Tag Archives: featured

Advice

Match your lifestyle,personality and interest with your photo genre

Every specialty or genre of photography whether it is landscapes, wildlife, fashion, editorial, events, or sports has its very own definite challenges.

If it’s not having to deal with needing specialized equipment, then it’s the logistical problem of getting access or else finding the various elements of the photo shoot and making sure all the components from models, props and equipment arrives on location at a designated time.

In other words, what they all do have in common is really problem-solving once you get past the rudimentary skills of using the camera and equipment.

So before you head down a certain path of specializing and buying a ton of equipment, perhaps you should consider if your current lifestyle will be a good match for your area of interest. Continue reading Match your lifestyle,personality and interest with your photo genre →

Advice, Tutorials

Tips for better group photos

Professional belly dancer Hadia Habibi needed some pictures with her Al Nar Bellydance Ensemble.
Professional belly dancer Hadia Habibi needed some pictures with her Al Nar Bellydance Ensemble.

Group photos tend to be documentary in nature i.e their primary purpose is to record who was present at some place and time.

For that reason, I take a quick group photo with my point-and-shoot camera as an attendance record whenever I’m teaching. It cures the most camera shy instantly.

What if you are aspire for your group photo to be better? To get past the mentality of lining up everyone up against the wall? Continue reading Tips for better group photos →

Photography

The portrait you make can mean a lot

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Samantha Aarts, Mary Pope’s 18-year-old daughter modeled for one of my lighting classes last year. She passed away from an accidental morphine overdose.

I have my days when I think of what I do for a living to be a joke.

It takes but a fraction of a second to make a picture.

While I was at the newspaper, except for natural disasters which affected many lives, the importance of my photography was seldom real.

Often I would ask myself, “Why am I being dispatched to traffic collision especially if it happened hours ago?”

Was it ever going to change how people drive?

Would people think twice about texting or drinking and driving after reading about it?

I highly doubt it.
Continue reading The portrait you make can mean a lot →

Photography

Photogear I shouldn’t have bought

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Every so often when I clean out my closet, I’ll come across an item which is still in pristine condition just the way it was after I broke the clear shrink-wrap.

It starts me wondering, “What the heck was I thinking?”

You are bound to disagree with me, but before you post your comments, which I encourage you to, remember this:

The tools any artist finds indispensable is dependent on usage. And usage is dictated most by the types of subjects we point our lenses at. So with that in mind…

400mm telephoto f4.5

When I was in college in Ohio, I owned a 400 mm f4.5 telephoto lens. MInd you, this was in the old days of film and manual focus. In the Midwest where I went to school, that lens was only used in the best of lighting conditions. The aperture of f4.5 was way too slow for anything but outdoor sports which happen in good light. Those of you reading this have to realize even in today’s high ISO capability DSLRs, trying to get a shutter speed of 1/1000 sec is asking a lot.

Flash diffusers

Over the years I’ve bought some doozies. I once bought a diffuser which you inflate by blowing up like a beach ball.

I even had one that was a miniature umbrella that attached to the flash.

Diffusers for flash units or Speedlights/Speedlites are often not the problem. It’s the placement of the flash, being on camera.

Now I’m wondering as I write this if I’ll ever be seen with Gary Fong’s Lightsphere. Continue reading Photogear I shouldn’t have bought →