I’ve had little time to do any very interesting photography in the past couple of weeks. Still, my cameras have been coming out with me and I’ve been grabbing shots when I can. However, with the weather being what it is (I live in Seattle so no surprise – it’s been raining) and work being busy, my images have been mostly opportunistic. When things are like that, I often default to a handful of simple styles and look for images that fit into that mold. Examples of styles might be …

Kaden Kratzer, a super photographer, recently shared his developing process with me for black and white film. We recently became good friends and I had remarked that I regularly found white specks on my scanned film using my original developing technique so Kaden sought out to give me a hand. This post is his instructions, which after I tried, worked flawlessly for me. Kaden is a wonderful photographer (who recently joined us over at www.lostinfocus.org), an expert at film / developing and a great guy who is very willing to …

I’ve always wanted to use an online self publishing / photo book service and recently I finally made time to give it a shot. I wanted to create Akuri a Christmas gift – a photo book of our beautiful dog who left us this year, Ume – so I chose blurb.com‘s offering. On the blurb site, they offer a download for their book making software ‘Booksmart’. Once installed on your PC (or Mac), you get to choose from several book styles such as:

Small Square (7″ x 7″)
Standard Landscape (10″ …

A photographer I know recently commented that they didn’t like any of their shots from 2009, and were hoping for a better 2010. I really liked that comment. That sort of reflection is rarely performed by photographers… we take sooo many pictures (usually several thousands per year) that it’s often easy to hide behind quantity, rather than quality. It reminds me of another conversation I was part of previously. A great photographer I knew had come back from New York and said that he was gutted he only had a …

A recurring theme has been coming up a lot recently with photographer friends of mine – about the importance of photo projects.
Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned professional who just happens to be stuck in a slump, my best advice to get things going again is to pick a project. The idea of a project can be extremely simple – even just a single word (e.g. “happiness” or “rain”). Once you’ve chosen it, shoot that, and nothing else, for a month. A project has the effect of constraining what …

I’ve been mailed at least a dozen times by students who have chosen either me or the theme “narrative photography” for a presentation / project / etc. People usually find me either from seeing my previous projects of because I come up as the top result on Google on a “narrative photography” keyword search (www.narrativephotography.com also ends up here). Most emails I get are usually questions of what / who my influences are / were, what gear I use, how I manage lighting, etc. I’m always happy to answer but …

Shooting dogs, in the photographic sense of course, is about as fun as photography gets for me. The pictures can be artistic, creative, fun, cute and very often ridiculous. However, getting them to sit and pose isn’t always easy, nor…

UV, NC (Neutral Colour) and other clear piece of glass – what you put in front of your expensive lens for protection. I gave these very little thought when I first starting buying lenses. I’d always wanted to protect the…

Every now and then I come across an image I find truly unforgettable that reminds me of the power of photojournalism. A few years ago, it was this image. On July 5th 1989, Tank Man, or the “Unknown Rebel” as…

I’m still new to the metering system of the Canon 5D (having been a Nikon user until about a month ago). While I usually get my exposure more or less right, sometimes I miss it coupled with the fact that…