Jon Sienkiewicz

Camera store employees can be opinionated—to put it kindly. They often make up jokes about the brands of cameras and lenses they consider inferior. Some can be vicious. Here are a few of my favorites. We’re using the mythical Sputnik brand for our examples.

It comes as no surprise that many professional and some high-output amateur photographers use AI-assisted editing apps and/or plug-ins to perform standard image editing operations in bulk. Pros have outsourced common, repetitive editing tasks (like knocking out backgrounds) for years. In fact, beginning back in the good ol' days of analog photography, studios routinely outsource retouching and — of course — film processing and printing.

Deleted images do not “disappear.” Formatting a memory card does not “erase” the images.

Never sell or loan a memory card unless you’re willing to risk the possibility of sharing every image, video, tax return and any other file that’s ever been saved to it. The same applies to hard drives, SSDs and USB drives. Here’s why it happens, and how to protect yourself.

You know a tool is hyper-useful when you recognize its potential with little or no explanation. Perception depends of frame of reference, and photographers are quick to imagine how certain items mesh with their image-making work habits. Foil windshield visors become ad hoc reflectors, for instance, wooden boxes become props and discarded sunglasses translate into creative filters.

Here's a trio of photo accessories that you may find indispensable once you comprehend the logic that conceived them.