How to Photograph the International Space Station

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Light Path of the International Space Station

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.

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Last Call: Northern Michigan Photography Workshop

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Beautiful Michigan

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.

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Fall Color, Rocky Mountain National Park

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Hallett Peak and Flattop Mountain

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.

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Colorado Fall Color Travel Guide

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Aspen and Evergreens, Marshall Pass, Colorado. September 25, 1990

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.

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What to Do When A Lens Quits Working

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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.

DSLR vs Camera Phone, Part Two

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Venus and Jupiter in the night sky over Fremont California. Canon 5D Mark III vs iPhone.

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.)

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DSLR vs Camera Phone, Part One

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Black-crowned Night Heron. DSLR vs iPhone.

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.)

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POTD: Wood Poppy

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Wood Poppy (Celandine Poppy), West Lake Nature Preserve.

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.

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Great News! You Can Create RAW Panoramas with ACR 9.0

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Panorama of the Stivers Photo Auction.

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.

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ACR and RAW: Two of the Best Things You Can Do For Your Images

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Dawn, Hallett Peak and Flattop Mountain. Before and After 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.

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Adobe’s Improved “Process Version” for Adobe Camera Raw

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Vermilion Lakes Sunset, new and old ACR "process versions".

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.

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The Best of the Best Photography Magazines

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Some of my favorite photography magazines.

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.

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Stivers School for the Arts – Photography Exhibit and Auction

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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.

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Nature Photography Workshop – OSU, Mansfield Ohio Campus

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Nature Collage

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.

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2015 Nature Photography Workshops – Registration Update

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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.

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Photography Exhibit and Auction, Stivers School for the Arts

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Art Exhibit and Auction, Stivers School for the Arts

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.

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