Category Archives: Collaboration

Community Collab Project :: August

by · · 3 comments

Once upon a time, in a far away land (called the Interwebs), there was a magical camera.  For years, this magical camera brought joy to millions by capturing moments and memories.  The camera thrived, it’s days full of smiles and cheese…or at least, people talking about cheese which subsequently…mysteriously…made them smile!  It was a happy time in the Interwebs…until a shadow fell over the land.

Slowly but surely, the camera began having difficulties.  Basic compositions were hard to think through.  ISO’s and Time values became mind-boggling concepts.  The camera was in a fog.  Everything he tried felt flat and colorless…and the camera checked…he wasn’t set for monochromes!  What the magical picture-maker needed was some inspiration…  a “Creative Challenge”, so to speak.

Just as the camera came to that realization, a knight in shining armor raced up.  “Camera!  Thou art in a creative rut!  But fear not, a solution hath arrived.”  The knight proceeded to tell the camera (and, due to his lack of volume control, most of the Interwebs) about this month’s Collaborative Creative Challenge hosted by Sir Nick Exposed and the fair maiden Seeing Spots Photography.  Talk about impeccable timing!

Read more at Seeing Spots Photo

Silhouette Collaboration Galleries!!

by · · 20 comments

What another AMAZING Collaboration!!

We cant express enough, how much we love and appreciate all of your participation in these projects month after month! Personally, I love watching everyone grow in both creativity and in their photographic skills with each new project.

We’re always excited to hear you feedback!! Each project is uniques to each individual creative. In some cases some with excel while others may struggle; some have experienced the topic hundreds of times, others it could be there first time even hearing about it. The beautiful thing is, its not a contest. There is no right or wrong way to go about it all. Our objective for these projects is to continue to provide FUN (and hopefully exciting) opportunities to continue to grow creatively as well as help you pick up a new (or dust off an old) skill or technique along the way. Continue reading →

Community Collaborative Project::July

by · · 2 comments

YAY!!

Our awesome co-host Shannon just released the details for this months community collaboration on the Seeing Spots Photo site, and I gotta say Im super excited for this project! Ive included an excerpt below.

 

HEY CREATIVES!!  IT’S THAT TIME OF THE MONTH!

Ummm…wait…that came out wrong.  What I meant to say is that it’s time to announce the details on this month’s Community Collaboration Project (CCP for those of you who are hip to acronyms and initialisms).

But First!!

Before we spill the beans about this month’s skill set project, we wanted to give a RIDICULOUSLY LOUD, GINORMOUSLY HUGE thank you to all who have participated in our last couple projects!!  Did we mention we had over 100 images submitted to our Scavenger Hunt??  OVER 100!!  Seriously, give yourselves a round of applause.  I mean, think about it…you took on an ambitious project, rocked it full of creativity, and throughout it all, you continued to make new friends (*cough network cough*) all while becoming stronger photographers.  That’s like a win-win-win…um…win.  Or a win x 4.  Or a win to the 4th degree?

Anyway, we are so appreciative to have you all on board for these educational, yet fun community projects.  Without all of your continued support, well…there would be a win to the zero power. haha

We look forward to continuing to make these projects bigger and better in order to consistently stretch your creative imagination and skill sets.  So…um…keep spreading the word, mmmkay? ;-)

Okay, now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for. <insert drum roll, please>

If you’ve been following along on our Facebook and Twitter pages (which is where a lot of the day to day details of these projects get posted.  So, you might want to subscribe.  Just saying!) then you know we asked for suggestions on what YOU GUYS wanted to practice.  After all, we’re here for you!  We mulled over the recommendations we got back, and decided that this month’s skill set would be……..

 

OH Cliff Hanger!!… Find out what this months topic is over on Shannon’s Blog HERE

Scavenger Hunt Collab Galleries

by · · 17 comments

Wahoo!!

Thanks to everyone who participated, we had over 100 submissions for Junes Scavenger Hunt Photography Collab!! That makes this the biggest collab Shannon and I have hosted yet, with over twice as many photo submissions as last month!

Its awesome to see the wide range of thinking on this project, and how each person captured the subject in such wildly different, and in some cases wildly similar ways! Your creativity never ceases to amaze us on these projects, and it excites us to continue hosting these each month!! Continue reading →

Community Collab Project :: June!!

by · · 37 comments

HEY CREATIVES!!  IT IS THAT TIME!!!!

We are excited to bring you this months Community Collaboration Project (CCP? That could catch on ;)  )!!

But first, before we get into the AWESOME project theme, Shannon and I wanted to send out a HUGE thank you to all who have participated in our last couple projects!! With out all of your continued support, these projects would be uber lame. We look forward to continuing to make these projects bigger and better in order to consistently stretch your creative imagination and skill sets. :)

So with that being said… if you’ve been following along on our Facebook pages (you doooo follow the Nick Exposed and Seeing Spots pages, right??) then you know we’ve been leaving you clues about this month’s theme.  The trick was…the fact that we were leaving clues was the clue!  So, without further ado… We bring you this month’s CCP theme…

THE SCAVENGER HUNT!!

Are you excited? Because we sure as hell are!!

Not sure how much explanation this project needs, but heres the Nitty Gritty:

15 days and more than 15 scavenger ideas to shoot. We are urging you to do as many possible – one per day would be great – but we are including a few extras for those over-achievers out there.  Now we know, this is an ambitious project, but we’re confident that will all give it as much as you can.
You can do all 15 as a once a day kind of thing, or you can pick and choose from the list and shoot just a small handful of ideas. We chose a wide range of somewhat off the wall, creative ideas for you guys to pick through, each with endless possibilities on how you can approach it.

The project will go from today June 15th to Sunday June 30th at midnight EST.

Anyone and everyone is welcome to join in on the photography fun.  *hint hint hint* Share with your friends! Spread the word! Post on your Facebook/Twitters/G+/local grocery store community board. Reblog! Scream it from the rooftops! (But make sure it’s before 10pm….otherwise the neighbors get grumpy. :-) *end hint*  Ahem…now where were we?

Oh yes!  This project is for you, Aunt Betty and your smelly brother Sam.  It’s for your neighbor, your neighbor’s neightbor and their Uncle Bob.  Anyone with a way to capture images is welcome to join us.  Shoot with your slr, dslr, point n shoot or camera phone. Hell we don’t care if you shoot with your little sisters Barbie camera. Just get creative with it.

As always please send an email to submit@nickexposed.com with “Count me in for the Scavenger Hunt” in the subject line. Also include the blog/web address you will want your pictures linked to when we put together the gallery at the end of the month.

Below is the list of scavenger ideas to choose from. We cant wait to see your creative interpretation of the different items.

  • “Chuck Norris Was Here”
  • “Big Foot Footprint”
  • Reflected Love
  • Abstract Self Portrait
  • Framed Moon
  • “Whats your sign”
  • Anti-gravity
  • Unusual Perspective
  • Abandoned
  • Silence
  • Pride and Joy
  • Emerging Star
  • Buried Treasure
  • Sparkler fun
  • Clownin Around Upside-down
  • Lyric Quotograph
  • Summer
  • Patriotism
  • Night

We are truly excited to see what you can do with this collaborative project.  We know what creative people you are – and it’s a real treat to see how you interpret these challanges.  It’s a great source of inspiration for us, and for the other participants!

Keep checking our pages, FB’s and twitters (SSP & NE) for updates and shout outs!

 

Lengthy Lighthouse

by · · leave a comment

I’ve done a lot with Long Exposure in the past using my Canon, and typically feel quite comfortable with the idea, squeaking as much creativity out of the technique as I can at the time. However being stuck (not a bad thing by the way) with my iPhone as my main camera over the last couple weeks definitely proved to be a bit challenging, as I searched through the limited apps available frivolously spending money here and there trying to find the one that would give me the most pleasing results. Continue reading →

Long Exposure :: Examples

by · · 8 comments

If you havent heard this months community project is all about LONG EXPOSURES!!!

What the heck is that?!?

Well.. Its a lot of things. When Shannon and I sat down to brainstorm ideas for this project, we decided to go for a more open ended approach in hopes that the end result would be a wide range of creativity from all who participate. We realize that Long Exposure encompasses a large portion of our creative art, and can be interpreted in many different ways. Things from HDR, light painting/drawing, Night shots to creative blur and captured motion, the list goes on and on. The beauty of this is you can experiment and try so many different ideas and approaches.

Does it have to be something new to you? Absolutely not, however we always suggest that you push yourself creatively. Try new techniques or work on approaching old techniques from a new angle.

Shannon gave a few examples of her past experiences with this topic in her post on the collab HERE

I figured I would throw in some ideas on the topic as well to add to the creative spark. So below are some examples of a couple of the different techniques you could explore when approaching this fun and exciting genre of photography.

Light Painting/Drawing:

ISO 100 27mm f/11 12sec “Candle Magic”

This was one of the earlier Daily Exposures, and an extremely fun one at that (it actually won two awards in January as “best of” in the class of Fine Art in Pixoto’s photo competition). Light painting and drawing like the rest of these techniques has an endless amount of possibilities.

Not that you want to recreate this image, but the way that I did this was with a maglite, the kind that have the screw off head and reveal a bare bulb. When you reveal the bare bulb it gives you  this ribbon of light that looks quite magical. Also I had the candle lit and the two light sources combined illuminated my hand as it made the rotations giving the interesting red glow around the scene.

  • Which brings me to a great point… Don’t be afraid to fail and make mistakes when experimenting with these new techniques!! Not only did it take about 10 attempts to come to this image, I also didnt plan on the lights illuminating my hand, which in the end turned out to be a happy accident :) Theres no wrong way to do this stuff, only new ways to approach it creatively!

Now do you have to use a maglite? Absolutely not!! You can use any source of light that you want, as big or as little. Some other ideas include glow sticks, led flash lights, cell phones, large flash lights, sparklers, that marshmallow you set ablaze while trying to make your smores… again the list goes on. Get creative with it and remember to have fun!!

Night Time Shots & HDR

ISO200 18mm f/22 13sec “Night Time Presidential Museum”

ISO 200 24mm f/6.3 4sec “Night Shift”

Obviously I enjoy shooting HDR and typically squeeze one or two in each week. In this case I love what the long exposure does to bring these dark night scenes back to a working exposure.

The top pic was taken right at dusk and in order to draw in as much light as I could, while still shooting a small aperture (f/18) in order to get the starburst effect from the lamps, the shutter speed dropped to double digits in the seconds range.

The second shot was taken at I believe 1am if I remember correctly, on a different occasion then the one prior. And, although at that time of the night the scene was pretty dark to the human eye despite the lights from the city, the long exposure was able to capture all the detail and make its three exposures to make this image.

If your not familiar with HDR (High Dynamic Range), its when you set your camera up to “bracket” or take 3 (sometimes more if you own a Nikon) separate exposures… one at regular exposure, then one underexposed (typically by 2 stops of light or more), and one over exposed (again by 2 stops or more). You then use either Photoshops built in HDR software or an 3rd party software like Nik software HDR Effex Pro or my favorite Photomatix Pro from hdrsoft. This sofware then takes the details from all three photos and combines them, using crazy cool algorithms and math stuff that I could never in my life figure out, and makes a sort of super picture containing all the detail and substance from all 3 pics. This isnt meant to be a HDR tutorial however if requested I could put up a tutorial or refer you to some great resources on the subject :)

Do you have to do HDR for night time shots? NOPE! You could manage just fine with a simple long exposure, I just tend to lean towards HDR, as it gives me more flexibility to work with the details.

 

There are a couple examples to add onto the examples Shannon already shared in her recent post on the subject. Im sure we will post more examples as we go, and as always feel free to post your own thoughts, tips, tricks and examples in the comments below. We want this to be as interactive as possible so get to posting, and more importantly… get to shooting :D

If you want to join in on the fun, send an email to nrmayo87@gmail.com with “Count me in on Long Exposures” as the subject line. Please include your first and last name as well as your blog/site address so we can give full credit when you submit your awesome photos!! The deadline for submitting photos is Sunday June 3, midnight est.

One last thing!!! Dont forget to follow us on facebook for more updates and hot news :D
Nick Exposed on Facebook
SeeingSpotsPhoto on Facebook 

Long Exposures

by · · 5 comments

Below is a segment of a post, our AWESOME Collab Co-host Shannon posted today to help all of you who are interested in participating in this months community project on Long Exposure Photography.

Check it out and be sure to visit her site for the rest of the article

 

Let me hit you with some knowledge.

Long exposure is another way of saying “keeping the shutter open for a long time”. This can be done for a few reasons – to compensate for low available light, as one of a many exposures for bracketing, or to capture the idea of motion on film…errr….sensor. Let’s look at all of these briefly, shall we?

Most DSLR cameras give us the ability to control how much light hits the camera’s sensor. We can do this by adjusting the aperture (size of the opening through which the light travels), or time value/length of exposure (the length of time the aforementioned opening stays open). The aperture size and length of time the shutter remains open will help determine the overall exposure of the image captured.

For example, this image was taken with an f/1.8, 50mm lens. The only available light was a street lamp on the other side of the road, diagonally across from the old abandoned gas station. Although this image was shot in RAW, I did not make any adjustments to the exposure while editing. The only thing I’ve done to this image is sharpen and reduce the vibrance in LR, as the original had a strong yellow cast from the lamp light. Despite being taken right around 9pm at night and being shot at 100 ISO, the wide open aperture and long exposure gave me plenty of data in the final image.  (See the final edit of this photohere.)

Settings: f/1.8, 8 secondsSettings: f/1.8, 8 seconds


Dont forget to send and email to nrmayo87@gmail.com with “Count me in for Long Exposures” in the subject line if you want to participate in the project.

Calling All Creatives :: Collaboration #2!

by · · 5 comments

Here are the facts:

Quotography is creating an image that is inspired by a quote. And, turns out, it is also a collaborative, creative effort between photographers all over the world. Finally, it’s an experience that Nick and I are very proud to have shared with all of you. =)

Out of 35 participants, we received 64 image submissions. It was our biggest collaborative group project yet!! (Mostly because it was our only collaborative group project to date. But let’s not cloud the issue with facts!) The point is, we are taking this success to heart – we have enjoyed working on this project, and working with you – the best group of creatives on the planet. So much so, in fact, that we’ve already got our next project in the works. Read More

Read the rest of this article over at Co-host Shannon’s site to see what the next Community Project Theme is :)

My 3 Submissions

by · · 31 comments

ISO400 50mm f/2.5 1/1600sec

“So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”  -Hunter S. Thompson

Yikes!! Finally getting around to making time to get this post in. What a fantastic project!!! Thanks to all who participated, Shannon and I were extremely pleased with the turn out and amount of creativity that went on over the last couple of weeks. We plan on having the gallery up by the weekend :)

Now onto my thoughts and process with the quotes I was given! Continue reading →