how I use categories on chromasia

All the entries on chromasia are placed into one of seven primary categories: six to reflect the aspect ratio of the image, and the seventh to indicate that an image isn’t available as a print. Additionally, each photograph may be assigned to one of more additional categories or subcategories, e.g. my HDR category, self-portrait category, children category, and so on.

about the ‘people [portraiture]’ category

The 'people [portraiture]' category is a subcategory of my people category.

8 May, 2013 // Sidney #1comments & reactions

As you know, I was recently on Jura, running a two day photography workshop for the winners of a competition I judged last year. On the first day we were out and about, but on the second day it was cold, wet and rainy so we stayed at the Jura Lodge and shot a range of portraits: some with strobes, some with natural light. This shot is probably my favourite, a portrait of Todd Winter's father. Todd was one of the competition winners, and Sidney came along to accompany him on his trip.

He was a great sport - we posed him mercilessly for most of the day - and I'm sure we all got a range of great shots.

And it's also a fitting image to post today as I've spent pretty much all of it critiquing the first assignment images for my new course The Art of Black and White Photography: Assignments. And while it was a long day – critiquing 42 images takes time – it was an enjoyable one: they've produced some great work so far.

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1,22pm on 3/5/13
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It's not often that I post two shots side-by-side but in this case I couldn't decide between the two and didn't think it was worth posting them as separate images. Both were taken during our photo tour to the Venice Carnival earlier this year.

In other news ...

I'm really pleased to announce that we're launching a new course today: The Art of Black and White Photography: ASSIGNMENTS, designed to follow on from The Art of Black and White Photography on Udemy.

It's a four week, online, assignment-based course, and if you think you might be interested, just click the link below.

The Art of Black and White Photography: ASSIGNMENTS

We've scheduled two occurrences so far – May and June – and while there are quite a few places available for June there are only for (from 25) left for May: so sign up soon if you want to take part! Oh, and if you haven't signed up for the Udemy course yet (which you'll need to do before you can work through the new course), we're offering it at half-price for anyone who signs up for The Art of Black and White Photography: ASSIGNMENTS.

And if you're interested, Antony Northcutt has posted a great article on his blog about why he's going to be taking the course in May. Thanks Antony :-)

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8.16am on 10/2/13
Sony SLT-A99
Sony 85mm f/1.4 Carl Zeiss Planar T*
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4 April, 2013 // GPP2013 #13comments & reactions

Here's another RX1 shot from Dubai: a portrait of one of the drivers who took us out into the desert for my Landscape Photography workshop.

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1.56pm on 7/3/13
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31 March, 2013 // GPP2013 #12comments & reactions

This is the second shot I've posted of this guy, one of my students from my Art of Black and White Photography workshop in Dubai and, while this one isn't nearly as dramatic, I do think it does a better job of capturing his personality: he wasn't quite as serious as my first shot would suggest :)

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3.11pm on 4/3/13
Sony SLT-A99
Sony 85mm f/1.4 Carl Zeiss Planar T*
f/3.2
1/100
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-0.3
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On the basis that my last couple of shots were rather unattractive – an abandoned microwave oven and a pile of goat's legs – I thought I'd post something a bit prettier today: one of the fabulous models we worked with during our 2013 Venice Carnival Photo Tour.

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4.04pm on 6/2/13
Sony SLT-A99
Sony 85mm f/1.4 Carl Zeiss Planar T*
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19 March, 2013 // GPP2013 #7comments & reactions

This is one of my students, shot during my Art of Black and White Photography workshop at this year's Gulf Photo Plus training event. My reason for shooting it was twofold.

First, he was a great looking guy. Second, I wanted to shoot an image to illustrate a point I make about converting portraits to black and white, i.e. that you can vary the black and white conversion process to either minimise or maximise facial detail. For example, if you use the Channel Mixer or Black and White tool and apply the Red Filter preset you can minimise facial detail (great for women and kids). At the other extreme, if you use the Blue Filter preset (as I did in this case) you can emphasise facial detail.

There's a counter-intuitive element here – using the Red Filter can make a portrait overly bright (there's lots of red tones in a person's face), while using the Blue Filter can make them too dark – but if you compensate for this using a curve you can create some very striking portraits.

On which note, if you're interested in learning more about black and white photography/post-production, take a look at my latest course on Udemy, The Art of Black and White Photography. It covers pretty much the entire black and white workflow, including portraiture, and usually costs $79.00. For the rest of this week though (up until midnight on the 24th), you can use the following link to sign up for just $39.00 and join 13K+ people who have already enrolled.

https://www.udemy.com/the-art-of-black-and-white-photography/?couponCode=chromasia_blog_offer

This offer is open to anyone, so please feel free to share the link.

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3.00pm on 4/3/13
Sony SLT-A99
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15 March, 2013 // GPP2013 #6comments & reactions

This was shot in the Fish Market in Dubai, and while I have absolutely no idea what he was trying to tell me, or show me, I'm pleased I took the shot.

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9.38am on 3/3/13
Sony SLT-A99
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14 March, 2013 // GPP2013 #55 comments

This is the first of quite a few portraits I'l be posting from my trip to Dubai, and it's probably one of my favourites: shot in the Hindu temple in the Textile Souq during my Shoot the Street workshop for GPP2013.

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1.01pm on 3/3/13
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I'm not quite sure why there was a pigeon sitting on this young woman's shoulder, but as she seemed so happy about it it was definitely worth a shot :)

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2.34pm on 4/2/13
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A somewhat more flattering portrait of guy I photographed in my previous entry.

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3.20pm on 5/2/13
Sony SLT-A99
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N45°26.044'
E12°20.351'

I'll be writing a detailed blog post about our 2013 Venice Carnival Photo Tour soon – I'm just waiting till I get some of the truly great images from our students so I can put a gallery together – but in the meanwhile I'll post some of my shots here. This one was taken early on Saturday morning down at Saint Mark's square. It was freezing cold, windy, and I forgot to take my gloves, but I'm really glad we went: there were some fabulous costumes, more of which I'll post over the coming days.

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7.47am on 9/2/13
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N45°26.006'
E12°20.436'
8 January, 2013 // untitled #148comments & reactions

Here's another shot from my recent trip to Dubai: a portrait of one of my one-to-one students. Sometimes this training malarky can be tough :)

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3.54pm on 4/11/12
Sony SLT-A99
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27 December, 2012 // Issacomments & reactions

A shot of my good friend Isaa AlKindy in the desert near Dubai, created by blending two RAW conversions to create the gradient between the yellow/orange sunset and the blue sky above.

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5.12pm on 2/11/12
Sony SLT-A99
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N24°55.861'
E55°41.833'

This is another portrait from our trip to Oman earlier this year, and while I'm not entirely convinced I made the most of this one (I feel there's something about it that's not quite right, but I can't tell you what) I did think it was worth posting.

As always, let me know what you think.

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9.10am on 15/3/12
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19 September, 2012 // untitled #141comments & reactions

Every time I've been to the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat (Oman) I've taken photographs of the huge chandelier that hangs in the centre of the main hall, and each time I've ended up with some reasonable shots, but nothing that I've been sufficiently impressed with to share. This one though, I like a lot better.

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11.12am on 14/3/12
Canon 5D Mark II
EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM
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This is another portrait from our recent GPP Faces and Places Photo Tour to Oman and it's also the image I've added as this week's Mini-PSD as the processing was quite interesting, i.e. it was partially desaturated using the Channel Mixer and then toned with a curve.

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10.06am on 14/3/12
Canon 5D Mark II
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Since starting work on my (relatively) new Udemy course on black and white photography pretty much all of my black and white conversions have been intentional, i.e. I've started out knowing that I was going to produce a black and white image. With this image though I did try to produce a colour version but just couldn't seem to get it to work. Maybe I've just been spending too long looking at black and white images, or maybe this is another example of an image that just doesn't have the same impact in colour. I don't know. I am happy with how it turned out though.

And on a related note: today's the last day do grab a $20 early bird discount on my The Art of Black and White Photography course. If you haven't seen it yet: we launched it a month ago today and now have 408 subscribers and 17 five star reviews. A HUGE thank you to everyone who's signed up so far :-)

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9.38am on 16/3/12
Canon 5D Mark II
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Here's another portrait of one of the many fabulous people we met during our GPP Faces and Places Photo Tour to Oman earlier this year. If you haven't been, you should, it's a beautiful place to visit.

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11.32am on 15/3/12
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20 August, 2012 // chewing a waspcomments & reactions

It's rare that I post unflattering portraits, but I couldn't resist this one: taken on Blackpool's North Pier last weekend.

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2.37pm on 11/8/12
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19 August, 2012 // untitled #140comments & reactions

Despite overexposing this one by one stop (as you'll see if you take a look at the original) it's a truly dreadful exposure and I don't know what possessed me to shoot it this way. That said, I doubt I'll bump into this lady again, and I couldn't resist her smile, so decided it was worth going the extra step in Photoshop to create an image that did her more credit. I'm not sure it's ended up quite where I wanted but it's definitely a marked improvement on my lacklustre original :-)

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2.43pm on 11/8/12
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COMPUTERS AND HARDWARE
17" MacBook Pro
15.4" MacBook Pro
Apple 24" LED Cinema Display
Wacom Intuos3 Graphics Tablet
4TB Infrant ReadyNAS NV+
500GB MirrorDrive RAID

CAMERAS
Canon 1Ds Mark II
Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 5D
Panasonic Lumix GF-1
Ricoh GR Digital III

CAMERAS (previously owned/sold)
Canon 20D + BG-E2 battery grip
Canon PowerShot G9
Canon PowerShot G5
FujiFilm FinePix 40i

LENSES
EF 15mm f/2.8 fisheye
EF 35mm f/1.4L USM
EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
EF 100mm f/2.8 macro USM
EF 135mm f/2.8 soft focus
EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM
EF 17-40mm f/4L USM
EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM
EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM
Lensbaby Composer

FILTERS
Lee Filter system
105mm Circular Polarizer
P105 Wide-Angle Lens Hood
Graduated ND Soft Filter Set
Graduated ND Hard Filter Set

OTHER EQUIPMENT
Speedlite 580EX II
Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2
TC-80N3 timer remote control
Gitzo GT3540LS tripod
Really Right Stuff BH-55 PCL-1 panning clamp
055XPROB tripod with 484RC2 head
Manfrotto 681B monopod
Manfrotto 322RC2 grip head
WhiBal™ G6 Balance Card

BAGS/CASES
Thinktank Airport International v2.0
Pelican 1510 hard case
Lowepro Apex 60 AW
Lowepro Mini Trekker AW
Lowepro Mini Mag AW

SOFTWARE
OS X
BBEdit
Transmit
Capture One Pro
DxO Optics Pro + FilmPack
FDRTools
Lightroom
Photomatix Pro
Photoshop CS5
PTgui Pro
RAW Developer

PHOTOSHOP PLUGINS
Noise Ninja
LensFix & Panorama Tools

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David J. Nightingale


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