Tag Archives: primer for newbies
A Lifelong Quest for Image Clarity
The title sounds ominous enough. My first attempts to produce “snappy” pictures in print started in my sophomore year in college. I was the production manager for our college magazine and was determined to make the images in publication pop off … Continue reading
Color Balance is All About Neutral Gray
Sometimes taking a neutral position on things isn’t really the safe thing to do – sometimes it’s downright destructive! Your camera may not be as smart as you think! Auto White Balance. Your camera’s Auto White Balance, or AWB is … Continue reading
Out of the Shadows and Into the Light
Uncovering Hidden Details In the Shadows. There are usually significant details hidden under the weight of the darkest parts of an image. These darker details are very rich and revealing, and to some extent they are recoverable, but they must … Continue reading
Printed Picture Dynamics – The Good, Lackluster, and Frumpy
Why do good photos look frumpy and dull in print? There is a very simple, and easy to correct answer to this question. Continue reading
Photoshop Tools and Audio Controls
There exists an amazing parallel between the sciences of audio and photography; one that I learned about in the ’80 from personal experience. I owned a hybrid photo/litho production company in Nashville Tennessee from 1973-1986. This allowed me to enjoy both the creative … Continue reading
Preparing Photos for Publication – Part One
Here’s a serious question… who should be preparing your photos? Typically, the three folks (in descending order) generally charged with overseeing the quality of publication photos are: the photographer, the publication’s production department, and the printer’s pre-press department. Collectively, there’s a pretty good chance that essential … Continue reading
To Be (Visibly Appealing) or Not To Be, THAT is the Question!
I’m toying with a new idea, and it all has to do with photo quality. In particular, the real estate photo listings. On my last post I noted that it seems that few people actually care about the quality of … Continue reading
Does It Really Matter Anymore?
Lately, I’ve come to the uncomfortable reality that perhaps my obsession with delivering clarity and definition in the digital photographs is much more important to me than it is to many in the Internet (and even print) publishing community. From … Continue reading
The Great Paynter European Photo Adventure- Post One
I just finished a 30-day trek around southern Europe with my best friend (my wife Barbara), and my Lumix G5. This composite shot (one of over 4500 taken during the trip) is of one of the Dresden Museums, just down … Continue reading
Shedding Light on Black and White Part 3: The Digital Conversion
A comparison between the way film-based cameras and digital cameras capture spectral information and transpose that information into black and white images. Photography is all about Light. The more we understand about the way light behaves, the better we will … Continue reading