Category Archives: Assignments
August Winner – September Begins!
Ahhh, month-end. Contest announcement days! As most know, this is the time when the previous month’s winner is typically announced and the next month theme is opened up for entries. Today is no exception… First up, congratulations go out to Evelyn B. for her winning metal-themed image: Not only is this a perfectly-lit image, but the details are spot on, and it totally fits the theme of Metal! Congrats to Evelyn B. from Flickr – please email me your contact information so I can submit to Red River Paper for you to get the pack of Pearl Metallic Paper (which … Continue reading
Five Ways to Deal with Harsh/Low Lighting
A common question I get here is how to deal with harsh or low light situations. This is a great question, and for event photographers, it’s simply part of the job to recognize various lighting conditions and address them accordingly. Today, I’d like to share Five Ways to Deal with Harsh/Low Lighting: 1. Cranking the ISO and hoping to fix in post With advancements in technology, noise handling both in camera and in post production has resulted in some astonishing results that in previous years would have been literally unrecoverable. While we should always endeavor to make our images shine … Continue reading
5 Tips to Better Landscapes
The most common questions I get here on the blog center around the idea of how to take better pictures. Whether those “better pictures” are better landscapes, or portraits, wildlife or events, everyone wants suggestions on how to approach the practice of taking pictures better. Esoteric and creative considerations aside, there are some fundamental “tricks of the trade” that, by and large, will almost always improve your craft in pretty much any genre. So, today, I thought I would take a moment to share 5 “tricks” I’ve learned that always lead to better landscapes:
December Winner!
The trumpets sound! The chorus rings, and the internet shall stop and take notice! Why you ask? We have a winner for the December Giveaway! I am happy to announce that the winner of the December Giveaway Bonanza is none other than: Frank Sammut! Frank’s shot of a childs hand, offering up a gift perfectly symbolized the concept of giving, and his blurred bokeh of the holiday theme in the background was just beautiful! He’s got some great work on his Flickr page too, so stop by and check it out and tell him congrats! Congratulations to Frank for winning … Continue reading
The Beauty of Bokeh Revisited
I know – the blog has not gotten much attention lately. My apologies – but after the job loss, and pounding the pavement, my schedule has tightened up considerably, so the “planned posts” have pretty much been exhausted as I let myself get behind. The good news is that with several opportunities on the horizon, I am a little less stressed about “real world” economics, and can dedicate some time back to the blog. A few items of note: #1 – The Year End Blowout Bash is underway – and LDP/Canon Blogger is giving away a ton of goodies. I … Continue reading
December Giveaway News
A few days late, but the year-end giveaway is quite exciting as there is just a ton of good stuff going into this giveaway. Here’s the inside skinny on what the winner is going to walk away with in December: A free copy of the “Within the Frame”, the wildly successful and great book donated by David DuChemin! A free copy of “Visionmongers”, the latest book from none other than David Duchemin! A free copy of Photomatix, the software known for its HDR processing, donated by the folks over at HDRSoft! A free 16″x20″ gallery wrap of a print of … Continue reading
A Look Ahead…
Just a few news nuggets today of some things that have been going on and simmering on the proverbial stove for the past few weeks. Many of these are now starting to bubble up to the surface, so here’s a little hint as to what I’ve been up to, and what is ahead for the blog and podcast…
Five Elements of Control: #4 Context
Have you ever seen something that looks so out of place that it catches your eye? Well catch it with your lens too, because contextual positioning of subjects in interesting or unusual/unexpected areas creates visual interest. This is what I refer to as controlling the context of your subject. So many times I’ve heard people tell me “but how can I change the surroundings?” The answer lies not in changing the surroundings of subjects you want to shoot, butin reversing that idea: find unusual subjects in your given surroundings. Say you are on a photo walk and in a city … Continue reading
Five Elements of Control: #3 Geometry
Earlier this week, we looked at the idea of how contrast/luminance can impact a photo, and that your creative style may tend toward a wider contrast or a narrower contrast. Then, yesterday we looked at how the element of color can impact a photo, both in the sense of how colors can balance and compete against one another, and how bright versus dark colors can play off each other. Since we’re moving from more theoretical to more tangible elements that we want to include in our photos, next up is the geometry of our photos. So, what is geometry? Basically, … Continue reading
The Benefits of the Back Story
We all know that our photography at its best can stand on its own – no jazzy or snazzy music, no cheesy frames or doohicky slideshows. However, some of our best (and worst) photos also come with some pretty incredible stories. Just one read through Joe McNally’s “The Moment It Clicks” will give you unique insight into how setting the stage or giving some insider perspective on a photo or body of work can both add value and meaning. A while back, I posted a photo with the title “The Boneyard and the Back Story”. In that post, the story … Continue reading
The first ever Comment Contest!
After a short (and unexpected) break from blogging yesterday, here’s a Friday Free-For-All for you! Here’s where reader input is going to be what makes or breaks the content – that’s right, I am putting it all on the reading audience. You can link to your own site in the comments, and the “Comment Luv” plugin will show the most recent post for fellow bloggers too. Here’s what the content topics are to chose from (you can pick one, two, three, or all of the topics to address in your comment): What are your favorite iPhone/iTouch applications (for photography)? Who … Continue reading
How to build a star tracker!
Rather than go through another hardware review today, I thought I would share a different kind of hardware with you – the DIY kind! Over the weekend I embarked on a little project on building a device to track stars as they move across the sky (even though it’s really the earth that’s moving and not the sky). Now granted, there are better ways to build star trackers, but many involve electronic motors, are more complex (in my mind anyway), and can get kind of costly (at least from what I’ve read). So, I figured I’d start simple, and go … Continue reading
Let me count the ways…
The age old phrase of “let me count the ways” seemed like as good a theme as any to announce the newest contest from the blog here for the Learning Digital Photography podcast. I just got word from the folks at OnOne software that they really liked the post on Genuine Fractals – so much that they would like to participate in a giveaway! Can you guess the prize? Yup, that’s right, the entire OnOne Plug-in Suite: 4.5! This is an amazing offer, as the package normally retails for $500! That’s five hundred big ones! I don’t know about you, … Continue reading
Come on Ride the Train
It’s somewhat fitting this week that yours truly is making serious use of the mass transit in Denver because a project that has finally come to fruition is a photo-themed shoot of trains. I’ve always found them quite interesting, and only recently did I come into possession of a very high quality model train to pose as I desired for specific types of compositional and focal impressions. Since the podcast isn’t quite finished, I figured now would be as good a time as any to share with you a sampling of my Train project… So, there’s the “Train Series”. I … Continue reading
A Dose of Inspiration
For those that are keeping up via feed reader, you may have noticed some Flickr additions over the weekend. As the “What’s This?” arc came to completion, I thought it might be fun to compile all the images into their own dedicated set on Flickr for everyone to enjoy. As it turned out, I had not been keeping up with cross-posting images there as much as I had thought, so it took several visits back and forth between the site files and Flickr to get everything together. The Flickr images show up as their own feed posts, so there were … Continue reading
New Years Resolutions…
We all do it – set some sort of expectation of what we want/need/should do for the upcoming year. Whether we admit it or not, everybody thinks at some point about doing something new, better, different, or whatever. What usually happens is some lofty goal or achievement that receives attention for a month or so before petering out. This year, CB is setting everyone up to succeed…in taking more photos! Instead of a generic goal, I’ve come up with a way to not only achieve those ends, but also to reward those that do! Every month, CB will host a … Continue reading
Look for Lines
For this week’s edition of “Thursday Thoughts”, I’d like to take a look at the subject of composition. We always are striving to enhance our composition, either by understanding the rules of composition better, or by pushing the envelope in new directions. With the explosion of digital photography, the decreased price of entry, and the abundance of opinions, now more than ever, if you really want to succeed in photography, it helps to get a jump on the learning curve by a better understanding of what works consistently over time. There’s a reason why we often refer to the Rule … Continue reading
