• Shameless Self-Promotion

    I know it’s been a super long time since I’ve posted, but I assure you that it wasn’t anything you did. Perhaps it sounds like a lame excuse but as much as I enjoy sharing photography news, tips, and ideas with all of you, this blog is just a hobby and life has a way of encroaching on hobbies sometimes. That having been said, and in the theme of “shameless self-promotion,” I would like to (very, very happily) announce that I finally posted my photos from both the Grand Teton National Park as well as Yellowstone National Park; a trip that I took nearly a whole year ago.
  • Canon Loyalty Program!?

    Sometimes I feel like a shill when I talk about these sales and deals, but it’s so hard for me to look at a fabulous bargain and not pass it on. Such is the case with the so-called Canon Loyalty Program, which is apparently Canon’s way of saying “thank you” for buying one of their point-and-shoot cameras. I found this on the venerable deal-hunting site “FatWallet,” and if you like you can read the original post yourself.
  • Double RAW Conversion

    The best thing about shooting in RAW is that you can “develop” the file to adjust exposure, white balance, and scores of other settings without losing much image detail. I’ve seen people do some pretty cool stuff with that ability, but those people don’t have an equally cool name, like Calvin Hollywood. Calvin Hollywood–and yes, that’s his real name–is a prolific photographer and digital darkroom master from Heidelberg, Germany. Maybe you’ve heard of him, but I hadn’t until this morning when I ran across this tutorial he made about “double RAW conversion” wherein he loads the same RAW file processed in two different ways into Photoshop to boost image detail.
  • Ever Wondered About Gamma?

    Have you ever wondered about that “gamma” thing you keep seeing? You nerd.

    Really, though, gamma is important and you have probably seen the word all over the place in photography and design. It’s actually a really cool thing and when you understand how it works you will likely feel better about yourself, your photographs, and about the universe. Well, you’ll feel smarter, anyway, and you will be. You’ll also be able to add another item to your lists of:

    • Answers to questions nobody will ever ask you,

    • Greek letters you recognize, and

    • Awkward things to bring up on a first date

    You can already check off number two if you look up on the right there. Yup, that’s gamma.

    Additionally, if you are friends with other photographers and they don’t know what gamma is or how it works, you might come out of this looking like a rockstar. At least to the extent that rockstars are knowledgeable about non-linear power-law expressions.

  • Product Photography on a Shoestring Budget

    Photography is awesome and I love it, but it’s super expensive sometimes. Photographers often commiserate with one another about the high price tags on tripods and ball heads (or sometimes they gloat, but the nice ones commiserate), and if you get into studio photography you are often getting into a whole new world of expenses from strobes and stands to backdrops and gels.

    Now, it definitely pays off to have the right tools for the job, and that starts to become glaringly apparent when you’re doing work with people, but for so-called tabletop product photography you can often get by with some home improvement supplies and a little ingenuity and patience.

    After the break, the resident product photographer and editor at Handmadeology shares a $12 product studio setup that yielded the image on the right.