[Neuse River Sailor]

Thanks, Rod, for the kind comments. Faith looks forward to the time or two a week that I visit her grandmother and she gets a chance to take some pictures. In a few days we are all going to a burn survivors' group get together (her grandmother's boyfriend was burned in a house fire) and I have been talking to her about being discreet and not making anyone feel self-conscious with the camera. I told her to speak with the group leader first to see if it is ok to take pictures, and if there is anyone who is especially self-conscious, not to force herself on them. She listened and understood, and I am hoping she can get some good candid pictures at the picnic. Believe me, the concept of discretion is not something that comes easily to an eleven year old. But it is a lesson that will serve her well as a photographer and in all aspects of life.

Here's a picture she took a few days ago. She has no problems with sprawling out in the grass to get on a level with her subject.

[ChristianRock]

It's been very inspirational to read so many stories and what everyone is focusing on...

Me, photography wise, there's a few things I'd like to be able to work on more.

1.To really get to know a focal length, and make it a focal length in the normal range. Probably 30 or 35mm (APS-C).
2.To do more street photography, losing the fear of snapping people pictures.
3.To do a series on black and white. I do black and white sometimes but not often, and I feel that focusing a month or two on it would make me focus on lines and textures because I won't be able to rely on colors alone.
4.To find subjects other than flowers, and not to rely on bokeh so much
5.To really start finding my way around post processing.

If I can do those 5 in the next couple of years I'll be feeling pretty accomplished! I think I'll just have to make myself do it by setting a clear objective for a set period of time.

[savoche]

3.To do a series on black and white. I do black and white sometimes but not often, and I feel that focusing a month or two on it would make me focus on lines and textures because I won't be able to rely on colors alone.

Most of the Daily In crowd did a month of black and white last November. I found it very rewarding with the nice side effect of learning a lot about b&w post processing and how colour balance influence the result when converting an image to b&w. Highly recommended.

[ChristianRock]

Most of the Daily In crowd did a month of black and white last November. I found it very rewarding with the nice side effect of learning a lot about b&w post processing and how colour balance influence the result when converting an image to b&w. Highly recommended.

That is one thing I learned recently from studying a black and white "preset" that I liked a lot in Darktable - it used tone splitting to create a really interesting color balance before converting. As a result, I became more aware of the color balance for black and white (was trying this via contrast before) and I've even been using the tone splitting module to change how texture looks in closeups, and to give a bit more "vintage look" to urban style photography. And I feel I'm just scratching the surface... the possibilities are almost overwhelming.

I think it's the composition part that I need to focus on when doing the B&W period - such as trying to have pure whites and blacks in the picture, emphasis on textures and just trying to use more lines and curves to lead the viewer's eyes. These 3 things.

[WildPortraits]

One of my favorite summer projects is exploring my yard. Luckily I have a large yard including around 6 acres of woods and another few of assorted wetlands and grasslands. And with a macro lens, it is like exploring a jungle. So many tiny insects leading big lives, all easy to overlook without slowing down and really looking.

[R. Wethereyet]

My long term project was a book on Algonquin Park. Whether or not it's still a project, I am uncertain. I've shown first drafts to park staff. They aren't interested. Well they are interested if I pay the full cost of publishing and they just have to put it on their shelves. So for now I have a very nice personal album documenting all aspects of my time in the park, along with a couple of my favourite essays on various Canoe Tripping related topics. To print them as 1 offs is about $150 Canadian, occasionally I can get them printed at half price for about $80 CDN and if I ever do another order, one of my friends has asked for a copy, at that price. And she's in the book in 3 different places. I'm not seeing it as a big seller unless I can get the price way down. The price the park staff would like to see it at would be 39.95. They'd take $10 per copy, for selling it, I'd have to get them produced for $29 to make $1 a copy. I'm simply not going to like the IQ and paper weight of what I can get for that.

So it's sort of an on going project. Inertia says that even though I've already added two pages with new wildlife images, I'll probably never order another copy. It's sort of withering on the vine at the moment. During the last 10 years I've probably paid over $10,000 (much of it paid for by photographer clients I took out on trips) in park fees for over 300 days in the park , carried 20 pounds of camera gear over 200 km and paddled it for another 700 or 800 km. I've taken images in places where there's probably never even been a DSLR before. It's been a great ride, but I'm ready to lay it aside.

I'm looking forward to be able to go for a trip, and just enjoy the trip, with maybe my K-3, 18-135 and 60-250, and just be a tourist like everyone else.

I kind of feel like I'm retiring from my retirement job.

I second Skodadriver's comment - "Don't give up on the book!". My project is to extract some hard copy images for the thousands of digital files buried deep in the bowels of my computer. I have come across the idea of creating "magazines" from Blurb for some of our family vacations. They are very high quality (from the reviews I've read - still working on my first publication) and very reasonably priced - starting at around $6 USD per copy. Perhaps that could be an idea for you? Create magazines for different areas of the park and charge less - they will sell like "hotcakes"!! ;-D

Here is one persons video review of a photo project produced as a magazine: Social Doc Photography Tips and Blurb Review - YouTube

[Neuse River Sailor]

Working with my young student today. We shot a Super Takumar 35mm f3.5 on a 20mm extension tube. It was her first experience shooting with an extension tube and also first time using focus peaking, so she had a couple of new concepts to grasp. It took some practice to learn to slowly move the camera until she caught focus and admittedly she had 10 out of focus shots for every good one, but hand-held macro on a manual lens is a steep learning curve. A couple of them came out so good, at least to an eleven-year old girl's way of thinking, that I'm sure it will make her enthusiastic to keep trying:





She also got a good one of her sister:

[monochrome]

Shoot within walking distance of your house. Over and over. Hmmmm. I’ve never thought anything around me was interesting enough - so I’ll have to figure out how to make it interesting.

Good Project - I’m in!

[Drinkkeri]

For my personal projects there are three questions that I must answer before I even touch my camera. I understand that someone may feel this is not a very relaxing way to enjoy photography but I don't know any better

What?
As I mostly work with people I need to find out if people available have any interesting hobbies, habits, outfits or even moods that I share and that I can work with. There needs to be something that resonates with me and with the idea I have as the idea is the spark that leads to these questions in the first place.

Where?
The location matters. Apart from how it suits the photo Im going to take I often ask if there is electriciry? How does weather affect or restrict the shoot? Any other restrictions(small spaces, access restrictions, unstable surfaces, honeybadgers? etc) I don't do a lot of studio photography even for work and tend to avoid being in a studio as much as possible for my personal projects too so I spend a good amount of time looking and thinking how I can implement my answer to "what?" in a location.

When?
Even indoor locations are sometimes effected by the time. Is there light coming from somewhere that causes problems or is the lack of light from some source a problem? What about the weather? Can something be done to avoid time restrictions or must the shoot happen at certain time? How does the location look in summer compared to say late autumn? If it's winter can I get my model(s) to somewhere warm during pauses?

[twilhelm]

Most of the summer I've worked with black and white film again, and have now mixed my third developer, ID-11. The recipe was relatively simple and had several ingredients similar to Rodinal (PaRodinal). So that gives me three different developers PaRodinal, Caffenol and ID-11.

For the "within walking distance" this is Svema MZ-3, an ISO 3 film in my ID-11 behind the local fire-station. Kind of a "dreamy" film.

[normhead]

Boy that image brings back some memories.

[WildPortraits]

I like to try different projects that make me see differently. For a while I shot tiny minerals with extreme macro lenses, they seemed like small universes. I still do this some, but it required focus stacking and a lot of computer work so it takes more time than I often have. I also like to shoot miniature scenes, using tiny figures or props in nature to create small imaginary landscapes. It's also good for me just to shoot in my yard, as others have said. Since I live in an area with 4 seasons there is something new every day.

[normhead]

I shoot outside with BW bear *Bird Watcher Bear) once or twice a year. It's always fun. This year it was yesterday.

This year's mushroom hunt with BW Bear - PentaxForums.com

[Ed Winchester]

I'm lucky enough to live with the bleakly beautiful Dartmoor landscape right on my doorstep, and my photographic project is still what it has always been: to try to capture that landscape the way it really looks, rather than in a way that conforms to contemporary clichés of what a "landscape photograph" should look like.

It's the aspect of modern photography that I struggle most to understand: why do people come to this amazing place and then photograph it in a way that has no resemblance to the reality of it? Why can I type "Dartmoor" into Flickr on any given morning and find photos of a blazing red sunset from the evening before, when I was out on the moor myself and know that it was actually just the pale pink that we usually get? How do people always manage to make even the grass look the wrong flippin' colour?

People don't seem to come here and think, "How can I capture this moment in this place the way it is?" Instead they always seem to be thinking: "How can I distort this scene to make it look the way the internet tells me a landscape photo should look?"

The photographers whose work I admire are almost never the ones using the latest greatest gear. The ones I admire are the ones who show me their own world truthfully in the way in the way that they see it themselves.

Hi Dave. I’m based in Plymouth and am looking to get up there ASAP, would you be interested in a joint venture? I’m new to the forum so haven’t looked at private messages so if you are keen feel free to e-mail me.
I’ve also got the Astro bug and the gps unit if you want to take turns getting black pictures?! Cheers.

[ZombieArmy]

There's a specific picture I want to take. I have the exact picture in my head on how I want it to come out but I'm figuring out how to do it as a single shot, on top of figuring out when, where, battling the weather, whether film or digital would be better for the shot.

I have full intentions of taking this shot at some point, but I have a lot more to learn before I do.