photography by wasim.

Tag: scott kelby

Ten Fail Proof Gifts For Photographers In Your Circles

Whether we’re ready to admit it or not, the holidays are upon us. I tried as long as I could to ignore the names of the months passing by on the calendar, but, well, once Daylight Savings Time hit, denial turned to grief turned to acceptance turned to ‘ok, fine, let’s do this thing!’ Anyhow, chances are there’s a photographer in your family or group of friends that you’ll have to shop for, and while we’re certainly a famously finicky bunch, I guarantee you, there’s still something that photographer “needs.” So here’s a list of things that will help turn that psychosis-inducing task of figuring it out into the easiest checkmark on your shopping list. Here are 10 fail-proof gifts for photographers in your circles.

1. GIFT CARD!!! While so many might say this is the lazy, impersonal way to go, trust me, this is the number one gift any photographer will want. While we’re an extremely picky species, there is always something that we want. And that’s not limited to photography gear…we need hard drives, memory cards, batteries, light modifiers, sand bags, cables, a myriad of stuff, so a gift card to an outlet that sells everything from electronic to photography gear is an insanely valuable asset. You can’t go wrong with Amazon, B&H Photo, or Adorama.

2. Airline Miles – Just about every photographer dreams to have fresh new exciting unfamiliar things and places to photograph, and every one of those photographers has a destination (or two, or three, or fifty) that they dream to visit, but just about every one of those photographers frets over the price of that plane ticket to get there. Miles are a HUGE help. Whether you have enough to hand over enough for a full flight, or a few thousand that can help alleviate part of the financial burden, miles are a gift that will never be unappreciated by the photographer in the family.

3. iPad Mini – This is quickly becoming a must-have item for photographers, especially those that work in the field. From the tethering capabilities to just about every camera to the increased focus by major image software companies like Adobe, an iPad mini is something that will definitely get used. And if you’ve got the budget, AppleCare would help. Just sayin’.

4. Craft & Vision Gift Certificate – Guaranteed there will be at least 2 books that come out this year that the photographer in your family will want. And as they’re all written by respected photographers in the industry, they will be coveted. David duChemin’s Craft & Vision almost has a lock on the best photography books in the publishing world. Best of all, most of them are less than 10 bucks, so 20 bucks will go a long way. 50 bucks? Fuggedabbadit!

5. KelbyOne Gift Certificate – Scott Kelby and KelbyOne are perhaps the go-to in photography training, seminars, and workshops. The Photoshop master has built quite the machine, offering everything from video tutorials from the industry’s biggest draws, to live seminars and conferences taught by everyone from himself to National Geographic superstar Joe McNally. If you don’t know Joe, trust me, the photographer you’re aiming for does. I would recommend getting a membership, but there’s a good chance the photographer you’re shopping for already has one, but a gift certificate can be used for the seminars or workshops or various products as well. Can’t go wrong with this one.

6. BorrowLenses.com Gift Certificate – BorrowLenses.com is awesome! Every photographer you’ve ever known and will know, will spend hours, days, weeks, months, researching gear, lenses, camera bags, bodies, you name it, before they finally make their decision. A lot of times, the only way to know, is to touch, feel, use, and marinate with a piece of gear, and BorrowLenses.com makes that incredibly affordable and awesome. You can rent, Netflix-style, everything from camera bodies, lenses, and even lighting gear, so you can test it out before you buy. You’d be helping make the photographer’s research a hands-on experience. They’ll never forget that!

7. Adobe Creative Cloud Subscription – Because we hated the fact that we had to pay for a subscription to use the software that is our bread & butter, that charge on our credit card still irks us each month, and by paying for it for a year for us, it’ll help us forget it for that much longer. Ah…the good ol’ days…

8. Leatherman – Because we love cool things and Leathermans are cool things! And we can have a hundred Leathermans and love each one of them. Like children. Sort of. Not really. But you know what I mean.

9. Swatchmate – Ok, this is pretty sweet stuff. This might apply more to digital artists than to strictly photographers, but, well, the line does seem to be blurring, so here’s one for color freaks. This device allows you to capture ANY color anywhere you are from any surface of anything at all and be able to save it as a swatch to use later. It can even save it directly to Photoshop for you.

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10. Their own Prints – Not for them, but for other people. There is NOTHING that tickle’s a photographer’s fancy more than that notification on their phone that they sold a print. And if you buy several after another for different people, that means more notifications. That means more love.

11. (BONUS). My Prints. Because, well, they’re awesome! But you didn’t hear it from me. Well, yes you did, but, no you didn’t. Anyhow…do it! Buy. Crated or FineArtAmerica.

Additionally, if you’ve got a budding photographer in the family, and you’re looking to get them their first camera or upgrade their shooting experience, here are the 6 Best Cameras For Budding Photographers.

And please remember, if you use Amazon, use this link or the one right there in the right column on this site. There’s no difference to you at all, but by using this affiliate link, I get a bit of a kickback from Amazon which helps me cover the costs of running and maintaining this site and creating content like this that is hopefully of some value to you.

For more of the photography psychotica, pick your poison:
Instagram: @wasimofnazareth
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November 19, 2014
The Proof Sheet – Photography News In Review For The Week of July 14

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.

Photoshop World-A-Thon : So many of us can’t make it out to Photoshop World, so what’s the next best thing to attending the real thing? Attending Photoshop World-A-Thon. A full night of tips and tricks taught and demonstrated by Photoshop World veterans including Scott Kelby, all from the comfort of your own home. The free webinar comes with a free virtual swag bag and it all happens on July 24 at 7pm ET. CLICK HERE to register.

Aperture To Lightroom Migration Tool Now Available – While there hasn’t been an official release from either Apple or Adobe, there is a beta version of a new tool to help you begin your migration from Aperture to Lightroom in the wake of Apple’s announcement to stop developing Aperture. The tool is called Aperture Exporter and if you want it, CLICK HERE to visit the official site and download link.

Last week we talked about BBC opening up it’s journalism training courses to the public. This week it’s the Massachuessetes Institute of Technology. Through their Open Courseware project, MIT just gave us “Documentary Photography and Photojournalism: Still Images of a World in Motion,” a course actually offered at the iconic university. The free offerings include everything from the official syllabus to assignments and other course materials. CLICK HERE to go to class.

Blackmagic Design have cut the price of their popular Pocket Cinema Camera by HALF! As if the $1000 prices tag wasn’t low enough for a professional level cinema camera that can shoot 1080 footage in RAW ProRes format with 13 stops of dynamic range, they’ve gone lost their minds and decided to make it available for $495 from now through the month of August. Git it! CLICK HERE for more info.

Best of the Blogs

Photographer John Rowe, along with Ethiopian Kara tribesman Lale Labuko have teamed up to help stop the practice of Mingi, an age old tradition of labeling certain children, mostly born with physical abnormalities, as ‘cursed.’ These children have traditionally been taken away and killed. Thanks to Labuko and Rowe’s Omo Child Organization, they have helped bring an end to the practice. CLICK HERE to read more about it. (source NBC)

A first-aid trained journalist from Norway stopped in midst broadcast when a bomb exploded in proximity to where he was reporting from in Gaza. He rushed to the scene where he aided an injured child, before taking a moment to gather himself and resume his job by photographing the incident and the child. For the story and the video, CLICK HERE. (source Petapixel)

July 18, 2014
The Proof Sheet – Photography News In Review For The Week of July 7

Welcome to the inaugural edition of 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.

EyeFi, the makers of those wonderful wifi enabled SD cards for you DSLR, along with influencer marketing agency Evolve!, apparently did some research together, the results of which were released this week – an infographic that displays what they consider to be “The Top 30 Most Socially Influential Photographers.” Jeremy Cowart, Joe McNally, and Peter Klesken top the list, followed closely by Chase Jarvis, Adam Bouska, and Jimmy Chin. As expected Scott Kelby, Trey Ratcliff, and Thomas Hawk made the list. Click here to check out the entire infographic.

Building on the success of their #DitchDay event in NYC last month in which Samsung gave away thousands of their NX30 mirrorless cameras, they’ve now partnered up with Amazon for their own version of that DitchTheDSLR event, this one called SamsungNXLive. On Monday, July 14 at 10am Pacific, head over to this link, where, accompanied by a live photography training session, you’ll be able to trade in any of your DSLRs for $250 dollars off of a Samsung NX30 or NX300.

Indonesian photographer Herman Damar captures some of the most idyllic, charming, joyfully warm images of everyday children in everyday village life in Indonesia. What you see are moments that seem like they’re plucked straight out of a fantasy or fairytale, making them even that much more difficult to believe that they’re real. But they are. And if you don’t check ‘em out, you’re certainly missing out. Click here to view them all over on PetaPixel.

Japanese website Nikkei leaked an image this week of what is supposedly the first image taken with Sony’s new curved sensor, one that apparently closer mimics the way the human eye works. The technology behind it aims to eliminate vignetting and soft pixels in the corners that is typical of images from the camera sensors we’ve grown to know and use. Click here for the leaker and the image.

Perhaps in an effort to combat the inane Idiocracy-esque state of our mainstream media, the BBC College of Journalism decided to blow the door open on their journalism training resources for the next year, letting the public in on all their courses and sessions and documents that they use to train their own journalists (yes, I know it’s surprising, but in some parts of the world, journalism actually requires more than a miniskirt and a microphone). Some of the topics include smartphone journalism, ethical journalism, secret filming, and documentary making. Click here to get edumacated.

PopPhoto.com reported this week that Vision Research releases “the fastest camera on the market,” The Phantom v2511. Apparently this beast is capable of moving through 25,600 frames per second. Um…yeah! Madness. Click here to read more about it at PopPhoto.

July 11, 2014
A Quick, Easy And Effective Alternative Method Of Sharpening Your Images

When most people think sharpening in Photoshop, they understandably default to the ’Sharpen’ or ‘Unsharp Mask’ filters. But since I learned this trick a few years back, I don’t believe I’ve opened a single one of Photoshop’s native sharpen plugins a single time. Instead, I’ve relied on one of the ‘Other’ filters in that ‘Filter’ menu – the ‘High Pass’ filter.
Essentially, you’ll make a duplicate layer of the image layer. Then navigate to the ‘Filter’ menu, down to ‘Other,’ and choose ‘High Pass.’ What you’ll see might startle you at first, but don’t worry, you’ll learn to love that gray mask that ‘ruined’ your picture in just a minute. Using that dialog box that pops up, I’ll usually enter a radius of between 2-5 pixels, depending on the image. The more sharp edges and lines I have in an image, the higher of that 1-5 scale I’ll go. Anymore above that will usually result in the dreadfully obvious over sharpened image. If you zoom in closely on the image, you can see exactly what is being sharpened and by how much. You can see the level of sharpening of those pixels through that grey mask on the image. In portraiture, I’m usually between 2-3 pixels at most, mostly to help accent eyelashes and eyeballs.

Wasim_Muklashy_Photography_High_Pass_Sharpening_1

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Once you decide how much sharpening you’d like, hit ‘Ok.’ Now the top layer will be that High Pass filter. Go to the ‘Blending Mode’ drop down menu above the filters, which is usually set at default to ‘Normal,’ and navigate through those options. I usually stick with ‘Soft Light,’ as it provides the most natural look, especially for portraits and architecture, however, you can play with the various other options, including ‘Vivid Light’ and ‘Hard Light.’ Once you scroll through them, you can see the different way each blending mode affects the high pass filter. The great part here is that you can also control the opacity of that layer, even further fine tuning the sharpening.

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So that has become my preferred method of sharpening. It just seems to offer the most manual control over the sharpening process and once you get used to it, it’ll start to come as second nature. Here’s the before and after, you can see it best in the eyes:

Wasim_Muklashy_Photography_High_Pass_Sharpening_Before_After

The image used here was shot on a Samsung NX30 with a Samsung 60mm/f2.8 lens. The model above is the stunning and popular social media star, Julia Kelly. You can find her on Instagram,Twitter, and Vine.

For more of my madness:
Instagram: @wasimofnazareth
Twitter: @wasimofnazareth
Google+: www.Google.com/+WasimMuklashy
Facebook: www.Facebook.com/WasimOfNazareth

July 9, 2014
Why Google Plus Haters Are The Best Thing For Google Plus

So recently, I’ve been seeing a few posts and articles circulating around the web that are basically hating on Google Plus and, well, as a Google+ lover, I think that’s pretty awesome. Huh!?? Yup. You see, it’s not often that something as seemingly trivial as this really rocks my boat, but considering the extremely polar opposite experience that I’ve had on the platform, and the second glass of single-malt I’m working on, I felt compelled to spurt out a late-night response to it all. This ‘rant’ centers around why I think the haters are helping the platform rise above the rest.

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November 12, 2013
Rediscovering The Joy Of Photography Prints

I hit a new milestone with my photography last week…I know this might not sound a like a big deal to most, but to me, it was huge:

I made my first proper art print from one of my digital images.

When I attended Scott Kelby’s “Shoot Like A Pro” seminar here in Los Angeles a few months back, one of the perks was that we got a coupon code for a free 16×20 print from one of the sponsors, Mpix, on some madness they call Fuji Pearl photo paper. Regardless, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Despite the fact that I took photography in high school, my father taught it, we had a darkroom at the school that we’d use on the weekends, he had a darkroom at home that I wasn’t allowed to touch, and hell, my first science fair entry was a shoebox pinhole camera, and from all of this, I spent a good chunk of time developing film and photos, all in black in white, none of which I still have before taking off to college where my time got eaten up by…ahem…studying, I held off for a while because I was nervous about how it would come out – perhaps dealing me a blow if it came back and thought to myself ‘this is shite!’ I had made 8x10s at Costco and they actually turned out fairly well (especially considering the price at $2 per), but twice the size? Never. Will the pixels and my processing hold up?

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August 20, 2013
Scott Kelby, The Metro, and The Ranch.

So was a pretty good last few days. Did the whole Scott Kelby’s “Shoot Like A Pro” workshop/seminar here in Los Angeles on Friday, and I’ve got two thoughts:

One, he’s the MAN! I learn more from a one day session with him than I can on my own in months. He simplifies things so much to the point where you start asking yourself, why the hell did I ever think that was complicated to begin with? I had a great experience at his Photoshop seminar last Winter, was hoping for the same with this one, and I got it.

Two, WHY DIDN’T THE METRO RAIL EXIST WHEN I LIVED IN LOS ANGELES!???? Damn…parked my car in Culver City, made it down to the Convention Center in 20 minutes on the train, and just as easy on the way out. No traffic, no rush hour, no gas, no driving, no cell phone ticket, no 20 dollar parking, no hassle. Frickin’ insane. Right in my stomping grounds…L.A. almost felt like a (gasp!) real city! (more…)

May 28, 2013