Tag Archives: creativity

Community Collab Project :: August

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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

Updates for ya’ll

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Wow!! What an incredible summer it has been so far!

I want to start off by giving a big shout out to all of you who participated in last months Community Collab Project! If you didnt see already, the gallery is up and ready to be enjoyed HERE. This months project is going to be absolutely KILLER!!! An enormous thank you to our amazing co-host Shannon Kalahan from Seeing Spots Photography, for coming up with the insanely creative idea! Im seriously on the edge of my seat right now, because I want to clue you guys in on the awesomeness that is to come in this months CCP! (BTW if you havent liked her facebook page yet… well you better do so HERE)

Now, where to start for the rest of the updates… First of all I regret to say, I will be putting the 365 project on hold for the time being. With my increasingly hectic schedule I just don’t have the time or energy to put into the challenge like I did earlier this year. BUT DONT WORRY, this is not to say I wont be shooting anymore! Au contraire,  I will continue to shoot as often as I can, and will do my best to bring you the best of the best from my shooting :) Let alone the awesome shots I can bring you from my professional shoots like these. Continue reading →

Silhouette Collaboration Galleries!!

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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 Collab Project :: June!!

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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!

 

My Active Mind

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As I lay here in bed, my mind wont let me sleep
so much running between these two ears
Its incredible to think about where we are these days

What did we do before google?
Before youtube?
Before the internet in general?
How did we learn anything?

I feel like we have the world at our fingertips
and I also feel that’s a major part of what keeps me up at night
the idea of knowing I can learn anything
I can do anything

I ask one question and it leads to two more
which then multiplies even further
I have an incredible thirst for knowledge

I wonder if minds where this active years ago?
Did people feel as empowered as we feel these days

With so many resources at the touch of a button
Most of which are available on the devices we carry in our pockets
Excuses are especially invalid these days
There’s no reason for people not to be pursuing their passion and dreams

Its an excitingly possible world out there
Which ironically makes it even more impossible for me to fall asleep

Catching Up

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“Love Photography”

Yes yes I am still alive :)

Ive been getting a handful of concerned emails, asking why there havent been any posts this last week. The beautiful thing about BIG goals, is the BIG obstacles that come with. Well… those pesky obstacles are beginning to arrive, like unwanted guests around the holidays, starting with the back end of the site going down preventing me from posting our awesome articles and pics. Luckily wordpress got everything handled just in time for all the submissions for this months Photo Project to come in, so we will have the gallery and extra writeups up within the week!!

If youve been following along you probably know that I have been doing all of my recent shooting on my iPhone, as Im in the midst of upgrading to a new DSLR (Hopefully it will be in at somepoint this week!!). Typically when shooting with the iPhone, I treat it as a regular camera and, 9 times out of 10, I will import my images into Lightroom to process as a part of my regular workflow. Well this time, an unusual situation called for some unusual creativity!

I wanted to do all editing for these on my phone itself, which on most occasions I avoid going for the overly processed, grungy, texture filled photos that is so synonymous with all the photo apps that are saturating the phonetography market these days. However, like Joe McNally says “I never do anything 100% of the time”, or in this case never not do anything. I had overlooked the possibilities of making some sincerely unique and abstract images with the tools I have at hand with the iPhone.

So I now bring you a small compilation of some of the unique, and abstract in some cases, images from my recent iphone editing sessions. All editing was done in my all time fav iPhone photog app Snapseed with a few of the images taken through a instagram filter as the final step.

“Light Bailed”

“Above All Else”

“Displaced Beauty”

Long Exposure :: Examples

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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

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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.

Guest Post : Kris Mathis : Until

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There’s Power In The Word UNTIL…

I have a question for you. How long should a baby try to walk before you tell them to give up trying? Think about that for a second. How long would you give a baby to learn to walk before you tell them enough is enough! Just give up trying!

Now some of the mothers out there are probably reading this and thinking to themselves, “Is this guy crazy!! I would never tell my baby to give up trying! He/she will keep trying to walk UNTIL they walk!” And I agree with you mothers. We should never tell our children to give up. But we should also never tell ourselves to give up either.

You see, there’s something special about that word ‘UNTIL.’ And this one word carries more power than we give it credit. We must remember the power of this word while on our journey towards our goals and dreams.

Promise yourself that you will keep going UNTIL you reach your goals and dreams! You must keep reading books UNTIL you develop your skills! You will keep listening UNTIL it makes sense! You will keep practicing UNTIL you’re good at it! You must keep going UNTIL you make it no matter how long it takes! You will go step-by-step and day-by-day UNTIL it happens for you!! Continue reading →

Time Flies

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WOW, I feel like its been forever since I’ve posted something. As I mentioned earlier last week the past week and a half have been consumed with various work related projects, mainly charity related with our upcoming Gala event in Chicago this week. Unfortunately with my schedule being the way it is, I haven’t been able to allot my self the time needed to process the photos I’ve been capturing. To give you a behind the scenes glance however I have right around a thousand photos waiting for me to sort and process, so be on the look out for the missed days photos to start showing up slowly but surely. To give everyone a heads up as well, this weekend I will be in Chicago helping run our fundraising event, and will have no access to my computer, however I do plan on capturing the great city of Chicago with my lens and will have plenty to share once I return :)

Now on to other exciting news!

First of all I hope everyone enjoyed their Easter celebrations! The family took a trip out to my Grandmas for the day, with which I spent most of the day mowing her yard for her haha. But it gave me some great time to think about the direction of the blog and all things related. I can’t stress enough how much I have enjoyed the growth of the community so far, and look forward to the excitement and growth that is to come!  Continue reading →

The Treasure Folder

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INSPIRATION

As creatives we often find ourselves reaching out in hopes of finding this wonderful word. Personally I love surrounding myself with as much inspiration as possible for every aspect of life. Above my desk I have a bulletin board and a white board filled with all sorts of inspiring pictures, quotes, articles and other randomness to remind myself to keep moving forward.

Just this week one of my absolute best friends, an EXTRAORDINARY photographer/artist/creative, and I shared our inspiration folders with each other. As she pointed out, it was like getting to look into each others minds and see the bits that make our creative section tic. I realized what we are inspired by says a lot about our direction in which we are heading both creatively and in general with the other inspirations we acquire. However, at the same time we often miss the many treasures that are within these powerful inspirations.

If your anything like I have been in the past, and have acquired a folder full of inspiring pictures (over 6,000 in my inspiration folders right now), it either just sits there collecting virtual dust or you look through it from time to time and get a stagnate inspiration more often than not, where your inspired but have no clue where to start to put any of it into action. Often at most we get an idea of a subject to shoot or create, yet our folders hold so much more than just these simple ideas. Continue reading →