Dawn at Sprague Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park
The exposure compensation scale on your camera is one of the keys to mastering exposures, getting better images, and ending up with professional quality colors. This means taking your camera off of full auto mode and taking control of your own exposures.
Bill Biggart’s final photograph. He was killed when the second World Trade tower collapsed on top of him. He was 53 years old.
Photo by James Nachtwey for TIME magazine.
On this date, fourteen years ago, we experienced a great national tragedy in the United States. Not only in the lives that were lost in the terrorist attacks, the families torn asunder, and the emergency responders who suffered terrible health problems as a result of working at the scene – but also in the way we view ourselves and our world.
In remembrance of that day, and to honor the lives that were lost, I am posting some tributes.
Nature Collage. Click to see a larger version.
CAPTURING THE WONDER OF THE OUTDOORS
Photography Weekend – OSU’s Gibraltar Island
October 9-11, 2015
4:00 pm Friday to 3:00 pm Sunday
CAPTURING NATURE’S WONDERS
Photography Workshop – OSU’s Mansfield Ohio Campus
Saturday, October 17, 2015 – 9:00 am to 9:00 pm
I am excited. My nature photography workshops in Ohio are fast approaching.
Forget-Me-Nots, Thorne-Swift Nature Preserve, Michigan
Today’s question came by email. I am posting the question and my answer below. The person asking the question uses Canon gear but the information below also applies to Nikon and other brands.
Question From “D”: I have been looking at a 58mm closeup lens for my Canon camera. I am also looking at closeup filters for my 28-55mm or 55-250mm Canon lenses. What do you recommend I get?
If you walk out the back door of your favorite restaurant, you never know who you might find in the back alley parking lot.
Light Path of the International Space Station. August 1, 2015. 10:05 – 10:09 pm EDT. Click to see a larger version.
The International Space Station (ISS) passes over Columbus Ohio. It isn’t that hard to find and it is relatively easy to photograph. In this photo the light path curves below the center of the frame from lower left to upper right (click to see a larger image). There are also airplane lights in the lower right corner of the frame. The stars are slightly streaked due to the motion of the earth during the long photograph.
Beautiful Michigan
I am SO looking forward to going to Northern Michigan next week. Such beautiful country. I will spend a couple of days creating images and I will be leading a nature photography workshop August 14-16 on the shores of beautiful Lake Charlevoix between Petoskey and Boyne City. If you love nature photography and want to up your game, this weekend is for you.
Hallett Peak and Flattop Mountain, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. September 29, 2014.
I am SO looking forward to my annual fall color trip to Colorado. I will be doing a three day photography workshop* at Rocky Mountain National Park (September 25-27) as well as doing one-on-one sessions with individual photographers who want to up their game in the shortest possible time (September 28-29). Plus I will be doing some wandering on my own. It is hard to beat Colorado in the fall.
Aspen and Evergreens, Marshall Pass, Colorado. September 25, 1990
UPDATE: The most recent and updated version of this article is here.
Welcome to my first Colorado fall color travel guide with 99 photos and 17 maps. 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 two days to two weeks exploring the beautiful Colorado Rockies at a gorgeous time of year.
Electronic Lens Mount
It is an unhappy thing when a lens quits working normally, or stops altogether, complete with some kind of error message on the camera body. The good news is that you can usually bring your lens back to life and it only takes a few seconds to a few minutes to do. Details are here.
The Strip, Las Vegas with Fireworks
You can point your camera at the sky in auto exposure and autofocus modes and fire away whenever you see a burst of fireworks, but for the best quality photos, it helps to know a few tricks of the trade. It’s easy when you know what to do.
Venus and Jupiter in the night sky over Fremont California. Canon 5D Mark III vs iPhone.
Camera phones have serious issues when it comes to low light photography. They simply do not have what it takes.
(Click on any of the images in this article to see a larger version.)
Jupiter and Venus over Big Red lighthouse and Holland State Park, Michigan. May 16, 2015.
Tonight is the night for the “Star of Bethlehem” conjunction of Venus and Jupiter. They will come within 1/3 of a degree of each other in the western sky.
Black-crowned Night Heron. DSLR vs iPhone.
“Will camera phones replace DSLRs?” I get asked that a lot lately. Camera phones have already replaced point and shoot cameras for a lot of snap-shooters. But for photographers that need the serious benefits and advantages of a DSLR, that isn’t going to happen now or any time in the near future.
(Click on any of the images in this article to see a larger version.)
There are only a couple of openings left for my nature photography workshop August 14-16 on beautiful Lake Charlevoix in northern Michigan. If you want to take your photography to the next level, now is the time to sign up. This is also the last week to get the early bird discount which ends this Friday.
Male Northern Cardinal Bringing Food to the Nest
It took about 3 1/2 weeks and a lot of patience to get this photo. I was ready from day one but the breeding pair weren’t.
Female Northern Cardinal with food for her nestlings.
A mated pair of Northern Cardinals raised their spring brood in our yard. This female with food in her mouth landed in a nearby tree before flying into a bush to feed her nestlings.
Wood Poppy (Celandine Poppy), West Lake Nature Preserve.
On my way home from my photography workshop in Grand Rapids/Holland, another photographer and I stopped at West Lake Nature Preserve in Portage, Michigan. It is one of my favorite nature photography locations in southwest Michigan. Something is happening there most any time of year.
The conclusion of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address in Lincoln’s own hand. Click to see a larger version.
This is the famous conclusion of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address from the only known manuscript in Lincoln’s handwriting. This is a photo of the bottom of page four.
U.S. Flags at Sunset, Rose Hill Cemetery, Lamoni, Iowa
From Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865.
Panorama of the Stivers Photo Auction. Click to see a much larger version.
You can create panoramic images with ACR 9.0 and this article tells you how.
The really great news is you can now open RAW camera files, stitch them together with ACR 9.0 (Adobe Camera Raw version 9) and output the panorama as a RAW file in the Adobe DNG format. Why is this such a big deal? This means you can go back any time, re-open the RAW file and tweak it again with all the advantages of RAW image processing. It is also a huge time saver from when we had to process each individual RAW file, output it as a PSD or TIF file, and then stitch them all together. I will walk you through the process of creating a RAW pano with ACR.
Alpenglow on Hallet Peak and Flattop Mountain. Left side: Before processing with ACR. Right side: After processing with ACR. Click to see a larger version.
My eyes saw the wonderful alpenglow on the mountains, but it was barely there in the JPEG file right out of the camera. The unprocessed RAW file looked just like the JPEG, but a RAW file has a lot more potential to bring out the color in the image. After the RAW file was processed with Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) the image matched what I saw with my eyes. The color channels in a RAW file have 16 times the color tonality range of the color channels in a JPEG file. If you aren’t shooting RAW files and processing them with ACR, you aren’t getting all the color quality your camera is capable of producing.
Vermilion Lakes Sunset, new (top) and old (bottom) ACR “process versions”. Click on the photo to see a larger image.
Adobe’s newest “process version” for Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) provides better image processing for your RAW camera files. Photos you have processed with an older process version can look even better with the new version. For your images to look their very best you need to have the latest process version.
Event photo, ISO 3200
When you need to shoot an event without a flash in low light, high ISO settings are the rule of the day. I have some very good news, and some bad news.
Before and after changes with ACR. Click to see a larger version.
Despite all the things you do to get the right white balance (see my last article on setting a custom white balance), there are some situations where a color cast is pretty much unavoidable. When that happens, ACR comes to your rescue.
Setting a “Custom White Balance” at the beginning of a photo shoot will save you a lot of time. It will only take a minute or so and can save you a lot of work later on. Think how long it would take you to color correct 250 images.
Two Jack Lake. Uniformly blurred photo.
Never, ever, never use compressed air to clean your camera. This is especially true of the mirror box and sensor. You can damage your camera. Today’s $160 cautionary tale comes from a friend of mine.