Everything you need to know about Dan Margulis is in Advanced Color Correction, Part One .
After you have devoured the book I recommend in that article, you will know why you need to get Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace.
If you want to master color in Photoshop, Dan Margulis is the best of the best. He is one of the first three persons to be named as a member of the Photoshop Hall of Fame. And the book to get is Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction (5th Edition). It is well worth finding on the used market (which you can do via my photography store). What Margulis teaches you to do with color is amazing. The before and after images will make your jaw drop.
Jeff Schewe and Bruce Fraser on RAW Camera Files
If you aren’t shooting RAW files with your digital camera (as opposed to jpeg files), you should think about the advantages of shooting in RAW. Read the articles RAW vs JPEG Camera Files and The RAW vs JPEG Exposure Advantage at my photography web site.
A lot of the quality of your final image will be determined by what you do with your RAW files when you open them in Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) which is part of Photoshop and Lightroom.
DeLorme inReach Two Way Satellite Communicator
Every now and then you hear tragic stories about people who lose their lives simply because they didn’t have a cell phone signal and couldn’t call for help in an unexpected emergency. A $200 – $300 satellite communicator would have saved their lives.
If you want to master Photoshop, a complete course can be found in the books recommended below.
More photos are taken of people than any other photograph subject. If you want to improve your photographs of people, there are some excellent books to help you do that.
I have no idea when I was first entranced by the photos of Ansel Adams. There is a wonderful, luminous quality to his work. Small wonder he is America’s best known landscape photographer. Collections of his work would make a worthy addition to any photographer’s library. This is also the time of year that Ansel Adams calendars pop up like snowstorms.
The best advice I can give you is: Don’t buy any book or calendar with photos by Ansel Adams unless it is published by Little, Brown and Company, or by NYGS (New York Graphic Society, which is also published by Little, Brown).
Why?
Star Trails, Rocky Mountain National Park
Interested in getting into astrophotography? The simple stuff is simple to do (like the photo above). The hard stuff is hard and complicated to do if you want eye popping photos like you see in Astronomy and Sky and Telescope magazines. Here’s my advice.
Golden Brook. Photo © Tony Sweet
I’ve been reading two excellent nature photography books by Tony Sweet. They are published by Stackpole Books. They choose first class photographers who have written an excellent and ongoing series of photography books. I’ve been giving high praise to Stackpole’s photography books for years and I now have two more to add to the list.
Wildlife Location Guides
The first step to photographing wildlife is finding wildlife. In the case of common wildlife, that’s easy. If you are looking for squirrels you may not need to look any farther than your own back yard. But if you want to photograph something a little more exotic, like Chachalacas or Green Jays, you need to know where to look for them (the southern tip of Texas).
Some of my favorite nature photography books.
Want to be a better nature photographer? Read anything by John Shaw, Galen Rowell, Art Wolfe, Freeman Patterson, Tim Fitzharris, George Lepp, Larry West, Arthur Morris, Allen Rokach, John Netherton, Leonard Lee Rue III, Brenda Tharp, and the Stackpole (publisher) nature series.
Here are some specific books to look for.
Is composition something that can be taught, or is it innate? Probably a bit of both. It is hard to look at photographs by Frans Lanting, Art Wolfe, Galen Rowell, and Dewitt Jones without coming to the conclusion that they were born with some kind of magic sense of composition. On the the other hand, it is clear that photographers can improve dramatically with the right kind of guidance.
This is a list of books that I found the most helpful when I took a serious interest in photography. These books were written back when film was king, but that makes them all the more valuable to today’s digital photographers. Some digital photography books get so lost in technical information that the heart and soul of photography can get lost. The best film photography books are about light and shadow, subjects, form, texture, line and shape – all of which applies to digital photography. Some of these books are out of print but well worth finding on the used book market.
Many photographers would say Light: Science and Magic is THE best book on photographic lighting – and I agree with them. If you intend to be seriously involved in photography, this book should be on your required reading list.
Short List:
SanDisk
Lexar
Memory cards are the “film” for your digital camera. You don’t want to have a card failure and lose your photos. A reliable brand is important.
Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies
With 12 books, hundreds of magazine articles, over a dozen instructional videos, and numerous workshops to his credit, digital photography expert Tim Grey really knows his stuff. In one of his eNewsletters, Tim gives this excellent recommendation for Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies:
Incident Light Meter. Photo © Jim Doty Jr.
There’s no question that in some complex metering situations, an incident light meter can be quicker, faster, simpler, and more accurate than the meter in your camera. Many incident light meters can also measure light from an electronic flash, a huge bonus when you are using a flash in the manual mode.
Double Bubble Level
Why waste time fixing crooked horizons when a simple accessory will put an end to the problem. Read the complete information article here.
Save money and buy a Manfrotto Double Bubble Level from Amazon.com (and get free shipping), or you can order it at my photography store which is powered by Amazon. Same price, same free shipping, same great service, same guarantee..
CAmera, nodal slide, and panning clamp
If you are using an Arca-Swiss compatible quick release system, which I highly recommend, two simple pieces of easy-to-carry equipment can put you in panorama heaven. Get the full story here.
Link
The best of the best photography gear, books, accessories, and online photo labs:Â a series of articles.
AlienBees Studio Lights
For the best combination of quality and price, it is hard to beat AlienBees studio lights. I’ve been using AlienBees in my studio (and on location) for 6 years, and like so many other photographers, I’ve been singing their praises. It would be hard to find the same quality for less money.
Arca-Swiss compatible “L-bracket” and tripod head
Mounting a camera onto the screw on top of a tripod head is time consuming. Doing it in the dark when your hands are cold is annoying. Once the camera is mounted, if you flop the camera over to the side to take a vertical photo, the camera tries to rotate on the screw. To provide a solution, all kinds of “quick release systems” have been created. Some of them work quite well, some not so well. Most systems have a weakness of one kind or another.
Ball Head with Clamp, Really Right Stuff BH-3
The short list.
3-Way Tripod heads:
Manfrotto 056 3D Junior Head (replaces 3025)
Manfrotto 3025
Manfrotto 115 3D Super Junior Head (replaces 3028)
Manfrotto 410 Junior Geared Head
Ball Heads:
Slik Pro Ballhead 800
Kirk Enterprises BH-3
Kirk Enterprises BH-1
Really Right Stuff BH-40
Really Right Stuff BH-55
Umbrella, flash, and flash bracket on a tripod.
Photographers are always looking for ways to soften the light when doing portraits. The light from an accessory flash can be quite harsh so there are a wide range of modifiers to soften the light for more pleasing portraits. Here are my three favorites.
Looking for a tripod? Choose wisely. Other than a camera and a good lens, nothing can make a bigger difference in your photography than a good tripod. This is the place to find information, recommended models, and links to more information.
It is best to buy your tripod legs and tripod head separately. The best brands are interchangeable so you can match the legs you want with the tripod head that you want, even if they are from different companies.
Is it a great deal? Or is it a rip-off? You are searching online for a good price and you come across a terrific deal. Are you about to get burned? There are ways you can tell.
Gorillapod
There are a lot of practical and inexpensive gifts for photographers. Here is a nice list in order of approximate cost from $4 to $80. All of these items can be found at my photography store (powered by Amazon.com with Amazon’s terrific ordering, shipping, guarantee, and service). Most of the items below are in the Photo Goodies section. Prices do fluctuate so the prices below are approximate.
Adobe Elements 11, Lightroom 4, and Photoshop CS6
Your photos will look their best if you optimize them with some good image editing software.
Short list:
Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 or 10
Adobe Photoshop CS6 or CS5
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 or 3
The lab you choose and the kind of file you send to your lab can make a big difference in the quality of print you get back. How do you pick a good online photo lab? How do you get the best results from your lab? What color space should you use for your digital files and how do you convert your files to the right color space? How big a print can you make from your digital files?
Just a few of the many beautiful calendars in my photography store.
Inspiration is one of the keys to better photography, and beautiful calendar images are a great source of inspiration for the whole year. This is the place to be if you are looking for beautiful calendars for yourself (or for the photographer in your life). I picked an extensive selection of beautiful calendars for my photography store (which is powered by Amazon.com).
Remembering all of those who have served and are serving in the Armed Forces of the United States of America.