Pro Techniques

Some years ago Steve Simon took a leave from his job as a newspaper photographer in his native Canada and headed south across the border on a self-assigned project. “I’d loved photography since I was a kid in Montreal, roaming the streets, inspired by Cartier-Bresson,” Simon says, “but I’d been working 10 years at the newspaper, doing the same things again and again. I was looking for a way to get the inspiration back, to explore the power of what photography can be.”

Hi everybody! I’m very excited to be launching a new Q&A column here in Shutterbug—a magazine I’ve been reading, and been a fan of, for so many years—so it’s truly an honor to be here with you. I invite you to send in your questions to editorial@shutterbug.com, and I’ll do my best to answer them in Ask a Pro. OK, let’s jump right to it.

A unique way to create complex geometric, multicolored designs is to attach tiny Christmas tree lights to a bicycle wheel and spin it in a dark room or outside at night. I found 7 ft of Christmas lights powered by 3 AA batteries online for about $12, and that was just enough to cover the entire circumference of the front wheel of my son’s medium sized bike. I took the wheel off the bike with a simple crescent wrench and used black electrician’s tape to affix the lights and the wires onto the rim, figure A.

Hospitality photography focuses on hotels, resorts, and casinos but it’s not just about capturing luxury accommodations and lush exterior shots of surrounding vistas and scenery. It’s as much about highlighting comfort, relaxation, and fun. The pictures may include special dishes prepared by gourmet chefs, waiters serving tables, and guests enjoying the ambience and amenities. It’s a smorgasbord of images designed to appeal to a wide range of tastes, albeit presented with an air of sophistication to make any potential guest feel like a prince or princess upon arrival.

There are many kinds of white light. At first this statement seems like it doesn’t make sense, but if you look closely at a typical light bulb in your living room (the old kind, not the new florescent type of bulbs) and compare it with, say, a daylight florescent fixture, the light bulb is much more yellow than the florescent light. Similarly, if you compare sunrise and sunset lighting to the light from an overcast sky at noon, the lighting from low angled sunlight is very yellow—it looks golden, in fact—and the cloudy sky produces a white light that is more bluish.

Chuck Berry was right. “It goes to show you never can tell,” he wrote, and sang, and that phrase is as appropriate a way to begin this column as any I can think of. I certainly never can tell which photo will please the client, fulfill the assignment, or sell well through my stock agencies; in other words, which one will succeed in the marketplace.

You’d wash your car inside and out before you tried to sell it, right? At the least you’d vacuum the dog hair from the back seat. Why do so many people offer downright dirty cameras and lenses for sale at online auction websites? While you cannot (and should not) remove signs of wear, you can easily make used gear clean and presentable.