Harley

A couple months back I was asked to take a few photos of a Harley. The owner wanted the photos for online site so that they could sell it off.
I had not done anything like this before and I was very apprehensive. It was pouring down on the day that we decided to do the shoot.

The gear that I had with me that day was my Nikon D700, Nikkor 50mm F1.8 and my SB600 flash unit. I for reason decided to take photos only with my 50mm. One of the reason was that I knew 50mm being a prime lens would help me get sharper shots and secondly that was the only prime lens I had.
As it was pouring down, we decided to do the shoot in a garage which had a nice shed. The challenge there was that the wall at the back was too close to where the Harley was standing. I tried all different angles but however I might try the wall was going o be in my photos.

I did a few of shots of the Harley from either sides and then took shots of the detailing and the speedometer.

There was one good thing, I could place the Harley right at the edge of the shed and make my background go blur. But there was too much happening in the background. I tried changing my Aperture to the lowest to get a good bokeh, but it was too bright on the outside.

All the photos were corrected for exposure in Lightroom. Some of the shots have been shot as HDR images and combined in Photomatix Pro.

All in all it was a fun shoot :)

Hope you all enjoy the post. If you have any comments, please leave them below.

Blurb it out!

"Stories are keepsake of families, cultures, communities and companies and provide the fundamental connections we as human crave"*

Yesterday morning at an ungodly hour (for me) we had a workshop and breakfast. The thing that made me signup for this workshop was of course the breakfast (not really), but what I was really interested in was the content that was going to be discussed.

The workshop was with Daniel Milnor who is a "Photographer at large" at Blurb. The topic of discussion was Tools of Modern Storytelling.  I went there with an open mind not knowing to to expect. As we took our seats (I had to sit right at the front as all other seats were taken), Daniel came over and started chatting. I didn't even know that he was the one who was going to present later. Daniel was introduced as a story teller which he thinks is a better term for someone who makes-up-things. But really he is a story teller. Daniel shared his insights about using Blurb and how Blurb is being used in the photography industry. But Blurb is not limited to just professional but anyone and everyone who has an urge to tell a story or want to capture memories in a book. Blurb recently opened its Australian office in Sydney and this workshop cum breakfast was part of the 5 day Roadshow that they had organized in Melbourne.

Daniel Milnor at the Blub Workshop in melbourne

Some things that I learnt at the workshop:

• Blurb allows people to create books with Rich Media (a new word that I learnt at the workshop), which means that the user can embed sound and videos in their ebooks. 

• We can create ebooks, magazines, photo-books, coffee table books, cook books using Blurb. 

• The books that you create can be sold in the Bookstore and they can be made available world wide.

• The BookSmart software which can be downloaded from here on your Mac or PC and is a very easy to use software.

• If you do not want to install anything on your machine you can use Bookify directly from the blurb site.

• They also have plugins for Lightroom 4 and InDesign which helps making books from within those softwares. The plugins can be downloaded here.

• The S4 has a built in Blurb book maker software.

• You can make your own book at as low as $4.95 per book.

• Photographers can download their photos from either Flickr, SmugMug.

Some noteworthy books mentioned at the workshop:

Fuel Creative Group - They create Blurb books for their client meetings, each meeting has a different personalized Blurb book.

Andrew Kaufman - My Ceylon

Robert Leslie's Stormbelt

The first thing that I did when I got home was to create my Blurb account so that I could see what was all the talk about. And yes its very simple. So here are a few links to some cool offers from Blurb. 

• I have joined in the Blurb Affiliate program (you can get your link to become an affiliate here).
• Turn your Instagram photos to a Blurb book here.
• Just for the month of May you can use this link to create your Blurb book and get 15% off.

OR

Like us on Facebook and leave us a comment below and 5 lucky winners will receive a $40 voucher to create your own Blurb book. But hurry as the voucher is valid only till 30th of June 2013 (Some conditions apply). 

*Taken from the presentation of Daniel Milnor.