Should You Buy “Gray Market” Photo Equipment?
Great Deal? Don’t Get Burned!
Is it a great deal? Or is it a rip-off? You are searching online for a good price and you come across a terrific deal. Are you about to get burned? There are ways you can tell.
Buy What You Can Afford!
The first rule when choosing camera gear is to buy what you can afford. It is hard to enjoy taking pictures if you are worried about how to pay for the camera you are holding. So buy what you can afford now, and upgrade later. And the second rule? We will get to that later.
How Long Will Your Photo Lab Prints Last Without Fading?
Estimated Print Life from Wilhelm Imaging Research
Would you rather have a high quality print that will last up to 50 years, or a print that will fade in 5 years? That’s not all. The print with a very short life expectancy might cost more than the better quality print. People buy short life span prints 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.
How to Get the Best Results from the Best Online Photo Labs
The lab you choose and the kind of file you send to your lab can make a huge difference in the quality of prints you get back. How do you pick a good online photo lab? How do you get the best results from your lab? What color space should you use for your digital files and how do you convert your files to the right color space? How big a print can you make from your digital files?
Buyer’s Guide: Recommendations For The Best Photography Equipment, Software, Books, Magazines, DVDs, Online Photo Labs, and More
Welcome to my online buying guide for photographers. With over 75 articles it is one of the most comprehensive buyer’s guides on the web.
I get lots of photo questions, and many of them begin with “What is the best . . . .” They usually come from photographers or someone who is shopping for a photographer.
My “best of the best” series recommends the best photo gear, accessories, software, books, DVDs, online photo labs, and a whole lot more. Thanks to the information in these articles I get emails from photographers thanking me for saving them time, frustration, and a lot of money.
This article is published annually in November with regular updates. Most recent update: November 17, 2023.
All the Photos in Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies
This collage has all 271 photographs in my book Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies. For those of you who are curious, a statistical breakdown of all of the photos by subject matter, location, film vs digital, camera model, and year can be found here.
Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies
I can’t believe it, but my “how to” photography book came out 11 years ago this month. I don’t mention my book very often on my photo blog, but this is the time of year I usually do that. Yes, this is a “crass commercial message”.
22 Years Ago Today: My First Page of My First Web Site
I posted the first page of my first web site 22 years ago today. You can see the original here.
Veterans Day
Trunk or Treat Gallery, October 31, 2021
Gallery
This gallery contains 20 photos.
Trunk or Treat image gallery. Click on a thumbnail above the text caption to see a larger image.
Trunk or Treat
It is that time of year and Halloween activities abound. Go out and create colorful images. This collage was created from images taken at Trunk or Treat last year in Lamoni Iowa.
Soybean Harvest at Sunset
A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine asked if I would get some images when the time to harvest soybeans came around. I told her the perfect image would be at sunrise or sunset with a nice sky and the combine kicking up some dust. When it was time for the harvest we had two cloudy days which would make for boring images. Finally, on the third day the clouds were breaking up in the afternoon and it looked more promising. I hopped in my car and drove to the harvest location.
October 14: How to Photograph Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, and the Moon
Thursday evening, October 14, 2021, you can photograph Jupiter, Saturn, and the Moon all in one frame, and Venus too provided you have a really wide angle lens. This photo was taken October 13 at 8:11 pm local time and Venus is getting pretty low in the sky. On October 14, the moon will be in between and below Jupiter and Saturn, forming a triangle.
The Starscope Monocular, It Is The Same Old Scam
We’ve been down this road before (see the first link at the end). The scam works like this. Pick an inexpensively made product from China, jack up the price, make up ridiculous and false claims about the quality of the product and what it can do, and sell it on dozens of web sites using ads thinly disguised as articles. Go to the internet and grab professional photographs created with high dollar professional camera gear and put the photos in the ads to give the impression the photos were made with the Chinese product. And for good measure, say in the ads that the product was designed by American or German engineers and manufactured in the U.S. or Germany. Create fake customer reviews to go in the ads, and for good measure, create fake reviews sites to endorse the quality of the product.
A Favorite Photo Shoot
Beth is a concert violinist, who, in her own words “lives for art”. Our first outdoor photo shoot was in a cold and windy snowstorm with her playing her violin. Our second shoot was also in the snow (links below). For this autumn shoot we went with water.
Continue readingSarah, Lake Michigan
This is one of my all time favorite images of Sarah in the landscape. I love the pose, the light, and her rippled reflection in the water.
A photographer wrote to me and asked me how I put Sarah’s image out in the water and created such realistic looking ripples. I wrote back and told him this image is not a Photoshop composite. Sarah was actually out in the lake and the ripples are real. All of my images of models in the landscape are real.
A Simple Tip to Improve Your Photos
This happy group of photographers is on a multi-day photo safari in western Colorado. The photographer in the foreground is using his hat to cast a shadow on the front of his lens. Why is he doing that?
Don’t Fall for This Scam!
Seriously, do you really believe you can see something “miles away like you’re standing next to it� We’ve been down this road before (see the first link at the end of this article). A $47 monocular is not better than a $3,000 telescope, but thousands of people who know nothing about optics fall for scams like this. This screen capture is from the top of a long ad on the internet.
What Are Your Favorite Portrait Photography Months?
What are your favorite portrait photography months? Whether you are a professional or amateur, when do you create most of your portrait images? Do they cluster around a particular time of year? For many wedding photographers the busiest times of the year are June and before Christmas. People who do senior pictures do most of their work in the late summer or fall, depending on when the photos need to go to the yearbook editor. My portrait photography is much less specialized, so I decided to check out my busiest months.
Two Photographers and Eleven Outdoor/Travel Writers Pick the Best National Parks for Fall
Long’s Peak and Bear Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park
Fall is a fabulous time of year to visit the national parks. Crowds are usually smaller than in the summer, temperatures are cooler, and some of our national parks have glorious fall colors. With so many to choose from, where should you go? Which national parks will provide the best photographic opportunities in the fall?
The Best National Parks for Fall Photography
Hallett Peak and Flattop Mountain, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
What are the best national parks to photograph in the fall? Here are my choices, grouped by state and province from west to east. This list includes the favorites I have been to, plus the ones I most want to see based on the recommendations of the photographers I trust, like Tim Fitzharris and QT Luong. More about them later.
Fall Color Photography Guide to Marshall Pass and O’Haver Lake, Colorado
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.
Colorado Fall Color Photography and Travel Guide – 2021
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 exploring the beautiful Colorado Rockies at a gorgeous time of year.
Finding the Peak Fall Colors at the Best Locations
Autumn, Tahquamenon Falls, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Fall color will soon be sweeping the country (and already is up in Alaska). To make the most of it, you want to be at the right place at the right time. With some help from the internet, I will help you find the best fall color locations at the peak of the season.
20 Years Ago
I remember it like it was yesterday.
I was working in my office. The family/TV room was right around the corner. The phone rang and I picked it up.
“Stop whatever you are doing and turn on the TV.” I walked around the corner and turned it on.
9/11 – Let Us Pray
LET US PRAY
On the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, four planes were hijacked and ultimately crashed. Two crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City and one crashed into the Pentagon. The fourth crashed in Pennsylvania.
Dozens of people in each of four airplanes living in terror as their hijacked planes are flown to destinations unknown to them. Each ends in a terrible fiery crash.
Chip East Reflects on the Last Photos of His Friend, Bill Biggart, Taken on 9/11
Photographer Chip East was staring intensely at his laptop screen.
It was two weeks after two jetliners had plowed into the towers of the World Trade Center. His good friend, photojournalist Bill Biggart’s body had been recovered from the rubble. His personal effects, including his cameras had been released by authorities to his widow, Wendy.
Bill Biggart’s Last Photos – 9/11
Bill Biggart’s final photograph. He was killed when the second World Trade Center tower collapsed on top of him. He was 53 years old.
September 11th As It Happened
This compilation of news reports captures the essence of that morning better than almost any other video on YouTube.