Pro Techniques

There was a time when all wedding photography was pretty much the same. Well-trained photographers worked from “shot lists” and used high-end, medium format equipment. They took wedding portraits (many in-studio) whose hallmarks included great color, sharp details, beautiful lighting, and well-posed subjects. Wedding albums were filled with 8x10”, 8x8”, and 5x7”...

If you are a wedding photographer, you already know what I’m about to tell you. The advent of inexpensive digital cameras that can produce amazingly good photos has shaken up the wedding market. With that and other matters in mind, I interviewed four of the top wedding photographers in the US and asked them some hard questions about where the wedding market might be headed. Our top shooters...

There are plenty of reasons to eschew perfect sharpness. A classic application was to suppress lines and wrinkles, or just for a light, airy mood: as Tallulah Bankhead once said, “They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum.” Another reason is to create the sense of something half-remembered, imperfectly limned in the picture as in...

For all practical purposes, you can narrow your film scanning options down to four choices. There are three types of scanners: drum, flat-bed, and dedicated film scanner. The fourth alternative is to have your film scanned by a professional lab.

When I began this project—what has since evolved into something much more than I originally imagined—it was a hobby.

We have all had the experience of looking at old photographs that transport us back to a different age, whether it is 20 years ago, or 120. It can be very tempting to try to recreate a vintage look, whether for a particular emotional effect or simply because we can. But what are the actual differences, and how can we recreate them?

There are at least 10 answers or groups of answers...

The guy at the camera store told you that a filter is “cheap insurance against fingerprints and expensive repairs” but was he really looking out for your best interests?