On The Cover When Chris Alvanas first started taking HDR photographs he was drawn to subjects he could portray with an edgy, even eerie feeling, like this fishing boat at a Newport, Rhode Island, pier. A distinct preference to turn HDR toward the dark side still plays into Alvanas’s plans and digital darkroom work.Explor...
“To the complaint, ‘there are no people in these photographs,’ I respond, ‘there are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.’”—Ansel Adams
It’s June, a month of brides and Shutterbug’s Digital Darkroom special issue. In this month’s edition of Web Profiles, I’ll introduce you to a website created by an amazing...
Tripods have been around for so many years that you can find some on sale for less than the cost of a medium pizza. All have three adjustable legs, a screw that attaches to the bottom of a camera, and some sort of mechanism that allows the user to point the lens steadily in the right direction without moving the whole contraption. That being said, is it smart to save a few bucks when shopping for...
We took this photo through our rental car windshield as the fog was lifting and the smoke from a forest fire lay heavy above the road early in the morning on Highway 120 as we entered Yosemite National Park. The combination of the filtered sunlight and sky resulted in a surrealistic road picture. We find it fun to capture the “mood” of the road. This image was made using our Sony...
Carly Cassara Souderton Area High School Souderton, Pennsylvania
Sight Lines Access is everything if you want to do the kind of performance photography Carly loves to do, and her approach to securing a position at the front of the stage is direct: “I usually e-mail the band’s publicist or manager, or one of the band members and see if they...
Tamrac’s Ultra Pro 13 Shoulder Bag Designed for the photographer on the move, the Ultra Pro 13 shoulder bag is large enough to safely accommodate a wide variety of photographic gearand a laptop computer. It features an EasyGrip handlewith a built-in Torsion Bar to distribute the weight, a Double Lens-Bridge Divider System, a padded BioCurve shoulder strap, a...
When I think about all of the photography equipment I have added to my collection over the years—cameras, lenses, lights—I would have to put my finger on the raw conversion window in Photoshop as probably the most effective tool I currently have for making my images look good. It has even lightened the load in terms of the amount of equipment I use for taking the shot in the first...
Our Picture This! assignment this month was “Backlight,” and readers responded with images that spoke of the wonders of light in this, perhaps the most challenging but many times the most rewarding, lighting condition. Many of the images brought back the words of the filmmaker Werner Herzog, who I will paraphrase here, when he said that images are our way of bearing witness to the...
You read this magazine. You’re reading this column right now. So I’m thinking that you’ve got your act together. You keep up with the new gear; you pick up tips and techniques, ideas and inspiration. Your skills are sharp and you know what you need to get the pictures you want to get. So when you go out to shoot this summer, you’re going to go with one camera body, maybe...
You don’t need a back-up drive, you need a back-up plan. Backing up image data is an attitude, not an accessory. I preach the Three Rs of File Safety; to be effective, your back-up storage solution must be Regular, Reliable, and Redundant.
High-capacity external hard drives cost less than a steak dinner these days. And you can buy a name brand 4x...