Assignment #2 - Waiting

First things first,
Thank you so much for all of your comments and choices that you have left on our blog. We really appreciate it . It's great to hear your opinions and learn about the way you see things - it gives us such a great motivation and pushes to think and work harder.
As you see, we just completed our assignment #2.
"Waiting" was the subject of this one. Not as simple as we thought it will be, but I guess that's the point.
We also thought to modify slightly the process of leaving comments for your convenience.
There are two ways to express your opinions now, Quick or Regular.

Quick - if you don't have much time, or don't feel like leaving a written comment, just vote for you favorite picture in the poll just here to the right. And you are done.

Regular - if you have a bit of time and want to share your opinion with us about your favorite photo or about the other ones.
Quickly vote for your favourite picture in the poll on the right and then leave a written comment below, as usual.
Thank you so much again.

...and now we kindly invite you to visit the gallery below and let us know what you think about our latest works.
Best Regards,

Go to gallery

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Process of processing

Post processing in digital photography can be a tricky thing. How far can one go in processing the picture, so it's still can be called a genuine photograph. The border where the digital photography ends and other kinds of digital graphic arts begins, seems to be rather blurry and not definite at all. Without passing a judgment, it is still important to look for an answer to that question and set guidelines for one self.
We knew, we will get into that problem sooner or later and we will have to make a choice.And so, we have chosen our way. We have formulated our own definition of digital photography and of how far we can go in post processing of our work.
Our way is the way of tradition. Even though we do use the digital camera instead of film , and we do post process our work on the computers rather then in a darkrooms, we have chosen to stick to traditional way of treating and developing photos. To sum it up, every work we publish on this blog is manipulated only as much and using same techniques, as we could do with the image captured on film and developed in a darkroom.
Different use of aperture, shutter speeds, camera motion, color filters, gradient filters, cross processing and spilt toning, were present in traditional photography for years, and so we have an option of using it in our digital workflow as well.
As a consequence anything that exceeds the techniques of traditional photography in any way is not in our interest at the moment and to avoid temptation, we decided not to process our pictures in Photoshop or similar editors at all.
To take pictures we use Nikons D60, D90, D300 with lenses 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6, 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6, 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 and 50mm f/1.8
To process the pictures we use Adobe Lightroom 2 and iPhoto'08 and iPhoto'09.
So that's a little insight into our processing process.
Best Regards,
j

Assigment #1 - the Beginning

The task of this first assignment was to create pictures that would represent or be inspired by the notion of "beginning" in any sense of that word.
We had 2 week to accomplish this task. Each of us have chosen 3 of his best works and they are posted here.
We kindly invite you to have a look at them by clicking on the link below. Choose you favorite picture and let us know about it by leaving a comment.
Thanks a lot and we hope you will enjoy the outcome.

Go to gallery

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The Foreword

We spend endless hours in buses ,trains , planes , waiting rooms. Our reality is composed of constantly changing places and faces. While waiting for the evening performance to come, we roam the streets of yet another city, eating in yet another restaurant or lying in bed in yet another hotel room. After some time, being subjected to all this landscapes, all this information, creates a desire to capture it. Is this desire an attempt to stop this quickly passing time, preserve memories, keep track of people and things passing by in this ever changing landscape ? Or is it that by seeing the differences between this place and the one we will visit tomorrow, we slowly become more curios of the surroundings ?
One way or the other I'm lugging my camera around, everyday and everywhere. Taking pictures of this and that, some of them better then others. I end up with thousands of them. But it seems so accidental, so unfocused, sometimes chaotic.
Perhaps if we look at this same world but through a specific task, subject, with a specific fame of mind, perhaps it will organize and focus this act of snapping pictures.
Perhaps we can challenge each other, inspire to look at the subjects differently, push the creativity in order to frame all those frames a little.
j