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.
My Favorite Photography Magazines
Photography is about inspiration as well as information. You can get both from a selection of well chosen photography magazines. There are a ton of choices out there and it seems like there are new ones every time I go to my favorite newsstand. But some are clearly better, more accurate, more useful, and with better images. The magazines that follow are, from my point of view, the best of the best photo magazines. But photography is a very personal thing so the best magazines for you will be different than the ones for someone else. Read through the descriptions below and the lists in the Links section at the end of the page.
Each year in the spring, Stivers School for the Arts in Dayton Ohio has an annual fund raising auction to support the photography department. Students at the school exhibit their work at the auction, plus a group of professional fine art photographers from around the world are invited to donate work for the auction. That is how I came to be involved. This was my first year.
This gallery contains 32 photos.
Nature Collage. Click to see a larger version.
CAPTURING NATURE’S WONDERS
Photography Workshop – OSU – Mansfield Ohio
May 9, 2015 – 9:00 am to 9:00 pm
I am excited. My next nature photography workshop in Ohio is fast approaching.
UPDATE: I just heard from the registrar and there are only two openings left for this workshop. If you want to get in you need to register ASAP.
Michigan Nature Collage
CAPTURING NATURE’S WONDERS
Photography Workshop – Grand Rapids Michigan
May 16, 2015 – 9:00 am to 9:00 pm
Some of my 2015 workshops are almost full or full. Now is the time to sign up if you want to participate.
SUMMARY UPDATE April 14. The September Colorado workshop is now full. There are only two openings for the August Michigan workshop. There are only two openings for the May Ohio workshop. We still have some openings for the other workshops. Details below.
Photography Exhibit and Auction, Stivers School for the Arts. Click to see a much larger image.
Stivers School for the Arts in Dayton Ohio has an annual photography exhibit and fund raising auction. I was invited to submit my work and this is my first year to participate. All the excitement was last night (April 10). This photo was created early in the evening before the gallery was packed with people. I will post more photos from the evening later on.
Frida Kahlo and one of Dieg0 Rivera’s Murals
DIEGO RIVERA AND FRIDA KAHLO IN DETRIOT. Sunday, March 15, 2015 – Sunday, July 12, 2015.
“Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo were an explosive couple. He carried a pistol. She carried a flask. He romanticized Detroit. She rejected it. But what they shared was a belief in communism, a thirst for tequila and a passion for each other. Discover how they left their mark on Detroit. And how Detroit left its mark on their art. Exclusively on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit brings together nearly 70 works of art that depict the evolution of these two extraordinary artists’ careers, including eight of Rivera’s epic preparatory drawings for the Detroit Industry murals and 23 pieces by Kahlo, whose work has never before been shown at the DIA.”
Original and Corrected Image. Click to see a larger version.
I was a guest at this wedding and seated in a location where the sun created a lot of contrast and flare. If I was the official photographer at the wedding I would have been at a different location, but I took the photo anyway, hoping to fix it later. I will take you through the process with some extra tips along the way.
Print quality and fading with refilled cartridges. Click to see a larger version.
Not long!
Of course it is tempting. If you have your ink cartridges refilled it will cost a lot less than buying new ink cartridges from the printer manufacturer. But is there a price to pay? You bet, a huge price.
A word to the wise. If you have a chance to go to a photo seminar or workshop by Bob Davis, by all means go. You will learn and you will be inspired.
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 my series of articles on winter photography. This year I revised three prior articles and added six new ones. They will help you meet the unique challenges of winter photography. So read the articles, get out there, have fun, and create some stunning images!
Denali Sunrise from Reflection Pond
The Sunny f16 rule is really useful on bright sunny days in the spring, summer, and fall, but you can’t rely on it in winter. It will often lead you astray. There are much more accurate ways to meter in the winter.
Camera LCD Display With The Blinkies Turned On. Washed out pixels in the photo are flashing white and black.
Some camera’s come with a highlight overexposure warning, commonly called “the blinkies”. If you have overexposed, blown out pixels, those pixels in your image will flash white and black. A quick look at the LCD image will tell you if part of your image has white, washed out, featureless pixels. If your camera has a highlight overexposure warning, I suggest you turn it on. If you see the blinkies and you don’t want washed out pixels, tone down your exposure until the blinkies go away.
Snowy Owl Sitings in the Northern U.S. – March 2015. Click to see a larger version.
This is just a quick update to my snowy owl post from 2014. I hadn’t intended on an update but there are still snowy owl sightings as recently as yesterday (March 7) across the northern U.S. and southern Canada. This is a rare opportunity. Head north for the purple colors on this map and check out the locations for recent sightings. Set the map date for “March-May Current Year” (to limit the map to recent sitings). The owls are farther north than they were in January and February.
Storm Clouds Rolling In. (Click to see a larger version.)
Storm clouds rolling in over Hallett Peak and Flattop Mountain. Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.
Photo Data: Canon 7D. Canon EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens at 120 mm. 1/200 sec, f/11, ISO 100.