Bacon Lettuce Photo

by Joe

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Amit is an entrepreneur that lives in San Francisco. He takes photos, twitter, and sometimes blogs. He runs Photojojo, it’s about photography + awesomeness.

Tell me about the beginnings of Photojojo?

Photojojo started as a fun side project, I felt like there’s some interesting stuff to do with photography and crafting and I figured let’s launch it and see what happens.

Do you have a personal interest in Photography?

Yeah! I did a lot of photography in High School I actually got into video photography. I’ve been shooting for 14 years and I guess to me I like to take photos casually and I’m an amateur. When I got to New York I got my first Digital SLR because NY is incredible it’s hard not to be really excited about photography when in NY.

Where did you get the idea for Photojojo?

I saw a lot of interesting stuff going on in digital photography, a lot of my friends were taking lots and lots of photos when they got their digital cameras, usually hundreds and thousands of photos a year. The photos would just pile up and get forgotten about on their computer. It’s kind of sad that we’re generating and recording all these happy moments and never looking back because theirs just too many photos to keep track up. I also noticed a lot of people getting excited about DIY (Do it yourself) and crafts and customized products and making stuff come alive. Seemed like an interesting place to cross those two, digital photography and having people get more into making stuff again.

You guys seem to have a lot of great ideas, are those user submitted or do you come up with those on your own?

A little bit of both, some ideas we come up with originally and some we get on the web or our friends and readers submit things, we try to credit them when that happens. It’s a good mix.

How large is your staff at Photojojo?

We are 4.5, and the half is my mom who helps part time.

Most of our photography and digital photography are shot with my Nikon D70 which definitely fits the bill for online stuff, works great for shooting with the web which is what we’re usually doing. A lot of our photographs for our book were shot on the same camera and a Canon Rebel XTI. All these cameras are not huge monster cameras, they’re the bottom when it comes to digital SLR’s. Yet I’m not a real big gear head when it comes to that, I’m all about what you can do with what stuff you can do with your photographs and not so much the gear used and lens comparisons. You could really take great photographs with just about anything, I use my iPhone’s camera more then any other camera and I get some good stuff out of it.

What do you think about photo communities like Flickr or Picasa? Have they reached their potential or do they have room to grown and where do you think Photojojo has a place in that?

I’d have to say there’s a lot of potential for these to grow, I think Flickr is great and is probably my favorite online photo community. I think Facebook’s got the most potential for doing something interesting just because they’ve got a larger space and a broad spectrum of users. It’s not just professionals but amateurs…Facebook hasn’t done much with photography but I’m hoping that they’ll look at that…when it comes to integrating a lot of social apps I think they have a lot of interesting things they can do.

If you could magically improve photo communities wordlwide what would you do? Would you like to expand and grow the photo safaris you do now?

Yeah, like with anything else though, as a small company we have to be cautious about where we spend out time and resources but we definitely want to do more… we have to strike a balance between what we do with events, and the store, and the book that’s coming out. But definitely is a different experience when we bring people together that have a common interest in the real world instead of online it brings and and creates a much stronger relationship with people. We’d love to do that more. The ones that we have done so far are in New York and Las Vegas and we’ve really enjoyed them.

What is your favorite type of camera?

Small. Smaller is better. I honestly wish if I could just have a camera that was as good as a DSLR but could fit in my pocket I’d be just so jazzed about that. I think the best camera is the one that you have with you all the time. I’m actually in the market right now because I spilled some water on my camera at PMA and it stopped working and I’ve been looking around and I just wish there was something small and wonderful like on my phone so I wouldn’t have to have a second device to carry around. The camera on the iPhone is too crappy.

by Brian

This photo was taken using a Canon Powershot G5 held behind a reversed 50mm Nikon f1.4 lens to get this blurry magnified effect. I like the muted colors and grain in this photo, seemed to be very fitting for this subject. The smudge was a piece of dust on the inside of the lens (you can see it next to the number 22 on the hour hand).

by Joe

This photo is one of the outtakes from my project 52, taken with my Canon Rebel XSi and a 50mm 1.8 lens. I love using textures and layered two onto this photo, a lace texture and an antique cursive writing texture and just went from there playing with different modes and opacities.

Technical Data:
Exposure: 1/40th
Aperture: f/3.2
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 400

Thanks Andrea for allowing us to feature your photo. Great use of a textured overlay. For those of you unfamiliar with “project 52″ it is when you take a photo of yourself once a week for an entire year. It’s a great exercise in creativity! Try it and maybe add your photos to our new BLP flickr group!

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by Brian

This photo was taken along the San Mateo coast of San Francisco Harbor near the San Mateo Bridge during the sunrise. The low tide revealed some nice patterns in the shoreline while a bank of clouds hid the sun as it rose. I waited till the sun just crested over the clouds and snapped this photo using my Canon 20D.

by Brian

This photo was taken from Magic Island facing northwest just after the sun had set. The beautiful row of condo’s overlooking Ala Moana Beach made for a nice subject.

Click here for a detailed map of Magic Island.

I didn’t have a tripod handy so this is hand held (hence slightly blurry) two second exposure with my Canon 20D, f/5 @ 70mm and ISO 200. I’d love to go back one night with my tripod for better shots except I’d be worried out there at night with all my camera gear =)

If you like this photo, take a look at another photo I took at Magic Island.

by Joe

I think what made me take this photo, was the influence of having seen so many inside shots of old passenger trains, and old busses. Stepping inside this vintage car, my camera automatically lifted for the shot. I did have a vision of using HDR, but I was too lazy to set for multiple images. Since I was shooting in RAW format, I knew I could produce a descent HDR anyway; at least in the style that I enjoy creating.
The image was processed with Photomatix single RAW HDR conversion, with somewhat exaggerated settings. Then processed in Adobe Photoshop CS3, where Neatimage was used to reduce noise, and a texture layer was added to enhance the feel of depth and color.

Canon EOS 40D
Canon EF 24-70mm 1:2.8 USM lens
1/64s
f2.8
ISO 400

Allen has definitely shown how someone can use HDR’s to make photos look like paintings or masterpiece works of art. Here’s another image of his that caught my eye.

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by Brian

This flower was growing in my parent’s backyard in Waipahu.

I’m not sure what it is but the texture of the leaves and the colors caught my attention. It had rained the night before and the flower still had the rain drops on it. Taken with a Canon 20D. Lens unknown, somehow Flickr’s no longer showing my EXIF data, boo.

by Joe

When it comes to this picture: I had just bought a Canon 5D Mkii and wanted to see what sort of DOF it would get with the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8. As my daughter Janneke was the only one willing to pose I took a picture of her. I was very pleased with the DOF, which is quite shallow. I didn’t blur anything in post-processing.
I did tweak the colours and contrast but I suppose that’s fairly obvious. I brightened the eyes a bit as well. My wife thought I had done something with her lips as well but that wasn’t the case.
The thing I like most about this picture is the fact that it shows that Janneke has what we call “a lazy eye”. She has to wear a patch on her right eye to train her left eye on a daily basis.
I also - in a weird sort of way - like the dress she’s wearing: it’s dead ugly but Janneke and my elder daughter simply adores it.

You can see more of Steven’s Photos here. This is a great example of a portrait, the lighting, colors, and composition. Notice how the vignette draws the viewers eyes to the subject? Very Nice.

by Brian

This photo was taken at Moanalua Gardens where the old monkey pod (I think) tree’s are both spectacular and breathtaking.

It’s hard to get a grasp on the sheer size of these trees without a sense of scale, which unfortunately, is missing in this photo. I converted it to black and white because I was after the patterns the branches and leaves were making. So I converted, punched up the contrast and threw in some sharpening in post. Taken with my Canon 10-16mm on a 40D body. The wide angle’s flattened out the tree a bit for this interesting effect. Enjoy!

by Joe

For me, photography is about a moment. I love landscape photography for its unpredictable nature. You can go to the same place again and again and always get different results. Sometimes you get a great scene and don’t capture it the way you wanted. Other times, everything comes together just perfectly. On this particular morning, I awoke, stuck my head out and looked at the still dark sky…clear sky…the enemy of the landscape photographer. I almost gave up and returned to bed, but I thought I should go and enjoy the sunrise anyway.

The clouds did come in a little later as I was driving to the jetty. I shot a few just as the sun was rising, but they didn’t have what I was after. Having the sun in the frame it was also very hard to get a good balanced exposure. This shot was a very conscious decision to extend the exposure time using a 10 stop B+W neutral density filter and a ND grad to balance out the sky. The sun is not far out of the frame to the right. For me this filter is worth every cent. It allowed me to get a 30 second exposure at ISO 100 with the sun well and truly up in the sky. So I managed to get this ultra long exposure for the time of day when I would have normally been getting exposures of a fraction of a second.

For me this was a great day, a reminder always to try some different things, and not take the conditions at face value. Having the filter, the tripod, the grads, the mirror lock up, the cable release, all seem like a chore initially, but after a while it is simple and quick, and the results are well worth it. I used to blend two exposures to get foreground and sky well exposed, but that is impossible to get right if you are doing ultra long exposures with clouds around water as the two won’t match with the clouds moving. My advice is to buy what you can afford and slowly build up your equipment as you can, and experiment often. If you feel like going back to bed…don’t do it…you need to be out there and practicing to get better!

Exposure: 30 seconds

f-stop: f11.0

Focal Length: 24mm

ISO: 100

Camera: Canon 5d

Lens: EF 24-105L

Editing: Lightroom 1.0

Andrew is a photographer from Perth, Australia