Watch the short video above, or keep reading if you prefer the written word. I think a lot photographers put all their creative eggs in too few baskets. They look to the work they do with the camera as job one, which it is. But it’s not the only job. It’s the sexy job, for sure. But it’s insufficient. Some …
3 Ways To Give Your Images Their Best Chance
Watch the 7-minute video above, or keep reading if you prefer the written word. In my last video I resumed a conversation I’ve been dying to come back to. Specifically: Why do photographers get so intimidated by the edit and the “now what?” that comes once we put the camera down? And are we missing important creative opportunities? For years, …
A Better Edit Makes Better Photographs
Take a few minutes to watch the video above or, if you’re more of a written word person, keep reading. When I came home from Kenya last year, I had a hard drive filled to busting with 30,000 images. I’d been photographing for 30 days, so that’s a daily average of 1,000 photographs which, it turns out, is really easy …
Crank It Up! (Or How I Stopped Fearing The Noise Monster)
My first “real” digital camera was a Canon EOS Digital Rebel. All black, with a vertical battery grip and an impressive 6.3 megapixel sensor, it felt like a tiny miracle. But take that ISO up to 800 and the resulting images were less than miraculous; they were so noisy you’d need earplugs. That was 20 years ago, and while so much has changed …
Refine Your Mood in the Darkroom
In my last post (August 06), I discussed a few ways to improve the mood in our photographs, namely by finding stronger mood in the first place, usually by looking for more interesting light or more interesting weather. Just getting out there earlier and staying later helps. Some weatherproof gear and a willingness not to baby the camera so much …
Masking and Lightroom Presets
What I’m about to show you is my favourite discovery of the year in terms of my workflow. I tend to do a lot of the same kinds of adjustments to similar photographs, especially when creating a body of work. I might globally add some exposure and contrast, tweak some colours, and then apply a mask to my main subject …
Masking In Lightroom, An Introduction
I love the masking tool in Lightroom Classic and it has seen some changes over the last few iterations, some of them pretty significant. I was asked recently about this and it seemed like something you might be interested in if you’re a Lightroom user. If you do any dodging and burning at all, the new AI functions are game …
Grizzly Bears: Big, Beautiful, and…Noise-Free?
There is a powerful argument to be made for photographing what intrigues you, what you love, or that by which you are obsessed. Making photographs takes time, so that curiosity, love, or obsession serves you well when your best work demands not fractions of a second or even minutes, but hours, days, or—in the case of longer projects—even years. Bears have …
One Decision Away From Stronger Photographs?
Click play to watch this 7-minute video Transcript: I think many photographers put all their creative eggs in too few baskets. They look to the work they do with the camera as job one, which it is. But it’s not the only job. It’s the sexy job, for sure. But it’s insufficient. Some lean heavily on post-processing or development; you …
3 Ways To Love Your Photographs More
Click play to watch this 7-minute video Earlier this week I started a conversation I’ve been dying to have for a while: specifically, why do photographers get so intimidated by the edit and the “Now what?” that comes once we put the camera down? And are we missing important opportunities? For years, I’ve been signing my letters and articles to …