LATEST ADDITIONS

I’m writing this in mid-December as I’m making plans for a February trip to Vietnam. As those plans are shaping up, it might be a good time to talk about how I decide what to take on my photo trips and how I try to ease it all through the world’s airports.

The gear I take depends on where I’m going, how long I’ll be there, and what I expect to accomplish. One thing I know from the...

Many photographers will walk out the door for a portrait shoot with little more than a camera and a reflector. They do so based on the common belief that flash photography is meant exclusively for indoor shooting, that flash is only used when there isn’t enough light to achieve a perfect exposure. However, based on my experience, a flash combined with a few affordable accessories has tremendous...

The following is an excerpt from Understanding and Controlling Strobe Lighting: A Guide for Digital Photographers by John Siskin, published by Amherst Media (ISBN: 978-1-608952-42-7). John has been a Shutterbug contributor and we were glad to see him bring his knowledge on the topic of lighting to this new book.—Editor

Hard Or Soft Light?
In the past, most...

I had passed this long-abandoned, one-room prairie schoolhouse near Elk City, Kansas, hundreds of times over the years and each time I resolved to stop the next time to photograph it. Except for the chimney and tin roof, there had been no apparent effort to preserve the building, which is now on private property. Finally, on a hot, cloudless July morning, after 25 years of procrastination, I...