Showing posts with label photo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photo. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

The Ken Burns Effect

Have you ever watched a documentary that used stills (photos) with music for drama? Maybe the stills faded into (crossfade) one another, or slowly panned across the screen. Well this is known as the Ken Burns effect.

It is called that because the famous documentary filmmaker Ken Burns uses the effect, I hate to say effect, in many of his films. His most recent film was entitled "The War", a seven part documentary that aired on PBS.

As I got into film making I used a lot of my photos in my work. At the time I didn't realize I was using the Ken Burns effect.

For photographers though it opens up new ways to express your photographic creativity. With inexpensive video editing tools you can take your images to a new level. You will even begin to shoot differently.

To show off your work you can burn them to DVDs for playing on large screen TVs or use YouTube or Flickr's new video function to display your work.

Keep the old camera clicking. There's nothing like a moment captured in time. But look for new ways to display those moments.

In some of my upcoming posts I will offer tutorials on how to do the Ken Burns effect and tools you can use.

As always please comment or visit and connect with me socially at
http://www.earlb.com/

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Video now on Flickr

Flickr has made the leap to video...sort of. As I write this I am renderin a short sneek-peek of a documentary I am working on to upload to Flickr.

The first thing to note is that Flickr is not becoming a YouTube. You can only upload 90 seconds of video. While YouTube, MetaCafe, etc... users may find this useless for video I think it will be useful in the photography world.

Why? Because a lot of my documentaries have photos with music. This can take photographers into a new realm of people "seeing" their images. The old "Ken Burns" effect could possibly take over Flickr. Hmmm maybe I should start a Ken Burns group real quick...

Anyway if photographers grasp this concept I think they can take their photos to a new level.

Earl B

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Thursday, March 20, 2008

Big Lightning Strike - Photo Tip


Big Lightning Strike
Originally uploaded by jagerBB
This image is getting a lot of activity on Flickr. Most of it is because it shows up under "extreme weather" #1 on yahoo images. It's not particularly my favorite but it is dramatic and I can see why people like it.

How it was taken
There is no magic here. Just find a storm and open the shutter for 20-30 seconds. The less the better so that noise doesn't build up if you shoot digital. Also shoot a few shots and adjust your F stop for the surrounding lightning. I wanted the house and euipment to show up in image as well so I adjusted F stop and maybe some shutter to guesstimate on exposure.

The lightning itself though pretty much takes the picture. Think of it as a big flash.

Also you will need a tripod of course. In some cases I've used bench tops, rails etc... when one was not available.

I also check direction of storm/s before going out so I can plan the shot and know where the storm is headed.

Disclaimer: Remember this can be dangerous and you should do this at your own risk.

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Friday, March 14, 2008

Old Man in Philippines - short essay

I met this guy in a small farming village in the Philippines. He was making a three rock fire outside his small bamboo house for cooking rice.

This was his first portrait.

See my latest travel dispatches at:
earlb.com

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