Tools That Make Macro Photography Easier – Helicon Focus Pro and CamRanger

Spring has sprung.  New life all around us, providing a wealth of photographic subjects.  Perfect for macro photography.  Macro photography reveals the smallest of these subjects, from tiny lichens to the wing details of insects to the inner sculpture of a summer bloom.

Canon Macro LensMacro photography requires only one unique piece of equipment:  a lens that can focus within a tiny distance of the subject, resulting in an image that is the same size on the camera sensor as the subject is in real life.  But macro lenses have an amazingly small depth of field, almost guaranteeing that some part of the image will be out of focus.   What’s a photographer to do? Continue reading “Tools That Make Macro Photography Easier – Helicon Focus Pro and CamRanger”

Photography as Art

ScotiabankApril and May are the traditional kickoff months for photography festivals in this area.  Many photographers, themes and collections are on display.  So many, in fact, that viewing all of their work is impossible, and isolating favourities can be challenging.

In a recent excursion, I participated in a discussion of photography as art.  The premise was that in order to be noticed, you can’t just be a photographer – you need to be an artist.  You need to give your photographs a distinctive look, a distinctive emotional connection to the viewer.  This means going beyond just documenting a subject – it means creating a work of art.  And this isn’t new – all successful photographers have realized and operated on this basis since the days of pinhole cameras.

Featured-ImageThis leaves me wondering.  If photography must be art to be successful, is there a point where a photograph is no longer a photograph?  And where is that line?  The answer isn’t obvious.  Here’s why…

Continue reading “Photography as Art”

Is Nature Ever Natural?

In two weeks, my local photography club, the Oshawa Camera Club, will be holding a discussion and vote.  The subject:  how natural should nature photography be?  Club competition rules for the nature category are currently strict, limiting almost all evidence of “hand of man” and requiring that the image be a documentary of the subject in their natural environment.  But today’s sophisticated software opens the door to edits that are routinely applied in other categories, so why not here?  Here’s the debate… Continue reading “Is Nature Ever Natural?”

To Print or Not to Print, That is the Question

We didn’t learn about printing photographs during my training in digital photography.  Some of you might say “What did you expect, it was a DIGITAL photography course?”

Good point.  But I always felt there was something missing in my training and I recently attended a two day course on printing photographs.  It opened my eyes to the value of a hardcopy print.  Here’s why. Continue reading “To Print or Not to Print, That is the Question”

Tools That Make My Photography Easier – Luminar

For as long as I can remember, Adobe Photoshop has been the king of image editing software.  It is used by professionals in the photographic and graphic industries to work wonders with any form of image, even allowing you to create an image without using any camera at all.

Luminar BrandBut the consumer revolution left Adobe a bit behind, with savvy semi-pro and enthusiast photographers looking for image editing options that were reasonably priced and didn’t require a college degree.  To Adobe’s credit, they saw that demand and Adobe Lightroom was born.  But recent moves to subscription services and releases of updates users didn’t want have set them back a bit.  Room for others to step in?  Now we have a new player in this arena – MacPhun’s Luminar.
Continue reading “Tools That Make My Photography Easier – Luminar”

Light Painting with Patrick Rochon

I had the pleasure yesterday of attending a presentation by Patrick Rochon, also known as Patrick the Light Painter.

patrick-the-light-painterThere are many ways to express one’s creativity in photography and Patrick has chosen light as the medium for his expression.  You might wonder what’s unique about that, since every photographer uses light.  It’s how he uses it that sets him apart. Continue reading “Light Painting with Patrick Rochon”

Shedding Light on Adobe Lightroom

The most important tool in my kit is Adobe’s Lightroom CC.  It is the lifeline to my photographs, providing import, organization, editing and delivery for the thousands of images I’ve captured.

Lightroom is billed as a companion product to Adobe Photoshop.  It’s packaged with Photoshop in the Adobe Photography subscription plan.  Lightroom was designed from the ground up to be a standalone workhorse and many people use it as such.  But it is equally a great companion to Photoshop, allowing for many basic workflow tasks to be performed quickly in Lightroom before launching Photoshop for more complex edits.

Despite these positive features, I’ve spoken to people who describe Lightroom as frustrating and overly complex.  It seems this is because of 3 design decisions that Adobe made in terms of how Lightroom operates. Continue reading “Shedding Light on Adobe Lightroom”

Another Year

We all reflect at this time of year on the things we’ve accomplished, the friends we cherish and how life in general has treated us.  In my case, health issues took centre stage, but have ended positively.  I also finished school and started to dabble in photography more seriously.  I’ve settled into retirement from a full-time career and now have much more flexibility than I have ever had in deciding what to do with my day.  And I’m sharing the holiday season with friends and family and having a blast.

But it is time to get serious again and do some planning around where I would like my photography to go next. Continue reading “Another Year”

Adapting to Change

You might think that this is a piece on new photography technology or techniques, but it’s more fundamental than that.  A month ago today, I received a new hip, courtesy of the Ontario healthcare system and the wonderful folks at Sunnybrook’s Holland Orthopaedic Centre in Toronto.  I’ve affectionately named my hip “Metallica Chalybs”, in honour of the materials out of which she is made.   Continue reading “Adapting to Change”

Graduation Day

After two years, 20 courses and a not so trivial investment in gear, I’ve received my diploma in digital photography from Durham College, Canada.  I am now a photographer.Graduation

Continue reading “Graduation Day”