This week I share a chat with my friend Don Komarechka about his awesome macro work and his upcoming crowd-funded book. Don is an incredibly talented photographer, and probably the only photographer I know that is geekier than I am when it comes to diving into the details.
There’s no shortage of geekiness in our chat either, and although I won’t transcribe the conversation for the blog, I have posted some of Don’s beautiful macro photographs below that we talk about in our conversation, along with a wealth of macro photography and mad scientist-style conversation with one of my favorite guests.
When we recorded our chat in the middle of May, Don was still working on getting his Kickstarter project launched, but luckily, the day before I left for Namibia, as I worked on this post, Don sent me a link and some beautiful shots of his new book, Macro Photography: The Universe at Our Feet.
I’ll create a gallery of photos of the book below, but for now, I’d like to also quickly mention that Don runs a great Podcast Photo Geek Weekly that you might also want to check out, and to see his workshops and connect check out Don’s main website at www.donkom.ca.
Anyway, here are the photographs that we discuss in our chat. Please listen with the audio player above. and I hope you enjoy the conversation.
This week I share an awesome conversation with my friend Don Komarechka about his most recent crazy scientist photography, as he sinks his teeth into full-spectrum, infrared and ultraviolet photography, as well as stereoscopic 3D macro photography.
As Don himself said when he emailed me about this new work, it makes for a fun outside-the-box chat, which I’m sure you are going to enjoy. We didn’t script any of this, so there is no manuscript this week, but below are the 14 images that Don shared with us.
You can find Don and connect with him via the social links on his web site at www.donkom.ca.
These photos are pretty high resolution, so open up your browser window nice and wide, then click on them to view the larger image. To stop the images from auto-advancing, just place your mouse over them.
For this 3D macro photography, you can actually view them in 3D by going cross-eyed, and adjust your eyes until the point where both images overlap. I also had to tilt my head slightly, because one eye is higher than the other. Once you get the two images registered though, the effect is amazing, so do give it a try.
Show Notes
Catch up with Don Komarechka on his web site here: www.donkom.ca
Today I talk with Don Komarechka about what he learned from his recent experience as he self-published his incredible new book, Sky Crystals – Unraveling the Mysteries of Snowflakes. Don is a photographer based in Barrie, Ontario, Canada and a fellow This Week in Photo Podcast co-host, and now also a fellow X-Rite Coloratti member.
In our hour long discussion we talk about various aspects of self-publishing, including…
This week, TWiP co-host Don Komarechka and I hook-up again to talk about printing, a passion we both share.
Here are the points discussed:
– Why print?
– A photo isn’t truly done until it’s printed
– Helps to hone your craft
– How big can you print an image from a typical digital file?
– Choices of paper: discuss our favourites and why
– Do it yourself or get someone else to to do it?
– How much does a good printer cost? Paper & ink?
– How big do you go?
– Expect to waste money and consumables while learning
– Colour Management
– Screen & Printer
– What does spending more on calibration gear get you?
– Why it’s necessary – prints come out too dark!
– Soft-proofing
And here are some of the images that I mentioned during our conversation…
5 Meter Wide Wall Mural
Here’s a photo of me with that 24×48″ print that I mentioned. This was from a 10 megapixel image, embiggened in Perfect Resize.
Martin with 2 x 4 Foot Print
Here’s the comparison between five of Breathing Color’s papers — All excellent papers, but reflectiveness is something to bear in mind, especially if you’ll be framing under glass or perspex, which adds another layer of reflectivity, unless you go for anti-glare glass. I actually just really like matte prints anyway, and Optica One, on the very left here is my favorite. Just look how deep those blacks are and how rich the rest of the colors are!! From left to right these are Optica One, Elegance Velvet, Vibrance Rag, Vibrance Luster and Vibrance Gloss . My favorite gloss paper is Vibrance Rag, the middle one.
Paper Samples
By the way, if you buy anything from Breathing Color, use the code MBP20 for a $20 discount off any order of $20 or more.
And I thought I’d throw this in for good measure. My Canon imagePROGRAF iPF6350 printing out a couple of profile charts.
Printing Printer Profiling Targets
Here are the three main tiers in X-Rite’s line up – from left to right, the ColorMunki Photo, the i1 Pro 2 and the i1 Display Pro.
X-Rite Calibration Product Comparison
Support Don’t Snowflake book here, and more importantly get your own copy, or one of the other great value packages!
Here’s a chat with Don Komarechka, a nature photographer from Ontario, Canada, who in addition to beautiful landscape work, shoots the most amazing snowflake photographs! Because this was a discussion, I don’t have a transcript for you this week, but below are some examples of Don’t snowflake images and a shot from the Yukon and Bulgaria, that we talked about in our conversation.
Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.
Gallery
Click a thumbnail to view the images from this post with limited shooting info. Once the image has opened, you can navigate back and forth with your keyboard arrow keys or by clicking the image.
