Beyond Phototips

Three weeks ago, my MacBook Pro crashed. It had seen a year of good service, and because it was my first ever Mac, I’d just about set it up to workexactly the way I wanted it to; and it crashed. The Apple service provider in my city said that the logic board had died, and they would fix it in a jiffy. The “Jiffy” turned into a 3 week ordeal that I will not describe here, but the Mac is back, and Oh! What a joy it is to have it back.

Photo: Mitra Mirshahidi

Now, this is not a Mac Vs. PC thing. What I’m trying to push here is customisation and familiarity of your equipment and how that affects the ways in which you use it.

You see, in those three weeks, I had to go back to my PC, running windows; a computer that I’d not used much in the last year, except to play a game or two. Now, I was forced to re-set it to work the way I wanted it to. And it was a pain. The pain of re-familiarisation and customisation.

Almost everyone has faced a similar issue some time. So, now pause to consider this from the perspective of your camera usage. 

Do you shoot in Manual exposure mode? Do you have a favourite lens? and on that lens, do you have a favourite aperture that you move to more naturally than others? Yes? I know that I do.

I have a favourite aperture: f/2.8 and focal-length: 24mm (so far). I have a favourite lens: the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 L which suits that preference (and it may have had a serious influence on me towards forming that preference). And I shoot most often with aperture priority though I do shift to manual exposure when things get rough.

I guess what I’m saying is…

It pays to know your equipment

1. It pays to know where your equipment is good, and where it’s not so good. 
2. It pays to know what you like best from it, and how to set it up to get what you want withough much thought.
3. It pays to try out all the settings on your camera. You’ll discover features and capabilities that you never knew existed.
4. It pays to read the manual so that you know the heart of your camera just as well as you know it’s body.
5. It pays to buy equipment that you’ll love and use frequently. Don’t buy it because it was available at a great price. Buy it because you’ll love using it.
6. It pays to work out how to best set up your equipment. Do you prefer a tripod, or a monopod, or even a bean-bag…? Try them all out, and choose the one (or ones) that suit you best.
7. It pays to be open minded… and that’s the biggest one of all.

Photo By:Bruna MirandaYesterday, I upgraded and I downgraded. I upgraded from a standard Free Flickr Account to a Pro Account, and I downgraded from my Canon 5D with L series lenses (stats) to my old Konica-Minolta Dimage A2 (stats) dSLR-like camera. So what’s the deal?

I’d found that I was restricting the images that I posted on Flickr to a great degree. Now, while that is a good thing to do, and while it does give you the compulsion to show off only your best work, it also makes me restrict my images to under 200 in total and I’ve not been posting much because of that. Now that I’ve jumped in the pool (with a measly $25), I’m going to have to post photographs more frequently, and of course, keep increasingly my image quality.

I did say “Increasing My Image Quality” just now, didn’t I? So why am I downgrading my camera? It seems illogical even to me. However, I do believe in this little post I made some time ago entitled “Its the photographer, not the gear” Where I boldly stated that a better camera does not equal a better photograph.

I’m going to put that statement (and my photography skills) to the test. In the next few months I’m going to re-explore my photography and put up photographs taken for the most part on my trusty Konica Minolta Dimage A2 (even though I have some brilliant Film Cameras and two Canon 5D bodies at home).

Why?

Its going to be an exercise in seeing differently. True, seeing things on a dimly lit LCD based viewfinder system, but its a restriction that I want to work with. It means that I wont be able to see the picture I’m taking properly in broad daylight (the LCD sucks in daylight, so I’ll have to use its measly LCD based viewfinder). It means I wont be able to change my lenses much. But again, why all the pain? Afterall, a Canon 450D or even a Canon 40D is quite affordable.

Here’s why

My work over the last few months has undergone a dramatic change. From mostly taking photographs alongside my Dad, I’ve moved to making websites.

Why would anyone choose websites over taking photographs? Because its a new challenge for me, and one that I’ve been wanting to explore for years!

Well, its resulted in me sitting in office and slouching over my computer for days on end. Its taken a toll on me (and by extension, this blog). I’ve not been seeing much of the outside world .

I’m still going to be huddled over the computer for a great portion of my day, but I’ve decided that at least a part of it is going to be dedicated to photography and the outdoors.

What can you expect?

Well, I think you can expect me to be thinking of photography a bit more in the months to come. Hopefully, I’ll also be able to get down to posting my thoughts about photography and some of the new insight I gain in making the shift from Pro photography, to lay photography (strange deal, dont you think).

I hope you’ll stay with me through this odd journey to share my strange world.

You’re welcome to check out my Photographs before the deal on flickr.

If you come by later on, here are my most recent photographs on flickr.

We hit 1000 subscribers a couple of times last month. But RSS feed subscription numbers are not absolute. They fluctuate often, sometimes going down, sometimes going up, based on daily feed views (not acutal subscriptions); so I preferred to err on the side of caution before making this announcement!

I decided to use the benchmark of 1000 subscribers over a period of one week; and we just managed to achieve that with your help (8 days now, actually)!

Wow, I’m thrilled about your support! For a blogger who does not post all that often, you’ve shown me a great deal of it. Thank you!

With a Little Help From my Friends

Through our transition from Photography Tip to Beyond Phototips, I’ve had some support from some wonderful bloggers, Brian Auer from Epic Edits Weblog and Umesh Gopinath from Whitespace have been a continual source of motivation. There are others too, but too numerous to mention, and some without a blog for you to check out… However, If you’re one of them, you know…

The graph below shows the steady increase in RSS subscriptions from when Beyond Phototips used to be Photography Tip till the 6th of May, 2008.

The large jump that you see from around 230 subscribers to around 550 subscribers in November 2007 is mainly attributed to Brian’s post about his favourite photography blogs and their RSS feeds.

You’ll find Beyond Phototips listed there at 31 under the name “Photography Tip“. This was before we moved from the blogger platform to an independent domain. BTW, Brian’s site comes up as a “Highly Recommended RSS” addition to your feed reader.

Whats coming…

My work as a Web Designer / Photographer does not give me much time to write for Beyond Phototips, but it is enormously encouraging to see this kind of support for whatever little that I do write. I suppose its also a good reason to try to make some more time in my schedule to write a bit more.

I’m going to take this opportunity to let you all know that I’m working on a new series of posts that I hope will be revealing to some, and engaging for all of you. What is it about? Check your feed reader one of these days, and you’ll find out!

Thanks for the great times so far, but I’m curious to see where this goes in the future. I hope you choose to stick around for the ride!

About RSS Feeds

If you’re wondering what all the fuss is about RSS subscribers, here are a couple of links to help you out, also do remember to come back and subscribe to the Beyond Phototips RSS feed, once you’re done. You could also sign up to receive our posts in your email.

• RSS in Plain English (Recommended Video)
  
• Getting Started with RSS

Also, do remember that your feedback means a lot to me. If you ever want to request a post about a particular topic, do leave a note in the comments, shoot me a mail (at susheel <at> beyondphototips.com) or catch me online at my twitter account. While I cant promise that I will write about it, I certainly will try to fill that request.

I hadn’t checked out Photography Voter before I made my post yesterday, about how you’ll get better expressions if you can get people to look at you “through the lens”. I just did, and look at what I found. Just on the first page! A whole bunch of posts about Portrait Photography!

5 Tips for Directing Models
Tips for making people relax, who might not be comfortable in front of a camera. This goes perfectly with my last post.

Getting those Portraits right, once and for all
Some interesting pose-related tips for taking better portraits.

Approach to Taking a Portrait
Different people, Same needs when you’re taking a photograph. How to get through to the person being photographed.

Wired Magazine’s top 10 Reader Self Portraits
Some really interesting self portraits here.

About a Pair of Green Eyes
A beginner’s first portrait photo-shoot.

All these just off the first page!

Photowalks are fun. I know this. I’ve been in the practice for ages, but it was only recently that “jargon” was applied to it. Now that it has, there are a lot more organised “photowalk” happening.

Apparently I’ve been missing a bit… Especially in my home-town, Chennai.

Now, Chandrachoodan of Selective Amnesia has been quietly organising photowalks for a while now, and this saturday plans are on for the fourth photowalk. Head on to the website to take a look, and read the discussion in the comments or just read on for more details.

The walk will start at 8AM on the 10th of February. We will begin at the Simpson’s building (near the Chintadripet MRTS station) and go on down Mount Road, going past the Hindu and The Mail offices, P.Orr and Sons, and the old D. Angeli’s buildings… We’ll then cross the road and finish at Bharat Insurance building.

Here’s a map to show you the locale.

View Larger Map

Do buzz us and let us know that you’ll be coming. Head over to Chandrachoodan’s post and leave a comment. And do remember to bring your camera…

Greetings everyone… Welcome to a new phase in our journey, and thank you for making it such an interesting journey so far. I hope you’ll be as excited about this new phase as I am…

Out with the old; bring in the New

Sometime late, late last night (in India), Photography Tip became Beyond Phototips. It was moved to a new domain name: http://www.beyondphototips.com/ with a brand new layout, (the new layout based on the Grid Focus theme) and blogging platform (we’ve moved from a free Blogger account to a self hosted WordPress platform). Not everything is as it should be at the moment, and links are still pointing to the old website, and some references need to be changed, but rest assured that they’ll all be set right in the coming days of this transition. Please bear with us in the mean time.

The old website will remain as it is, for now, and will not be updated. If you have bookmarks pointed to the old site, please re-mark this new domain so that you don’t miss out. If you have posts with links to the old website, don’t worry they wont become invalid. I’d like to point out to you at this stage that all of the content from “Photography Tip” is also available on the “Beyond Phototips” website too, and if you wish to, you can re-link your posts to the new website.

If you’re viewing this in a feed reader, worry not, you don’t have to do a thing. Your feed url will be automatically redirected to the new website’s content and you should have no trouble in reading it. There may be a delay between the stream being redirected and the time that feed readers have their cache updated, but hopefully this will not be too long. In any case, here’s the new URL for the RSS Feed http://feeds.beyondphototips.com/photographytip/

So what does this mean to you as a subscriber / reader of the blog?

I’ll be maintaining my old(er) schedule of three posts a week. But it does mean that you have a much nicer interface to look forward to when you visit the website. There is a simpler, less cluttered interface (though the old one was quite simple by itself), making important links very accessible.

The Archives are accessible via all the categories right on the main navigation menu; along with other important information that will make its way there eventually. The center column has links to posts that were among the most popular on “Photography Tip” and which I hope will continue to interest you on “Beyond Phototips”. There are also links to the popular categories of posts for quick access.

The third column has links to the home pages of the various Series posts that Beyond Phototips is running. This is so that you can find all of these links in one place.

I guess that’s it for now. Do let me know what you think of the new theme in the comments, and please do let me know if you spot any bugs. I’ll be ironing out the kinks over the next week or so, and you can also expect a number of new posts to come flooding in.