Photo How To

You have common sense enough to know that you need a spare battery, high capacity memory cards, USB card reader and, for sure, a subscription to Shutterbug, so we won’t restate the obvious. But there are a few other things you really should have to maximize the fun and function of your new camera.

Hi everybody! Welcome to my new Q&A column here in Shutterbug—a magazine I’ve been reading, and been a fan of, for so many years—so it’s truly an honor to be here with you. I invite you to send in your questions to editorial@shutterbug.com (with “For Scott Kelby” as the subject line), and I’ll do my best to answer them in Ask a Pro. Now on to this month’s questions.

He lives in a historic California gold-mining town about an hour out of San Diego, so the props for Ed Masterson’s Old West images are easy to come by: a barrel borrowed from a nearby winery, a pistol from a friend’s gun collection, a book from an antique shop, weathered wood from old barns nearby, and so on.

The below video from Red Bull Illume just might take your breath away. The short, hair-raising clip documents how photographer (and skydiver) Wolfgang Lienbacher created a series of stunningly beautiful images of the Red Bull Skydive team in action while in a freefall himself.

Many, many years ago a coworker at Altman Camera in Chicago showed me that it was possible to screw a Vivitar +10 Macro Adapter into a partially disassembled set of Nikon K-series extension rings and thereby build a soft focus lens that practically exploded with delightfully horrendous aberrations. It was fixed-focus, you had to bob to-and-fro like a drunken sailor to use it, but it was sensationally unsharp and I’ve been hooked on this genre ever since.

I’m what (the immortal) Stan Lee calls a “true believer” and I’ve been a fan of comic books since childhood. As a result, I can’t resist a convention because it’s an opportunity to dive into the world of fandom and mingle with like-minded people from around the country.

Hi everybody! I’m very excited to be launching a new Q&A column here in Shutterbug—a magazine I’ve been reading, and been a fan of, for so many years—so it’s truly an honor to be here with you. I invite you to send in your questions to editorial@shutterbug.com (with "For Scott Kelby" as the subject line), and I’ll do my best to answer them in Ask a Pro. OK, let’s jump right to it.