Kingston Mill is an atmospheric place close to where I live and is therefore convenient for photography. There is a 19th century mill, an 18th century stone arch bridge, a canal built in the 1830s, and the Millstone River, all providing opportunities for landscape imagery. It is also a place that provides opportunities to shoot the same scenes in different weather conditions and seasons.

This image was made in the morning when the fog was heavy. It was shot in color but given the fog,  leafless trees, and brownish stones, color did not add anything to the image. By converting the image into black and white, I focused on the subject of the heron on the dam framed by the trees. In the original image, the detail in the upper right corner was blown out. I brought it back essentially by using the dehazing filter. Regardless of what software you use, there are certain filters that allow you to decrease the highlight in an area to allow the details to emerge.  However, since the point is to capture the fog in the scene, you want to balance bringing out the details with maintaining the effect of fog.

The image would have worked without the bird, but I think the bird makes the image. I also decided to keep the bird as a smaller part of the overall image, rather than just do a close up. The point after all was to capture the scene and atmosphere and not do a nature photograph of just the bird.

You should never be discouraged to go out photographing in inclement weather. Sometimes fog and overcast clouds allow you to create moody images. Not everything has to be the bright blue sky.

This photo of English Bay in Vancouver, taken a few years ago, reminds me a bit of Stonehenge (without the megaliths) and an ancient gathering of people. What are your thoughts on it?

This very simple photo from Asbury Park, New Jersey is one of my favorites. In cropping, I kept the curving line of footprints in the left corner. I brought out detail in the sky to create layers by using editing software. I also converted the image to black and white to create atmosphere. What are your thoughts about this photo?

Who doesn’t like a sunset?

When photographing a sunset, the image can be made more interesting by making sure it has context.  Perhaps other elements give it relevance or maybe the sunset alone is all you need to consider. The timing of the shot is also important; there are moments when the sun is still up, near or at the horizon, or below the horizon, affecting both color of the sky and the ability to shoot.  There are many choices and decisions.  You can shoot repeatedly, but which one will you decide is the best?

Here is an image I made at English Bay in Vancouver, prior to actual sunset but as the sun was descending.

Here is what the image looked like in raw form, as shot, with no polarizing filter, only a UV filter,

Let’s start with composition.  I wanted the people at the beach as part of the image.  I did not go right up to the water’s edge, but situated myself to make sure I could get a wide enough view to show a sampling of the people.  For safety reasons, I focus below or to the side, hold down the shutter button to maintain focus, close my eyes, and move the camera slightly up or to the side and take several shots. 

Of course, never look at the sun and always take the appropriate steps to protect your eyes.

There are ways to handle exposure—by taking several shots, exposing for the sky, exposing for the dark areas, changing exposure settings to underexpose, using filters, or employing other techniques.  There is an old saying, expose for the highlights, develop for the shadows.  Others may be more sophisticated at the moment of capture than I am; I rely on Lightroom and the ability to process the image through the software to make comparable adjustments.  In this case, I made use of the dehazing filter, taking it to 100%, the white point to -100 (all the way to the left), slight adjustments to vibrancy and saturation (+10 each) to bring back the coloration, and +75 to the shadow filter to bring up some detail in the now darkened beach and people, but not completely to lose the silhouette effect.  It is true that for some images, too much dehazing can make it look artificial or create a vignette or make certain parts too dark.  I was satisfied with the effect and the use of other filters to keep it as natural looking as possible.  I was also able to bring out enough detail to render the mountains in the distance distinguishable from each other.

I think I captured the sense of being there.  It was not as dark in reality, but there is an evocative mood to this image that appeals to me. 

Ultimately, the final image should be only what pleases you. 

I took this photograph in Havana, Cuba as the light was fading towards the end of the day.  You will notice that the musician is in focus, but the women are not.  For me, the blur of the women indicates motion. 

So many times we come across a street scene that exists for only a few seconds, if that.  We don’t always have time to adjust shutter speed so we take the shot, and before we can take a second photo, the scene has changed.  Upon pulling this image up on the monitor, I saw blur.  Does that mean the image is lost or irrelevant?  Not necessarily.

I could have cropped out the women and just showed the musician since he is subject of the image,  however, the women walking past seem to ignore him, as if this is nothing new or interesting to them.  That adds something to the story that the image tells.  Without them, it is the musician.  With them, it is a more complete street scene. 

I look at a lot of photographs in galleries, museums, books and online, and there is often a flaw of some kind, like blur. Think about this.  Does it really ruin the image or does it perhaps add to it in its own way?  If, like me, you’ve competed in photography club competitions, you may well have heard the judges criticize various images because of a slight cut-off of a person, or a blur, or some other minor element.  Hear what they say, but decide for yourself.  If the image works, it works.  I think this one does.  Feel free to disagree.

Louis Pasteur once said that “Chance favors the prepared mind.” The photographer must always be alert; there is no off duty. You never know what you will see, and all of us have stories of the images that got away.

Here is one of my favorites from a few years ago at a bus stop on State Street in the Loop area of Chicago.  Shot in color, I transformed it to black and white because I wanted primarily the silhouette, the shape, and the tones.  Backlit against the advertisement, which amazingly said “man kind,” this captured a woman at the end of day, shopping done, waiting for the bus to go home.  I like it because of its humanity and of the intimate and solitary moment of an individual doing a very normal act like waiting for a bus, and yet I find something profound about this moment, this person, and her place in the city.

I welcome your comments.

From time to time I am asked if there are particular books that I might recommend for the beginning photographer.  There are four types of photography books I bought when starting out.  One was a general guide to photography so I could learn concepts and practicalities of exposure, depth of field, and technical aspects.  A second category related to camera-specific books as a supplement to the manual.  The third type of book was the specialty book, such as one that focuses on landscape photography or printing.  A fourth type that might be considered a specialty type would be one that focuses on a particular image-processing program.  What I found, after a while, was that there was significant redundancy, outdated instructions on a particular software program due to ever changing features, and better and more comprehensive explanations online. 

What you really want to do is find a general "how to" guide that explains not just how to operate the camera but which helps you understand both taking of images and processing them.  A book that covers recommended settings and what they do along with processing features (workflow, working with layers, etc.) will provide the basics.

The specialty books for the most part repeat the same basic principles and applications, albeit in the context of the particular topic.  Sometimes, even if repetitive of basic principles, they are worth buying if the images themselves are inspirational to you.

Which brings me to the main point: mastering basic techniques only teaches you how to take a technically acceptable picture.  The books featuring histories of photography or the work of individual photographers provide context and help you to see what has survived critical and popular acclaim.  In my opinion, the more of these books you read and the more you understand about photography as an art form, the more your eye improves.

There are numerous authors that feature regularly and some write more practically than others.  Some take you step by step through an application; others seem to write the same book over and over, changing the title and shifting the focus a bit but showcasing their own photographs more than providing new insight. 

If I had to mention one author that I found clear and informative, it would be Lee Frost. 
In one of the first books I bought, he simply suggested projects such as photographing the taxi cabs in each city.  This book helped me focus and provide a discipline that has served me well in travel photography.  I learned to create series of images around topics, and that helped me to avoid being overwhelmed in new places when I had limited time.    

After all these years, I still try to shoot taxis.  Here is one in Mexico City. 

The still life maintains a place not just in painting but in photography as well.  Today’s photographer, if alert, may find ready-made still life moments that say much about a locale and its people.  For those who like urban photography, the city offers many opportunities for images that present themselves without the need for arrangement.   Take this photograph, for example, made in Amsterdam.

Dutch still life paintings often contained insects or examples of rotting fruit to show the passage of time and the inevitability of death and decay.  Since I used an example from Amsterdam, I felt the image was interesting as a modern take on a 17th century exercise.  This image is something analogous to decaying Dutch flowers—the trash that was the result of an enjoyable moment in the present. It is the same message of the inevitable decay of life. 

I believe that the more one knows about art, the more creative a photographer might be.  My studies of art have enabled me to see patterns and understand composition better.  Perhaps the same is true for other photographers.

The following photo was made in Zagreb.  Here I cropped it to even out what was seen of the chairs, to serve as a frame.  This received a purchase award in a county competition for photography. 

Keep in mind that there is nothing wrong with photographing your own empty bottles and cups; they can also provide a foreground image for a broader shot.

The key to an image like this is tight cropping.  On occasion, you might want to rearrange a bottle, perhaps to show the label, but otherwise it is surprising how often still life photographic opportunities present themselves.  For those of you who never considered the merits of an image like this, think of it as part of a long tradition.

Photographers are often too obsessed with details, wanting to make sure that shadows or dark colors are not just blobs in the image.   Occasionally the goal is to get a subtler approach by either exposing for the dark, using bracketed shots that offer a range of exposures in quick exposures one after the other, or otherwise using post-processing software to bring it out.

Sometimes, though, the shot works better as a silhouette or with barely noticeable detail.  This is because too much information can be distracting.  If we want impact, the impact of a small outlined figure against an essentially uniform expanse provides the pop.  In this way, the image can succeed as a minimalist images in which a particular detail is set against an uncomplicated background. 

Here is an example from Barcelona, of a woman on a paddleboard.

I did several things to create a photo that had sufficient contrast to have an impact.  First, I did not do a close up of her; the isolation of the paddleboarder against the expanse of sea was the subject of the photograph.   Second, I put her off center and slightly towards the bottom, and had more sea than sky to further break it up.  Photographers are often told of the Golden Ratio or Rule of Thirds which divides the image into three rows and three columns.  Under this rule, placement of the main subject anywhere but in the center is considered better practice to break the symmetry and create a tension in the image.  Like all rules, it can be broken successfully, but in this case, I put the person more to the right, since it follows another recommendation which is to leave space for a person in motion to move into.  Sometimes symmetry can have an impact, but here I wanted her off center horizontally to create a sense of movement but more centered vertically to increase the sense of isolation—at least that is how it appeared to me.  If she were completely centered, she might seem "stuck."

Another example is from Abuja, Nigeria, of two men padding on a lake, where I also put them off center.  However, there is not the sense of isolation here, and the silhouette is not perfect.  There is color visible on one of them.  While I liked this image because of the sense of purpose and camaraderie demonstrated by the two paddlers, it doesn’t work in the same minimalist way as the Barcelona photo.  

It remains an interesting photograph to me, depicting something of life in Abuja but the one taken in the Barcelona is, in my opinion, more powerful.

If you are going to do a silhouette, consider it as part of a minimalist exercise, so the viewer focuses essentially on just two elements—the silhouetted figure and the background.

It is not always easy to resist the siren call of the newest cameras with all the bells and whistles with a price tag to match.  Of course, there are qualitative differences between lower end digital SLRs and higher end professional cameras but at a certain point, the qualitative difference in the raw image can be indiscernible. 

You can test this with your own history.  I switched from an Olympus OM1-N camera to a Nikon F70 and then the Nikon F80 until I switched to digital.  I then used a Nikon D50 and then Nikon D70, before moving to Nikon D5100 and then the Nikon D5300.  Each stop of the way I was tempted to go to the higher end models.  After much consideration, I concluded that I would never use a lot of the features of these newer models, and the models I use have all of the core things that I need. 

I believe, as do many others, that it is better to focus more on the lens than on the camera itself.  We are now seeing the pressure to move to mirrorless cameras as the next step.  To some extent, cameras are becoming like mobile telephones in which the main function is just one more function along with all the other things those pieces of equipment provide. Do you need that in order to be a better photographer?  I don’t think so.  A good photographer can take a good picture with an adequate camera and lens, but the technology itself will not turn a mediocre image into a “wow” image.

If you think about it, when the Olympus OM-1 was the mainstay of the working photographer, world class images were captured and made.  While the Nikon D70 could not do many of the things that the top-line Nikon camera can do today, at the time it was far more advanced than a far more expensive camera of 15-20 years earlier.

Here is an example.  This image of a canal boat pilot in Amsterdam was made ten years ago, in 2008, with a Nikon D70.  The D70’s highest resolution ISO was 200; this was shot at that, and at 1/400 second with F5.6.

As processed, I produced this image.

A pro-am digital SLR today would have more pixels available, more autofocus points, and a faster ISO, but one would be hard pressed to challenge the quality of the original capture or the overall result in showing this character portrait of this man.  These older cameras have had their place, have produced first rate digital negatives, and while it is good to keep up with the improved technology, that technology will not make the image for you.  Some of these older cameras, which were advanced for their time, may have more utility than some of the new cameras, and serve as excellent cameras both for training and artistic purposes.