Pro Techniques

When Canadian engineer Joseph Cacic designed and built a tripod in the late 1990s that would accommodate bird’s eye aerial images, Boston photographer Frank Siteman was among his first customers. For Siteman it was the perfect solution for the environmental photographs that he favors. Weighing 75 lbs and easy to roll, the tripod can be placed in a garden without disturbing any of the floras...

One of the things that makes a photograph successful is that attention is directed to the subject. This can be done with good lighting, muted backgrounds, or graphic design. An important design element that directs our attention into the heart of a picture is called a leading line. This is a line that usually begins at the bottom of the composition and extends into the heart of the scene...

One of the traditional compositional guidelines that many artists and photographers adhere to is that a subject’s movement should go toward the center of the frame. You can see this method of composing an image in the photo of the frigate bird (#1) that I placed on the left side of the frame; it is flying toward the imaginary vertical center line of the image. Similarly, I placed the tall...

My biggest surprise in shooting the famous Carnival of Venice was how accommodating the costumed people were to be photographed. I had assumed that they would become quickly annoyed with all the photographers stopping them and wanting pictures, but the opposite was true. They came out just to be photographed. Some were out as early as 7am and in the sunrise lighting they posed in front of the...

Last fall I got an e-mail and a few JPEG attachments from Jody Dole, a commercial and advertising photographer whose career adventures I’ve chronicled over the years in these and other pages. “I’ve been having a good time making 19th-century cyanotype look-alike images,” Jody wrote.

Turns out, Jody had been up to more than cyanotypes. He also had a...

In many ways, Florida seems like a thoroughly modern state. New developments and towering skyscrapers dot the urban contemporary landscape. Tourism display racks contain dozens of the latest amusement and attraction brochures. Each year, millions of visitors descend upon Florida to experience the beaches, theme parks, major cities, and golf courses.

However, away from the...

If you love black and white photography you should check out the tools and techniques that allow you to make customized “conversions” from your RGB digital image files.