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Instead Of The Newsletter

Mario — Sat, 12 May 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Regular visitors and of course newsletter subscribers probably already noticed this.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to stop the Mario Live Newsletter. While some bloggers would see this at the beginning of the end I had very good reasons to cut the cr…

I’m subscribed to some newsletter as well and there comes the point where you just notice that your mailbox is full enough. I felt that I didn’t want to pump a newsletter out just for the sole purpose to stuff your mailboxes some more.

The newsletter, whether you use it properly or not can be a huge expense. For the real marketing guys it is worth it. For me it is not. The income this blog is creating has nothing to do with the newsletter at all. For example: the complete hosting for the last year was paid by a large British company just for mentioning their name in one of my Manga Studio tutorial posts.

Anyway, I still want to connect and interact with you. So instead of gathering your e-mail addresses and sending you information you jut don’t want to know or you already know I created an accompanying Facebook page.

I will really appreciate it if you subscribe to it by giving it a like. You can do this by clicking here.

Let’s stay connected!

A Big Thank You To All Of You

Mario — Tue, 01 May 2012 06:00:00 +0000

A couple of days ago I received a very adorable e-mail from Donna who had an issue with Manga Studio. You probably think that it’s very common for me to receive this questions and yes, it is.

But what made this so adorable and nice is the fact that Donna is a 67 year old grandmother who has fun using Manga Studio. I just like the imagination of it. It just proofs that there are no limits when it comes to diving into creativity using digital technology.

I’m glad I could help Donna by sending her in the right direction and wish her many busy hours being creative with Manga Studio.

Fall In Love With Your Flash – Continued

Mario — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 17:34:08 +0000

Today I show you the results of the little shoot I did in yesterdays video.

As I promised I made an HD video because I really want you to see that you can let your flash images better just by letting in more ambient light.

All this without compromising on the sharpness of the image.

For Beginners: Why You’ll Fall In Love With Your Flash (Again)

Mario — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 23:15:30 +0000

First things first: I had to shoot today’s video with my old digital video camera, thus there is no HD video today.

Second: it’s not for you if you already earned your salt using flash.

Anyway, if you just starting out or are used to avoid using any kind of flash out of frustration, this might be interesting for you.

Very often the main subject is properly lit and the background is totally black or at least heavily under exposed.

In this case you just have taken a low-key image. Not intentional though. But you want to do everything intentional of course.

The most heard complain by people who are just starting with flash is that they usually killing all the ambient light in their photos.

Even though you have been shooting in a controlled environment. An example would be a birthday party with your family where anybody is sitting on a sofa and things like that.

Sounds familiar? Let’s have a look at your meta-data. You probably had a high shutter speed. Most likely something around the 1/200 or 1/250 as this is the maximum sync speed of your camera. (For the critics: read the title of this post. It says beginners and they don’t fiddle around with high sync and that kind of stuff).
The next thing is that you probably flash with too much power.

If this is the case you literally blew the atmosphere out of the image.

The reason that this is happening is the overlooked fact that your flash is freezing the image what allows you to use a lower shutter speed. A way lower shutter speed than you might think.

In this video I shoot hand held with my 70-200 2.8 with a weight of 1.3 kilograms. Quite heavy and not easy to shoot with at low shutter speeds.

You may know that the maximum focal length should be your lowest shutter speed. And even if you shoot with 1/200 of a second with a lens like this the chance to get some motion blur because of your hand shakiness is pretty high. When I don’t use a flash I usually don’t want to shoot below the 1/500 with this rocker.

But as you are using a flash or studio strobe in this example and the action will be frozen before your shutter is closed again you can go way slower with its speed.

This gives you the benefit of letting more ambient light into the camera and the result will be that your images looking warmer. Yes, they look like the moment you experienced when you took the image in the first place.

Tomorrow I will make a HD video where we have a brief look at the RAW-files I took.

Thanks for reading/watching!

If you like this article and/or video please share it with your friends. Thanks again.

The Solution To Your Google Video Chat Problem!

Mario — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:10:02 +0000

Today I’m going to solve your annoying Google Video Chat problem. If you don’t have it you probably want to know what it is.

The complain is that your webcam works fine in every application and even if you do a video chat everybody of your friends will see you. But…. the only thing you’ll see is an icon of yourself and/or your friend.

Even if you go to the settings within your gmail account you just see a black screen where your video image is supposed to be.

Not any longer, as I made this short video that will solve your problem.

I’m sure this solved your problem and I wish you a good video chatting experience from now on. If you like my stuff please share it with your friends.

Thank you very much for your support!

The Power Of Black And White And Slow Motion

Mario — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:24:30 +0000

Some images work better in black and white. Not just because the lighting situation was that bad that there wasn’t much color anyway but because of the feel it can give to an image.

Sometimes black and white gives an instant nostalgia to the image. You can fish for some of my black and whites by clicking here to see what I mean.

In some cases I see it like putting slow motion to an image as it takes away every ballast and distraction.

For a better demonstration I embed a brilliantly made music video below that is taken in black and white with super slow motion. I think this makes the point clear if I haven’t already.

In fact it’s just taken during a normal day in London. We all would have seen the images in a totally different way if we would have been there. A totally different feel has been added by subtracting the colors and speed of the everyday life.

So the next time you feel that one of your images doesn’t work try it in black and white before hitting the delete button.

Have fun!

RAW Edit Of The Pack Of Lions At Gaja Zoo

Mario — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 17:20:54 +0000

After editing the little kitty I decided to do a RAW edit of the pack of lions at Gaja Zoo.

For the first time ever I did crop in a 1:1 ratio. As I said in the video above, normally if I crop at all I always keep the 2:3 ratio. However, even if you don’t like to crop at all don’t become a salve of your own principals.

If you feel that your image is looking better if it’s cropped for whatever reason crop it for heavens sake.

As I said repeatedly, it’s always easy to say after the fact that you should have shot more from the left, the right, above or beneath. Or you should have gone a little bit closer or further away. Sometimes there just isn’t to do any of the things mentioned above.

Have fun shooting and thank you very much for watching!

RAW Edit For The Fro Week 63

Mario — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:42:54 +0000

This week I decided to join the RAW edit of the week again. The image is of a little kitty and it’s taken with a Nikon D3100.

The photographer went to the very edge of this camera model when it comes to the ISO settings of 3200. A little downside of this is often that you lose some overall sharpness. But we are here to fix this a little bit.

The good thing is that if you decide to go black and white you can take your image to the next level even if it has been taken in not so good light circumstances. This will not say that black and white is just a second choice to cover things up.

Black and white often adds some extra feel and character to an image. I love black and white.

I hope you found my explanations of why I moved the sliders within Lightroom the way I did and hope you visit this blog again next time. Thank you very much.

If you like my video’s and/or blog please share it via Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc. This helps keeping it all up tremendously.

Photo Print Services – Don’t Go For Cheap

Mario — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 20:04:11 +0000

It’s an adventure to find the right print service. At least over here in the Netherlands everything is about pricing first, quality second.

This is not just true for print services by the way, this also counts for restaurants. If you ask somebody to recommend a restaurant it’s most likely that they name one where you get much food for little money. Quality second.

OK, you got the point. Now let’s have it about print services:

The big quality problem Webprint.nl creates with its own philosophy of being the cheapest lays in the fact that too many processes are fully automated. While there is nothing wrong with automating processes, there is not enough human control. They print every image with the same settings.

But you really want somebody in place who can see if an image comes to dark or with to flat colors out of the printer. I don’t know about you but if this has an extra price tag on it, it’s OK for me.

As I promised in the video here are the links to the original images shown in the video. Click here for the lion and here for Daisy. Clicking on this images will increase them, so you can have an even closer look.

Please leave your comment below in the comment section and if you like please share this on Facebook, Google+, Twitter a.s.o. This helps this blog tremendously. Thank you!

Starting With Strobe Photography Without Breaking The Bank

Mario — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:14:31 +0000

If you want to get your toes wet with studio strobes you most likely don’t want to break your bank account. This is especially true if you are on a budget. But this shouldn’t withhold you from getting started either.

You can start your studio strobe adventure with gear around the $100,- per strobe and this will be enough for now. I always suggest to get to the edge with the gear you have before you upgrade and go to the next level. At least this is my upgrade strategy.

Mario Live! » Uncategorized

Instead Of The Newsletter

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