This is the famous “Lansdowne portrait” of President Washington by Gilbert Stuart. Stuart painted 3 famous portraits of Washington (and Stuart followed up by painting many copies of the originals due to lots of requests). The Lansdowne portrait is named for the Marquise of Lansdowne, former British Prime Minister and recipient of this painting.
RGB Histogram (upper right) and Luminance Histogram (lower right).
If your camera offers both RGB and luminance histograms, choose RGB. An RGB histogram is one of your most valuable exposure tools. A luminance histogram can lead to bad exposures and poor colors.
Sarah, Professional Fitness Trainer
Your camera is in love with middle gray. The quicker you learn how to deal with this infatuation, the better your photos will look, including all of your color photos.
Snowy Owl looking for prey.
If there are cold enough temperatures and plenty of snow cover on the ground, the northern United States has a winter invasion of Snowy Owls. These are magnificent creatures and well worth your photographic time and attention. This series is filled with tips on how to find and photograph snowy owls.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
The video quality of some of these links is iffy.
I Have a Dream – short version with still photos
I have a Dream – short version with video
Martin Luther King Jr.
Today is Martin Luther King Day in the United States. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born January 15, 1929. He was a Baptist minister and a prominent civil rights advocate. King was the youngest person to receive a Nobel Peace Prize when it awarded to him in 1964. He was assassinated April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.
One of his most famous speeches was delivered at the Lincoln Memorial August 28, 1963. Often referred to as the “I have a dream” speech, it is one of the most significant and powerful speeches of the 20th century. A portion of the speech follows. Links to the full speech and an audio file are at the end of this post.
Kristina in the Snow
The white snow in a winter scene can and often does fool a camera meter into underexposing a portrait, so here are the steps to take to get the right exposure. I throw in a few portrait suggestions too.
Mount Hunter from a Bush Plane. Denali National Park. Alaska.
Metering for scenes with a lot of snow can be tricky since the bright snow fools the camera meter. I see a lot of winter photos with gray snow, which means the camera meter did exactly what it was designed to do. The solution is quite simple provided you know what to do.
Last Light on El Capitan, Yosemite National Park
In addition to all of the usual photographic challenges, winter provides some extra complications, especially in terms of metering. So I began this series of articles on winter photography. Check out the links below. The articles will help you meet the unique challenges of winter photography. So get out there, have fun, and create some great winter images!
Sunset Light on El Capitan
We spent most of the Christmas holiday in the Bay Area visiting family. When we left the Bay Area the morning of December 30, 1990, we decided to make a side trip to Yosemite before making the long drive home.
Have a joyous holiday season!
Silent Night, Moraine Park, Colorado
Snow glistens in the last light of dusk.
Distant clouds glow with the fading light from the sun, long since set.
Lamoni Schools Jazz Band. December 11, 2025.
Under the direction of Mackenzie Stotts, the Lamoni bands put on a fun and varied winter band concert with a mix of traditional music and holiday favorites. Lamoni has four bands that played in this order: the High School Jazz Band, the 5th and 6th grade band, the 7th grade band, and the 8th – 12th grade band. Each of the bands played several numbers with classics like “Winter Wonderland”, TV special music, like “You’re A Mean One Mister Grinch”, and music from “The Polar Express”. A delightful surprise was “Carol of the Boombuckets” featuring boombuckets and boomwhackers. Boomwhackers look like swimming pool noodles, but they are made of plastic and cut to length to make different pitches as you swing them to hit the floor. It was a happy evening for the big and appreciative crowd at the Shaw Auditorium.
I created this for an art exhibit and posted it today as a result of a special request.
What is “gray market” photo equipment and how does it differ from “U.S. Warranty” equipment? Gray market equipment (also called “parallel import”) is imported into the U.S. but bypasses the official U.S. distributor. Gray market equipment costs less, sometimes a lot less.
Norman Rockwell’s classic painting “Freedom from Want” was created in 1943 and was part of his Four Freedoms series. It was inspired by FDR’s annual address to Congress, January 6, 1941. That address became known as the Four Freedom’s Speech.
When I was growing up, we spent many a Thanksgiving at grandpa’s house in Haxtun Colorado. Thanksgiving was a much anticipated and happy time. We would leave home on Wednesday afternoon after dad got home from work. It was a long 7 hour drive to Grandpa’s house in those pre-interstate highway days, so it would be really late by the time we arrived.
Max, Before and After ACR.
In this tutorial I will show you how to change the color balance of a RAW or JPEG file, and how to remember those changes to make the same exact changes to other files shot in the same lighting conditions.
Graceland University: Ag FFA and Business Simulation
In a prior article I shared 11 photos from a project for Graceland University. I was in the process of choosing selects. Years ago a photo editor said, “Take lots of photos and send me the very best.” Most editors don’t want to go through all of your images. It is the photographers job to go through the photos from an event and choose the best images for the editor. They are called “selects”. The editor goes through the selection and makes the final choices as to which image or images will be published.
High school teams work on their designs.
It was a fascinating day. Hundreds of high school students from across Iowa gathered for a fun day of activities and competition. The students were divided into teams and each team was guided by a Graceland student or professor from the business and agriculture departments.
Satellite Communicator
While my car was being serviced I was sitting in the auto dealer’s waiting room. I was bored. I looked at the dense clouds outside and decided to see if my satellite communicator could pick up the satellites through that cloud layer.
Aspen grove, Marshall Pass, Colorado.
Autumn is by far my favorite nature photography season. I take more pictures in the fall than any other season of the year.
Autumn Leaf, Columbus Ohio. November 18, 2016.
I was out in our neighborhood and spotted this autumn leaf still hanging in there.
Otter Cliff and Granite Ledges at Sunrise, Acadia National Park. October 19, 2017.
My fall in Acadia National Park Series.
Horseshoe Park, Ypsilon Mountain, Rocky Mountain National Park. October 11, 2007.
My fall in Colorado series. As you can see from these photos, fall colors can hang around for quite a while in Horseshoe Park, Rocky Mountain National Park.
Mt. Sneffels at Sunrise. October 3, 2002.
My fall in Colorado series. This is one of the two most classic scenic locations in Colorado. (The other is the Maroon Bells and Maroon Lake. See October 23 and 24.) It is 6+ miles west of Ridgway Colorado on CO-62. You can’t miss it. On most any fall day you will see cars parked on the side of the highway and photographers lined up taking pictures.
Sprague Lake, Hallett Peak, and Flattop Mountain. Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. October 2, 2010.
My fall in Colorado series.