Back to Basics: Using Focus Creatively
By Suzanne D. Williams— You can exert a great deal of creative focus control over your images once you learn how to use some of the basic functions your digital camera offers. First, though, let’s define a few terms that are essential to the process. Photographers who use the term “point of focus” refer to the subject or object in a photograph where they want to draw the most attention. “Focus” itself...
Seeing Differently
By Michael Freeman— One of the first tenets of professional photography is that you have to try harder, always and all the time. There’s almost too much said about this, so I’ll restrict myself to one only, from American photographer William Albert Allard: “You’ve got to push yourself harder. You’ve got to start looking for pictures nobody else could take. You’ve got to take the tools you have and probe deeper.” Well, maybe I’ll allow...
Sell Your Images At Art Fairs
By Christine Pentecost— I thought long and hard before I did my first art show. I was afraid to give it a try, afraid of failure, afraid of not being good enough. To actually set up a display and sell face to face was a daunting thought. But when an friend contacted me one day and said she couldn’t do a local show and would I like to have her spot, it took about five seconds to say “yes”! I was excited about it, but very apprehensive....
American Manga Artist: Jean-Paul Deshong
By Arthur H. Bleich— In Japan, Jean-Paul Deshong is a Mangaka, an artist who creates comics or graphic novels– an art form long revered in that country. Top manga artists there make high six-figure incomes and are superstars of the art world. Deshong, an American comic book artist, decided a few years ago to write and illustrate Sons of Fate, a novel set in Japan’s Tokugawa period of isolation from the West that lasted more than two...
Think Inside the Box For Dramatic Flower Photos
By Christine Pentecost– I’ve always been intrigued by photos of flowers on pure black backgrounds, so last summer, I decided to do some black box photography, using an abundance of mountain wildflowers blooming around our Montana homestead as subjects. I began by making a box that had four sides: right, left, top and back (no front or bottom) that was 24” high by 15” wide by 17” in depth, using black foam core. The two pieces that...
Take the High Road for Breathtaking Images!
By Albert Chi– There’s a fantastic photo adventure awaiting you, requiring only a vehicle, your camera and some minimal planning for a most exciting trip. And chances are, it’s probably close to where you live and relatively inexpensive to get to so you can take the whole family along. Okay, what’s the catch? There isn’t any. Geotab, a Canadian firm that tracks truck locations has just built a set of coordinates representing...
Lotte Jacobi’s America
By Arthur H. Bleich– Gary Samson was an aspiring 25-year-old photographer in 1976 when he first met Lotte Jacobi in New Hampshire. She was 80 and a successful German portrait photographer from Berlin who had emigrated to New York City in 1935, narrowly escaping Adolf Hitler’s persecution of the Jews. Samson was working for the University of New Hampshire as a filmmaker who had been assigned to do a documentary movie about her and...
Favorite Photo Places: An Amazing Wildlife Refuge
By Ron Wolfe and Will Keener– You get to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, south of Socorro, NM, at least a half an hour before sunrise. You position yourself with back to the wind, so the birds will fly over you; your back to the rising sun, even better. In the near dawn, you hear a cacophony of clicks and low calls from the Sandhill Cranes and the higher-pitched squawking of the Snow Geese on the water. Your camera is...
Pictar Pro Makes Smartphone Cameras Smarter
By Arthur H. Bleich– Inside every smartphone camera beats a heart that yearns to be a DSLR. The features are there but, like Sleeping Beauty, they need a few digital kisses to awaken them. Pictar Pro does that and more. Through an integrated software app, it will add of dozens of options that can be accessed with external controls, just like a “real” camera. It doesn’t just make your phone feel like a DSLR (or...
A Great Read: “Photographers On Photography”
By Henry Carroll– Let’s consider the visionaries, the groundbreakers, the original thinkers – those influential figures from past and present who pushed photography forward and continue to do so today. How did they – how do they – approach their craft and what matters most? Here we have a selection of quotations, photographs and interviews that offer telling insights into the minds of masters. Serving as brief introductions to the big...
Acquire Great Art on a Shoestring Budget
By Anna Andersen– When Erik Culver graduated with a BFA from The University of Texas at Austin in 2008, he went home with hundreds of photographs, paintings, drawings, and prints and almost all of it went into storage. Ten years later, while his art still collects dust, he’s helping students find better homes for their work. Culver and his co-founder, Alok Marwaha, launched ArtStartArt to sell student artwork through monthly flash...
Custom Software That Really Struts Its Stuff
By Arthur H. Bleich– I remember buying an all-in-one tool years ago that promised to do everything. It did…kinda. But it did none of them really well. When you need to make a task quick and easy, there’s nothing like using a dedicated tool. Lucis Pro by Microtechnics and Restore by Vivid-Pix are one-trick ponies, but what they do, they do very, very well. And both come in various Mac and Win configurations. Lucis Pro first...
Take Great Holiday Party Photos!
By Maggie Kornahrens– There will be a plethora of cameras and smartphones at every party and soiree in the coming weeks and if you want to capture the spirit of the holidays in fresh and exciting ways, be willing to branch out of the ordinary. Cameras these days are advanced enough so that anybody can shoot great family party photos. Here are a few tips that can take your holiday pictures from ho-hum to ah-ha. Keep it Simple. Holiday...
My 70-Year Love Affair With Photography
By Larry Silver– As a boy growing up in the East Bronx, I knew “the photographer” as the guy who took pictures at weddings and Bar Mitzvah’s. My Uncle Herman, the “authority” on all subjects, had never heard of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alfred Stieglitz or Edward Weston. nor, for that matter, had anyone else in my building on Elder Avenue. Yet somehow at the age of 14 I became fascinated by the idea of making pictures and...
Embrace Change…It’s Good For You!
by Suzanne D. Williams– Life happens. Things change. I was reminded of this recently when watching a series of videos by a large- format photographer who still uses film. He was explaining the mental process he went through to create a series of beautiful mountain photographs when he stopped to comment on how he felt about the inevitable end of large-format film. Now, I am a huge fan of large-format photography and the idea that film...
Your Images Pirated? Here’s How To Get Paid For Them!
By Arthur H. Bleich– If you’ve ever posted images on the web–and who hasn’t–chances are someone out there is going to steal them, use them without your permission and not pay you a penny. If they’re used on social media among friends –and for no financial gain– that’s a common scenario and except for asking to have them taken down, there’s not much you can do. But when a commercial enterprise uses one of your...
Our National Parks Odyssey: Into The Winds
This is the fifth of an ongoing series about Red River Pro Andrew Slaton and his wife Ellen who, along with two dogs, Islay and Skye and Colonel Bubba, the cat, left the comforts of Dallas to hit the road full time in a travel trailer, with the goal of photographing all 59 U. S. National Parks. This is a continuation of Part 4 which ran in the previous post.— By Andrew Slaton– We meandered down the Gulf Coast chasing blue water and...
Our National Parks Odyssey: One Wild Life
This is the fourth of an ongoing series about Red River Pro Andrew Slaton and his wife Ellen who, along with two dogs, Islay and Skye and Colonel Bubba, the cat, left the comforts of Dallas to hit the road full time in a travel trailer, with the goal of photographing all 59 U. S. National Parks. By Andrew Slaton– There’s an ebb and flow on Soda Lake that sounds remarkably like the ocean. I hear the whoosh…. whoosh…. whoosh outside our...
“Into The Light” Showcases Legendary Musical Artists
By Jérôme Brunet– My love for music began long before I found my way into photography. My mother was a classically trained musician and teacher, and had me playing the cello at age four. I continued on for the next ten years into my teens, but when I first heard the opening riff of Led Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown” I instantly switched over to the guitar. It wasn’t until high school, when I took a photography class, that my...
What Rembrandt Taught Me About Portrait Lighting
By Joel Grimes– Part of the requirements for receiving a BFA in Photography from the University of Arizona included half a dozen semesters of art history.At the time I felt like this was overkill and was only interested in attending my photo-related classes. In hindsight, one of the greatest influences that shaped my personal vision as a photographer did not come from studying the work of the master photographers, but that of a master...
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