Photography Tips

I've had the D850 for a year now and finally got to play with a feature I knew the camera had but had never used...the WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. Up to this point, I hadn't needed to mess with that built-in networking functionality because the workflow to get the images off the camera's memory card always started with loading the pictures into Lightroom using a card reader. It's so fast loading directly off the card…

These lovely leaves might well have led you to think of Fortitude doing a big dump of red leaves to the deck but this was actually outside of the Eastern Wake Regional Centre near Zebulon. After getting the booster jab, it was a very welcome sight indeed to see such a beautiful explosion of colour that I couldn't help but to aim the iPhone's camera at the massive pile o' red leaves! :)

Today's gallery is exactly why I love shooting in the autumn and as much as I love those two Japanese Maples in front of the house, Fortitude's colouration will easily be my favourite. Only five days after the previous set of shots and Fortitude is in full-on red colour saturation. These were taken just before noon so the sun was overhead and occasionally peeking through the leaves which gives a lovely backlit texture to the…

The first set of photos were shot after collecting Katie and Alex in Clayton for the morning commute to school. I was loving how the fog was playing in the fields. Unfortunately, this is an example of just how quickly the light can change when you're shooting shots like this. Right before getting to Julia's house, I had spotted some hay bales in a field when it was much darker and you could just barely…

When it comes to full-on obnoxious colour saturation, no season comes close to the autumn for colour that practically explodes off the frame. These pictures were taken in the afternoon after collecting Katie and Alex from school. The first set of the trees at the intersection of New Hope and Rogers Lane shows just how glorious the setting sun can show off the colours of the leaves in the trees. The second set shows Patience…

Everyone has "squirrel moments", right? In this case, it was a real life "Mr Nutterbutter" who thought they could evade the reach of the camera lens on the iPhone to nick a nut. Oh, you silly squirrel! :) There's hardly a place on Earth where you won't find at least one camera lens pointed at you and escaping detection of the crime is well nigh impossible! :) The only thing this little critter needs is…

After getting a few pictures of Mistletoe with the sunflowers at Dix Park, it was time to unleash the D850 with the 105mm f/2.8 Micro-NIKKOR lens and get up close and personal with the sunflowers and the bees that were busily pollinating them! This is the combination I wanted to be packing when we came out here a few days earlier for Julia's birthday because the detail the lens is capable of capturing is nothing…

Julia's birthday included an impromptu trip to the large field of sunflowers currently inhabiting Dix Park just south of downtown Raleigh. She was interested in getting some pictures of the kids with the sunflowers as a backdrop and taking advantage of the lovely lighting from the setting sun. As we were between various shots/posing/occasional grumpiness/more posing/SHOOT!, I decided to have a bit of fun with the iPhone's camera and get some nice shots of the…

I've loved my little PlusTek 8200i film scanner...with the exception of medium format 120 film, it's handled just about every set of negatives and slides I've thrown at it. It is designed to scan 35mm (135 format) film and it does it very well...having three trays to hold the negative strips is very nice as you can scan one set of negatives and have two strips loaded and ready to go. 126 format film can…

One of the treasures I discovered in my father's garage was a huge collection of 35mm slides shot by my grandmother and a tray that my father shot whilst deployed to Vietnam during his first tour of duty (1967-1968). What was shocking was how good a condition they were in despite the heavy humidity of the Central Florida area and near the garage door in particular where they'd likely been sitting since 1998 or 1999…