We all travel while traveling, right?
Often however I see photographers traveling with their camera in the bag just hanging in their seats waiting to arrive at the location, however there are often many cool options to shoot while traveling.
Today some images I shot on the ferry from the mainland UK to the Isle of Wight.
It’s only an one hour commute but there is a lot to shoot and the time flies when you’re shooting 😀
In the old times we choose the filmrol for the look we wanted, now a days everything is of course digital and although I still love to shoot with film my workflow is 99% digital. I do however always say that “In my workflow I’m a 99% digital photographer, however in my heart I’m a 100% analogue photographer”, now why do I tell you this today?
When I look at my digital files I always feel something’s missing.
They are not bad, or looking weird, but they are just a bit “too” perfect, I know it sounds weird from a guy teaching to use the color checker and light meter however do realize that these tools are just to get the basis right, from this basis I always build up to the final look.
ALL the images you see from me are in one or another form tinted.
The last few years I’ve been mainly using the awesome DxO filmpack for this but since the release of Alien Skin Exposure X I have to be honest I’m more and more switching “back” to Alien skin, the X release is just really nice. If you already have filmpack… don’t upgrade (unless you want to) but if you don’t have any tinting plugin yet make sure to check out Alien Skin Exposure X (follow this link for a cool discount).
But what does tinting do?
To show you this and also to let you see my thought process I included 4 images from a session we did with Nadine in 4 different looks, it’s the same image, the only thing I changed are the colors, judge for yourself which one you like the best 😀
As you can see 4 totally different looks with different “feelings”.
I would normally just go through some presets I created and sometimes it just fits, but there is more….
If you shoot a commercial series it’s very important to keep the look constant, in other words use the same preset for all your images, now you also understand why it’s important to keep that basis correct, because if the basis is the same/correct the preset will give you the same results.
To make sure you select the right preset I would advise to try out your favorite preset on a few images and if they look awesome that’s the preset to use, however very often a really cool preset can look awesome on Photo 1 but terrible on Photo 2, often you will quickly see what the “problem” is, it’s better to select a different preset than that fits great for all images.
For commercial shoots I will also normally show a few images in a black and white conversion I really like, this way the client can always choose and making sure the clients gets a lot to choose from means that they will order more prints, but you will actually have a bigger chance they will hire you again because you give them a lot to choose from.
So the next time you’re done with your image…. and you think it’s perfect….. run it through a tinting plugin and I’m sure you will be very surprised 😀
We just released a brand-new instructional video called “Beyond snaps : Street and travel photography tips”
We all love photography right?
So when we travel the camera always travels with us, however how often did it happen to you that when you looked at the images at home you thought “Now where is that killer shot?, I know I made it”. Well we all know that feeling, often while traveling there isn’t time to wait for the perfect light, get the perfect position to shoot from etc. there is always something going on that will prevent us from taking the perfect shot.
In this video you travel with us through the beautiful Sweden and I’ll give you a lot of tips about how you can go “Beyond snaps”.
The video contains many topics like :
using GPS for more adventure, internet on the road, backups, power while traveling, gear advise, using lenses for special effects, finding the interesting angle, how to approach people, tripod tips, shooting a sunset very easily (or faking one), making roads interesting and much much more…
The video is jam-packed with information and will make sure that your next trip doesn’t end in “Now where are the good shots”, but will end in “LOOK at this shot”.
Video run time : well over 95 minutes
Quality : Shot on 4K, video is 1080P for download
File size : App 7 GB
You can now order the video straight from our video page or via :
We all know that photography is taking pictures…. However is it just that or is there more….
Well when a blogpost starts like this there is of course more, right…
During our travels we often also visit landmarks and to be honest I always find these challenging, not to shoot them but to create something that hasn’t been done before, because let’s be honest everything has been done once or twice at least. As soon you realize that one burden is actually lifted… pff we don’t have to be unique…. but at least lets try to do it slightly different.
The easiest shot is always from the what I call “Kodak point”, you can find these at some sights and the only thing you have to do is point your camera in the “general” direction and shoot, and in all honestly you’ll end up with a good shot of the landmark…. but if you try to move around, zoom in, shoot from a very low or very high angle, shoot it with an extreme wide-angle or even fish eye you will actually get something totally different. You could even use your “selfie-stick” to get some stunning shots that you would normally not get (so we finally found a good use for that stick).
In the end it’s all about one thing…
As a photographer it’s not enough to just see the landmark, treat like you would treat a model…. and ok it doesn’t listen and you can’t pose it, but you can still wait for the light, change your own position, zoom in to show details or leading lines, add something in the frame to make it funny, or weird… when you think about it the options are limitless.
Even from the “kodak point”.
