A summer without sunflowers just wouldn’t be summer and I hate the reminder but the calendar says another great ‘summer to remember’ is coming to a close, but damn, where did the time go?…Thanks so much to all of my fellow photographers for your...

Can I offer just one invaluable tip that all of the frustrated wide-angle lens shooters could use? You bet and here it is: “Embrace the FACT that your wide-angle lens can focus remarkably close, as close as 9” in some cases, which should be...

LEARN MORE If you are like most photographers, you can remember the photo that changed you forever a single moment captured in time that captivated you and spawned the inception of your photography journey. It’s where your desire to create images that might be...

Arguably, the people of India as well as the landscapes and cityscapes, are the most colorful in the world, and some days, some mornings, some very brief morning minutes, no, make that brief seconds on this morning, you cross paths with one colorful individual,...

Ahhhhh, the power of red! An otherwise monochromatic ‘sentence’ ends with an exclamation point, a red exclamation point no less! When setting your camera’s meter reading for snow scene’s, make sure you end up at a one stop over-exposure, (+1) as this will always...

Could not tell you what all the celebration was about, but I was certainly elated to come upon this couple appearing to be dancing in celebration of..?…on a pedestrian bridge that crosses the Saone River in the city of Lyon France. Because my meter...

In much the same way the sculpture gazes at the rock before them, with chisel and hammer at the ready, the gifted and extremely talented make-up artist/model ‘Natt’, finds herself staring in the mirror, staring not at a blank canvas, but rather at the...

Like most artists with a camera, chances are quite good that you are looking for answers, inspiration, ideas and motivation in your continued pursuit of photographic excellence. Consider getting involved in the You Keep Shooting Photo Community. I wanted to share with you, at...

Selective focus is a technique and a photography term that gets thrown around a lot, but often times without mentioning the all important need to USE MANUAL FOCUS! With each Spring, you will have numerous chances to practice the art of selective focus, but...

Here are five more images from last April’s Holland workshop and I realized earlier this week, “better late than never”, so let me just add that all were shot with my Nikon D500 and my Nikkor 18-300mm, obviously at various focal lengths, AND perhaps...

When I lived in Chicago, one of my favorite locations for photographing people was Millennium Park. On those hot August days of stifling humidity, Crown Fountain, with its two impressive sculptures of granite and glass block, was a great place where both young and...

It’s so easy to become lost at Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi’s 400year old market, yet it seems every time I’ve been lost, I find some great treasure and this was certainly true on this late afternoon. My eye’s first caught site of the tiled...

During the Provence workshop, we were shooting near the northern French Alps, about one hour SE of Grenoble, a wheat field here, a lone tree there, a small country road where Michele is seen running away from the threat of the big storm with all...

You can do this! In the world of macro/closeup photography, there is this ‘optical law’ that states, “any out of focus spot of light in your overall composition will be rendered as an out focus circular shape, and the closer you focus on a...

Here are several ‘who cares’ portraits taken on this overcast day, and I say “who cares what aperture I use here because the subject will be standing very near a cyan colored wall thus making any concerns about depth of field mute!” And when...

It was in one of the neighborhoods in Jaipur, India where I, with camera in hand, had met several young boys who volunteered their white doves as potential ‘props’. Although I did in fact take up their offer, placing one of the doves in...

It’s another take from the Montreal Convention Center, one of the most colorful locations I have ever come across. In fact, just on color alone, Burano, Italy and the Montreal Convention center are both tied for first, IF I was forced to vote, “most...

Just when you think you’ve seen all there is to see among the lavender fields of Provence France…using drones is becoming more and more restrictive, which is WHY, I rent those bucket trucks, those utility vehicle looking bucket trucks with the bucket at the...

When you feel you have come upon a good portrait subject and assuming the logistics are worked out, i.e. lens choice, aperture choice, background, point of view, you will, in all likelihood, just before you shoot, feel compelled to say something along the lines...

When one looks for opportunities to shoot ‘motion-filled’ subjects, waterfalls, ocean surf and city traffic at dusk often come to mind, but the reality is, motion is everywhere, including the spray of sparks falling from the ceiling as the welder attaches numerous metal plates....

The colors of Ethiopia, in a single frame, a composition of a cheerful and beautiful young girl within the surrounds of some equally cheerful and beautiful light. A lucky morning in the normally sleepy town of Turmi, Ethiopia. Nikon D500, Nikkor 18-300mm at 65mm,...

I’ve been known to go just about anywhere, but my preference is to go somewhere. Somewhere and I share a great history. Somewhere leaves the door open to chance. Last August I was somewhere when, once again, chance showed up at my door. Nikon...

As artists, we are aware of our inner voice that is constantly prodding us to do more, to push past the self-imposed boundaries, boundaries that keep us ‘safe’ yet behind a stifling fence. If we are intent on reaching the as yet undiscovered ‘creative...

While getting dressed today, for work or play, consider wearing AND sharing your WARMEST piece of ‘clothing’- your smile. These two smiles belong to two young girls from the Karo Tribe in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley. You keep smiling and you keep shooting! Nikon D500,...

We are passionate, we are driven, we move with a sub-conscious abandon, under a self-casted spell, relentlessly pursuing the perfect image, which as most of have learned and accepted by now, is a pursuit with an unquenchable thirst. It is why we scout a...

I have photographed my share of forests and some felt almost perfect, but not until last week, near Inle Lake, Myanmar did I feel I had finally reached ‘perfection!’ This is a managed forest of trees that will be eventually harvested for pulp/paper, but...

Another day in Old Harar, Ethiopia…one of my top five favorite locations in this, our very colorful world.  Pointing at me, “You keep shooting!” said the little girl. Nikon D500, Nikkor 18-300mm, using a ‘who cares’ aperture since there are no depth of field...

She is a little girl from the Dorze tribe of SE Ethiopia’s Omo Valley and upon seeing her ‘hiding’, yet peeking from around the corner of the very small 8×10 cement walled house that she shared with her Mom, Dad and three sisters and...

Rarely will anyone argue with the overall consensus that “mid-day light is the worst!”, yet as further proof that ‘rules’ can in fact stifle a shooting opportunity, a MID-DAY shooting opportunity I might add. She was one of a handful of the unsung hero’s...

Atop the small incline, grows a very big tree, a tree that provides some welcomed shade when temperatures top out at 98 degrees plus each afternoon, but overnight, the temperature drops to a cool 68 degrees, and by sunrise, there are few Hamar tribes...

As I recall, the car was still rolling to a stop when I opened the passenger rear door, leaping out and running back up the lone country road, anxious to introduce myself to the farmer and his young water buffalo whom we had driven...

PART I: How important can a background be, particularly when shooting portraits on the street? It can every bit as important as the seamless or muslim textured backgrounds used in portrait studio’s around the world. The role this background plays in the overall composition...

Late afternoon, racing down a gravel road in NW Tuscany, Italy, a single refrain of the song, “…over the hill and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go…” is stuck in my head like a needle on a record.  One of my students...

It was the wall of sewing machines that got my attention, as if they were a collection of trophies, yet I soon learned that these Singar sewing machines were in different stages of repair. The man who was responsible for their repair is seen...

My idea was simple enough; to record colorful images of moving cars at shutter speeds nearing a 1/4 second, as I shot down onto street below from my 45th floor balcony of the Stamford Swiss Hotel in Singapore. (Second image.) The resulting implied motion...

The 200-year old Ubien Bridge, built from teak, stretches across the southern end of Tangthman Lake in Mandalay, Myanmar, allowing one to have an elevated view of the lake and the activity below. From roughly twenty-feet above the lake, the early morning calm on...

Are you aware of just how vitally important your index finger can be in the creative process of image making? To be clear, I am not talking about the role your index finger plays in the firing of the shutter release button. No, I’m...

Two things regarding this image are working in my favor. It’s 1:30pm, but it’s a day of heavy overcast, so the normal harsh light of mid-day has been softened considerably allowing me to keep shooting and two, my subject has cataracts, thus rendering his...

What is your ‘wait time’ between capturing one truly compelling image until the next; one hour, one day, one week, one month?  If you are experiencing giant gaps between the loud gasps from your audience, you are probably a photographer who TAKES pictures versus...

We camped, for two nights with one of the Hamar Tribes near Turmi, Ethiopia, and it was the first evening, while scouting locations, that I saw this large ‘lookout tower’ like rock monolith and with its west facing view it was a quick no-brainer...

When shooting on the streets, sometimes my subject is ‘confined’ to a given area and then the challenge can become even greater to find a clean background, and when all else fails, I have been known, with the help of an assistant or two,...

We had just come up the steps at a metro station near ‘little India’ in Paris, when I caught site of some really old style windows made of glass and wire mesh (see 2nd photo) an abstract opportunity had presented itself to combine a...

Frieda, a 77-year old widow, born on this very farm southwest of Hamburg, Germany, raising pigs, cows and chickens “for as long as I can remember.” With the help of her 58 year old daughter, (also widowed) and her only grandchild, 23-year old Bettina,...

An easy compositional tip applied to portraits… On the streets of Delhi, many colorful fabrics are on display outside the shops that sell them, displays that mimic hanging curtains. And lucky for me that one row of these hanging fabrics were basking in filtered...

Driving south of The Dalles, Oregon, near Dufur, it was a late afternoon in early July when my eyes caught sight of him in his field. He was checking his wheat, the taste and feel, to determine how soon the harvest would begin. As...

My eyes caught site of a lone pigeon flying above this vivid magenta painted wall and it was his brief shadow, that caught my attention as it raced up the side of the wall.  Along with another pigeon, it sat perched atop the wall...

Photography has taught me many things, not the least of which are the seasonal changes that take place near and north of the 45th parallel.  The value of re-visiting these same locations, is two-fold; one is the obvious photo opportunity to shoot the same...

Somedays, I wake up, and I am eventually greeted with a sense that on this day, I am lacking any ability to ‘see’ and if it persists long enough, self-doubt will begin to whisper, and that is when I will immediately drop everything and head...

So there she sits, on a blue step of a stairway in the Old City, ‘The Blue City’, Jodhpur, and as I prepare to shoot, a pigeon, flying overhead in this narrow alleyway, startles her, she looks up, and at that moment, I realized,...

Imagine taking gum wrappers and other small pieces of paper, folding each into a 1 1/2” square, folding in such a way that each additional folded square inter-locks with the previous one and then ending up with more than 150 individual 7-foot strands…what do...

You’ve found the clean background, and with camera at the ready, give the child a balloon, and you keep shooting! Nikon D500, Nikkor 18-300mm, F/6.3@1/800 sec. 100 ISO WB  

Happy, jovial, giddy, lucky, fortuitous, blissful, delighted and joyful are words that all of us have at one time or another used to describe our good mood or the good mood of others, but the only word that I feel that could best describe...

Her ‘business’ was not much wider then a single kitchen cupboard and when she opens her doors, she sits cross legged, atop a soft red pillow and serves up a small glass of fresh cold water; not tea, not coffee, not snacks, no food...

This is an image of the world’s largest sitting Buddha, Thimphu, Bhutan. Simple stuff here: camera and 10-24mm Nikkor are sitting on rock floor, at a spot where a reflection is seen in the few darker slabs of rock that are staggered throughout this...

How do you bring much needed water to your rice fields in and around Inle Lake, Myanmar? You make narrow channels from the lake to your farm, and while walking slowly in the narrow and shallow channels of water that lie between the elevated...

As I came around the back side of one particular house on the edge of Inle Lake with it’s explosion of purple water lilies, in the country of Myanmar, my eyes caught site of her, a woman who I assumed lived in the house,...

Over the years I have witnessed both men and women at work, in what are arguably, ‘brutal and/or hostile’ working conditions, yet it is in these very conditions where I have often found ‘beautiful’ portrait opportunities. I came upon this young Ethiopian man, a...

The Yamuna river runs right through the city of Agra, India, a city most notable for being the home of one of the Seven Wonders of the World, The Taj Mahal. Unlike the famous Ganges River, which runs through the most holiest of India’s...

Panic has not set in yet, despite your confidence at being ‘lost’ in NE Myanmar, near the Thailand border. You have no GPS, but you still have one hour of daylight left and you at least know you must drive north to reach your...

Although it was brief, the afternoon rain shower left behind a puddle large enough to capture the reflection of the twin spired church across the street, and with the help of a willing student, Lexi, in my Savannah Workshop, my students and I had...

  Before we say goodbye to summer… Just how elaborate is the set-up to create a shot of ‘refreshing lemonade’? Surprisingly, it’s not elaborate at all! You will need: 1) Natural light 2) A drinking glass filled with sparkling/mineral water 3) A lemon slice...

I am often asked what separates an ordinary photograph from an extraordinary photograph. Most ‘ordinary’ photographs have one thing in common; most were shot at EYE-LEVEL! Most extraordinary photographs became extraordinary because the photographer CHOSE to change his/her point of view and in the...

When does a used bar of orange soap reach a level of critical significance in the world of photographic image making? My students and myself were unexpectedly presented with a chance to shoot great light of a simple bar of orange soap, atop a...

In your efforts to expand your photographic vision of understanding exposure, don’t forget that you will need to start limiting your vision as well! Let me explain. It is estimated that the ‘dynamic range’ of the human eye’s ability to see light and dark...