written by: Dan BurkholderI’m not sure who said it first, but the advice, “When you think you’ve found the best shot, turn around and look behind you” was the wise counsel that left me with a keeper during an early morning shoot in the Catskills. I’d stopped to photograph a waterfall from a stone bridge when a cloud blew in silently but with amazing swiftness. Suddenly, the friendly upstate New York mountains felt more like a spooky English moor. The mist was so thick that the waterfall below the bridge utterly disappeared in the haze. Thinking that the best shooting for this location was Read more »
written by: Dan BurkholderHave you noticed? Photographers are combining images in all sorts of new ways. They use HDR (High Dynamic Range) to combine bracketed exposures, stitch wide panoramas with overlapping images, and shoot multiple images of a scene, changing the focus between each exposure to increase depth of field… this technique is called focus stacking. Lens aperture is commonly used to control depth of field (DOF). In this article, I’m going to explore ways to monstrously increase DOF for landscape or macro photography using focus stacking. If you’ve dallied in HDR imaging you know that shooting a bracketed series of images−from light Read more »
written by: Dan Burkholder“Connected,” that’s the word we’re hearing more and more in our digital lives. Connected via email, Facebook, Twitter, the Cloud…you know the drill. Most recently, Samsung has begun hinting that an explosion of cloud related storage and sharing options might accompany new cameras with built-in WiFi and 4G protocols. Yep, it’s not hard to envision the day when we can permanently retire sync cables and card readers from our photographic lives. But why wait? We crave smaller−but full-featured− cameras now. And we want to move images from our cameras to our iPhones and iPads now, with currently available technology. The Read more »
Has Automated Image Editing Come of Age?
written by: Dan BurkholderIn this continuing series of iPhone Artistry articles, we’ve discussed valuable−and sometimes wonky− issues surrounding using your iPhone and iPad for honest-to-goodness image capture and editing. In this particular article, we’re taking a detour (well, on the wonkiness, anyway) to examine an app that promises to lead us into the mythological land of decision-free photography. Many of us fancying ourselves “serious” photographers and image editors display an open contempt for software claiming to be automatic and foolproof. We eschew the idea behind automated things, like the “green rectangle” on our camera’s mode dial, even calling that auto-everything mode the “PHD” Read more »
Apple's Two Coolest Gizmos Unite to Make Photography Easy and Fun
written by: Dan BurkholderAnd in the Beginning… In this wacky, adrenaline and pixel driven world of digital photography, we’re witnessing something close to a reinvention of the medium rather regularly. In fact, this article looks at new hardware and software that, without exaggeration, really does represent a new beginning in the way we capture and edit our images. When Apple introduced its first iPhone in 2007, many of us were amazed at the list of jaw-dropping features the new gizmo sported. We could browse the web, send emails, and synch our calendars and address books, all while talking on the phone. But few Read more »
The new Polaroid-Holga for the 21st Century
written by: Dan BurkholderAnd in the Beginning My personal iPhone journey started on Thanksgiving of 2008. Waiting eagerly for my other-network contract to expire, I couldn’t wait to browse the web, have visual voice mail, sync calendars and address books, play games and…oh, and it had a camera. I was initially dismissive of the iPhone’s camera. It was low resolution, fixed focus, and had no control at all. You know where this is going. Slowly but surely, I was seduced by the iPhone’s ease and accessibility. The image quality worked its way into my photo- graphic heart. The software (“apps” of course) was Read more »
