Jon Sienkiewicz Blog

President Eisenhower said, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” I get that. It’s a truism that applies to things much lighter than D-Day, too. So as I watch March melt into April, I summon my highly analog paper Day-Timer calendar and begin plotting my summer. In pencil, of course. Here are the seven “must-do” activities I’ve strategized so far. 

In my review of the original Platypod Pro I suggested that it was “Quite possibly the coolest camera support around.” Well, here’s news: it just got bigger—and better. 

You’ve probably never thought of a pumpkin as being particularly shiny, but in fact, like many other common objects, their surface is glossy enough to produce glare. Glare is a photographer’s worst enemy. Glare appears as areas of blocked highlights that are completely devoid of detail. Remove the glare and the entire surface of the pumpkin appears in full rich color and lush detail.

Photo Walks are in. As we welcome spring to our part of the world, photo walks should be on your radar. But he who hesitates is lost wandering the streets alone. For example, Ricoh Imaging recently announced a photo walk in Las Vegas via an email blast. Slated for April 6, the event sold out with lightning speed. Thankfully, Ricoh has more walks at other locations in the works. Similarly, Fujifilm and Luminar Neo recently shared plans for 50 photo walks throughout the US. If you hope to participate in a photo walk, you must monitor the schedules and act FAST. Let's unpack this.

It comes as no surprise that many professional and some high-output amateur photographers use AI-assisted editing apps and/or plug-ins to perform standard image editing operations in bulk. Pros have outsourced common, repetitive editing tasks (like knocking out backgrounds) for years. In fact, beginning back in the good ol' days of analog photography, studios routinely outsource retouching and — of course — film processing and printing.

Micro Four Thirds mirrorless camera systems promised us lenses that are more compact but fully featured. That promise has finally been fulfilled—and it took Tamron, the master of the All-in-One Zoom, to make it happen.