Jorge Quinteros

Tych Panel: The Ultimate Photoshop Tool »

On occasions when I want to tell a story with photographs from a different perspective, I oftentimes refer to using diptychs, which are essentially a collection of closely related images arranged side by side and I accomplish this within Lightroom by using a Preset I had put together.

But then there are some more elaborate multi-panel layouts that I generally see wedding photographers utilize to showcase their work and as much I admire it, there’s no way I would devote that much time to manually composing all these images together the way they do in what I assume is Photoshop, unless you download this very useful Photoshop Plug-in called Tych Panel that I came across.

Rather than try to explain what it does, I suggest you watch the video to see how easy it is to use and to top it all off, it’s free. I do like it but I wish there would be a Preset that would achieve the same results but within Lightroom instead.

Instagrid Network »

Apparently Instagram is reaching a point where it’s no longer just a service about letting you share photos with friends and like-minded people. It appears that if you’re popular enough on the service and have an enormous following, regardless of whether your photographs are great or not, you can now get paid for inserting a brand name every so often once you become member of the Instagrid Network. It was developed by the find folks at Instagrid.me

I guess it’s similar to when celebrities Tweet about certain products. They may not necessarily like them but they’re getting compensated to mentioned them which is the ulterior motive. Reminds me a lot of what the Kardashians do. As long as they’re getting paid, they literally put their name on anything.

I’ll be interesting to see how this network thing goes.

Self Assignments »

Site founded by Bradley Spitzer where he ask professional photographers the simple yet great question of why they shoot personal work. I love Sasha Lecca’s response largely because it’s true and I find myself gravitating towards that too:

When I go to a photographer’s website, if there’s a PERSONAL section I usually click on that first. Seeing a photographer’s images when the work is not on someone else’s dime or time and just for the LOVE of doing it can be an important revelation – it’s information that can help show in a much fuller way more of what makes you a photographer.

Pro Photographers Potentially Ruining Instagram? »

The gist of the article:

There is absolutely no reason you shouldn’t post your DSLR edited shots to a service like 500px, Google+ or Flickr, that’s is what they are there for. Instagram is called Instagram because the service is suppose to represent the photography you took in….wait for it….an instant. To be blunt, just because you are able to upload photos from your iOS photo library doesn’t mean you should.

At first I puzzled about how I felt with photographers uploading their processed dSLR photos onto Instagram but I’ve concluded that I dislike it. I use Instagram to share photographs taken exclusively with the iPhone because there’s a level of authenticity to the process as oppose to bypassing the limitations the iPhone may have when shooting with it and replacing it with a dSLR.

The purpose of an app like Instagram is to celebrate the increasingly mobile culture. There’s no right way or wrong way to use the service but sharing dSLR photos on Instagram seems almost like violating the spirit of the app.

I understand the majority of people probably won’t care where a photo published on Instagram came from because to them, a photo is a photo. For me it’s like you saying you’re going to bake a cake based exclusively from what you know and what have in your kitchen but in the end you end up borrowing ingredients from your neighbor along with suggestions on how to make it look even prettier. Perhaps not the best analogy but it’s the only one I can think of at the moment.

What I upload to Flickr is different from what I share on Instagram and I never feel the need to cross-pollinate my photos between the platforms so as to gain more exposure on what I shoot.

I can’t impose on you as to how you should use Instagram but seeing people upload dSLR photographs on the service is as much as a turnoff as seeing people share stupid fortune cookie comments with Tweegram.

And by the way, “Thou Shalt Never Post dSLR Photo to Instagram” is commandment number one so stop violating it.

Epic Portraits by Sam Hurd »

Shooting portraits can be both challenging and intimidating, especially for newbies who are more accustom to photographing generic things and not necessarily people who are entrusting you to provide direction as to how you envision the final image to look like.

I’ll admit I’m not too experience with utilizing strobes as far as trying to pull off a dramatic portrait. The majority of portraits I’ve taken have been captured under natural light. Heck, I’ve never even shot inside a studio and because my knowledge in this sector is very limited to say the least, I’m always intrigued with reading and enlightening myself with how other more experienced photographers manipulate light and pull off stunning portraits.

Wedding photographer Sam Hurd has this ongoing series on his site entitled Epic Portraits where he’s photographed celebrities such as George Clooney, Tom Brokaw and Alec Baldwin but the underlying theme among all the work is in how Sam writes about the gear, the goal of the shoot, the vision and the story behind each portrait taken.

I’ve Instapapered every single session he’s written about thus far. One of the many aspects I enjoy about the online photographic community is the willingness for many pros to share information that one would assume they would be against disclosing.

I haven’t amassed a body of work as big as any of the photographers I admire and I obviously don’t have as much experience as they do but I’m always open to share the little that I know to those who are as interested in wanting to refine what they currently know about photography.

Not All Images are Great »

Daniel Milnor on street photography -

My problem is I feel the vast, vast, vast majority of images I see on [street photography] sites are simply not great. This has little to do with the quality of photographer. In many cases I wouldn’t edit, print, upload or post most of the images I see, but this speaks to the reality of how difficult this type of work really is.

I agree with Daniel. The appeal towards most street photography sites I visit are derived primarily in how intelligently they write about their craft rather than me being overly impressed with actual work that’s begin produced with a camera. I’m calling it like I see it.

Among the million street photos we come across, there are a few that do have merit on some level but then there’s those that one struggles to wrap their head around the idea of why someone would classify a desaturated shot of a fire hydrant as “street photography”. Certain photos want and need more and one could make them matter more by asking ourselves this question when we take a photo: “What should anyone bother remembering this shot?”

According to Nick, street photographers should “Edit, edit, edit” their work more and perhaps that will reduce the amount of work that gets lost in the bucket of being called “street photography” and yet doesn’t hold up to its designation.