When I was 25 I worked for a short time at a newspaper in Ottawa, Illinois called The Daily Times. It has since merged with a neighboring newspaper and become simply The Times. In my short time there, I shot well, in part because I was partnered with another young photographer named Harold Krewer. Harold…
Continue reading →During the heyday of 35mm photographic film, single lens reflex (SLR) camera bodies were very often sold with a “normal” lens on them, a 50mm. There were several reasons for this; the 50mm was small enough that it fit into most photographer’s hands easily, it was cheap to manufacture, it was lightweight, it usually sported…
Continue reading →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 →Since my college days I have been fantasizing about photography equipment. My first Nikon camera, an FM, came with a fold-out poster featuring the more than 60 Nikkor lenses that would fit my new camera. I framed that poster and hung it on my dormitory room wall, and have had it ever since. That was…
Continue reading →I have talked in previous entires about “bokeh.” Every lens exhibits bokeh, a word of Japanese origin that describes the characteristics of the out-of-focus areas of an image. Some lenses are noted for being able to produce good bokeh, while others, particularly cheap zoom lenses, routinely yield bad bokeh. Lots of photographers on internet forums…
Continue reading →I own two genuinely spectacular vintage manual focus Nikon lenses: the 200mm f/2.0 and the 400mm f/3.5. Both are capable of incredible imaging, since both were made during an era of craftsmanship in photographic manufacturing unmatched by any today. I don’t use these lenses as often as I think I should, and the reason is…
Continue reading →Trends in photography, like all trends in society, come and go. One trend in recent years that I am glad is finally, at least from my observations, waning is obsession with bokeh. I have talked about it a time or two, but I became interested in exploring it some more late last week when a…
Continue reading →For more than 107 years, since before Oklahoma statehood, my newspaper was printed in Ada, in the building where I work. The room that housed the press even burned once, in 1959, destroying our first press. Recently, however, as our News King press got quite old and parts got harder and harder to find, our…
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 →If you read photography press or internet forums, eventually you will come across talk of lens focal lengths that are regarded as “portrait lenses.” As surely as there are lenses that can provide beautiful portraits, there are caveats to that notion, the most important of which is that most lenses can produce excellent portraits of…
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 →With a bountiful snowfall in Oklahoma again this winter, I have had more opportunity to photograph beautiful snowfields and snow shapes here in our own pasture, as well as making news images for our newspaper. Other people have taken advantage of the situation, though with less satisfying results. There have been whole photo albums on…
Continue reading →Alternate title: Lens Selection for Basketball Action I shoot a lot of sports, and in winter, I shoot a lot of basketball. Over the years I feel like I’ve gotten pretty good at it, and while I am set in some of my ways, I am still flexible in some of my choices, like lens…
Continue reading →The intensely complex visual puzzle that photography represents is rife with thousands of lessons to be learned, only a few hundred of which I am able to share with my students in the time we have in class. The lessons can be graphic, geometric, mathematical, photometric, sociological, economic, psychological, even physiological. Imagery in the 21st…
Continue reading →When I was in college, my photographer friends and I had what we thought were the best cameras and lenses we could afford. I remember by the time I was looking for my first job after college, I had two Nikon FM2s and an FE2, plus a 28mm f/2.8 Nikkor, a 50mm f/1.2 Nikkor, a…
Continue reading →