The MPEX Experience reached a milestone today: this is our 200th post! Thanks for all our fans and customers out there who read this blog. We strive to offer you insights, tips, tricks, news, and hopefully we’ve helped you improve your photography. To celebrate, we’re going to look back at some of our favorite posts out of 200.
Tips & Tricks: Recording Sound
“Sound is one of those things that makes or breaks a video. How many times have you seen a video on YouTube that looks professionally done but sounds like it was recorded in a tin can? We don’t want you to be one of those people.”
Photo Frosh’s First Photo Challenge: Self Portrait
“While I was looking through these photos, I knew I didn’t want any of them to be my ‘self portrait.’ A coworker asked me why I wanted my photo taken in the middle of the street. I shrugged. ‘I just thought it would be cool,’ I said.
“‘But what does it say about you?’ he asked.
“This was an interesting point. I wasn’t taking a self portrait that really said anything about me.”
An Interview with Greta Rybus of “Who I Met”
“I have so many ideas for projects, but [Who I Met] just stuck. It popped into my head one day last spring. I was preparing to spend the summer in Europe, and I wanted to create a project that would allow me to photograph with depth, to get to know the people I met, and go beyond photographing as a tourist. I liked the idea because I can work on it anywhere, meet anyone, and it affords the opportunity to learn along the way.”
Why Mirrorless Rocks
“For many photographers, especially longtime DSLR users, the question remains: ‘Why should I go mirrorless?’
“The short answer is that mirrorless cameras are smaller, lighter, and faster (in terms of burst-mode frame rates) than most DSLRs (specifically, on that last point, DSLRs in the same price range).”
Tips & Tricks: Photographing the Great Outdoors
“With the weather getting warmer and all the little (and larger) critters starting to emerge from hibernation and return from their winter migrations, we wanted to give you some tips and tricks from Sonnie, our resident wildlife and landscape photographer, for taking photos of the beautiful sights the natural world has to offer.”
Mock-Ups: Martin Schoeller
“One of the more iconic celebrity portraitists is Martin Schoeller. His portraits have a very distinct look thanks to his very narrow depth of field, his head-on composition and subtly awkward crop, and his deceptively simple lighting arrangement. . . . In fact, Schoeller’s portraits — and the various attempts around the internet to reproduce them — are what inspired Mock-Ups, as they’re pretty simple to approximately replicate but hard to master.”
Photo Frosh Photo Challenge #3: Black & White
“Maybe this is because I’m a photo frosh, but shooting in black and white made me more deeply consider light and shape, more than I have thus far. In this way, I’d suggest that even the most experienced photographers shoot in black and white every once in a while, to jog their memories as to how fundamental light and shape are to photography.”
Hometown Heroes: Matt Reese
“In my personal work, I really enjoy exploring the idea of duality. My two-part ‘Gaia and Butcher (Creator’s Vision)’ touches on this conceptually, where as ‘The Pitting of Lupercalian Brothers’ expresses it through chiaroscuro. It’s safe to say there’s a lot of Caravaggio in my light. I rarely shoot without gelled strobes, so there’s a lot of color in my light too. It’s just something I obsess over, the expressive nature of light itself. I spend a lot of time thinking of light as a character. There are so many different ways it can affect a scene and tell a story. That definitely inspires a lot of my aesthetic.”
Tips & Tricks: Motivating Yourself to Shoot
“One of the hardest things for new (and experienced) photographers is getting motivated. Sometimes you just don’t want to shoot. But keeping up with your photography is the best way to heighten your skills. So what can you do if you’re just not feeling motivated to go shoot?”
Interview with Martin Usborne
“These images are created from the inside out. They start with a rough sketch that is later realised. I draw quickly, trying to tap into something instinctive, then recreate the scene photographically, either by finding the location or by building a small set and using multiple lights. It always surprises me how close the final image is to the sketch. The dog comes next, and I normally find them whilst walking my own in the park or through friends. None of the dogs are professional models. The dog’s expression or manner is crucial in determining whether it can carry the mood of the scene. The car is then used to match the ‘feel’ of the dog and the location.”
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