Thomas Jefferson Memorial: Taking Pictures From A Moving Car

Thomas Jefferson Memorial

Thomas Jefferson Memorial photographed from a moving car.

I don’t usually recommend taking pictures from a moving car, but we were coming up to the Jefferson Memorial and I liked the light and the rippled reflection in the water. In the busy DC traffic, asking the driver to stop the car in the street was a recipe for disaster (and there was no place to pull over).  I had to grab this shot on the fly which, from a fast moving car, is harder than you might think.

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Getting Started with High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography

Sunset, Gibraltar Island. Combined images.

Sunrise, Gibraltar Island. HDR Image.

Compared to the human eye, digital cameras have a very limited dynamic range. Your digital camera simply can’t capture the range of tones from light to dark that your eyes can see. That is why HDR photography has become so popular with so many photographers, and absolutely essential for some commercial photographers.

Update, November 19, 2017: A revised version of this article is here.

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How Long Will Your Photo Lab Prints Last?

Estimated Print Life from Wilhelm Imaging Research

Estimated Print Life from Wilhelm Imaging Research

Would you rather pay $3 – $4 for an above average to poor quality 8×10 inch print that will fade in 18 years, 9 years or less, or would you prefer paying $2.00 for a very high quality 8×10 print that will last 50 years?  People pay more money for prints with a short life expectancy all the time. Why? Because they don’t have the right information, and they may have no idea that prints have such widely different life spans.

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