Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Focusing your DSLR even while wearing glasses

Nikon D200 with vertical gripAccording to the Vision Council of America, about 75% of US adults use some sort of vision correction. About 64% wear glasses, and about 11% wear contact lenses exclusively, or part time with glasses the remainder of the time.

It seems safe to assume that the same percentages apply to photographers in general, including travel photographers, and those on vacation.

Unfortunately, many photographers who wear glasses seem to have difficulty focusing their DSLRs and composing their images due to their inability to see the image fully in their camera's viewfinder, “edge to edge.”

Fortunately, for most photographers who wear glasses, there are both equipment solutions and techniques to help with focusing and image composition.

We need to start with the photographer's glasses. Prescription lens glasses are either single-focus or multiple-focus. Multiple-focus lenses can be bifocals, trifocals, and progressive lenses. Of these, the most difficult to use while photographing are trifocals and progressive lenses.

Photography Exhibition: The Getty Museum - In Focus: The Sky

Fence, Truro, Joel Meyerowitz, 1976The Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California, regularly has extraordinary photographic exhibitions. In Focus: The Sky is no exception.

This exhibition will run through December 4, 2011.
“With its immensity, immateriality, and variability, the sky has been an enduring subject in art history, fascinating and challenging generations of artists.
As soon as the medium of photography was introduced in 1839, photographers attempted to represent the sky and its natural phenomena.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Statue of Liberty to close for year

The Statue of LibertyNew York City (NYC) is one of the prime travel destinations in the world, and a location with a myriad of outstanding urban photographic opportunities. One of the great photographic opportunities in NYC is the Statue of Liberty National Monument.

If you're traveling to New York City in the fall, or planning a trip to NYC between late October, 2011 through late October, 2012, please be advised that from October 29, 2011 through approximately October, 2012, the Statue of Liberty will be closed to the public.

Liberty Island itself, on which the Statue of Liberty is located, will remain open during the project, and most of the time, most of the outside views of Lady Liberty will remain unobstructed.

Ellis Island has been undergoing restoration and renovations for a number of years, and there have been a number of erroneous reports in the press that Ellis Island will be closed. While the buildings which have been undergoing construction will remain closed until complete, the Immigration Museum, and the famous Great Hall on the 2nd  floor of the Museum, where so many immigrants to the US waited for their interviews with immigration inspectors, after finishing their medical exams, will remain open.

In fact, it's only the Statue of Liberty itself which will close starting this coming October.

Photography Exhibition: The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Night Vision:Photography After Dark

Mulberry Street, by Sid Grossman (American, 1913–1955)The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City, is one of the premier art museums in the world. When they have a photographic exhibition, you can be sure of its extremely high quality and its careful composition and construction.

At the turn of the last century, night photography came into its own as an artistic genre. In the early years of the medium, capturing images under low-light conditions was nearly impossible, but by the early twentieth century, faster films, portable cameras, and commercial flashbulbs freed artists to explore the graphic universe of shimmering light and velvety darkness that reveals itself in the hours between dusk and dawn.

Night Vision: Photography After Dark examines the work of the night camera artists.

This exhibition will run through September 18, 2011