When Abby and I first met, I was still shooting some film. On the budget of a small-town news photographer in a world of $5500 digital SLRs, I wasn’t in any kind of position to buy the digital cameras I wanted. I had, however, bought a digital point-and-shoot, the Nikon Coolpix 885, in the early…
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 →I’ve had the Fuji Finepix S200EXR since early October 2009. I got it just in time for Abby’s family reunion in Duncan, Oklahoma. I got it primarily as a hiking camera, as a replacement for my dying Minolta DiMage 7i. In addition to some walk-around shooting, I’ve shot three major events with it, the reunion,…
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 →At a basketball game tonight, one of the player’s parents joined me courtside to ask a couple of pieces of photographic advice, then stayed for nearly two quarters for what ended up being quite a cordial chat. One of the things she asked me was, “What would be the advantage of getting an additional flash…
Continue reading →I started teaching another round of beginning digital photography Monday night. One thing we cover in the initial stages of this class is file formats. Of course, my students are very familiar with JPEGs, since these files are ubiquitous, from the photos on this blog to the shots of me at the front of the…
Continue reading →In 1998, the company bought me a film scanner, and the computer to go with it. Within a few weeks of tweaking and adjusting, I was scanning everything. That left two 500-sheet boxes of Kodak Ektamatic SC black-and-white, single-weight paper sitting on the shelves in my office. For a while I kept them, just in…
Continue reading →Photographers who shoot outdoors a lot try to take advantage of what has become known as the “Golden Hour” or “Golden Moment.” In reality, this period of time during the first or last light of day can vary depending on what you are shooting and how you want to use the light. Essentially, this moment…
Continue reading →One thing I stress to my photo students is the value of editing. Specifically, I tell them that no one wants to see 1200 photos of anything, and that no matter who shot those 1200 photos, only a tiny fraction of them are any good. (I cite 1200 based on a gallery of someone I…
Continue reading →Most of my photography students have the same gear: a digital SLR, the “kit” lens sold with it, and sometimes a telephoto “kit” lens as well. In the long-ago days of film cameras, SLRs were frequently sold with a 50mm lens, for several reasons. They were cheap to make, they had fast (meaning “large”) maximum…
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 →Update 2018: At one point the Tamron 70-200mm fell from a car seat onto a paved parking lot, and the lens never performed well again. Despite liking its handling and look, I ended up selling it. For a couple of years, I’ve had the excellent AF-Nikkor 180mm f/2.8 in my bag here at home, but…
Continue reading →One thing I try to stress in my class, which is sometimes ignored, is the value of what we call in the biz “fast glass,” meaning lenses that feature big apertures. In general, the gold standard in my line of work is f/2.8. It represents the point at which most camera/lighting/lens combinations can get the…
Continue reading →My blogging friend Tom the Beanie Cap Guy posted an entry recently called “11 Images,” in which he talks about the 11 images that represent his photography in the past three years. His art is quite different from mine, though I find it incredibly passionate and compelling. I thought it would be a neat challenge…
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