David Giral Photography Blog | Articles
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Articles

2014/03/24
in How To
by David Giral

How To: The Art of shooting Urban Skylines

From Montreal to Chicago and San Francisco passing by Hong Kong, Sidney and Kuala Lumpur, there are hundreds of beautiful skylines in the world. With each city featuring a specific architecture and unique natural surroundings, a skyline is a city’s visual signature. In essence, capturing skylines is all about creating a fingerprint of a city; it’s also about showing its life and soul through a single image. When shooting skylines, it’s important to include key landmarks into the picture. For instance, a Montreal skyline photograph without...

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2014/02/17
in Reviews
by David Giral

Review: 7 Essential Android Applications for Professional Photographers

With the explosion of the tablet and smart phones market in the last few years, it has never been so easy to take pictures, enhance and share them directly from your smart device. This process has been improving quickly, thanks to the release of new apps. Most apps are geared towards making smartphone pictures more visually appealing, and making it easier to share them with friends. That's understandable, but this type of app cannot increase the productivity of photographers using conventional cameras such as DSLRs. But...

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2013/02/08
in How To
by David Giral

How To: Understanding Diptychs – When two is better than one

[caption id="attachment_1785" align="alignnone" width="1024"] A yummy goat sandwich at olives and Gourmando | Old Montreal, CanadaLens: 50mm F/1.4 | ISO 800 - 50 mm F/2 1/50s (left) | 50mm F/2.8 1/125s (right)For this food diptych, notice how easy it is to summarize a restaurant in two pictures, with one picture showing the menu and another one with the plate ready to be served.[/caption] So you’d like to start doing diptychs? Dipt-what?? What’s that? Let’s forget Google or Wikipedia for the history lesson and dip into the...

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2012/04/10
in portraiture, Reviews
by David Giral

Lens Review: A Headshot session with the Nikkor 135mm F/2DC lens

Recognized  as one the best Nikkor portrait lens, the Nikon AF DC-NIKKOR 135mm f/2 D (72mm filters, 818g, 1.1m close focus) is also one of the sharpest prime lenses available and has the advantage of a closer minimum focus distance than the Nikkor 70-200mm F/2.8 VRII. As a photographer shooting a lot of natural light portraits, the 1300$ investment in that lens felt was like a good move to make. The lens is lighter and shorter than the Nikkor 70-200mm F/2.8 VRII and easier to handle. So as soon as...

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2011/05/04
in Making Of
by David Giral

Making Of: The Lexus on Broadway Avenue, New York City

On my last trip to New York City, I had planned for a few HDR sessions during my stay, mixed in with some editorial shooting in NYC.   Image Info For this HDR "making of", 5 exposures were taken with a Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF-S 16-35mm f/4 G ED VR with the following settings: exposure time: 0.6s (0EV), 1/6s (-2EV), 0.3s (-1EV), 1.3s (+1EV), 2.5s (+2EV) focal length: 16.0 mm aperture: F10.0 ISO: 200 Before taking the shot (see location), I waited for a bus to come into the frame for the longest...

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2010/08/23
in How To, portraiture
by David Giral

How To: 10 Portraits, 10 different lightings and 10 reasons to love them

One of the most important thing when you shoot portraits is knowing how to light you subject no matter what the conditions are.  Be it natural or studio , playing with light is one of the most amazing aspect of photography. So here are 10 headshots with 10 different types of lighting to illustrate what it's possible to achieve in different conditions. Case 1:  cloudy day, natural light, indoor Melissa and I had scheduled that shoot in Malibu a while back and even though sun was...

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Veillée de Noel à la librairie Henri-Julien, Montréal, Québec, Canada
2010/01/18
in Making Of
by David Giral

Making Of: Christmas Eve at the Henri-Julien Bookstore in Montreal

Going out to take photos on Christmas Eve, I had no other choices than do my best to capture the beauty of the City of Montreal in the snow. I have already published photos of that night: Snowy backyard somewhere on the Plateau Mont-Royal Snowy alley of the Plateau Mont-Royal I've always loved those lonely photo walks, listening to audio books, while trying to find secret places and different angles to what everybody has already photographed. I've had already come by that book store and taken a photo...

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Robyn Photoshop Makeover Before/After, by David Giral
2010/01/11
in How To, Making Of
by David Giral

Photoshop Makeover: Fashionista514′s Headshot

Photoshop portrait retouching is everywhere: in blogs, newspapers, magazines. With the development of online tutorials, plug-ins and actions, access to the skill has become easier than ever. However, like all skills, learning how to balance each adjustment is not that as easy as it may seem and experience is key. It can also depends on the context in which the portrait has been taken (one just has to look at some of these editing disasters to see that trying to cut on the quality can really...

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tip of the day, by David Giral
2009/12/30
in How To
by David Giral

How To: keep EXIF on HDR photos using Photoshop

The problem with HDR photos and panoramas is that editing strip the resulting files of their EXIF data. Here is a simple video detailing the different steps to keep the EXIF data in your files. The format that you use for saving does not influence the end result. I hope it helped. Thank you for watching! Happy new Year 2010!!...

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Curious sides of Krista - Toronto Actress, by David Giral Photography
2009/12/28
in Making Of
by David Giral

Editorial Portrait: The curious sides of Krista Lee Watson

Before I start to explain the process used to create the above photograph, I wanted to thank Krista (an actress from Toronto whom I met during a Lighting Essentials workshop, visit her website here) for being such a good sport having endured the cold temperature of Montreal at the end of November with such grace. She is a fun and dynamic person fun to work with. This specific photo was taken at the end of the shooting and as we were about to walk back to...

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Photograph of a snowy backyard taken on the plateau mont-royal neighborhood on christmas eve
2009/12/27
in Making Of
by David Giral

Making Of: A Snowy backyard somewhere on the Plateau Mont-Royal – Montreal

Since I got to Montreal in 1997, I've always been fascinated by those backyard alleys, and specifically those who display a lot of symmetry. The brickworks of many old buildings make for a great interest too. This specific photo was taken on Christmas Eve 2009 on a fairly overcast weather. I used a Nikon D300 and a Sigma 10-20mm all zoomed out at 10mm to make sure I captured the whole scene. I used a tripod to be able to stay at low ISO. The exposure...

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Macy's Store at the Blue Hour, San Francisco
2009/12/23
in Making Of
by David Giral

Making Of: Macy’s Store – San Francisco

During my last trip to San Francisco, I had the opportunity to take a few photos at the blue hour in San Francisco before heading out on a road trip to Seattle, Wa. The photo above was taken at Union Square and pictures the amazing facade of Macy's store along Geary Street. The three photos used were taken at 13mm with a Sigma 10-20mm lens mounted on a D300 and a Gitzo tripod. Exposures ranged from 1.6, 0.8 and 6s. The particular challenge with this pĥoto was to...

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