Family Photography How To

This should bring a tear to the eye of digital camera users the world over.

Photo fun when it's colder than a polar bear's tail and snowing like a feather pillow shoved into a woodchipper? Yes, it's possible. Winter is unavoidable, but the perils it presents can be greatly minimized. Here are some tips to keep you clicking in cold weather.

Time to hit the Reset Button and put your notions of Image Quality on Pause. In our everyday lives as photographers we prize sharpness, saturation, acutance and absence of aberration when we idealize the images we want to capture. Now it’s time to recognize that images that are blurred, smeared, warped and otherwise traumatized can be beautiful.

Lensbaby lenses produce images that are intentionally unsharp, because optical aberrations can be beautiful. In a word, a Lensbaby turns blur into bliss.

Yesterday we brought you a timesaving tutorial for streamlining Lightroom so the workspace displays all the tools you use in the order you want, with everything else hidden from view. We have another great trick today, this time it's a simple hack for using the Histogram to achieve perfect White Balance.

Somewhere out in the vast darkness of cyberspace, millions and millions of precious photographs are wandering aimlessly, homeless and lost forever. Each day, more and more photos join the tens of thousands of socks that were lost in clothes dryers, umbrellas left in restaurants and the car keys that never made it back to the safety of a purse or pocket.

Not to mention the zillions of smiling golf balls banished forever somewhere in rough.

Your data is not safe, but good work habits, starting with a conscientious backup plan, can make data recoverable.

Some ways to help offset the cost of your favorite pastime

There are lots of way to make money in photography, including selling and trading photo gear, processing film and making prints for other photographers, scanning images (slides, negatives and prints) and putting them on CDs for others, retouching photos, copying and restoring old photos, collecting collectible photographs...

Here are some tips for making the most of the fall color change, including five fun filters (the physical, screw-in kind). Scientifically, the leaves of deciduous trees lose their chlorophyll and reveal the reds, oranges and yellows that were hiding beneath the green. For me it’s like a kindergarten kid getting their first box of 64-color Crayolas—so many new colors and so little time.