Composition: Prescriptive or Descriptive?
If there is one question I get whenever I teach or discuss composition it is, “Yeah but do you shoot with all these compositional rules in mind or is it something you see afterwards?” To put it another way, are these compositional rules prescriptive or descriptive? And the answer, of course, is a little of [...]
Line of Sight
So much visual weight is given to the human face that it trumps just about everything else in an image.
Zack and Old Dogs
A photographer most of you know and if you don’t shame on you, is Zack Arias out of Atlanta. Zack was in New York recently and gave himself an assignment to shoot 10 portraits of 10 strangers in 10 hours. For some of us this is not hard, for others this is a complete nightmare.
There [...]
A Day of Texture
Hariman enjoying my 85mm 1.2
Yesterday I took a day off and went out and took some photos. I needed to get away from the computer, away from the four walls of my office and get out into the real world again. I called up a friend of mine, Hariman, and we went roaming the [...]
Exposed: Anticipating the Shot
This post is not so much about the story behind the image above, but about the “how” behind the image. I have been thinking a bit about what it takes to see “the image” before hand. I am not talking about telepathy. What I mean is when you go into a location to shoot, or [...]
Mastering the 85mm 1.2? Not quite.
Click on any of the images to view larger.
One of my blog readers, David T, asked if I would write about how I use the 85mm 1.2. He seems to think I have “mastered it”. Let me put that thought to rest right now. No way have I master the 85 1.2. This little lady [...]
FAQ: How do you photograph people? How do you approach them?
Today I thought I would do something a little different and answer a readers question online. The reason is his question is probably the most common question I get asked by other photographers; “How do you photograph people? How do you approach them?” I get this from newbie and veteran professionals alike. Here is the [...]
What a drag.
Remember how I said, we all need to step out of our box and stretch ourselves? Well, Thaipusam was that for me. I am not referring to the strange trance state people where in, or the body piercing. I am talking about a creative stretch. I think most of you, if you follow my work, [...]
Very Basic Lightroom Work Flow
Thanks to Sumit Dua of Los Angeles, CA, USA for his question and allowing me to use his image as an example.
Sumit wrote:
I am wondering how much professional photographers process these images to get the color to saturate and pop like they do in your work. Is it entirely done in the camera (and are [...]
Video: Hand Painting Photos With Oils in Photoshop
Well, sort of. Here is a technique I ran across on Kelby Training taught by Lisa Snider King. I really like her style. What can I say she is from Texas! So I want to give credit where credit is do. (Sorry Lisa, I realized in the rush to keep this tutorial 10 minutes, I [...]
The Radiant Vista
I am not sure what happened over at The Radiant Vista, but the good thing Craig Tanner, Mark Johnson and Matt Gibson had going over there went up in smoke. The Radiant Vista is no more. But the spirit of it continues on in at least two websites by two of the three. Craig Tanner, [...]
Bad at Spelling? Here is a helpful hint.
This is not a photo related entry today. But one I hope will be helpful to many folks. Maybe you are like me and cannot spell or maybe your grammar is, well, iffy. I was never great in school, in fact I just got out by the skin of my teeth as we say in the US. [...]
Be a Cultural Insider and get better photographs. (pt.2)
Picking up where we left off yesterday, I want to give some more thought to the actual “how to” of being a Cultural Insider.
Learn some key phrases: As I stated before, ideally learn these phrases in the mother tongue of the people you are photographing. You’d be surprised how many resources there are for this [...]
Be a Cultural Insider and get better photographs. (pt.1)
Having worked cross culturally for over 15 years, with 13 of those years spent living in Kashmir, India, I made it a point to run my company, Frontier Treks & Tours, as culturally sensitive as possible. So I became a student of culture and how to best be a non-destructive observer and how to gracefully enter [...]
Lightroom Plug-ins make Life a Breeze.*
*Ok, maybe that title is a bit of an overstatement.
We all know Lightroom is powerful. Most of my editing is done and post processing these days, and no longer in Photoshop. In fact, I would say with the advent of Lightroom 2 and local adjustments (see my video HERE) 95% or more of my [...]
Steve McCurry Sharp
One of the fun and quite frankly, thrilling things that digital imaging has been able to deliver that film never did, is the ability to give you truly razor sharp images. Yeah, we had sharp images in the film days, but not like what we can get now. With the digital cameras ability to grab [...]
Who says there is no "Un-Suck" button?
David DuChemin is fond of telling me and others there is no “un-suck” button in Photoshop. Hmm, I thought I was sure I saw one. Then yesterday I found it. You just have to look in the right place. Come on David, you know it’s there!
Sometimes a picture is worth the extra effort.
Final image
Original #1
Original #2
Yesterday, my wife and daughter and I went with some Malay friends to the Kampon or village. We played in rice paddies and ate a lot of good food and drank a lot of fresh coconut juice. I took a few images of our host’s children. One was particularly nice, but… not [...]
The Stock Jungle
I am not talking about the stock market, not that jungle. The jungle I am hacking through is the stock image jungle. From monsters like Getty Images and Corbis to the micro stock agencies where you can pick up a great image for $5 or less. Who are they and how does this all work. [...]
Not Magic, Just CS3 Auto Align.
This afternoon, I did a photoshoot of a friend’s two little girls. As often when photographing children, they were wiggly. So I have one ok shot of the two girls in the grass (fig 1) and one not so good (fig 2). But if I could combine them, I would have a winner. Enter, CS3’s [...]
I shoot for mostly NGOs and nonprofits. I photograph images of the unknown, the forgotten and the helpless. These are often the stories that most people overlook. 
