The fans are screaming; the Bulls have the ball, and you are following number 23 as he approaches the basket. He jumps, he shoots … you score! You did get that picture just as the ball left his fingertips, didn’t you? If you got that Sports Illustrated cover shot, the ball would be frozen just […]
Back in the early 1970s I learned a lesson about depth during the “String Art” craze. It was so popular it was actually being taught in schools. Basically put, you created geometric shapes, placed a certain number of points on those shapes, and connected those points with different colors of thread. The end result looked […]
Back in the days of black and white photography, I worked in a darkroom as a lab assistant, and sometimes students would make the mistake of asking me what I thought. If they wanted to learn this was not a mistake, but if they just wanted me say how great their work was, that was […]
When you hear the phrase Depth of Field (also called DOF) you may wonder why you should care as long as your pictures are in focus. Well since DOF is generally referred to as the range of a pictures over all sharpness; and most people are instinctively drawn to the sharpest part of the picture […]
In October 1978, the cover of National Geographic showed a self portrait of a gorilla using a camera. I’m serious—you can look it up if you would like. The cover shot was a self portrait, taken by a gorilla, and by the standards of the day it was actually pretty good! Each year 100 million […]
Color can be a dominant element in photography, but not always for the better. If you use color sloppily, just because it’s there, you have missed its real power. Back in the days of black and white, every image had to stand on its own merits. A red rose, for example, was not automatically thought […]
There are four main types of weather that often discourage photographers from even attempting what might be some of their greatest work: extreme cold, extreme heat, extreme moisture, and extreme wind. While each of these has probably at one time or another discouraged even the best of us from going out to shoot, they also […]
Over the years of learning about photography, certain lessons stick out in my mind. One of these was the Mailbox Assignment. The assignment was simple: take 36 shots of a mailbox. It had to be the same mailbox. Oh, and by the way…each shot had to be unique. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, let’s see, […]
The root word of repetition is “repeat”. When you repeat a certain size or shape or color you add strength to the overall image. Repetition is a basic concept in the world of art. If you want to make a statement, you repeat certain elements again and again. If you repeat something once or twice […]
Once upon a time, in a land far away, there was a photographer who always told his subjects, “Smile big for the camera.” The problem with this fairytale is that not everyone smiles all the time. Let’s say, for example, you say that to someone at a family reunion you happen to be covering, and […]
