“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it, we go nowhere.” -Carl Sagan
**
There it is – This Week’s Motivational Kick In The Yahoo!
**
Dream!
Author: Wasim Muklashy
-
A Monday Motivational Kick In The Yahoo – September 8, 2014
-
A Spontaneous Excursion Up Pacific Coast Highway – Part 2: Big Sur
So after the kayak melee in Morro Bay, it was time for Stephen Chiang, the photographer I was assisting, and I to drive up north to San Francisco for the job the next morning. Put two photographers in a car, give them the choice between A. a straight and direct, but boring route, and B. a windy, curvy, 2-hours-longer scenic route through Big Sur, and, well, you can guess which one they’re going to choose 11 times out of 10. So up the curvy Pacific Coast Highway we went, absolutely one of the most beautiful and scenic drives in the country. As we made our way through Cayucos, then Cambria, we stopped for lunch before PCH opened up along the Pacific Ocean for good from the lowlands of San Simeon (best known for Hearst Castle), all the way up the jagged picture-perfect sparsely populated Central California coastline to and through the majesty that is Big Sur. We pulled over and admired for a while, excited at the fact that just 24 hours from now, we’ll be back here to spend the rest of the week making the tough decisions of frolicking around the grand vistas overlooking the Pacific, or splashing around in this, the largest of the world’s 5 oceans.
But first, we had the task of finding dinner and a place to rest our heads for the night in San Francisco for the job in the morning, so we crossed over the famous Bixby bridge, rolled past Monterey and Carmel, made a pit stop in San Jose for my first experience with Yakitori at Gaku Yakitori in San Jose (I ate sea urchin!!! Anthony Bourdain would be proud!). There we used Airbnb.com, found ourselves a place to stay for the night, so after dinner, rolled into San Francisco around midnight. We woke up the next morning to fresh coffee from our host, who just so happened to be the photo editor for Via Magazine, an edition of the Automobile Club publications covering the western states, so, well, naturally, we all immediately clicked. (BTW kind Airbnb host, if you’re reading this, I have a feeling you’ll be hearing from us…)
The work day went suspiciously smoothly. It was a corporate headshot job, and we were in by 10am, out by 3pm. We didn’t even bother to stay in the city, opting to immediately get out, back along the coast, stopped in Pacifica at a roadside fresh produce stand for some snacks and supplies, and proceeded on down to Big Sur, where we were to meet my cousin, my aunt, and the family for dinner at Andrew Molera State Beach campground, our home for the next few days.
Luck would so have it (yes, all luck, no planning or rushing to break down the equipment and get out of the city by a certain hour of course), that we made it back to the infamous Bixby Bridge in time to find a few vantage points to get some solid sunset shots. What are the chances?
We pulled along the side of the road at Rocky Point Restaurant, managed to get a few good shots and angles, not a difficult task in a location like this, but something still told us that we should continue on. So we did, and about a mile further down the PCH, we found a small turnout to park alongside what seemed to be a candidate for a perfect overlook. We took a trail along the bluff (extremely careful to avoid the poison oak that seemed to be in full bloom), which ended at the edge of an abandoned property that we didn’t realize until we were already on it. The boarded up house and remains of an old firepit gave it away. But when we turned around, there was no way we were backing off right away.
This.
View.
Was.
Perfect.
We spent the next 15 to 20 minutes capturing the last rays of sunlight over the Pacific and shining onto the coastline hugging the Bixby Bridge, turned towards each other with a knowing “that’s why we do this” smile, and walked back to the car.
Hungry.
We finally pulled up to Andrew Molera State Park, hiked through a 1/2 mile tree canopy into our campsite where the rest of the family was waiting, burgers already grilling, beers already poppin,’ and hence began our stay in Big Sur.
Check out the gallery of images from that day and evening below, taken on Samsung NX3000 and NX30 mirrorless cameras.
Click here for the next part, Part 3: More Big Sur
And if you missed it, here’s Part 1: Morro Bay
And for more of my madness, including additional images and edits from this very trip:
Instagram: @wasimofnazareth
Google+: www.Google.com/+WasimMuklashy
Facebook: www.Facebook.com/WasimOfNazareth
Ello: www.Ello.co/WasimOfNazareth
-
A Spontaneous Excursion Up Pacific Coast Highway – Part 1: Morro Bay
It began as a work trip. Well, sort of. I’m finding more and more and more these days I’ll fish for any excuse to leave Los Angeles…just the thought alone gets me excited. So when Stephen Chiang, a photographer friend that I occasionally assist mentioned he needed an assistant for a gig in San Francisco, I jumped at it. When he mentioned it would begin with a night of camping in Morro Bay State Park, and end with 4 nights of camping in Big Sur, that wasn’t just the icing on the cake, that WAS the cake.
We hit the road on the Sunday before Labor Day, caravanning with his family (his wife, who happens to be my cousin, their kids, and my aunt), got to Morro Bay, took a walk along the shore for the first sunset of the trip, and then headed down to the village for a seafood dinner at The Galley. Afterwards, we headed back to camp, lit the campfire, shared some scotch and stories, and crashed.
The next day was an adventurous and activity filled one. It also ended up being the first time I’ve ever entered and operated a kayak. My cousin and one of her kids hopped on a paddle board, her husband and the other kid hopped on another paddle board, and my aunt and I jumped into the kayak – both rookies mind you, and it was immediately apparent. It took a few twists, turns, and devising a system to coordinate our left from our right, but eventually, we got the hang of the bugger…for now.
We made it across the bay to peninsula on the western side of the bay that ran along the Pacific coast towards the icon of the town, Morro Rock. The sandbar was about a half mile wide and covered with sand dunes that we traverse to get to the beach side. We spent a couple hours in the sun, had a packed lunch, and then made our way back over the sand dunes to our ‘transportation.’
The return trip was not NEARLY as easy as we had anticipated. No matter what we did, all we could manage was to spin around in circles while the undercurrent pulled us further and further away from the direction we were trying to go in. Apparently the tide has dropped and we were trying to kayak through 12” deep water. Well, needless to say…that didn’t work out too well. We ended up spinning around in place while the current was pulling us in the wrong direction almost snapping the paddles as we dug them into the sand to try to stay put. No bueno. I’m partly embarrassed to admit we ended up holding onto the back of my cousin’s paddle-board as she towed us in…
And since I feel compelled to find a way to make you forget about that last sentence and focus on something else, here are a few images from that first day in Morro Bay, all of which were taken with a Samsung NX3000 mirrorless camera…
If you’re ready for Part 2: Big Sur, click here.
Finally, for more of my madness:
Instagram: @wasimofnazareth
Google+: www.Google.com/+WasimMuklashy
Ello: www.Ello.co/WasimOfNazareth
-
A Monday Motivational Kick In The Yahoo – September 1, 2014
“Learn to be still. When in doubt, do nothing.” -White Eagle
**
There It Is – This Week’s Monday Kick In The Yahoo!
**
Marinate! -
How To Minimize Reflections In Interior Photography
I was recently commissioned to photograph a live/work space in Downtown LA for insanely talented tattoo artist Jun Cha. It was set up as a loft, with the living quarters upstairs, and his tattoo studio in the commercial space downstairs. The space was absolutely beautiful, and I’ve never quite seen a tattoo studio or parlor as elegant as this was – a gorgeously clean monochromatic space adorned with Greek mythological statues and replica busts of everyone from David to the Virgin Mary, classy leather-bound art books, Roman columns. It was stunning.
Cha’s articulate attention to detail in his artwork transferred over to his borderline obsessive attention to every detail in this space. Hell, he even lay the tile down himself, a feat he made sure to remind me was NO small task. And this tile, this gorgeous black tile adorned with extremely contrasting white veins leading from one side of the room to the other, provided me with the biggest challenge of the space. The issue was that it was so highly reflective, and the overhead lights that were in the studio were so predominant, that if you looked at the floor, it was impossible not to see the reflections of these necessary lights.
Since the main point he understandably continued to hammer home was to ‘make sure to focus on and bring out the detail in the tiles, specifically the white veins,’ I had to figure out how I was going to do this. One thought was to shoot an exposure with the lights off, and one with the lights on, and then paint in the floor in a composite, but that seemed like much more work than it was worth, and the last thing I wanted to do was make it seem unnatural. There had to be a more organic way to do it. Then I thought maybe we’d dim the lights, so at least it would minimize the reflections, but that would still be distracting enough to take away from the focus of what he wanted the images to be…the white veins.
Immediately following the day that I scouted the location, I found myself on an impromptu trip to the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains, specifically in Mammoth Lakes, Yosemite’s Tuolumne Meadows, and Mono Lake. I know, strange segway right? But this is where it hit me. Yes, Cha’s studio was in the concrete jungle of Downtown Los Angeles, and yes, where I found myself 24 hours later was the complete opposite of that, but I have a set of filters that I use in almost all landscape and outdoor shots, and one of the filters that gets the most action, which I happened to pull out for a sunset on a lake shot, is the circular polarizing filter. Why? well, it’s designed to minimize reflections, especially in water.
Duh!
I had found my solution. For the first time in my photographic life, I was going to use the polarizing filter indoors for an architectural interior shoot. And I must say, it worked brilliantly. There were a few instances in which I had to clone out some particularly strong ceiling lights in post, but it was a mere fraction of the retouching job that would have lay ahead without those polarizers. The reflections were 90% gone, the tile was the star of the show, and, most importantly, the client was happy.
So yes, if you happen to be shooting real estate or architectural interiors, and the reflections get to be too much, taking away from the detail of the texture or design, whether it be in tile, or glass, or distressed concrete, or waxy hardwood floors or shiny metal surfaces, don’t be afraid to reach for that polarizer. It can save the day (and the shoot).
If you want more, click here for 7 Tips For Shooting Real Estate Photography, and click here to learn How To Expose For Interiors And Exteriors.
And if you’re in need of real estate photography services, whether commercial or residential, please feel free to contact me or check out my Property Photography website.
And, finally, for more of my madness: Instagram: @wasimofnazareth Twitter: @wasimofnazareth Google+: www.Google.com/+WasimMuklashy Facebook: www.Facebook.com/WasimOfNazareth
-
A Monday Motivational Kick In The Yahoo – August 25, 2014
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it, we go nowhere.” -Carl Sagan
**
From me to you, There’s This Week’s Monday Kick In The Yahoo!
**
Think it! -
The Proof Sheet – Photography News In Review For The Week of August 18
Welcome to The Proof Sheet, where each week I’ll post some of the more notable photography news in sweet, chewy, bite-sized, easily-digestible morsels. Click the Read More for this week’s stories.
Nikon just can’t get it right. After the infamous D600 dust spot melee, you’d figure they’d be a bit more careful about what they put into the marketplace, especially when that camera is their new D810. Apparently, they’ve issued an advisory for this new flagship, warning that long exposures may result in ‘bright spots.’ At least, this time, they’re fixing them for free.
In celebration of National Photo Day last week, Lytro has published a fun info graphic detailing the 175-year history of photography. It starts with the first recorded photograph on paper in 1839, and leads us all the way up to the emerging light field photography technology. Click here to see and download the entire infographic.
RAW editing in your browser has arrived!! Pics.io announced about a year ago, right around the time that Adobe went and pissed off a large chunk of their user base by announcing the Creative Cloud model, that they were working on a browser based RAW editor, and, well, to the chagrin of Adobe, they’ve kept their word. The beta version is now out for public consumption. Click here to download the photography psychotica from their site.
Blackmagic has updated the firmware for their Cinema Camera and Pocket Cinema Camera, FStoppers reports. The upgrade adds histograms, audiometers, and time remaining indicators along with some other extremely useful features, helping make their already amazing cameras a bit more user friendly. Click here to download the update.
A New York photographer has been awarded a $125,000 settlement stemming from a claim that he was harassed and arrested when cops noticed him recording them as they performed an intrusive ‘stop and frisk.’ They arrested him for disorderly conduct after he advised those being frisked to get the cops’ badge numbers. The court decided in his favor, the NY Daily News reports.
-
My Experience In Trey Ratcliff’s The Arcanum – Levels 1 & 2
So if you haven’t heard of it yet, you need to hear of it before yet. Like now. Right now. It’s the future of learning and education, it’s based on the master/apprentice model, it was created by Trey Ratcliff, and it’s called The Arcanum.
The idea is simple…a master chooses an apprentice, and the apprentice learns the craft. The craft in this case is photography. The execution…is seemingly brilliant. Using today’s technologies – everything from real time screen sharing and VR on-location sharing – mixed with a structured and tiered leveling system, and you have yourself what could be a glimpse into the future of education.
Here’s a quick video that’s worth watching to give you a primer of what it’s all about:
I submitted my application when I first heard about it late last year, and once beta ended I actually heard from a master, Ollie Dale, who was interested in my application and asked me to be an apprentice. While I was insanely humbled, I had just been involved in an automobile accident and my finances weren’t exactly in order, so what I was waiting for for 6 months, I had to turn down. Luckily, soon after the accident madness died down, I was asked by another master, Robin Griggs Wood. And if you don’t know Robin yet, GO check her out. Her work is incredibly inspiring and surreal. I could NOT find it in myself to turn down the rare opportunity twice, so I freed up the room on the ol’ Visa, and boom! Here I am. A registered and active student apprentice to a bonafied master photographer and artist!
Our first assignment in Level 1 is to provide 5 images to be critiqued, along with a description of ourselves and our goals for those images and what we’d like to get out of all of this. This one was easy, but served as an introduction to the private group, my cohort, of fellow apprentices under Robin. We see each others work, get get to know each other a bit, and we share our journey with each other.
I think the greatest thing about this model is the sense of accountability. After I submitted my Level 1, and was ‘leveled up’ by my master, I saw the stream of work people were submitting on a regular basis and, well, it got a bit intimidating. I kind of froze for about a week or so wondering if I was in way over my head, but then as I dug deeper, I realized that everything that was happening was all extremely encouraging. People weren’t judging anyone or anything, they were helping each other out. That’s when I actually started to feel ‘bad’ about not completing my assignments and interacting with the group – not because of guilt, but because, well, you realize you’re going to get out of this what you put into it, and if you put nothing into it…well…you get nothing out of it. And I wasn’t here to get nothing out of it.
A 135 year old moreton bay fig tree. So I finally manned up and got crackalackin’ on my Level 2. The assignment there was to peruse the Grand Library of inspiring and educational videos available to the members of The Arcanum, find one that spoke to me, and apply the technique. Since I was in a bit of a rut, the one I found and that spoke to me was Rick Sammon’s “Top Ten Techniques To Get Inspired”. So I took a few of those techniques, got out of my little comfort zone, and headed out to a town I’ve never been to that’s relatively close by, Santa Paula, California, the “Citrus Capital of the World.” The gallery of images you see in this post are from that excursion, all taken with a Samsung NX3000.
Anyhow, if you want to join me and see how this thing goes, enter your email and subscribe to my updates right there in the right column. I’ll provide regular updates of my experience in The Arcanum here as I continue on and get deeper into it.
And if you haven’t yet, check it out at www.TheArcanum.com, see what it’s all about, and if you’re feelin’ it, fill out and application, wait, and see what happens. You never know what synapses might start firing and what doors may open up. Perhaps I’ll see you in my cohort…
To read about my experience in Level 3, click here.
For more of my madness: Instagram: @wasimofnazareth Twitter: @wasimofnazareth Google+: www.Google.com/+WasimMuklashy Facebook: www.Facebook.com/WasimOfNazareth
-
I’ve Finally Assembled My Perfect Hiking And Backpacking Camera Kit
If you’ve ever gone on an extended hike or backpacking trip, you know that every single ounce of weight counts. An extra strip of beef jerky may not seem like a lot sitting in your pocket at home, but you WILL notice and feel every single gram of it as the sun-scorched miles move beneath your boots. So when you’re packing for such a trip, weight and consideration and bare essentials are a constantly compromised necessity, and, obviously, for photographers, food and clean socks come in a distant second to camera gear. Lucky for us photographers, the new breed of mirrorless systems has changed EVERYTHING. Gone are the days of having to trudge 10-15 pounds of DSLR gear and lenses to get solid professional high-quality images. Now you can make top-shelf images AND pack an entire bag of beef jerky.
As I prepared to pack for a 5-day, 45-mile backpacking excursion into the Sierras, I was absolutely thrilled at how much lighter my pack already was since last year’s adventures through 3 National Parks, and especially the year before that, when I lugged around that same full Nikon D7000 kit through 22, 104-degree Grand Canyon miles on the way into Havasupai, Arizona. Ouch. Ouch. OUCH! While, unfortunately, this month’s Sierra backpacking trip got cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances in the group, I still thought it’d be valuable to share what I had already packed and was prepared to take.
First, here’s the bulk of the Nikon D7000 kit that I had with me both for the Havasupai trip and for the National Park trip. Basically, the kit I’ve been used to traveling with:
Nikon D7000 Body (APSC CMOS Sensor): 1 lb, 8 oz.
Nikkor 18-200 Lens: 1 lb, 4 oz.
Nikkor 35mm Lens: 7 oz.
Tokina 11-16mm Lens: 1.2 lbs
Manfrotto 190xb Tripod with Manfrotto 486RC2 Ballhead: 5 pounds
Filters, Filter Holders, Extra batteries, USB charging brick: 1 pound
TOTAL: 10.5 LBS.
Now, for comparison’s sakes, here’s what I had packed this time:
Samsung NX30 Body (APSC CMOS Sensor): .8 pound
Samsung NX3000 Body (APSC CMOS Sensor): .5 pound
Samsung 18-200mm lens: 1.27 pounds
Samsung 12-24mm lens: 7.3 oz
Dolica TX570B150SL Travel Tripod: 2.5 pounds
Filters, filter holders, extra batteries, USB charging brick: 10 oz.
TOTAL: 6.1 LBS.
And here they are side by side, with the respective lenses mirroring each other. Look at the size differences alone in the Samsung kit on the bottom row versus the Nikon kit on the top row, especially in the lenses and the bodies:
So as you can see, that is not only literally a savings of almost half the weight, but it also includes AN EXTRA CAMERA BODY. Heck, both camera bodies together weighed less than the single DSLR. Granted, the tripod alone also saved me 2.5 pounds on it’s own. So yeah, needless to say, between this revelation, and my recent mirrorless-only trip to the Pacific Northwest, my DSLR traveling days are well behind me. Add the benefit of bright OLED displays and Wifi capabilities on the Samsung NX30 and Samsung NX300, allowing me to use my phone as a trigger or high res monitor as well, and there’s really no reason left to go back.
Adapt or die…or, at the very best, adapt or suffer through a bad back…orrrrr better yet…suffer through that bad back by packing an extra 4 pounds of jerky!
Mmmm…jerky…
For more of my madness:
Instagram: @wasimofnazareth
Twitter: @wasimofnazareth
Google+: www.Google.com/+WasimMuklashy
Facebook: www.Facebook.com/WasimOfNazareth
-
A Monday Motivational Kick In The Yahoo – August 18, 2014
Wasim-Muklashy-Photography_NX30_Venice_CA_Skateboarding_Monday Motivational “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” -Henry Ford
**
From me to you, There’s This Week’s Monday Kick In The Yahoo!
**
Move Mountains!
