Ya work with what ya get


On christmas evening, the threatened storms rolled in, giving us the third snowfall of December. This is a fairly rare occurrence for this latitude, where we usually don’t get snows until January at least, and often not this heavy. While I learned how to drive in central New York, I don’t have a vehicle ready for winter driving, so when the roads get treacherous, I stay read more

Journalistic integrity

I’ve been reading a couple of books recently on photojournalism, one by the editors of Time, the other by the editors of National Geographic, and it’s brought up some things I’ve kicked around in my head for a long time regarding how we think of photojournalism, and most especially editing. Lucky you now gets to read them, if you skip below the break.

As close as it gets

Yep, I’m actually out watching the lunar eclipse progress – or at least, I was. The conditions are deteriorating and I’m both too cold and too tired to stay with it. This is as close as I’m likely to get to live-blogging, by the way. I know that’s disappointing my legions of followers who have been waiting for an update.

In my area, we’ve got thin overcast starting read more

On composition, part six


Some of the things that create the difference between snapshots and compelling photographs are subtle. Nevertheless, they are extremely good habits to have. In this case, I’m going to talk about position.

Because we live in a three dimensional world, the relation and position of objects within the frame will change depending on how close you are to them, how close they are to each other, your read more

Communicating science

So in an earlier post I denigrated some efforts that were being taken supposedly to “communicate science,” or to be more specific, to help foster an interest and understanding of science and try to reduce the idea of scientists as either hopeless nerds or conmen pulling a fast one on the public read more

Book Review: Your Inner Fish

In a previous review, I talked about a book that dealt with the concerted efforts by creationists to discredit evolution, and the book was specific to the goal, but not aimed towards greater familiarization with evolution itself. Enter Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin, which tackles that aspect more specifically.

Shubin opens with some read more

Compensation: It doesn’t refer to those giant lenses

After a recent post, someone remarked about the effect I showed in one of the illustrating photos, reminding me that this is one of those photography techniques that’s much easier to implement than to explain – and I know, because it’s the hardest thing I’ve had to teach students. So here goes an attempt within a post, on the subject of exposure compensation.

One key part read more

Almost made history

A few years ago, I took a weekend photography trip to the Outer Banks of NC with a friend, and among others, took one of my favorite black & white photos seen here (and twice at least on this blog.) But I haven’t told the backstory, and how I nearly made history, until now.

While wandering the beach at Buxton, just south of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse, we came across a small placid tidal read more

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