Blue Pixel

Ever since I first read about infrared photography, many decades ago in high school, I've been intrigued by the idea. The images produced by it are otherworldly and I wanted to try my hand at it. Unfortunately, my attempts back then always ended in failure, not in small part due to the difficulty of using and processing infrared film. Thankfully, times have changed, and digital's taken film out of the equation.
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Recently I received an email from someone who was part of a workshop I taught, and thought it might make a good blog entry: "I attended your two workshops in Berkeley last week, and didn't get a chance to ask my specific question. I'm leaving for an Antarctic peninsula cruise this coming week, and any suggestions for specific settings (e.g. White Balance) to try under those unusual lighting conditions?"
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After traveling to 53 countries as a professional photographer, I decided to really live like the everyday traveler and head off on a trip to Morocco with just a Nikon D40, an 18-200 mm lens, and a 2 gig Lexar SD card.
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Last weekend I went to Berkeley to teach a two-day photo class. I was working with Nick Didlick, a good friend and excellent photographer from Vancouver, Canada, and we both flew in two days early to meet some friends and drive to Yosemite National Park. I've been lucky enough to visit Yosemite several times over the last few years, so I decided to take a different approach to photographing it this time.
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I was working in my studio last week (translation - the basement) photographing some products I was going to use in a presentation. Two keys to any good photo are light and background. I often use a black backdrop as it highlights the product. And I learned long ago that with lighting, KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) was a good rule for me to follow. Good light doesn't necessarily mean lots of lights. This time, though, I needed just a bit more.
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I'm just back from leading a photo trek to Maui for American Photo (http://www.mentorseries.com). I do about four trips a year like this, and we had just over thirty people joining us. The second day we spent driving and shooting along the road to Hana, and after dinner that night most of us headed to the beach for a little light painting.
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Last year while shooting winter photos in Yosemite National Park, Nick Didlick (a friend and Blue Pixel Associate) came up with a unique (and low-cost) way of shooting time exposures. I was reminded of that recently when I needed to do the same thing, and didn't have a cable release.
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When it comes to photography, people always want to talk cameras and lenses. Yes, they're important (and I like to talk about them too), but one tool that doesn't get enough chat time is tripods.
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I recently went to a friend's wedding and took along a little point-and-shoot I could carry in my pocket. When it was all over I had a nice set of photos, and wanted to share them with the family. Rather than send a bunch of small prints, I wanted to give them one large print to commemorate the day. My favorite way of doing this is by using the Free Transform tool in Photoshop, and this can be done with either full-blown Photoshop or Photoshop Elements (I used version 4).
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Its a phrase we all know about that indicates you're in danger, and something that came to mind during a trip I just returned from.
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