"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."- Anais Nin Over the last week I've been playing with light, varying the quality and quantity of it, to create different visions of the same object or scene. As a photographer, you live and breathe light - manipulating it to create the image you envision. Anais Nin's quote got me thinking about how different photographers rarely get the same shot - even when shooting with the same equipment. Years ago I took a photography class at Disney Institute in Florida. We were all shooting film with Nikon's latest mid-range SLR at the time with a wide-to-telephoto zoom lens. Our instructor was a professional photographer who worked events on the various Disney properties. He was helping us improve our candids of children. He'd walk around and observe how we were framing shots and considering lighting. (What amazed me at the time was that he was able to tell me what was going to be a problem in a particular sho...

There's always some new piece of equipment or new software plug-in we want or must have. In a perfect world, equipment arrives well before the day of the shoot so that we can test it out. We don't however live in a perfect world. On occasion I've found myself torn between a) pulling an all-nighter to perfect set up technique with new light stands and reflectors or b) "winging it" at the shoot. So far I've mostly resisted the temptation to "wing it-" even when I'm adding back up/redundant equipment to my kit. It's too easy for us to become complacent and think we can work our magic with a new piece of equipment immediately. If we're lucky - that's the case. If we're unlucky, we don't have images from an event. When earlier this year, I decided to "wing it" with a new portable Wolverine media drive, Murphy's Law reigned supreme. I was unable to backup my flash cards on-site. Luckily I had plenty of flash cards and ...

If you've ever viewed images in Adobe Bridge you may have seen a Metadata panel (some online photo sites display this information as well). There's a section in Adobe Bridge labeled "Camera Details (EXIF)" which identifies equipment and camera settings used to take the image. This is great information when you're learning photography and when you're attempting to recreate an image. However, the information only tells part of the story. Some very important details that are missing (that you might want to keep track of) are: Filters Portion of image used for spot metering Flash settings Modification(s) to flash units Presence/location of reflectors or diffusers A couple of nights ago I was choosing images that were representative of my style to upload to a portfolio for a class I'm taking. As I was reviewing images, there were differences between photos shot in the same location only seconds apart (different Canon 30D body but identical set up). Luckily I wa...