I’ve been using Adobe Lightroom (Lightroom Classic) in earnest for about five years now, and my image library contains over 80,000 photos. Every now and then, I like to streamline my catalog to reduce clutter. A great way to do this is by using the “Refine Photos” command in Lightroom Classic:
When I find myself overwhelmed or just need a burst of creativity, I look no further than using a deliberate pan blur, or “swipe” to create an abstract photograph. The idea behind a swipe is to use a relatively long exposure and move the camera either up/down or left/right while dragging the shutter. I find that with the right subjects, I can create some pretty fun images!
Swipes are just one of the many topics I cover in my complete guide to long exposure photography.
I’m not a total die-hard when it comes to solar photography, but I’m going to be close enough to the 2017 solar eclipse event that I figured I’d at least try to get some photos. But first, I had to construct a solar filter. Here’s how I made mine for about $45.
First, decide on which lens you want to use for photographing the sun. I chose my Nikon 200-500 f/5.6 VR lens, because it’s versatile and I can shoot it hand-held if I want to. I also chose this lens because it has a front filter thread, which will allow me to easily mount the solar filter to it. Continue reading A Homemade Solar Filter
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Did you know that with a little tweaking, you can extract tremendous dynamic range from single RAW files in Adobe Lightroom without using HDR? The trick is to take advantage of Lightroom’s Camera Calibration panel. There, you set the initial tone curve of your image (contrast & color). By using a low-contrast tone curve, you can recover more highlight and shadow details than by using sliders alone. If you use Nikon DSLRs, you can choose the “Camera Flat” profile to get more dynamic range. If you don’t have a Nikon camera, you can create your own custom profile with a linear tone curve by using the Adobe DNG Profile Editor. My video above will show you how.
Discover more Lightroom processing secrets with my comprehensive PDF guide.
It’s July, and that means many of us in the USA will be able to watch fireworks demonstrations. If you’ve never photographed fireworks before, you don’t want to have to troubleshoot camera settings in the dark. Most fireworks displays are under 30 minutes in duration, so you’ll want to be prepared! Here are my tips for photographing fireworks displays: Continue reading How to Photograph Fireworks