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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Selling Images? Print Them Yourself For Best Results!
By Kaitlin Walsh– A couple of years ago I decided that outsourcing my printing didn’t give me the artistic control I needed to make sure my customers were getting the best possible prints and service that I could give them. My hunger for more autonomy prompted me to set up a home printing operation and that, of course, involved making some hard choices. After weeks of research and budgeting, I took the plunge and...
Expressive Nature Photography
by Brenda Tharp– Photography is pure joy. The ability to see something special and capture it in the camera is nothing short of amazing for me, even after all the years I’ve been a photographer. From the tiniest detail of a flower to the grand expanse of the Milky Way stretching overhead at night, our world is an outstanding place, providing countless opportunities to experience beauty. To be out photographing in nature is truly the...
Choose The Right Paper For Printing Old Photos
By Christine Pentecost– Digitally restoring old and damaged photos and bringing them back to life has been a very rewarding and challenging hobby for me over the past 15 years. I have restored photos from the late 1800s that were mounted on cardboard, to Polaroids from the 70s, and to photos ravaged by Hurricane Katrina’s flooding. The heartwarming tears of joy I have witnessed upon returning a restored photo to the owner has always...
New York In The Snow
by Vivienne Gucwa– I wish I could say that there was one photo that started it all. It would be the one photo that somehow ignited my passion for snow photography in New York City. The one that people could look at to understand why I might walk up to eight miles through snowstorms at night. But there isn’t. That’s because my passion for New York in the snow began at a very early age. I grew up in a financially challenged household in...
Kaitlin Walsh– Merging Art With Anatomy
by Arthur H. Bleich– Kaitlin Walsh is a biomedical artist– a rarity in the art world. Her beautifully crafted, abstract anatomy watercolor paintings celebrate the wonders of the human body in ways so imaginative it’s sometimes hard not to fall in love with her deadly cancer cells or even mundane parts of the human body, like an ankle, so beautifully are they executed. These are not those sterile pictures you see hung on the walls in...
Spark Up Your Holiday Photos!
By Suzanne D. Williams– We’ve all done it, taken that endless stream of holiday photographs with the same people doing something, only we can’t exactly tell what. Then there’s the familiar, “Oh look at the tree!” only it’s slightly blurry and the top is missing. Sound familiar? Who doesn’t have similar Christmas and other holiday pictures somewhere? Believe it or not, there is such a thing as...
How To Print Beautiful Antique Christmas Cards
By Arthur H. Bleich– The Christmas card-giving tradition began in London in 1843, when Sir Henry Cole commissioned an artist friend, John Horsley, to design a card that could be mailed to his friends. Some say Sir Henry thought up the idea to avoid writing long letters in reply to those sent by friends and acquaintances– an English tradition at Christmastime. He had a “To___” printed at the top so he could write in his friends’ names–...
Our National Parks Odyssey: Ups and Downs
This is the second part of an ongoing series about Red River Pro Andrew Slaton and his wife Ellen who, along with their two dogs and a cat, have hit the road full time in a travel trailer to seek adventure and photograph all the National Parks. There have also been some side trips, some ups and downs and…well, let’s hear it from Andrew. –By Andrew Slaton– Redefining Success… “Success is to be measured not so much by...
Fine Art Inkjet Printing
By Jim Nickelson– I’m often asked from friends, family, and even other photographers about why I bother printing my work when the whole world seems to be moving digital. For me, the reason is simple: creating a fine art print is my primary purpose in making photographs. As is likely becoming obvious, I am a strong proponent and champion of the fine print. If you are a photographer, I think it is essential to eventually print...
For Love Of Lions
By Kenn Jacobs– My first published photo in a book was a pub sign–The Old Red Lion–shot in a now-forgotten English village. It wasn’t until many years later, though, that I had an epiphany when I came face to face with the sculpture of the Lion of Lucerne in Switzerland. Carved in 1820 as a memorial to the bravery of 600 Swiss Guards who lost their lives in 1792 during the French Revolution, Mark Twain described it as “the most...
Make Big Images With Small Desktop Printers
By Christine Pentecost– I have a beautiful, scenic image in my collection that begged to be displayed larger than could be output by my desktop printer– which only can use letter-sized paper. Surely, I thought, there must be some way to solve this problem and, as it turns out, there is. Image Splitter is a very simple-to-use (and free) software program that takes an image and quickly divides it into sections which can then be sized to...
Exhibit Your Photos for Prestige and Profit
By Peter E. Randall– For most photographers, the chance to have a one-person exhibit is an exciting opportunity. Then reality sets in and it’s apparent that having an exhibit is more stressful and difficult than making the photographs in the first place. The most ideal opportunity is to be invited to show by a major gallery or a museum, but for most of us that’s not an option. We don’t have the reputation or the following...
Our National Parks Odyssey
By Andrew Slaton– Steam from the early morning chill rises off the Green River in the Wind River Range of Wyoming. Squaretop, an aptly named handsome granite mountain in the distance catches the first rays of the sun, rising somewhere I cannot yet see. I sip my scalding, black coffee in our trailer and wait. This is what I do. I get paid to just sit out in some of the wildest places of the world until that unreal moment of light,...
Shooting The Stars, Part 3: Post Production
By Ron Risman– Finishing Your Image As good as your image may look straight out of the camera, it’s really not finished yet. Since I shoot using RAW, the image is captured with a very flat profile. It lacks contrast and sharpness and can easily be brought up to wow status using Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), Adobe Lightroom, or other image processing packages. Once you import your images into Lightroom or ACR select one of your images and...
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