Every wedding has its quirks… they’re all a little different and usually a little odd. This wedding, which I shot near Missoula, MT last October was no exception. But lest anyone get the wrong idea… the people involved were absolutely wonderful. The wedding was fun and comfortable, and generally enjoyed by all.

In fact, the even the trip there was beautiful. I stopped several times along I-90 on the way from Seattle to take photos of the beautiful fall scenery. The drive back was equally enjoyable… for the opposite reasons… but I’ll get to that later.

The wedding was scheduled for early on a Saturday morning, outdoors at state park known as Fort Fizzle. If you’re familiar with Montana weather, you’ll know that October mornings are cold, so the pre-ceremony breakfast and coffee were served around a series of camp fires and standing propane heaters.

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Who will benefit from paying for the Canon 7D?

This week’s introduction of the new Canon 550D / Rebel T2i raises some interesting questions.  This is a camera that clearly out-classes the Canon 50D in many regards, and has many of the features of the 7D, but at less than half the price. Will professional or semi-professional photographers be satisfied using the T2i instead of the 7D? What types of photographers will get any practical benefit from paying double for the 7D?

Let’s get this out of the way first. If you’re at least a semi-pro, you’ll want to opt for the 550D designation over the “Rebel”. What photographer over the age of 15 wants a camera with “Rebel” in red letters across the front?

More seriously, though, let me do a quick side-by-side comparison of their features. If you’d like to see the whole table at once, just click use the drop-down menu at the top-left of the table:

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To Make More Money

Save your money for new lenses and more pocket wizards – building a good photography website doesn’t need to be expensive. In the pages that follow, I’ll cover a few basic requirements and several options that you can use to create a feature rich, attractive, and profitable website in the shortest amount of time and for the least amount of money. You don’t need to know HTML or CSS or Javascript or Flash… so jump right in! Before long, you’ll be online and pulling in (at least a little) cash. It’s easier than you might think.

Photography is an expensive hobby… an SLR body, a few nice lenses, a good printer, and the related flashes, software and accessories, and you can spend $10,000 in very short order.  Photographers deserve to make back a little cash. Almost every means of making money with your photography either require or would benefit tremendously from a good website that is dedicated to your photography. Every photographer needs an online portfolio. They need a place to list their prices for services they offer. They need a gallery for their fine art, and a place to get their name into the public realm. Your needs will differ depending on your style of photography and your goals, but there are many commonalities as well.

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Since writing the original Quick Guide to Reef Tank Photography (which is a good place to start if you’ve never visited this site before), I’ve had a couple of additional opportunities to photograph reef tanks. I’ve been able to confirm a couple of my original suspicions and found problems with others, so I thought it might be worth posting them here.

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Canon Announces New Model of Iconic Lens : 70-200 f2.8 IS II USM

Today, Canon announced the release of their updated model of the 70-200 f2.8, a workhorse for photojournalists and and other photographers who enjoy its wide apertures, snappy auto-focus, and (usually) crisp optics. Don’t get your credit cards out yet… it won’t be shipping until at least April, according to Canon USA. Read the rest of the article for a quick summary of the key differences.

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Last week, I had the opportunity to take some photos of a beautiful reef tank down in Kirkland.  I’ve taken photos of freshwater fish before; at one point, I had a heavily planted tank with a nice collection of odd-ball fish. I’ve also taken a few snapshots in marine tanks, in addition to quite a bit of macro photography in general, so I didn’t anticipate too many problems.

So, I packed up my macro lens (a Nikon 105mm micro) and a fast 50mm f1.4, and went to start shooting. But I did encounter some problems, and I think that now, several days later, I’m getting a handle on the root causes. If you’re planning on shooting in a reef tank, perhaps you’ll find these tips useful. And if you have some useful insights, please post a reply!

General Tips

These were the general thoughts that I had in mind going into the shoot. Most of them will seem pretty basic, but if you don’t have experience with these tanks, they may help.

1. Set the White Balance : This is especially important if you have to shoot .jpg! There is rarely anything in a reef tank that is color-neutral, so your camera will have a hard time setting a reliable white balance automatically. More importantly, reef tanks (and aquariums in general) frequently use lights that are unusually high in color temperature (such as 10, 14, and 20,000 K), and if your camera is set at standard daylight settings, your photos will come out very blue.

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In early August I spent several days at Flathead Lake, in Montana. About 30 yards from my cabin was an old tree with a beautiful Osprey nest on top… a common site around the lake. Shortly after I arrived, though, I noticed that it was a much noisier nest than most. I took a closer look and found that in addition two the two adults, there also appeared to be 3 juvenile ospreys in the nest. I hadn’t brought a long telephoto lens, unfortunately; the longest I had was a 200mm, but with my Nikon’s APS-C conversion factor, that’s equivalent to a 300, roughly. I thought it was worth a shot. Or two.

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Introduction

Noise Reduction software is now an integral part of the photographic workflow, just as much as yellow and magenta filters were in the days of the wet B&W darkroom. They are particularly important, though, for those of us working in photojournalism, wedding photography, and similar fields that require us to shoot indoors in poorly lit venues at high ISOs. Even images from the best modern sensors benefit from proper noise reduction (NR) treatment.

One of Photoshop CS4’s few shortcomings, though, is its weak noise reduction functionality. To get the best results, it is now necessary to use 3^rd party software, either stand alone or as a Photoshop plug-in. Over the years, dozens of different NR programs have been released, but today, only a handful of them are really worthy of attention, either because of their popularity or effectiveness.

One wonderful site, MichaelAlmond.com, has already compared many of these programs, especially many of the older Photoshop actions, and I would not hesitate to recommend reading his information. I found, though, that his reviews were missing some key information and were, at the same time, not organized for quick reference. They’re also getting to be a little out of date (last updated in 2005). Consequently, I’ve decided to write some updated and augmented reviews of my own. I hope that you find them useful.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE MAIN ARTICLE INDEX

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I suppose that a lot of people are already really tired of HDR, and I admit that I have been too. When HDR techniques are used conspicuously, the resulting style is very distinctive but, consequently, also cliche. These days, when I use HDR, it is only when I need to use it subtly to bring in some extra shadow detail or reign in the highlights.

And then I a cousin of mine told me about Stuck In Customs, a blog of travel photography that is, as far as I can tell, entirely done with HDR. Some of the photos are predictably cheesy. Others, though, were pretty impressive, and I thought that I’d better do a little more experimentation with HDR myself. And so, I found myself on the Seattle waterfront last evening with a tripod and cable release, looking for scenes with high dynamic range… which, at night, was just about everything.

I framed this image thinking that I might be able to get the highlight details from the dock lights and building windows and still hold the shadow detail from the boardwalk and surrounding area. I took 5 exposures, ranging from so dark that no highlights were blown (almost black other than the lights) to so light that about 1/3 of the image was flashing as blown out on my camera back. 

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A Video Tutorial

In fact, I made this video as a test to see how the software would work, but it’s complete enough to be worth posting. I’ve learned that in future videos, I’ll want to work closer in.

In any case, this workflow is very simple and quick, but flexible and generally produces bright, vibrant results, which is exactly what we want with stock and landscape photos.

I’ve uploaded this video to youtube so it can be seen by anybody, but I’ve also created a high resolution version of the file, which you can download by clicking here: Quick Landscape Workflow . If you have any trouble playing this video, I recommend watching it with Media Player Classic, a free and excellent video player, which you can download in a matter of seconds.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this video, or if you have any suggestions for future videos. Part two of the “Sharpening” series will mostly likely be a video tutorial as well.

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