Kim St. Dennis Photography

Digital Photography School.com is an interesting site. Darren Rowse, the editor and founder is Austrian based and post about all things for the digital photographer.
 
The tips and tutorial entries sometimes center around creative inspiration and theory which is why I like them so. Today's post centers around being a curious photographer and Rowse has some helpful tips to check out.


How to Be a Curious Photographer

So I ran across this over at Darren Rouse's Digital Photography School but dont know who the origional author is to give credit to.
At any rate its a fantastic graph of the life of a photographer. Where do you land on it?


Edit: So, my buddy Mike Kang noticed that I hadnt placed myself on the graph. Well, I've been shooting with an old Hasselblad film camera for about 7 months now and recently decided I didnt really care about gear anymore and that the image itself held the only importance. So, I guess that leaves me between, "one exposure per motive" and "Death." Ha!

 I must admit, I love an English accent on a woman. While shooting Tanya the other day I noticed her accent, but it was just slightly off. I thought maybe northern England, Cockney or something. So, I asked. Australian she said.



The set up was 2 softboxes, one large on top, on a boom, the other medium on a background stand. You know the little 3 leg stands. one softbox right on top of the other, concave, directly in front of Tanya for that nice even head shoot look. Then added in one light for fill camera right just with a reflector and 20% grid. The lower softbox and fill were 1/3 of the top softbox which was key.





















 So, on a side note,we caught the World  Cup final on Sunday. There was the two of us Holland suppopoorters in a Peruvian restaurant withabout 150 Spanish supporters. It was fun, but in the end the Dutch lost which was heartbreaking. My sports interest will now wain again for the next 4 years....

Los Angeles is a used tissue for aspiring professional photograhers. I paint that picture only becuase in order to shoot at a lot of our lovely locations around the county, you need to caugh up some dough. This is a side effect of LA being the home of the US film industry for the past 100 years or so. Essentially, unless you "run and gun," every Tom, Dick, and Harry has their hand out to get paid if a tripod or lightstand hit the ground. What can one do?

Well, one can take a class at a local college and use the studio, parking garage, and out door locations there! This maximizes the econmics of paying for shooting space and also gets me out of the house every thursday night (as if someone had to pull my arm to get me out).

So, my buddy James Stiles (www.jamesstilesphoto.com) grabs about 8-10 of us a handful of models each week, we set up some lighting to our desired look, we get the use of a free MUA, and get to shoot away. The studio is about 2.5k sqft. equiped with 6-8 Norman packs and 16 or so heads, super big softboxes, gels, grids, etc. Considering the cheaperst studio Ive found to rent is $25.00 per hour, the cost of the class is not bad at all.

So lots going on, but Ill drag it out over time as I can.

Sold off the Nikon D300 and switched up to a Canon 5D mark II. This means selling all my Nikon gear and picking up some Canon stuff. A few intersting things I noticed...

My photography is at a point where I own and shoot with a medium format film camera (Hasselblad 503cx), have learned enough about lighting to deconstruct photos fairly well, and really dont care about camera brand anymore. I'm at a stage where composition and creativity mean more than anything else.

So, I wrote my favorite Nikon author and asked him for some reccomdations for Canon authors to which he replied "And there’s never really been as much there [Canon] as with Nikon, anyway." Wow, I guess the brand wars go deeper than I thought.Scratch off favorite tech author for future Canon advice. =^)
 
 So, Im loving the camera so far. It hasnt actually been that big a switch not like moving to a hasselblad. Next move I make if I do will be to a H3D or something like that. Ive always eyed this Rolleiflex. But, that can all wait. Ive purchased a new camera and have shedded some of the gear fever that can run so rampant. Now, I just want it to work smoothly. Funny thing is, thats why I bought a mac! hahaha. Even funnier, I get paid to work on Windows!

 

Let me prefrence this by saying I think a still camera should be a still camera and not a all in one multimedia device. Focus on the still sensor, not new features I will seldom use. with that said, Drew Garder is pretty fantastic. Check him out here:
http://www.drewgardner.co.uk/


At any rate hes got a new webinar coming up about video which may be interesting. Check it out and register here:
http://manfrottoschoolofxcellence.com/2010/04/23/still-in-motion-multimedia-techniques-to-shoot-with-the-new-dslr-cameras-with-video-capabilities/

©Drew Gardner. Photo from manfrottoschoolofxcellence.com

Last couple of shots here with the Nikon D300. Its been a good camera for me. Thanks for that. Out with the old and in with the new!






















More to come.

K.