PotD: Stones and Cows

PotD: Inside - Outside

Here I put the camera up to the door viewer. Since the light meter looked, directly at a dark brown door, the flash went off giving a nice circular grey reflection effect. This is a easy way to put a fish-eye on your camera, but perhaps a bit too limited when it comes to variation. You can put things outside the door, of course.

PotD: Elevator - Going Down

Often, your camera can go where you yourself can not.

PotD: Foggy Night

Digital noise can add to the atmosphere.

PotD: Torn

Pictures often make good pictures. Especially if you can find new frames for them.

PotD: By Hook Or By Crook

I can not turn off the flash on this camera. This "feature" makes close-ups like this one quite interesting.

PotD: All White

A change of perspective lets you see new things in your surroundings. Also, try not to be afraid of natural abscense of color.

PotD: Starry Night

PotD: Passing By

PotD: Almost Skylight

PotD: Shopping Pattern

PotD: Ice Ice Baby

Two Week Warning

Today we are two weeks away from the official opening of It's Not the Camera, It's You! and boy am I busy furnishing behind the wrappings. I think I can promise you some interesting takes on the vast fields of photography and creativity. Here are some of the things we will look closer at during the next months.

Noise is for Heroes - what to do with digital noise. This and other articles will help you work around the shortcomings you cameras have, and hopefully endorse them.
24 Picture Limit and other exercises to help flex your creative muscles.
DUC hunt - where to find cheap digital cameras. Also upcoming; reviews of older digital cameras focusing on how to best use them as creativity building assets.
Software reviews - What digital picture software can aid your imagination instead of fire up your frustration?
Picture of the Day - Daily examples of how we apply our ideas to make pictures.

All this and more on It's Not the Camera, It's You! Stay tuned!

PotD: Human Pyramid

PotD: Jupiter, And Beyond the Infinite

Todays PotD links in fine with my rewiew of 2001 - A Space Odyssey over at my other blog The Really Short Movie Guide. However, it was not really planned, it just happened. Honest.

PotD: Tape Dispenser

Potd: Screenshot

Potd: Last Days of Christmas

Potd #5: Golden Globe

If you do not know what all your lamps look like from above, you may not be a photographer.

What the DUC?

As I am putting together the first articles for the blog, I notice the need for a new word. Very often i need to refer to the kind of cameras we talk about here. But what to call them? Elderly digital cameras and/or digital cameras with inferior lenses and/or digital cameras with low pixel resolution doesn't really roll off the tounge.

Not all the cameras we talk about has a low resolution, not all have inferior lenses, nor are they from a specific time-period. So to go at the problem from the other way, what *are* they?

Well, Digital, Underestimated (from our point of view) and Cameras. DUC. It's an acronym as well as a TLA. I like that.

And as soon as I got that sorted out, I knew this post has to link to the comic strip What the Duck. It's about a duck. And cameras. You'll like it.

Potd #4: Big Field Day

I like the desaturated color in this picture. It looked like this coming out of the camera, no editing has been done. Normally it is hard to photograph landscapes with a 1.3Mpixel DUC, but once in a blue moon you end up with a result that works out.

Potd #3: Soundhole in One

Very seldom can you point a camera at an instrument and walk away with a bad picture. Digital noise makes excellent grain once converted to monochrome.

Picture of the Day explained

OK, so we got this thing called Picture of the Day, right. This is a way to show lots of pictures taken with what is generally believed to be inferior digital cameras.

Labels

The Labels used on PotD are of two kinds. We list both camera model and number of megapixels, making it possible to search the pictures for either.

Participate!

You can participate! You got a excellent picture taken with a camera that fits in with the idea of this blog? It could be a 0.3 megapixel camera, or a Hasselblad with a pinhole lens. Send them in to me at ulf.kack@gmail.com. Please put "itsnotthecamera" in the subject line. Now go find that old camera you put away in the top drawer, replace the batteries, get out there and get you pix on!

By sending in pictures you give me the right ONLY to display them on this blog indefinitely, no other form of publication of any kind. You will be attributed to the picture, so please write clearly what you would like the attribution to read.

Your picture could be either a Picture of the Day, or an illustration to a regular article. If you only would like your picture as a PotD, please say so in the mail.

Potd #2: Veggie Sushi

Most photographers I know take pictures of their food before eating. I can not explain why, but with food this delicious looking, it is no wonder. Sushi works good with a camera, because even if you have not got a good lens (the iPhone really have not) there still is a lot of colors and shapes to build your picture with.

Legalese

This post should not really be necessary , but anyhow.

Everything on this blog, pictures, articles, film clips, cookie recipies - ALL - is copyright Ulf Käck, at the year of original publication. Exception: Photos and/or other content attributed to people other than me. They, of course retain their own copyright. Hopefully I have even asked their permission before I use their stuff.

If you wish to use any of it, please ask permission first. If you wish to link to the blog, you can even use a couple of sentences or a picture from the blog assuming you attribute the stuff clearly. If you are at all unsure, ask.

Also, I am not affilated with any of the companies to witch I link on the blog. The links to Amazon.com however, go through my Amazon Associates account. If you by the thing I linked to, I get money from Amazon. No need to thank me, you're welcome!

Thank You.
/Ulf Käck

Potd #1: Woobly Blur

Your DUC is a good candidate for camera-tossing. If it should break, it will not break your bank account along with it. Maybe your heart, but we all have to take chances, don't we?

Coming Attractions

Hi, and welcome to It's Not the Camera, It's you!

My goals with INTCIY are two. One, to make you more creative as a photographer. And two, to get you to learn to like your camera.

Let's face it. Have you ever been satisfied with your camera? Or are you sitting with a $100 point-and-click-camera, wishing for at $500 DSLR? Or with a $8,000 DSLR wishing for a medium format high-end digital system? There's always something you really would like to, but can not do, with the camera you got.

And what are the results of this? You spend your time flipping through camera catalogs or reading the latest digital camera reviews on the Internet instead of actually taking pictures? This is most likely a result of one of two things:

1. Either you are lazy, or
   
   
2. you do not know how to make the best of what you got.
   

(To be honest, it could very well be both.)

Hopefully, through this blog I will help you overcome both of these hinders. It is all about creativity and curiosity, and these things can be trained.

First post planned to arrive february 2:nd, 2009. Hint: If you add yourself as a Follower, or sign up on the RSS-feed, you will not miss it...

Until then, check out ShutterCentral and Stuff In Front of Me, both updated daily.