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Exposing for Highlights

In The Craft, Tutorials &Technique by David26 Comments

While people rush to buy the latest cameras with the highest dynamic ranges and the latest software that’ll allow simulation of the highest dynamic range possible, and there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, it helps to remember that every limitation can also be a beautiful creative constraint. On the beach in Moeraki recently, and disappointed by the bright sunlight and …

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Cringe

In Pep Talks, The Craft, The Life Creative by David11 Comments

I often look at the work of a younger me and cringe at his decisions. His choice of moments was hurried and impatient. His composition was simplistic. His use of colour and composition was undeveloped. My god, he barely seemed to know what he was doing. No wonder he spent so  much energy trying to convince himself he wasn’t an …

Lens Caps

In Life Is Short, Rants and Sermons, The Life Creative by David22 Comments

I’m not sure whether anyone needs to hear this or I just needed to say it. But it’s starting to feel like the spirit of our current time is fear and fear often leads us to build walls around our hearts, to do what we can to protect ourselves. And the thing that was meant to protect us quickly becomes …

Cath(art)ic

In Life Is Short, Rants and Sermons, The Life Creative by David14 Comments

What if art has always been, in some deeply human way, cathartic for us? What if we used art as a way to respond to the heartache and the fear and the thoughts and emotions we had no other way to explore or express? What if we once responded to the world in the medium that worked best for us; …

Paying Attention

In Life Is Short, Rants and Sermons, The Life Creative by David36 Comments

Every day we draw upon limited resources for the things we want in life. We choose what we spend our time on, what we spend our money on, and what we will pay attention to. All three of these give us either greater freedom or impose stricter limits on our lives. What we spend frivolously now we will not have …

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Fuji XT-2: My Impressions

In GEAR by David55 Comments

  This won’t be a long one because you can get full specs on the Fuji site and review sites that are willing to spend way more energy on details than I have the mental capacity for. Nevertheless the long-awaited Fuji XT-2 has just been announced. Having spent a month with a pre-production model and wishing most of my photography …

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Within The Frame, 2nd Edition

In Books by David199 Comments

Since 2009, Within The Frame has surpassed all kinds of expectations, among them my own. What started as a book about the passionate (and compassionate) photography of people, places, and culture, became a book that was just as much about vision. It led to other books, workshops, and connections with people that have since become collaborators and best friends. Now …

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Cameras Don’t Make Photographs.

In Rants and Sermons, The Craft by David69 Comments

The recent outrage over Steve McCurry’s penchant for tweaking his photographs with Photoshop is just one in a long series of opportunities for photographers to get their panties in a twist over how photography should or should not be done. This morning, I’ve about as much desire to enter the fray as I have to pour this mug of coffee …

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Giant Mantas of Socorro

In Postcards From..., Travel, Wilderness by David25 Comments

I boarded the Nautilus Belle Ami, with a couple dozen other divers on World Oceans Day. Together we spent the next 36 hours sailing from the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, bound for the Revillagigeda archipelago, a small collection of islands and rocky pinnacles a couple hundred miles south. The experience of the last 12 days was, in significant …