As a photographer and a photography business owner, I go through a number of activities at the end of each year to close it out, just like many businesses do when performing year-end activities. These activities have become an essential part of my photography workflow, allowing me to continue using...
From Dusk Till Dawn – IRIX and NiSi
The title of this article closely resembles a Tarantino movie (and I originally wrote this close to Halloween weekend), but this is another story. It is a story that speaks of lenses, filters and the people behind them. And it describes the difficulties of doing a review when time and...
Understanding Depth of Field – A Beginner’s Guide
Depth of field (DoF) is one of the most important concepts in photography. Understanding what DoF is, and knowing what factors affect it, are things all photographers should master. Many photographers know that you can control DoF by adjusting aperture. But did you know that DoF is influenced by other factors...
Shooting in the Moment
This article will very likely be my last one for 2016 here at Photography Life due to an enormous workload I'm under right now preparing images and writing text for five photography related e-books I have planned for 2017. I'd like to extend a special 'thank you' to Photography Life reader,...
Architectural Photography Tutorial
Light, shapes, lines, forms — the foundations of photography. No matter what subjects you shoot, you'll end up working with these features for every photo that you take. Architectural photography, though, takes it to another level, with its perfect geometrical lines and shapes that are hard to find anywhere else in the...
New Zealand Marine Birds and Mammals
My apologies for being silent here at Photography Life for over a month! I've been away on an extended holiday/field trip in New Zealand with my wife, and our busy schedule didn't allow time to prepare any new articles for Photography Life. While the vast majority of our New Zealand photography focused...
Choosing a Creative Exposure – A Beginner’s Guide
There are many combinations of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO that will correctly expose an image. With all those combinations, which one is the right one? If you leave your camera in full program mode, your camera will pick a combination for you. However, letting your camera have complete control...
Nikon 85mm f/1.4G Review
This is an in-depth review of the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G AF-S lens that was announced with three other lenses in August of 2010. Ever since the manual focus AI-s version of the Nikon 85mm f/1.4 lens was introduced back in 1981, the Nikon 85mm f/1.4 lenses have been used as...
When in Doubt, Bracket!
On any photographic forum, it doesn't take much effort to find old or new discussions on how to set the "proper" exposure while shooting, and even what exactly "proper exposure" is. The question of setting exposure was and is one of the most commonly-discussed topics on forums and blogs. Newbies...
Nikon 24-120mm f/4G VR Review
This is an in-depth review of the Nikon 24-120mm f/4G ED VR lens that was released in August of 2010. The constant maximum aperture, mid-range Nikon 24-120mm f/4 VR zoom lens was a major update to the Nikon 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6G VR, which had been known at the time for being...