Family Photography How To

Minor League Baseball trumps the Big Leagues. Tickets are significantly cheaper, atmosphere is casual and parking is way easier. Plus the players are playing for heart, not purse. Although ballplayers on the farm teams may not have the talent or skills of the guys in The Show, the action—and therefore your chance for a great shot—is equal.

Here’s your guide to finding the teams near you, preparing for the event, and coming back with the most rewarding photos.

Show your best images to the world by posting in the Shutterbug Photo of the Day gallery. Here’s the quick and easy procedure along with some tips to help you navigate to the right place, and even some advice about composition and subject matter.

It’s November, and that means retail stores and malls are shifting into end-of-year holiday decoration mode. Soon the red-suited elf will be shaking his bell outside the train station. Is it rushing the season? You be the judge. One thing we know for sure: it’s not too early to pick up a few new ways to give your holiday photos that extra sparkle.

Freezing rain is falling, your tomcat is suing you for royalties from the YouTube videos he starred in, and every bird in the city boycotts your feeder because of your snoopy telephoto lens. Cheer up! We all have those days when we feel like f/16 in an f/1.4 world. But there’s always something to take pictures of—and it often can be found as close as our own kitchen.

Time to hit the Reset Button and put your notions of Image Quality on Pause. In our everyday lives as photographers we prize sharpness, saturation, acutance and absence of aberration when we idealize the images we want to capture. Now it’s time to recognize that images that are blurred, smeared, warped and otherwise traumatized can be beautiful.

Lensbaby lenses produce images that are intentionally unsharp, because optical aberrations can be beautiful. In a word, a Lensbaby turns blur into bliss.

Don’t wait! Plan your fall foliage photography forays now. Here are four interactive maps that help you predict when the fall colors peak in your area, plus a recommendation of three glass screw-in camera filters that make autumn colors more vibrant.