Lenspiration Blog
Welcome! Wherever you are on your photography journey, learn to take better photos through the photography tips and stories you'll find in the following free articles. By learning from the experience of others, you can also start taking pictures that you're excited to share with others!
How I Edit: Apartment Fortress
The other day, I ran across an interesting photo in my archives. It was Easter Sunday, 2011. I was working in South Korea and had decided to visit a friend in the military stationed at the Osan Air Base. It was early afternoon, and we were taking the scenic route...
On Assignment: Wisemen Silhouettes
I had such a great time with this assignment! At first, I didn’t know how I was going to do it. I wasn’t even sure if I could do it! But approaching it one step at a time, and solving one problem at a time, I was neat to see how it all come together. This...
Help Make Lenspiration Better in 2022!
2021 has been a great year! In January, we finished shooting for Calvary Baptist Church’s calendar they printed in Europe for 2022. Plans are in the works to get one shipped out to each photographer who’s photo was included in it! After months of planning and hard...
Only 20 To Go! (And the Story Behind the October Cutout)
You wouldn’t happen to need a stock photo, would you? Like, maybe, any one of these? The reason I ask is because, if I can sell 150 photos on Adobe Stock before the end of the year, I can get a free one-year subscription to Lightroom. And since I don’t need it...
More Stories Behind the Cutouts
If you’ve never paid much attention to the cutouts in the Lenspiration calendars, you’ve probably never thought about how similar or different they are from the main photo. Some of the cutouts are from surprisingly different places! But before I delve too much into...
The Story Behind the Cutouts!
It’s easy to talk about the main photos in a calendar, but I don’t think I’ve ever talked about the cutouts before! The “cutouts” are a unique aspect of the Lenspiration calendars. The very first year I ever started to make them, I saw a calendar that had little...
On Assignment: Many Different Photos
It’s the last photo assignment of 2021! A good time to step back and make sure all your photos from the year are well organized. And we have the perfect assignment for it: Many Different Photos! Like normal, I made a demonstration video for this assignment. But...
When I Feel Like Being Negative
Ah, the perfect subject for a blog post the day after Thanksgiving! You can’t be happy and thankful and grateful and kind and sweet all the time, can you? I mean, eventually, it’s going to wear off, right? Well, yes, if you never develop your negatives! I don’t...
2022 Calendar Giveaway!
“And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou...
The Need to Be Clean
The beach is such a fun place to play! Riding the waves, building sand castles, scrambling up sand dunes. But when the camera’s out, things are different. I don’t ride the waves. I don’t build sand castles. I don’t scramble on sand dunes. I wade ankle deep in the...
On Assignment: Raw Ingredients
When it comes to a real-life photo assignment, it doesn’t get much better than the one featured this month, Raw Ingredients! A small, family-owned business, looking for clean, bright, stock-like photos of just about anything! Lots of ingredients are used in Oil of...
Flat Lay Background Surface Ideas
Tuesday’s coaching webinar wrapped up the Shoot to Serve photo assignment for the month of October. Family Conferences wanted a picture for a Thanksgiving-themed social media post and had some photo ideas they liked, so we were all challenged to replicate those...
Ever Heard of the Word “Cull” Before?
Have you ever heard of the word “cull” before? Know what it means? It’s a word that comes up during Photography Teams all the time. The students go out and take a ton of pictures. In this digital age, we always take more photos than we need, right? So we need to...
The Hike Down From Seneca Rocks
From the top of Seneca Rocks, the views are picturesque, the danger real, and the experience of climbing around positively thrilling (see The Hike Up To Seneca Rocks). But the hike down was also picturesque, dangerous, and thrilling in it’s own way. Picturesque?...
The Hike Up To Seneca Rocks
Oh the sheer fun of taking a camera on a hike with no real purpose other than to just photograph whatever strikes my fancy! Such a whimsical experience is not so common a happenstance for me any more these days. There always seems to be some sort of grown-up...
On Assignment: Happy Thanksgiving!
“It’s barely the beginning of October, and you want me to start thinking about Thanksgiving?!” Well, welcome to the world of graphic design, publishing, and commercial photography! For those of us who like to do most of our photography in the outdoors, I guess this...
Covering a Family Event
The camera on my cell phone is usually sufficient for capturing memories for most family evets. However, for my grandfather’s funeral, I brought my DSLR because this was more than just a random get-together. It was an event I wanted to remember forever. For the...
Making the Right Edit
It was a gloriously foggy day! I love foggy days. Especially when I’m driving down curvy backgrounds. It makes them so photogenic!Coming up to the top of a ridge, I was happy to see a safe little place to pull off. The road came up one side of the mountain, and...
Have You Ever Had Your House Burn Down?
I hope you haven’t. Can you imagine how incredibly horrifying that experience would be? Even if nobody was hurt, it’s one of the most awful things I can imagine. And imagine if all your camera equipment was inside. It’s all gone up in smoke. Completely ruined. No...
On Assignment: Awesome Reflection
Have you ever gone to the same location multiple times in the same day, simply to observe what the place looked like at those different times of day? You would think that I, of all people, would have done this many, many times since I love landscape photography....
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