Street Photography Diary: Issue 15

Street Photography Diary: Issue 15

Thomas Fitzgerald
Street

It's been a while since I've done one of these Street Photo diary posts. The last one was in March and it's now may. I haven't been doing as much street photography as I would like lately. For one, I was focussing on some writing, and getting my Iridient Developer book out. Secondly, because of all the lovely nature blooming around the city and the surrounding areas, I've been doing a lot more nature photography. I finally took my camera back to the streets recently though, and set about capturing the life around me.

The Difference a Good Lens Makes

The Difference a Good Lens Makes

Thomas Fitzgerald
Editorial, Gear

It never ceases to amaze me the difference a good lens can make to your image quality. I know this sounds like an obvious thing, but until you've used some high end glass, you don't really know just how much of a difference it can make. There's a lot of misinformation out there on the internet (shocker) when it comes to what makes a good lens, or even the importance of good quality optics to begin with. One well known and somewhat infamous blogger, has even stated that the lens actually makes no difference in terms of image quality. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Milestones & Journeys

Milestones & Journeys

Thomas Fitzgerald
Site News

Over the past week I've reached two very important milestones, both here on the blog and in my photography journey. First of all, my new e-book on processing X-Trans files in Iridient Developer has become the fastest selling book that I've released to date! Secondly, my humble little blog has passed the million viewer mark!

Trying out Medium

Trying out Medium

Thomas Fitzgerald
Photoblogging

I'm always trying out new blogging and social platforms to see if they're worth using, especially for photographers. Lately, the one that is getting the most attention seems to be Medium, and so I thought I would try it out too. I wanted to try it both for myself, and for an experiment to see how it would work as a photo blogging platform. so I could write about it for my fellow photographers.

Alpine

Alpine

Thomas Fitzgerald

Every now and then there is a kind of weather that we get here in Ireland that I really love. Where I live, we're sort of in the foothills of the Dublin mountains, and during the summer, sometimes we get a kind of misty cloudy rain, that has a real mountain like feel to it. It reminds me of so many episodes of the X-Files which took place in forest settings of Canada, and it has a real frontier feel to it, even though we're still just in a superb of the city. I always think of it as "Alpine" weather, even though this is probably just a name I've given it myself. 

The Fleeting Beauty of the Cherry Blossom

The Fleeting Beauty of the Cherry Blossom

Thomas Fitzgerald
Landscape & Nature, Editorial

I look forward to the sight every year. It's a fleeting moment, but worth the wait. The pink and white beauty of the cherry blossoms that burst forth every year, announcing spring to the world is one of my favourite sights. When the cherry blossoms bloom, the bleak months of winter are finally at an end, and this year more than ever, I've been eagerly anticipating the blooming of the cherry blossoms.

A Quick Second Look at the Sony 35mm F/1.8 OSS

A Quick Second Look at the Sony 35mm F/1.8 OSS

Thomas Fitzgerald
Sony, Mirrorless

When I wrote my extended review of the A6000, I was pretty scathing about the Sony 35mm f/ 1.8 OSS lens. In the article I wrote that it was one of my least favourite lenses and that it had some terrible chromatic aberration. Recently, I was going through some older images in y library, including some I’d shot with the Sony 35mm and as I went through them I realised that I may have been a bit hard on it. So I started shooting some more images with it, and I now realise that I was possibly wrong in my assessment of it, so here’s a second look at the 35mm lens.

Quick Lightroom Tip: Clear Quick Collection

Quick Lightroom Tip: Clear Quick Collection

Thomas Fitzgerald
Lightroom

Here's a very quick Lightroom tip for you. I often use the quick collection in Lightroom as a sort of temporary clip board or place to collect some images that I'm either collecting for a blog post, or for a comparison and so on. Sometimes I will be in the processing of going through images , and I may have set some search filters in the library or something similar, when I decide that I may want to add some images to the quick collection. However, I already have images in it that I no longer want, but I don't want to leave the current view to go to the quick collection. 

Mirrorless Cameras are Like iPads

Mirrorless Cameras are Like iPads

Thomas Fitzgerald
Mirrorless, Editorial

There are a lot of heated discussions in the the photography community when it comes to mirrorless cameras. For some, it's an "either or" situation. You are either a mirrorless shooter or your not. I began to think that the situation with mirrorless is very like the iPad (and tablets in general) market. Some people see iPads as the future of computing. I'm reminded of the comments the late Steve Jobs's made about the iPad and computing market after the iPad first launched. He made the analogy of iPads being like cars and computers being like trucks. While many people only need a car, he pointed out, there will always be people who need trucks. For me personally, this sums up how I feel about the camera market. Mirrorless cameras are kind of like cars in this analogy, or like iPads.

The Current State of Photo Workflow Applications

The Current State of Photo Workflow Applications

Thomas Fitzgerald
Editorial

When Apple first released Aperture it was something of a revolution. It was the first application to be released which combined an asset management solution with raw processing software. It may be hard to imagine now but up till this point, the tasks of managing your images was separate form the process of developing raw files. While some people still work the old fashioned way, Aperture forever changed the way many photographers approach their workflow.

Why use one RAW Converter Over Another? (An excerpt from my upcoming Fuji X-Trans Guide for Iridient Developer)

Why use one RAW Converter Over Another? (An excerpt from my upcoming Fuji X-Trans Guide for Iridient Developer)

Thomas Fitzgerald
Fuji X-Series, Software

I am in the process of writing my third Fuji X-Trans guide. This one will be a compressive guide to working with Iridient Developer. It's actually turning out to be the biggest one of these guides yet, and I go into a good bit of detail on how to use the software, and cover workflows for working with Iridient Developer and Lightroom. However, as I've been writing this, I keep thinking about some of the questions that I often get asked by email about using one converter over another. 

Things to photograph when you're stuck at home: Toy Photography

Things to photograph when you're stuck at home: Toy Photography

Thomas Fitzgerald
Abstract & Art, Misc

Having been pretty much home bound for the past two weeks thanks to a nasty chest infection, I’ve been going slightly crazy from cabin fever! I’ve been having the urge to photography something….anything at this point, and this got me thinking about things to photograph when you’re stuck at home, and in particular something I had been dabbling in recently: toy photography.

A Fun Week (Not)

A Fun Week (Not)

Thomas Fitzgerald
Humour, Editorial, News

I want to apologise for the lack of updates this week. I've not had a very fun week. What started out as someone coughing on me in a line at the bank, turned into a cold, which I then thought was becoming the flu, ended up as a bad chest infection that had me taken to hospital by ambulance the other night with a fever and a ridiculously high heart rate. Special thanks to my Apple watch for the heads up on that one. 

Using Photoshop Plugins in Affinity Photo

Using Photoshop Plugins in Affinity Photo

Thomas Fitzgerald
Software

Here’s another quick tip about Affinity Photo. When I first wrote about Affinity Photo, one f the questions I got from many people was: “Can you use Photoshop Plugins with it?” The answer, you may be pleased to know is a yes. I’ve tried the Nik suite (which is now free) and they all work perfectly well in Affinity Photo. There is one difference that I’ve noticed, and it’s important to be aware of it if you’re planning on using plug-ins in the software.

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