6 Common Photography Fallacies
As you progress through the world of photography, you hear a lot of things. Oftentimes conflicting things. This Internet age is a true wonder, and it has put vast amounts of information at our fingertips, indexed it, and made it easy to find. On the other hand, it has also let the misinformed, confused, and [...]
Monday Morning: Part 2
We left Fords Pond half-numb and starving and dropped down into Clark’s Summit, where Paul’s cousin has a diner – one of those great little places that’s unassuming, with good, cheap food. Refueled and warmed, we headed out again, this time up to Lackawanna State Park. At Lackawanna, the wind was still blowing in from [...]
A few more portraits
Mandy’s graduation is this weekend, so we headed out to get a start on the senior portraits Wednesday evening. The mixed pleasure of working with your girlfriend is that the shoot ends up more relaxed and informal than it is with a client. On the other hand, she was feeling tired tonight, so it was [...]
Sweet 16 – or, the Dreaded Party Venue
Sunday was my girlfriend’s cousin’s Sweet Sixteen party. Long about time for the group photo I stepped in to help out, in the process putting myself square in that always-painful situation; shooting in the Dreaded Party Venue. You know the one I mean. The church hall, the school gym, the community center. The name changes [...]
Amazing models & photos
This one came up in the DPChallenge forums; one of the members there found Michael Paul Smith’s photo stream “Photos of my models.” My first thought had been models, as in, people posing for photos. What Mr. Smith has put together is – at least in my opinion – even cooler. This is a photo [...]
Panorama
Each time I return to Gettysburg, I seem to find myself at Little Round Top, shooting from the top of the castle-like monument there. It offers a good view of Devil’s Den and the fields beyond, all the way to the PA Memorial and Pickett’s Charge to the north. So I know that I already [...]
Looking at the mundane
A little while back I spoke about trying to make images of common place things, of scenes that I was familiar – even overly familiar – with, instead of constantly wishing for something more exotic. That’s not an easy challenge to rise to, much less to walk away from with good images. And while I [...]
Manual Focus
As I wander around the internet I keep coming across a number of references to manual focus. The frequency is surprising to me, since MF isn’t part of my usual bag of tricks and I can’t think of a single photographer I know personally who makes much use of it. But to hear folks talk [...]
Senior Studio Portrait – Preview
On Saturday, I’m shooting part two of a senior portrait session. Part one took place outdoors and was where I started talking about the merits of lighting with a single strobe. Part two will take place in the studio (which itself is going to be setup in a computer room at a friend’s house). For [...]
HDR – A Process
HDR – high dynamic range – images may be the future of photography, depending on who you listen to. But future or not, they are here to stay, and they are progressing along the path from “trendy new thing” to “artistic impression” to “subtle and effective tool. I never jumped on the “HDR is Evil” [...]
