Pro Techniques

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Barry Tanenbaum  |  Jul 29, 2011  |  First Published: Jun 01, 2011  |  0 comments
Years ago Dale Huncovsky, owner of the only grocery in Cuba, Kansas, had a heart bypass operation. Since then several men from town show up once a week at Dale’s store to unload the semi that brings the week’s supply of groceries. That’s how the personal and the practical play out in Cuba.
Alicia Fox  |  Aug 01, 2011  |  First Published: Jun 01, 2011  |  1 comments
Travel and photography are two intertwined subjects for me. Ever since I first had the freedom to travel, at age 18, I have been exploring the world, absorbing and photographing the unique cultures I encounter. I have developed a love for environmental portraits. In this style of photography I can capture not only the character of a person, but also the world in which they live.
Jay Miller  |  Aug 04, 2011  |  First Published: Jun 01, 2011  |  1 comments
Photographing airplanes and other flying machines is not something one routinely finds on a list of preferred occupations. It is in fact one of the more esoteric slices of the professional photographer’s pie. Not surprisingly, aviation photography is a demanding and potentially dangerous occupation. It requires a high level of arcane expertise in a very specialized subject area. Understandably, there is little room for error. Hanging out of flying machines with a camera in your hands is not a run-of-the-mill photo assignment.
Maynard Switzer  |  Jun 17, 2011  |  First Published: May 01, 2011  |  1 comments
Right from the start it sounded like it was going to be a challenge. In late summer last year I was hired by the Taiwan tourist bureau for a 10-day shoot to take pictures for a travel magazine advertorial. Since I’d never been to Taiwan before, and my usual way of working is to make all my own plans, schedules, and lists of places to shoot, I did some research as soon asI got the assignment. What I found wasn’t promising.
Barry Tanenbaum  |  Jun 23, 2011  |  First Published: May 01, 2011  |  1 comments
Well, it’s really only one city—New York—but the assignment called for Jon Ortner to capture images so different in spirit and approach that he might as well have been in two very different cities. There was not only a dual nature to the job itself but also something of a split personality to the building Jon was hired by developer J.D. Carlisle to photograph. Located between 29th and 30th Streets on Sixth Avenue, the 54-story structure in fact has two names and natures: from the street to the 25th floor it’s the Eventi Hotel; at the 26th floor it becomes the Beatrice and rental apartments.
Lou Jacobs Jr.  |  Apr 01, 2011  |  1 comments

When the Virginia Tourism Corporation needed a series of illustrations, to help publicize tourism with imaginative style, photographer Keith Lanpher, based in Norfolk, was chosen for the job. This was a location project that called for seven days of shooting with numerous models as well as a passel of dogs and a large smoke machine.

Lanpher knew it would...

Steve Bedell  |  Apr 01, 2011  |  1 comments

In today’s world, stock photos often sell for pennies, yet there are still photographers out there making a good living selling work for a good price. By talking with stock shooter Bill Bachmann, I found out that I, and most of my portrait/wedding brethren, have been missing the boat big time by not using our client images for stock images. According to Bachmann, we’re sitting on a gold mine and...

Jack Neubart  |  May 04, 2011  |  First Published: Apr 01, 2011  |  4 comments

Automotive photography involves more than cars, although these vehicles make up the bulk of this genre. Automotive can also mean motorcycles and practically any motorized conveyance that hits the road. Tackling these vehicles may appear overwhelming at first, but not to veteran automotive photographer Richard Izui.

Steve Bedell  |  Mar 01, 2011  |  1 comments

Most of us know about making outdoor portraits using the small fill flash on our cameras. But these photos have a “look” that tells everyone they were “made with flash.” They have a flat, often harsh look to them. A more sophisticated technique that can be accessed with many new cameras is the use of off-camera flash; you can even use multiple units controlled directly from the camera. I use...

Mike Ware  |  Mar 01, 2011  |  1 comments

For its first 160 years, photography was based on silver. Effectively all camera negatives have to be made of this metal because only silver halides are fast enough to record analog chemical images “instantaneously”—or even in a couple of minutes. But printing from the negative need not be speedy, so the door is open to several slower photochemical processes for printmaking.

Lorraine A. DarConte  |  Mar 01, 2011  |  1 comments

In recent years, “posing” has made a big comeback thanks in part to the deluge of photo enthusiasts with decent, affordable equipment who have swelled the ranks of wedding photographers to the point of bursting. This situation isn’t likely to change any time soon, so smart photographers have been buying books and videos and attending workshops and conventions to learn how to properly pose people...

Gary Fong  |  Mar 01, 2011  |  1 comments

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...

Maynard Switzer  |  Mar 01, 2011  |  1 comments

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...

Steve Bedell  |  Feb 01, 2011  |  0 comments

Eric Luden is a former executive at Ilford Photo, a noted commercial and fine art photographer, and the founder of Digital Silver Imaging, a New England lab that works exclusively in black and white. During the 1990s, he served as a consultant with Eastman Kodak’s black-and-white division before joining Ilford, where he worked for over 12 years. In 2006, he became the VP of North American...

George Schaub  |  Feb 01, 2011  |  0 comments

Every digital image starts out as a color image, an RGB that, when shot in Raw format and loaded as a 16-bit file, contains millions of color and brightness codes. These codes, or pixel addresses, can be manipulated in many ways using presets or “manual” adjustments to create looks that range from “true” to highly stylistic interpretations of the content within the image.

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