June, 2009 | Photocrati

Favorite iPhone Apps for Photographers

I travel a fair bit. And like many photographers, I’ve grown to love some of the benefits that come from having a connected PDA in my travels: being able to handle business calls and emails and modest web browsing is a great benefit to me as a travelling sole proprietor. I’ve been using an iPhone 3G for the past year, and I’ve found a handful of useful applications that I’ve come to rely on in my work. Finding these applications can be a bit of a trick, most “iPhone photography” applications are aimed at folks making photographs with the iPhone itself. It can be hard to sort through applications for the rest of us.

For each application, I’ll also note whether the app functions without a connection to the internet. While network coverage continues to increase, in many of the areas where I often shoot, it’s still spotty or non-existent. So, for me, offline usage is a great benefit. (more…)

High-Speed Sync

What is it? High-speed sync is your flash and camera working in perfect harmony at shutter speeds above 1/250 sec (for most cameras). I’ve heard of high-speed sync but never saw it in action until I met Joe McNally. Watching him give a demonstration really opened my eyes to the potential. If you are interested in the technical aspects of how it works, I would recommend the numerous articles that explain all the technical jargon. In doing my research for this article I came across a lot of great information explaining how a flash works and why it’s supposed to sync with a camera at 1/250 and flash duration and why the planets are aligned the way they are and why the earth is warming, you get the idea.

I’m not a technical guy; so I won’t try to bore you with technical speak. But to put it in my simplistic numnuts terminology it works like this. (more…)

The Tuesday Composition: Highlights

Crashing Waves, Bandon Beach — Crashing Waves. Bandon Beach

If you like this article, you can now get the book! Joe has expanded the “Tuesday Composition” series into an inspiring new ebook on composition, especially for nature photography. Check it out: The Tuesday Composition.

This is the first installment of my delayed promise toward writing a weekly post about photographic composition. Unlike many basic elements of photography, such as depth-of-field or ISO, composition is something that is not easily taught in in a top-down, linear fashion. Even the most frequently cited “rules of composition” are ideas that are more often ignored in an excellent image. And very few people can even begin to construct an effective image through an abstract understanding of even dozens of such rules. Instead, photographers learn composition and how and when to apply these rules, through trial and error, through practice, through looking at other photographers’ work, and through guidance and feedback from skilled eyes. So think of this series as a starting point, not an ending point, to learning composition. Now, let’s get started by talking about highlights. (more…)

Lesson Logs and Other Mnemonic Devices

I’ve always believed that one of the keys to being successful in any venture is to know your own strengths and weaknesses. GnÅthi seauton or Know Thyself as the ancient Greeks would have said. Me, I was blessed with the ability to remember all kinds of useless, small items. What was the name of that makeup artist on the shoot three years ago who complained and whined all day? I can still remember it. As a result of this freaky ability to remember stuff I was able to go through school and my early career without really having to right stuff down, keep to do lists or any of the other basic things that we should really do in order to lead productive lives.

Fast forward 20 years. I’m no longer in my early career, but in the heart of it. I have a family, a mortgage, bills, a dog, bills, a lot more clients than I used to and a whole lot less memory. I don’t know if it’s simply a function of getting older, not having enough sleep, or having too much on my mind, but to be honest, I don’t really care. The long and short of it is I need to get stuff done. If I can’t remember it, I need to write it down. So now I’m a firm believer in the power of the pen. I have to do lists all over the place: on my desk, in my wallet, on the computer. iCal and I are new best friends and I probably couldn’t function without my Blackberry. (more…)

Wedding Photography and the Zoom Lens

If you get a bunch of wedding photographers together in a room (like AA), talk will eventually come around to lenses. A bunch of photographers talking about lenses makes watching paint dry seem glamorous. Everyone has a favorite lens and everyone has a particular style and it can be tough to decide on what your style and lens choices will be. It’s really just trial and error. Eventually, you will find yourself reaching for the same lens again and again and suddenly, before you know it, you have a style!

So, let’s talk about the almighty zoom lens.

(more…)

Reflections on Weak Sunsets

Sunrise Reflections, Old Marina, Mono Lake — Sunrise Reflections. Old Marina, Mono Lake

The power and beauty of an exceptional sunrise or sunset is incredible. As nature photographers, it is understandable that we gravitate towards the most direct expressions of these incredible moments. Those sunrises and sunsets often offer not only incredible color in the skies, but also on the landscape itself–color that shows texture and contrast by raking across our subjects. Trying to pull in the whole picture, capturing all of this, is a wonderful goal.

Sadly, all too often, the skies don’t light up the way we expect. Or other factors get in the way of these hopes. In remaining attached to our vision of the grand scene, it is all too easy to give up and to forget what powerful alternatives can remain. Often, I find those alternatives include reflections. (more…)

Scams: The Seamy Underbelly of Photo Biz 101

I recently came across this article, on art scams, and while it’s worth reading in its own right, I have some additional experiences and tips to add to the bargain. While I haven’t yet been successfully scammed as a photographer, I’ve certainly had a number of attempts aimed at me. And in some cases, in hindsight they seem laughably bad, but not scams all are so obvious. (more…)

Straighten Your Photos in Photoshop

This video will teach you how to easily straighten up your photos in Photoshop. This is especially important for photos with horizon lines that are not quite right. For more…

Q and A: Can you make 59×37-inch prints from a 12 megapixel image?

Question

My wife gave me a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi camera recently and I wonder how large a print I can order. I always use the highest JPEG size and quality when taking photos. When I open them in Adobe Elements 7, and check the size, the information shows 59 x 37 inches. Is it really possible to get a print that large with JPEGs from this camera? J.R.

Answer

Well, J.R., the simple answer is no. A 12-megapixel image simply does not have enough pixels for such a massive print if you expect good quality. When checking the size data in Adobe Elements, you will also note that the software indicates Resolution: 72 dpi. (The term dpi means dots per inch; think of it as pixels per square inch of a print.) That’s a very low level of resolution suitable only for images viewed on a computer monitor. You need a resolution of at least 200 dpi — and preferably 240 dpi — for a true “photo-quality” print.

Try this. (more…)

The Car Blind

BigHorn Sheep, Bandlands — Big Horn Sheep, Badlands

Wildlife photography presents the nature photographer with many challenges. One of the foremost is getting close enough to the animal to create an effective image, while not disturbing the animal, affecting it’s behavior, or putting oneself in danger. Because wildlife is often most sensitive to the presence of things that look like humans or other large mammals, when possible many wildlife photographers will make use of a blind–a general term for any sort of structure, tent, or what have you, that renders the photographer less visible. Numerous styles of blinds exist, some are as simple as camouflaged tarps that disguise the form of the photographer, while some are elaborate structures. While dedicated blinds have their place, I’ve often had good success photographing using my car as a blind. (more…)