Sometimes what you see is not enough...

I have been a witness to many quarrels regarding the amount of photo manipulation from time to time.  There are times that I agree with the opinion that too much post processing alters the meaning of the word "photograph" making it mostly a "creative result" and there are other times when I couldn't agree more with an agressive plan of post processing to convey the meaning of the subject.  

Archangels Gabriel and Michael Day (8th November)

Going back to 2009 I have some photos to remember my visit to the local Kalamta airport for the celebration of Archangels Michael and Gabriel, protectors of our Air Force.  It was a 3-day open visit to the local airport and I went there to visit a friend of mine who was attending the events and welcoming the visitors to the exhibition.  

May 2014 (Part 3 of 3, Mount Athos)

The next monastery was the largest and richest on Holy Mount Athos.  I don't know if the word "rich" or "money" is compatible with religion, but this is what we were told about the monastery.  Please note that the monastery has a guard post on the road from Karyes, where the guard checks the visitor names against his list and their permits or "diamonitiria".  I don't know why, but it seems that in this monastery there are a lot of Cypriot visitors.  The monastery was very big with huge buildings and a lot of monks, but it was also very tidy and clean (like every monastery we went, the surrounding paths and rivers are a different story).  We were put in a room with three other guys from Cyprus, nice guys, we had a lot of fun for one day with them and we laughed a lot.  

May 2014 (Part 2 of 3, Mount Athos)

The following morning we had an early rise to catch the bus to Ouranoupolis where we would then take the ferryboat to Dafni, then the bus to Karyes and finally one of the mini busses to Megisti Lavra Monastery.  The morning resembled something coming out of a fairy tale with pink clouds and blue skies as the sun slowly found its way above the mountains.  Almost everyone was sleeping in the bus (or was sleepy like us), but from time to time there were voices talking about that spectacular morning.

May 2014 (Part 1 of 3 Meteora and Thessaloniki)

A couple of months ago I returned from a trip to Meteora and Holy Mount Athos and it was only a few weeks ago when I finished processing my shots.  I came home with over 2.500 photos shot in 9 days, and I estimated I was shooting one shot every 3.5 minutes excluding the time I went to sleep!  It's a large amount of data and some of the photos are not good, some of them are going to be merged together for panoramas or exposure blending.  Basically I was walking with the camera in my hands and my lens on my backpack almost all the time, except when I was getting really tired and giving up for the day (and even then, I occasionally regretted not going out to shoot some more).

500px, a good idea turning bad?

500px is one of the top photo communities today and a place where good photographs are always plenty and eye catching.  I am not sure how you can learn photographic techniques from this community, as it is up to the photographers to share their ways and it is not so chat-friendly to discuss on line with the creators.  That would require enormous processing strength and bandwidth as there are many registered users.  You can actually learn something from their blog, or their new "ISO" site, but generally speaking information is very scarce.

Lucius river, a dreamy forest path in Arcadia

It was high noon when we decided to go for a photo trip with a friend of mine around the region.  Clouds were present and we feared for rainfall, but there was something pushing us to make that trip anyway.  Finally we decided to go a little further this time and we drove about an hour north to Arcadia region having occasionally drops of rain in the way and hoping that the weather would allow us to see and photograph the beautiful surroundings near Lucius river.  At first, we arrived at the place where Ancient Gortys was located with some ruins of exposed ancient structures lying among green wet grass.  It had just rained and the rocks were all shining around, but we knew that we had to walk by the river to truly admire it's beauty.

Canon Recalls to Repair PowerShot SX50 HS Digital Cameras

Recall Summary

Name of product: Canon PowerShot SX50 HS Digital Cameras
Hazard:

A chemical used in the rubber part of the viewfinders on the camera can cause skin or eye irritation or an allergic reaction to the user. 

Tragic Lantern's GPS Auto-off feature in action. Thoughts...

Remember the previous post about Tragic Lantern's GPS Auto off feature?  Well it works, but is geotagging your photos worth it?  Well, yes and no.  Since GPS drains the battery very quickly it is up to you to estimate when and how to use your GPS features.  If you ask me now, I would probably plan to use GPS tagging for the first couple of photos in every session and then turn it off completely for the rest.

Adobe Camera Raw 8.4 and Lightroom 5.4 out!

Camera Raw 8.4 is now available as a final release for Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop CC. New features include: new preview controls, red eye correction for pets and updates to Local Corrections. This version also has bug fixes, support for new cameras and new lenses.

Lightroom 5.4 is also now on Adobe.com and available through the update mechanism in the application. It provides support for Lightroom mobile, additional camera raw support, lens profile support and fixes bugs that were introduced in previous releases of Lightroom.  

Tragic Lantern (Branch for Canon 6D) to implement GPS-Auto-Off feature

One of Canon's 6D flaws is that the integrated GPS feature drains the battery if you don't remember to turn it off in every single session or when the camera is not used.  You can have the camera turned off, but the GPS still drains the battery as it was not related to camera operation at all.  Well back in December I purchased an EOS 6D and kept finding my battery drained within days of use, something that did not happen with my EOS 60D that uses the same battery type.

Nikon D4s and Lexar 400x or 1000x memory card issues

CompactFlash® Memory Card check for use with Nikon D4S and D4

It has been reported that there are a small number of a specific type of  Lexar CompactFlash® memory cards that may have a problem communicating with your Nikon D4S and D4 DSLR camera. This article describes how to identify the problematic cards and what to do if you have one.

Nikon to offer D600 replacements if 'spots' continue

With regard to the issue with which multiple granular dust spots are reflected in images captured with the D600 digital SLR camera, Nikon sincerely apologizes for any concern and inconvenience suffered by D600 users, retailers, and all concerned.

Chinese government orders Nikon to stop selling D600

The Nikon D600 had a rocky introduction in 2012, with countless users noting that the camera often produces images with dust/oil spots. The company released the D610 a year later that is virtually identical to the D600, but with this issue seemingly corrected. 

Influence...

There are a lot of people a photographer should thank for inspiration, but usually he doesn’t.  There are a lot of photographers whose work is admired and sometimes copied and are never mentioned to one’s photography works.  It is inevitable for a photographer to like, admire, get frustrated, get disappointed, curse (I do that a lot!) when something in the frame is not as it should be and tries to find a way around it.  Well, this time I have to thank all those who influenced me, who confronted me in photographic arguments, who have corrected me in ways I could not have imagined at that time, and to those who just deleted me from their lives because we were incapable of discussing a constructive critique.

Evolution…

It’s been a while since our last communication and I am happy to say that my equipment upgrade is almost complete and initial tests are under evaluation.  What I always try to do with new equipment parts is to reach their limits, find the strong and week points and what I can do with it.  To my surprise I have gained a lot with this upgrade in terms of quality and performance.  In fact, this was a massive upgrade since I changed all my lenses in addition to my camera.