As a photographer the question I face most often is, “What camera should I get to start out?” It’s a tough question. A lot of the answer depends on what you can afford and what you plan on doing with it. Is photography a hobby? Are you trying to make money at it? Going on [...]
Archive for July, 2011
Your First Camera
Posted by chris on July 29th, 2011
Posted in Articles 
Tags: canon eos, canon eos rebel, decent camera, nifty fifty, nikon body, photographers 
No Comments »Your First Portfolio
Posted by chris on July 27th, 2011
Once you’ve been in photography a few years, it will be time to put together a portfolio. The most common mistake new photographers make is trying to include all of their very best work. The goal of a good portfolio is to organize your work around themes and demonstrate your ability to capture the essence [...]
Posted in Articles Tags: journalism, photographers, photography, photos, uniqueness, visual style No Comments »My First Camera
Posted by chris on July 25th, 2011
When my dad was in Europe toward the end of WWII, he was a navigator on a C-47 cargo plane and got to travel around quite a lot. While he was there he bought a camera so he could take pictures of his many stops. Even though he was in Europe and had plenty of [...]
Posted in Articles Tags: argus c3, history of photography, interesting design, three decades No Comments »Top Rated Budget Lenses
Posted by chris on July 22nd, 2011
Cameras are for Christmas, lenses are for life. So goes the old saying in photography. You can spend a lot of money on lenses. A set of Zeiss primes will cost more than a car…a nice car. The good news is you don’t have sell your wheels to get good glass. With a little shopping [...]
Digital Light Meters
Posted by chris on July 20th, 2011
Even today it’s not unusual to see photographers and cinematographers carrying a light meter. It seems terribly old fashioned but there are still very good reasons for doing so, even in this age of sophisticated cameras with sophisticated, high-speed internal computers. Light meters are still handy in the computer age because the nature of light [...]
Posted in Articles Tags: digital light meter, nature of light, photographers, point selection, reflective qualities No Comments »Nikon D5100
Posted by chris on July 18th, 2011
I normally don’t write reviews of specific cameras, unless it’s one I shoot myself. But I’m making an exception for the Nikon D5100. What impresses me about this camera is not just the price or the build quality, which very closely match the Canon 60D, what I like about this camera is that it’s living [...]
High Speed Photography
Posted by chris on July 15th, 2011
One of the most fascinating aspects of photography is high speed photography. Cameras have the ability to freeze events in time that are too fast for your eyes to track. It’s a fascinating way to view the world and a profitable niche market in photography. If you want to do commercial high speed photography and [...]
Getting The Moon In Photographs
Posted by chris on July 13th, 2011
Getting the moon on your shots can add a dramatic element to a scene and an eerie quality to the lighting. One of the most dramatic shots I’ve ever taken was a moonlit night in the shadow of Mt. St. Helens in western Washington state that erupted in 1980. When the mountain erupted it blasted [...]
Posted in Articles Tags: exposure time, full moon, gimbal mount, manual exposure, phases of the moon, shutter No Comments »Basic Digital Camera Tricks
Posted by chris on July 11th, 2011
Sometimes when covering topics for commercial photography it’s easy to forget most people just want to take better pictures with their point-and-shoot cameras. So, today I’m going to lay out my tips for taking pictures with almost any digital camera. In some cases you may need to dig around in the menus to find these [...]
Posted in Articles Tags: digital camera, digital cameras, photos, point and shoot cameras No Comments »Glass Photography
Posted by chris on July 8th, 2011
Nothing can make you quite as crazy as a photographer than glass. It is, without a doubt, one of the most difficult things to photograph really well. Glass is a nightmare for a camera. It reflects everything, it displays bizarre catch lights and can seem nearly impossible to focus properly. And yet you won’t be [...]
