I recently read a blog post by Nicole S. Young on tips for photographing food in a restaurant. Nicole is fantastic at capturing food and I love her work. I own, and reference, her well-written book on general food photography. I was anxious to read her restaurant tips, as most of the time when I take food photos I’m seated in a restaurant. Her advice is excellent, but as I read her article I realized that the type of photos I take in restaurants—and the reasons I take them—are a bit different than hers. I thought creating my own post with tips on what I’ve learned taking photos in restaurants might be useful to anyone who wants to shoot food for the same reasons, and in similar places, that I do.
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Advice, recommendations, and travel inspiration.
Even though there are numerous advantages that digital cameras have over film, there are a few key disadvantages. One clear inconvenience with DSLRs is sensor dust. The image sensor in a DSLR is static—it isn’t constantly refreshed like film would be in a traditional camera—and overtime specs of dust are bound to find it and attempt to ruin your images. Chances are, there’s at least one speck of dust on your sensor right now. Of course, depending on your shooting style, you may never notice—and if you do notice, one dark spot showing up on a photo is usually a one-click fix in Photoshop or Lightroom. It’s when you have a lot of touch-up, on every photo you take, that dust becomes a problem worth solving. For many, sensor cleaning is an intimidating chore and if not done right you may end up worse than you started. After years of trying and researching different sensor cleaning methods, I finally found one that is easy, safe, and highly effective. I love it so much, I had to share!
When I went to Kauai in September I knew I was going on a helicopter tour. I had never flown in a helicopter let alone tried to take photos from one. I feel pretty confident shooting from the ground. I usually know which lens to grab and camera settings to use for a particular situation. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from riding in a helicopter though so I did a bunch of research beforehand in order to be prepared. I wanted to share what I learned, both from others’ recommendations and now my own experience, here.
Since posting my original “Getting started with 500px” article back in March, the team at 500px has made a few changes that I thought I should discuss. Some of the things I said in that original article are now no longer true, and I didn’t want to confuse new users who may come across that old entry.
A while back, a colleague at work gave me one of his new MOO MiniCards advertising his online photography portfolio. It was about half the size of a normal business card, which was already cute and unique, but more so was when he fanned out a few and flipped them over to show that each one had a different photo printed on the back! I spent some time looking through them and chose one I liked to keep. Walking away, I thought, “This is such a clever idea!” Especially for photographers, turning business cards into a pocketable portfolio just makes a lot of sense. The act of giving a business card becomes an interactive activity and a great way to start a conversation.
I’d seen MOO cards advertised online and in magazines and always thought they’d be cool to try, but until I was actually given one I didn’t put much serious thought into ordering a set. Recently I did look into putting together a set of cards for myself and wanted to share the steps I went through to prepare my images as well as my impressions of the final product.
500px is an online photo sharing community. It’s similar to the popular website flickr, but designed by photographers, for photographers to share only their best work. 500px has about 500 times fewer registered users than flickr—but in my opinion, that’s a good thing. The site has a unique rating system that’s time sensitive. This means that no matter how well known you are your photos’ “pulse” will go down over time; everyday new photos have a chance to make it to the top and be seen by hundreds of thousands of viewers. After browsing 500px for a while I decided to register a few months ago. I saw it as a great way to get exposure, to receive feedback on my work, and to be able to learn from others. It’s been fun to see which photos of mine are liked by the community (and to see if my idea of a good photo is matched by my peers!). It’s also been great to see the other amazing work out there. I see images that I like and try to decide what makes them successful so I can apply those characteristics to my own work. You will only get out of 500px what you put in though. You can’t just upload photos and sit back and wait. I’ve learned a few tips and tricks to how 500px works since joining and want to share those here.
After a waiting a few years for Nikon to release an update to the D300s I’d been using, I finally made the jump to full frame when the D600 was announced. Here’s why I made the decision and why I think I’m better off with this camera than the one I thought I wanted.
First, why upgrade cameras at all? I bought the D300s when it was first announced in mid-2009. Its predecessor, the D300, was highly regarded as an excellent DX format (crop sensor) body and many pros used one or at least had one as a backup camera. I had no doubt the D300s would be just as good, if not better. I was replacing an aging D70. I certainly had a reason to upgrade. I wanted more resolution, lower noise in low light, and a pro-level autofocus system. I’d advanced as a photographer enough that I would take advantage of many of the pro features of the D300s. Without spending the big bucks for a full frame camera, the D300s was the best camera I could buy and it worked extremely well for me.