Browsing all posts in photography tips.

Night Photography–Tips, Tricks & Having Fun

By Steve Russell As photographers, we tend to spend a lot of time thinking and talking about light; the golden light of the first hour or two after sunrise and before sunset, placing the lights just right in a studio and adjusting the light intensity until it’s just right, where and how to bounce a [...]

Accessories for the New DSLR Owner

A friend of mine recently got an early Christmas present – a Nikon D90. She was in the process of updating her Wish List and pinged me for suggested accessories for a first-time DSLR owner. 1. First thing’s first. I promptly went out and bought her Scott Kelby’s Digital Photography Boxed Set, Volumes 1, 2, [...]

Learn From Your “Bad” Photographs

For every one great photograph that we post on-line, upload to Flickr, share on Facebook, or show our friends and family, there are twenty “bad” photographs hiding on our hard drives that never see the light of day. The reason? They’re overexposed. Or underexposed. Or composed strangely. Or out of focus. Or just… off. Here [...]

DSLR, or Point and Shoot?

I’ve received several requests for advice lately, on how to decide whether to purchase a D-SLR or a point-and-shoot camera. Some folks are taking advantage of the seasonal sales to get themselves a new toy; some folks are asking for advice before buying a camera for the photographer in their life. As with most things [...]

Build a Home Photo Studio for Under $800

I have plans to turn one of the spare rooms in my home into a photo studio. I abruptly got frustrated with the surfaces and common areas of my home, and the lack of light in those areas. Living in Arizona as we do, we constructed our home to be energy efficient and let in [...]

Set Your Goals for 2011

Setting periodic goals for yourself is an excellent way to continue to enhance your photography skills. We are now less than two months away from 2011 (it sneaked up on us so fast!), so now is a great time to start thinking about what you’d like to accomplish in the forthcoming year. Following is a [...]

The Beauty of Soft Focus

We talk a lot about how to achieve tack-sharp, perfectly focused photographs. We extol on the virtues of the Unsharp Mask in Photoshop, and enumerate the countless ways to steady our cameras in order to achieve perfectly crisp images. There is great beauty to behold, though, in a softly focused photograph – keeping in mind [...]

Back to Basics: ISO Explained

The term “ISO”, when used in photography, refers to the speed rating of film. “ISO” stands for “International Organization for Standardization”, and this organization is responsible for defining standards for many, many industries and disciplines. With respect to photography, the film speed ISO rating system was created to standardize the quality of film throughout the [...]

Around the Internet

I’ve amassed quiet a list of finds from around the internet that I’ve been meaning to share with you all. There’s no time like the present! First is the incredible shot of the Popocatepetl volcano in San Andrés Cholula, Mexico, that you see above. I came across it on Flickr not too long ago, and [...]

Key Learnings from a Client Shoot

A couple of weeks ago I was hired to visit the home of a client and take photos of her teenage daughter and her daughter’s friends. Doing a photo shoot at a private home is significantly different than a shoot in a studio, so I thought I would share a few key learnings from my [...]