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RSS Yuri Arcurs – Leading Microstock Photographer Blog

  • I’m one of the most influential photographer of this decade. PDN survey.
    To my big surprise I am on the list of the most influential photographers of this decade. PDN magazine, the biggest photo magazine in the world and host of the PDN Photo Expo in new york every year, has asked the photographic community to list the most influential photographers of this decade. I feel terribly humble [...] […]
  • Great Christmas Presents for Photography loving Guys
    Great Christmas Presents for Photography loving Guys Since I am a photography loving guy myself, this is partly my own wish list. I will classify myself as a relatively skeptical and critical person. This list is for the slightly geeky type that enjoys nostalgic retro stuff and photography gadgets. This post I presume is for the [...] […]
  • My top list of best blogs 2009 and some blog info
    Ahead of the rest... A summary of the top early birds blogs Give yourself the upper hand, twitter these helpful blogs before anyone else I often find that the best blogs are discovered through lists and word of mouth. It never ceases to surprise me how difficult it can be to find new and interesting blogs, simply by [...] […]
  • LensBaby – More than just for fun
    Lensbaby images sell!… If you can get them online. That’s the tricky part. I simply love shooting with my lensbaby and actually have four of them. One for Nikon and three for my Canon. Different kinds and different effects. The lensbaby does something smart: It makes the images look VERY intentionally blurred which is the criteria for [...] […]

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Photos with new Nikon 50mm lens

I got a chance to shot some still life photos with my new lens over the weekend. I don’t have them all keyworded yet for submission to the microstock sites, but I thought I would at least put a couple of them up here. When I first started the photo session I was pretty impressed with the new lens. It was really FAST even at maximum aperture I was getting shutter speeds less then 1/100th of a second. I thought it was a combination of the new lens and extra lights I was using. Needless to say I was quite bummed with I downloaded the figures to the computer and realized I’d just spent a couple hours taking pictures at ISO 800! UUUGGGHHHHH! I had forgotten that I had set it up to 800 to take pictures at a cub scout presentation. I kept a couple of the pictures that I had because I liked them compositionally but most I just deleted. So I set the ISO to 100 and started all over.

Arc of eggsMy main subject for this session was eggs from our flock of chickens. The picture to the left gives a give representation of the various egg colors. And yes the second one from the left is a light green and the fourth one is khaki. We don’t have any white eggs in the house usually so didn’t have one of them for comparison purposes. We might pick up some white eggs to paint for Easter as our colorful ones don’t paint up quite as vibrant, although they do get a nice rick color.

Dog treatsAnother subject was some of our dogs treats. He wasn’t too thrilled about not being allowed to have them until I was done photographing them but he made out okay in the end. The one thing I like about the dog treat picture is I was able to do a good isolation and left plenty of copy space at the top of the image. As I’m comparing them the isolation on the dog treats is much nicer than the eggs. I actually used the Magic Extract tool in Photoshop Elements to remove the background which is why it blends in with the white background of the page perfectly. The egg shot doesn’t do that.

Really just need to keep practice and maybe get some more lights.

Allen

Note:  Of course if the page background isn’t pure white it won’t blend in.