Photography 101
I love making portraits. People, especially faces, to me, are a fascinating subject. So expressive and varied---there is emotion and character and life in every subject.
First, what is a portrait? The extremely open-minded among us will argue that any photo can be a portrait---face not required. A hand, a wisp [...]
Read more...
Photography 101
A brief history lesson about an image sharpening method called "unsharp mask." Photoshop and other image manipulation software all have a feature with this name that will sharpen an image. So, why is it called unsharp mask?
The name comes from the original photographic procedure used to increase the apparent sharpness [...]
Read more...
Photography 101
Still life photography is the photography of inanimate objects purposefully arranged and lit. There's something very satisfying about capturing something exactly as you pictured it in your mind. The items themselves, their arrangement, lighting, and camera settings are all meticulously controlled to produce the desired result. Still life photography is [...]
Read more...
Photography 101
I've written about metering before but I thought I'd recap an important point about the light meter in your camera: it's a stupid, stupid device. Which isn't to say that it's useless. Far from it. Your camera's light meter is an extremely useful tool. But, you have to know when [...]
Read more...
Photography 101
Camera shake is the bane of photographers everywhere. No photographer has perfectly steady hands. Once shutter speeds drop, camera shake begins to seriously affect image sharpness. Fortunately, there are solutions. Nothing will give you consistently sharper photos than a sturdy tripod and every photographer should have one. But there's a [...]
Read more...
