Here's a thought…

HT1429 - Yay for Zoom Lenses

From the buzz about prime lenses that has buzzed around photography for my entire life, I suppose they are the ultimate. Primes are certainly not the preferred for my kind of photography. Over the years, I've tried lots of primes, but I always come back to zooms when I get frustrated with the limitations of primes.

HT1430 - Hidden Images

I'm constantly amazed when I run across an image in my Lightroom catalog that has escaped my attention for a while. We see when we are ready to see. I guess that applies to image we may have captured years ago but haven't been properly prepared to see them.

HT1431 - How Many Pictures

Here is a question that comes up with some frequency. How many pictures should there be in a project? There is not, of course, a specific numeric answer to that question, but there are some principles that might help you think about this.

HT1432 - D-76 and Dektol

In my early days in photography, my instructor would only allow us to use D-76 to develop our file and Dektol to develop our prints. His contention was that we needed to learn how to use these two well before moving on to other developers. Does this still apply to how we learn today?

HT1436 - Unreasonable ISO Fears

"Always shoot at the base ISO unless it's an emergency situation." I can't tell you how many times I've heard this so-called advice. I think this might have been true in the earliest days of digital photography, but today's cameras are so much better.

HT1437 - When 24 Equals 21

Subtitle: When more is not nearly as much more as you think it is. Panasonic would love to seduce me to buy their new full-frame 24 megapixel camera. For me, those 24 megapixels are not as seductive as they could be because they are in my least favorite aspect ratio.

HT1438 - Ergonomics of a Phone Camera

I know that phone cameras have the potential to be used to make serious photographic artwork. I've seen it, I've published it, but for the life of me I can't do it. I simply cannot take a phone camera seriously and I think I know why: it's the ergonomics.

HT1439 - The Daily Photo Game

I've said for a long time now that artmaking is a conversation between us and others, including other artists. Here is a fun example of that in photography.

HT1443 - Pictures Arise from the Silence

One of the best ways I know to find a photograph in the chaos of the world is to simply stop looking for a photograph. There's a great analogy used in the world of meditation that I have found to be flawless in helping me find photographic subjects.

HT1444 - The Subtleties

Every one of us sweats bullets over subtleties in our images and prints that are likely to never be seen by most of our audience. If no one will notice those subtleties, why do we put so much effort into that last 1% that improves our photographs? We do it, of course, for ourselves and for that 1%.

HT1445 - No Technical Barriers

What if I could wave a magic wand and eliminate all technical barriers from your creative life? Would you find that a relief that unlocks a flood of productivity? Or would you find that the removal of technical barriers brought you face to face with the challenges of knowing what and why to photograph?

HT1446 - Multi-shot High-resolution Mode

I've been playing around with the multi-shot high-resolution mode of my Panasonic G9. Here are a few observations and first conclusions about this clever bit of technology.

HT1450 - Five Stars - An Alternative Use

Yesterday I was talking about the flawed strategy of using star ratings as an indication of the quality of an image. But that's not the only way we can use the star rating paradigm. Here's my alternative.

HT1451 - Rereading Moby Dick

Like many high schoolers, I had to read Moby Dick — and simply hated every moment of doing so. So when a friend suggested I read it again, I was more than a little hesitant. I dreaded the thought. Nonetheless, I jumped in and am finding it one of the most interesting books of my life. What changed?

HT1452 - Ruthless Editing

The earliest steps in assembling a project for me has been to build a collection in Lightroom of potential candidate images. The implication of this beginning is that the final selection is arrived through a process of elimination. This is really a difficult strategy because so often I find myself needing to eliminate images I really like.

HT1453 - Interruptible Time

One of the most valuable yet unexpected benefits of a digital workflow is that it is interruptible. That is to say, if I only have 10 minutes to work on an image, I can still make that productive time. In the wet darkroom days, I needed an uninterruptible number of hours to produce a print. That was fun, but not always practical.