2012/02 Milky Way Photography 101
Last April in Baja I didn’t get it right photographing the Milky Way. Our goal this month is to lay the groundwork for creating an outstanding image of our galaxy's heart on the first go . . .
2012/01 Ultralight Backpacking and Photography
Ultralight Backpackin’ Tips by Mike Clelland is easy, organized reading. Even better, every page the book entertains with illustrations that mimic classic (Keep on Truckin’) Robert Crumb . . .
2011/12 2011 Favorite Image Critique
In 2011 I shot many panoramas, setting up and shooting them in many locations. I also drove my car a lot less. Shooting locally was key . . .
2011/11 Lightroom 3 Black and White
If Ansel Adams had the darkroom power of Lightroom 3 to manipulate black and white imaging, he’d do a leaping victory dance like Jack Black in The Big Year . . .
2011/10 Look Thrice; Shoot Once
I reviewed some wildflower scenics from my August, 2011, Olympic National Park shoots and was once again reminded of the old carpenter maxim “measure twice, cut once”. . . .
2011/09 Composition for Panoramas
A successful pano requires not so much mastery of the technical aspects, easily done, but thought and imagination . . .
2011/08 Reverse Stacked Lens Macro
The beauty of the stacked lens is that it can be a powerful magnifier, well beyond 1X . . .
2011/06 Clipped Bird Wing Repair in Photoshop Elememts 8
A throw-away image rises to four-stars . . .
2011/06 Focus Stacking
Focus stacking . . . is a clever digital answer to lens optic limits that conspire to demolish resolution and depth-of-field (DOF) . . .
2011/05 Expedition Trip Critique—Isla Carmen
I had a bit of anxiety the first few days of my April, 2011, Isla Carmen circumnavigation. I felt I wasn’t getting the shot . . .
2011/04 Expedition Trip Plan, Part II—the Photo Plan
All the while during research, I develop a shot list that, importantly, also includes sketches . . .
2011/03 Expedition Trip Plan, Part I—the Gear
The listed gear will enable me to capture just about everything . . .
2011/02 Waterproof Camera Bag: Sagebrush Dry
I still use the Pelican (box) to safely stow photo gear, but for active photography on the water, my waterproof answer is
Sagebrush Dry (formerly Sagebrush Dry Goods) . . .
2011/01 2010 Favorite Images Critique
Keep that viewfinder glued to your eyeball and look, look, look . . .
2011/01 More 2010 Favorite Images Critique
Keep that viewfinder glued to your eyeball and look, look, look . . .
2010/12 Hot Spots and Spotlighting
(It's a) well-composed image. If I can deaden the hotspots, and spotlight the central area, I may have a winner . . . .
2010/11 Backpacking and Photography Re-visit
I feel like I thrived (on the Enchantments backpack trip), despite the 4,400 ft vertical climb the first day over Aasgard Pass . . . .
2010/10 Pelican Box Fiasco
I got caught in a rookie mistake last week, on the Bowron Lake Canoe Circuit in British Columbia. . . . .
2010/09 Tripod Tricks
I decided to try cramming the Avalanche Lilies at Mirror Pond into the foreground. To do so meant getting down to their level, and to do that I needed a tripod that got low . . . .
2010/08 Dark Sky Drama with Lightroom 3 Adjustment Brush
Darkening the sky improves the photograph by drawing attention to other bright areas in a scene . . . .
2010/07 Weather, Whether
I let the weather forecast drive the shoot, and designed an accommodating overnight trip to the Olympic Peninsula . . . .
2010/06 Tilt and Telephoto: Tools for Summer Wildflowers
If you haven’t done so already, it’s time to dust off the wildflower lens kit . . . .
2010/05 Can't find your images? Step up to the Lightroom Filter Bar
Finding images in Lightroom is done in the Library . . . .
2010/04 Got Histogram? Field Tool Extraordinaire
A camera’s histogram is a great field tool, among the best of tools in a digital photographer’s kit . . . .
2010/03 Canon 7D: AI Servo for BIF (Bird in Flight)
My hope for the 7D was that I finally had a camera that could nail a high percentage of BIF shots . . . .
2010/02 Lightroom 2 Spot Removal (on steroids)
I find I use Ligthroom 2 Spot Removal frequently, with wildlife photos to remove distracting twigs, for example, and sometimes, to move whole subjects . . . .
2010/01 Frame It!
Put depth in your photos with a classic compositional technique . . . .
2009/12 Cheap Fifty
If I was going to use the sub-$100 Canon 50mm f/1.8 for scenics . . . where sharpness is a priority, shouldn’t I spring for a pricier prime?
2009/11 Get Creative with Timer Remote: Canon TC-80N3
For super-sharp, tripod-mounted images, and for expanding your shot repertoire, it’s a practical tool . . .
2009/10 Light-weight Backpacking and Photography
Let’s have a look at cutting the weight on our backs—and reach for those wilderness dreams . . .
09/09 Backpacker Panorama Hardware
I imagined Prusik Peak in the Enchantments, or Indian Henry’s at Mt. Rainier, shot in a breathtakingly large angle of view and incredible detail . . .
08/09 Image Maturity
The late, great Galen Rowell crafted the term “image maturity” to describe a quality of an image . . .
07/09 Bird Photographer Kayak
Photographers would do well to choose a kayak for the kind of paddling they intend to do: a kayak that gets you a stunning and unique mountain lake location, as well as serve as a bird photography platform . . .
06/09 10-day Power Trip
Card and battery edifice: Ten days of digital photography without a recharge . . .
05/09 Collection Efficiency
It used to take me an hour or more to find and prepare images for . . . a monthly bird photo meeting. With a functioning Lighroom Library and some specific Lightroom 2 tools, the timeframe now is more like 10 minutes . . . .
04/09 Finding Perspective
At the Santa Cruz Kayak Surf Festival . . . a matter of perspective—what angle, what position, what elevation, what field of view or lens choice would yield the best photograph . . . .
03/09 Gimme Dat DNG?
Wouldn’t it be cool to use any software to develop raw files? So far, the big boys aren’t playing . . . .
02/09 A Matter of Numbers
Three is magic. And five is better that four, seven better than six . . .
01/09 Make That a Vertical
Dang! If I'd only shot that as a vertical . . .
12/08 Vision in Photography?
Vision implies seeing the future, in a non-obvious way, like getting a patent . . .
11/08 Get Smart with Star Ratings
It sure strokes the ego to put your 5-star portfolio images on display at the click of a filter button . . .
10/08 Raw vs. jpg
Since going to a digital SLR in ’05, I’ve always shot Raw. Shooting jpg was for hobbyists . . .
09/08 Lightroom 2: Whoo-Hoo!
A little more than a year after introducing a catalog and image processor software called Lightroom, Adobe upgrades a winner. I feel like I'm Ansel Adams on steroids . . .
08/08 Adobe Elements 6 Panoramas
If you haven’t used the Panorama feature of Adobe Elements 6, you’re in for a treat. . . .
07/08 Digital Thinking
Photographing with today’s digital SLR’s is the stuff of dreams . . .
06/08 Polarize that sky (without a polarizer)
In the March, ’08 tip I discussed “the only filter”—the polarizer—a filter that hasn’t gone away with digital, and whose hallmark is a deep, blue sky. But a dramatic blue sky can be achieve in Photoshop, or especially in Adobe Lightroom . . .
05/08 Full-frame Bokeh
Here’s a simple question. Suppose you can approach your subject closely, filling the frame. What gives a better result, a full-frame sensor or APS . . .
04/08 Handheld Super-telephoto Helper
The new crop of digital SLR’s—and some field choices—provide the kit to do the improbable . . .
03/08 The Only Filter
In days of pre-digital yore, outdoor photographers carried a bunch of filters . . .
02/08 Packing a small sea kayak
Most photographers aren't burly-burly men, they just want a kayak to get them to a photo-op. Here I pack a small 15 ft kayak . . .
01/08 Going solo? Go Gorillapod!
Always looking for alternatives, a few months ago I added a new tool to the arsenal, a Joby Gorillapod SLR-Zoom . . .
12/07 Do-It-Yourself Backyard Nesthole
Out on a woods walk one spring, I observed a pair of chickadees holing out a nest in a snag. Significantly, it was five feet off the ground . . .
11/07 People in Nature
A missing element to make many a great scenic saleable can be pretty obvious. It's an element that's also ignored, overlooked, forgotten and even belittled
by us nature photographers. Yet it’s an element we find endlessly fascinating, an element that grabs the attention in every scene . . . .
10/07 Remote Imaginings
An assemblage of eight Wood Ducks — preening, stretching and snoozing — and perched on a log in good light would make a great photo.
7/07 Floral Portrait Conundrum
When shooting wildflower or floral portraits — pictures of single flowers or small groups of flowers — it's often difficult
to achieve both sharpness in the flower(s) and . . . .
4/07 Beat the Gray Sky Blues
The Northwest (US) where I live features some of the planet’s grayest skies, a nightmare of gray on gray . . . .
1/07 Go Dynamic with Diagonals
Photographers should regularly remind themselves that pictures are static and two-dimensional. . . .
12/06 Staying Charged On the Road
You're not staying in a hotel. Campground electricity is in the bathroom, maybe. But you're driving an hour or more between shoots . . .
11/06 Canon Picture Styles
Miss Velvia film? Shoot RAW, and punch up your outdoor scenics (or bird photos) with Canon's Landscape Picture Styles . . . .
9/06 Patience
You've found a wildlife shot to match your vision. Getting the shot often requires
something more. Call it doggedness, tenacity, perseverance, or simply patience . . . .
8/06 Split ND Filters: Glass vs Digital
After hiking to Spray Park at Mt. Rainier NP, I shot a few frames to compare
a graduated (split) neutral-density filter with achieving similar results in Photoshop. . . . .
7/06 Take your eye off the Viewfinder
Serious film photographers wouldn’t think of it, but point-and-shoot digital
shooters routinely snap photos with camera at arms length. . . .
Also see FAQ for on-the-water advice.
