My first camera didn’t have a battery. Not a single solitary double-A. I could shoot all day without the need to go anywhere near a USB charger. Of course, that’s all day if I had enough film. Film that at best, would take 36 exposures, 38 if you were a risk taker. Film that cost money to buy, money to develop, and money to print.

Digital Photography Is Amazing, But…

Let’s be honest, modern digital photography is amazing. It’s not as cheap as we originally suspected at the turn of the millennium, but it has brought image-making to so many more people. We can get incredible images, straight out of camera, often with little consideration of the settings used. And that makes me a little sad.

Digital photography’s Achilles heel is the very thing that makes it so appealing. It is instantaneous. However, to me, that can devalue it a little. We take more pictures but treasure less.

There are some elements in film photography that I think can be very useful to us in the modern digital era. Today, I would like to take a look at some of them.

“Film is what occurs on your teeth when you don't brush.” – Vincent Versace

Film Photography Gives Us Patience

I think patience is the thing we have lost the most in digital photography. That instant gratification of seeing an image on our LCD drives us to take more and more. That can only mean we are giving each individual shot, much less consideration.

With a film camera, you need to be patient. You have to carefully think about the shoot well before you actually go do it. Black and white or color? Low or high ISO? Slide or negative?

You could take all types of film to cover all bases, but film was and still is expensive. You would need to think about what you wanted to achieve from your shoot, buy the right film for it, and then work within the constraints of that film. That needed patience and forethought.

Once at a location, you needed to isolate the shots you wanted to get. There was no firing away to your heart's content, your film stock was limited and every shot needed to count. That slowed you down, made you think more, and in turn, allowed you to be more creative.

Understanding Exposure via Film Photography

Another thing we are missing from modern digital photography is a true understanding of exposure. Sure we might know that wider apertures give a more blurred background but exposure is much deeper than that.

Read: The 10 Best Film Cameras Worth Buying

Most film cameras from the 70’s onwards had some form of exposure meter. Even my first camera, a Zenit 11 (the one with no batteries), had a rudimentary selenium cell light meter. However, they were not always accurate and you did not have the benefit of LCD screens and histograms. You really needed to know and understand the way metering worked.

A classic example of this might be shooting birds or aircraft in flight. With a digital camera, we point the camera at the subject and shoot. We notice it’s a bit dark so we open the aperture a little. But do we really know why that image came out dark in the first instance?

In film photography, you had to know that your light meter would be exposing for the whole scene. In this case, the whole scene contained a lot of bright sky and the meter would consider that and stop down further than you would want.

Is that relevant to digital photography?

I think so, yes. Whilst we can adjust based on histograms and LCDs, what if you wanted to get a shot very quickly. Perhaps a rare bird is passing fast overhead. With a good knowledge of exposure you would instantly dial in 1-1/12 stops of exposure compensation. Without it, you would end up with a single underexposed image. That's just one example of where understanding exposure can help us nail a single shot. There are many more.

Understanding Value through Shooting Film

I alluded to this earlier but film photography gives image-making a value. Every shot you take has a base cost. It’s quite easy to work out. Add the cost of the film to the cost of developing and printing and divide by the number of exposures on the roll. I think you might be surprised at how much each image costs.

When each image has a value, you try your hardest to make that image work. You will think carefully about the exposure. You will make sure the focus is nailed and most importantly you will continuously refine your composition until you are ready to take the shot. The end result is a beautifully exposed sharp and creative image.

From that, you will get immense satisfaction.

You Don’t Have To Buy A Film Camera

All this sounds great but you are not going to go out and buy a film camera just for this. Luckily you don’t have to. You can apply all of the above to your current digital camera just as easily.

For patience, you can spend time planning your shoot. You can think like a film photographer and work as if you are using film. Limit yourself to one or two “rolls of film” Set a single ISO and work to that and perhaps even shoot JPEG in a specific film simulation mode.

All of this will improve your photography.

For exposure, you can simulate film photography, simply by switching off the LCD and not reviewing your images. Learn to read what the meter is telling you and you will begin to understand in which types of conditions the meter can be fooled. Instinctively understanding exposure is a very valuable skill to have as a photographer.

Lastly, to give your images value, simply make every shot count. Take your time, analyze the composition, move around, improve the perspective, try different lenses and when you are 100% happy with the view, take the shot.

Film photography is not for everyone. However, what film photography does bring us is a set of skills that are slowly being lost in digital photography. Some might say, so what? Well, despite the amazing advances in photography, those skills are the ones that will set you apart as a great photographer. They are skills that elevate not just the technical aspects of your photography but also the creative.

You don’t need a film camera to learn or improve these skills. Simply applying a film mindset to your modern photography will reap great rewards.

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It's that time of the year 🎶🎄

The holiday season is for most people a bittersweet time-frame in which memories meet our current social circles. Usually, this means family and friends, a perfect subject for turning our cameras to those close by. Which happens to be one of the biggest ironies several photographers encounter. You see, some of us rarely turn our cameras toward everyday life, and that's just sad…

This takes me to a short anecdote. Back in 2014, I noticed the importance of taking photos of everyday life thanks to this magnificent book put together by Annie Leivobitz. After receiving a physical copy of it, I got inspired to capture the upcoming holidays with an open eye. The most special thing about those images is the meaning they have to me.

Last week, Dahlia and Tersha planned a winter photography challenge with the aim of capturing outdoor holiday scenes with a narrow depth of field! So yeah, a pretty narrow assignment as you can see! Our talented community embraced the challenge and here's a slow-cooked curation of those gorgeous shots. Expect Xmas bokeh, colour-temperature tweaks, filters, natural light and more!

But first, let's all give a special shout-out to Frogdaily for winning our current POTW!

Photo Of The Week

Isn't this an odd encounter? Maybe not, but for some of us it does feel even surreal! This image was shared in the “Color Red” throw-down opened last week, a thread that quickly escalated into a high-quality gallery of photographs organically built by talented visual storytellers like yourself!

The color red is an effective way of grabbing people's attention, but one needs a bit more than just reading of course. Here, the context is the ultimate element taking this shot up to extraordinary levels.

Congrats Frog, and thanks for sharing this with us!

Weekly Photographic Challenge Wrap-up

What a cosy ride don't you think? If you wish to see more photographs, take a visit to the 674rd thread.

A colorful explosion enhanced by the creative nature of Lensbaby! Did you know that light beams can be shaped into other shapes rather than circular? This is achieved via light-diffraction devices, and they look just like cookie-cutting molds.

Gorgeous shot, perfect for a digital postcard!

“This is what the snow looks like here within a few seconds of landing on the trees”.

“There are some lights on the bushes…”

A nice set of images indeed!

No snow for Tersha, but a striking bokeh tree!

“A repost but I don’t have many opportunities for outdoor night”.

Vibrant and colorful, great use of a square 1:1 ratio!

Love how this looks like a coven in Yule!

One simply can't resist cats 🥺

Now that's a creative way of mixing strong Xmas traditions together. Clever indeed!

This is shot with an iPhone 14 Pro Max. I was working on how to to get a narrow depth of field. I tried using the Portrait Mode and it worked most of the time.

What You Shouldn't be Missing from the Light Stalking Community

Rob Eyers wished us all a happy, healthy and peaceful holiday!

Rob shared a fly he captured while frolicking with his Nikon D810 and 70-200mm while hoping for some birds, a crispy shot given the setup and hand-holding conditions:

Tersha gave us another extraordinary image of frozen leaves!

Also, Rob Eyers shared this wonderful view which made us all a bit jealous 🙃

By any chance, do you find yourself more and more drawn to Black and White? If so, take a look at this thread!

Last but not least, Rob made some tweaks and fixed the sharpness/size issue some images were experiencing a couple of days ago, swing by to read more about this.

The Mobile Monday Challenge is open for sharing some shots! And if you want to see more shots, take a look at the Members Picks, a place where our community shares their favourite photographs from our forums every week.

We'd Love To Hear Your Thoughts

Also, our Feedback Forum has some nice pictures, and is clear that some of you have started building a solid photography style. This is the right place for all those people who want to grow fast as photographers.

Here, you'll get your work critiqued by plenty of well-intended people, but you'll also have the chance to critique your peers. We truly believe in the power of criticism and feedback. Here are some of the most interesting shots shared during the last week:

The Shark Tank is a great place to learn and to discuss, so please read the instructions in order to get a better critique experience. Share your comments, opinions and doubts on any or all of the images above. We also will be delighted to see some of your own images. Don't be shy, critiques are given to photographs and not photographers.

Also, don't forget to participate in our upcoming challenge!

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Sourced by Time Trap Photography sharing the best photography tips, news and tricks throughout the industry. Time Trap Photography is dedicated to freezing those special moments in life that can be revisited and admired for generations to come. - Shannon Bourque
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Zu Anja Behrens’ Kundschaft gehören Mercedes-AMG, Maybach sowie Porsche und damit ist eigentlich schon klar, wo der Schwerpunkt unserer heutigen Folge liegt. Die Automobilfotografie ist Anjas Zuhause, aber nicht nur. In ihrem Portfolio finden sich auch Landschaften, Unterwasseraufnahmen, Portraits und Mixed-Media-Kunst. Für diese hat sie eine Galerievertretung. Es gab in der Podcastfolge also einiges zu besprechen!
kwerfeldein – Magazin für Fotografie https://ift.tt/YGqAeDx

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Sourced by Time Trap Photography sharing the best photography tips, news and tricks throughout the industry. Time Trap Photography is dedicated to freezing those special moments in life that can be revisited and admired for generations to come. - Shannon Bourque
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Artificial intelligence isn’t just coming for our jobs.

It’s also expanding rapidly into other fields.

And photography is essential to its mission. 

Not only is artificial intelligence capable of generating images and videos, it can also analyze them. Think space exploration, deciphering long-lost languages, or medicine, as is the case here.

Research scientists revealed that they discovered a way to use photographs of a child’s eyes to assist an AI tool in diagnosing autism in what can only be called a massive leap forward for the field. 

The team at Yonsei University College of Medicine said of their work, “Individuals with ASD have structural retinal changes that potentially reflect brain alterations, including visual pathway abnormalities through embryonic and anatomic connections… Whether deep learning algorithms can aid in objective screening for ASD and symptom severity using retinal photographs is unknown,” Science Alert writes.

Interestingly, the AI was totally accurate when it came to diagnosing autism but wasn’t quite as accurate when it came to gauging the severity of it. To discover this difference, the team let the AI evaluate photographs of children diagnosed with autism and those without it hence the high accuracy on the one measure but the varying output on the second count (48-66% accuracy according to Science Alert).

The research suggests that this could be an integral part of early diagnosis and, over time, perhaps refined to better determine the severity of symptoms.

For our part, it’s nice to read something different involving AI and photography which has dominated our headlines over the past year. After all, people are feeling like this “revolution” is going to put us all out of a job, Adobe included.  

Any thoughts you might have on the future of science and AI as far as photography is concerned are welcome in the comments. 

You can also read some of our other photography headlines at this link.

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Sourced by Time Trap Photography sharing the best photography tips, news and tricks throughout the industry. Time Trap Photography is dedicated to freezing those special moments in life that can be revisited and admired for generations to come. - Shannon Bourque
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If you have followed me on Light Stalking for a while you will know that I am a bit of an Apple fan. Whilst I try not to stray into the realms of fanboi, I do like their products, in particular for photography and video production.

Back in late 2020, Apple released its first Apple Silicon products, amongst which was the new Mac Mini M1. As my aging Mac Pro was, by then, 12 years old, I decided, based on the glowing reviews, to get one as my main machine.

It was a great choice. For around $800 I got a machine that was fast, quiet, and allowed me to edit my Fujifilm RAWs with ease and to edit 4K video. However, with my purchase, I made one, perhaps schoolboy error.

Learning From Your Mistakes

The error I made was to pay the extra money for the 500GB SSD – up from the default 256GB. There were two problems with this, 500GB did not really give me anything extra. All my apps would fit neatly onto 256GB and all my video and images were always going to need external drives.

The other problem was that I went for the default 8GB RAM version of the Mac Mini. There was a certain amount of consternation amongst reviewers about Apple’s RAM policy with their new M1 products. Both 8 and 16GB seemed like nothing in a world where PCs were running 32GB as default.

However, Apple’s RAM worked differently.

Instead of being connected to a motherboard, separate from the CPU, it was “unified”, built onto the CPU. This meant it shifted data around much quicker, negating the need for larger banks of RAM. And that was true, my Mac Mini M1 was fast and powerful. Then I bought a secondhand medium format digital camera.

Big RAWs Need More Ram

I have written about the reasoning for buying my Fujifilm GFX 50s. It’s a camera I adored from the moment I first uploaded the raws to my Mac Mini M1. It’s also the camera that revealed the fatal flaw in my decision to go for 8GB over 16GB.

You see, the Fuji’s RAW files are 119MB apiece. I like to shoot and edit in HDR, especially my blue-hour shots. That means a single HDR merge is over 600GB in size. Technically it’s less as Lightroom converts to Adobe’s DNG raws, however, it did mean my Mini M1 slowed down dramatically when both previewing and compiling HDRs.

In addition, my Fujifilm X-H2 shoots significantly higher-quality video than my previous cameras. With 10-bit color and bit rates of up to 400 Mbps in 4K, video editing was also becoming very sluggish.

It was time for an upgrade.

The New Mac Mini, Same As The Old Mac Mini

Unboxing my new Mac Mini M2 Pro, I could have become very confused. Externally, it looked almost identical to the M1 version. The only tell-tale sign that something is different is on the rear, where you now get 4 USB-C/Thunderbolt ports, compared to the two on the M1. This incidentally was another drawback of the M1 model especially as I needed external hard drives plugged in.

The real changes are on the inside. The CPU is the Pro version of the M2 Apple Silicon chip. This is effectively two M2 CPUs welded together giving a big increase in speed over the M2 and a massive increase in speed over the M1.

The memory bandwidth is also twice that of the base M2. Better still the base model M2 Pro Mac Mini comes with a 500GB SSD and 16GB of RAM as standard. All this for around $500 more than I paid for my M1 three years ago. So was it worth it?

The Mac Mini M2Pro In Use

As ever, the Apple experience in setting up was seamless. Unplug the M1, plug in the M2Pro, go through the set-up screens, and choose the Time Machine backup. This copies over all the apps, settings, and files from my older Mac. It takes a little while to do but when you return, it is as if I hadn’t changed a thing.

Apps opened without the need for reinstallation, entering passwords, etc. All my documents, images, music, and movies were in exactly the same place. Safari web browser had all my bookmarks and more importantly, I did not have to re-enter my passwords whenever I visited sites. Sitting in front of the monitor, visually everything was the same.

Until I started working.

Fast Not Furious

The moment I started to work in Lightroom I noticed the difference. Fuji GFX raw files would open quickly, edits were instantaneous. Two areas where the M1 really slowed down were multiple masks and clone/healing tool corrections. Have more than a few of these and the M1 would really struggle. The M2 Pro however does not slow down even with tens of edits on GFX raws.

When it comes to HDR merges, it is night and day. The M2 Pro shows the preview within seconds and only takes a few more to merge the files. I can actually be previewing a second HDR merge whilst the first one is compiling.

The same is true of video. My big Fuji 4k files now playback in real time with no stutter even with multiple edits and effects. The real test in video speed is stabilization.

As a stock videographer, I shoot from a gimbal a lot. This invariably needs some stabilization applied in editing. The M1 Mac Mini wasn’t particularly slow at this, however, the M2 Pro is rendering stabilization at 4X the speed of the frame rate, that’s fast. If you are stabilizing tens of clips every session, that adds up to some serious time saved.

Another pro for the M2 Pro is the 4 Thunderbolt ports. It means I can now run my 2K Ultra Wide as my main monitor but also add in my 27in 4K monitor as well. This gives me a dedicated monitor for detailed editing and color corrections as well as a larger preview window when editing video.

Summary

If I had not bought the Fujifilm GFX50s I would probably have chugged along with the M1 for a while longer. The GFX required me to upgrade to the M2 Pro if I wanted to keep a smooth workflow going.

However, the extra speed has actually improved my workflow speed in both stills and video.

The other important factor is the resale value of Macs. They do tend to hold a higher value for much longer than their Windows counterparts. That means that all being well, I will still get $400-$500 back on my old M1 when I sell it. This means in real terms the original M1 has cost me $400 over three years.

More than good value.

The M2 Pro whilst about 30% more expensive, is probably much more future-proof and hopefully will also represent very good value. Whilst I am not expecting it to beat the 12 years of my old Mac Pro, I still foresee it being perfectly usable in five years time.

Who knows what Apple will have produced by then?

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Sourced by Time Trap Photography sharing the best photography tips, news and tricks throughout the industry. Time Trap Photography is dedicated to freezing those special moments in life that can be revisited and admired for generations to come. - Shannon Bourque
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This story ended in the way many people would have predicted.

But we have to give Twitch some credit for at least trying.

You see, the topic of nudity is a sensitive one, whether in photography or videography. And with the advent of streaming services, this sensitivity is a little bit more heightened given that many social media channels are also some of the world’s largest advertising markets.

In other words, the line between tasteful photography and pornography might be a little too blurred for most paying advertisers thus anything that could be construed as the latter needs to be absolutely banned if you are to keep the revenue flowing. 

Twitch, it seems, has revisited its recent “artistic nudity” foray and is now reversing course, citing community concerns, according to The Verge. 

This policy won’t just extend to human-generated nudity, either. As The Verge reports in detail, a lot of debate has centered around AI-generated nudity and specific forms this might take. None of them have survived this new policy, of course, and it’s not hard to blame Twitch given that all of this is relatively untested territory in general. 

Twitch users seemed to pick up on this almost immediately and began testing the absolute limits of Twitch’s new policy with everything from nude avatars to everything in between. Almost proving the maxim that we “just can’t have nice things,” Twitch has made sure that its platform will never be confused with one providing a space for nudity of almost any kind whatsoever. That means no actual nudity, generated nudity, or even things like “disrobing” or dancing that could allude to nudity. 

Any thoughts you might have on Twitch’s aborted artistic nudity policy are welcome in the comments.

We have some other headlines for you to read at this link right here.

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Sourced by Time Trap Photography sharing the best photography tips, news and tricks throughout the industry. Time Trap Photography is dedicated to freezing those special moments in life that can be revisited and admired for generations to come. - Shannon Bourque
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During my photographic career, I've met several pauses regarding my visual production. It makes me feel quite guilty sometimes, and the best way I've found to overcome this kind of creative block is the following.

One should start looking closer. Beyond the literal act of getting closer to everything via a macro approach, I also mean the figurative act of considering your surroundings as worthy of being photographed. Sometimes, we photographers behave curiously. Once we found a couple of genres to commit to — in my case documentary and sometimes street — we restrict ourselves from enjoying other subjects as well. Curious indeed…

Try looking at your room as a detective searching for clues about somebody's behavior. Study how light behaves in your kitchen or living room; step out into your yard and look for wilderness around you. And if you find these words encouraging enough, you'll likely stumble with some chilly winter garden scenes! Dahlia got our community to study how winter developed around their places, and these are some of the most wintery submits:

But first, let's all give a special shout-out to Rose Marie for winning our current Photo Of The Week!

Photo Of The Week

Congrats Rose on your creative solution for the challenge, thanks for sharing such talented work with us:

Weekly Photographic Challenge Wrap-up

ATTENTION: The following images are best-viewed a cosy blanket:

“Winter starling, taken a few years ago …”

“From the archives”

“Not much snow here yet. A prehistoric monster I found in the park”

Finding rectitude in nature is hard, and this image indicates how things can get arranged into patterns just my moving around; playing with our perspective.

love those eighties-vibe colours! 🟥🟨🟧🟪🟦

Those purple tints on the cooler hues give a nice and chilly aesthetic to this shot, turning it from being just a road into something more storytelling as well.

And speaking of stories, this image speaks by itself about how tranquil solitude can be!

And the winner of the purest image of a frozen garden is… This poetic shot!

wow… this left me speechless…

What You Shouldn't be Missing from the Light Stalking Community

Tersha surprised us with some abstract leaves, Rob even thought this was from an underwater shot!

Ndjetfan swung by and wished us happy holidays with this photograph:

And in case you were wondering, he shared the EXIF for it: f8 1/125 ISO400 Canon R5 24-70 @24

Rob opened the request for throwing down photos with a clear focus on red colour. Click here to participate. This is an example

and this is the first submission we got:

Once again, I want to highlight quick-review on a cool little new tool in Lightroom that is using AI to add bokeh:

I've been using Lightroom since version 1.0, and it never ceases to surprise me how it gets better and better!

The Mobile Monday Challenge is open for sharing some shots! And if you want to see more shots, take a look at the Members Picks, a place where our community shares their favourite photographs from our forums every week.

We'd Love To Hear Your Thoughts

Also, our Feedback Forum got some nice pictures and is clear that some of you have started building a solid photography style. This is the right place for all those people who want to grow fast as photographers.

Here, you'll get your work critiqued by plenty of well-intended people, but you'll also have the chance to critique your peers. We truly believe in the power of criticism and feedback. Here are some of the most interesting shots shared during the last week:

The Shark Tank is a great place to learn and to discuss, so please read the instructions in order to get a better critique experience. Share your comments, opinions and doubts on any or all of the images above. We also will be delighted to see some of your own images. Don't be shy, critiques are given to photographs and not photographers.

Also, don't forget to participate in our upcoming challenge on narrow DOF!

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Sourced by Time Trap Photography sharing the best photography tips, news and tricks throughout the industry. Time Trap Photography is dedicated to freezing those special moments in life that can be revisited and admired for generations to come. - Shannon Bourque
Please visit our main site for booking availability and rates.

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