November 2013 archive

Minimalism

©TimeLine Media - Minimalism - Hirshhorn Museum at night

On this Saturday morning, there is a lot of sad news coming from the Philippines. The record-breaking Typhoon Haiyan hit the island nation very hard. I still have lots of family that lives in the provinces of Leyte and Southern Leyte, and we are hoping for the best as the recovery and rebuilding starts.

For today’s photography post, I wanted to write about minimalism in photography. Just as in writing, painting, or other artistic forms, it is a challenge to strip out the extraneous elements that may not add to the final piece. There is are authors that write six word novels, or poets that only write haiku. It may seem seem restrictive to put limits on how many words or syllables you use in your work, but it also can open up a new world of creativity. The structure is set for you, just finding how you can fit your art into the structure is the goal.

©TimeLine Media - Minimalism - Hirshhorn Museum at night
©TimeLine Media – Minimalism – Hirshhorn Museum at night

There are many photographers that I follow on social networks that are amazing with their minimalist work. Photographing structures, landscapes, even street scenes with a lot of negative space leaving forms and shapes for the viewer to interpret. For me, this makes for stronger photographs that seem easier to remember in your mental library. It something that I will practice and strive to better in my photography. It adds to my portfolio which is full of busy, action-filled, dance photos. Let me know what you think!

©TimeLine Media - Minimalism in photos DC
©TimeLine Media – Minimalism in photos DC
©TimeLine Media - Minimalism - underneath the Woodrow Wilson Bridge
©TimeLine Media – Minimalism – underneath the Woodrow Wilson Bridge

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Paragon Open photos released!

©TimeLine Media - Paragon Open photos released

The proofing website has finished processing the web pages for the 2013 Paragon Open! All of the photos have been categorized by the man’s number, but there were a few that I could not identify. There were 24 couples that I did not find their number, so they are listed at the end of the collection as PO-XX. They are still separated to each have their own category to make it a little easier to find.

©TimeLine Media - Paragon Open photos released
©TimeLine Media – Paragon Open photos released

This looked like another great day of dancing! It is more of a challenge for me to categorize these since I was not there personally. I hope to have a schedule that lets me cover this, but another great photographer, Mario, took time to travel and cover this for me. He uses a similar setup and camera, so it is easy to edit these photos in post to look as good as we can. Thank you to everyone that has already visited the site since they were released last evening. I have started to work on getting your orders to the lab already.

Thanks to Andrei Gavriline and Elena Kryuchkova for having TimeLine Media cover this event for them. We hope you and the dancers from the event enjoy the photos. Hopefully, I can make it up in person next time, but it is nice to know we have colleagues that can cover these events for us. To view all the photos from this event, here is a direct link to the images:

http://www.timelinedc.com/proofs

©TimeLine Media - Paragon Open photos released
©TimeLine Media – Paragon Open photos released

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Panoramas – Tech Thursday

©TimeLine Media - panoramas from a dSLR

Event Update

Just a quick update on the Paragon Open photos. The editing is completed, and the upload has started at the website. It should not be much longer before they are viewable. The website needs to process the photos – create all the thumbnails for color, black and white previews, and setup all the ordering pages. By this afternoon, all the photos will be available here:

http://proofs.timelinedc.com/

Fall Photography

Around this part of the Mid-Atlantic, the autumn colors are in full swing. It is a beautiful time to drive and walk in wooded areas with the yellows, reds, and oranges on all the trees just before they fall. It is always difficult to determine when would be the best time to go out to take photos. Unfortunately, our busy schedule did not let us go at the optimal time.

©TimeLine Media - panoramas from the iPhone
©TimeLine Media – panoramas from the iPhone

In the photo above, there were still more green than bright fall colors in the leaves. From the overlooks on Skyline Drive, the panorama feature on your smartphone is one of the best ways to capture the grand views on top of the mountains. The biggest challenge for me is to keep the horizon level straight! I had to crop this photo after capture to straighten the view, but my shaky panning also did not keep the mountain level straight through the frame.

If you have a dSLR with you, the colors will be more saturated, and you can manipulate the RAW files much easier in post. Here is a photo from another overlook made from 3 separate frames. The images were then combined in Adobe Photoshop using the “File: Automate: Photomerge” function. I did not have to input any other information, and the program easily spit out a nice panorama! Having RAW files, you can make sure all the images in your panorama look the same prior to combining them, so it looks like it was snapped in one pull of the shutter.

©TimeLine Media - panoramas from a dSLR
©TimeLine Media – panoramas from a dSLR

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

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