Forget the Glass - Photography Sans Lens

Wehn



So this Sunday I heard late in the day that it was World Pinhole Photo day, and I thought I'd like to give it a try. I had made several pinhole cameras in my youth, loading and shooting paper negatives, 4x5 film and the like, but it had been years. I thought it would be fun to try it with digital. Since I have a digital SLR it was pretty simple to replace the lens with a pinhole.

Here's how I did it. First I found the body cap that protects the camera when there's no lens on it. Then I drilled a quarter inch hole in the center of the cap. Now that's way to big a hole to be a pinhole, so I took a piece of aluminum foil and taped it over the hole, then poked a small hole in it with a needle. This fairly crude arrangement became my pinhole lens.

Using ISO 800 I was able to make exposures in direct sun of about 1/25th of a second. This worked out pretty well. As you can see none of the pic's are sharp, that's part of the charm for me. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Wedding Album Design

One of the current trends in wedding photography is photographers creating albums and press-printed books with gorgeous layouts of the photos at different sizes. The appealing results look more like magazine pages than traditional wedding albums, and most brides love them. Photographers love them too because it gives us more creativity to tell the story graphically, and they look great!

The challenge is that it can take a lot of work to design these layouts. They need good design software. Traditional graphic design software like Adobe InDesign falls short. Printers and labs technical requirements generally demand high resolution jpgs somewhere in the workflow, and photographers want to keep making image adjustments in Photoshop. So, how do photographers balance the technical demands of their printers while giving themselves enough creative freedom to make their productions awesome, all while doing it in an efficient manner?

To get a sense of how others were solvn this challenge I posted the question on twitter and got 9 responses. They varied. Three folks use the software provided by the printers, Jorgensen, GraphiStudio, and Blurb. One was very enthusiastic about the Fundi Album Builder software, another voted for the YouSelectIt product, still another uses only Photoshop. One respondent is having Pictage do his. The graph below maps the results.


My favorite two responses came from two different photographers each giving ringing endorsements for Photo Junction Remix. They each said they liked the software because it was fast, flexible, fun to use and, possibly best of all, FREE!.

Since the underlying purpose of this poll was to find a better solution to my own album design needs, I had to check it out. Last night I downloaded and installed the software from http://www.photojunction.com/. Sure enough the download was free, and the website says "Photojunction Remix is offered as a free 12-month subscription." Although, the license agreement says the free trial period ends after two months. Hmmmn hopefully that's wrong, 'cause I really like what the software. So far it's operating very well. It's fast, flexible, easy, and integrates very nicely with Photoshop. I turned out 3 great looking pages in a very short time, with learning curve. I actually find myself looking forward to designing pages again.

If you made it this far, thanks. If you are a photographer with an opinion or favorite software to share, please leave a comment. I'd love to further a discussion on this subject.

A Gift of Wallpaper Walls

Merry Christmas everyone! As my gift to you, please download any of these pictures to use as wallpaper on your computers. For best resolution, click on each photo to display it's larger size, then right click "save image as" to your hard disk, and add to your wallpaper via the control panel. Enjoy!

Precious Wedding Moments

In this recent wedding I managed to find the time to shoot in a reportage style that allowed for the spirit of the day to be revealed. Seven hours of shooting yielded more than 600 images captured. Thanks to Adobe Lightroom, I could process all those photos while making creative choices along the way. The final cut presented to the bride was just over 400. I'm happy to say she's thrilled with the results. See more Seattle area wedding photography at jeffspeigner.com.

The Girls

The Girls, originally uploaded by inspiritu.

Took this picture of my daughter and her friend last year on a trip to Southern California. To me it symbolizes both their connection to each other and to the natural world.

Photo by Seattle area photographer, Jeff Speigner. See Seattle area wedding photographs at jeffspeigner.com

Congratulations Natasha and Kyle

Natasha and Kyle are getting married today and they've chosen me to record their nuptials with photographs. It should be a great shoot, as they're a lovely couple, and fun to work with. The photos above are from an engagement session this summer taken in the front yard of the brides' mothers' house. It was a slightly overcast day, making for diffuse lighting that I added to with a little flash for the catch lights. Next week I'll post an entry with several of my favorites from the wedding shoot. See their Seattle area wedding photographs at jeffspeigner.com.

Santiago Scenes

Taken on my recent trip to Guatemala, this group of images gives a glimpse of the scenic beauty in the Lake Atitlan area. The first shot taken on the first morning just outside my hotel room at La Posada de Santiago. The volcano, San Pedro, is one of three that surrounds Santiago Atitlan. The second is a mother and son returning from washing clothes on the lake shore. Three is of a man in traditional clothing walking along the road in front of La Posada. Four is from the dock in Panjachel with a dramatic sky above vulcan San Pedro. The last shot is on the boat back to Santiago from Panajachel.