He was the subject of a documentary short that won awards at the Tribeca Film Festival several years ago and you can watch it by clicking HERE or on the image below. The documentary details his life photographing the poor side of Buffalo over several decades. He truly became a fixture in that community, which allowed him to photograph people and events in a way that only special relationships will allow.

Jonathan uses a Nikon D3S, Nikon SB-800, and Ewa-Marine Underwater Housing for these shoots. Check out the interview below with Jonathan on how he does these shoots. If you found this interesting please re-tweet this post.

With weather as terrible as this, I had to leave my SLR and make do with my crummy little Fuji point and shoot I’d only recently bought as a back-up.

Sadly, life happened, but a few years later and after some internet research, I was heading to Whitstable to board an inflatable powered boat and head out to see the Maunsell Sea Forts – Shivering Sands, Red Sands, Knock John and the Kentish Flats Wind Farm. However, the weather wasn’t looking good. It was a very windy, cold, dull, grey and wet May morning and until this point, I’d always been a sunny day-seeker when it came to my photography. After meeting our guide, my friend and I sat patiently while he decided whether it was safe for us to head out or not. Thankfully, the wind soon died down a little, although the rain continued to fall as heavily as the anti-aircraft fire these forts were designed to shower upon unsuspecting London-bound German World War II bombers.

With weather as terrible as this, I had to leave my SLR and make do with my crummy little Fuji point and shoot I’d only recently bought as a back-up. It was painfully clear that I wasn’t going to be able to get the bright, colourful shot with endless blue skies, calm seas and bright red towers I’d hoped for and would have to try and adapt and create something dramatic that showed just how awful the weather was and how steadfast these forts were. Perhaps I’d be lucky and it might even complement the creepy nature of these awesome wartime creations. I grabbed a small graduated ND filter and a polariser (neither of which would fit onto the camera) and held on for dear life as we headed out into a busy shipping lane and the waves got bigger and bigger. Bums spent more time off the seats than on them as we approached the wind farm, but we were more or less airborne when we arrived at the Shivering Sands Fort – to which we weren’t able to get too near due to the wind.

With one hand on the camera, one hand holding a polariser in front of the lens and both feet desperately searching for a foothold underneath the bench, I began snapping away. If you’ve ever tried to juggle fifteen live monkeys whilst tight-rope walking in a force 10 gale blind-folded, you’ll have some idea of the multi-tasking that was required and it was no surprise that it just wasn’t working out at all. I was lucky if the camera was even remotely pointing in the right direction and spent more time wiping the lens than pressing the shutter. Desperate to try and find a way to come back with anything at all, I put the camera into a lower resolution mode to make it work faster, changed to a Fluorescent white balance setting to bring out some red in the rusty towers (no, I have no idea why this camera model’s Fluorescent setting enhances reds rather than blues either), set the lowest exposure compensation setting I could, changed to the ‘chrome’ setting to bring out any colour I could and held both the polariser and the ND filters – freshly wiped with a soggy t-shirt – over the lens. I also shot straight to JPEG – as I more often than not do.

Just as I did this, the hand of God was sent in my direction and the boat arrived in a small, calmer section of water. Some seagulls suddenly flew out of one of the towers and as if by magic, a small glimmer of morning sunlight shot out of a tiny gap in the clouds and bathed the towers in a soft, warm glow – made all the better due to the dark, gloomy skies to the north of them. This was it. With about half a second to compose the shot, I literally threw caution to the wind and leant over the side of the boat and took three shots. All were ruined by the splash of a cunning, photophobic wave. A quick wipe and I took a single last shot before the sun disappeared, seemingly forever.

We continued on to Red Sands as the weather worsened before our guide decided we’d best abort our trip to Knock John – much further out – and head back to the safety of the shore. I tried all manner of settings on the subsequent shots, but nothing really seemed to be working and I arrived back on the firm Kent soil bitterly disappointed. Pretty much every one of the shots was a complete failure, but this particular shot was, I thought at the time, the best of a bad bunch. Upon returning, I opened the shot in Photoshop and cropped it to get a straight horizon, reduced the input levels to 0.8, as the shot was still brighter than I’d have liked and used a 12% increase in shadow detail/highlight reduction to balance the extremes in contrast. I quite liked what I caught, but at the time, I wanted bright blue skies, bold, eye-burning colour and the smoothest, flattest seas I could get.

I headed back to the Forts a number of times to try and get what I’d wanted with chunkier, bigger and better cameras – including a great trip one amazingly warm summer day the following year. However, as much as the subsequent shots were clearer, of much better technical quality, higher resolution and true to the pre-visualisation I had when I first saw the towers on TV some years before – they just didn’t do it for me. I kept returning to this grainy, low-res, quite badly exposed shot and realised that this was exactly what I was supposed to get on that grey, miserable day. I finally had all the evidence I needed of something I’d just begun to realise – that it’s not the camera or equipment that’s important, but your own imagination, your own ability to adapt to quickly changing conditions and being able to make the best out of what’s presented to you. Since this day, I realise that some of my favourite photos had been taken with really rubbish cameras and some of the worst with the very best. I was then able to revisit much of my old work with new eyes and a fresh perspective and have gained a love of really grainy shots – which I often now deliberately set out to create. I now always carry a crummy little camera with me alongside whatever is my current kit of choice and more often than I’d expect, it’s that useless piece of junk that delivers.

I thoroughly recommend it. I’ve been back to the amazing north Kent coast many times since and sat just a few feet away from the visible masts of a sunken World War II munitions ship containing over 3,000 tons of explosives that could potentially detonate at any second, obliterate the Isle of Sheppey and send a tidal wave across London (truth is stranger than fiction!), visited a number of other forts and even ended up in a hospital with three broken ribs and a broken finger, but that’s a story for another time…

Tours of the Maunsell Sea Forts are available through BayBlast, priced from £25 for 1½ hours, www.bayblast.co.uk, Tel: 01227 277 775.

When I first started with Adobe Photoshop and at the same time photography, these are some of the first edits I figured out how to do. Since then, I found more powerful ways to do the same things, but understand that these are very powerful tools when you understand all the nuances and features of each of them. We will just be skimming the surface here.

Our goal with this tutorial is to brighten this image, increase the contrast, and then warm it up a bit to our taste. We are starting with a picture straight out of a Nikon D700.

1. Everything we will be doing will center around the layers box. Notice how the picture is a little too dark, not much contrast, and could use a little warmth.

Read more: http://howitookit.hanseldobbs.net/adobe-photoshop-simple-brighten-contrast-and-warming-edits.html#ixzz1Glnyzq5W

2.  You will need to create a second layer that is a duplicate of the background layer.  There are two good ways to do this.  You can drag your background layer onto the little paper icon pointed out in the picture below or you can go to the Layer drop down menu in the menu bar and select “Duplicate Layer” and select “OK” when the box pops up corresponding to that selection.  Also, know that the little eyeballs next to each layer allow you to turn that layer off if you don’t want to use it.  It’s also nice to use when you want to turn it on and off to see the changes you are making with that layer.

Features of Camera Van
The front grill is fitted with Polaroid cameras. He also customized the license plate, with CAMRA VN written on it. The front bumper is decorated with Mexican mirrors. The passenger side is fitted with antique cameras. Blank has included each and every kind of camera he could find in the collection. Another stunning feature is the arrangement of four 32-inch TV monitors on the sides. On the door, there is a big eye made up of camera lenses and mirrors.
Initially, the back window was fitted with photos of children. Later, in 2006, Bland fitted two pictures captured with the cameras on the van, on the back window. In 2009, he changed it again and placed two computer monitors. At present, the rear window is fitted with two 20-inch Samsung TV monitors. The outside border of the monitors is fitted with colorful cameras of every size and shape.
On the driver’s side, there is an extraordinary artwork done with Kodak Instamatics. This idea was suggested by one of his friends, Ron Dolce. The interior of the van is also packed with Bland’s artwork. With just one push of a button on the dashboard, he can include one more picture into his collection. He has also written ‘Smile’ on the roof of van.
Future of Camera Van
Over the past 15 years, the van travelled to almost all states in America. Bland’s ambition is to take his van across the globe.

Damon’s work can be found on this website and it is amazing. He is an accomplished portrait photographer and photojournalist at the same time. Very inspiring!

You can see his photographs with the New York Times HERE.

See his 2009 Pulitzer Prize winning portfolio HERE.

Read an interview with Damon about his coverage of the Angola Prison Rodeo when he work for the Dallas Morning News.

Making of Camera Van

The idea of making a Camera Van struck Harrod Blank in 1993. It was an actual dream that got him thinking about it. In the dream, he saw a car fitted with cameras everywhere. He then took his car to town. People started staring at his car in disbelief and Blank captured pictures of the people with his camera. But, the people did not know that the cameras really worked. That’s how he got very natural pictures. When he woke up the next day, he thought he would give it a go. To build the van, he sought help from his friends. It took almost two years to come up with the perfect design and to start building the van. Finally, the work was completed in 1995. In April 1995, Bland took the car outside California and travelled to Houston. From there, he travelled to New Orleans. He ended his tour in New York City.

The Camera Van

Features of Camera Van

The front grill is fitted with Polaroid cameras. He also customized the license plate, with CAMRA VN written on it. The front bumper is decorated with Mexican mirrors. The passenger side is fitted with antique cameras. Blank has included each and every kind of camera he could find in the collection. Another stunning feature is the arrangement of four 32-inch TV monitors on the sides. On the door, there is a big eye made up of camera lenses and mirrors.

Initially, the back window was fitted with photos of children. Later, in 2006, Bland fitted two pictures captured with the cameras on the van, on the back window. In 2009, he changed it again and placed two computer monitors. At present, the rear window is fitted with two 20-inch Samsung TV monitors. The outside border of the monitors is fitted with colorful cameras of every size and shape.

On the driver’s side, there is an extraordinary artwork done with Kodak Instamatics. This idea was suggested by one of his friends, Ron Dolce. The interior of the van is also packed with Bland’s artwork. With just one push of a button on the dashboard, he can include one more picture into his collection. He has also written ‘Smile’ on the roof of van.

Future of Camera Van

Over the past 15 years, the van travelled to almost all states in America. Bland’s ambition is to take his van across the globe.

With weather as terrible as this, I had to leave my SLR and make do with my crummy little Fuji point and shoot I’d only recently bought as a back-up.

Sadly, life happened, but a few years later and after some internet research, I was heading to Whitstable to board an inflatable powered boat and head out to see the Maunsell Sea Forts – Shivering Sands, Red Sands, Knock John and the Kentish Flats Wind Farm. However, the weather wasn’t looking good. It was a very windy, cold, dull, grey and wet May morning and until this point, I’d always been a sunny day-seeker when it came to my photography. After meeting our guide, my friend and I sat patiently while he decided whether it was safe for us to head out or not. Thankfully, the wind soon died down a little, although the rain continued to fall as heavily as the anti-aircraft fire these forts were designed to shower upon unsuspecting London-bound German World War II bombers.

With weather as terrible as this, I had to leave my SLR and make do with my crummy little Fuji point and shoot I’d only recently bought as a back-up. It was painfully clear that I wasn’t going to be able to get the bright, colourful shot with endless blue skies, calm seas and bright red towers I’d hoped for and would have to try and adapt and create something dramatic that showed just how awful the weather was and how steadfast these forts were. Perhaps I’d be lucky and it might even complement the creepy nature of these awesome wartime creations. I grabbed a small graduated ND filter and a polariser (neither of which would fit onto the camera) and held on for dear life as we headed out into a busy shipping lane and the waves got bigger and bigger. Bums spent more time off the seats than on them as we approached the wind farm, but we were more or less airborne when we arrived at the Shivering Sands Fort – to which we weren’t able to get too near due to the wind.

With one hand on the camera, one hand holding a polariser in front of the lens and both feet desperately searching for a foothold underneath the bench, I began snapping away. If you’ve ever tried to juggle fifteen live monkeys whilst tight-rope walking in a force 10 gale blind-folded, you’ll have some idea of the multi-tasking that was required and it was no surprise that it just wasn’t working out at all. I was lucky if the camera was even remotely pointing in the right direction and spent more time wiping the lens than pressing the shutter. Desperate to try and find a way to come back with anything at all, I put the camera into a lower resolution mode to make it work faster, changed to a Fluorescent white balance setting to bring out some red in the rusty towers (no, I have no idea why this camera model’s Fluorescent setting enhances reds rather than blues either), set the lowest exposure compensation setting I could, changed to the ‘chrome’ setting to bring out any colour I could and held both the polariser and the ND filters – freshly wiped with a soggy t-shirt – over the lens. I also shot straight to JPEG – as I more often than not do.

Just as I did this, the hand of God was sent in my direction and the boat arrived in a small, calmer section of water. Some seagulls suddenly flew out of one of the towers and as if by magic, a small glimmer of morning sunlight shot out of a tiny gap in the clouds and bathed the towers in a soft, warm glow – made all the better due to the dark, gloomy skies to the north of them. This was it. With about half a second to compose the shot, I literally threw caution to the wind and leant over the side of the boat and took three shots. All were ruined by the splash of a cunning, photophobic wave. A quick wipe and I took a single last shot before the sun disappeared, seemingly forever.

Shivering Sands

We continued on to Red Sands as the weather worsened before our guide decided we’d best abort our trip to Knock John – much further out – and head back to the safety of the shore. I tried all manner of settings on the subsequent shots, but nothing really seemed to be working and I arrived back on the firm Kent soil bitterly disappointed. Pretty much every one of the shots was a complete failure, but this particular shot was, I thought at the time, the best of a bad bunch. Upon returning, I opened the shot in Photoshop and cropped it to get a straight horizon, reduced the input levels to 0.8, as the shot was still brighter than I’d have liked and used a 12% increase in shadow detail/highlight reduction to balance the extremes in contrast. I quite liked what I caught, but at the time, I wanted bright blue skies, bold, eye-burning colour and the smoothest, flattest seas I could get.

I headed back to the Forts a number of times to try and get what I’d wanted with chunkier, bigger and better cameras – including a great trip one amazingly warm summer day the following year. However, as much as the subsequent shots were clearer, of much better technical quality, higher resolution and true to the pre-visualisation I had when I first saw the towers on TV some years before – they just didn’t do it for me. I kept returning to this grainy, low-res, quite badly exposed shot and realised that this was exactly what I was supposed to get on that grey, miserable day. I finally had all the evidence I needed of something I’d just begun to realise – that it’s not the camera or equipment that’s important, but your own imagination, your own ability to adapt to quickly changing conditions and being able to make the best out of what’s presented to you. Since this day, I realise that some of my favourite photos had been taken with really rubbish cameras and some of the worst with the very best. I was then able to revisit much of my old work with new eyes and a fresh perspective and have gained a love of really grainy shots – which I often now deliberately set out to create. I now always carry a crummy little camera with me alongside whatever is my current kit of choice and more often than I’d expect, it’s that useless piece of junk that delivers.

I thoroughly recommend it. I’ve been back to the amazing north Kent coast many times since and sat just a few feet away from the visible masts of a sunken World War II munitions ship containing over 3,000 tons of explosives that could potentially detonate at any second, obliterate the Isle of Sheppey and send a tidal wave across London (truth is stranger than fiction!), visited a number of other forts and even ended up in a hospital with three broken ribs and a broken finger, but that’s a story for another time…

Tours of the Maunsell Sea Forts are available through BayBlast, priced from £25 for 1½ hours, www.bayblast.co.uk, Tel: 01227 277 775.

I use curves so much that I set a custom keyboard shortcut for it that I can hit very quickly. I’m constantly bring up curves to make little adjustments to my photos. I am going to show you how to control brightness and contrast using curves in this tutorial.

1.  We are going to create a curves layer.  The other way to do this is to click on Image, Adjustment, and then Layers.  This will bring up the Curves window, but the edits will be done directly to the picture itself.  There isn’t anything wrong with this, but it’s really nice having it in a layer that you can change the opacity on, change the filter, and I will later show you that you can create masks to control it even more.

Click on the circle that I point to in the screen capture and click on Curves to bring up the Curves window and create the Curves adjustment layer.

Adobe Photoshop Curves Tutorial

2.  The first thing you will notice in the Curves window is a graph.  This graph is essentially the lightness and darkness of your picture in graphic form.  You will notice that our graph does not go all the way to the right of the box.  If it doesn’t do this, then the picture does not have a true white.  The opposite is also true if it exists.  If your graph does not go all the way to the left then you don’t have a true black.  For a picture to really “pop” you want to have a true white and a true black except when you intentionally do not want that.

Adobe Photoshop Curves Tutorial

3.  This is the first edit we will do.  Drag the white nob in that window till it is at the very edge of the graph.  Notice how the image gets brighter and whiter.  When you’re done, just close this window.  That is our first edit.

Adobe Photoshop Curves Tutorial

4.  Create a second Curves adjustment layer just like we did before.  This will be Curves 2.  Now, notice that diagonal line there.  We can play anchor points all over that line and move it to control the contrast and brightness of the image.  I typically will place that anchor point and drag it up and to the left just a little to brighten the image a bit.

Adobe Photoshop Curves Tutorial

5.  After I create the anchor point and drag it up just a little bit to my liking, I will create another anchor point in the spot where the mouse arrow is in the below image.  Don’t let go after clicking.  Click and drag the line down and to the right a little bit.  Notice how it creates an “S” curve and the contrast in the picture increases.  Do this until you are happy with how it looks in the picture.

Adobe Photoshop Curves Tutorial

6.  Close the Curves 2 layer window and now you can adjust the opacity for each layer to your liking.  If you are adventuresome; click on the filter menu to the left of the opacity slider and try each filter for each layer to see what the effect is.  Have fun with that.  When you are all done with these layers, go to the Layer menu in the menu bar way up at the top and go down to Flatten Image.  I also have a custom keyboard shortcut for this as well since I do it so often.  My shortcut is Command+F.  I’ll do a tutorial on setting up custom shortcuts.

EXTRA:

We did a tutorial earlier on actions.  We used curves to increase the brightness of the picture by pushing that line up a little bit.  To skip doing all of this each time, you can record that one simple step as an action and call it “bump up”.  When your picture is a little dark you can hit that action to bump up the brightness next time and just keep bumping till your happy.  You can also do the opposite and create a “bump down”.  Create a “contrast up” and a “contrast down” action as well.

Let me know if you have any questions and have fun.

Adobe Photoshop Curves Tutorial

Adobe Photoshop Curves Tutorial