Too cool, part eight: It’s not the tool, it’s how you use it


Green herons (Butorides virescens) are cool birds. Small, subtle little guys, they tend to be pretty shy in these parts and not pose for photos all that eagerly – the shot above (and here) was taken at Wakodahatchee Wetlands read more

There’s always a way

Skimming through my archive photos looking for a topic for a blog post, I found one! Amazing, isn’t it? Anyway, one of the things I tell my photography students (and anyone else that will listen) routinely is that chasing equipment isn’t the key to getting those wonderful images they’ve been after. I’d use myself as an example, because I’ve worked on a shoestring all read more

Another update

Spurred on by this post, I added a page about exposure to the Tips & Tricks gallery on my main website. It can now be found here, and covers what the camera is doing, what you’re after, and how to achieve what you want.

Exposure isn’t a simple subject, so don’t expect a quick explanation, but hopefully this will help you understand it if you need help. Take a look and see what read more

On composition, part seven: Depth

So our next topic of discussion on the subject of composition is “depth” – what it does and how to present it.

Depth is one of those things that is subtle, but very effective, most especially in landscape photography. Drawing the viewer into the photo, making them feel that they have a window into your image, rather than a flat “painting,” can give a much better impression. read more

Quiz time!



All right, so today marks the second anniversary of my first blog post, with this being the 148th actual post. No, this doesn’t call for a celebration, because I’m not only not into relatively meaningless milestones, I expected to be seeing more visits than this by now. Ah well.

So instead, I’ll provide a quiz question (mostly because I feel some need to put something up here today.) read more

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

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

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

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