Featured Stories
The Google+ Conference for Photographers
I am tied up all next week, which is somewhat disappointing to me because it means that I can not be… [more]
My First D800 Photo Shoot
This past Saturday I gathered up some lenses, my new Nikon D800, and my youngest son and headed out to… [more]
Shooting War Birds this Weekend
This Saturday, May 12th, the Freedom Museum located at the Manassas Airport, will host the 2nd Annual… [more]
Some Shameless Self Promotion
Discounts on Lightroom Learning If you are thinking of incorporating Adobe Lightroom into your workflow,… [more]
The May Desktop Wallpaper Calendar is Now Available
Only a day late this month but hopefully the image makes up for my tardiness. This is a fisheye HDR image… [more]
Today’s Featured Story
The Google+ Conference for Photographers
I am tied up all next week, which is somewhat disappointing to me because it means that I can not be in San Francisco for the first ever Google + Conference for Photographers. When I first learned about the conference I knew that this was going to be unique in a lot of different ways. First of all, it’s the first ever conference devoted to a social media platform. Sure, there have been lots of tweet-ups, but they are all about meeting people not about the Twitter platform. Another first is how this conference is being marketed. It’s probably the first ever conference that is being … [Read More...]
Image Processing
Picking Custom Colors from your Photos in Lightroom
It's been quite a while since I have done any video tips or tutorials so I thought I would kick the week off with a new one from Lightroom. This isn't really anything new in Lightroom but it's something that a lot of people don't know about. It has to do with picking a custom color from within your photo for things like fonts, strokes, or even backgrounds. Have a watch of the video and enjoy your … [Read More...]
Adobe Improves the Already Great Adjustment Brush in Lightroom 4
I have been doing a lot of work with the beta version of Lightroom 4 as I prepare to write my next book and at first glance, you might think that there really isn't much change between versions 3 and 4. But the more that I use version 4, the more I am noticing that Adobe has really taken the time to refine and improve a lot of the existing features. Just the other day, my buddy Scott Kelby wrote … [Read More...]
Camera Gear
Do you really need a new camera?
I spend a good bit of time trolling Google Plus looking for interesting stories, comments, photos, etc. just to help keep my finger on the pulse of the photo community. Over the past couple of weeks the big chatter has been all about the new DSLR cameras that have been introduced by Canon and Nikon (and even Fuji and their X-Pro 1). There has been a lot of excitement but also a lot … [Read More...]
I’m Selling My Canon T2i/550D
It was a pretty tough decision but with the release of the new D800, I really needed to look at my current stable of cameras and start thinning the herd. It wasn't that long ago that I got my Nikon D7000 and I followed that up with the Sony SLT-a77. So you can see that something has to go. The Nikon and Sony are going to be keeping my camera bag company for the near future, which leaves no room … [Read More...]
Photography
The Google+ Conference for Photographers
I am tied up all next week, which is somewhat disappointing to me because it means that I can not be in San Francisco for the first ever Google + Conference for Photographers. When I first learned about the conference I knew that this was going to be unique in a lot of different ways. First of all, it’s the first ever conference devoted to a social media platform. Sure, there have been lots of … [Read More...]
My First D800 Photo Shoot
This past Saturday I gathered up some lenses, my new Nikon D800, and my youngest son and headed out to Manassas Municpal airport to see some cool aircraft and watch a little aerobatics. This was my first real photo shoot with the D800 and I had a real blast putting it through its paces. The weather was fantastic so I can't tell you about the ISO performance of the camera (I shot between ISO 100 … [Read More...]
HDR
Creating Faux HDR in Lightroom – the New and the Old
I was working on one of my Lightroom chapters and I got to the section where I described how to do a faux HDR look using the sliders in the Basic panel when it hit me, the sliders I normally use for creating the effect are not there anymore. In LR3 there is a Recovery, Fill Light and Brightness sliders but those are gone, having been replaced by a Highlights, Shadows, and Whites sliders. I then … [Read More...]
Single Image Tonemapping in Photoshop CS5
The other day I was processing some bracketed HDR images that I had recently shot. My typical workflow is to take the images from Lightroom into HDR Pro in Photoshop. I don't typically tonemap in Photoshop, just create the HDR file and save it as a 32-bit radiance file. Then I open the newly created file in Photomatix Pro for tonemapping and then save it back into Lightroom. There's an option in … [Read More...]
