When I read the recent Wildlife Photography on a Budget guest post, it resonated with me. You don’t need the latest and most expensive gear to enjoy shooting wild life. Although it doesn’t stop you dreaming and thinking “if only” … particularly, when you sit in front of the computer and inspect the results from the latest trip. If only … better sharpness, contrast, out of focus rendering, reach … the enjoyment of a good photo is often tinged with…
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Sony Xperia XZ2 Camera Review
Without a doubt, the photography industry has been shaken by the rise of smartphone photography. The highly competitive market of smartphones has also been overrun by many options from a variety of different manufacturers. The Android platform dominates smartphone sales, having a whopping 87% market share – an impressive number when compared to the 12% that iOS represents. With Android being an open platform compared to iOS, it attracts many manufacturers from all over the world, including Sony. While Sony…
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2018 Guest Post Contest Winners Announced!
If you have been following Photography Life recently, you’ll know that we have been publishing several articles and essays as part of our 2018 guest post contest. The theme of this year’s competition was teach us something interesting, and our readers responded with excellent photographs and tutorials. The grand prize winner of the contest, who will receive his choice of a Nikon D750, Fuji X-T2, or $1500, is Madhu Manicka – congratulations!
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A Simple Way to Improve Your Black and White Prints on Any Printer
The secret to a good black and white print is controlling the dynamic range. The dynamic range is the range of tones, from the blackest black to the whitest white in an image. In a black and white photograph you want to make full use of the entire dynamic range. The problem is that, when printing, the printer usually hits the limitations of its dynamic range long before our eye (and camera, and monitor) stops differentiating detail. As the printer…
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The iPad Pro and Lightroom CC: A Mobile System Worth Considering
In this article, I will share my recent experience of switching from a Macbook Pro running Lightroom 6, to a 12.9″ iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil, running Lightroom CC – and how this new setup has changed my photography workflow. I will discuss in detail my basic workflow, as well as share some images I’ve edited using LR CC.
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How the Lightroom Metadata Panel Can Improve Your Photography
When searching through my photo library for a class I was teaching recently, I found myself turning to Adobe Lightroom’s metadata filter regularly to help me find the examples I needed. But what I discovered was a lot more useful to my own photography than just sample images for a class. It’s easy to mistake the metadata filter for a simple search function, but when you really start to look at the data it provides, it’s an amazing tool that…
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How Photography Inspired Me to Love Science and Preserve the Planet
Science has a way of making heads turn away. The more complex it gets, the more abstract it becomes. And if you’re not constantly putting effort into working out the fine intricacies of it all, you might just get too overwhelmed to commit any interest to it. Science communication has been around for a while, then, trying to work out different ways to bring people closer to scientific issues. Today, we see an impressive production of films, videos, podcasts, lectures…
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The Rise and Rise of Smartphone Photography
Smartphones have come a long way. Over the last few years, the improvements made in smartphone photography have been huge, culminating in the powerhouses on the market toda,y such as the Google Pixel 2, the iPhone X, and the Samsung Galaxy S9. My current handset, the Samsung S7 Edge, can take great-looking photos and even performs pretty well in low light, and this model is now over 2 years old! But despite it being a capable piece of photography kit,…
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Commuting with a Camera
I suspect that a lot of landscape and cityscape photographers, like myself, are not always able to devote the time necessary to wait for atmospheric conditions and astral bodies to be in that “ideal” position for the image you have in mind. Some of the early landscape masters were known to camp out for days waiting for all the variables to line up just so. The realities of needing to make a living and driving to and from work five…
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My Hard-Won Photography Lessons
The old axiom that we should learn from our mistakes is sound, although sometimes those lessons can be a bit on the painful side. As a 15-year-old, freshman high school student in 1960 I was excited to work as a photographer on the school yearbook. Assigned the task of developing a tank of 4×5 inch negatives, I wanted to make sure I got it right – so I set up individual beakers of developer, stop bath, and fixer, pre-measured, to…
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Learning to Self-Critique Your Images
I’d like you to join me on a journey of learning to see and take better pictures. That is, learning to view our images critically before any one else sees them. Early in my journey, I was intrigued by a signature from a photography forum: “Please harshly critique my photos! Doing so helps me become better at this photography thing.” Since then, I have uncovered many hurdles to me taking great images.
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The Importance of Creativity in Photography
In my previous article for Photography Life, I wrote an article about stage photography, where I discussed some of the modus operandi I use to take professional stage photographs. That article was a lot more straightforward, technical, and objective than the one below. That’s because I’m hoping to explore the philosophical, cultural, and spiritual aspects of the creative process. It is less about the technical, and more about the inner journey of photography as an art form.
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Reverse Lens Technique for Macro Photography
There aren’t a lot of things which will still work when used the wrong way ‘round. Airplanes, cutlery, and shoes, for example, all have a preferred direction of use; turning them around, and using them in reverse seldom turns out well. Photographic lenses, or at least some of them, are an exception to this rule. For macro photography, turning some lenses around will actually improve their performance. This can have important consequences for your photos, and your wallet.
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When Exotic Nature Photography Isn’t An Option
Viewing incredible images of wildlife captured in exotic locations can be an engrossing experience for many of us. Imagining oneself being able to travel to some of these far-off destinations and taking part in a wildlife photo safari is the dream of many photographers. For many folks exotic nature photography isn’t an option, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy nature in our local areas. This short article shares a selection of images captured during the past week or…
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Essential Wedding Photography Tips for Beginners
Photographing weddings is a hard task, and you only get one chance at it, so there is no room for mistakes. This is a special day for the couple, and your photos will be stored as memories for generations. So, more than perhaps any other genre of photography, it is crucial to prepare and practice ahead of time – the last thing you want to do is mess it up. Especially if you are just beginning to shoot weddings, it…
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What to Photograph in South Australia
I read many articles from all around the world sharing beautiful photography locations. However, there seems to be a lack of content about Australia. Having lived here for over five years now, I want to share with you some of the best landscape and wildlife photography locations that I have visited. In this article I am going to focus on South Australia, but I hope to keep building on it and adding new locations when I have the time.
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Photography as Part of the “Second Act” of Our Lives
I have been interested in photography since I was a teenager. However, as so often happens to all of us, life gets in the way of our interests and passions sometimes. Jobs, mortgages, kids, and family responsibilities become our priority in what I have come to call the “First Act” of our lives. Having successfully raised two children into adulthood and recently retired from our jobs, my wife and I have now entered what I refer to as the “Second…
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How to Accentuate Light in Photoshop
I like to photograph nature, particularly landscapes. One of the factors that drew me into it is the challenge of capturing the beauty of mother nature. As landscape photographers, we often have to embrace the weather and work with it rather than around it, which means you may need to accentuate the light in post-processing software like Photoshop. That is what I will cover in this article.
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The Art of Photographing Flowers
My favorite offshoot of landscape photography is flower photography. It is a bit easier to pursue than landscape, since you needn’t travel very far to get unique and beautiful images. All you have to do is step into your own garden or visit a public garden to find a world of beautiful flowers to photograph. But it takes skill – plus a little something extra – to be able to make really beautiful flower portraits. In this essay, I’d like…
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Using Wide Angle Lenses for Street Photography
Street photography can be one of the most accessible genres of photography – after all, you can pretty much do it anywhere, anytime. And the essence of photojournalism/street photography is the summation of emotions, reality, and a story in a single image. You can take good street photos with any lens, but personally I am a big fan of wide angles.
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