We have been out of the Sticky Paper and the Sony / Fuji version of the Sensor Gel Stick for a while now and back-orders have been piling up as a result. Wanted to let our readers know that we have just received a fresh stock of both. Existing orders were going to be sent out today, but due to the snow blizzard in Colorado (we got dumped with over a foot of snow and it is still snowing!), all mail will go out on Monday.
Photographing Birds at Hendrie Valley Sanctuary
I recently spent a very enjoyable morning photographing birds at Hendrie Valley Sanctuary at the Royal Botanical Gardens in the Hamilton Ontario area.
Dell XPS 13 Review
After reviewing Microsoft’s Surface machines, a number of our readers requested us to also review other competing products that sport enough processing power to run photo applications like Lightroom and Photoshop. Since in my past corporate life I spent quite a bit of time with Dell PCs and servers, it was my first natural selection. Having previously owned a Dell XPS 13 (when it was first introduced a while back), I wanted to take a look at the newest-generation version to see how well it would do for photography needs. Although a more direct competitor to Microsoft’s Surface Pro line would be the XPS 12, once I found out that it was maxed out at 8 GB of RAM and only 256 GB of storage, I had to move up in size. And since my goal was to find something light and compact to travel with, I did not consider the Dell XPS 15, which boasts the most power among the three models and comes with a dedicated GPU. When the Dell XPS 13 finally arrived, I got ready to put it through some tests to see how it would do. After a two-week trip to California and four more weeks of heavy work on the XPS 13, I decided to share my thoughts on the machine with our readers in a detailed review.
Workflow and Post-Processing Basics Teaser
John Bosley and I have been working hard on producing our second video course – PL Level 1: Workflow and Post-Processing. While we still have quite a bit of work to do, we are planning to wrap things up by the end of the spring this year. Meanwhile, we thought it would be a good idea to share the below teaser, which shows some of the content that will go into the final production version of the course. We’ve had tremendous feedback on our PL Level 1: Photography Basics course from our readers, so we are really excited about producing the second video. We believe that this particular course will be of great value for many photographers, because it encompasses the entire workflow process, from setting up the camera, shooting and post-processing images, all the way to exporting images for the web or print.
How to Choose the Sharpest Aperture
Photographers have a dilemma. If you want your photographs to have the largest possible depth of field – from the foreground to infinity – a small aperture is absolutely necessary. At the same time, though, a small aperture causes your photograph to lose sharpness from diffraction. So, where’s the sweet spot? In this article, I will cover how to choose the sharpest possible aperture for such a photograph, including mathematically accurate charts (free for printing) that are easy to use in the field.
How Was This Picture Made #8?
For Part 8 of our How Was This Picture Taken? series, I have chosen the following photograph to share. On two recent road trips into the desert near my home base in Southern California, I had the pleasure of going on two landscape photo shoots, both of which I plan to write a photo essay for Photography Life readers very soon. In the meantime, I thought it would be fun and educational to post one particular photograph and invite our readers to share their thoughts on how this photo was visualized and constructed. Also, I thought that by sharing technical aspects on the making of this photograph in advance of my upcoming essay, the narrative and images in my essay might be aesthetically richer.
What is Lens Compression and How to Use It In Your Photos
Have you ever heard someone say that a telephoto lens “compresses” the background or “flattens” an image? What exactly does this mean? The perceived distance between your subject and the rest of the scene is dependent on two things: where you stand relative to your subject to take the photo and the focal length of the lens you choose. In this short article, I want to discuss this type of perspective distortion, and how to use it to compose exciting photographs.
Nikon D5 Preview with Sample Photos
I got my Nikon D5 a week and a half ago and have been itching to try it out on some real world wildlife photography, but this time of year is tough for wildlife where I live and also the weather here has been insanely difficult the last week or so. This has really hampered my chances to try and get some photos with this new camera.
How Was This Picture Made #7: The Answer
Last week I posted a portrait as the next installment to our How Was This Picture Taken series. There were a lot of great guesses and a few people even guessed the exact technique that I used to create the image!
Looking For The Moment
I’ve written before about making the familiar unfamiliar with a view to creating a more original image or a different take on something. An important element of making an image more interesting than a mere capture can be to reveal a story or intrigue within it. In a world awash with random snaps and selfies it can be a challenge to find images that hold our attention.
