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	Article Title	Article Description
To get rich, brilliant colors like the ones in these wildflowers, you need to use some special techniques	Taking Pictures of Wildflowers, Part 2	In part one of "How to Shoot Wildflowers" I advised you to wait for a cloudy day, or at least not shoot until a big cloud floated by to soften and diffuse the harsh light of the sun. I also advised that you might want to use a two or three foot diameter diffusing screen that you hold between the sun and the flower to soften the light. However, I stated that I really don't use diffusing screens and mostly just waited for a passing cloud or even came back later on a cloudy day. In this article, I discuss my recent conclusing that I really do need to use a diffusing screen and how such a screen really can make a huge difference in how your wildflower pictures look. Read the entire article
This picture is extremely sharp in very large sizes. Getting this kind of sharpness takes a little extra effort.	How to Take Sharp Pictures	Taking sharp pictures is an art. There is a lot to it and whole books have been written on the subject. However, the basics are not all that hard. This article is an introduction to the basics of taking and printing sharp pictures. Read the entire article
Difficult exposures like this one just can't be printed without Photoshop	Photoshop is Crucial	Mostly real landscape photographers use Photoshop to bring a scene back to what it actually looked like before the camera screwed it up. For example, cameras don't see nearly as many levels of brightness as the human eye does. This is why photographs often show what was originally a bright blue sky as blank white or why they show the gorgeous shadows at dusk and dawn as pure black. One of the main jobs of photoshop is to fix problems like this. Read the entire article.
Posted on 9-3-09 This picture of Wild Goose Island in Glacier National Park is a good example of excellent light.	Good Light	One of the most basic principles of photography is shooting in good light. Everyone knows, even non-photographers, that you should take photographs early in the morning or late in the evening. We all know this truism, but it is amazing how easy it is to forget it, since we have all taken lots of pretty good, mediocre but still pretty good, photos in all kinds of light. Read the entire article.
Posted on 8-10-09 This picture was taken near the Maroon Bells in Colorado with my hand held Canon 1DsMarkII	Hand Held Cameras 1 Introduction	Hand holding a camera will immediately make any photographer much more creative and spontaneous. This is especially true if the camera has a long range zoom lens and you don't have to break your train of thought to dig out an new lens and put it on the camera. You can quickly shoot a distant scene with three different kinds of foreground or flop down on the ground and get all kinds of great close ups. It takes no time at all to take twenty shots from all kinds of different angles and positions that you would never have gotten had you been using a tripod. Read the entire article.
Posted on 8-11-09 A hand held shot taken in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming with my Olympus C8080.	Hand Held Cameras 2 The Olympus C-8080	I had been in the Winds many times before and taken many pictures using film cameras but I had never been satisfied with the results. This year I wanted to shoot the Winds digitally. I wanted the best quality pictures but my best quality digital camera (a $8000.00 Canon 1Ds MarkII) weighed almost 7 pounds with a single lens and with my lightest tripod and tripod head the whole outfit weighed over fifteen pounds. This was just out of the question for someone who was no longer a young man. The maximum pack I could carry comfortably was no more than 40 pounds max, and I really wanted to go with no more than a 30 or 35 pound pack.So I decided to take my Olympus C-8080 and no tripod. This whole outfit weighs 2 pounds. Read the entire article.
Posted on 8-12-090 A hand held shot in Desolation Canon of the Green River. This was taken shortly after dawn in low light.	Hand Held Cameras 3 The Green River in Utah	My first thought was that I didn't want to take my good camera; it was sure to get full of sand and wet and ruined before the trip was over. So I decided to take my trusty Olympus C-8080. As described in my last post, I had good luck handholding it in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming the previous summer and I thought it would be perfect. It was. Read the entire article.
Posted on 8-13-09 This is a shot I took on the Green River with my Olympus C8080. I hoped that I could do a better job with a newer, more powerful camera that was just as light.	Hand Held Cameras 4 Canon Rebel Xsi	However, even though my Olympus was doing a pretty good job, I thought that maybe I needed a camera that had a little larger image size than the Olympus but that would still be very light, easy to handle and could be taken on long backpacking trips. Also, when shooting in RAW format, the Olympus is unbelievably slow and I really wanted to be able to shoot in RAW.After a bit of research on my favorite camera reviewsite, dpreview, I came up with the Rebel Xsi, also called the 450D. Read the entire article.
Posted on 8-14-09 This is a hand held shot that could have been much better if I had had my wits about me.	Hand Held Cameras 5 Depth of Field	I shot the picture to the left in mid July on day one of my month long summer shoot. I was driving through the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado on my way to our old home in Howard, Colorado. I had my new Canon Rebel with the new Tamaron 18-270 lens on the passenger seat right beside me. It was so easy to stop and take pictures that I was stopping fairly regularly, wandering around a bit in the close vicinity of the car and shooting whatever looked good. In the location of the above picture I shot half a dozen pretty good images. Read the entire article.
Posted on 8-15-09 This is a hand held shot that is very sharp thruout that I shot at 1000 ISO.	Hand Held Cameras 6 High ISO speed and Noise	There is a downside to using higher ISOspeeds; the higher they are, the more noise you add to a picture. In the case of my 1Ds Mark II, I'm lucky, it's a very good camera and there is not much noise added even at ISO 1000. There definitely is some though; however if the picture is not sharpened, almost all of this noise can be removed later in Photoshop and it will never be noticed. Read the entire article.
Posted on 8-16-08 This is a hand held shot that is sharp from close foreground to the distant background.	Hand Held Cameras 7 More on Depth of Field	There are several ways to get greater depths of field when shooting with hand held cameras. Read the entire article.
Posted on 8-17-09 This picture was taken at 1/30 and f-16 with a long lens. I never would have been able to do this without image stabilization.	Hand Held Cameras 8 Image Stabilization	The ability to shoot at slow speeds makes handholding cameras much more attractive. Since I can shoot at slower speeds, I can use smaller f-stops and this enables me to get a much better depth of field. Often I don't have to resort to increasing ISO speed to get smaller f-stops, I just rely on the image stabilizer and shoot more slowly. Read the entire article.
You have to understand the use of lens aperture before it is possible to keep both foreground and background sharp at the same time.	Digital Photography 101, Part 1: Part I Shooting Modes	It is critically important to set up your digital camera correctly. This article covers setting up shooting modes. It is also a general article on lens aperture, shutter speed and bracketing. I discuss program mode, aperture priority, shutter priority, manual mode as well as an introduction to exposure and depth of field. Read the entire article.
RAW image format is important when you want to get the best possible image quality.	Digital Photography 101, Part 2, Part 2: Choosing a file format	This article is about how to choose the proper file format for your digital camera. It makes a big difference whether you choose tiff format, Jpg format or RAW format. This article also includes an introduction to using Photoshop to edit your pictures and using Epson Printers to print them. Read the entire article.
Use small ISO numbers to get the best image quality and to eliminate camera noise.	Digital Photography 101, Part 3, Part 3, Basics.	This article covers setting your camera for the proper image size and shape, white balance, flash, digital zoom and ISO settings. Get these basics right and your pictures will be far better. Read the entire article.
Pictures with a lot of snow can be difficult if you don't know how to use exposure compensation.	Digital Photography 101, Part 4, Part 4: Understanding Exposure.	Getting the exposure exactly right gives your pictures a professional look. I discuss how to use exposure compensation to get beautiful pictures when the light is difficult as well as how to shoot winter scenes and dark scenes. Also included are pitfalls and stories of how I often manage to get it all wrong. Read the entire article
When I first shot this picture the sky was pure white and the the foreground almost black. I fixed it using a special technique.	Digital Photography 101 Part 5, Part 5: difficult exposure problems	This article explains how to deal with difficult exposure problems such as a picture that has a very bright sky and a very dark foreground. If you just shoot the picture normally, the sky will end up pure white and the foreground will be black. When you know how, it's easy to get the correct exposure in both the bright parts and the dark parts of a picture. I also discuss the importance of setting up your digital camera for the correct saturation, sharpening and contrast. If you get these settings wrong, you can easily ruin every picture you take. Read the entire article.
If you don't know how, taking wildflower pictures can be almost impossible. However, a few simple tricks will help you get excellent results.	How to take Pictures of Wildflowers Part 1.	My best secrets for taking pictures of wildflowers. Shooting them in the correct light is essential. I discuss how to keep both the flowers and the background sharp, filling the frame with flowers and other techniques for great wildflower pictures. Read the entire article.
Use polarizing filters to reveal the brilliant colors hidden in almost all landscape scenes.	How to use a polarizing filter	The best way to add great color, richness and brilliance to your nature photographs is to use a polarizing filter. It is important to know when this works and when it doesn't. Read the entire article.
Depth of field is the most important technique of professional landscape photography.	Depth of Field	The number one professional technique for making dramatic landscape photographs is to use depth of field to keep both the close foreground and the distant background in sharp focus. Here is how do to it on your digital camera. Read the entire article.
The proper use of foreground is a major composition tool.	Basic Photographic Composition, Part I	Composition is one of the most important and least studied photographic skills. It is about framing the picture (i.e., selecting just the right piece of the real world in your camera view finder), making sure the picture has a subject or at least a main point of interest, using foreground, developing depth as well as using line and space and shape and color to create an image that pleases the eye and the soul. Without good composition, a photograph can never be more than mediocre. It is an essential tool. In this article I discuss learning to see, simplicity, filling the frame, and using color to create interesting pictures that are a delight to look at. Read the Entire Article
This picture has a feeling of balance that comes from good image composition.	Basic Photographic Composition, Part II	In this article learn how to use fore-ground as a major composition tool, the rule of thirds, image balance, image depth and image frames. Read the entire article
To take a picture like this one which has close foreground and distant background, both of which are sharp, it is absolutly essential to use a tripod.	To Use a Tripod or Not? Part I	The question, "To use a tripod or not?" is a pretty important question if you seriously want to take good pictures. Five years ago I answered this question with a most emphatic "Yes, of course, I always use a tripod. I haven't taken a picture without a tripod for twenty years." Now-a-days, with the advent of digital photography, the answer is not quite so simple. In this part of the article, Part I, I discuss the reasons why use of a tripod is absolutely essential if you are serious about landscape photography and if you take outsanding nature photographs. Read the entire article.
Professional Landscape photographers all use the same basic techniques to create outsanding pictures. Once you understant these techniques, they are not difficult to use.	How Professional Landscape Photographers Take Such Great Pictures	One of the questions I am most often asked is "Why don't my pictures look like yours. What are you doing that I'm not doing?" This article is a summary of how professional landscape photographers work: what kind of equipment they use, their shooting techniques and how they print such great pictures. Read the entire article.
One of the tricks of taking great pictures is turning mundane scenes from the everyday world into art shots.	Th e Art of Landscape Photography: Turning the everyday world into art.	There are a lot of definitions of art and discussions of how to make it. I rarely think that what I am doing with my camera is making art, however, I am always trying to somehow go beyond the scene that is in front of me and make it into something special--to make it into something a little more than a literal duplicate of the actual, real world scene. I guess that to me is "art." At any rate, here is how I try to make "art" from real world scenes and what goes through my mind while I am doing it. Read the entire article.
Laminated pictures like this one that hangs on my living room wall are a great way to display photographs.	Laminating Photographs to Eliminate Glare and Reflections	We think that the best way to frame pictures is to laminate them and then frame them without mat or glass. The picture is completely protected, yet there is none of the glare and reflections caused by glass, even reflection control glass, that often make framed pictures almost impossible to see. Looking at a laminated picture is almost like looking at the real world through a large window. This article includes guidelines as to whether you should have your loose print laminated or not. Read the entire article
Now-a-days there is no excuse for any color photograph not lasting at least sixty-five years and most probably 100 years	The Archival Life of Photographs, How Long do Photographs Last.	Only a few years ago color photographs did not last longer than ten years or so before they began fading and discoloring. Now-a-days there is no excuse for any color photograph not lasting at least sixty-five years and most probably 100 years. Unfortunately, those photographs that fade in ten years are still being made. It is all in how they are printed and what they are printed on. Here are the facts about the archival life of photographs and how to know which are good and which are bad. Read the entire article.
There are a lot of details on how to frame a photograph that are helpful to know before you take you picture to the framer.	Essential Techniques for Framing Photographs	This is quite a long and complete article about framing photographs. It answers questions such as: Do I need to have my photograph mounted? Do I want to laminate my photograph? Can I have my photos mounted after they are laminated? Should I frame my picture using glass and mat? Do I really need to get my picture framed at all. Read the entire article.
Many modern homes have very large walls that require very large pictures. Here are some ideas on how to frames these pictures.	How to Frame Very Large Pictures: May 2007	Huge Pictures require special techniques. This is an article on some of the best techniques for framing very large pictures. Read the entire article.
Taking bright, colorful pictures with perfect color balance like this one are easy with a digital camera.	Should You Buy a Digital Camera	If you are in the market for a camera, there is little doubt that it should be a digital one. Here is an article on how to buying a digital camera: what to look for and where to buy it. Read the entire article
How to find the very best, impartial information about buying digital cameras.	How to Buy a Digital Camera, Part 1	Buying a digital camera can be complicated. If you go to Best Buy or WalMart or some such big box discount store you are confronted with a whole rack of cameras and about the best you can do is maybe choose a name brand and megapixal size and hope for the best. However, there is a much better way of going about this. Read the entire article
	How we make our Photographs	This 2004 article is still a good read with tons of good info. When I first began photography seriously in the 1980's, I was shooting negative film and printing in an old fashioned wet darkroom using a monsterous paper processor the size of a small dump truck. I continued to make photographs this way through the first of my years as a professional photographer. This took me into the mid 1990's. Between my beginnings in the 1980's and now, photography has gone through one of the most monumental changes in the entire history of photograpy. It is certainly of the magnitude of the change from black and white photography to color photography. By 1997, I was still using film, but now shooting both negatives and slides. I had abandoned my non-digital printing lab and was having the film scanned on large, digital, drum scanners and then digitally printed on very large and expensive Light Jet Printers in commercial labs. In 2004, when I wrote the article below, I was still at this stage and just about ready to begin using digital cameras and inkjet printers. I think the article is still a very good read. It is the story of where I was in 2004, half-way between two worlds. It is also full of the basics of trying to catch all the beauty of the natural world on a piece of two dimensional paper. The tools change, but the problems of light and color and compositon remain the same. It is a good article about becoming a competent photographer. Read the entire article.