Three Guys Talking About Photography

There is nothing better than getting a few of your friends together to take pictures and talk about photography. This is a video with Drew Altdoerffer and Lau Norgaard, both of Phase One, having a discussion with me about photography today. We got together in my living room and started to discuss photography, which is a topic near and dear to all of us.

While Drew and Lau work at Phase One, it doesn’t lessen the way they feel about photography. It’s their passion that fuels the design and features of the cameras and backs that Phase One makes.

There is so much happening with photography today. There are a large number of very capable cameras with the ability to produce excellent images under almost any condition. Today’s cameras have high ISO capability allowing super low-light capability, high-dynamic-range fast frame rates as well as fast and super accurate auto-focus (such as eye -AF). All of these features fit just about any budget.

Software for post-processing is advancing at a fast rate, too. There are a number of programs that can process images using artificial intelligence. Programs such as Photolemur, Luminar 4 and Topaz all have AI built into their products. In Luminar 4, you can take a photo with a blue sky, and with the click of a button, you can replace a sky with any one of hundreds of choices. Topaz has any number of programs that use AI to determine and reduce noise, sharpening, scaling and more. These tools will play a big part in how we work with images moving forward.

We discuss computational photography as we see in today’s mobile phones where we can adjust the blur of the background in an image. The discussion leads to a further conversation about what this technology allows us to do as a photographer. What does the technology in the cameras allow me to do to take my photography to a higher level? It leads to a point where we don’t have to limit ourselves and allows us to move out of comfort zones to expand our photography.

I hope you like and feel part of this conversation. We’ll pick it up again when Drew and Lau visit the next time.

The Video (47:38)

Kevin Raber
November 2019

Kevin Raber
Indianapolis, IN

Photography is my passion and has been for 50 plus years. My career in photography has allowed me to travel the world, meet some of the most interesting people on the planet and see things I could never have dreamed of. My goal is to share the passion of picture taking through photographs and teaching with as many people as I can, hoping it brings them as much joy and happiness as it has me. I do this through photoPXL.com, this site, as well as Rockhopper Workshops, and other projects, as well as teaching as Artist In Residence at the Indianapolis Art Center.