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I’ve previously mentioned that area light usage causes unwanted light spots. It’s especially noticeable on black and white photographs. This concerns colour photographs too. However we have to use a flash unit: there are many situations when this compact & powerful light source is necessary. Imagine you’re making a report in a restaurant where interior lighting is changing several times per minute from side to frontal, from extremely dark to glaringly bright, from warm produced by halogen lamps to that of the blue dusk...
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The beach was illuminated by two streetlamps. One of them had a usual light bulb while the other one had a gas-discharge mercurial lamp. I appreciated the situation at once & told my wife that we had to take a picture of this beach at sunset the next day. She was quite astonished as she couldn’t see anything worth photographing. I started to explain that the photo’s foreground would be bright green with a red strip behind it, followed by the dark sea and, eventually, by the pink sunset sky in the background.
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Long ago during the stagnation period deputies were appointed according to different parameters. For example, by nationality. It occurred to someone in the Central Committee to have a yukagir deputy to the Supreme Soviet. This nation already at that time was so small that it was a challenge to find its representative who hadn’t ruined himself by drinking among the two hundred yukagirs in the north of Yakutia.
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White grass, white foliage, white clouds in the black sky, whitened red-brick houses, black water, and absence of haze. In a word, summer-like winter or winter-like summer! This is how a standard infrared landscape looks. Any photographer can make such pictures nowadays.
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A year later I suddenly decided to make a series of scenery pictures on studio table. In such a way the rootlet became the hero of “space” fantasies. I changed the backgrounds. Sometimes they were painted with gouache on big whatman paper. At times I used light and shadow changes on a sheet of milky plastic. As a soil for the rootlet I used kitchen salt, marine rubble, bank sand or metallized polyethylene film. Some small parts are either drawn afterwards or deformed with the help of computer. I wanted these photographs to be used for interior decoration...
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If eyes are a mirror of human soul, then windows reflect inner state of mind of the house owner. Pictures made by tourists during different cruises, even if they were not fascinating, are all of the same type and not interesting, to my surprise. It seems as if they were shot by the same average statistical person. This average tourist shoots photos in most inappropriate time, since 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., when the sun is at its highest point and colour temperature exceeds 6000 degrees.
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The small ship is approaching very fast; the peacock tail of its trace is changing every moment. It seems that each of these moments is worth of admiration and I’d like to push the release button of the camera without interruption. I get all worked-up in shooting. However “patronage” of camera is limited only to thirty six shots, so I have to restrain myself, otherwise the film will have been over when the river bus disappears and the “peacock tail” smoothes down, and I won’t have enough time to change the film and will regret about this lost shot for a long time.
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Light brush, in essence, is a usual torch, with the light of which the future still life is gradually lighted, this is done centimeter by centimeter and in perfect dark. However, this can be not only a still life. I saw interiors shot with the help of this tool. Principle of gradual lighting of the object is also used for portrait shooting. I used this technique even to lighten landscapes. In this case a powerful electric flashlight was used as a light brush.
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Exposure metering or “About silly ‘point and shoot’ cameras and clever photographers”.. Every man has some experience with photographing nowadays: from youngsters to pensioners. Digital technologies made this process so simple that people needn’t go to the photo laboratory even. You have just to wait a minute and you have a ready picture in your hands. It’s bad that colours are not correct, pictures are very similar like Shrovetide pancakes, and soapy. But at the same time you can enlarge the shot slightly, switch on the on-board flashbulb and not pay attention to poor lighting. Great! Photographers are not needed any more! Every person is a photographer of his own!
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There is a group of lucky beggars among photographers. They are going ape over bokeh. This word means features of objects blurring which are located in blur zone of the camera lens. Two types of bokeh are distinguished: foreground bokeh and background bokeh. Bokeh is peculiar to every camera lens. A human eye, for example, is a single-lens objective. At this it is highly imperfect. However, we always focus it on some particular object. Our brain ignores blur zones. Camera lenses are utterly impartial. They blur everything what is not focused. But they blur in different ways. Some of them do this beautifully, others don’t..
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Acutance is a term clear for everyone. From the point of view of consumer-viewer, it’s possible to discern without effort all details important for the subject image on a picture with high acutance. Everything seems simple. However this simplicity, as the saying goes, is worse than theft.
Imagine a portrait of a middle-aged youthy lady that has been shot with assistance of all modern technologies. You can count every skin pore, every wrinkle, every spot. Imagine that a portrait of a political party leader on the election poster is made in such “high-quality” way.
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De beers - the world's largest diamond monopolist - was preparing for its anniversary - 40 years in the Russian market. In connection with it a placard model contest and a magazine advertisement banner contest were announced. A small promotional agency offered me to take a picture for this contest. I made two versions of it. One of them won the tender. One source of light is used in this shot. A narrow spot light has refracted in the facets of large pastes. Rainbow flashes, having spread on a white plastic background, have completed the composition..
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Shooting of things is one of the most popular means of earning money among magazine photographers. Women magazines always need pictures of all new lipstick tubes, bottles of scent, cream pots, book covers, costume jewellery; magazines for men require photos of tobacco-pipes, daggers, knives, footwear. This shooting doesn’t bring much money, but if you adapt yourself to it, become familiar with it and take it seriously without haughtiness, it can not only support you but also give artistic pleasure when you solve more and more technical and composition tasks.
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From my point of view, shooting of weddings demands high level of proficiency from the photographer. That’s why the work of photographer at wedding ceremony is high-paid. A photographer, having fair name, can calculate on fee from three hundred to one thousand dollars per shooting day. For this money a wedding photographer must demonstrate his skills of shooting portraits of all kinds: close-up, half-length, full-length and group portraits. He has to apply various reporter skills, starting with taking pictures in the street under bright sun and finishing with applying photoflash when shooting in dark apartments...
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It’s not a problem any more nowadays to obtain an acute image. A blurred image isn’t a problem too. Let’s try to understand: what for is this wealth for us? The task is not as simple as it seems in the beginning. Imagine that Robinzon Cruso’s friend, Man Friday, managed to find a jug with golden coins. He would be glad with the jug, but most likely he would throw away the coins. These round objects are useless in his world. You can see the work of other people conserved in gold only after you have moved to another reality.
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