3-Day Weekend Starts Tomorrow: Food Photography with Penny De Los Santos
Do you know about CreativeLive.com? CreativeLive launched sometime last year and offers online photography workshops on a variety of topics. Many of the workshops are 3-day weekend workshops, 8 hrs per day. All workshops are free if you watch live online, and fee-based for the workshop video downloads. It’s a great source of information, and [...]
MARS 2011 with Garrett Nudd
Some of you may know that I spent the whole of last week in Cape May, New Jersey at the annual conference of the Mid-Atlantic Regional School of Professional Photography (MARS). MARS is an affiliate school of Professional Photographers of America (PPA), one of the professional associations that I belong to. Each year, MARS puts [...]
Registration is open! March 27th Blossom Kite Festival: A Photographic Storytelling Workshop
I’ve just announced a new photography workshop on photographic storytelling, centered around Washington, DC’s first ever Blossom Kite Festival! Spring is in the air with the National Cherry Blossom Festival’s first ever Blossom Kite Festival, including a Kite Makers Competition, Hot Tricks Showdown, and Rokkaku Battle. During the Hot Tricks Showdown, multi-line sport kite fliers [...]
Ask a Gallery Owner – 8:00-8:40 PM TODAY with Jason Horejs of Xanadu Gallery
I know this is short notice, – I got this e-mail a few days ago, but have been busy and only just opened it. If you’ve kept up with my blog, the name, Jason Horejs, of Xanadu Gallery may be familiar: – “Starving to Successful.” Get into Galleries and Sell More Art – ArtTracker from [...]
New Workshop Coming March 12th. People Photography for Beginners: Gaithersburg St. Patrick’s Day Parade
Do you have an expensive camera that you don’t know how to use? Do you always shoot on automatic? Do you wish you could take better photos of your children? Do your photos often end up under or overexposed? Do you wonder why your photographs lack impact? Do you wish your photographs could equal your [...]
Helping Out a Student at American University
A student at American University – Jaclyn – e-mailed me last week. She needed to interview a professional in the field of mass communication for an understanding media class. Because she’s interested in photography and wanted to learn about the career of a professional photographer, she googled photojournalist in Washington, DC and was drawn to my cultural, humanitarian, [...]
A Presentation to the Women Photojournalists of Washington: 10 Tips for Selling Fine Art Photography
In late October, I had the honor of being asked to give a presentation on selling fine art photography to the Women Photojournalists of Washington, as part of their Ten Tips Tuesday series. I had a lot of fun with the presentation, so I thought I’d share an excerpt of my ten tips with you, [...]
How I Shot This: Carnival Rides at the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair
Earlier this week, an e-mail popped into my inbox. It said: Hello, my name is Ashleigh and I am 16 years old. I have recently started my A-Level Photography course and have been inspired by your photos of fairground rides which i found on google images! I then took a look at your website and [...]
Making a trip to Uganda not JUST a trip to Uganda
At the beginning of 2010, ephotos.com published an interview of me, and featured my travel/humanitarian photography on the front page of their website for several months. A few days ago, I received an e-mail from a student photographer named Jessica, who wrote to me after reading the interview. Here’s what she said: I hope this doesn’t [...]
Student Work: Light and Motion – Photographing the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair
Last week, I taught a photography workshop on Light and Motion: Photographing the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair. The students and I had a great time; everyone agreed that the fair is a great subject for a photography workshop! What better place to learn about night photography? And of course, everyone got some great photos, so all of [...]
How-To: Shooting the Blues Club on Bourbon Street
Last week, I posted a photo of Troy Turner, Ike & Tina Turner’s nephew, singing away the blues at the Blues Club on New Orleans’s famed Bourbon Street. One of my students saw the post and asked me how I made the shot, so I thought I’d tell you here on my blog. So here goes! [...]
Student Work: DC Memorials at Night
A few Fridays ago, I ran an intermediate/advanced workshop on “Photographing the DC Memorials from Evening to Night.” Here is some student work from John and Barry, two of my four students. Didn’t they do a great job, doing a teacher proud???!!! (Students: You’ve all received an invitation to view a private lightbox with these [...]
For Budding Photographers: Secret #2 of the Exposure Triangle
In my recent blog post, “Secret #1 of the Exposure Triangle,” I talked about using shutter speed to creatively express movement in your photographs. Today, I’ll take you through Secret #2: Using aperture to control depth-of-field. Aperture refers to the size of the lens diaphragm opening; it controls the amount of light entering the camera. A [...]
Great Falls Sunset: Vision Doesn’t End with the Click of the Shutter
I’ve been contemplating the image-creation process this week, as I work on a series of images of Great Falls. I thought I’d share some of my musings about the three essential steps to great image-making: Step 1: Defining your vision for the image and the message you want to convey, be it beauty… drama… majesty… [...]
For Budding Photographers: Secret #1 of the Exposure Triangle
Over the past year, I’ve noticed that at least half of the new photography students who come to me bring along with them a misconception about the relationship between shutter speed and exposure. I’ll ask them how they decide to use a slow vs. fast shutter speed, and they’ll say something like, “When it’s bright [...]
WORKSHOP: Photographing the DC Memorials from Evening to Night
I’m super excited about a new 1/2-day photography workshop that I’m putting together for Monday, July 5th on Photographing the DC Memorials from Evening to Night. One of the things that students at my last workshop on Art of Architecture: Photographing the Franciscan Monastery appreciated a lot was the “intimate” nature of the class, and how that lent [...]
How to Check Your Camera for Sensor Dust
One of my students recently mentioned to me how he was kicking himself after a shoot for not adequately cleaning his camera lens. I asked him if he was sure that it was a dirty lens rather than a dirty sensor. If you’re getting annoying little spots or blobs on your photos, then this post [...]
Just getting started in digital SLR photography? Check out these gear recommendations…
I often get questions from people at a range of photographic levels on gear, whether it be camera bodies, lenses, flash, or other accessories. Today, someone asked me for recommendations for a first digital SLR camera. (Here’s to you, Mac!) Rather than continue to answer these questions individually, I decided to share my response with [...]
Check out my new Black Rapid RS DR-1 Double Strap!
I’m a two-camera shooter, especially at weddings. I have to have those two bodies to allow me to quickly access at a minimum my wide angle and zoom lenses without missing any of the critical action – the look on dad’s face when he sees his daughter for the first time, the groom’s face when [...]
If photography is the air you breathe, you will make it…
I am a fan of David duChemin, a humanitarian and international assignment photographer. I was reading one of his blog posts, “No Vision without Passion,” and his words have really struck a chord: “…If you want to succeed in your photography, whatever that means to you, then you need to fuel it with passion and [...]
ArtTracker from Xanadu Gallery. Keep Track of Your Artwork.
The other thing I came across while browsing Xanadu Gallery’s website is their ArtTracker software. One thing that I realize is that I need to get more organized about tracking all the artwork that I have in various galleries/art shops, hanging in my studio, or simply resting in archival boxes waiting for the next show/buyer. So [...]
“Starving” to Successful. Get into Galleries and Sell More Art. April/May Workshops for Artists.
I received an e-mail from Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, advertising their “Starving” to Successful | Get into Galleries and Sell More Art workshop, which is coming to Virginia/Maryland (Roanoke/Norfolk/Richmond/Baltimore) in April/May. I hadn’t heard of the gallery or workshop before, but the e-mail itself (which talked about the six most common mistakes artists make when [...]