Photography is in large part about exercising control (or maybe that’s just the excuse I use because I happen to be such a control freak). Since the dawn of photography there has been an effort to control the light, the subject, the print, and all other factors that influence the final pho...
Continue readingWhen I photograph birds and wildlife, I often use ISO 400 or even 800. Even though the recent Canon cameras are pretty good at high ISO, there is always some noise, in particular in the smooth, out of focus areas. It is not a problem: with Photoshop, it is quite easy to reduce the noise, and I...
Continue readingPublishing photos on the web is the best way to share experiences and to learn with other photographers, and it is a great way to publicize your work. To create an effective web presentation, it is necessary to follow some basic steps top resize, sharpen and save the photo.
Continue readingAdobe Photoshop Lightroom is the latest entry in the Digital Asset Management (DAM) arena, released mid-February 2007. Lightroom enters an increasingly competitive field that has had some established players, such as Extensis and iView, as well as some new players like Apple’s Aperture. Wh...
Continue readingFor those of us who are Mac users and would like more than ever to finally have an “all-in-one” software program that can handle capture to finish, Apple’s Aperture, now in Version 1.5.2, shows fine promise towards that end. But as with any new software, there is a learning cur...
Continue readingNearly a year ago Apple announced a major new piece of software called Aperture, which was touted as being the first software devoted to photographers’ entire postproduction needs. Shortly thereafter Adobe responded with a beta version of new software called Lightroom, designed to meet sim...
Continue readingOne of the frustrating facts of photographic life with which macro shooters learn to deal is that depth of field drops as magnification increases. When I began trying to capture images of insects, I found that my dragonflies, for instance, could have sharp heads but not sharp tails, or vice vers...
Continue readingIn July 2004, I wrote a brief article for Naturescapes.net chronicling my transition from color photography to black-and-white and how it affected my perception of the bayou where I live. I also gave a description of my black-and-white conversion and printing methods. Now, at the end of 2006, mu...
Continue readingOne of the questions I get asked most frequently by nature photographers is how to make the best black and white images from color photographs quickly and easily. Most of the time “best” and “quickly and easily” are mutually exclusive, but fortunately there’s a way...
Continue readingTaking great pictures never loses its appeal, but every now and then you need to mix things up a bit. I don’t mean finding a hobby other than photography, but rather finding a new way to express your creativity with photography. Many photographers have used multiple exposure techniques to...
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