I just returned from another adventure in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest, and I am excited to say that the trip was a complete success. In my last entry I talked a about what kind of gear I would select if I needed to assemble a bag for my professional work, which involves…
Continue reading →I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the role of the iPhone in the photographic world, so I am not sure which came first, the “1960’s faded color print” look or the Hipstamatic iPhone application. Did the app respond to the market, or did the market respond to the app? In any case, it is…
Continue reading →Q: What makes a digital SLR camera “professional.” A: You do.
Continue reading →People who don’t understand creative minds are often eager to dismiss and degrade their ideas, often with a buzz-phrase. If you hear someone say, “What-EVER,” or ,”Oh-kaaaay…”, often with an eye roll, you’ve just been sociologically dismissed by an insecure, non-creative person. I remember when I was just starting to become interested in photography as…
Continue reading →I was at a ball game the other day when I saw a high school girl a few feet away shooting with a Canon digital camera. About the time I noticed her, she noticed me and asked, “Do you know how to adjust the exposure on a Canon?” I told her I did. I do…
Continue reading →Long before the digital revolution, my friends and I struggled to find the ideal way to express our photographic vision using film. Film was a fickle mistress at best, since it took a fair amount of finesse plus a huge amount of memorization to utilize film. A lot of photographers in the film era settled on…
Continue reading →A variously-ascribed slogan goes, “garbage in = garbage out.” The computer industry is particularly fond of this expression, since it helps remind programmers of the value of writing good code. Today, however, I am speaking of making video. For most of the history of home video, camcorders recorded movies at the equivalent of a resolution…
Continue reading →A talented news and sports photographer visited me recently, and I just spent some time making pictures with him. One thing we discussed, and not for the first time, is why I am interested in fine art photography. He is not, yet I sense in him a great curiosity about why we who shoot fine…
Continue reading →Because the photographer discussed in this entry seems to have disappeared from the webscape, I have removed his name and web address from this entry. I am not normally critical of other photographers. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, I am fairly sensitive to criticism of my own work, and find that it…
Continue reading →I have to say that I am pleased with everyone I am teaching presently, both the group at the Pontotoc Technology Center Monday evenings and the gang at East Central University in the mornings. They are two very different groups with distinct goals, and it requires me to reset my teachometer when I go from…
Continue reading →After a bit of classroom discussion about composition and perspective, the class and I stepped outside for a short time to explore those concepts. Since it was so hot, we headed back indoors fairly quickly, and on the way, we caught sight of art student Britni Trimble, who was painting in the Alla Prima style using…
Continue reading →This is an old trick, but I use it all the time. Sometimes when I need to shoot something through a fence or net, I press my lens up to the fence and shoot at its maximum aperture. If I have f/2 or f/2.8, that always works best, but as you can see, f/4 does…
Continue reading →Professional photographers, like a lot of artists, can sometimes be a pretty arrogant bunch. I don’t know if this has anything to do with many of us being men, or if it comes with the inherent self-righteousness of being a journalist, but in my travels I have found it undeniable. Maybe it has something to…
Continue reading →My father was always interested in various technology, but more so in acquiring technology as a bargain. His favorite thing to do in the world was get up early on Saturday morning and go to garage sales. He particularly got a kick out of picking up old stereo components, old home appliances like electric razors…
Continue reading →My close friend Michael and I spent a day recently in northern Oklahoma, attempting with some success to photograph the Great Salt Plains area. The reason we do this is entirely artistic. This exercise in imaging isn’t in any way commercially viable; we’re not building our portfolios to sell online, and we don’t have any…
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