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Tell Me a (Better) Story

In Storytelling, The Craft, The Life Creative, Thoughts & Theory by David27 Comments

Ask photographers (or God help you, the internet) what makes a good photograph and it won’t be long before someone says, “a good photograph tells a story.” I don’t think that’s true. Not always. I think there are spectacular photographs that tell no story at all. They leave an impression. They elicit an emotional response. Others provide information. And if …

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Cooking a Better Photograph

In Photographically Speaking, Study the Masters, The Craft, The Life Creative, Thoughts & Theory by David41 Comments

How is it that two photographers can stand in the same place and make two very different photographs? What accounts for the frustrating reality that, in that moment, one photographer can make something truly compelling and beautiful while the results of the other’s efforts are underwhelming? Surely it can’t be just better gear. Sometimes it’s different gear. Different gear represents different possibilities, …

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Masking and Lightroom Presets

In Lightroom & Workflow, The Craft, The Life Creative, Thoughts & Theory, Tutorials &Technique, Workflow & Technical Issues by David46 Comments

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 …

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Masking In Lightroom, An Introduction

In Lightroom & Workflow, Photographically Speaking, Photographs & Photoshopping, The Craft, The Life Creative, Thoughts & Theory by David57 Comments

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 …

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Want Different Results? Try Different Things.

In Creativity and Inspiration, Photographically Speaking, The Craft, The Life Creative, Thoughts & Theory, Travel by David83 Comments

Landing in Nairobi last month, my usual fears were running amok. Would my luggage arrive with me? Would I have problems at customs? Would the bartender at the first camp be able to make me a decent Old Fashioned, of which I was desperately in need? You know the ones. But most heavy of all, the one weighing me down …

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3 Ways To Give Your Images Their Best Chance

In Lightroom & Workflow, Resources, The Craft, Thoughts & Theory, Tutorials &Technique by David36 Comments

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, …

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A Better Edit Makes Better Photographs

In Lightroom & Workflow, Resources, The Craft, Thoughts & Theory, Tutorials &Technique by David69 Comments

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 …

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Study The Work of Others

In Books, Study the Masters, The Craft, Thoughts & Theory, Tutorials &Technique by David12 Comments

In my last article, I suggested studying the work of others as one path toward making your own work stronger. To shoot what things feel like requires that we first have feelings about things but also to understand what possibilities exist for translating feelings into photographs themselves. It’s a conversation that could get touchy-feely really quickly, but if it gets too far …

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Shoot What It Feels Like?

In The Craft, Thoughts & Theory by David23 Comments

I was young when I first heard some version of this advice: don’t shoot what it looks like; shoot what it feels like. That resonated with me then, and it still does, but I feel like my entire photographic journey has been spent trying to figure out what it practically means in a way that translates to my photographs. “Shoot what it …