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!
On Assignment: Sharing the Gospel
When I found out that this next assignment was about “Sharing the Gospel”, a lot of different ideas for what to shoot started coming to mind! A tract sitting with a tip on a table in a restaurant. A closeup of a Bible on the knee of someone in a living room with a...
How to Use Your Camera to Share the Gospel
With the current assignment wrapping up this weekend, it means a new assignment will be launching next week! Want to know what it is? Well, you’ll have to wait. But what I can tell you is that we’ll be shooting for Creation Today again! I appreciate the ministry of...
What Happened on August 19
Julianna and I have a date set for our wedding, now! It will be August 19, 2022. It will be an important date in our minds forever! But, has it always been? No. I’ve walked around on many an August 19 oblivious to the fact that it would ever be an important date to...
Looking for Portraiture Resources?
It’s been a long time in the making. Ever since Lenspiration started, you could say. An article here, a blog post there, forum discussions everywhere in between. Each article, blog post, and forum topic meet the need of the moment. But what about weeks, or...
On Assignment: The Intricacy of God’s Creation
There are several ways you can do macro photography on a budget, but for this assignment (see details here!) I explored one way I had never tried before! It’s true that flipping the lens isn’t the sharpest way to create macro photos. For starters, macro...
The Best Kind of Photography Job
It was very dark when I pulled into the driveway. But the headlights revealed quite a stately homestead. A gate led through an ivy-wrapped archway into a manicured back lawn where a shapely pool reflected the light reflecting off the clouds from downtown Dallas, 20...
6 Observations from A Very Special Event
A special event just happened last week that made me appreciate portrait photographers a whole lot more. Their experience. Their patience. Their expertise. You see, instead of being the portrait photographer, this event found myself on the other side of the lens. I...
Going Deeper Than First Impression
Looking forward to the first homeschool convention of year next week! Never been to a THSC Convention before. They say it’s the “biggest and best homeschool convention in Texas.” I guess we’ll find out soon what it’s like! Thinking about heading to Texas got me...
How Much More Can I Learn?
For last month’s photo assignment, 6 photographers submitted 44 photos. There were some fantastic photos among those 44, but there was one in particular that I really liked. This photo was submitted by Samuel West: When critiquing everyone’s photos on the Coaching...
On Assignment: Photos of American Patriotism!
I was so excited when Pennsylvania State Representative Andrew Lewis said we could do a photo assignment for him! This could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! And as such, not even a snowy day could keep me from shooting (or at least attempting to shoot!) some...
Revisiting a Photo Shoot From 2015
Any guesses as to which State this capitol building belongs to? I’ve only been to this State capitol building one time. Driven through the city many times, but only stopped in downtown once. And the reason I was there was to take some pictures for a client! He was...
An Example of a Published Photographer
Let me show you a photo that my Grandpa took back in, ...actually, wait a minute... can you guess what year it was taken? This was a question I asked on the last coaching webinar. And I said whoever guessed closest to correct would be the featured Lenspiration...
Can You Fake Golden Hour?
I was going through my archives today, looking for example photos for some new training material. And I came across this simple, well-composed shot taken in pretty much the middle of the day. It’s a grand-looking photo because, yeah, it’s literally the Grand...
On Assignment: Family Moments Together
As I was preparing for this month’s assignment, Christian from Christian Family Reformation introduced me to this idea of a new kind of photography I hadn’t really tried doing professionally before: Family Photojournalism. Why not professionally, artistically,...
Which One Would You Hang On Your Wall?
With the next assignment coming up, I spent last Tuesday shooting and filming it with some friends out in eastern West Virginia. But shooting the assignment wasn’t the only thing we did! We played Clue and cracked riddles around the campfire and scrambled through...
Exploring Balance
Since I’m not traveling much at this time of year, it’s a great time explore new territory in photography knowledge! Recently, I’ve been working on a new course on photography composition. And it’s been very interesting! This week I was hashing out particulars on...
What I Learned On My Latest Birding Excursion
It was fun photographing birds with some fellow photographers the other week. I liked the pictures I took so I thought maybe I should blog about it. Hideaway Countryside near Cheshire, Connecticut Download as free desktop background in next Latest from Lenspiration...
On Assignment: Colors of the Bible
As promised last week, the new photo assignment is now launched! You have until Saturday, February 26 to photograph the three colors of the Bible that Suzanne is requesting. And you might want to start on it early. Who knows what unexpected things you might run...
Can You See Color?
A new photo assignment is launching next Friday! We’ll be shooting once again for Suzanne Shera of Lightlab Etc! I first met Suzanne at the CHAP convention in 2019 and we’ve been in touch ever since. She wrote a book, Lightlab, that teaches children around the ages...
Directing Attention to the Subject
My brother Michael works as a beekeeper at a giant apple orchard on an abandoned coal mine site in southern West Virginia. The abandoned coal mine site is giant too. Like, ginormous! Hundreds and hundreds of acres of empty West Virginia wilderness. The bee yards he...