As a professional photographer, I have lots of friends, including my lovely wife, who are photographers. I guess the axiom “birds of a feather fly together” really does make sense. One of the things we like to do as photographers is get together for the purpose of making pictures, often with the idea that we…
Continue reading →Since the introduction of Adobe Photoshop and similar software programs in the early 1990s, photography has changed in some very fundamental ways. Since Adobe developed Photoshop in large measure to aid advertising entities in creating more effective ads by manipulating and retouching reality, it inherently aids in retouching everything that passes through it. Recent iterations…
Continue reading →An alternate title for this post might be, “What I Don’t Do Best.” For my entire career, I have had the privilege to work a job that I love. I am a news photographer. I get to attend and photograph events that shape the lives in my community, from lazy July 4 parades in one-street…
Continue reading →I don’t get to do this very often, since most of the lenses I own and use are built so well that they don’t really wear out. Most of my lenses are Nikon’s Nikkor brand, and especially the older ones are build to last. The lens I am discussing today is not a Nikkor, though,…
Continue reading →This may seem like a trivial and/or simple principal, but I feel it is key to learn how to hold your camera and make it a habit. Early in our relationship, my wife Abby learned and adopted the correct posture for using a digital SLR, and has used it ever since, and I think it…
Continue reading →A student from last year, Beth Grand, told me yesterday that she wanted to take the class again, and I consider that extremely flattering. The beautiful thing about the advanced class is that what we do almost exclusively is shoot, and I think the students get a lot more out of that than from the…
Continue reading →Most digital imaging sensors are equipped with a set of filters, either adhered to the surface of the sensor itself, or, as is the case with some of Kodak’s digital SLR cameras, in front of the viewfinder mirror. Typically there are at least two filters, an infrared filter designed to block the long wavelengths that…
Continue reading →It is always such a pleasure to have people in my class who get it, and who are there because they want to be there. Tonight’s first of three sessions of advanced digital photography gave me the privilege of hosting just such a group. It was a cold night, but everyone was having so much…
Continue reading →In the by-gone days of film, it was widely and truly held that once you had a couple of reliable camera bodies and a flash, it was time to sink money into lenses, which we in the biz simply call “glass.” The reason was that aside from nice features and correct exposure, camera bodies didn’t…
Continue reading →A friend commented recently that one of my photos really impressed her. The photo, a black-and-white shot of a mission graveyard south of Farmington, New Mexico, was made one morning in 2003 as David Martin and I were ending an excellent desert hiking trip, Desert Cold. One reason it’s possible to make photos like this is…
Continue reading →I was cruising though some links on a friend’s blog this morning and came across one family blog after another that featured photos of their children. The photos weren’t very good, in part because of a common element: the Stare. The Stare is ubiquitous and pervasive in amateur photography, and ultimately ruins what might be…
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