Should you be shooting RAW?

manual’ mode.  When people are starting out in digital photography, it can seem like another area full of technical jargon that forms a barrier preventing its uptake.  However, once you have an small understanding of the processes involved and how different settings can impact your results, you will find that letting your camera do the processing can be the limiting factor in achieving your photographic vision.

What is RAW?

A RAW file is an uncompressed image file that records the data from the sensor

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The Reality Of Shooting In National Parks

This is Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park, Utah. You may have seen this type of shot before or one much like it. Some people wait until the sun is blocked by the arch and the underside of the arch is glowing red, as in this picture.

Calm. Serene. You can almost hear the light breeze and the whisper of time held still.

Now let me show you what is missing in this frame on that day.

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The Secret to Shooting for $1,000 an Hour

The original claim had come from Chris Wunder, a photographer with more than 30 years’ experience who now sells workshops with the claim that it’s possible to make $8,000 a day doing school photography. The key, he says, is the number of portrait jobs available in schools and the speed with which photographers can get through them.

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Shooting a Great Picture Takes Time… and So Does Selling It

and accept that you probably still won’t make enough money to cover the cost of production.

Art Fairs Take Advance Bookings

The problem with microstock is that because anyone can join, the competition will beat you most of the time. Art fairs are easier places to make sales because the competition is restricted. Juries check applications keeping out as many as 90 percent of artists hoping to show.

That already means you could be waiting a while. You won’t be ready to show at an art fair until you’ve produced a good body of work with a clear style and theme, and understand the quality of work that art fairs are looking for. Until that happens, you’ll be getting rejections. And even if you do make it through the selection procedure, you’ll still have to wait. Applications for art fairs begin a good six to eight months before the fair opens. Between shooting a collection of images good enough to sell, and actually making that first sale at an art fair, you could be waiting the best part of a year.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t choose to sell at art fairs. They’re often a good way to get your foot in the door of the galleries. Just don’t expect either of those opportunities to open just at the moment you’re ready for them.

Prints Depend on Trust and Attention

To have a chance of pitching your images to buyers at an art fair, you’ll first need to persuade a jury that your photos are likely to sell. Offer your prints online and you’ll get to pitch directly and without asking anyone’s permission first.

Like microstock, that should be fast and easy. Flickr and 500px both allow members to offer their images as prints so there’s no need even to build a website.

But you will need traffic

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Double Your Passion by Shooting Railroad Photography

locomotives were put on display in Spencer, North Carolina in July, around 4,000 photographers turned up to shoot them.

The Center for Railroad Photography & Art was founded 15 years ago to interpret the connection between railroad art and American history and culture. The center organizes traveling exhibitions, holds an annual conference and maintains a collection of railroad visual media. Its current project is an exhibition of World War II-era portraits of railroad workers from the Chicago area called

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On Assignment: Shooting what You Can't See

As photographers we are always looking for tangible, photographable things to include as visual cues. But often we are called upon to make a photo that revolves around something invisible, or even intangible.

I tend to view those assignments not as limiting, but rather as assignments in which the physical limits have been removed. That's the case with this shot of Paul Capriolo, CEO of Social Growth Technologies.
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Take a Picture of THIS:

Okay, so here is the description of what Paul's company does:

"Social Growth Technology delivers high performance online advertising and virtual currency monetization in the social gaming and e-commerce environments."

Alrighty then, let's take a little visual inventory. They work with computers. Which if course is a wonderful visual differentiator. (Seriously, people at a computer is a visual trap. We all use computers. You gotta find something different, no matter how cool the things they do on a computer happen to be.)

And as a startup, they are not yet at the phase where they have killer offices with a ball pit and baristas. That comes later. These guys are a nascent but fast-growing business.

Actually, they did have some very cool spaces, but nothing that would fit the brief of the shoot. Mostly because adding to the complications for this shoot was the fact that the photos had to be very horizontal (even more so than seen above

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