So by next week, look for a radical change in the design of the site with a much more emphasis on highlighting the photo portfolio. Still will be posting other topics but I think I need to focus on what I can handle right now

With the conclusion of this year’s edition of Heavy Rebel Weekender, a furious burst of photographic activity comes to a close. In the past few months, I have done dedicated photo shoots with such themes as Heavy Rebel, models at Fila, Celtic Festival, Dance Recital along with the standard family photos. By a rough count, over 2000 photos were taken over this three month stretch.

So I have a busy several weeks ahead of me in my spare time to process and post these photos to Flickr and then repost some to my dedicated galleries on this site.

Also, I have become more aggressive in using social media to promote my photographs. For one, Flickr provides access now to post photos to my Facebook and Twitter accounts. So for the more notable of my photos I am now doing so. This is in turn has provide me more visibility and has lead several people to start following me on Twitter or on Facebook. More exposure is always welcome.

I have also started following some photographers and businesses on Twitter for their feeds of links dealing with photography. The sheer volume of links on a daily basis makes it impossible to view them all but of the few I click through have proved most informative.

I will be following up this post with future posts discussing some of the photo shoots I have done recently but one thing  I need to mention is my evolution as a photographer.

Early on when I first start photographing with my then new digital camera, my subject matter fell strictly into two camps, Family and Landscapes. Looking back, if I was not taking pictures of the family I was shooting pictures of  farms and buildings. But now, while family pictures are still important to me and the rest of my extended family, I find myself increasingly focused on photographing people and events. There seems to be a vitality about these things that I can not never capture in a landscape. Indeed, when one excludes my autumn color photographs, it has been a long time since I spent a dedicated day to just taking photos of fields, trees or buildings.

Another aspect of my photography has emerged too in that I would like my hobby to be self-financing in that I am willing to take photos for pay. As it is, very few photographers make a living taking landscape photography. With people taking more photographs than ever especially with smartphones that have image taking quality that can match entry level compact cameras, the sheer volume of photos out there can address most people’s needs.

Still, there is a need to provide high quality photographs for weddings, children and family portraits. That requires equipment and experience to do it right.I still have much more to learn about photography but the experience is something I can improve upon by shooting more in all sorts of situations and environments.

But I will find time soon.

After coming across another article about photography using shallow DOF, I decided to give it a try. Since I do not have the right sort of equipment in doing it in the field, I used a popular technique using Photoshop software to simulate the effect. You can see this handiwork on my Flickr site. It is just a few photos taken from a variety of photosets.

The one limitation I had was that my photos generally do not make great subjects for this sort of technique which works best if you are positioned above a landscape, preferably one without people and have a quality of light that is bright and casts long shadows.

This is something that I will not spend much time on doing but it is a good illustration on what you can with some basic techniques using the Quick Mask tool and gradients.

For me, though, I am always curious to what extent I can push the level of my craft. I am always want to try new things in composition, lighting, subject and so on.

So in the effort to push my skills, I will undertake a series of projects each focused on a particular skill, technique or subject. For example, I might want to try the art of light tracing which is where you open the exposure of the camera for several seconds and then using a colour light, draw patterns on the screen. Another example would be a set of photos centred around vintage signs.

By necessity, I will have to start small and simply but as time progresses and as I acquire more equipment, I can attempt more complex projects.

So through these projects, while I hope to have fun doing them, I hope also to learn something and build upon these skills and be much better photographer for the future.

If you were among the few who actually read the old site, you would have notice a distinct emphasis on photography with posts on Photo of the Day, Galleries and posts on the art of photography.

So after a break from blogging of nearly a year, I decided to go back into the world of blogging with a focus on photography.

I make no pretense on being an expert on photography. Far from it but I am a pretty decent amateur who is serious about his hobby and is constantly learning new ways of photography, to push my knowledge in terms of subject matter and techniques.

So what you will see on the side are the following:

• The Blog – this is the posting are for my commentary on photography. What is new, what events are going on, how I approach certain themes in photography. Generally, this where I will be writing on a regular basis.
• Portfolio – this is the showcase of my best photography grouped by a common theme or subject such as Autumn or Cars.  So I will not be uploading the entire set of photos from a shoot into this section, just the best of the lot.
• Techniques – here I will take on some techniques that other photographers have learn and apply it to my own photography. This can be camera-centric such as working on  focusing techniques or software-centric such as applying the Orton effect to a photo.
• Projects – think of this section as a composite of techniques and portfolio where I take on a subject matter for example Black & White photography and build a gallery around it
• About – My background bio is here, a listing and description of the equipment I use, and some of the resources I draw on in support of the blog.

There are some notable omissions from the old site. For one, I will not be redirecting my Flickr site as separate galleries here. My Flickr site has taken on the role as my public release of all of the photos that passed muster with me… and several that do not. Frankly, if I took a halfway decent photo, it went up on Flickr. That will not change. Most of my photo output will still end up on Flickr. But from those, I will select the very best for highlighting on this site.

As before, commenting will continue to be part of the site. Additionally, I might open up the site to solicit postings by other authors.

For the portfolios, clicking on the large thumbnail images will launch a view which will show the image at its full size. You can go back and forth through the images on the page with the viewer. You can also display the image at its full upload size by clicking on the expand button located on the top right corner of the page.

Looking forward, I do not expect any significant changes to the site in terms of content or site design. There will be tweaks to the site. Already I am looking forward to updating the video player for the site (video is expected to be a more significant part of the site than before. However, there will be a significant development for brianleon.com planned for summer  of this year which I will reveal at a later date.

So take a look around. There is some content here now and more will be forthcoming.

I started out with the basic camera kit and over time, I added lenses, a flash unit and other accessories in my attempt to improve the quality of my photography. When I walk around town with my camera hanging down my chest, a camera bag slung over my shoulder and a tripod clutched in one hand all the while framing and peering at possible shots, I look very much like someone who wants to get the most out of his photography.

The Past

The way I photograph now is much different than I received my first camera , from my father,in the early 80′s, a sixties vintage Minolta viewfinder. It was his first camera and it was a beauty. I was happy to take pictures of people and places and learn a bit about setting apertures and shutter speeds. I studied books about techniques and tried to emulate them as I could. For two years or so, I took dozens of pictures, limited only by the cost of film and developing. I always worked within the available light as I did not had any flash units nor any accessories. But at some point, the camera was damaged and never repaired. My initial brush with amateur photography came to an end and I never touched a camera again for another ten years. Yet, during that time I always fondly remembered the joy when I was able to photographed to my heart’s delight.

In 1996, when I was assigned to a job in Germany and given the opportunity to see Europe, I bought myself another camera. If I was going to Europe and traveled around the continent then I will going to make sure I was going to photograph it extensively. But I did not get a SLR or anything too sophisticated. It was a Pentax 35mm compact that had a zoom lens and a built in flash and some default modes including a panoramic setting. The ability to slip it into my pocket was useful; I could take it out on a as needed basis and never betrayed that I was a visitor and not a local.

Being a compact camera, I had little control over its functions other than the zoom and choosing between a few modes(flash, portrait, landscape): point and shoot was all that was required as the camera took care of the settings. So this allowed me to focus on the image and composition. That camera served me well taking pictures in Germany, Austria, Paris, and London giving me a treasureful of memories. Over the year I was there, I built an extensive library of images, dutifully printed and stored in photo albums.

Yet returning home, the camera was shelved away. I never bother to do much with it outside of letting it accompany me on trips to New York City. When it was lost somewhere in a move, I did not felt much of a loss and if I needed to record something, disposable film camera served just as well for me.

However, I remained interested in photography and for several years, I read about the ongoing advancements in digital photography and its inevitable replacement of film photography. I had already decided that my next camera was to be a SLR because I wanted to return to the time when I had my father’s Minolta where I had the ability to control all aspects of taking a photograph.

Still, going digital was  unrealised for for several years as there was a large gulf between price and quality of digital cameras from the small 1-3 megapixel compacts to the the DSLRs which were cost thousands of dollars at the time. It is when Canon came out with their breakout Digital Rebel camera that the cost and quality balance was finally reached. It still took me a year of saving to commit myself to buying the camera but when I did buy it, things changed for me.

A year of trial and error

With the camera, I started out taking basic shots just to get a feel for the camera. I used the standard modes at first so that I could get immediate feedback on what the camera was capable of and of what I was capable of in using the camera without worrying about f-stops and shutter speeds. I soon graduated out of that and started using the advance modes of photography mainly with the aperture -priority mode. When Madeleine came along, I bought the flash and started to work on using the flash properly adjusting its power and finessing my bounce technique.

At the same time, I kicked off my blog to start recording my thoughts as well as providing an outlet for my images. This burst of creativity of prose and image was remarkable. I found my thoughts drifting towards to my next session with the camera, seeing what I could do with it.

Using digital gave me the freedom to take as many pictures I would want without worrying about the cost and I was taking a lot of shots. Now I could bracket my shots with aperture adjustments or exposure compensations to get the near ideal shot. Needless to say, there are a lot of wasted images and images that I would not have taken if I was using film. Managing my photo images files became a much needed chore for me.

Naturally there were lulls and peaks of activity during the course of the year. Many of my photo sessions were driven by requests from the family and friends for new pictures of Madeleine so I complied. A trip to the mountains in May proved also to be quite productive as well as Christen’s recital. But I felt limited by the lens the camera came with as some of the shots I took proved to be poor quality and needed extensive post production work. So I invested in higher quality lenses especially for the portrait work of Madeleine and started building up my equipment.

The following autumn saw a fury of photography as I was driven to capture the fall colours in the Blue Ridge mountains as well as locally here in Winston. Over a period of several days, I packed my gear and trodden to places where I rarely ever visit. Perspectives change when you are walking through a neighbourhood rather than drive through it. At the same time I was taking autumn photographs, I explored other themes: churches, local street scenes, and night time photographs. At the end, I shot well over 700 images during that period. In retrospect, I was just getting started.

The Present

Since that first year of discovering my photography potential, I am still fully immersed in my photography. While still a hobby, I found out that it has been lucrative as well as I have done commission work for a Church magazine, found my photos being sourced for local websites and even inspiration for other people’s art. Even my company has found use for me to record the social events that occur as well as custom portrait look.

Also, because of the increasing volume of photos I had, I use Flickr as my main photo hosting site. Several thousand of my photos now reside there from the snapshots of a family event to the more polished photos of car shows and dancers

The Future

Like everything else in my life right now, I find myself pulled in multiple directions for my time and it probably will be that way for awhile. So my photography tends to come in bursts, usually focused around an event. With these events, the photos tend to lean more of the snap shot quality but even then, I try to find the unique shot that makes a difference.

Sometimes, though,  I wonder if I could get anything more out of the subjects I focus on of late. How many more autumn photos can I take, I wonder to myself. Yet, every year, I find some new perspective on a subject and find myself renewed once more.

I wonder too, if I could ever make a viable career out of photography. It seems that everyone with a decent DSLR camera thinks that they are a few steps away from a second career; a website, a few photos, some recognition and people will start buying your photos and services. In reality, it is much, much harder than that. Like anything else in life, to be really good at something, you need to spend years on your craft. I really can not make that commitment.

Still, I never let that stop me from becoming a better photographer. I will keep on learning; I will buy the equipment to indulge my creative bent and if I manage to get some commission work here and there, well, perhaps it will be a self-financing hobby.

More than anything else, though, I really enjoy being behind the camera.

But why do these lenses cost so much? Well, if you check out this site of the Canon Camera Museum, they provide a documentary of sorts on a Virtual Len Plant which shows all of the steps needed to create a high quality lens starting with the raw material for all glass, silica and then through each process of making the glass, grinding the glass, application of coatings which then it all put together in the assembly of the lens. There is a lot of work involved and the more specialised the lens, the more expensive it is especially for the large zoom lenses found at sporting events. Those lens go for $5000-20000 depending on the size.

I doubt I will spend that much for a lens if I just remain as serious amateur. But if remain with a major camera manufacturer, in my case Canon, you can be readily assured that the lenses you buy today will be compatible across the whole DSLR line now and for the foreseeable future.

Using a filter for your lenses seems a bit archaic these days as many of the effects that filters traditionally do (soft focus, special sparkling lights, colour casts) can be replicate through a photo editor like Photoshop. The exception is polarizing filters where their effects are much more complex.

Screwed in filters vs Cokin filters

Starting out with filters, I used the screwed in type. I found them easier to use and carry around. Currently, my filter collection contains neutral graduated filters, a polarizer, a warming filter and a red intensifier among others.

High quality filters are expensive. The red intensifier filter which I use to punch up autumn colours in my landscape photographs cost $55 from B&H photo. Consider that a collection of lenses will have different lens widths, getting a collection of filters for each lens width will run into the hundreds of dollars and may even exceed the retail cost of Photoshop.

However, I made the transition to the Cokin type filters this year as an alternative option. Part of the reason to do so was cost. Using the same filter holder and filters, I could use the filters for all of my lenses with a series of lens filter adapters for the 58mm, 67mm and a 77mm lens diameters for my lenses. That saved me a bundled compared to getting the same filter for each of the different lenses I have.

The other reason for the switch was to use the neutral gradient filter in a more effective way. I photograph plenty of landscapes and many times I have a situation where the sky is just too bright relative to the foreground. To compress the dynamic range , the ND gradient will darken the sky while keeping foreground unchanged. However, unless the scene is composed such that the horizon is in the middle, using a screwed in filter will force some compromise in the shot where you may get too much foreground or sky for your liking. With the Cokin filter, this problem is alleviated by the fact that you can adjust the filter up and down the filter holder so that the gradient hits the horizon where you want it.

Replicating effects through Photoshop

But consider also what someone using a Photoshop–like editor and tries to replicate the same effects as the red intensifier filter. The effect this filter is that it will boost any colors in the red-orange spectrum, giving them more saturation making it ideal for capturing fall foliage without affecting any other colours. With the photo editor, first you will have to select the portion of your image to be altered otherwise you will affect parts of your image you did not intend to change. Bring up your Hue and Colour change tool, and then using the sliders change the Red or Yellow channels of the image to really punch up the colours. Then you may have to use the Levels or Curves tool to increase the contrast and lessen any dullness in the shot. When I did that in Photoshop, it may take 30 minutes or more to come up with an image I would be satisfied with finally. For a typical photo shoot of 30-40 landscape images, it may take me days to process all of them.

Still after the fact, looking at one of these processed images tells me that they look a bit unreal which is not the impression I get from shots I took this year with the red intensifier filter. Being able to chain filters together, usually with a polarizer, provides me with much more vibrant and colour complex images than I can ever attain with my limited Photoshop skills.

Then there is the problem that the more you alter the captured image, the more likely you will introduce usual colour shifts or halo effects and so forth. Using a filter on the image before it is captured by the camera sensor helps minimizes all of those unwanted effects.

There also effects that can never be replicated in Photoshop. A prime example of this is the advantage of using the neutral graduated filters. Taking landscape photographs during the daytime, you have to contend with the problem of a high dynamic range between the sky and the landforms. Invariably to capture detail in the sky, you will have to underexpose for the land and conversely to capture detail for the landforms, you find your sky has been overexposed to the point of being blown out. The ND grad filters, available in various exposure stops, narrows the dynamic range allowing you to capture details in both the sky and land. One shot should get you the photograph you want. Doing it in Photoshop would require you to take multiple shots at different settings, bring all of the images into the editor and using masking techniques, get the detailed exposure you want. Doing that once took me nearly two hours to do it right.

What’s better?

I like using filters because I would rather spend my time taking photographs rather than trying to manipulate them for a certain effect. There is some inconvenience in trying to swap filters out in the field and it is more weight to consider but I do not think that is too much of a problem.

Since I have been using Lightroom for most of my photo editing these days, I have control over more of the image to get it in terms of exposure and colour and able to replicate many of the elements of a photo in a more intuitive way than Photoshop. For several of the filter effects though, only Photoshop or Elements are able to do it. As I take a lot of photos each time I go out, this means a lot of post processing work.

So the lesson here is use the best tool for the job at hand for there is no one perfect way of achieving that perfect shot and a combination of hardware and software can do the job when neither one of them separately can. Question becomes whether the time you want to spend on your photography is in the field or in front of the computer.