You kill a kitten every time you post a bad HDR image.

Blog post should be succinct and limited in scope. I’ll try. No promises.

The Austin Photography Group holds a meeting the second Sunday of every month here in Austin. Their meetup website: http://www.meetup.com/photo-438/ I’ve been wanting to go for months [...]]]>

You kill a kitten every time you post a bad HDR image.

Blog post should be succinct and limited in scope. I’ll try. No promises.

The Austin Photography Group holds a meeting the second Sunday of every month here in Austin. Their meetup website: http://www.meetup.com/photo-438/ I’ve been wanting to go for months and I finally did. It was worthwhile.

Trey Ratcliff, fellow Austinite, HDR guru, the man behind stuckincustoms.com, author of a new book on HDR and all around nice guy presented HDR stuff at the meeting.

Until I saw this I was a firm believer that a kitten dies every time you make an HDR photo. Now, I just believe that a kitten dies every time you post a BAD HDR photo. I recall that Trey used the term ‘amped’ in his presentation. I’ll stick with bad. If it’s amped then I don’t like it because I find it bad and you have killed a kitten.

Bad photographs, whether HDR or not, will be bad, and good ones will be good.  The problem is HDR is in it’s fad state now and it’s pretty easy to take a bad-to-mediocre photo and turn it into an ‘amped’ up POS.  HDR has been around a long time.  The idea of compressing a full  range  image into a print  was codified by Ansel Adams and his zone system.

In a nutshell: HDR is a processing tool that can assist in creating an image that better represents what the photographer saw / envisioned in the scene.   Like any processing tool it can also be put to really bad use and take out lots of kittens along the way.

Trey has killed his share of cute furry creatures. There are probably some bad HDR pics in the book, I don’t know as I haven’t read it, but the book is for learning and it is important to share and learn from mistakes.

Just keep them off of Flickr.

If you are intersted in HDR photography then head over to stuckincustoms.com and read and practice using his free HDR tutorial.

Save the kittens!

Dear Friends and Followers,

Should I go get my MFA in photography?

My major thoughts on this:

It’s important to love what you study and practice. I’ve been shooting since I was six or seven years old. My first major publication was in the Los Angeles Times Home Magazine when I was [...]]]>

Scrabble at the Beauty Bar

Dear Friends and Followers,

Should I go get my MFA in photography?

My major thoughts on this:

It’s important to love what you study and practice. I’ve been shooting since I was six or seven years old. My first major publication was in the Los Angeles Times Home Magazine when I was 17 or 18. I love the art and science and history of photography. I’ve been semi-pro on and off for years. I taught underwater photography 20 years ago in the Cayman Islands. I went all pro 3 years ago and if you include my stint at Club Photo I’ve been solidly involved in the industry for over 5 straight years. I’m not a corporate cubicle guy – in retrospect, I’ve been happiest when shooting and involved in the art and industry of photography.

Two Masters’ degrees? I have to be an entrepreneur as well as a photographer in order to make a living doing what I love. It sure helps having the training and experience the MBA brings me. As an MBA I loved certain aspects of business and have been able to do solid work for many companies. The MBA also allowed me to teach business courses. I loved teaching business collegiate settings and I loved teaching photography even when underwater. A major goal of the MFA is to allow me to teach photography and a lot more. The MFA education will provide me two distinct benefits One, I’ll become a better photographer. Two, I’ll have the ability to teach at a collegiate level.

As an MFA/MBA I would bring substantial experience and educational ability to the classroom and my own practice. I have a particular interest in teaching crossover business courses to artists. Many MBA programs are really good at teaching course to people that want to be entrepreneurs but don’t know what business they want to create. Many artists are wannabe entrepreneurs that lack the business skills to live a good life doing what they love. I’d like to help correct that. I’d happily teach a class on cost estimation one hour then go teach a class on lighting techniques or camera basics the next hour.

Teaching and practicing pro photography would be the best balance in life I could see for myself over the next 20 years.

Now, my good friend Kirk Membry, who specializes in pano photography and design (his panos here), made a great point when he said “Why don’t you just get your Adobe Instructor Certification? That MFA is really expensive.”

Good points. Maybe I can sate my appetite for teaching by doing that and I can save $50k at the same time. Wow, that is a compelling reason to really think about it.

Which I did for a couple days. Sure, I could do that. Becoming an ACI It doesn’t force me to study photography and really delve into the art. I want to broaden my exposure and find new areas to develop depth. The MFA experience should be an emmersive journey in addition to mastering tools and techniques.