If They See Imperfections

Photo by Aaron Wallace, used with permissionIf someone looks at one of your photographs and sees imperfections, others might suggest that the photograph isn't that good. We normally don't see imperfections in a great photograph. Of course there are exceptions to this... Shooting at ISO 5 million (I know impossible) might produce excessive grain and make the photograph unusable.

The photograph shown here by Aaron Wallace is a great photograph and was taken with an Olympus EPL-1, a pocket-able 4/3rds camera. The lens used was a Zuiko 14-35mm f2.0, a really great lens. I saw an EPL-1 down at Staples yesterday with two kit lens for under $500... ($400 at Amazon). Take away the cost of the kit lens and what would be the price of the EPL-1, say $300? Chris Smith and I looked at one when he and Cami were up doing their course "Bending the Light: 411" in November.

I'm sure that if we looked at the the full resolution version of this photograph we might possible find some imperfections. And if there were imperfections I bet someone would have to point them out because we'd all be going WOW! I don't think we'd notice any imperfections in this shot even if Aaron had used one of the kit lens!

(Please note that this copy of the photograph is poor.. it is only 98k in size.. I snipped it with permission from Aaron's Flickr page).

Which one of us wouldn't want this shot to to be part of our portfolios. I would! In fact give me a couple of thousand like it!!!  I'm sure Aaron is making a living at this based on his skills... 

Some times we all do to much "pixel peeping" I think. It is fun.... It might be right.... but in the end there are many other factors, most importantly our skills as a photogapher that make for a great photograph. It isn't the equipment, it is the photographer.

To see more of Aaron Wallace's work head to his Flickr page, I personally think he is a very, very good photographer.

Bending the Light: 411

Chris and Cami's name came up at our last meeting and I emailed him a note about a great shot that I saw on Flickr right along the lines of what he taught us last November. 

What came out of the conversation was their new website for their course "Bending the Light: 411". It not only includes the course information, but their associate trips that Chris and Cami will be doing over the next few years.

I understand that they are working on courses in Ohio and in Denver this year.

It was fun to read the comments about the course from last November and revisit that experience in thought. What a fun and educational day for us. Go check out the site for yourselves.

Bending the Light: 411 Completion

Updated on Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 11:30AM by Tom S.

The course came off yesterday incredibly well and all the feed back I heard was great. Certainly I think we all learned a lot. Even the most experienced of us picked up TONS of tips and further grounded what understanding we had, being self taught, in some theory.

But most importanlly I think most of us learned what good lighting looks like and what a difference it can make in the our final photographs.

Many of the more experience photographer spent much of their time helping the beginners understand their cameras and with the help of Chris setting the stage for each session they, at the very least, got to photograph the models with the best of us.

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