The area near Brussels Airport is easily accessible. They are many roads, bike roads, fields, etc. and the place is very interesting for some creative shoots. But my attention quickly turned over to the airplanes. I was amazed how low they get when approaching the airport and I couldn’t stop taking the pictures. The feeling of a low-flying airplane together with the enormously loud sound of the engines was simply AMAZING! I can’t wait to go there again!

It took me awhile (being so deep in digital cameras nowadays) to realize that film cameras limited me by certain number of pictures a photographic film roll could contain (not like digital cameras, which can take from few hundred to few thousand RAW pictures, depending on the capacity of a memory card). The limitation of a number of ‘exposures’ (in photographic jargon of course) in film cameras forced me to spend some time and think about a composition of a picture, how to frame a subject, inspect closely foreground, background, double check the lighting and any other details that could improve a picture so that no film and frames would be wasted. This limitation of a film camera was (and for someone who uses a film camera still is) a very important step in the learning process of the art of photography and I personally believe that it still should be a part of the learning process of photography.

I think that digital cameras with their huge memory cards give us the freedom that actually does more harm than good for those who want to learn photography – we don’t take that extra time and effort on checking composition of a picture like in a film camera because we know that we can re-take a picture countless number of time and delete easily ‘bad’ pictures without any financial costs (as it wasn’t the case in the photographic film roll era).

I think I have found a solution for those who own only digital cameras and who want to learn composition in a way it was done before. The solution is quite simple: next time you will go for a photo walk, do an assignment for yourself or just take pictures, leave your 8 or 16 GB memory card at home and take with you only one memory card of 1GB or even less (the less capacity, the better; I just checked that 1GB for shooting 12.1 MP RAW will give you about 68 exposures). Depending if you shoot RAW or JPEG and how many megapixels your camera has, you should find a memory card that enables you to take not more than 30 exposures. And remember to leave all other memory cards at home! This way you will limit your gear but you will definitely expand your knowledge and experience in composition!

I strongly encourage you to try it out few times and I guarantee that you will see improvement in your photography soon.

Happy Shooting!!!

Exposure is NOT the same as shutter speed!

I won’t go in detail but I will just give a quick summary to those of you who are still confused a little: exposure is the total amount of light that passes on a film (or a digital sensor). That total amount of light depends on the aperture and on the shutter speed.

Note: Some photographers use ‘exposure time’ as a ‘shutter speed’. Although this is correct (shutter speed defines for how long a film or a sensor are exposed, therefore ‘exposure time’), I personally don’t use ‘exposure time’ because it’s very much different from ‘exposure’ itself but can create much confusion.

Again, the answer is quite simple (at least at first): The inclusion of video-making in Aperture 3 is because of the changing trends in the photography world and among photographers! Aperture’s developers have noticed (which actually it’s hard to miss) that more and more photographers start including video-making into their portfolios and services. I won’t elaborate too much here on the reasons for that and the specifications of this changing trend because next article will be specifically devoted to the changing trends in photography. However, I will mention just 2 reasons for the moment:

1) Market Saturation - the photography market has started to be more and more saturated with “wanna be” photographers thanks to the falling prices of semi-professional and professional equipment as well as to its growing availability. I think I should clarify what or rather whom I mean by “wanna be” photographers before people start jumping on me: I don’t mean young photographers who know what they do (although they still learn the art of photography) and know how to behave like a professional photographer towards clients. If you still wonder what I mean by a “wanna be” photographer, watch this video of Judge Joe Brown – Cheap Wedding Photographer.

2) Video becomes a standard in DSLRs – yes, if you’re a photographer and you’ve bought a DSLR in the last couple of years, there is a pretty good chance that your camera records decent videos. There is no need to buy an extra video camera. So why not getting new customers for video-making (and earn extra money), while you can keep using existing gear which you’ve been using for taking (or rather making) pictures?

Few real-life examples of photographers who have started or plan to include movie-making into their services:
- probably the most obvious is Chase Jarvis. I have no idea when he has started making movies… but he does and does it often with DSLRs;
- Scott Bourne from PhotoFocus.com – to me, he is a photography veteran (of course in a very positive sense). He’s been a long time photography-only Nikon shooter (at least to my knowledge) and only recently he decided to get few Canon DSLR bodies and add-ons to make movies;
- Eric Roy – a photographer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota (US). I spoke with Eric just last week and he confessed to me that he is going to start making movies very soon as well and include movie-making in his portfolio and as a part of his services.

I spent few hours yesterday testing Aperture 3.0.2 and I have to say I was positively surprised. This update makes Aperture 3 finally usable or as Scott Bourne from PhotoFocus.com wrote: “Aperture 3.0.2 – FINALLY Finally Ready For Prime Time”. It’s true (and many photographers confirm that) that Apple’s first public major releases (like Aperture 3.0) are in fact full of glitches and bugs. Therefore, they should be seen by the end users as ‘unofficial’ public betas and not final products. Only after few updates (just like in case of Aperture 3), these products become usable. I myself didn’t use Aperture 3 and I waited for the first update of 3.0.1 but even then, the product was not operational, unusable and buggy. I’m a little surprised and even disappointed that Apple  acts they way it does with its products towards the customers. Maybe they will learn the lesson, especially after such a sound criticism about buggy Aperture 3. Sometimes it’s good to learn from competitors Apple!

Having said that, I will probably stay with Aperture 3 (well, actually Aperture 3.0.2) as it seems to work fine (more or less at least). I’ve tested about 75%-80% of the features and performance of its 3.0.2 update and it works much MUCH better than the previous version.

When I was in Maastricht (the Netherlands) in January 2010, I saw this playground surrounded by white snow and I couldn’t stop thinking about my nightmare from childhood. I grabbed my Nikon D90 without any hesitation and just when I was about to take a picture I realized that I should make a picture (besides, there was something missing – dramatic lighting). I pull out my SB-900 speedlight and asked a friend to hold it up at about 75-80 degrees between me and the object and point it directly at it. I also underexposed the picture in the camera in order to achieve more dramatic lighting and contrast. Few post-processing tweaks here and there and voilà! – Playground from hell – almost the same as in my childhood dreams (still brings chills when I look at it).

I hope to have time for another Brussels Photo Walk soon, so feel free to get in touch with me if you’re interested in joining!

I know two holidays closely related to each other: Halloween and All Saints . The last one is a typical Catholic holiday celebrated on 1 November. Halloween is of course a secular holiday a day before All Saints. Not being too much of a Catholic person, I don’t mind Halloween. In fact, I prefer it slightly more than All Saints. The reason is quite simple and it lays in the reason of All Saints’ Day. The main purpose of All Saints’ Day is to commemorate those who died and went to heaven (yes, only those who went to heaven because the next day of All Saints [All Souls' Day] is for those who died but who haven’t entered heaven yet). Anyway, I think that we should remember about those who died not only on this special day but to keep them in mind all the time. We can learn some much from the lives of those who departed, that one day for that is simply not enough.

However, one special day a year for scaring people and being scared myself is completely enough for me. Otherwise, I would get a heart attack every other week if Halloween was more often

Today’s picture: I finally have for you a picture from Brussels. I took it yesterday (on Halloween’s Day) close to Saint-Catherine Square. I have some more pictures from Brussels coming soon so ‘stay tuned’ to my website

I have come up with my new photography motto or saying: “I don’t take pictures. I just try to capture the past”

Now about the picture. I dug out few old pictures taken still with my old SLR (yes, there is no “D” in front of it so it’s not a Digital one) – Minolta 505si – old, good traditional 35mm film camera. There will be posts called “From the Attic”, which means that these will be some old pictures, most of them taken with this old camera.