Marc Pampols

I’ve read a great article by Patrick Lavoie on Photo.net, Patrick is a professional digital photographer that describes her personal and unique workflow to make and process her pictures.

Digital Photography Workflow: Fashion Photography, by Patrick Lavoie

I’m very “obsessed” with workflows, I have always thought that using them helps you perfecting your techniques and doing new and creative things.

In this article, Patrick Lavoie discusses his unique digital workflow process tailored to meet the needs of his professional career as a photo retoucher and digi-tech working with high-end fashion photographers, the set of software and tools he prefers to use, and goals he accomplishes with his digital workflow. The article is enhanced with illustrative figures and screen shots, and includes examples of photo retouched jobs from Patrick Lavoie’s portfolio. Whether you are just entering the world of digital photography and need some tips and advice on how best to post-process your images, or are a seasoned pro, the insights shared here should be helpful with your own digital photography workflow and fashion photography post-processing.

If you are planning your wedding and you want to get a great photo and/or a cinematographic video work, StillMotion is one of the best you can find all around… watch this one!

Julia + Phillip SDE - Toronto May 31st from StillMotion on Vimeo.

You can watch more StillMotion wedding videos here

This is my new toy purchased this morning, a remote control for my Canon EOS 400D, the RC-5.

My first impression was pretty good, is very small (see image), comes with a battery and the shot angle is 360º, at least at a distance of 1m.

The price is 18-21 EUR, so it’s cheap and a must-have for every photographer!

Canon RC-5 Remote Control

I have recently been accepted as a contributor in iStockphoto, a website where you can find and buy royalty free stock photography :)

The first thing you have to do if you are interested in being a contributor and earn money for every sell, is to pass a first question test, and then, submit some samples of your work to see if your images are technically and commercially ready to sell.

To pass the first test, you have to read some articles and documentation about copyright and quality of the images, then the images you have to upload should look perfectly clean and sharp viewed at 100%, this is a very important thing.

There are some more interesting photo royalty free websites like Fotolia, Dreamstime or Bigstockphoto.

I’ve been using some noise removal software for special situations like this one I show below, this picture was taken from the Top of the Rock, in the Rockefeller Building, New York.

If you look close, you’ll clearly see noise specially at the sky, this crops are at 100%  

New York original picture

The best two programs I’ve ever used are Neat Image and Noise Ninja, both available as a standalone program and a photoshop plugin.

Picturecode Noise Ninja: After some usage, I prefer this one. It’s easy to use, fast, “cheap” and produces in my opinion, better results than Neat Image.

Neat Image: This one is also very nice but in my tests always producted more artifacts than Noise Ninja.

And… after applying a noise reduction program (in this case, Noise Ninja) the New York picture looks better:

New York filtered noise with Noise Ninja

I made some tests with my Canon 55-250 IS today, and I have discovered something new to me, the build-in IS does not work the way as I expected.

Here you can see a sample, the same image taken with and without IS, with a tripod, and a cropped sample at 100%

Yes, IS (or VR for Nikon) helps you get sharper images while holding the camera with your hands, but not when you have a tripod, because IS/VR is always looking for vibration, and if they don’t find it, the same mechanism will cause that vibration.

Canon IS on and off samples

If you have a Canon Digital camera, you can display thumbnails of your RAW shots in Windows XP or Vista with the Canon RAW Codec

You can download the codec for free at the Canon website

Display Canon CR2 RAW Thumbnails in Windows Vista

At the moment there is not a compatible version for 64 bit Vista, but you can download the codec for almost all EOS and PowerShoot models, simply install, reboot, and you will see thumbnails of your RAW files in the Windows explorer.

MILapse has posted some beautiful HDR timelapse videos in Vimeo, if you like HDR this is a must see, congratulations MILapse, that’s a brilliant work!

HDR (High Dynamic Range) is a technique that allows you to make a bigger range of exposures between light and dark areas in images.

Link: MILapse video gallery on Vimeo

Ultra Wideangle HDR Timelapse from MILapse on Vimeo.

A lot of walking across the island of manhattan in New York during the past 10 days with some of my friends… I am still tired! and back to work tomorrow Monday :(

Also I have uploaded some pictures, click here to view the flickr album about the trip.

Everything was great, I think everyone should visit “the big apple” at least once in their lifetime.