Making the jump from Lightroom to Photoshop can be an intimidating proposition. Much like that first time you switched the camera from Auto all the way to that frightening ‘M’, suddenly you had more tools to work with than you knew what to do with. No longer was the camera handling everything behind the scenes and making the majority of the decisions for you; now you had to know the correlation between Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO to make the image you wanted. While Lightroom isn’t exactly the ‘Auto’ of …
Landscapes 201 – Composition
There are two things that need to come together to achieve a striking Landscape photo. The first, and ultimately most important is the light. But coming in at a very close second is composition. You can have the most glorious light filling the scene in front of you, but without a strong composition it is simply just that – light. It won’t engage the viewer beyond the color, and no amount of editing will fix a bad composition that wasn’t thoroughly considered and thought about while in the field. Composition …
Show and Tell: Possum Kingdom Invasion
“If there’s one thing I know, it’s never to mess with mother nature, mother in-laws and, mother freaking Ukrainians.” – Skinny Pete Storm Chasing – it has become extremely popular in recent years, however it’s also very dangerous, not only to you, but others on the roads as well. Mother Nature is not to be taken lightly when she’s full of anger and fury. For this single reason, I choose not to chase on my own, but instead have formed friendships with a couple of experienced chasers whom I trust. …
Show and Tell – Artists Palette, Death Valley
The for my first major trip of 2018, I set my sights on Death Valley National Park. One of the few places with a good chance of being ‘camping weather’ at the end of February, and a location I had wanted to shoot for some time. Clear skies during the day and partially cloudy skies at night frustrated me much of the time. While the weather wasn’t as cooperative as one might hope, I can’t complain too much either as I think the warmest we ever saw was in the …
Death Valley National Park – February 2018
For my first major trip of 2018 I set my slights on a location I had not visited since I was a kid in the back seat during a family vacation – Death Valley. I distinctly remember driving through Death Valley during some family vacation, it was late enough that the rental Town Car had an outside temperature gauge which was of course an interesting stat for a dash through the valley in what was most likely June, but I’m also fairly certain we didn’t stop to experience the valley …
Landscapes 201 – The Magic Hours
“Noon” – a four letter word to a landscape photographer. There is nothing more important to the quality of our landscape images than the quality of light entering the front element of the lens and ultimately onto the sensor or film. There are two distinct times of day when the light of the world is at its best; sunrise and sunset. These two times are known as the Magic Hours and each is split into two halves. The Blue Hour and the Golden Hour. Blue Hour occurs in the period …
Landscapes 201 – Adjust and Adapt
You’ve planned your photography trip for weeks, maybe even months, you’ve picked the best time of year for the location, or the skies, or the tides, or whatever it is you want to capture at some far away location. Taking time away from most likely both work and family, you have a list of ‘must have’ photos in your mind of what you want to shoot when you get there for the trip to be a success. There is, however, one thing you can’t control, one variable that will, almost …