On the Wing

A couple weeks ago, I spent a little time at a Columbus metro park called Blendon Woods.  It turned out to be a worthwhile trip.  There’s a large pond there with a pretty dense population of waterfowl, but the best features there are two blinds built right on the water.  These blinds are built to…

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Why shoot RAW?

One of the features found on quite a few high-end P&S cameras, and all DSLR’s (as far as I know) is the ability to output RAW files.  This feature tends to be pretty confusing for new users, but power-users and pros love it.  What are RAW files, and what’s all the confusion about? RAW files…

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HDR from a single image

Over the last couple years, High Dynamic Range (HDR) photos have become pretty popular among photo processing types.  HDR photos are really nothing more complicated than a combination of images with different exposure settings.  Unlike panoramic photos, which stitch photos into a larger image than you’d normally be able to capture, HDR images take the…

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The Accidental Bee

It’s late winter here in Ohio, and while we’ve already had our first tease of spring, it’s cold and damp out today — a perfect excuse to look back to a photo from the middle of summer last year.  This photo also illustrates the “Get Out of the Car” principle.  I had no idea when…

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Should your next lens be a Zoom or a Prime?

Owners of DSLR cameras have a dizzying array of lenses available for their cameras (that’s sort of the point, after all), but choosing the right lenses for your bag can be a challenge — especially when you’re on a tight budget.  Among the biggest choices is whether you want a zoom or a prime. Prime…

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Get out of the car!

Photographers say that the best camera is the one you’ve got with you.  What they mean, of course, is that when you see a subject for a photo, you’re out of luck if you don’t have your camera with you.  When the elements don’t prohibit it, then, I try to keep my camera in the…

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Image quality not quite up to par

I’ve noticed some pretty dismal image quality in the last couple galleries / blog posts I uploaded.  I’m not sure yet where the image quality is taking a nose-dive, but I’ve clearly got a little detective work to do, as the quality isn’t nearly what it should be by the time these photos made it…

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Framed

I was flipping through some shots from last summer in anticipation of the return of warmer weather here.  I found a few shots that were nice, but not spectacular.  Specifically, I wasn’t really excited about the composition on some of these shots, and I thought I’d try some post-processing to change up the look of…

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RC Heli-photography

Here’s a pretty remarkable conjunction of expensive hobbies:  a Radio-Controlled Helicopter camera mount.  I saw a link to a pretty fantastic short movie created with this setup a couple weeks ago.  This movie is technically impressive, having been shot on a Canon 7D suspended from a helicopter flying over the biker, but I think what…

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Partial Saturation

Last weekend, I went for a hike and stumbled on a little historic farm in the middle of the park.  This farm had all sorts of fantastic photo opportunities, and I was excited to get home and try processing a few in black & white.  I’m not really much of an expert at B&W conversion,…

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