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Photographing Festive Lights

Although it is cold outside in this “neck of the woods”, for those brave enough to get outside and shoot the lights, there are some great opportunities. There are a few things to know when trying to make the most of your neighbours’ efforts. The best time to capture the images are at twilight. Just before the sun sets, you will get a decent shot of the house as well as the lights.

Gallery Show

i was at the gallery recently to chat about my work. There was some interest in the technical details of the images on display. I really enjoyed speaking with people who appreciate fine art photography. Hopefully enough to give the pieces a new home……..

JPG vs RAW - Part 5 (at last..!)

Part 4 ended part 4 with - Why would you shoot in RAW? Because YOU have control over the final result. If you take a look at two images in the “Blog Examples” section of the Image Collections, i will try to explain what I am taking about. The first image is as the scene was shot. Although it was shot in RAW, the JPG would have looked about the same.

JPG vs RAW - Part 4

In my last post, I said that “The final JPG image is not so good for “serious” photography. On reflection, I thought that it may have been a bit harsh, but today I spoke with an advanced amateur photographer. He mentioned that he is starting think about RAW after reviewing some images he took on a trip to Iceland a few years ago. His comment to me was that he’s like to apply some processing to improve the results, but since he shot JPG’s, there was not enough data to work with.

JPG vs RAW - Part 3

In the last blog, we ended with “Now that we know what RAW is, we can go on to explain why you’d want to use it….” I guess that the difference between JPG and RAW is akin to the olden days when you could take pictures with 35mm film or use a Polaroid. The Polaroid gave you a nice picture, but if you wanted to change it - well it was WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).

JPG vs RAW - Part 2

To explain why you would want to use a RAW format, we have to explain what RAW is. Every camera manufacturer gives you this option. The files have a specific extension that denotes a RAW file. Nikon (my preference) uses the NEF format (Nikon Electronic File), Canon uses either CRW or the newer CR2 and Olympus uses ORF (Olympus Raw Format). These file types all have the same attributes but are no compatible with each other.

JPG vs RAW

A question I am asked frequently is “Do you shoot in JPG or RAW? " The answer is actually, both. As a former (and sometimes current film photographer, I need the latitude that RAW images provide. However, when I do not intend to process the images, JPG is definitely a more efficient format. If you have a few minutes, let me begin to explain…. Most beginning digital photographers use the JPG setting in their cameras.