Within The Frame, Within Top Ten.
You could have knocked me over with a feather (whatever that means) when my publishing team emailed me yesterday morning to let me know that Within The Frame was chosen by Amazon.com as one of the best books of 2009 in Arts & Photography. It came in 5th, after Joe McNally’s Hotshoe Diaries, Scott Kelby’s Digital Photography Book, Volume 3, …
November 2009 Wallpaper
Nearly missed the timing on this one. Here’s the November wallpapers in both 2560×1600 and 1280×853, shot in the Nubra Valley, India, not far from the Pakistan border this September. This dog showed up and if I’ve ever been tempted to bring an animal home with me, it was this morning. We named her Siberia. Click the image above to …
On The Poet & The Geek
My buddy Chris Orwig, a man who combines the poet & geek with grace. A few quick quotes this morning to bring us all back to thinking about the uneasy – but necessary – connection between the artistic and technical sides of ourselves, or our craft. It seems everywhere I look as I study creativity and the creative process, I …
What’s With The ISO?
Every week, without fail, I get an email from an inquisitive mind about the EXIF data in Within The Frame, specifically the question goes like this, and I quote from yesterday morning’s email on the matter: I noticed that in quite a lot of your photos you use high ISO even though there seems no reason to do so, for …
Stuff (But Vision is Still Better.)
This one is an unabashed, shameless, Gear Is Good but Vision Is Better post. You’ve been warned. There have been a lot of quiet, but enthusiastic ripples about the new Elinchrom Ranger Quadra system, and I finally caved in. I called B&H and talked it through, then placed my order. I’d been tempted before Photoshop World and then I got …
On Smiling.
When I wrote the first two eBooks – TEN and TEN MORE – the subtitles suggested that they were ways to improve your photography without buying gear. I’ve been amused, to say the least, to see the reaction to this by several others (including the prolific Scott Bourne, who’s written two posts inspired by the concept – HERE and HERE) …
Being There
One of the lessons that came up time and again on last month’s Lumen Dei tour was the importance of presence. As in really being there. We photographers often suffer from some kind of attention-deficit malfunction. We look, we shoot, we don’t always really see. So this year we encouraged people to stop running around looking for the next thing …
It Feels Like This Outside
I woke up to rain and grey this morning. It reminded me of a photograph, one that one of my readers asked me to make into a wallpaper but I’ve just not got around to it. But the weather’s got me hunkered down inside, with a cup of tea, and looking out the window at something much like this. So …
Metamorphosis
I had the distinct pleasure of spending a couple days with Dave Taggart recently. Dave flew up to spend a couple days with me working on his craft and getting out a few bugs before he joins us on the Kenya tour in January. In the lead up to our time together I spent some time looking at his work …
Inside the Harvest Photographs
Last Friday I posted a short slideshow of images shot in Lamayuru, Ladakh. Thanks to all for the kind words left in comments and sent in emails. There were a number of requests for a how-to, so I’ll do my best to be helpful. Truth is there isn’t much to tell in terms of technique. I pointed the camera and …