Finally I can say “I am Back!”

Hello guys. First of all I would like to apologies for being inactive for more than 6 months now.  I had some problems with my hosting service and took a while until I was able to get back my database with all my posts and comments.

So what I was up to?

So you might be wondering what I was up to, for the last 7 months. Well the most important thing is that I worked for 6 months at a national newspaper here in Romania, where I learned a tremendous amount of things, from camera equipment all the way to studio lighting (yes studio lighting in press, I shot had to shoot like 15-20 girls a month for an yearly Miss contest). But I recently quit to start my own business in graphic design and photography.

Speaking of graphic design, I have finally finished my personal website with portfolio for web and graphic design, and I will soon launch an website for my wedding photography entitled Nunta in Imagini (Wedding in Images) , and after that I will launch a portfolio for the rest of my photography .  Stay tuned for updates.

What’s next?

Well, I promise I will update this blog at least weekly with news from photography world, and more photography and photoshop tutorials and this time in video format for better understanding. This is a future feature, and I need to learn more about video compression and the best way to shoot a video tutorial.

Tags: Constantin Chirila, Personal, Photography, Tutorials

You can now follow me on Twitter.

For like 3 days I have joined Twitter with the rest of the bloggers, after understanding and seeing how important is micro-bloging platform for the internet comunity.

So now that I have a Twitter account you can easily follow me at http://twitter.com/ConstantinC or you can easily click on the Twitter icon at the top of the blog near the RSS feed.

What you are going to gain to follow me on Twitter?  Well, I usually surf the net a lot, and I find a lot of cool things worth to share, and Twitter allows me to post and share a lot easier than writing an article on the blog. I also daily read more then 60-70 blogs  from witch more than half it’s about photography, so I can provide you with more information than this blog allows me.

Thank you.

Tags: Achievements, Constantin Chirila, News, Personal, Photography, Twitter, Web

I’m back, at least I hope so.

Hey everyone!

First and foremost I want to apologize for my inactivity, it’s been 2 crazy months and I’m still not finished. I’ve been busy with the college and things, and also I have started to work part time, so my time is pretty limited.

Anyways, this couple of months were a lot of releases and news in the photographic world like:

• the release of the Canon 500D / Digital Rebel T1i DSLR camera
• the release of Nikon D5000 DSLR camera
• the release of Phase One P40+ camera system
• three new entry-level DSLR from Sony: A230, A330 and A380
• the release of Pentax K-7 DSLR camera

Although I wasn’t able to talk about these I promise that from now on I will struggle to be very prompt in talking about any news.

Also, I am planning to show some photo retouching techniques and maybe I will start a video podcast so you are able to understand much easier the steps of the future tutorials. I am also planning to integrate Twitter, so stay tuned for some changes in the interface.

Last but not least, I would like to proudly announce that I recently became a member of AAFR ( the translation: Association of the Romanian Artist Photographers ), hope I got right the translation. This is very important to me, because only best and most active photographers can take part . If you wish to see the photographs that helped me join AAFR, then you can go here.

Thank you for reading.

Tags: AAFR, Achievements, Canon, Constantin Chirila, Nikon, Pentax, Phase One, Sony

First of the Many Gallery Participations to Come

Yesterday I went to the opening of a gallery where three photographs of mine, previously chosen, were exposed. I was pretty amazed of how many people in my city are interested of photography. Also I met other photographs and exchanged some experiences we had. I found out and learned new things from them.

I felt pretty happy and proud when I was asked different questions about my exposed photographs or when I was told that my work is pretty good. Also there were people interested to buy my work, which I wasn’t expecting.

At the end there were some beautiful speeches by some important people (from the art point of view), and also by my current professor from the School of Photographic Art. Me and some other photographers, each received a diploma for the selection of our photographs to be put in the gallery.

Overall there was a beautiful experience and there is no doubt that I will repeat it, with other more beautiful photographs to impress people that love and understand photography as art.

You can check some photographs from the opening of the gallery at my FlickR account.

Tags: Exposition, Gallery, Photography

Happy New Year 2009!

I want to wish you a Happy New Year to everybody, and lets hope that 2009 will be at least as beautiful as 2008.

See ya guys in the next year. Don’t forget to have fun and photograph some fireworks.

Tags: New Year

Merry Christmas to everybody.

Merry Christmas!

I would like to wish you all Merry Christmas. I hope that all of you will enjoy your holiday together with your family and friends. Take a lot of photos in this beautiful part of year.

I wish I had the time to write some tips for getting right your Christmas portraits, but unfortunately I was way to busy buying presents grocery, visiting friends, etc. I would like to apologise for this, and I promise to write it. Together with this I plan to talk about some basic things about camera and photography, and share some tips on how to use them efficiently, then as soon as it starts to snow around this parts I will share with you some photographs and some othe tips and tricks on photographing snow filled landscapes and maybe take a deep dive in composition.

By the way you can visit this page called “My way of saying Merry Christmas!” that i shared with my friends, here is the link: Merry Christmas! . I hope you like the idea.

Again Merry Christmas and see after the holidays. (Hopefully i will post something until the end of the year)

Tags: Christmas, Constantin Chirila, Holiday

Release: Constantin Chirila Photo Blog now available

So finally I have finished my Photo Blog. Here I will try to post at least one photograph a day, so you can admire  any new photographs. For now I will post some old photographs for you as well, so that this photo blog will act as a gallery as well.

The whole purpose of this photo blog is to show my wok in a controlled environment and especially to receive from you guys any comments or rating regarding my photographs.

Also you can see any updates of the photoblog on this blog on the sidebar under “New Photos”.

Some info about this photo blog:

• Every photo will have it’s description
• The photographs will be sorted in categories
• You can find my camera settings for every photograph that was captured ( Aperture, Shutter speed, ISO, Focal Length, Flash)
• You can rate my images with ratings from 1 to 10
• You can comment my images
• You can subscribe to email notification or to RSS

Hope you’ll like my work, and I am waiting for my photos to be rated and commented.

photo.constantinchirila.com

Tags: Constantin Chirila, Gallery, Photoblog, Photography, Release

Hello world!

Being the first post of this blog and in the honest attempt to maintain the “tradition of blog-starting”, the first words must be “Hello world”.

Through this post I would like to firstly present myself, the blog and my vision about this blog.

So, my name is Constantin Chirila and I am an ambitious photographer. I am in the pursuit of “seeing” the other face of the world, the face that is hidden by our sometimes ignorant eyes. I want to see details and forms, objects and textures that we usually walk by without even notice them.  And finally I want to capture this to share it with you and others.

Photo-Skills.com is my way to share my always developing skills, share my thoughts about different aspects of photography and other linked subjects. I will share my way of doing things from taking the photograph to editing and manipulating it. I will share with you my knowledge perfected and improved along the years by reading thousands of pages about photography and spending hundreds of hours of shooting and experimenting. I consider this blog to be as another way of improving my skills, because the best way of learning, beside practicing, is teaching others.

So I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.

Tags: Photography