The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.--Augustine
Of all the things photography does, showing us distant lands was one of its earliest functions. Before direct flights to Beijing, the first photographs of China that appeared in National Geographic gave readers a sense of what the country was like, even though few would ever make the trip. Two...
Much of my portrait and fashion photography is done on location, but living in a place like Colorado the models (and the photographer, too) just aren’t always in the mood to stomp around in the cold weather and snow. That’s when a studio comes in handy. Some photographers just prefer having complete control over the lighting. Instead of the hassle and cost of renting a studio, why not...
Studio lighting equipment is available in either continuous or electronic flash configurations. Continuous lighting is “on” continuously, much like a light bulb or the sun for that matter, enabling you to use your in camera light meter to measure and see how the light falls on your subject. Continuous lighting sources use photoflood, quartz, or HMI (Hydrargyrum Medium-Arc Iodide) bulbs, which can be hot, leading to the use of the term “hot lights.” An increasing number of continuous lighting tools use Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL) or LEDs, producing what are, in effect, “cool” hot lights.
I’m often asked how photographers can have their website appear in this column, so I decided to offer some advice that even if it doesn’t get you featured in Web Profiles will improve the quality of your site.
Don’t use Flash. It may be fun, but why spend time and money to limit the number of people who can view it? Using Flash means literally millions of iPhone and iPad users can’t see your site.
Avoid the temptation to fill the site with graphics that compete with your photographs. First impressions count and you want visitors to focus on your images.
“Get your pretty little portfolio off my desk before I go into a diabetic coma.”—J. Jonah Jameson to Peter Parker
In case you forgot (or maybe didn’t know), Peter Parker a.k.a. Spiderman is a freelance newspaper photographer; one of the highlights of the movies to me is the off-handedly whimsical way his editor, J. Jonah Jameson, treats him, but it never stops...
Nada, Nothing, Bupkis. Anything that sounds too good to be true usually isn't. But free Internet access uses an age-old formula to let web surfers gain access to the World Wide Web (WWW) at no cost. Radio. Yup, radio. After you buy the...
"But when television is bad, nothing is worse...a vast wasteland."--Newton Minow
In his now famous speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, the FCC's Minow may have quoted Edward Estlin Cummings but he was on-target in addressing the state of television in 1961. I have to wonder what he would think about the visual and aural...
Every company that makes lenses usually designs a few that are ideal for portraiture. The trend these days for studio and boudoir portraits is toward fast prime lenses, while zooms remain popular for location and wedding photography. Wide-angle lenses may get you closer to the subject but perspective distortion exaggerates a subject’s nose and ears.