Photo How To

Some discouraged photographers complain and say they can’t get good shots because they don’t have the time or funds to travel to exotic, photogenic places. Sorry to rain on their pity party, but everyone can get decent images without a travel budget. Here are a couple projects you can start on tonight, as soon as it gets dark.

Need to shoot a camera for eBay, Thingamajig for your employer’s website or pastry for the bake sale? You can get slick, professional-looking results with minimal headache and a very tiny investment using mostly recycled stuff. 

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.

Most photographers prefer to be out in the field with their cameras, rather than sitting behind a computer processing photos. That means finishing up your edits as soon as possible without sacrificing quality.

Most photographers would rather be out in the field with a camera up to their eye rather than sitting behind a computer editing their work, and this means a streamlined workflow that delivers great results in a hurry.

Here's the frustrating thing about shooting sunsets: While these scenes are among the most popular that we capture, oftentimes our results fall far short of the splendor we witnessed through the viewfinder. That's because the beautiful warm tones and a perfectly balanced  exposure can be very difficult to get right in the camera.

It would be great if we could always expose images perfectly, with nice details in the highlights, shadows, and midtones. But when shooting under uneven lighting outdoors, it’s easy to be a bit off.