Why People Hate Menus

Prior to the Olympics this summer, several news agencies decided to issue new cameras and lenses to their photographers, some of whom would take them to Paris to cover the Games. Some of those photographer posted this news, often that their newspapers or agencies were buying them new Sony equipment. Almost immediately, Sony users chimed…

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What Did You Get?

As I write this, the photography press has been up in arms again about, as you might be able to guess, Artificial Intelligence, or AI. And while there are legitimate concerns about the misuse of anything complex enough to damage the human condition, I feel that AI will soon move from the “next big thing”…

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The Fabulous Fifty

I’ve said on more than a few occasions that I love the 50mm focal length. There are quite a few reasons to love your 50mm, but at the top of the list is that in human scale terms, it fits just right into the efficiency quotient of manufacturing, shipping, cost, weight, and, of course, making…

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Circling Back to My Favorites

Before I make my main point, I’d like to take a second and say that photographers have really been embarrassing themselves at the Olympics this week, including one who obliviously wandered onto the track where an active race was taking place, forcing runners to go around him. I am appalled , but not surprised –…

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The Claw

I’ve been taking pictures for a living for a long time. The apex of technology when I started in this field were cameras like the Nikon F2, the Canon F-1, the Hasselblad 500 series, and the Leica M and R series. It was a very interesting time in the evolution of photography. The film technology…

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A Look at the Nikon Z30

Several friends of mine recently took the dive into Nikon “mirrorless” digital camera photography. Two of these photographers, Robert and Scott, hail from Tulsa. The three of us met at the University of Oklahoma forty years ago. In 1984, we photographers had only the vaguest idea about digital photography, and I recall quite clearly imagining…

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Fun Little Things

Sometimes we in the photography community take things too seriously. We are inclined to tell ourselves that our work is important, sometimes more important than it really is, when much of the time, we need to take a breath and relax, and have fun doing our jobs. I thought of this recently when I saw…

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Judgement Upon Us

My social media followers may have noticed that Facebook recently removed one of my posts, saying “It looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way.” This post wasn’t an offensive meme or a politically or socially insensitive comment. It was a link to a photo on my…

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The Impossible Photo

If you know me at all, you know how fed up and I with the mythology surrounding photography, and at the center of my frustration is the idea that you can – an should – buy mastery. Anyone in any art knows that you have to earn mastery. A new piano won’t make you play…

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