Let me tell you, I am kinda upset - I was going to sell my Pentax kit lens (18-55) for a decent price (less than the half of retail price), still no-one wanted it (auction site).

I tried to set the price at the 1/3, added a UV filter, one offer has appeared.

What's the problem? Pentax's kit is widely known as a very good lens. I just don't need it anymore, 'cause I am buying another lens which covers the same area (and more)

My thought is - everyone has the kit lens, you purchase it when buying a camera. And regardless the kit lens price when sold separately, offered by shops, the kit lens is the most difficult to sell at a decent price. I wonder if shops ever sell kit lenses separately...

I guess ...

My friend, Pawel, enabled a nice photo session opportunity: He and his motorbike in action. First, we went to a nearby forest to do some rides and shots, then to the sea. We were lucky to have a nice sky, although I needed to make some Photoshop processing sometimes - layers and masks I am more and more familiar with.

In some shots I used my Sigma flash, to freeze the moving bike partially (left upper photo).

Oh, I almost forgot - for the first time in maaany years I rode a motorbike myself! Unfortunately, I have no pictures to prove that ...

Maybe next time :)

After encouraging my wife to experiment a little with shrimps (she rarely or never did it before), I had a photo opportunity to broaden my food photos collection (see my Collections in Profile page).

I took just two shots. I was too hungry to resist, you know :)

I found those background details (spices, fork, etc) very useful to improve the composition. Must do that more often and experiment. Well, as always :) - Your photo life is about constant evolving.

Have a nice lunch, everybody!

The title may sound strange, everyone would answer - sure, I do! But what I mean is 'home renovation'.

Well, my house is being renovated. Not the whole interior, but the most inconvenient part - hallway and bathroom. Sounds like a good opportunity to shoot some DT shots? Sure!

I am having my hallway and bathroom renovated. After getting MR documents signed, I could take some photos. Nice 'before and after' effects, some backgrounds, details, dirt and dust.

Because the rooms are rather small, there was also some space to try new off-camera strobe techniques, as well as 'ceiling bouncing'.

Go and try my "People at work' Collection, all the shots taken during ...

What I really enjoy doing is taking a second look at a batch of photos brought from a session. I am usually quite eager to process most of them right away, but, when time is short, or I pick some shots of which I think they 'stand out', I sometimes omit processing some.

And then, after some weeks, when the eye is fresh, those omitted ones can prove quite good. In my portfolio there are numerous photos (already downloaded on DT) which are those 'second looks'.

My advice is: go back to your archives from time to time.

Very often, in the forums, you can read a beginner's question: "What lens should I buy next? I already have a kit lens"

Well, the answer is one - if you don't know what to buy, don't buy anything. When you start to shoot more, when you are a more experienced photographer, your needs will be crystalized and you will know what to buy, More, you will even know what you don't need :)

During my vacation in Norway it turned out I tend to use either ultra wide angle or long lens, almost without middle ranges. After returning home I decided to sell my 80-210 and buy Tamron 18-250 (new lens which has good opinions and tests). In this way I will have just two lenses covering almost the whole range I need:

Sigma 10-20 (love it!) nad Tamron 18-250.

This will ...

I took a car trip to Żydowo, Poland, a small village famous for its water power plant. From a river three pipes go down to a lake, at the bottom there's the actual power plant.

When you go along the pipes, you can see how huge they are. Adding a person in the photo gives the sense of size.

At the bottom you will find a nice lake, ideal place for summer tanning and swimming. Thanks to the Sigma 10-20 the tree looks really widespread.

I had a thought today. Rocking chair - a piece of furniture which is so old yet still many people have them. Feels nostalgic, feels almost like from another era.

I was so amazed I saw one in my friends' house, which is rather a modern one in design.

Do you think we will be rocking in those chairs when we get old? Maybe this thing has a staying power?

Sunday. Bad weather. Nothing to do, nowhere to go. Sounds like a good opportunity to try some oh-so-obvious at-home shots? Yes.

Following the strobists's 101 article about snoots, I finally made myself one. Cool stuff! I am very pleased with the result - monochrome photo.

Then an off-camera and umbrella shot (right photo).

Then a ceiling bounced one (lower left photo).

Same idea, different results.

Play with your flash everyone!

Whether you are (like myself) or are not a Pentax user, I believe you will find this site very inspiring.

The site has just opened. Spare some minutes to watch the films about photo enthusiasts and what they do to make photography their lifestyle.

Landscape, city life, sport, extreme, everyday life - all there.

The title of this blog clearly refers to this by Astargirl.

True, it's not easy to pose and to concentrate on the technical issues at the same time, but it's necessary sometimes. It's similar to the situation when a film director appears in his own film - well, it doesn't happen often, does it?

Personally, when I try a new photo technique, lighting, post processing, I first try it on myself. When I am comfortable with it, I look for opportunities to practice on other models.

This is how this (first in my portfolio) 'clone' photo has come to life. As you can see, it's sometimes difficult to get along with yourself :) :)

It's my first DT anniversary today, whoa! Time flies, doesn't it. Time to look back and analyze what happened during this time.

As I look at the statistics chart, my first months were completely idle in building portfolio. I uploaded my first files in November. No wonder my first sale came no sooner than January. I had to learn tough lesson about being rejected and I had to improve my craft, for which I am very grateful, DT inspectors! :)

Then, all of a sudden, a customer contacted me because he wanted to buy the copyright to one of my photos. The half of 350$ was nice:) Yep, that lucrative SR-EL happened.

In April I made the decision to go exclusive on DT. So far, it seems to have been a good move.

I kept on uploading, finally, in April this year, things began ...

I have just read a blog entry from Bwendy3.

Here's my advice. Take a look at this photo:

I did two things here. First, while taking it, I waited for the man to turn around so as not to see his face.

Second, in PS: the people at the left are very small, yet, their faces were visible. I applied 'motion blur' on them, they seem to be moving and are not recognizable anymore.

Exactly the same operation on the people travelling down the ski slope here:

One of the sites offering storaging services says that 'eventually all hard disc drives fail'.

Sounds serious. What will happen to all our photo files gathered on our computers? What do you do to back them up?

Here's what I do:

1. Because I shoot in RAW, I create a folder called 'negatives nr xx' - simply because I treat RAW files as kinda digital negatives.

2. When the folder reaches 4.7 GB, I burn a DVD.

3. I have a portable disc drive called Digimate, 80 GB, so I back the files there as well.

Here are some more things to keep in mind - DVD's are not 100% safe, they decay with time, so creating another DVD after some time is good advice.

Hard discs become larger and larger and the prices go down. I am considering buying a large 500GB external ...

I am wondering whether black and white images are popular among buyers. I have a handful of black and white images in my portfolio, not many of them have been downloaded.

Maybe it's because the fact, that even when a designer wants monochrome, he can quite easily desaturate a colour one and play a bit with levels/channels himself.

Does that mean we should forget about good old monochromatic images here on DT?

The new Tamron 18-250 has just arrived, I'll be testing it for some time. As for now, only my 'how it feels in hand' impressions: solid build, very nice manual focusing, quite pleasant AF sound, and that range !

But of course its optical performance is the most important, the results on DT are yet to come, when new photos get accepted.

I'd like to thank all the buyers for making me happy, today I reached another milestone regarding DL's! Can you guess the number by looking at those two photos?

Keep 'em coming!

Up til now I described my photos only when they had been uploaded on DT. You know, categories, keywords, etc. I have never used that File Info dialog box in Photoshop. Until I discovered how useful that is:

1. When you upload such a (described) photo on DT, the keywords and categories are automatically implemented.

2. When a glitch happens while uploading (there were a few, including recent FTP problems), you are safe, because the keywords are with your file, not in the site's database only.

3. When filling IPTC data becomes your habit, you will find it useful when uploading a photo for various photo communities sites - flickr for example.

4. If you are not an exclusive photog for one site, you will find it even more useful - one keywording, several ...

Referrals, especially those who are active, are your best friends on DT. Whether they are buying credits or sell their own photos, you get commission. The better they do, the better for us.

So, looking after your referrals should do good to both sides.

Whenever I have time, I try to help them with keywords and descriptions, sometimes they ask me how to improve a rejected image.

I think a good option would be also to write to Tonygers and ask him to look at my newbie referrals, he's got a good helping hand as well :)

Dealing with noise, especially when shooting at high ISOs, can be a frustrating thing to do. It can be done by playing with exposure, let me direct you to this blog article by Actionwatcher.

If you use PS (most of us do) the easiest thing is to rely on a plugin. For many months I used to have Neat Image, it was OK. Then I heard about Noiseware and I am quite impressed how it deals with knocking out the noise, still preserving detail. I highly recommend it. There's a trial version, so it's safe to try before purchasing.

Disclaimer: I have no stock shares of Noiseware's :)

Light from the camera - bad. Light from a side of the camera - good. This is the shortest way to express the simple truth that light from a side gives more texture and 3D feel to a picture.

If you are new to this world of off-camera lighting, there's a space which is absolutely a must - Strobist From the basics to more complicated operations. I highly recommend it.

I just love experimenting with off-camera flash, some of the results can be found here, on DT. So far I am triggering the strobe using my built-in flash, but I have just ordered those radio controllers, which trigger more efficiently and flawlessly. Can't wait to test them.

Every contributor here on DT wants to know how and where his/her photos were used. There is even a special thread on the Message Boards (DT in action) Because I've just discovered one of my images being used in an article, I posted a thread there too.

First have a read here.

...then let me tell how I found it.

1. I put my full name in quotas and ran Google search.

2. Then search among the search results (yes, it's another searching, cause every query brings many results, some are useless)

3. If you are lucky, and a designer/publisher credited you, you're on your way to finding You in action

4. Perform that search regularly, you will then see better if/when new results ...

You might remember my previous posts about Tamron, so, time came for the first results.

My first photos taken with the new lens are already online. So far I like it, the only disadvantages I came across are:

1. Slight barrel distortion at 18mm - easy to eliminate in Photoshop.

2. Vignetting, probably due to the polarizer I have on the lens, also easy to eliminate in PS

3. When shooting straight down or up, the lens can extend or shorten because of its weight. Not that I shoot straight up and down much, but...

But! : I took some test with and without the polarizer, number 2 and 3 were not occuring - it seems the lens is precisely ...