Often referred to as “Canada’s birthday”, today marks the anniversary of July 1st, 1867 when the three colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the Province of Canada were united into the single country of Canada.

As a Toronto-based team, mostly made-up of Canadians, we couldn’t let this day go by without a little feature on the blog. Along with a creative interpretation of the flag and a shot depicting Canada's national sport, we've made up a gallery featuring one image from each province. You could think of it as a guessing game if you like, or you could simply enjoy looking at pretty pictures of an amazing country.

To all our Canadian friends, wherever you are in the world, we hope you have an awesome Canada Day!

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There are so many incredible images on 500px but we want to know more about the photographers, and stories, behind them. Our Portrait series interviews a talented photographer each week, allowing us to discover more about living life through a lens.

This week's interview is with photographer Matthias Heiderich.

untitled by Matthias Heiderich

When and how did you fall in love with photography?
I'm not really sure, I think it was in 2007 when I started to follow picture blogs on the internet and came across all kinds of photographers I hadn't heard of before.

Have you had any formal training?
No, so far not. I'm self-taught, but photography isn't rocket science and relatively easy to learn, if you really want to.

How would you describe your photography style?
Artistic architecture and landscape photography.

Snow Blind 1 by Matthias Heiderich

Who or what inspires your work?
Electronic music is my main source of inspiration. But I also love to browse through portfolios and blogs to find inspiration and stay informed about interesting photography and graphic design projects. I'm really into link- and image-bookmarking and easily lose myself browsing the internet.

Is photography your profession?
Yes, it became my profession in 2011 when I realized it is possible to pay my bills with selling my art and doing some commissions.

What camera/s do you shoot with?
Pentax 67, Mamiya 645, Canon 5dMKII, Ikoflex Twin Lens, Polaroid SX70

And your favourite lenses?
Good old 80mm, f2.8

Berlin in a square by Matthias Heiderich

How about other equipment: lighting, tripod, filters etc.?
Yes, there's a tripod in my bag and a couple of colour filters and of course films. I never use artificial lightning.

How important is post-processing to you; do you need to remove many elements to get the clean lines we see in your images
I must admit I hate post-processing and I try to avoid it as much as possible. But digital retouch is, nonetheless, one of my routines and I usually work on crop, contrast, and colours; I very rarely remove elements and definitely try to let photography be the main part of the work.

How did you arrive at your unique colour palette, was it something you set out to achieve or was it a happy accident that you’ve made your own?
Well, I guess it's all a question of personal preferences. I really love colour photographs from the 50s and 60s and old polaroids. This and memories from my childhood might have been some sort of unconscious inspiration while step-by-step discovering what kind of photographs I prefer to take.

Playscape by Matthias Heiderich

How do you market your work?
I'm working together with galleries which offer some of my works in different editions. Additionally, I run a small webshop with a monthly changing range of prints. And well, I try to make use of this thing called social media to inform people about the availability of prints. Btw. there are limited edition prints available of most of my pictures.

What advice would you give to amateur photographers?
Ignore trends. Work every day.

Your work often breaks the two-thirds rule, favouring symmetrical shots. Do you think it’s important for amateurs to learn these rules but know to experiment against them?
Yes, I guess it's good to learn some rules, but following them won't make an outstanding picture. I would definitely encourage everyone to think for them self and to question all rules, not only when taking pictures.

What has been your proudest moment as a photographer?
The strange moment when I saw my pictures in a print magazine for the first time. It was even a really famous one.

Out of all the photographs you have ever taken, which is your favourite and why?
Before I was able to take this photograph I had to go through a snow storm, walk over a frozen lake, climb a fence, defrost my fingers and my camera. I simply HAVE to love it.

Untitled by Matthias Heiderich

If you could capture anybody or anything on camera what would it be?
The future.

Just so we can find out a bit more about the person behind the lens, could you tell me 5 things about you that are completely unrelated to photography?

What are your aspirations for the future, in photography or otherwise?
I definitely want to improve my photography and interview skills.

untitled by Matthias Heiderich

To see more of Matthias’ work head over to his website or his 500px page.

Thanks to Matthias for being interviewed and to you for reading. Feel free to leave a comment below, feedback is awesome!

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They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But sometimes it’s nice to learn more about what we’re looking at. Today’s story is by Jake Moomaw...

Never Give Up by Jake Moomaw

My dad introduced me to photography. When I was in second grade, he bought a Pentax K100 and taught me how to use it, the relationship between f-stop and shutter speed, and the basics of composition. Most weekends in the summer would find us up in the Rocky Mountains, shooting pictures. Those are some of my most cherished memories of childhood. My father was a Renaissance man in the truest sense: an electrical engineer, kite-maker, scrimshaw artist, mountaineer, and woodworker amongst so many other things.

On November 9th, 2009 a catastrophic stroke changed everything. The damage to his brain left him paralyzed on the right side, unable to speak, write, swallow, or do just about anything. Living a thousand miles away, I felt so helpless having to leave the hospital and fly back to Illinois. He went home with my mom a few days before Christmas with no health support at all until after the holidays. It was one of the most depressing and hopeless times we've ever been through.

Over the last two and a half years, with the help of my mom, extended family, friends and some of the best physical therapists in the state of Colorado, Dad has made some astounding progress and regained so much of his independence. He rolls six miles to the store by himself, has been tying fishing lures (one handed!) and even picked up his old K100 again and is enjoying his craft again. Mom's devotion, drive, and optimism has been just as key as Dad's determination and raw stubbornness.

This spring, my parents had a sidewalk installed in the backyard to allow Dad access to the garden. As the cement was drying, Mom scratched the words "Never Give Up" in the concrete. Three simple words that sum up their struggle so well. When I went out to visit in May, I saw the sidewalk for the first time and knew that sentence was something really special. The photo itself was such an easy thing to make but it symbolizes so much for me.

You can see more shots on this story here and to see more of Jake's work head to his 500px page.

If you have a shot with an interesting story behind it please email us at blog@500px.com :)

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There is so much to learn about photography and rather than intimidate those new to photography let’s educate them! If you have a tutorial you’d like to share, be it in shooting, or post production, or even top tips for getting your work out there please get in touch. Alternatively, if there's something you're looking to learn let us know and we'll see if we can find a photographer to help you.

Today's tutorial is courtesy of Richard Steinberger who often paints orbs into his images and was generous to share his tips & tricks with us.

Introduction

A few weeks back Debbie from 500px asked me if I'd be interested in contributing a tutorial to the company's blog. Specifically she was interested in how I create one of my "balls of light" images. Always up for a bit of nighttime fun, I agreed, and we (me, my wife Heather and my husky Kai) set out to produce a photograph for the 500px Blog during the full moon on June 4th.

I figured it wouldn't do to produce the ball of light in my front yard, so we headed for the high country about two hours southwest of Denver, Colorado. We traveled to the tiny hamlet of Grant and, from there, drove up to Guanella Pass. Leaving our car behind, we climbed from the parking lot at 11,500 feet to the top of a nearby hill at approximately 12,000 feet. From there, we had jaw-dropping views of Mt. Bierstadt, one of Colorado's celebrated Fourteeners, and a variety of other nearby peaks.

One of those peaks was Square Top Mountain, pictured below. I framed the shot in the remaining daylight, planning to place the ball of light between the two boulders that appear toward the right side of the frame. 

A Storm Coming

Unfortunately, the weather didn't clear as we had hoped. In fact, it became worse. After seeing rapidly approaching storm clouds and worrisome lightning strikes on nearby ridges, we decided to abandon the plan and hike back to our car. Quickly. By the time we reached the car, it was completely dark, and we had solid cloud cover. There was no full moon in sight.

What to do? Well, I've always thought that a person makes his or her own luck, so with that in mind we stopped at a waterfall on the way back to Grant for one more try at our ball of light.

A Ball Of Light Painting

So, what is this "ball of light," and how can you create one? The simple answer: light painting. And it can be done in different ways. The most popular way is to take a light source, put it on a string that you swing around in a circle with your hand while rotating your body in its own circle (making sure that the lowest point of the circle is always in the same place). I've seen varying forms of this done; from LEDs connected by wires to a battery pack, to flashlights tied to a rope. I've never cared too much for doing it this way; it doesn't seem very exact, and quite frankly, it's a lot of work.

I figured it would be much more practical to put daylight-balanced LEDs on a 5-foot pole that's fastened with a bolt to a second pole that's resting vertically on the ground. You can then move the 5-foot pole in the needed circle and, to suit your purposes, you can vary your turning speed and the angles of your lights to the camera. It's also a lot easier on the wrists!

Great Advice

When setting out to shoot balls of light, and when light painting in general, you should wear black clothing otherwise you risk showing up as a ghost in your image. As the camera can only record light, your chances of appearing in your photo are reduced greatly by wearing black.

In addition, a full moon offers the best opportunity to shoot a ball of light; it will allow you to see the surrounding area in the final image. Depending on how long your exposure is, your image might even look as if it was taken in the daytime.

During this project, however, cloud cover nixed our hopes for the full moon. Since it was completely dark, I decided to light-paint everything I wanted to show in our photograph. I've prepared a three-minute video, and I'll go into the details after you've seen the movie:

Ball of Light Tutorial from Richard Steinberger on Vimeo.

Getting Technical

Now, let's begin with the technical details:

As I noted in the video, the exposure was 1024 seconds — nearly 18 minutes at f13. If we'd have had a full moon, my exposure probably would have been closer to 40 minutes at f/13, without the light painting. I found that f/13 gives me good sharpness with my Canon 16-35 lens at 16mm, and it's a good f-stop for the high-powered LEDs that I use. I chose ISO 100 to minimize the digital noise. You'll have to experiment a bit to see what works best with your camera and light sources.

Here is a raw capture with absolutely no retouching or corrections done:

Post Production

I knew I had to do a bit of post-production work to get the image to look good, so I captured it in RAW. After importing the file into Adobe Lightroom 4, I adjusted the image with the settings seen to the left.

My results:

Next, I created two virtual copies in Lightroom, to which I applied the following settings:

My efforts yielded these two files:

Sandwiched Shots

Why create three different files? Remember how I "painted" the three different areas in the video? My intention was to combine the three different images in Photoshop into one, as the "raw" file did not have the apparent tonal range needed. As you see, the image above on the right has been pushed 3.65 stops to show detail in the far trees.

Of course, if I had taken more time to "paint" the trees, or if I would've used a stronger light source / higher ISO, I wouldn't have had to push the original file and sandwich the different exposures together. However, with light-painting, it's difficult to know when enough is enough; there are so many variables. At any rate, here's what the three images combined looked like after I "sandwiched" them together and erased from each the components that weren't needed for the shot. Basically, I created an HDR file by selectively erasing the elements of each file that were too bright and/or too dark.

Now there is detail all the way up to the far trees. The advantage of painting the light during the exposure and later in post-production is that you have complete control over the image. If you can visualize the outcome, you can formulate a plan and then selectively illuminate the parts of the image that you want the viewer to see. You'll be able to direct his or her eye throughout the image.

Swapping The Sky

There are still a few issues to deal with, however... most importantly, the ugly sky. Leaving it black wasn't an attractive option, so replacing it was the best thing to do. (Hey, this is art, not the news... anything goes!) For the sky replacement, I decided to use an image I had done a couple of weeks prior and not too far away from this location. Here it is:

This one was photographed at ISO 1600 for 30 seconds at f/2.8. The twinkles of the larger stars were done through a Photoshop action created by Pro Digital Software.

To replace the sky, I made a copy of the original layer, then I slid this image between the top and bottom layer: Then I erased the "ugly" sky on the top layer:

Last Minute Cleaning

Admittedly, I had a few minor things to fix aside from "dusting" the image. I had a few spots of light pollution to clean — see the red circles below, where my head lamp showed up. There also was some foam buildup at bottom center left that I didn't like.

Finally, I did a bit more color correction of the rocks and water, ran it through Photoshop's noise filter, sharpened the image and adjusted the levels to where I thought they should be. 

Close-ups And A Comparison

Here are a couple of different crops at 100% so you can see how the image held up after being pushed to its limits:

Here's a side-by-side comparison with the original "raw"capture:

And here's the final image:

Ball of Light by Richard Steinberger

I hope this was helpful and that you liked the image. If you did, please feel free to vote and/or comment on it here. If you have any questions, I will do my best to answer them right here on the post.

Big thanks to Richard (and Heather and Kai!) for trekking into the hills at night to create this awesome orb shot for us! If you'd like to give it a go yourself there's a tutorial on how to make your own orb tool here. And if you do create an orb of your very own make sure you upload it to 500px and post the link below!

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While I was attending Apple's World Wide Developer Conference, Michael Fey organized a photo walk, which 500px sponsored. It was a huge success with a great turnout and we had a great time! All of the photos from the walk which have been uploaded are tagged wwdc-photowalk.

500px is giving away two Awesome accounts to Brandon Bohling and Kendall Gelner.


Couple by Brandon Bohling


Leather by Kendall Gelner

Thanks again for everyone who participated, and especially to Michael Fey for organizing what I hope will become an annual event at WWDC.

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