Facebook reels just suggested to me a video from dpreview called “Is Your Old Camera Holding You Back?” I think you know my answer to this question, but it’s worth revisiting. Short answer: yes, your old camera is holding you back, but my old camera isn’t holding me back. Why? Maybe your pictures are boring…
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In art, filmmaking, television and photography, the term “negative space” refers to “the empty space around and between the subject(s) of an image. In graphic design this is known as white space. ” But as usual, my negative space doesn’t follow the rules. Most of our readers have heard by now that The Ada News…
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The dance of camera design has always been a complex one. Camera makers weigh costs, production, distribution, practicality, size, weight, and, of course, consumer perspective. For more than a decade, my wife Abby kept and point-and-shoot camera in her purse. At that time, the cameras in phones weren’t the imaging juggernauts we have in our…
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I have an unpopular opinion that I’ve been holding on to for a couple of years. It stems from an ad on a camera-makers’ website. “If a camera is higher in resolution, memories are more vivid.” It was a rare moment of real silence for me when I read that. I was amazed, both that…
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This week I watched a video on a social site about an older photographer who found that as the years go by, he carries fewer and fewer heavy, full-sized cameras. The result was that he made more and more photographs with his smartphone, which he said wasn’t very satisfying. His solution was to turn to…
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The summer of 2026 has been an interesting time for my small newspaper. We are in the process of moving our operation from East Main Street to the Mini Mall. Since our new home will have so much less floor space, the word went out that we could either use it or lose it, meaning…
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Since early in 2015, I have been using two Nikon D300S digital cameras for my work at The Ada News. They are great cameras, made better by recent advances in noise reduction software from various vendors. They shoot at eight frames per second, the color is great, autofocus is fast, and they fit well in…
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I know I probably talk too much about getting and staying organized, both in your photography and in your life in general. And it’s easy to say you should keep the good stuff and throw away the junk, but it is much more difficult to decide what really is useful and valuable, and what really…
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A photo buddy and I recently met at the Stratford Peach Festival. He lives in Tulsa, and only occasionally makes time to do professional photography work, so he liked the idea of photographing the Festival. He and I have known each other since college, where we were both photojournalism students. In the embarrassingly large number…
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It won’t come as a surprise to anyone that, as a photographer, I have always been interested in any technology that allows us to see more, see better, and even see things that we can’t really see with our own eyes. I love telescopes. What we saw with the Hubble Space Telescope was nothing short…
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My readers know well that I love old cameras, both digital and film. I make solid, sometimes award-winning images with cameras that some professional might shun, cameras they consider obsolete. Last week I was handed another tote full of old cameras, all of which had been used up and quit working. One of these cameras…
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From the start of my career, the photography press recommended using a filter on the front of all my lenses, and my peers always used a filter on the front of all their lenses. This filter was usually an ultra-violet (UV) blocking filter, but once in a while, especially early in my career, a “skylight”…
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I had another great night at the Oklahoma Press Association’s annual convention June 6. I received first and second place for education story, first second and third place for feature photograph, first and third place for news photograph, first second and third place for photo essay, and first place for sports photograph. ______________________________ Props to…
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I’ve never been shy about suggesting to my readers that the act of updating, migrating, and curating old photographic content is important. A phrase popped into my head the other day that went something like, “No one has ever taped a Facebook post into a scrapbook.” It is a sobering, even depressing, truth that social…
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Something calls to us when we see or hear something that feels or looks innocent. It’s true when we are falling in love, listening to beautiful music, or, in today’s topic, interacting with and photographing babies and animals. My next door neighbor Mike Nipps loves keeping chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, dogs, and one grumpy goat….
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