Mini-portfolio slideshow of my NYC photography. Play it full screen in 1080p HD if your internet connection would allow. Don’t be shy to comment or share! :-)

(Source: youtube.com)

Because it is important.

I am not unconditional Obama fan boy, and I did not had huge expectations of his presidency. I guess this is why I’m not as disappointed as some who vote for him for first term are. 

The truth is - economy will recover regardless of who president will be, so whichever party will hold Prez office for next 4 years will take credit for it and almost certainly will have next presidency as well. If Mitt come to power, it won’t be only him - it would be all the same people behind Bush administration that in chasing their own political and economical interests not only destroyed US economy and middle class - they take entire world economy down.  

Normally I would never post here content that is not mine or I don’t have permission to re-distribute it, but I’m making exception this time, because it is important that as many people as possible would read it before elections and make right choice.

Here is link to PDF file

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3d0P6cERnyjRmlxYUsxbmdvY2M

and if for some reason you can’t access link, below are pictures of all article pages.

Share with your friends because it is important!

(Source: youtu.be)

There is no secret how appealing nighttime architectural photography could be if it done the right way. But what exactly is the “right way” and how to achieve it?

First part of question is easy. Clients expecting subject photographed to look in the image not only as good as it is in real life, but even better, while at the same time still appear realistic. Better means sharp, crisp, with clean saturated colors, and brighter than our eyes can normally see at night. Answer to second part of question is more complex, but we have this answer for you.

Problem is camera can see much less range from darkest to brightest point than human eye can. So if we would just over expose to open up shadows and brighten up midtones, we also will completely obliterate all detail in highlights. We need to take several exposures for dark, midtones, and brightly lit areas and then combine them somehow into one image. But how?

Lately it been a lot of buzz about HDR or High Dynamic Range photography. It is one of the ways to combine multiply exposures into one image. By now you probably saw enough HDR images full of psychedelic halos, dirty highlights, and over saturated colors that made your eyes bleed and head spin. Although best examples of HDR photography are truly impressive work of art, they still far from appearing realistic and look rather surreal. Which makes this technique barely useful in commercial Real Estate photography.

More appropriate technique would be an exposure fusion. It been used for commercial interior photographers for quite some time, and it been used for creating images presented here.

My Workflow

Camera set on the sturdy carbon fiber tripod, pre-focused and switched to manual focus. Lens IS turned off. Bulb mode, ISO 200, F/11. White balance set to Tungsten, mirror lock up activated. Promote Control was used to trigger camera, control exposure time of each frame, and to shoot 9 exposure brackets with 2/3 EV steps. Middle frame exposure was 10 sec., mirror lock delay 2 sec.

RAW files converted to TIFF images using DxO Optics Pro7. Enfuse Pro was used for exposure fusion. Hugin engine was used for images alignment and ghost reduction. Resulted files been taken to Lightroom, and further adjustments applied. Nik Software Dfine 2 was used to remove noise, and Color Efex 4 was used to enhance tonal contrast. Lightroom was used to resize images for the web.

Equipment And Software Used

Camera Canon EOS 7D, lens Canon 24-105mm L f/4 IS, tripod Flashpoint F-1228, ballhead Acratech GP1, Promote Control.

Adobe Lightroom 4.1, Enfuse Pro, DxO OpticsPro 7, Nick Software Dfine 2, Nick Software Color Efex 4. 

Last May I shot model from Paris in NYC. Finally finished processing of all selected images, and created HD slideshow with images from that photo shoot.

Enjoy both slideshow and pictures below!

And here are pictures

(Source: youtu.be)

My reasons for signing this petition:

First, nobody’s “right” to have a weapon even combined with “right” to “stand their ground” can’t possibly to outweigh true RIGHT: to live!

Second, in this case “right to stand a ground” shouldn’t beallowed as admissible defense, because Trayvon had his right to stand his ground just as his attacker. Only he did not had a gun. If Zimmerman only intention was to “stand his ground” rather than shoot young black man, just showing gun and holding Trayvon on gun point until police arrived would be enough.

Third, to let Trayvon killing to go unpunished would send dangerous message that it is OK for every shit-face racist (or any kind of bigot for that matter) to enlist in neighborhood watch and go on the hunt for somebody they don’t like. Then you call police to report somebody “suspicious” when you find your target… and after that you’re free to kill your target unpunished. 

How would Jeb Bush like when black people start to create a “Self Defense Watch” and go to look for “suspicious” white people? Because judging by reports of Zimmerman calling police to report a “suspect” every time he saw black person, this is exactly what he was doing.

http://www.change.org/petitions/prosecute-the-killer-of-our-son-17-year-old-trayvon-martin#

I was working on custom patterns for one rapper album cover and clothing line. One came with interesting side effect - an optical illusion:
if you tilt your head very slightly to one side vertical elements seems to be tilted to the same direction, now tilt head to opposite direction - and pattern’s vertical lines start tilting other way. :-)

Interestingly enough, personally for me, if I tilt head to the right it has much more pronounced effect than when I tilt to the left. I guess its depend on how much left or right side of brain have dominance for each individual person.

One of my friends, excellent base guitar player, was asking me for quite some time to take few pictures of his guitars. 2 weeks ago I finally took some pictures of 2 of his guitars: acoustic 5 strings base and electric 6 strings custom made Fodera base guitar.

For this little project I used 6 Vivitar 285HV portable strobes with Cactus brand radio remote triggers. 3 of flashes were set in Lastolite medium size softbox to the camera right and slightly in front of guitar for creating soft main light. One flash with 3 red gels for deep red color was set at 1/4 power on the floor behind guitar aiming at drapes in background. Actual background drapes color was beige. 2 more strobes were used to add accent light from different angles on different shots. Power setting on those flashes was set from 1/16 to 1/2 depending on the angle and how far or close it was set to guitar. Flashes in softbox and one of the accent flashes was outfitted with warming gel, and camera (Canon 7D) white balance was set to tungsten. Accent flash used for strings on most of the shots was without any gels, effectively giving strings blueish tone.

Here is one of my favorite shots from that session:

What didn’t appeared in broadcast…