Morning Walk

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Dog's require walking.  Photographers need to get out and shoot.  It's a perfect combo.  Here's some snaps I took on a brisk morning excursion with McGruff.  I'm considering buying a 35mm prime lens.  But to see if it's of practicality to me I made the decision to set my variable lens to 35mm and leave it there to judge for myself.

Keep It Simple

 

I've been struggling with my photography as of late. I watched way to many Youtube photography channels on the matter and have been swimming in the technical aspects of the art and it became daunting.  I was shooting everything in 'raw' and spending way too much time editing my pictures in post like everyone i was studying on the internet.  I couldn't see the forest from the trees.  I wasn't happy with my photos as I was doing too much to them in post and feeling fraudulent.  

After a great discussion with a fellow photographer about this he gave me some sage advise. Go back to JPG.  It'll make your life easier.  What I got out of our discussion was this - Raw gives you way more information to work with yes - but that can be debilitating.  The images once in your post picture production software of choice will always look 'flat' as there is a ton of extra digital information that you have to work with.  My take on this now is that I shouldn't have to rely on all this extra information to fix my photos if I take them well enough to begin with.

I flipped back to JPG and haven't looked back.  When I take the memory card out of the camera and put it into Cyberlink PhotoDirector the picture looks more or less like I saw in the view finder.  A bit richer - not so 'flat'.  I am literally now touching up my photos in a minute or two as opposed to ten or twenty in RAW.  The results are far more pleasing - at least to me and really - that's who I am doing this for.  Me.

I was loosing the joy and getting stuck on the technical.  I was going down the trap of wanting to buy better gear to make my photos better.  I am what I am - an amateur hobbyist photographer.  Being honest with myself has been liberating and I am back to taking snaps because I'm inspired instead of trying to proove I can do it.

These two photos are the first of my flip back to JPG.  I am very pleased.

Follow me on Instagram: @thunderbaylandscapes

Winter Sunrise Photography in the Country

Blair and I drive around the country side of Thunder Bay shooting sunrises, rivers, cottages and lots and lots of snow covered trees!  Hiking - a wonderful way to spend a bright and crisp Sunday morning.

Tones of Grey - No Sunrise Again

Went shooting with photographer wizard @bmwphotoca to capture a sunrise and do some location scouting. The weather forecast again was off by a mile and we were met with cloudy blue and grey skies.

My Youtube channel:  Adam Sabaz
My Instgram to see all my photos: @thunderbaylandscapes and @at0mpub
Blair's Instagram feed: @bmwphotoca
Boreal Cultural Collective:  https://borealcc.blogspot.com/ 

Winter Hiking and Editing Project

I had shot some great footage over the holiday of the water falls at Pigeon River. My good friend Darryl compiled an amazing cutting edge cinematic masterpiece with his drone footage which can be seen here.

I had recently watched a Peter McKinnon tutorial on how to create that vintage retro 8mm look and was inspired to try it myself.  There's a bit to it (watch Peter's video for the how) so I won't go over that.

I use a similar piece of editing software called PowerDirector.  It has many of the same features as Premiere and is way more friendly to the pocket book.  I always enjoy learning so it was a great experience taking Peter's tutorial and learning how to apply the steps in my software.

Here's the final product.  It's not anywhere near perfect but "Done is Better Then Perfect".  A motto I've subscribed to this past year learning my passion for photography.  Every project I try improves my work flow.  There's lots to learn so I'll just keep banging this stuff out.  I'll worry about diminishing returns when the time is right.

Be sure to follow my friends and their amazing work.  I'm always trying to learn something new from these masters.

Blair Wright - Instagram - @bmwphotoca

Darryl Lahteenmaa - Youtube -  Darryl Lahteenmaa

Music by Kage - Band camp - cosmicseam.bandcamp.com

Follow me on Instagram as well - @thunderbaylandscapes  and @at0mpub

Jingle Drones

I am still beaming with overall joy and excitement.  A good friend of mine was visiting for the holidays and he brought his drone to the Bay!  I was so pumped to finally get an opportunity to fly one of these things.  I've been seeing amazing footage from our area over the last 2 years and have been nothing but awed and envious.   Here's my first ever footage from flying a Mavick Pro.   4K of vivid eye candy goodness.  Hope you like it!