Soft light is the most flattering all purpose light for most portraits. It enhances good features and minimizes flaws in the skin. Some of the best soft light is outside on “cloudy bright” days. Those are the days that there is enough cloud cover that you don’t cast a shadow but not so many clouds that it is dark and gloomy. Another test of a good cloudy bright day is to see if you can look at the sky without squinting. If you squint there aren’t enough clouds.
I was standing on the sidelines taking pictures at a high school football game. I was there just for the fun of taking pictures of my son and our home town team. Little did I realize that what happened next would dramatically improve my photography.
Marshall Pass is a beautiful fall color drive in southern Colorado, and still pretty much a secret. It does not turn up on most lists of the most beautiful fall color drives in Colorado. It is a beautiful drive with a lot of fall color photo opportunities.
Maroon Bells and Maroon Lake. Mid-morning. September 24, 2015.
Headed for Colorado this fall? Welcome to my Colorado fall color photography and travel guide with 131 photos, 18 maps, and over 100 pages of information (if you print it all out). I cover some of the best known fall color locations in Colorado, and one real gem of a road that is mostly unknown to photographers and leaf peepers. Spend anywhere from a few days to two weeks (or more) exploring the beautiful Colorado Rockies at a gorgeous time of year.
Richard Duane Klug (the name just above the rose) was born January 26, 1946. He died in Darlac Province, Vietnam, November 14, 1967 at the age of 21. He is one of over 58,000 American soldiers that died in Vietnam, and one of over 1.1 million American soldiers that have died in all American wars (almost half of them in the Civil War).
U.S. Flags at Sunset, Rose Hill Cemetery, Lamoni, Iowa
From Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865.
Zion National Park, Utah
Summer is the most popular time to visit the national parks. With so many to choose from, where should you go? Which national parks will provide the best photographic opportunities in the summer?
Pika, Rock Cut, Trail Ridge Road, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
Which national parks are at their photographic best in the summer? Here are my favorite choices, grouped by state from west to east, plus one Canadian province.
Total Lunar Eclipse, Super Blood Moon, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, September 27, 2015
Don’t miss it. This is the only total eclipse of 2021 and it happens this Wednesday May 26 (and begins May 25 if you live in Hawaii). This article will show you how to photograph it. Continue reading
Beth and I were on a mission to create fall color water portraits. Shooting at Lake LaShane was not part of the fall color plan. In advance of the day of our shoot I scouted several lakes, steams,and rivers in the area to find the best fall color. Only one location had the kind of fall color by the water that I wanted, Slip Bluff Lake.
The first thing to do is to ask permission ahead of time. Some places do not allow photography during the performance or they limit the number of photographers. In this case, Beth asked me to photograph her recital and I was the official photographer. One of the keys to photographing an event is not to become a serious distraction from the main event. That means not doing a lot of wandering around, and certainly not getting in front of people who are watching the event. Be as discreet as possible. If you need to move during a performance, if at all possible do it during the applause between numbers.
Theoretically you should not be able to get clear star photos from a moving plane. Engine vibrations are transmitted by the wings to the fuselage and you get blurry pictures during the long exposures. And I have a lot of blurry star photos taken at night from a plane to prove the theory is usually true.
Perseid Meteor photographed from Rose Hill Cemetery west of Lamoni, Iowa. 4:55 am CDT, August 13, 2018.
This is the best week to see the Lyrid Meteor Shower. The peak is early Thursday morning April 22, but you can see meteors through the 25th. This article will tell you what you need to know to see and photograph this popular spring meteor shower..
Theoretically you should not be able to create sharp photos of the stars using long exposures from the deck of a moving ship. But I decided I had nothing to lose by trying. At the worst I would end up with throwaway slides.
“In-Camera Compositing with Canon Explorer of Light Lindsay Adler”
This is your chance to see how an exceptionally good portrait photographer works in the studio. Even if you don’t have expensive studio gear, you can learn a lot about using lights and working with your subject.
You don’t often come across really nice “rim light”, so when it happens, make the most of it. I happened to glance out the window and saw this squirrel surrounded by rim light and grabbed a camera.
It was a beautiful spring day last year and a variety of species were coming through southern Iowa. I spotted this warbler in a tree in a wooded area right next to an open field. The light was just about perfect and the sun created a nice catch light in his eye. This is one of my favorite bird portraits. I am looking forward to their return this spring.
We have been down this road before. The last time around, people paid from $60 to $220 for a cheap Chinese lens they could have bought for $12. The lens was touted as a German product and the ads used fake quotes from a fake German engineer. They created fake test results and used fake testimonials. They grabbed professionally created photographs taken with professional photo equipment and passed them off as iPhone photos created with the so called “German engineered lens”.
Moon Over Balanced Rock, Arches National Park, Utah.
Are you planning a spring photography trip to one or more U.S. national parks? Where should you go? Which parks will provide the best photographic opportunities? Which parks are at their best in the spring?
Ocotillo. Big Bend National Park, Texas.
Which national parks are at their very best in the spring? If I could go on a fabulous spring photography trip to the national parks of my choice, all expenses paid, which ones would I pick? Here are my choices, grouped by state from west to east. This list includes the favorites I have been to and want to go back to again, plus the ones I haven’t seen and most want to photograph.
Big Bend National Park is one of my favorite places on the planet. My photography guide to Big Bend is here. March and April are good months to go. You will see more flowers in mid to late April but it will also be hotter. Fall is a prime time also. If you don’t mind the chance of a sudden cold spell and maybe some snow, I like winter in Big Bend too, but most people prefer spring and fall. Summer is ungodly hot.
Digital Photo magazine wrote an article on the top three ring lights for 2021. Ring lights are more flattering since they minimize shadows. And these are reasonably priced.
It was a week and a half after Valentine’s Day and most of the dozen Valentine’s Day roses in a vase on the dining room table were done and had been thrown away, but a few were still looking good. I asked Sami to lay on the floor, handed her a long stemmed rose, and I carefully arranged her hair. Then I stood up and pulled the best looking petals off of more roses and randomly dropped them on her. Some didn’t land quite right so I re-positioned a couple of them.
I was processing this image of Lyn Marie in Photoshop and the longer I looked at it the more I decided the color of the door frames, carpet, and walls took away from her colorful clothing. It made sense to me to remove all color from the image except Lyn Marie. In this tutorial I will show you how to do that.
I was aware of some of Peter Lindbergh’s famous images, like “5 Supermodels” but I did not know until recently that Peter Lindbergh is the photographer that created those images. This documentary is about Lindbergh and his work and you see a number of his stunning images.
Georgia O’Keeffe is one of the artists that inspires me. This Sotheby’s video is promoting an upcoming art auction, but it features some nice footage of O’Keeffe and some of her work.
This is one of my all time favorite winter images. On a prior photo shoot, Beth and I went out into the cold and snow to create images. She played her violin while I took pictures. It was her first time shooting in the cold and snow and she was a real trooper. For that shoot she wore her long black concert dress. The snow melted not long after that, but we decide if another day came along with the right conditions we wanted to shoot in the now again.
Thanks to the recent Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC), photographing birds has been my thing lately. On a fine, chilly winter day with slightly diffused sunlight, I found this Cardinal in the snow.