During 2022, I dedicated some time to create contact sheets of all the photographs I was taken. Including the terrible, bad ones. I wanted to preserve them as a brand new way to look at my work. Focusing less on individual photos and outings, taking a bird's eye view of my work as a whole. And I loved it.
The result is two thick volumes, more than 700 pages and more than 14,000 photographs.
In this video, I'll tell you why I decided to do it, why you might want to do the same, and how to do it.
Indiana, February 2023.
New Mexico Church is an image I took in New Mexico back in 2019. I used my old Sony a6000 with the manual lens Rokinon 12mm f/2 (18mm FF equivalent). I didn't do much to the RAW file, besides adding some contrast.
While the contrast slider can do wonders, sometimes you have to roll up your sleeves and go local. In this case, as you can see if you pay close attention to the images above, I added some brushes to make those white parts of the frame stand out even more.
Especially the monk / priest on the bottom right, the second subject in this image after the church.
The effect is very subtle. It's noticeable when presented with the before and the after, but it'd be hard to spot otherwise. It's not obvious.
This is very important when it comes to editing and post-processing our images: to be very subtle. The best editing is the one that does its job without screaming at the viewer.
New Mexico, April 2019.
Indiana, February 2023.
Indiana, February 2023.
California, February 2023.
Castilla La Mancha, December 2021.
From the video Photographing Don Quixote's giants in La Mancha.
California, February 2023.
When life gives you welding glass, you take long exposures! After breaking my last ND filter, I headed to a hardware store to purchase another kind of dark glass, one that I use when I was getting started with long exposure photography years ago. And you know what? It's even better than I remembered. A totally viable option for low budget long exposure photography.
Indiana, February 2023.
Indiana, February 2023.
Montana, June 2021.
From the video Photography in West Glacier National Park.
Indiana, January 2023.
Indiana, January 2023.
From the video Winter storm photography in Indiana.
California, February 2023.
From the video When photography is frustrating.
Photography is not always fun. In fact, it can be really frustrating at times. That's what makes it so challenging but at the same time so rewarding, you have to work hard to get the results you want, and there's guarantee you'll succeed.
Even when we get something, like I did in this video from Pacifica, something else can happen. This day, I lost my only surviving ND filter.
Norway, September 2022.
Indiana, January 2023.
