The Reason I Haven't Been Writing Much Recently (Photography Content)

Somewhere between driving from BC to Ontario and now I seem to have stopped writing. After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that three things have been causing it:

1) My slightly hectic first semester studying journalism at college.

2) Dedicating more time to introduce people to the southern elixir of non-alcoholic happiness otherwise known as sweet tea.

3) Actually having a DSLR.

Without further ado, here are some of my favorite shots taken between September and New Year's Eve of last year.

It's really nice when a Canon Rebel T6i is included in your course materials.

Nice!  Congrats on getting a "real" camera 

Phone cameras are pretty amazing these days, but there are some scenarios where you need more control to get what you want.  Interchangeable lens systems don't hurt either.  Speaking of, what kind of glass are you using?  

I see a possible career there.    

G_Body_Man said:

Somewhere between driving from BC to Ontario and now I seem to have stopped writing. After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that three things have been causing it:

1) My slightly hectic first semester studying journalism at college.

 

It's really nice when a Canon Rebel T6i is included in your course materials.

you might try and set aside some dough for a tripod so you don't have to rely on ISO quite so much.  I'd reckon smaller is better, in this regard.  And Joby seem to be "the answer" in this regard, thanks to Neistat.  ymmv.

also, I'll the grumpy old man (upper-30's) and point out that: until you have a job/kids... you have a lot more time than you think you have.  You're ahead of the game with being self-aware about the change... the level beyond that is being intentional with how you apply yourself to your time.  That one, though, is frequently a work in progress.  

keep it up, look forward to seeing more progress

Sounds like you're doing alright.  Keep up the shooting.  

So you ended up back in Ontario? Missed that move.

B'out time to change from "G-body" dude to something new or still carry that torch?

Pete

In reply to NOHOME :

Yup, I'm back! It's been entertaining watching progress on the Molvo both here and on Petey's Place. I've been thinking about a name change. Hopefully the avatar is distinctive enough. 

sleepyhead said:

G_Body_Man said:

Somewhere between driving from BC to Ontario and now I seem to have stopped writing. After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that three things have been causing it:

1) My slightly hectic first semester studying journalism at college.

 

It's really nice when a Canon Rebel T6i is included in your course materials.

you might try and set aside some dough for a tripod so you don't have to rely on ISO quite so much.  I'd reckon smaller is better, in this regard.  And Joby seem to be "the answer" in this regard, thanks to Neistat.  ymmv.

also, I'll the grumpy old man (upper-30's) and point out that: until you have a job/kids... you have a lot more time than you think you have.  You're ahead of the game with being self-aware about the change... the level beyond that is being intentional with how you apply yourself to your time.  That one, though, is frequently a work in progress.  

keep it up, look forward to seeing more progress

I now have two tripods! Actually, the reason I don't really use either of them is because all of these shots were for instagram, and I've gone with an underexposed lo-fi theme. (Damn millennials, eh?) A Gorillapod would be awesome, though. It's on my list right after a circular polarized filter.

I totally agree with you on the time thing. If there wasn't a five-week faculty strike forcing eight weeks of content into more or less four weeks (there was some re-jigging of vacation time to make up for some lost days) I'm sure I'd have written more. College is a time for experiences and maturity, be it realizing and accepting my food allergy or going to concerts or trying nice cheeses. As Alexandra Bracken wrote; "Let's carpe the hell out of this diem."

Matt B said:

Nice!  Congrats on getting a "real" camera 

Phone cameras are pretty amazing these days, but there are some scenarios where you need more control to get what you want.  Interchangeable lens systems don't hurt either.  Speaking of, what kind of glass are you using?  

So far I have the 18-55mm 3.5-5.6 kit lens (it's alright) and a cheap 55-250mm 4-5.6 lens (longer focal length for shallower depth of field).

I believe that Canon 55-250 is a decent lens, especially for the price.  Obviously it's not a light grabber.

A fast prime would be a great addition to your kit.  Some good 3rd party options out there.  I always had lens envy towards the 24mm STM prime as well.

pres589 said:

I believe that Canon 55-250 is a decent lens, especially for the price.  Obviously it's not a light grabber.

A fast prime would be a great addition to your kit.  Some good 3rd party options out there.  I always had lens envy towards the 24mm STM prime as well.

Agreed.  G-body, it looks like you like to take a lot of low-light shots so a fast prime would be a much better lens.  50mm f/1.8 "nifty fifties" are usually very affordable, especially used.  As far as 3rd party lenses, for what it's worth I've been satisfied with my Tamrons.

Also, are you shooting in RAW and doing any post processing?  Even if you're going for a low-fi look, you can at least choose which details you want to include.  Not to mention "rescuing" any underexposed areas no matter what lens you have.  

I'll stop there for now, as you may have just wanted to show us some shots rather than get a lecture on gear and post.

Thanks to his adroit choice of a replacement vehicle, I don't think GBM needs to change his name at all.

Matt B said:

pres589 said:

I believe that Canon 55-250 is a decent lens, especially for the price.  Obviously it's not a light grabber.

A fast prime would be a great addition to your kit.  Some good 3rd party options out there.  I always had lens envy towards the 24mm STM prime as well.

Agreed.  G-body, it looks like you like to take a lot of low-light shots so a fast prime would be a much better lens.  50mm f/1.8 "nifty fifties" are usually very affordable, especially used.  As far as 3rd party lenses, for what it's worth I've been satisfied with my Tamrons.

Also, are you shooting in RAW and doing any post processing?  Even if you're going for a low-fi look, you can at least choose which details you want to include.  Not to mention "rescuing" any underexposed areas no matter what lens you have.  

I'll stop there for now, as you may have just wanted to show us some shots rather than get a lecture on gear and post.

Funny you should mention that! I'm looking at getting an f/1.4 nifty fifty with some of the money from the scholarship cheque I'm getting from the BC government. Bokeh is love, bokeh is life.

Shooting in RAW and better post is also something I'm looking into using my scholarship cheque for. A student subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud isn't very expensive, and then I can use Premiere to edit video. I'd love to shoot more in RAW, but I have some short-term plans for the G35 that would be a better use of money spent on SD cards, so I'll wait until funds come in to expand my available storage memory.

Feel free to keep going! One of the things I've learned well in the past year is to never turn down free advice from knowledgeable individuals (my other favourite is that it's often cheaper to spend more on good stuff).

Sir I think your new name is a bit on the long side.

In reply to Daylan C :

Could be worse, I have a screen name on one website that's 13 words long and includes parentheses.

I think I'd rather have a 50 1.8 and use the remainder on a wide angle.

In reply to How Does This Millennial Afford His Lifestyle? :

Go download Lightzone, it's free and it works really well.

pres589 said:

I think I'd rather have a 50 1.8 and use the remainder on a wide angle.

Holy crap, I didn't realize how cheap Canon's own 50 f/1.8 STM lens is. Okay, I might be able to swing both a nifty fifty and a wide-angle.

Samyang 14mm or the Tokina 11-16 are both circa $300 USD, I believe.  Never used either, respect both based on what I've read, your mileage may vary.  I believe aberrations are better controlled with your average 50 1.8 vs. a 1.4, again your mileage may vary.  This is definitely the case with my Pentax M 50 1.4 vs my DA 50 1.8, and my F 50 1.7 is closer to the DA than the M.

In general (famous last words), it seems like inexpensive 50 1.8's beat out their faster cousins until a lot more money is spent.  

In reply to How Does This Millennial Afford His Lifestyle? :

I agree with Pres - skip the 1.4 for now since 1.8 glass is a much better value.  The difference isn't really worth the money IMHO, especially where you're at.  Only exception would be if you got a vintage 50mm 1.4 manual focus for like $100.

Speaking of, I personally don't think you need to spend a lot of money on lenses, especially if you have a Canon (or Nikon).  There's a lot of vintage stuff out there that is optically equivalent to the modern pieces if you're willing to do you're own focusing as I mentioned before.  Honestly, most cameras autofocus systems aren't that reliable in low-light anyway so I end up manually focusing my AF lenses in those situations.  If you're not convinced, just buy used of ebay to try them out and sell it for what you have in it when you're done. Used glass is a great way to try stuff out for almost-to-better-than-free.

The other lens I'd look at if I had a crop-sensor body like the Rebel is the Tamron 17-50 2.8 VC.  It would replace one of your kit lenses, so you could recoup some cost there.  I know a lot of people are picky about only using the manufacturer's lenses, but the last couple of generations have eliminated most of the difference and the lab tests prove it.  Here's a random one on Ebay for $169 obo.  Canon's 17-55 2.8 IS focus and stabilization are supposed to be better, but they go for more than twice the price.  If you can't tell, I'm a fan of playing it cheap until you figure out what's worth spending the big bucks on.

Also, unless you're SD card(s) are laughably small, I'd still shoot in RAW and just dump-n-clear after every shoot.  There is just so much more color information and therefore editing potential you're missing out on.  There are free software options like Trans_Maro mentioned, but Lightroom Mobile is free if you just want to play around with a Tablet or Smartphone.  You just don't get access to sharing the files across Adobe's cloud services, but there's nothing stopping you from using any others.

Hope that helps as it's worth exactly what you paid for it! I'm sure you'll have fun shooting either way.

The only suggestion I'd make to change the above post is to find the version of the Tamron 17-50 that is pre-VC; lighter, cheaper, smaller, and better image quality.  My sister uses that lens on her Canon and the results are fantastic.  I always suggest that lens to people.  

I will offer only two tidbits of advice, neither of which is related to gear, and which are worth exactly what you paid for them:

1) Think about what you want from a photograph before you take it. If you can't figure out what you want, or you don't know how to make it happen, don't take the photo. Pre-visualization is an incredibly important skill to develop if you want to advance your photography.

2) Always remember that a boring photo that is incredibly sharp, perfectly exposed, and technically brilliant is still exactly that: a boring photo.

02Pilot said:

2) Always remember that a boring photo that is incredibly sharp, perfectly exposed, and technically brilliant is still exactly that: a boring photo.

Word. 

Some people are really good at making boring stuff look awesome, and awesome stuff look boring. I found I was really good at portrait photography, but kinda sucked at sports and street photography. Street photography is tough because the vast majority of stuff on the street isn't that interesting.

If you're interested in journalism as a whole, get out to protests, marches, etc. Ask people if you can take their picture and when you do ask them simple questions and attached their answers to pictures. 

Sometimes a big part of the picture is the story. National Geographic didn't become the premier exploration and science journal by merely showing us a bunch of pretty pictures. 

A picture is worth a thousand words, but well-chosen words can multiply the value of an image tenfold.

Don't lose your comfort with writing by letting your pen become a rusty implement. Even just captioning your photos can keep you fluid with writing and help you refine what you are looking for in taking the picture in the first place.

pheller said:

02Pilot said:

2) Always remember that a boring photo that is incredibly sharp, perfectly exposed, and technically brilliant is still exactly that: a boring photo.

Word. 

Some people are really good at making boring stuff look awesome, and awesome stuff look boring.

Here's just one well-known example of taking an utterly mundane subject and turning it into a brilliant photograph: Andre Kertesz's Fork

That's a photograph that is all about the visualization and the skill of the man who made it.

Looking at the work of other photographers is very useful. Start with published photographers, everything from Daguerre and Brady up to the modern day. From there, start showing and discussing your work with your peers. Your college may have a photography group, or some organization outside the school may offer something. I attend two photo groups regularly, one of which is a salon where photographers show their work and discuss and critique others' work. While it can be tough at times, it's vital you get additional perspectives - it's too easy to fall in love with your own photos in the absence of more critical viewpoints.