You're Bad at this and You Don't Even Know it!

Well, those sound like fightin words.  Ahh, but I'm talking about myself.  I've found that when it comes to my own photography, I'm blind, I can't see those small mistakes until someone points them out to me.  I know the "Rules", I know how an image should look and I can point out flaws on everyone else's images quite easily, but I can't always see them on mine.  

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This was one of the first HDR images I made, years ago.  It was a hit with all my friends on social media and nobody ever told me the horizon wasn't straight, the rocks are a little red etc...  These are all things that I didn't see or didn't want to see.  Check out what my friend Marion did to this image in about 3 minutes in the next image below.

You may experience this too, if you only show your images to your social media friends, you'll never know it.  Your friends and family will tell you everything you do is just wonderful and they will Like it up and comment on how great it is, but do they know good photography, and even if they do will they tell you the truth?

Marion is a master Landscape photographer and she used Photoshop to straighten the horizon, enhance the sky, remove some red from the rocks, and added a vignette to darken the edges.

If you have a blind spot when it comes to your own images and your friends can't help you, then you can alway join one of my classes and I will critique your images and show you how you can fix them.  Plus I plan to have plenty of experienced guest teachers to weight in on your images.  Try it out by signing up for tonight's free live webinar with Marion Faria.

Happy Thanksgiving

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Click here for Thanksgiving photography tips.

Click here for Thanksgiving photography ideas.

Free Live Webinar: Improving Landscape Compositions with Marion Faria

Please click on the Image to Register!

6 Tips to Improve Your Landscape Images

Guest blog post by Marion Faria

Guest Blogger Marion Faria

I am a passionate and quirky photographer concentrating primarily on landscape photography.  My images have been printed in NANPA Expressions magazine. The image of The Road to Fitzroy was the cover image for Lonely Planet's "Best in Travel" 2015 book.  I have won numerous Spider, black and white awards, also, images of the day at earthshots.com, Shutterbug Magazine and Bing. Finalist for image of the month at Popular Photography.  My stock images are represented by Getty Images.  http://marionfariaphotography.com/

1. The "rule of thirds", which almost every photographer has heard about, can work most of the time.  If you are struggling with composition, it would be wise to use this as a starting point until you are more confident. It is based upon the Golden Mean which was used by painters for many centuries as a guide to composition.

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The image above demonstrates the use of the "rule of thirds"...it is beneficial to a composition to place a major subject on one of the crossed lines.  

2. The composition of landscapes can be improved by using certain graphic elements.  Some elements draw the eye into an image, others add strength and tension to an image...it is important to recognize graphically what is in your composition.

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The illustration above gives you an idea of the elements that can improve an image.

3. As a landscape photographer, I shoot almost entirely in Aperture Priority, switching to Manual as needed, which isn't very often, usually as night approaches.

4. When shooting landscapes, you want to use the lowest native ISO for your camera, mine is 100, some are 200.  Using a low ISO is important for helping to avoid excess noise in an image.  Using too much noise reduction can diminish the quality of an image.

5. Compose vertically as well as horizontally; it gives you another option and can improve a composition.

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Lake Louise, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

6.  Of course the most important thing of all, in landscape photography!  Wait for the best light.  The light is what will elevate an image from ordinary to extraordinary. Notice the difference between images 4 and 5.  In image 4 the light is dramatic, as is the sky; in image 5, the light is good on the mountain peak but flat everywhere else.

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Canadian Rockies, near Banff

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Mount Rundle from Vermillion Lake, Banff National Park

How to Find and Save Photo Locations that Don't Suck

How to Find and Save Photo Locations that Don't Suck

You may not even need to use google maps because The Photographers Ephemeris uses Google Maps and has most of the same features.  Plus TPE has a way to save locations and it has a way to share locations on photohotspots.com

Click Here for Free lessons on composition all month long.

Adam Savage's Tintype Portrait

Meet photographer Michael Shindler, who creates one-of-a-kind tintype photographs using a 19th century wet plate collodion process. At our recent live show, Michael transformed an entire theater into a dark room to photograph and develop a large-format portrait of Adam Savage. The process is beautiful and mesmerizing!

The Background is Just as Important as the Foreground

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It's Finally Safe to Upgrade to Lightroom 2015 6.3

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In a recent Lightroom update, Adobe decided to make major changes to the import process, in order to appeal to a more consumer level user.  However, the current Lightroom users were outraged with the performance problems, the removal of important features, and the crashing of Apple computers.  Luckily Adobe listened to their customers and created an update called 1015.3 or 6.3 which returned the import process back to normal.  It's now safe to update your Lightroom again.  This update seems to be stable, but only time will tell since it just came out. Check out the list below to see what else is in this update.

New Camera Support

Lightroom will now import files from the following new cameras: Canon EOS M10, Canon PowerShot G5 X, Canon PowerShot G9 X, Fujifilm X-T1 IR, Leica SL (Typ 601), Sony RX1R II (DSC-RX1RM2). Click here for a list of all cameras supported in Lightroom 6 (and other Lightroom versions. The title says Camera Raw, but the righthand column shows Lightroom support.)

New Tethering Support

Lightroom will now allow you to shoot tethered with the following additional cameras: Canon EOS 5DS, Canon EOS 5DS R, Canon EOS T6i / 750D, Canon EOS T6s / 760D. With your camera connected to your computer via USB, you can automatically import photos into Lightroom as you shoot. Click here for a list of all cameras supported for tethered capture.

Bug Fixes

Here is a list of fixed bugs, from Adobe:

Fixed several instability, functionality and performance issues introduced in Lightroom CC 2015.2.x/6.2.x.
Fixed several bugs related to Panorama Merge.

Fixed bugs that:

• caused edits made and saved in Photoshop or 3rd party plug-ins to not appear in the Develop module.
• caused user default for Chromatic Aberration Correction to not be honored after new Import option was removed.
• prevented rotated photos from showing as rotated when in Full Screen view.
• caused a performance slowdown when creating Standard sized previews on high resolution monitors.
• caused image previews to be incorrectly displayed as completely black after import if “Auto Tone” is on in preferences.
• caused crash when using the Radial or Graduated Filter.
• caused Palette, a 3rd party hardware device, to stop working with Lightroom.
• caused the Map module to appear pixelated and photos to be  dropped in the wrong place when using hi-dpi monitors on Windows.
• prevented you from exiting Full Screen view while using the Spot Healing Tool.
• caused the Flickr Publish Service to improperly publish multi-word keywords.

New Lens Profiles

MountName

AppleiPhone 6s back camera 4.15mm f/2.2

AppleiPhone 6s front camera 2.65mm f/2.2

AppleiPhone 6s Plus back camera 4.15mm f/2.2

AppleiPhone 6s Plus front camera 2.65mm f/2.2

Canon EFCanon EF 35mm f/1.4L II USM

Canon EFCanon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II USM

Canon EFCanon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II USM +1.4x

Canon EFCanon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II USM +2.0x

Canon EFCanon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM

Canon EFCanon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM +1.4x

Canon EFCanon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM +2.0x

Canon EFCanon EF 400mm f/4 DO IS II USM +1.4x

Canon EFCanon EF 400mm f/4 DO IS II USM +2.0x

Canon EFCanon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM

Canon EFCanon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM +1.4x

Canon EFCanon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM +2.0x

Canon EFCanon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM

Canon EFCanon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM +1.4x

Canon EFCanon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM +2.0x

Canon EFCanon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro Photo

Canon EFSIGMA 20mm F1.4 DG HSM A015

Canon EFZeiss Milvus 1.4/50 ZE

Canon EFZeiss Milvus 1.4/85 ZE

Canon EFZeiss Milvus 2/35 ZE

Canon EFZeiss Milvus 2/50M ZE

Canon EFZeiss Milvus 2/100M ZE

Canon EFZeiss Milvus 2.8/21 ZE

Canon EFZeiss Otus 1.4/28 ZE

Canon EF-MCanon EF-M 15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM

DJIZENMUSE X3 HG310 (RAW + JPEG)

DXODxO ONE

Leica MVoigtlander VM 35mm f/1.7 Ultron

Nikon FNikon AF NIKKOR 24-85mm f/2.8-4D IF

Nikon FSIGMA 20mm F1.4 DG HSM A015

Nikon FZeiss Milvus 1.4/50 ZF.2

Nikon FZeiss Milvus 1.4/85 ZF.2

Nikon FZeiss Milvus 2/35 ZF.2

Nikon FZeiss Milvus 2/50M ZF.2

Nikon FZeiss Milvus 2/100M ZF.2

Nikon FZeiss Milvus 2.8/21 ZF.2

Nikon FZeiss Otus 1.4/28 ZF.2

PENTAXAsahi PENTAX Super-Takumar 28mm f/3.5 M42

PENTAXAsahi PENTAX Super-Takumar 50mm f/1.4 M42

PENTAXSIGMA 18-300mm F3.5-6.3 DC MACRO OS HSM C014

SONY ASIGMA 18-300mm F3.5-6.3 DC MACRO OS HSM C014

SONYSony DSC-RX1RM2

SONY FEZeiss Loxia 2.8/21

SIGMASIGMA 20mm F1.4 DG HSM A015

Make Creative Compostions with this DIY Tilt Shift Lens

On this new web-serie we will focus only on the weird lenses , the old, the crazy ones that you can mount on a mirrorless camera. 

Paris-based photographer, Mathieu Stern is back again with another interesting lens experiment.

This time, he created “bokeh madness” by attaching a Russian Jupiter 9 85mm f/2 lens onto his Sony a7II using a M42-to-E tilt adapter.

The Jupiter lens can be purchased for about $100 to $150 on eBay, and has gotten glowing reviews for its image quality and affordability. The tilt lens adapter costs about $30 on eBay.

This is the second video in Stern’s ongoing Weird Lens Challenge series of videos.