LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process

HT2665 - Recovering Shadows Is Easier Than Recovering Highlights

HT2665 - Recovering Shadows Is Easier Than Recovering Highlights When determining exposure, especially in high-contrast scenes, we often need to bias our settings to protect either the shadows or the highlights. With my cameras and the way I tend to process images, I'd much rather underexpose and protect the highlights after which I can always pull up enough in the shadows give a hint of life in the darkest tones. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2664 - Our Attachment to Stuff

HT2664 - Our Attachment to Stuff In the early 1980s, I fumbled a lens swap and dropped an expensive view camera lens into the Pacific Ocean. I grieved then and still grieve to this day. Why is stuff so important? Every photographer I know has a piece of gear they lament selling — or losing. Isn't it silly that we can be so attached to stuff? I used to think this had something to do with the loss of potential, but now I'm not so sure. I once had a client who owned a Western store and I learned a great deal about stuff and our sense of self-identity from that experience. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2663 - How Each Image Contributes

HT2663 - How Each Image Contributes Although they are both forms of music, listening to a piano recital is a completely different experience than listening to a fully orchestrated symphony. The same can be said when comparing the single, standalone image and the multiple-image project. In the orchestra, each instrument contributes its part to the whole. In the multi-image project, each image contributes its uniqueness yet still exists in harmony with all the others. This is the key to selecting the images to be included in the project. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2662 - One Grain of Sand

HT2662 - One Grain of Sand It's difficult to admire one grain of sand while we are standing on the beach. I offer this as a metaphor for photography today. You and I sweat bullets to make a photograph we can be proud of, but if we look about a bit, we see trillions of photographs being made every year here in the digital age. Even if our masterpiece is spectacular, it is difficult to get it noticed in the tsunami of images being produced every day. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2661 - Images That Changed My Life

HT2661 - Images That Changed My Life Knowing my love for photography, a non-photographer friend of mine recently asked if there were images that literally changed my life. I fumbled an answer at the time, but I've thought a lot about this in the recent weeks. I realized I have two sets of answers: images I produced that changed my creative life, and images others produced that have had an enormous impact on me. The most interesting part of this thought experiment is to compare the two sets of images. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!