Photo Gear Purchases 2021

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I’ve always wanted a panoramic tripod head to do real estate photography. A stitched panorama will have much less lens distortion than a single image shot with a very wide-angle lens.

High-quality panoramic heads are priced from about $400 to $900 and they have many features. But I only need to occasionally shoot a horizontal row of photos which can be stitched together.

Before buying an expensive panoramic head, I bought a 240mm nodal rail with a sliding camera mount for $35. There are shorter rails but a longer nodal rail can work with a wider range of lenses.

It turned out that this cheap, little attachment works perfectly for what I wanted to do. Did I mention it was cheap?

A $35 nodal rail purchased from Amazon. This 240mm rail is sold under a few different brand names and there are other nodal rails as low as $20. A nodal rail is easy to carry in a camera bag or even a coat pocket.

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Copyright Phishing Scam

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Today I received this message through my contact form:

Name: John

Email: JohnBowles@xero.com

Message:

Hello,

Your website or a website that your organization hosts is violating the
copyrighted images owned by our company (xero Inc.).

Take a look at this report with the hyperlinks to our images you utilized at
www.warrentoda.com and our previous publication to find the proof of our
copyrights.

Download it now and check this out for yourself:

https://storage.googleapis.com/ . . .[redacted] . . .

I do think that you deliberately violated our legal rights under 17 U.S.C. Sec.
101 et seq. and could be liable for statutory damage as high as $150,000 as set
forth in Sec. 504 (c)(2) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (”DMCA”)
therein.

This letter is official notification. I seek the removal of the infringing
materials described above. Take note as a service provider, the DMCA requires
you to eliminate and/or disable access to the infringing content upon receipt of
this letter. If you do not stop the utilization of the aforementioned
copyrighted materials a law suit can be started against you.

I do have a strong faith belief that utilization of the copyrighted materials
referenced above as presumably infringing is not authorized by the copyright
owner, its agent, or the law.

I declare, under consequence of perjury, that the information in this
notification is accurate and hereby affirm that I am permitted to act on behalf
of the owner of an exclusive right that is presumably infringed.

Very truly yours,
John Bowles
Legal Officer
xero, Inc.

xero.com

12/06/2021

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Photo Retouching

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Why do you use spell-check?

To fix spelling mistakes that would otherwise make you look unprofessional.

Why retouch a photograph?

To fix mistakes in a picture that would otherwise make you look unprofessional.

 

A business may want photos of its new location while it’s still new and clean. But sometimes the construction and landscaping may not yet be finished. Retouching will be necessary to cover unfinished work.

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Reminiscing (Part Eight)

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(My last post reminiscing about old pictures.)

One of the many good things about working for a newspaper was the variety of assignments. Each day brought different photography work and each day you met new people.

A few examples:

• I shot an Aerosmith concert on January 6, 1990. That was followed by two hours of standing in January winter weather photographing a late-night fire at the Polish consulate in Toronto.

• On June 24, 1996, I photographed a story about a group of homeless people. My next assignment was at one of Toronto’s most expensive hotels where an International Olympic Committee executive was being feted.

• I photographed Stephen Hawking at the University of Toronto on April 27, 1998. After this, I shot a rock concert by the Deftones.

• My assignments on October 29, 1999, were to photograph the Prime Minister of Hungary and then photograph a real witch (no joke) for a Halloween story.
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Reminiscing (Part Seven)

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Irish actor Pierce Brosnan.

There are a few reasons why a photographer will shoot or crop a portrait very tightly:

1) Cut off distractions in the foreground or background. Sometimes the subject themselves might be wearing a distraction like text or logos on clothing, a shirt with an ugly colour or loud pattern, etc.

2) Dramatic effect. A tightly composed portrait emphasizes the person’s eyes and facial expression. An otherwise routine portrait can be made more attention-getting by cropping tightly.

3) Graphic effect. A tightly composed portrait can sometimes produce interesting lines or shape.
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Reminiscing (Part Six)

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Yet another post reminiscing about some old photos.

The pictures below were shot during various press conferences which were also recorded on video. But the moments captured in these pictures are not noticeable in the videos.

The power of photography is that it can capture and isolate one moment forever. Video flashes by at 30 frames per second and your brain barely notices any of those frames. Your brain doesn’t actually see video or motion but rather it sees in a series of still images and remembers only key frames.

 

This press conference had name tags placed in the seats. While waiting for people to take their seats, US actor Tommy Lee Jones briefly held up his name tag.

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Reminiscing (Part Five)

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Another post in my series of reminiscing about old photos. But this one includes a public service message :-)

I photographed a lot of fires when I worked for a daily newspaper: house fires, vehicle fires, factory fires. Newspapers like fire photos because the colour grabs people’s attention.

Thankfully the number of serious fires has gone down over the years due to better built homes and sprinkler systems. But fatal fires still occur despite the existence of smoke detectors.

 

This truck was travelling on Highway 401 in 1995, near Pearson Airport at the north-west corner of Toronto, when it struck some metal pipes that fell from another truck on the overpass in the background. The gas tank ruptured and the truck exploded.

I was on the highway only two kilometres away so I arrived in minutes. It surprised me that no one on that busy highway bothered to stop and help. But this is normal for Toronto.

There was a guy sitting on the guardrail, perhaps five metres ahead of the burning truck. He had his arms around himself and was hunched over in a ball. He said he was the driver, no one else was in the truck and he was unhurt. But it was obvious he was in shock. I helped him move further away from the truck and sat with him until emergency services arrived.

Several months later, a firefighter mentioned to me that the guy gave up driving.

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