Where is NormMonkey?
February 27th, 2008 @ 16:17 by NormMonkey
I admit that I am less bloggy lately than I have been in the past.
Most of my spare time these days is going into a couple of photography projects.
Project 1
The first is the “Every Day Objects” game described here. The latest Every Day Object appears in the right-hand sidebar (clicking the image leads to my gallery), or just visit the gallery by clicking here. As of this writing there are 32 photos of 26 objects.
The game is being played in the Open Discussion forum at Gnurple Forums. Each day, M-F, I post one new object for forum members to guess at. My Friend Codie is also posting occasional EDOs. I admit she is better than I at making them hard to guess.
Some of my favourites:
Object 1
Object 12
Object 24
Anybody can view the forum, new members are welcomeencouraged to join. Please email me as I believe registration is disabled at the moment to keep spammers away.
Project 2
The second is a Weekly Assignment challenge. There have been three already. The assignment gallery is here where you can see what we’ve done so far. Right now it’s just Codie and I doing the assignments. We’re hoping to get other enthusiastic photographers on-board. We have a Wiki over here which lists and describes the assignments, and various other useful information about the project in general.
My favourite Weekly Assignment of my own, so far:
Expanding Mind
Taken for the “Doors and Windows” assignment.
My favourite Weekly Assignment of Codie’s:
Shadow Face
Taken for the “Shadows” assignment.
Photography Books
Last but not least, in the various photography-related sites I lurk around on the Intarweb, two books appear to be outstanding so I ordered them.
The first is The Moment It Clicks by Joe McNally. McNally is about as professional as professional photographers come, with a career in assignment photography working for Life, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated and other world-famous publications.
Each page gives a picture and some advice / a story to go with it. It’s a mix of technical advice, tricks of the trade, on-the-job wisdom, and all useful. His writing style makes you feel as if you were sitting at a bar with him telling these stories, kind of an informal at-ease style. Nonetheless each lesson is presented in a way that beautifully and clearly illustrates some not-so-obvious concepts in a way that makes you smack your head and say, “of course!”
If you’re an amateur photographer wondering what the world of professional photography is like while also looking for tips, this book is for you.
The second is Light: Science and Magic by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver and Paul Fuqua. It has a more formal, educational style to it. It would be at home on the desks of a photographic lighting classroom. The information flow is organized as an educational course would be, starting off with basic principles and moving into dealing with more complex lighting situations.
They advocate learning principles instead of memorizing recipes, an attitude that I subscribe to wholeheartedly. However, where other textbooks present information in a dry, educational format, the writing style here includes enough wit, humour and interesting examples to keep you interested and flipping pages for hours.
That’s it from me for now. Each of the photo galleries I listed above has RSS feeds if you want to subscribe and keep track of new entries.
