Jon Sienkiewicz Blog

Whether they be cherry blossoms in Tokyo, sunflowers in Indianapolis or saguaro cactus florets in Tucson, flowers have fascinated photographers since forever. We all photograph them—it's a rite of spring where I live. Here are 10 tips that will guide you to better flower photos.

Deleted images do not “disappear.” Formatting a memory card does not “erase” the images.

Never sell or loan a memory card unless you’re willing to risk the possibility of sharing every image, video, tax return and any other file that’s ever been saved to it. The same applies to hard drives, SSDs and USB drives. Here’s why it happens, and how to protect yourself.

Somewhere in the world, a hard drive is failing at this very instant. Thousands of images, hours of video, document backups, tax records and back-to-school shopping lists are vanishing into the Cybervapor. A SanDisk Desk Drive external SSD will save your bacon. And your photos.

Polarizing filters make pictures look like they were taken at either the North Pole or the South Pole. Rotating the Polarizing filter shifts the appearance from North Pole to South Pole and back again. They are not always used to photograph Polar Bears; it’s easy to understand the confusion, but there are no Polar Bears at the South Pole. Polarizers are important because our ice masses are disappearing, melting away and raising the sea level around Miami. When the ice caps are gone, the only way we’ll have to recreate them—or Miami, for that matter—is with Photoshop.

Okay, I made some of this up. But I do know how Polarizers work and why you should use one. Please read on…

Greetings from the Garden State. From my upstairs windows I see the neighbors’ trees in bloom and the scene is very inviting, but like millions of other Americans, my family is hunkered down. Here are a few of the things I’m doing to keep cabin fever at bay.

The moon was full last week, and two lunatic things happened to friends of mine. One got a bad case of ransomware on her Mac (yes, that’s Mac as in MacBook Air). The other had a microSD card self-destruct in his Android cell phone. Bad things happen in threes and, oh yes, I hit a curb and blew out a tire.

The difference was this: I had a spare in my trunk. I didn’t wait until the curb bit me to prepare for the disaster. My two friends? Well…

You need a tripod. If you shoot video, panoramas, fireworks, time exposures, selfies or macro work in addition to general picture taking, you may even need two tripods. Selecting a tripod that matches the way you work is important, and not at all difficult if you approach it in the right way.