Slowing down your camera's battery drain!

I don't know about your digital camera, but my Nikon D-200, a DSLR, seems to eats up its battery charge too quickly. That's one of the major reasons I have a vertical grip on my camera. The grip allows me to use two batteries at a time, doubling battery life.

Today's digital cameras, whether DSLR or Point and Shoot units depend upon batteries to power the camera and its variety of moving parts and electronic circuits; no battery charge, no photos.

You should be aware of what you can do to extend the life of your camera’s battery. I also recommend carrying a spare battery at all times when taking photographs.

Photography Exhibition: The Museum of Photographic Arts - Picturing the Process: The Photograph as Witness

The Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, CA, continually has great photography exhibitions. Picturing the Process: The Photograph as Witness is particularly interesting. If you’re in the San Diego area in the next few months, don’t miss this exhibition. I’ll be there in December.

The exhibition will run through February 6, 2010.

Basic Composition 001

The best photos taken are the photos which are carefully planned.

Even while traveling, when we’re often rushed, when we’re preparing to go to the next site, or the next destination, taking the time to plan the current photo will produce the best photo of the current scene.

Sure, planning each photograph means setting the proper exposure, getting the focus right, and ensuring other technical aspects of the photograph, such as white balance, are as desired, but making a great photograph goes well beyond that.

Making terrific travel photographs, or any photographs, requires a well thought out composition. Carefully select your precise image and its design, order and presentation of the image’s subject matter to grab the viewer’s attention, and help them understand the photograph’s story.

Photography Exhibition: The Museum of Modern Art - New Photography 2009

MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, has exhibitions displaying some of the most interesting trends in contemporary photography. New Photography 2009 is one of those intriguing exhibitions.

This exhibition will run through January 11, 2010

Doesn't everyone love a parade?

What do you think? Is the old adage, “Everyone loves a parade” true?

When we travel, there are often photographic opportunities at parades. In some cases we just get lucky that there is a parade where we’re visiting. In many cases we traveled to be at the parade, or at least include it as part of our journey.

For hundreds of thousands each year the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and Carnival in Rio de Janeiro are destinations unto themselves. The nightly parade at Walt Disney World is attended by millions each year. The oldest new year’s parade in America, the Mummers Parade, with its classic string bands and guady costumes, continues to draw hundreds of thousands of visitors, each year, to Philadelphia from every corner of the Earth.

You might happen upon a special parade like the one in my example photographs, the 2008 Philadelphia Phillies World Series Victory Parade, which more than 3,000,000 attended. Travelers to Philadelphia that day got a big treat to be able to photograph and attend that parade.

Photography Exhibition: The Getty Museum - Irving Penn: Small Trades

The Getty Museum has become one of the premier museums exhibiting great works of photographic art.

At the Getty Museum they are currently showing the work of Irving Penn, a great American photographer in the exhibition Irving Penn: Small Trades.
 
This exhibition will run through January 10, 2009

“Working in Paris, London, and New York in the early 1950s, photographer Irving Penn (American, born 1917) created masterful representations of skilled tradespeople dressed in work clothes and carrying the tools of their occupations.

Do filters for digital cameras make sense?

Before the advent of high quality digital cameras, professionals, and advanced amateur film photographers traditionally used filters to modify both the color and intensity of light exposing the film, as well as to generate special effects.

Digital cameras operate in a different world with respect to color. Photographers can easily modify color in their cameras, or during post processing in their computers, via controlling white balance for scene color accuracy or effect.

Warming, cooling, and filters which convert fluorescent light to look like daylight, may be required for film, but digital cameras can achieve the same effects by their internal manipulation of the image’s digital data.

The use of traditional photography filters for modifying the color of the light, is unnecessary for digital photography, but other filters can work well for digital photography.

Photography Exhibition: The National Gallery of Art - In the Darkroom: Photographic Processes

The National Gallery of Art has an extensive collection of photographic images, however, most are not regularly on display. This exhibition, In the Darkroom: Photographic Processes, will take 90 photographs from its permanent collection. It will be a treat to see them. 

This exhibition will run from October 25^th through March 4, 2010

Getting my camera ready for the day's travel photography

While traveling, or for that matter, during any photo shoot, for a variety of reasons, photographers may vary any number of major camera settings which control exposure metering, focus, shutter mode, etc. By the end of the day, one’s camera’s settings may be significantly different than when the day began.

The next morning, it’s likely we won’t remember how the camera’s settings were left at the end of the prior day. That can result in  photographs which need extensive retouching and repair, totally blown shots which can only be discarded and missing great shots all together.

At some point this happens to everyone, but it is avoidable.