ken zirkel

I’ve been a longtime user of Adobe Lightroom, and I love it. I’ve been asked to give presentations on Lightroom at my photo club, and I sometimes use my notes from that session to share on bulletin boards on Reddit. So here it is, for my own reference: Q: How is Lightroom different from Photoshop? Photoshop [...]

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This question comes up a lot on online forums: “I’m new to photography. What are some good subjects to photograph? How do I come up with subjects?” The short answer is shoot what interests you, shoot what you can get to. Almost any subject can become a photo project. Shoot that subject frequently, at different [...]

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I hang around a lot (too much) in online forums, and this question comes up all the time. A beginner photographer is new to the hobby and would like advice on what DSLR to choose. If you are buying new: Of course Canon and Nikon are the most popular brands; they have the lion’s share [...]

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I saw a print ad in American Photo magazine for Meridian Professional Imaging. The ad specifically touted their panoramic printing, so I tried them out. They have a software package that makes it really easy to order enlargements; you can set the crop and preview the results. They have 1:3 and 1:4 and other ratios [...]

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This is a theme that goes around from time to time on internet bulletin boards. Here are my thoughts at the moment: Level indicator in the viewfinder, so that I know if the camera is perfectly horizontal or vertical. Further, I want the camera angle saved in the metadata, so that I can correct for [...]

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So, my father died last week, and I wanted to put together a photo gallery of photos of him. Digital was easy, I have everything keyworded, and a few minutes of searching came up with all my photos of him, as well as my “picks” of him, thanks to my photo organizing software. I have [...]

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The furor across the web about microstock has largely died down, but clearly there are still people out there who are (understandably) threatened by it. The argument, most recently expressed by Kenneth Jarecke in The Online Photographer, goes something like this: Time Magazine used to pay $4,000 for a cover photo, but now they only [...]

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Someone on Reddit asked advice on becoming a professional landscape/wildlife photographer. I’m not a pro, but I’ve followed the industry for a few decades from a few different angles, and I have met a lot of professional photographers. Anyhow, this was my reply: I don’t want to discourage you. I’d never want to discourage somebody [...]

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Constantly look at the media all around you. Pay close attention to commercial photography; not photojournalism or art. I’m talking about photos that are used in posters and advertisements, magazine articles, travel guides, church newsletters, even (to some extent) magazine feature articles (not news), etc. What kinds of imagery are they using and why? What [...]

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There is a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt about sensor cleaning. Frankly, I think it’s outrageous that there are no good self-cleaning sensor technologies out there. To think that a whole day’s shoot can be ruined because of a foreign object on the sensor that you cannot see until the shoot is over, it’s [...]

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