Early on, nature photographers are taught the necessity of using a tripod. The great teacher John Shaw calls the tripod a crucial, best single accessory. Pros use tripods. With a tripod you slow down, take control and become a better photographer. You can better fine tune compositions, pick and choose elements like line and shape, […]
2013 Favorite Images Critique ____ 2014/01
I wasn’t thinking I had many favorites when I created a 2013_best_images Collection in Lightroom from the filtered three-star-or-better images of 2013. But I found many I was quite fond of, and in a couple short sessions whittled those to ten. Often it’s the field experience as much as the composition that yields a favorite, […]
Lightroom 5 HSL Panel: More Pop and Mystery ____ 2013/12
Last year (2012/09 Photo Tip), I wrote about using Lightroom Development tools to create Pop and Mystery in a photo. The gist: darken skies, selectively increase color saturation and increase contrast. Ansel Adams famously said the negative is the score, the print the performance. The RAW file you create in camera is a digital negative; […]
Background in Wildlife Photography ____ 2013/11
Photographing elk is much like other wildlife photography, in that background is often key. Early in October I was in Jasper National Park, Alberta, waiting for the weather to break for a planned kayak paddle of Maligne Lake. While I waited I met a friend, Norm Dougan, by coincidence, and for two days he graciously […]
Photo Tip: Foreground Elements _____ 2013/03
In the field, I often stalk through a potential photo op with the viewfinder glued to my eye, seeking just the right composition or perspective. If I plan well, I’m scouting before the light gets good—in the afternoon for a sunset shot, or the day before for the sunrise. What I’m scouting for is foreground. […]
Photo Tip: Ligthroom 3 Black and White ____ 2011/11
If Ansel Adams had had the darkroom power of Lightroom 3 to manipulate black and white imaging, he’d do a leaping victory dance like Jack Black in The Big Year. Ansel artfully dodged and burned his negatives, and controlled light in the field with filters, one filter per shot. Today, digital age tools boost control […]
Photo Tip: Look Thrice; Shoot Once ____ 2011/10
Photographing Wildflowers I reviewed some wildflower scenics from my August, 2011, Olympic National Park shoots and was once again reminded of the old carpenter maxim “measure twice, cut once”. The low cost of shooting digital removes the cost barrier to shooting, shooting, shooting. Why not make dozens of shots? Surely some will succeed. I get […]
Photo Tip: Composition for Panoramas ____ 2011/09
I had some fun shooting panoramas in August. Some worked out well and some didn’t; there were a few pleasing surprises. A successful pano requires not so much mastery of the technical aspects, easily done, but thought and imagination with composition that is especially demanding with rapidly changing light or with people on the move. […]
Lightroom 2 Spot Removal (on steroids) ___ 02/2010
The Spot Removal tool introduced in Lightroom 2 was a nice feature, part of set of tools that allowed manipulation of individual pixels on RAW files. Almost coincidently, though, manufacturers introduced dSLR cameras with self-cleaning sensors that worked so well Spot Removal was rarely needed for dust touch-up. I nonetheless use the tool frequently—for wildlife […]
Photo Tip: Frame It! ___ 01/2010
Camera and tripod instinctively pop out when we view a mountain sunset or ocean seascape. The tripod legs spread; we mount the camera, plug in the cable release and fire away. Later we inspect the photo and discover that it doesn’t match our memory. An elementary problem in photography is translating a dynamic 3D world […]