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Tamrac Jetty 7 Bag: The Jetty 7 sling pack is the ideal companion for your compact DSLR (or mirrorless) camera—with an attached zoom lens up to 7-inches. It is roomy enough to hold a few extra lenses as well as a flash and various small accessories. The pack's sling design makes it easy to carry and access all of your gear. It even has enough room for a tablet, your phone, keys, and other assorted accessories. 

Trains are an ever-popular photography subject but we didn’t want to limit this assignment to just one mode of transportation. Instead, we decided to do a riff on the Christmas movie classic “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and let readers decide which speedy subject they wanted to shoot. We weren’t, necessarily, looking for action shots of these vehicles for this assignment but adding an element of motion in your images did not hurt. 

I’ve shot thousands of pictures with hundreds of great lenses over the past 40+ years, but these seven have a special place in my heart. That’s because they capture beautiful images that have “the look”—an elusive quality that may be a combination of excellent detail and sharpness plus a natural roundness in their rendition. It’s not bokeh exactly—that refers to smooth transitions and shape retention in the out-of-focus areas of the image—although these lenses all have gorgeous bokeh as well. 

One of the most important things in photography is composition, and windows and doorways can be great framing devices for your images. Much like a picture frame, a window or a doorway can be used to draw the viewer’s eye to a subject. We’ve seen them used for portraiture or landscape photography to great effect but, for this assignment, you were free to use them however you liked.

Without a doubt, the most popular images on the Internet (aside from cat photos) are of sunrises and sunsets. What is it about these daily acts of nature that so inspire us? It’s hard to say but easy to see. 

Inkjet printmakers now have a range of printing paper options that go well beyond the wildest dreams of darkroom printers in terms of size, surface, and print “look.” While covering all the offerings would fill all the pages of this issue, and then some, what follows is a sampling of paper options that I have recently tested with some suggestions about how they might best be put to use in your creative endeavors. 

When a photographer leaves the studio to go on location, they need to start packing. It doesn’t matter whether you’re slinging gear into a Range Rover or a baggage handler is stuffing it inside an Airbus, you need tough, dependable bags and cases that are up to the job. How do you pick the bags and cases that hold your equipment? Like green bags? Prefer anonymous bags? Want a hard case? What about wheels? The answer to these questions and more are found in this month’s installment of “One Case to Schlep.”