Pro Techniques

Sort By: Post DateTitle Publish Date
Jon Sienkiewicz  |  Feb 01, 2007  | 

Sooner or later, you're going to be tempted to buy a product that's labeled "refurbished." It will probably be the lower price that attracts you--after all, there is one and only one reason to even consider "refurb" and that is to save money. Depending on where you shop, you may be led to believe that the refurbished item is as good as...

Rosalind Smith  |  Jan 01, 2006  |  First Published: Jan 01, 2007  | 

How do you translate an idea into an image? Or convert words into a photograph? How can a picture create a sense of fear and is this fear something we are born with? Perfect pitch... How might you define this phenomenon with your camera? Or hypergraphia, the compulsive need to write?

These were among the puzzles that confronted Cary Wolinsky for his story on...

Jay McCabe  |  Jan 01, 2007  | 

"How do you get a handle on telling the story of life on earth in images? It took tons of research to master the material."

For his most recent book, Life: A Journey Through Time, Frans Lanting traveled, researched, and photographed for over six years, but when you consider that his goal was to document the story of life on earth, it seems a reasonable amount...

Jack Neubart  |  Nov 15, 2006  |  First Published: Dec 01, 2006  | 

Changing lenses on a digital SLR subjects the interior to invasion by dust and other airborne particles. While we can avoid the problem with prudent handling, eventually we'll have to face the facts: dust will get on the sensor. The imaging sensor, whether CCD or CMOS, is a dust magnet. As soon as the camera is turned on the sensor becomes electrostatically charged. Any...

Jon Sienkiewicz  |  Nov 01, 2006  | 

It's impossible to be a serious digital photographer without learning at least a little bit about computers. Some people take to computer technology like kids take to dirt, but many never get beyond e-mail and Photoshop. Don't get me wrong--that's not bad--but when the need to upgrade arises, the folks who are short on computer skills sometimes think...

Jay McCabe  |  Nov 01, 2006  | 

"Photographers may believe in certain pictures, but they have to have the educated eye of the picture editor."

"We're actually looking at film," David Doubilet says. He's at the offices of National Geographic magazine, going over the take from a recent two-month assignment in the South Pacific. The job was shot with both film and...

Chris Maher and Larry Berman  |  Sep 01, 2006  | 

As a young photographer, Eric Meola's first job after college was assisting Pete Turner. He got the job through the same passionate perseverance that has driven him in countless successful assignments. It helped him create a unique visual style that has carried throughout his entire career.

Shutterbug: After about 18 months of assisting Pete...

Jay McCabe  |  Sep 01, 2006  | 

"None of my sample albums have family formal shots. I intentionally leave them out because they're not what I specialize in."

"A lot of it comes down to your client's expectations before the wedding," Mike Colon says of his relationship to the bride and groom. "You have to talk about what they're really expecting, what...

Howard Millard  |  Sep 01, 2006  | 

Color can thrill, color can dazzle, but often a black and white or monochrome image is more powerful. Black and white may better convey the feeling you want to evoke for a particular image--more dramatic, more abstract. Paradoxically, even when you know that you want a final photo in black and white, you should shoot digitally in color, as you should scan a film or print...

Stan Trzoniec  |  Aug 01, 2006  | 

My first macro lens was the popular Nikon 60mm Micro-Nikkor. Good move, I thought, as the 60mm focal length could double as an all-purpose lens for a variety of assignments. Trouble is, when I started to get into more and more 1:1 (life-size) work, I only had 21/2" of working space between the front of the lens and my subject. The 105mm was next, sharp as a tack but again...

Joseph A. Dickerson  |  Aug 01, 2006  | 

It's a well-known tenet that Perspective Control (PC) or tilt/shift lenses are intended for shooting architectural subjects. But who says you have to use them that way?

A PC lens lets you do a certain amount of tilt/shift, rise/fall control, a limited equivalent to a technique that view camera photographers can fully exploit via the...

Rosalind Smith  |  Aug 01, 2006  | 

Imagine living on a beautiful island: Look to your left and see the sun rise in the morning; look to your right and see it set each night.

The secret nuances of color on the horizon where the sky meets the sea and the sea meets the shore have drawn photographer Alison Shaw to Martha's Vineyard off the coast of New England, where she has lived and photographed for...

Jim Zuckerman  |  Aug 01, 2006  | 

Photography can do two things that no other artistic medium can do: It can freeze motion so we are able to examine every detail in a fast-moving subject, thus revealing things that our eyes could never catch; and it can blur the same subject to express the fluidity and aesthetics of motion. When you blur a subject with a long enough shutter speed, it blends the background with a...

Barry Tanenbaum  |  Aug 01, 2006  | 

In the early 1980s, when he was just starting out as a commercial and advertising photographer, Rob Atkins took a few trips to the Southwest. "I went to photograph the great natural wonders," Rob says, "like the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley." But as he traveled to those and other destinations, something else caught his eye. "So often, out in the...

Clint Farlinger  |  May 01, 2006  | 

As I look over my favorite photographs taken through the years, a common theme intertwines many of them together: serendipity has played a major role in creating those images. Given this, I decided I wanted to be lucky more often (as luck has it, this is actually possible). Recently I read an article about the science behind luck and how luck is not random, but rather something we...

Pages

X