An interview with Bluedog Tutor Lisa Kurtz

We continue with our questionnaire to team members in the Bluedog kennel. Today the lovely and talented Lisa Kurtz, based in Brisbane gives us her answers.  

Q. Tell us briefly your photography journey to date. 
A. Always into photography, but the turning point was when my husband gave me my first digital camera 11 years ago for a birthday present. It was the catalyst for a career and life change.

Q. What inspires you – photographically?
A. Italy has always been a source of inspiration and I imagine it will continue to be forever. On a personal level, it is the desire to photograph my son and his ever-developing spirit. 

Q. What is a highlight of 2012?

A. As corny as this sounds, becoming part of the Bluedog team and beginning my personal project on the anonymity of the streets (b&w). 

Q. Do you have a ‘most memorable’ moment to date?
A. Yes – through a series of unfortunate events my camera and I were separated from each other during a recent trip to Sydney. I was forced to use a 3-megapixel phone camera (no, not even an iphone camera) and this taught me two things – if you take photography back to its basics you can even take decent photos on a 3-megapixel camera, and that not having my “real” camera made me free to experiment and take risks… in short, it was a wonderful experience!

Q. What lens can’t you live without?
A. 24-70 2.8 – wide enough for travel, and because I use my feet it is also perfect for my style of portraiture. I know it was only meant to be 1 lens, but I would try and sneak my 50mm 1.8 in as well for those low light situations.

Q.  What is your favourite type of shoot (and why)?
A. Children. They test your photographic limits every time as, by their very nature, they never do what you expect them to!

Q.  What do you do in your spare time?
A. I go to art galleries, I take photos of my family and friends, I talk regularly with my mother and grandmother who live interstate.

Q.   What's your best 2012 photography advice or quick tip?
A. Travel light with the least possible gear. You really don’t need it all! (But if you travel light, make sure it’s with fast lenses…)

Q. What are your plans or highlights for 2013?
A.  I am going on the Bluedog Japan tour and I know already this will be wonderful. Of course, I am also off to Italy which is always a highlight.

For more information on Bluedog's workshops, retreat and tours visit: 
www.blue-dog.com.au 

A few of us will be joining Lisa on her Capture Italy tour in May 2014.

For more information visit Capture Italy

All images (C) Lisa Kurtz

Tips for photographing Christmas Lights

Yes it’s that time of year – the trees are going up and presents are being wrapped.

Here’s a few tips for capturing great photographs of Christmas lights:

Do a drive-by and scouting mission first then depending on what you were after consider photographing it later in the evening. Early evening (6.30-8.00pm) tend to be chocker block with people to the point where the lights may be obscured, especially any garden lights.

Setting wise, use a wide aperture (small number) to allow maximum light into your camera. Team this with a shutter speed high enough to be able to hand hold your camera, around the 1/60th-1/100th for most people. While a tripod will get you lovely crisp images at night it can be a weapon of mass destruction at a crowded house. If the light levels are too low to get your shutter speed up remember that you can always lift that ISO to make the sensor more light sensitive.

Make sure you apply plenty of mosquito repellent - they are out in force at that time of night.

All those pretty lights can mean the opportunity to play around a little as well. Bokeh photos are a source of delight for most photographers and Christmas lights make perfect bokeh. Ok, so what is bokeh you ask? It is little points of light that are out of focus, often in the background of photos, where there is a really shallow depth of field. Large apertures (small number) will often produce this effect but there are ways to get even more creative bokeh intentionally. This requires a little bit of prep usually best done at home. Trying to cut card in your car is not always successful, I know, I’ve tried.

Cut a piece of card the same size circle as the end of your lens eg:57mm diameter and cut or punch a shape into the middle of the card. I’ve done Christmas trees, Santas, stars etc. Then carefully tape the piece of card over the end of the lens so that no extra light can sneak around the edges. With the lens on manual focus and the aperture as large as you can get it start snapping. The effect will be lots of little lights totally out of focus but in the shape of your cutout. Very satisfying and very impressive for a fairly simple process.

Remember that while you hope to get good shots, these displays are really all about people getting into the Christmas spirit so be sure to be considerate of others while you get your shots and keep a sense of Christmas cheer.

Ho, ho, ho and happy Christmas shooting to all.

Image by Anita Bromley

Digital Vs Film

With our first poll about to close in 19 hours its time to look digital versus film.
The Effort: Undoubtedly one of the biggest benefits of digital is there are no rolls of film to take down to the lab or process in the darkroom. And for dark room users the wait for negatives to dry, then make proof sheets, print and........ Our most expensive digital photograph was the first one we took! The cost per image has been drastically reduced and allows us to experiment and improve our photographic techniques quicker with the meta data supplied. This ease ways strongly for digital but.....

The Delete Button: Are some of us pressing it too early while still on camera or on the computer? Photography is part of history recording and we no longer end up with those shoe boxes of negatives under our bed and even more worrying is that many don’t understand JPEG lossy compression.

Seeing Before Clicking & Reviewing Afterwards: We can now exactly see the composition and take the time to compose our shots with digital – yes we could do that to some extent beforehand but its heaps easier with digital. After we’ve pressed that shutter button we can instantly review the image and information through the histogram and then reshoot to perfect our composition and exposure (means less to do in your photo editing software and more time shooting).

ISO Before You Go: Now this is one of the best things with digital for me. I can change the ISO from one image to the next and not have to load another roll of film or lose the photographs before I change the ISO ratting on the camera for film. Plus on higher end cameras we are now getting a much higher rating ISO then offered on film. On the negative, many digital cameras over 400 ISO in low light produce far too much noise – an improvement I think we’ll see in the not so far distance future driven by consumer demand.

Let’s All Share: Digital has made the sharing of images so much easier and quicker – someone across the other side of the world can view an image you have uploaded almost immediately. Yes you can scan images and do the same so this is not just a benefit of digital cameras but rather the technology. But hey, let’s be honest, scanning is just another job to do in our every busy life.

Keeping It For Ever: Do you archive your digital files or are you someone who has the last 6 months of shooting sitting on the card in the camera? This is still a new technology and I have had hard drive, CD, DVD, memory stick and card failures. Back up devices such as hard drives are cheap – do it and make that digital shoe box! It’s smaller than a garage which is what it would take to store those digital images on film and don’t forget if you can, to enter keywords, it makes it so much easier to search for an image.

So what’s Best? They both have their advantages and disadvantages and we have not sold off our film cameras and do not intend too. What we want from digital is the equivalent of what we got from transparency (slide) film and I believe that is sooner rather than later.