James Staddon

Merry Christmas! Here are the photos I took. Looking forward to seeing your photo submissions; have a fun time with this assignment!

Like I said on the webinar, the publisher is used to very high quality stuff so it made it a bit intimidating to photograph for him. But I was very relieved that he chose to use some of our photos! Good job. Excellent job, everyone! Attached is a screenshot of the 6 wining photos side by side in their “raw” state, edited in Photoshop, and then…[Read more]

That is really neat, @warrior-princess! Thank you for making the effort to submit some photos even though it was so last minute. It’s neat to hear the story behind them too!

Monday was the day that Spectra chose which ones would be the winners, but I’ll add your photos to the database they may choose from to use in the future!

Hey @grace-galdamez, I think I may have mentioned I was going to look over your lamb photos in the last webinar but didn’t have time for it. So, taking a look at them here now for you!

You nailed the focus, that’s for sure! Look at the beautiful, sharp eyes, and the detail in the hair. The poor thing looks like it’s in some need of a home and…[Read more]

@dotremain, thank you for carefully following the assignment details and providing some more information about your issues with focusing!

I’m not familiar with the “split manual focus system”. Do you only use manual focus these days?

Thank you, everyone! It’s always a relief when submissions come pouring in on the last week. 🙂 We’ll work on assembling the photos and getting everything ready for the coaching webinar tomorrow! You can register for the 7pm event at https://www.lenspiration.com/webinars

Oh dear, @dotremain. That’s right. Many things can be “fixed” in post-processing, like exposure, color and noise. But focus is not one of those things.

How to troubleshoot the lack of sharpness completely depends on the kind of blur. Can you tell if the blur is from camera shake or subject movement? Or does it appear to be miss-focused, tack…[Read more]

Ok folks, here are my favorite submissions cropped square since that was part of the assignment details!

This was a more difficult assignment, so I was blown away by how many of you photographers submitted photos!

And the webinar was really good. After structured critique of one, randomly-chosen photo from each participant using the scoreboard, we were inspired to greater heights by comparing your best shots to similar shots I found on stock…[Read more]

Wow, incredible photos everyone! Can’t wait to critique them tonight on the webinar! https://www.lenspiration.com/product/photo-coaching-94/

Impressive, Elijah! The rough wooden table top is a nice touch. Looking forward to the webinar next week!

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, everyone! Today would be the day, all ye Canadians, to shoot this assignment if you don’t want to go through all the effort of making another Thanksgiving again before the end of the month. 🙂

Sorry for the confusion, there, @dotremain! It’s all the same course, just being introduced to different audiences over the course of a few months, and this time highlighted as a stand-alone, forever-access product. It’s new to 2023, you might say, especially to those who are not in the membership or didn’t recognize it earlier as part of the…[Read more]

And here are my submissions! This time I remembered to crop them square. 🙂 And something I learned after creating the demonstration video, she could use photos of more than just the food on the table. That’s what I focused on, but if you can include not only the food but also people interaction and fellowship around the table that would make your…[Read more]

Well, now you know who the winners are! I can hardly believe there were 9 new photographers submitting photos for an assignment for the very first time. With 30 photographers submitting, this makes the largest number on record for 1 assignment. Good job everyone! If you would like the watch the critique of your photos, members can watch the replay…[Read more]

Yes, much better background! The next thing to work on would be increasing your shutter speed. I’d say no less than 1/1000sec. Here’s some more tips! https://shutter-count.com/lens/best-shutter-speed-for-hummingbird-photography/

With 30 photographers submitting over 150 photos, I think this is one of the highest participated assignments on record! Such creativity. Such high quality photos. Critiquing your work is becoming harder and harder! But looking forward to tomorrow’s coaching webinar. 7pm, Eastern Time, members can register for free:…[Read more]

Perhaps you could gel your flash to make it the same/similar color as the other dominate light-source colors.

Also, dominate with your flash if possible. Increase flash power (and use a faster shutter speed), turn off lights in the room, use modeling lights?