Before leaving on a trip to England, I decided to add a lens suitable for landscapes to my outfit. I chose the Rokinon 14mm F/2.8 in a Nikon lens mount due to its affordability and quality.

I’ve had the lens for about a year now, and here are my thoughts on this not-so-little gem.

Being able to tell a story through images is one of the best things about photography.

That storytelling is one of the reasons why I really enjoy wedding photography. The industry has changed over the past few decades to include a more journalistic and storytelling approach to wedding coverage, and I think it is a wonderful way to capture all the emotions and beauty of a wedding day.

How do you tell the story of a wedding through photos though? Let’s take a case example to explore.

Photography has changed quite rapidly over the past few decades. Instead of darkrooms and film, we have Adobe Lightroom and memory cards.

What does it mean to take a photo with a digital camera though? How does shooting with a digital sensor instead of film affect the look of your photos? What are the advantages and disadvantages of digital sensors?

I don’t think anyone is unfamiliar with Steve McCurry’s photo titled Afghan Girl. The National Geographic cover is one of the most recognized photos on the planet. It epitomizes the mashup of fine art and portraiture.

What about it makes it great though? Is it the complementary color palette? Her striking eyes? The Composition? What kind of camera did McCurry use, and what did he do to it in the darkroom? These are some of the questions I hope to explore with this blog.

This has to be one of my most highly requested topics, HDR.

I’m splitting this topic up over two posts. The first will cover what HDR is and how it is (unfortunately) misused and the second will show how to make HDR images step by step in camera and in photo shop.

Who doesn't like a bit of vintage once in a while? Today let's take a look at some old cameras!

The Brownie Name

Kodak has used the Brownie camera name for a long time. They were the early versions of disposables and originally marketed for children. Many versions of the camera evolved over time, but a basic and simply made design always prevailed.

If there is one effect that I would have to name the most popular for photo editing it would have to be the vignette.

Everyone tries it out sometime and usually with good results. Its a subtle effect that can draw attention to the center of your image and create nice framing. Today I'll show you how to apply a vignette with a few different editing programs, and talk a little about what not to do with vignettes.

Using vignettes is very easy in most programs, often requiring only a couple clicks.

I've used an Amazon Basics camera backpack for a few years now, but I decided I was in need of something with a bit more heft to it for traveling. After some research, I decided to try out the Thinktank Retrospective 40 Shoulder Bag.

The first digital camera I ever used took 3.2 megapixel photos. Cameras today take as many as 24 or 36 megapixel photos. What is a megapixel though?

I would like to introduce a discussion in this post.

Photoshop is the industry standard for image manipulation and creation, and with its powerful abilities to perfect and idealize the human form it has created an ethical dilemma.

I hope for this to be a continuing series to discuss and explore the ethical issues of Photoshop and its societal effects, particularly between media creators and consumers.

Disclaimer: Yes, I have done all of these, any examples are photos I took while learning myself. (most were taken while I was in high-school).

All photographers do this at some point, you have to start somewhere. Take an easy road right now though and check out these common beginner mistakes that I have learned to avoid.

A lot of people are intimidated by the PSAM (PTvAvM for Canon Users) dial.  Today we will go over what these different settings are and when they can be used.

There is usually a lot more than just the standard PSAM settings on the mode dial, but most of these are just variants of the "auto" mode and not the focus of this post. The letters PSAM stand for:

There are a lot of ways to convert color photos to black and white. Some provide a bit more control than others, but no method is wrong.

Through a lot of experimentation I found this method that gives me a look I really like and the amount of control over the look I wanted using a combination of Lightroom and Photoshop. 

Primes are lenses that consist of a single focal point (they don't "zoom").

Why would you want a lens that can't zoom? Well they have a number of advantages which you can find out in today's list.

If there is one incredibly important but under-appreciated piece of photography gear, its the memory card.

These little squares are the protectors of your digital negatives, and there are a lot more to them than people think.

The most basic technical aspect of photography is exposure.

Exposure is basically how much light reaches your camera's sensor (or film) in a single photo.

There are a number of things that can affect exposure and it may seem a bit complicated, but it's not. I have created an effective analogy below that will help you learn how exposure works.

Have you ever wondered how photographers get those creamy smooth backgrounds like the photo above?

There are several factors that create the smooth blurred background (commonly referred to as 'bokeh') including focal length, distance, and aperture the distance between the subject and its background.

To help explain how to do this yourself, let's take a look at each of those.

Photography doesn't end once you click the shutter.

Practically any photo you see on the web, in a magazine, or in advertisements has been edited. Its not that you need editing programs to make great images, but software like Adobe Lightroom or GIMP allow you to fine tune your photos to be the best that they can.

There are a lot of choices for photo editing and management, from free to "wow really?!" 

So how do you go about finding which program is for you? First, consider what you need.