David Frazer

You mentioned that your intended use is for studio work, and you haven’t really talked about what gear you already have, so I thought I would simply mention that what will make a much bigger difference in the final results than the camera body is the lighting system. What you you already have in terms of flashes, strobes, continuous lighting,…[Read more]

“lens corrections” is to correct vignetting and lens distortion (pincushion/barrel distortions)

There is another module called “chromatic aberrations”, if I remember rightly.

You’re right, @hayhand02 that is a Nikon lens, but it is for the Nikon 1 series, and will not work on their DSLRs. Currently, the closest there is that I am aware of is the Tokina 12-28mm f/4.0 (currently 430 USD at B&H).

@rmadaris, sorry I’m rather late seeing this… As far as software goes, I personally use Photomatix Pro 6 (about 100 USD – they also have a trial version) and Darktable (free). I also occasionally use Gimp (free).

Here is how I started:
Most of my work was shot in aperture mode, and bracketed -2 0 +2 although I occasionally need more, and…[Read more]

As a real estate photographer and real estate broker, I think I can probably help you a bit. Here are some of my thoughts:

Real estate photography has a very specific purpose: to create a desire to go see and eventually purchase a property. Depending on the agent, that can be approached in different ways.

Photo #1 is not a real estate photo.…[Read more]

There could be a couple of possible reasons for that. The most likely problem is the screen you are using to view the photos. Have you tried viewing the same photos on various screens? The more different screens you can try the better, even if they are only cell phone screens. If they all look pretty similar, and equally bad, it could be the…[Read more]

It looks like nobody here has experience calibrating their monitors (myself included). Getting the “correct” colour is rather tricky.

In general, grey should look grey (gray will do, too) and white should look white. But that changes depending on what kind of lights you have around your computer, too. A white paper sitting in front of your…[Read more]

Here’s a quick edit of your original, with a sky replacement, slight colour correction, and the verticals straightened. I would make one suggestion – shoot a bit wider than you want your final picture to be: it is easier to crop things out than to add things in. Yes, you loose some resolution by cropping, but the D3200’s 24 Megapixels is plenty…[Read more]

So far, what do you like best? Do you find Photos gives you as much editing power as you like? If so, don’t bother adding more software to your computer.

If you find that you would like to do a bit more than Photos does, a couple of other programmes you could try are Darktable (free) and Affinity Photo (50 USD, has a 10 day trial).

I have used RAWTherapee, Darktable, Gimp (all free) and have also used the free trial versions of Affinity, Photoshop and Lightroom.

In my opinion these programs can be divided into two distinct categories:

1) sorting and basic editing (including non-destructive global adjustments for RAW and jpg images, as well as some local adjustment…[Read more]

+1 to @bensharpeningcharacter on saying that you need more text. Your home page definitely needs more content – text and photos.

We happened past this old school the morning of March 8th on our way south, after driving through quite a bit more snow in CT, NY and NJ the day before.

Taylor’s Bridge School in Townsend, DE built c. 1923/1924

By the way, +jamesstaddon, I’m pretty sure I helped fix the roof on that first picture – that’s the school house at the Northwoods, right?

I’m no wedding photographer, but it would be important to get with any other photographers there and make sure you are on different flash channels…
Make sure you find a good way of bouncing the flash (off the ceiling, a wall, etc)

This is a bit off topic, but @jamesstaddon, is Lenspiration automatically stripping the exif data from all pictures now? It seems to me that the exif data used to be there, but I cannot find any recent pictures that have any exif data.

It sounds like he has some macro photography tools! A flash ring is normally a low-power flash that sits all the way around the lens and gives a fairly uniform lighting to an object that is close to the lens. That is great for taking pictures of small objects up-close. They go for anywhere from 30$ for an inexpensive off-brand to 550$ for the…[Read more]

Someone once said, “Only three things in this life are sure: death, taxes, and loss of data.” Although I would disagree with the saying, there is no sure way of not loosing files. The best idea is to have everything in at least 2 different devices in 2 different location. Most people will say 3 or 4 is better, but how much do you really want to…[Read more]

I like the choice of verses that go with the pictures. Watch out for typos though… 🙂 Keep doing more of these – the more you do and the more you look at other people’s work (book covers, magazine covers, bookmarks, etc), the better you will get!

Great picture concept! I would prefer to re-compose so that the Bible is in the girl’s left hand and have her turn toward her left a little. Remember the rule of thirds: our eyes tend to go to what is placed on thirds, so placing the Bible there would really improve it!

If you don’t mind trying new programs, you can try Inkscape to make your logo – it’s free. What program do you currently use to edit your photos? Most photo editing programs that support RAW files also have a way of adding your logo once it is made.

Your metering mode could also affect how bright it comes out.

AV (aperture mode) is a semi-automatic mode, so when the camera sees lots of bright white snow it might say “whoa! too much light!” and bump up your shutter speed or bump down the iso to avoid having bring white patches in the picture. Of course, snow is bright and white, but the…[Read more]