Underwater housings for DSLR cameras usually aren’t the cheapest accessory. Professional ones often cost as much as the cameras they house. If you’d like to add a simple layer of waterproofing to your DSLR without shelling out big bucks, check out this camera case dry bag. It’s a thick, durable, and watertight plastic case that comes with transparent sections on both sides for your lens and LCD screen.
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Another sign of the times (and bad news for film-photography enthusiasts): one of the most prestigious photo competitions in the world no longer accepts film photographs. Earlier this week Nikon published a “call for entries” for its 34th Nikon Photo Contest. Here’s what the entry guidelines say about “Eligible Works”:
Image data files created with digital cameras (including medium- and large-format cameras). Images that have been retouched using software or by other means will be accepted. Both color and monochrome images will be accepted. (Scans of photographs taken with film cameras are not eligible.)
The contest has been held since 1969 to “provide an opportunity for photographers around the world to communicate and to enrich photographic culture for professionals and amateurs alike.”
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There’s a trend in the camera world these days that involves stuffing large sensors into small cameras. The goal is to squeeze professional-grade image-making ability into a pint-sized package. Sigma’s new horse in this race is the DP1 Merrill, a fixed-lens compact with an APS-C sensor at its core; not just any ol’ APS-C sensor, mind you, but a 46-megapixel Foveon sensor.
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A few years ago, I came up with a theory. Every person has some balance of two incredibly valuable assets: Time and Money. If you have an excess of one of them, there’s a good chance that you don’t have much of the other. I’d like to take some time and reflect on how being aware of how you spend your time can potentially improve your business… and maybe even your life.
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If you regularly shoot in dusty or sandy environments, here’s a handy tip for keeping your camera clean: create a simple cleaning brush that attaches to your camera bag. Digital Camera World writes,
You’ll never bag a great photo with dirty lenses and dusty gear, so keeping your camera and lenses clean and protected is crucial. The front line of defence against dirt and grime is constant cleaning. This isn’t easy if you have to carry around cans of compressed air, blower brushes, fluids and other bulky equipment. Professionals actually tend to use ordinary paintbrushes for camera and lens cleaning, so save yourself money and space [by] making a handy cleaning brush that clips onto your belt.
You’ll need a hacksaw and a drill to “hack” a 25mm paintbrush, and a split-ring and carabiner for attaching it to your camera bag or backpack.
Keep Your Camera Clean with This Homemade Brush [Digital Camera World]
P.S. The magazine also suggests attaching double-sided sticky pads (or tape) to the inside of your lens caps to trap dust that’s floating around in your camera bag.
Looking for a photo project to play around with this weekend? Try exploring a technique known as the Harris Shutter. Invented in the days of film photography by Robert Harris of Kodak, it involves capturing three sequential exposures of a scene through red, green, and blue filters, and then stacking the images into a single frame. This causes all the static elements within the scene to appear as they ordinarily would in a color photo, while all the moving elements in the shot show up in one of the three RGB colors.
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New York City is undoubtedly one of the most photographed cities on Earth, but photographer Richard Silver doesn’t let that fact faze him. He’s on a personal mission to capture facets of The Big Apple in ways people have never seen before. A month ago, we shared his New York Sliced series, which consists of spliced photos of buildings that show day turning into night.
Silver has now followed that project up with a new one titled, NY Churches, which documents the various churches in NYC through beautiful (and disorienting) vertical panoramas.
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Photographer Richard Esposito has written an interesting article over at Tiffinbox on how weddings are becoming a “too many cooks in the kitchen” kind of environment, where everyone and their mother is a photographer now:
Gone are the days of capturing a sea of guests with genuine emotion on their faces. Now you have to give an elbow to Aunt Clair who’s blocking the aisle with her Digital Rebel in hand as the bride makes her grand entrance. I used to love capturing guests emotion during the first dance, parent dance, even the toasts. But now my subjects are a handful of guests with point and shoots held up blocking their faces, or the tops of everyones head because they are looking down at the back of the camera to check the photo they just took. My favorite moment so far was a photo of the bride going down the aisle from behind. Everyone in front of the bride has their cameras up, everyone that the bride has past is still facing the back of the church with the heads down looking at the back of their camera. Very few people stopped to enjoy the moment of a father walking his daughter down the aisle on her wedding day.
His advice for brides-to-be: “If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional photographer for one day, the emotional cost of hiring an amateur lasts forever.”
The New Wedding Guest [Tiffinbox via PhotoShelter]
Image credits: Photographs by Richard Esposito/Tiffinbox
Here’s a fun photo idea you might want to try out this Halloween: shoot epic portraits showing beams of light streaming in from the background. All you need are a perforated hardboard, a couple of flashes, and a fog/smoke machine (or some method of generating smoke).
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Now here’s a creative idea that we’ve never seen before… For this short film titled New York: Night and Day, New York City-based filmmaker and animator Philip Stockton blended daytime and nighttime images of his city into single shots. He explains,
New York: Night and Day is a combination of non-traditional video time-lapse and animation. I filmed day and night scenes from around New York City and combined them back into single sequences using rotoscoping techniques. The piece explores the relationships between night and day, by compositing together scenes shot in the same location over a time period ranging from 4 – 8 hours. I hope you enjoy it.
