buy a 22.3Mp camera when for $400 less you can get a 36.3Mp. To make things clear I am a Canon person so I guess the proof will be in the sample images and customer reviews from the Australian market later in March when both are on sale.

But it’s hard to believe the Canon 5D MKIII would be superior to any dramatic level over the Nikon D800. These are pro level cameras and both have an extremely high level of construction and the R&D from the world leaders in Cameras.

My choice. Save your cash for a Canon 1DX for a cool 9 grand.

Love.

SeanRay :)