Solving Adobe Update Problems

Some things in life are certainties. Along with death and taxes, you can add the guarantee that Adobe will continue releasing updates. But sometimes, installing those fixes can themselves be the source of problems.

It's been a busy week around here, but I've heard from some users that they've had a hard time with Adobe's recent upgrades. Here are some things to check.

Even as the capacity offered on new disk drives continues to rise, our existing disks don't get any bigger. The more you install on a computer, the more space gets consumed. A big hurdle encountered by some users stems from this space crunch. Some Adobe components common to multiple applications have to be installed on your C: drive, but you do get a choice for a few things. But the only way to move other pieces is to uninstall all Adobe software first.

Photoshop 2021 installs as an entirely new application, alongside your old version, rather than just an update to it. On the laptop where I am writing this, the latest version occupies around a gigabyte. That may seem like a lot or a little, depending on how overburdened your computer may be. While I would generally recommend keeping your old version for some time until you get used to the new one, you can free up a good chunk of space by removing the old during your upgrade.

Upgrading could also be a prime opportunity to do a once-over and get rid of any other deadwood on your drive. Whether you're on Windows or Mac OS X, drive space shortages can cause all sorts of headaches. As disk drives fill, their contents progressively become fragmented, slowing down just about everything. In the end, if you find yourself cramped for space, it may be time to consider upgrading your hardware. You wouldn't be the first person to have a significant software upgrade turn into a computer upgrade. As painful as it may be, though, new generations of computers are almost automatically faster than the old in so many ways. Progress marches on.

If you do find it necessary to upgrade your computer, remember that Adobe licensing allows you to install the software on as many computers as you want, but that only two can be activated at any given time. To avoid complications, deactivate the software on your old computer before activating it on the new. You can leave it installed, just in case you have problems and need to return to the old one while you sort things out. You can wait on uninstalling it until you'll sure things are good with the upgrade.

Remember that you need to be connected to the internet for the download to install successfully. If you install Photoshop on a traveling laptop, remember to check your network settings first. If you are connected to a corporate network or are otherwise behind a firewall, verify that you have probably credentials to access the internet. If you're connected via wi-fi, change to a wired connection to improve speed and reliability.

If you run into unexplainable errors, try rebooting your computer and rerun the upgrade. The old adage of "if at first you don't succeed, reboot and try, try again" can sometimes prove correct. You may have had a prior failed installation from Adobe or some other company that left resources locked. There's nothing like a freshly reboot computer to clear away the cobwebs.

But beyond this, all sorts of other problems could arise.

Make sure all your operating system updates have been installed. Check computer error logs for indications of difficulties. If problems persist, check with your operating system vendor for troubleshooting steps. The problem may have started before your attempted upgrade.

Try disabling your anti-virus software to avoid possible conflicts. New versions of many popular anti-virus suites block far more than they sometimes should.

Make sure you are running the upgrade under an account that has sufficient permission.

Check your hard drive for corruption. Some errors may lie there dormant and only crop up when you right to a given disk sector.

And remember, even after you get the upgrade installed, your may still have work to do. Many third-party plugins require re-installation to be recognized by the new Photoshop. Some may not even be compatible and need to be upgraded themselves.

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Canned Air

I buy cans of compressed air by the six-pack. It's good stuff, but not for everything.

One of my favorite uses for canned air is to help with cleaning camera bags. When you work outdoors, dirt and dust can inevitably find their way into your pack. Sometimes, it's just the stray particulates blown by the wind or carried along for a ride when you return your gear to your bag. Sometimes, it can be more obvious, like when I flipped the cover back over my pack, and it acted like a scoop to lift a lot of dirt all at once. That was fun. But no matter how careful you may be, at least some foreign particulate can end up on the inside of your bag rather than outside.

I always make a point of cleaning my gear when I get home from a trip. For camera bags, this starts by removing everything and shaking the bag upside down. All sorts of stray things have fallen out over the years. But the nooks and crannies in the corners can still hold surprises, and a few quick shots of compressed air can make short work of getting the final bits. It's worth the effort to be thorough to avoid random bits from working their way into your camera and lenses. It's one thing to get dirt in your bag. It's a far worse problem if it gets inside your camera.

With care, compressed air can also work well for getting stubborn dust off the outside of your camera and other gear. Any texture or crevices can provide a safe harbor for dirt and dust, and a quick blast with canned air can send it flying.

But you have to be careful when using canned air. The reason why it works so well to blast foreign matter away is that it is highly pressurized. And most of that pressure comes from a chemical propellant used in manufacture. Spray lightly with a can of compressed air, and you get a powerful burst of air. Shake the can and spray more heavily, and you'll also get a spatter of gunk. Keep that in mind whenever using this stuff. Spray carefully, and never spay anything sensitive or fragile.

Sometimes, you hear of people using canned, compressed air to blow dust out of their camera. Perhaps some of these cautionary tales are mere folklore, but at least some no doubt retell actual events. The stuff works so well for getting cookie crumbs out from under the keycaps of a laptop keyboard, so why not a quick puff to clear out dust before it finds its way to your camera sensor? Well, the high psi air burst can break the mirror box, shutter, and associated components of your camera. And should you be lucky enough not to damage anything from the pressure, you're sure to end up with propellant spatter on your sensor eventually.

The truth is, those cans of compressed air contain mostly propellant. That's why the cans come with an inhalant abuse policy statement. The propellant, typically difluoroethane or similar, is known to cause cardiac arrhythmia that can be fatal. There is no "air" in there at all. As you press the spray button, the propellant shoots out and instantly starts to vaporize. As it does so, it pushes the surrounding air along for the ride. If you're lucky, the propellant is all gone before the burst hits your target, leaving you with nothing but air. You're taking a bit of a gamble when using this stuff, but it works wonderfully for the right uses where your risk is low. When misused, your chances become more dicey.

By the way, difluoroethane is also used as an environmentally friendly refrigerant. A great deal of heat is absorbed during the quick vaporization process. That's why freezing your fingers is a sure sign that you're going overboard with the compressed air.

If you really must blow something out from inside your camera or lens, invest in a Giotto Rocket blower or equivalent. With its large rubber bulb and a air tube, a simple squeeze on a Rocket can generate a good burst of air that avoids the excessive psi and propellant found in commercial canned air. Be sure to hold the camera body upside down, with the opening facing the floor, to increase the likelihood that anything dislodged falls free and clear rather than just landing somewhere else inside. As a cheaper but slightly less effective alternative, buy an earwax removal syringe from the local pharmacy.

And never attempt to clean your camera sensor unless you know what you're doing. Damage it, and you're in for an expensive repair bill.

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Skynet Merges with Photoshop: The Future is Calling

No, Adobe isn't sending Terminators back in time to crush the competition, but they are adding more artificial intelligence features to Photoshop. Does the future belong to AI?

According to the Terminator movie timeline, Skynet first achieved consciousness at 2:14 am Eastern Time on August 29th, 1997. The following year, Adobe released Photoshop version 5 that brought several new features, including the Magnetic Lasso tool, that simplified creating selections and made the process much quicker and intuitive. It was uncanny. Somehow, it knew where the edges were in an image. By 2003, they introduced the Creative Suite that linked multiple Adobe applications on your desktop to share settings and integrate capabilities, becoming stronger than the sum of its parts. Ten years later, through the Creative Cloud subscription model, Adobe connected every Photoshop copy on the planet to the Internet. Skynet now spanned the globe.

By 2029 in the movie franchise, Tech-Com and John Connor were on the verge of winning the war, but Skynet sent a T-800 Terminator back in time to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor. Less than two years earlier, John Warnock founded Adobe in his garage with Charles Geschke after both left Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. PARC specialized in innovating in the field of computer technology and hardware.

Coincidence? Well, yes, of course. But whether Adobe or whoever your current favorite purveyor of digital darkroom editing software is, artificial intelligence is popping up all over. Computers are becoming more powerful, and competition drives companies to find ways of leveraging them.

Somewhat overshadowed by the pandemic coverage and the US presidential election this week, Adobe has just released a major update to Photoshop. Yes, to ring in 2021, Adobe is giving us a long list of really cool new features. If you're on the Creative Suite subscription plan, you should have already gotten the update for free. If you're not on a subscription, naughty you. Adobe doesn't really give this stuff away for free, you know. We pay via our subscription fees.

For Photographers, the top feature would probably be Sky Replacement. With just a few simple clicks, you can create an amazingly good selection mask of the sky in an image. From there, you can either replace it with one of your own or choose the perfect one for the occasion from Adobe's preset library. Expect to see those skies pop up in shared photos everywhere soon. Skylum Luminar has had an AI sky filter for a while now, but Adobe seems to have taken the idea to the next level. Skynet, here we come. But for now, we have Adobe Sensei, the AI engine that powers all of these new tools.

But for sheer media buzz, the top feature has to be Neural Filters. Simple sliders perform intelligent edits, driven by Sensei, in ways that would be impossible for all but the most experienced users. Most sliders are targeted toward portrait photographers, although some are more generally applicable, and it's clear that Adobe intends to add more Neural Filters in subsequent releases. For now, I played with a photo of myself, quickly turning my handsome visage into that of an extremely old man with long hair and a big grin. The sliders are even labeled with names like "Happiness," "Facial Age," "Surprise, and "Anger." They mostly do what you would expect with no manual selection. At the extremely comical ends of the spectrum, it did get confused a bit over my glasses. But Adobe is working on a slider to remove glasses. I'm personally not sure what I would do with many of these, but they are fun regardless.

Adobe Sensei relies heavily on internet access to provide input to the AI engine. But response times seem quite acceptable regardless, especially given the quality of the results. Even if I may be able to do better sometimes by hand without, the truth is, it's frighteningly good, and the manual method would take me far, far longer to realize those gains. As a technology, call me impressed.

Careful readers have no doubt picked up on the fact that I have mixed feelings about Sensei and AI editing in general. Such things can and surely will be abused, misused, and overused. Just stare in wonderment at some of "HDR" images if you don't believe me. And AI tools can also unquestionably be powerful tools that to make fast work of nearly impossible and time-consuming editing drudgery in front of a compute screen when you could be out shooting. When used with restraint and a skilled eye, these tools will be revolutionary.

And photographers have been modifying their images in various ways since the first shutters were clicked. For example, read about how Ansel Adams changed the way he shot, knowing what he could later do with that negative in the darkroom. Photographers have always looked for ways to overcome limits and take their craft to the next level. When I shot film, I carried a stack of colored filters to alter how specific images were rendered. One of my early purchases included a stack of Cokin colored filters, including the dreaded sunset filter. Once you've seen what they do, you can easily spot others taken with one. They all look the same unnatural orange, even in the shadows. By the time we got to the digital darkroom, the tools improved, but the concept remained the same. Each new generation of software gives us even more. Sensei is just the next step. It all depends on what each of us does with the tools we have, tempting though it may be to push things too far. It's been said that if you're good enough at Photoshop, you don't even need a camera. But what would be the fun in that, I ask you?

Anyway, just some thoughts I've had this week. It will likely take some time to work out how useful these tools are for real editing. And in the meantime, Adobe is sure to be secretly working on their next updates. To paraphrase from the Terminator movies: A person can go crazy thinking about this. The unknown future rolls toward us, but I face it with a sense of hope. We are in uncharted territory now, making up history as we go along.

AI, here we come.

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Don't Forget Your Towel!

According to Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a towel is "about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have." Over the years, I've also found one quite handy when photographing outdoors.

There are obvious uses for a towel. The Pacific Northwest is known for getting a fair bit of precipitation. The truth is, many parts of the country receive greater rainfall totals than we get here, but we can experience protracted periods of drizzle and light rain that amount to more hours of rain than elsewhere. Indeed, the "Pacific North Wet" is home to the largest temperate rain forest on earth, made famous by the Olympic National Park's Hoh Rainforest. It rarely rains enough to prevent outdoor activities, and most of us ignore it unless it really starts coming down. Modern cameras are water-resistant but generally not waterproof. A lens hood helps keep water droplets off the lens front element, but everything else can benefit from an occasional wipe with a towel. I prefer microfiber towels over the traditional terrycloth. They dry faster and are softer on whatever I use them on.

The same is true when shooting near the beach. A splash from a wave crashing against the rocks isn't a problem if you can wipe it away with a good microfiber towel. After finishing a session of exploring tidepools, I thoroughly clean everything to avoid salt corrosion, but a towel serves as a good temporary remedy in the field.

When temperatures plummet during winter, rain turns to snow. And snow can create complications of its own. A towel can prove useful to brush off snow grains before they melt. But when it gets cold still, snow can become an even more significant problem. Those tiny grains can work their way into all sorts of places, like into your camera when you change lenses. A handy towel keeps things tidy before problems develop.

But even when not needed to wipe water or snow off my camera gear, a towel can prove useful.

I've used a towel to wet down rocks near a stream to make them look more photogenic. Dull, gray rocks look, well, dull. Stream rocks that are only partly wet can be distracting, creating a jumble that competes with the stream itself for attention. But when thoroughly wet down, the natural color of the rocks becomes more pronounced, and the even, darker color contrasts nicely with the white of the water flowing over and around them.

Sometimes, the problem is the reverse. A depression in the rocks can form a pool that reflects glare like a mirror. A convenient towel can mitigate the problem. A good microfiber towel can absorb a lot of water.

A towel can be useful for cleaning up mud on my hands or gear. Or if I get sunscreen or bug repellent in the wrong place, a wet towel can help resolve matters.

I've used a dry towel to soften the pain of sitting on sharp rocks. I have a thing for shooting low to the ground, but the ground doesn't always have a thing for being very comfortable. A bit of padding can improve matters tremendously.

A towel can prove its use, even when standing upright on a bright, sunny day. Sometimes, I wish for a bit of cloud cover so that the camera LCD back doesn't become so washed out in the bright light. And it can be challenging to see clearly through the viewfinder when the sun is at the wrong angle. Glare can be a nuisance. But it can be mitigated easily by throwing a towel over my head and camera as I compose. If this sort of solution was good enough for Ansel Adams and other photographers of that era, it's good enough for me, even if it does make me look a bit odd to any bystanders.

And even if none of these situations come up, a towel can provide a bit of extra padding around gear in my pack. I'm not too fond of the overly thick foam inserts that come in most camera backpacks. One of the first things I do when I get a new bag is to pull out half of the foam blocks to make more room for gear. You may need this much padding if you plan to throw your camera bag around to see if it bounces, but with even a modest amount of care and attention, I know from experience I can get by with somewhat less. Still, a towel wedged in just the right place can stop to lenses from potentially rubbing up against each other as I hike.

Now, some of these uses for a towel obviously conflict with others. For example, I wouldn't put a wet towel inside my camera pack as padding on the hike back to my car. Accommodations have to be made sometimes. But fortunately, microfiber material dries quickly and can be returned to service in no time.

No doubt about it, microfiber towels are massively useful. Don't forget yours.

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Collecting Tripods

Although you probably dream of further adding to your collection, I'm guessing you own one, maybe two, cameras, and a modest collection of lenses. But how about tripods?

When first starting out, most photographers balk at lugging around a tripod at all, viewing them as not dissimilar to a ball and chain around their ankle. They're awkward to carry, and more so to use. All those gangly legs to wrestle into position kind of takes the spontaneity out of things. But as they progress in their craft, they increasingly become resigned to owning one to hold their camera still. Like it or not, a tripod is a necessary evil unless you're fond of blurry photos. At this stage, the question becomes one of buying the best tripod they can, or at least one that is good enough to do the job. But rarely do aspiring photographers dream of owning multiple tripods.

But the truth is, just like lenses, no one tripod can cover every need. Big tripods can support a greater load but weigh more and often can't get very low to the ground. Lighter weight tripods are fine for everyday use but aren't sufficient for more demanding applications. Smaller, ground-level tripods are perfect for, well, shooting and ground level and little else. You get the idea.

My general purpose tripod is a carbon fiber series 3 Gitzo Mountaineer with three leg segments. Tripods with four leg segments collapse smaller for more comfortable carrying, but are inherently less stable due to the extra leg joints. And with four leg segments that must be able to nest inside each other, the bottom section ends up being unnervingly skinny. The legs extend longer than I typically need, but I love the fact that it can still reach eye level, even when shooting on a steep hillside. It has no center column, so the only way to achieve height is by extending the legs. And raising a center column decreases stability by turning a tripod into a monopod with three legs underneath, and complicates shooting near the ground. For most shooting, this tripod works well for me.

But if I'm planning to hike very far at all, my main Gitzo can slow me down and make my back and shoulders hurt. It's literally a pain that it weighs so much. When I leave the heavier lenses back in the car, I don't need such a heavy tripod, so I have a lighter weight carbon fiber series 2 Gitzo. I don't use it that often, but it helps lighten the load when the situation fits.

I also have a sturdy old Bogen/Manfrotto tripod that I hate for regular use because of the lever locks. Undo one of these, and the leg goes completely loose and collapses freely into the segment above unless you're holding on. The Gitzo twist locks effectively allow for variable friction. I like being able to partially loosen a joint to make a small adjustment or unscrew further for freer movement. But the Manfrotto works better for shooting in tidepools because it's easier to clean after I finish shooting. I've written before about how to disassemble and clean a Gitzo, and it's no small task. The Manfrotto is simple to clean in the field by undoing all the leg locks and rinsing it with a hose or faucet.

Then there's the whole line of GorillaPod tripods from Joby, of which I have several. Perhaps only one of these would have been sufficient, but they kept coming out with better versions, and I'll admit to eventually justifying upgrading more than once. These things are great for shooting at ground level on uneven terrain. So long as you are careful of weight limits, you can contort a GorillaPod into whatever shape it takes to point your lens in the right direction while allowing for near-zero ground clearance. I've had an obsession with shooting as low as possible, and I love GorillaPods.

But some lenses are heavy enough that they would squash a GorillaPod like a gorilla, perhaps King Kong, if you a more specific metaphor. By inserting a small extension tube between some really big glass and a camera body, you can make an ultra-telephoto that can focus up close. I have an earlier model Nikon 500mm f/4 AF that's big enough I wouldn't dream of hand-holding, but I also wouldn't dream of shooting without some support. So long as the terrain is relatively level, a Platypod Max fits the bill perfectly. If you've never encountered them, Platypods are nothing more than flat metal plates with a mounting screw in the middle of one side that can accept a tripod head. Set it in the middle of a field, and you can get some great wildflower shots with blurred backgrounds due to the shallow depth of field.

I suppose you might be able to get away with a single tripod if you limit yourself to only one type of subject matter and point of view, but why bother? Good tripods may not be cheap, but they can last for many years if well maintained. I have so many tripods in part because I've just had some of them for so long now. Some of them have done duty as support through numerous camera upgrades. By now, I have quite the collection of tripods.

And then there are monopods. I only have a few of those, but we'll save that topic for another day.

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Put a Clamp On It!

With only a small degree of exaggeration, I once remarked that I had a quick-release plate on everything I owned other than my toothbrush. All those plates mean I also have a few quick-release clamps. And a few opinions.

There once was a time when mounting a camera to a tripod was mechanically simple, but time-consuming. Even today, nearly all camera bottoms come equipped with a screw hole for this purpose. But over time, various mounting systems of sprung up to simplify things. All such systems utilize the camera screw hole to affix a mounting plate permanently than can then quickly mate with a matching clamp atop the tripod head.

Equipment manufacturer Acra-Swiss developed what has become the most famous system, but there are others. The Manfrotto/Bogen "hex plate" saw some popularity with shooters back in the 1980s and '90s, and several other systems have been developed. But nothing beats the simplicity and reliability of the Arca-Swiss method. Arca-Swiss plates feature dovetail edges that mate with similarly sloped edges on the clamp, providing solid contact along the entire plate edge. Since the debut of the Arca system, a cottage industry making compatible plates has grown into an extensive marketplace of competitors, each vying for your business by developing just the right mix of quality, price, convenience, and other factors.

Early entrants in this field included Kirk Enterprises and Really Right Stuff. The latter, started in October 1990, excelled at producing high-end products that were only available by mailing a purchase check to the founder, Bryan Geyer. RRS had no website and did not accept credit cards. Their products weren't cheap but were famous for being custom CNC machined out of blocks of solid aluminum and custom fit for each supported camera model. Joe Johnson bought the company in 2002 and took it online, where it became the industry leader for such hardened aluminum wonders.

These days, you can buy Arca-Swiss compatible plates and clamps from so many sources that it's impossible to keep count. New ones come and go every few months. I seem to always come back to Really Right Stuff for any clamps or plates that really matter. I may buy off-brand stuff for some items, but not for an expensive camera or a big lens. If I give Nikon a couple thousand for there latest and greatest, I can afford to buy the bits that securely hold it from a reliable source. People often forget to budget for such things, but that doesn't make them any less important.

Arca clamps excel in terms of rigidity. Aircraft aluminum isn't apt to bend or flex when milled with sufficient thickness. They also significantly depend on friction. Nothing holds your gear other than pressure from the jaws of life. The bigger the attached gear, the bigger the plate and clamp should be to hold it securely.

After initially appreciating the convenience of lever-lock clamps, I've mostly soured on them. They're just too sensitive to manufacturing tolerances to guarantee proper clamping pressure. They also tend to get caught on tree branches and camera bag straps than to traditional screw-lock clamps.

Some clamp and plate manufacturers add "stop" pins at alternate ends to decrease the likelihood of accentual spills. Even with the clamp only partially closed, a piece of gear with stop pins would be able to slide forward only to the point where the pin ran into the back end of the clamp. I don't put much stock in such pins and just make a practice of tightening the clamp fully. The problem with these designs is that they promote the very problem they claim to solve. When relying on stop pins, you develop a tendency not to close the clamp fully. Closed too far, the clamp jaws and stop pins prevent the attached lens from being removed at all. Such a setup no longer qualifies as quick release unless the clamp jaws remain slack. I want the clamp tight, both for safety and for vibration reduction.

A lever-lock clamp that breaks becomes immediately useless. A broken knob-based clamp is severely crippled. Check your knob clamps. Most manufactured more than a few years ago have knobs that can unscrew entirely and come off. I still carry a small hex nut that fits the screw threads on an old clamp, but most new ones feature captive knobs that can't be removed. When checking if yours can come off, be sure to hold the clamp itself tightly in one hand while you unscrew the knob with the other. If it does come off, you'll discover tiny springs inside that provide tension in the clamping mechanism. Drop one on the ground, and it will take you a while to find. Don't ask me how I know.

For your prized gear, avoid plates that rely on rubber or cork pads to create a tighter fit. Nothing beats proper metal-to-metal contact from a custom machined plate. Again, after spending that much on an expensive piece of equipment, it makes sense to budget enough for a plate designed for the contours involved. Go ahead and save some bucks when adding a plate to odds and ends like your toothbrush, but spend what it takes for the important stuff.

Fit and finish vary widely between manufacturers. Functionally, it may matter little if one clamp has a smoother surface than another, but it does serve as a gauge of the manufacturing tolerances of the company that made it. I also appreciate the thoughtfulness with which some companies approach their task. Cheaper plates are basic rectangles in shape. More detailed manufacturing methods result in curved edges and corners but a higher price tag. Some designs include cut out voids on the backside to reduce weight. Every little bit helps, so long as it doesn't sacrifice stability.

Innovations introduced by Really Right Stuff and other major players tend to find their way into the designs of cheaper knock-off imports within a few years. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It's a curious situation. Some of the design features are under patent, and legitimate questions can be raised as to the legality of copies. Still, this entire after-market ecosystem began by copying Arca-Swiss designs. Generally, you get what you pay for, though, and I don't mind at all paying for legitimate products, nor can I expect innovators to continue making better products unless they get paid.

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The Art of Fall-ing With Your Camera

Fall is a beautiful time of year, but it's not that easy to capture an image that does justice to an entire season.

If you live in a part of the country that features annual displays of fall foliage that cover hillsides as far as the eye can see, consider yourself fortunate. Through the sheer weight of numbers and profusion of colors, you could likely point your camera almost anywhere and capture a feeling of fall. Find a subject worth shooting, and there's probably color all around.

But if, like most of us, you have to work at seeking out the reds, oranges, and yellows of the season, photographing fall can be a tad challenging. When you find a good composition, it often isn't that colorful. When you find a patch of color, there's likely nothing more than that to build a compelling image around. It can be challenging to find a suitable subject and good color at the same time.

Standing at a location, we may only see what is in front of us, but we're also aware of what surrounds us to a reasonable degree. This time of year, there's often an unmistakable feeling of fall. The cold and damp seeps into our bones. The wind rustling through the trees, and the resultant display of falling leaves creates a familiar mood. Even when not looking directly at the evidence of the season, you know it's there, and it influences your perceptions.

Understanding of how the camera sees is critical when trying to portray a feeling and point of view. With a camera, what's inside the frame matters; what lies outside the frame doesn't. You may know you're standing right next to a litter bin or picnic table. But if the camera can't see it, neither will your viewers. All they will be able to see is what you show them, either by choice or by lack thereof. It's from this alone that they will form their perceptions.

When you're trying to shoot a compelling image of fall color, but there's only a smattering of autumnal splendor to be found, fear not. In many cases, all you need is a smattering. The art of fall photography is in the telling. With careful framing and composition, you can do a lot with just a little.

A mountain stream may look relatively similar year-round, but when shot with a wide-angle lens close-up with some foreground rocks scattered in colored leaves creates a strong message, even if those are the only such leaves for miles around. Bonus points if the whole scene is still wet from an early morning sprinkle. Granted, having more to work certainly would be nice. But with some attention to detail and a dash of creativity, it may still be possible to take the picture you imagined in your mind's eye.

In spring, I sometimes find myself scouring a hillside for the wildflower patch of my dreams. In the fall, I do likewise searching for autumn color. Half the fun is undoubtedly in the quest and the discovery. But the other half is in exploring what I can do with what I find. Shooting position, perspective, focal length, and more are just as important as simply being in the right place at the right time.

Photography isn't just about taking pictures of things. It's about the way those pictures are taken. The art of fall photography isn't just about looking for colored leaves and taking their picture. It's about the way those colorful pictures are taken.

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The Rules of the Road

There's a notable shift in perspective from merely taking photos to making them. It's not uncommon for aspiring photographer to struggle with getting out of first gear, but it needn't be as hard as it might seem.

First, let's consider what goes into taking photos. Think back to when you first because interested in photography. No doubt, you had some reason for wanting to record the awesome things you came across in your life. It may have been memories of times with family and friends. It may have been the beautiful sights you encountered on your travels. The details may vary, but the underlying motivation is generally the same. Photography lets you save your memories and experiences, so you can relive them later and share them with those who were not with you at the time.

When you're first learning, it's enough to hold a camera still long enough to focus and shoot. Looking down at the controls on the camera means taking your eyes off your subject. The tendency is to center your subject in the frame to minimize the risk that it will accidentally slide past the edge just as you press the shutter release. It takes a certain degree of coordination, even to master the basics of photography. Go back and look at some of your earliest images if you doubt me. If you've already thrown out all those horrible early efforts, then you'll have to accept that you did so for a reason. I'll admit that mine were pretty bad if it helps for me to go first.

Once you did get beyond such fundamentals, you likely developed an interest in continuing to improve your photography. Looking at your images, you note that they somehow don't measure up to those taken by more experienced shooters. They've had more practice than you have, but clearly , there's some room for improvement. To get better, you decide to do some studying on the topic. Perhaps you did some reading, or took a class, or whatever. Many of us made use of these and more in various permutations. In each situation, the aim was the same: to learn the rules for taking better images. You learned about the rule of thirds, leading lines, symmetry and repetition, color theory and perspective. You did your best to apply all these rules when taking pictures, but in a sense, this only gave you even more things to struggle with when shooting. But at this point, it wasn't the shutter and the focus; it was also the many variables and facets of good composition that had to be mastered.

The obvious conclusion is that practice makes perfect, that you merely need to keep at it, and that one day everything will fall into place, and you will have arrived. And this is true, up to a point. But as you work to juggle a growing assortment of rules and guidelines, it's easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. It's easy to lose sight of what initially spurred your interest in photography. What started as fun ends up as work. If good photography ultimately boils down to just a matter of following a series of rules, what about the simple joy of taking pictures?

I've thought about this a lot over the years regarding my own process. Even without a camera, when I see something interesting, I want to see it the most interesting was I can, myself, then and there. Taking out my photo gear, it's this then that I want to photograph. When things are going well, it's not just my subject I'm photographing. A good part of what is happening is that I'm photographing the way I see it.

But if I want the picture I make to be its best, it helps to have seen other good images, and have at least some idea how they were made. This is were the rules of composition come in. Had I never learned how the arrangement on thirds-lines enhances an image, it would have taken a fair while to stumble across it in the field. Sooner or later, I'd like to think I'd notice such a pleasing arrangement on my own, but familiarity with this guideline in advance no doubt helped me notice sooner. Once you know about it, you start to see it everywhere. Images just look nice that way.

Indeed, I've come to understand that sometimes I now do this automatically. Certain compositions just look better, and I find myself drawn to them. I'm not so much following a rule. I notice when rules are being followed, and I go with it.

I remember learning to drive a car as a teenager. Yes, it was some years ago. I took a drivers education class in high school. At first, I found driving a difficult skill to master. I found myself frequently drifting side to side, having a hard time staying in my lane at anything above the slowest speeds. Eventually, I realized I was looking too closely at the front of the car rather than the road ahead.

Now, had I not already learned the rules of the road before I got behind the wheel, I'd like to think that I would have figured out I was supposed to say in my lane and mastered how to do so before any serious mishaps occurred. But it certainly did make the process simpler and safer by studying safe driving first.

Once I got the hang of it, I no longer had to focus so much on where my car was in the lane and found that I did so almost automatically. That's just the way things looked best to me. And to my driving teacher.

In a way, a car's steering wheel is no different than a camera's aperture. A brake pedal the same as a shutter speed. A center divider between lanes on the roadway the same as a leading line in the camera's viewfinder. That's just the way this stuff works. That's just the way it looks right. And you go with it.

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Express Yourself

You've learned all the composition rules you've learned but still struggle with getting the killer images you've anticipated. Maybe it's time to leap into the unknown.

Countless books have been written about photography. Most of us have benefited from reading at least a few. You can learn all sorts of things from books that can help make you a better photographer. Stop for a second and consider what it would have been like to buy a modern camera and try to figure it out with no help. Everyone knows that you point it at things and press a button, but why are there so many buttons and controls? If you stick with automatic modes, you could probably work out the basics of shooting if given enough time. If you accidentally switch to manual exposure, your challenge will increase exponentially, but let's suppose you avoid that complication. You'd be in for an uphill battle, regardless.

And your problems wouldn't stop once you figured out the whole exposure and focus thing. Merely pointing the camera at something and successfully pressing the right button is unlikely to result in overly compelling images. All I need do is look at some of my earliest images to confirm that. Let's just say there was room for improvement.

Whether you start by reading manuals and books, or you only turn to them when you get stuck, it's nice to know you can rely on the advice of experts. It can save you a lot of time and frustration. But there's a problem with this approach. All this advice is just a laundry list of general rules when reality only comes in specifics. All this advice can get you in the ballpark, but it won't substitute for your personal way of seeing things. Follow everything outlined in a photography textbook, and you'll be well-positioned to write one. Learn to see the world as your camera does, and you'll be on your way to being a photographer and to getting the images you want.

It isn't enough to take a picture of something interesting. A good image should express a point of view about that thing — your point of view. Once you know you're in the ballpark, set the rules aside, and express yourself.

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Without Giving it a Second Thought

Ever notice how some people salt the food on their plate before they ever taste it? They're not alone. Photographers do all sorts of things without giving it a second thought.

A hungry person sits down to eat dinner. But instead of reaching for a fork, they go for the saltshaker. It's always struck me as a curious behavior. It's much easier to add salt if it needs it than it is to remove it if you find out after the fact that, this time, at least, it didn't. Even if it does, you would have no practical way of knowing how much. It's easy to assume things might be the same as dinner yesterday and the day before that. But wouldn't it make more sense to assess the situation and go from there?

We all develop habits. Falling back on default behaviors might seem helpful by saving time, but it deprives you of your best opportunity to make a good decision. And photographers are not immune to this sort of thing. In various ways, I catch myself doing it, and I'm betting I'm not alone. Here are a few examples, but if you review your work habits, you're likely to find others.

I like zoom lenses. No, they aren't a substitute for moving closer. Their primary purpose lies in framing. Once you have a composition with the perspective you like, a zoom lets you crop that composition in camera to make it more compelling. But I've noticed something over the years. Many zoom photos are shot with the lens racked out to one end of the focal length range. Zooming in furtherance of cropping should show a relatively even distribution of focal lengths. If yours tend to cluster around the end of the scale, you're probably merely trying to get closer. Sometimes, there may be physical barriers to access, such as a cliff edge or even a sign in a national park warning you to stay on the path. But to the extent you are free to maneuver, you should do so, and then zoom. If you go through your images, you might be surprised. It's easy to fall into this habit without giving it a second thought.

A similar phenomenon can happen with your tripod. At least photographers will set theirs up to eye-level, then go in search of subjects to shoot. That is, they set it up for their convenience, not to support their camera at the optimal shooting height. But if all your images seem to have been shot from eye-level, you will miss out on vantage points closer to the ground. Getting down low can open up vast possibilities of composition most people never see. Flowers, small animals, rocks, and countless other exciting subjects are frequently available if you are willing to view them from their level. These days, it's becoming popular for photographers to shoot with drones. While I have yet to take the plunge myself, you could argue that this holds for capturing images from way over your head. As technology advances, the range of what is possible expands. Even more than ever, it's worth exploring different shooting positions. Don't just settle for the height from which you usually view the world.

When I'm shooting at a popular location, it can be challenging working around all the crowds. It can take me a while to set up, find what I'm looking for, and shoot. As I do my thing, I see other photographers come and go quickly, spending only enough time to get in and get out. Perhaps the most significant unquestioned default attitude is to shoot where others tell you to. That may come in the form of a scenic marker sign or a listing in a guidebook. But the rut you're in might be literal. A lot of people pull over and stop where space is available, helping to wear tiny parking lots into the landscape in places those who came before you stopped to snap their photos.

Back in the days of film, it was not uncommon to shoot with a warming filter permanently mounted to your lens. Everything looks better with a touch of warmth. These days, white balance gives us improved control over color temperature, without the need for an added layer of glass to shoot through. If you shoot raw, you can even adjust white balance after the fact. But even still, some photographers apply preset settings automatically to boost vibrance and warmth, add sharpness, and the like. One of the benefits of raw is that you can tweak such adjustments after the fact. But some photographers rarely do, preferring to accept the results without giving it a second thought. Even if an image looks good, there's nothing that says if it might look even better with a manual edit.

As mentioned, these are but a few examples of how we sometimes take the easy way out and fall back on defaults we've picked up over time. It's helpful to shorthand some things for efficiency or reliability, but it's easy to fall into unnecessary habits that can get in the way. I rarely think about how to remove a lens cap or which switch turns on my camera. And there's no clear boundary between such trivial concerns and more consequential maneuvers like my examples here. But when I have the time available, I find it helpful to examine my workflow and make adjustments when I find ways to improve or opportunities to gain greater control over the process.

Sometimes, it's worth giving things a second thought.

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Unsharp Masks are Cool

No, not the masks that you wear to help fight the spread of coronavirus, I'm talking about the masks that help your images to look sharp. They may not sound sharp, but they are definitely cool.

First, it's worth considering why images need sharpening at all? It's tempting to assume that if you do everything right when you shoot an image, it should be sharp right out of the camera. Focus carefully, and your job is done, right? But such is not entirely the case. Forcing your view of the world to conform to a regular grid of pixels means everything has to fit within those tiny boxes. Things ends up at least a tad bit approximated, with each pixel being an average of what lies inside. As camera resolution increases, each pixel becomes correspondingly smaller, but the problem remains the same if you look closely enough. A small amount of sharpening restores the appearance of detail lost during capture and processing. Within reason, a bit of sharpening can help save a soft image caused by other reasons, too.

But unsharp masking can seem a bit of a counterintuitive enigma. For something intended to improve detail rendering, it sure has a funny name. One would think it should be called a "sharp mask," at least. To understand why a cool sharpening technique has such a dull name, we need to look at some history.

Digital sharpening has the advantage of operating in software, and software can do all sorts of things. All someone has to do is figure out the math of how to manipulate pixel color values. But film photographers had a similar problem, with the outside world mapped to random particles of film grain rather than pixels. Fundamentally, any image capture method causes a degree of, and while film and digital are quite different, they both can benefit from a bit of sharpening.

With film, the means to address the problem were limited. Back in the old days, the process went something like this. Imagine you created a negative copy of your original image. If you then sandwich this in with the original, the two would cancel each other out. The dark parts of the copy would counterbalance the lighter areas of the original, and vice versa. But now imagine that the negative is rendered slightly out of focus. The light and dark would blur together somewhat near any edges. When stacked together with the original, this blurred negative will now accentuate detail by diminishing the canceling effect near edges. If one side of a border in the image was dark gray and the opposite one light gray, the in-focus negative would reverse the tones accurately, and everything simply would be dimmed. With a blurred negative, the two shades of gray would mix along the edges, and the boundaries would stand out more clearly than the rest. With appropriate exposures and blending, this is the gist of traditional darkroom unsharp mask.

Today we work In the digital darkroom, and software doesn't require optical and mechanical means to produce results. All it needs is some math and a fast CPU processor.

When you open the Unsharp Mask dialog in almost any software program, you will see pretty much the same thing, but I'm going to use the terminology here from Photoshop. If you're image editing software differs, you probably won't have too much trouble following along. The Amount slider controls how strong the effect will be. The Radius slider determines the size of the net you will be casting to find edges. Anything further away than this value from each given point will not be an influence in considering that point an edge. Set this too small, and only the finest edges will fit within the Radius and be detected. Set high enough, and random dust spots, and other irrelevant details could be considered part of some "edge." Think of this setting as being analogous to the blur in the film darkroom version. Threshold allows you to weed out some false matches for edges and is especially useful when working on images with noise or dust. The last thing you want is to sharpen the appearance of dust spots. Raise this slider until small speckles pass safely without being sharpened. But on the downside, higher Threshold values could also result in finer details going undetected and thus unsharpened.

With three independent control sliders, learning to use Unsharp Mask can take some practice. First, make sure you are not sharpening your original directly. Copy the layer, or convert it to a Smart Object. One thing about sharpening is that it can be tempting to overdo it. You want to leave yourself the option to dial things back or otherwise tweak things the next day. When viewed afresh, you may have second thoughts.

Not every image will require the same Unsharp Mask settings. Depending on your camera and your preferences, you may find values that work well as a starting point, but to get the best results, you want to eyeball it. Zoom in on your image enough to tell what you are doing, but not all the way. You don't want results that can only be seen under a microscope. It used to be standard advice to zoom to 100%, but with new, higher resolution cameras, I find that this is overkill. Keep the Preview checkbox enabled, and watch what you are doing. If you overdo it, the exaggeration of contrast that makes Unsharp Mask work will become obvious, and you will begin to see halos around edges. There are no right answers, but use restraint. Nothing looks worse than an over-sharpened image.

Creative folks have developed several other sharpening filters, but the unsharp mask remains the standard by which all others are judged. They all rely, at least in part, on masking.

So, mask up, everybody.

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Natural-Looking HDR

High Dynamic Range (HDR) images are everywhere. You can tell this is true because many are so obvious. But it is also possible to get natural-looking HDR results with a bit of attention to detail.

As background, one of the fundamental limitations of cameras of all stripes is that they can only capture a limited range of brightness in a single shot. It is true that modern digital cameras have improved matters somewhat when compared to the exposure latitude possible with. But when compared with what the human eye is capable of, the problem largely remains largely unsolved.

When we look at a scene, an intricate interplay between eyes and brain cooperate to create what we see. Pupils dilate and contract, and input from other senses merge with signals from optic nerve pathways to create a seamless interpretation of the world around us. "Seeing" is just the name we give to our sensory impressions when eyesight forms a primary component. But a camera doesn't interpret; it merely records. If the aperture is open sufficiently to see into the shadows, it's probably wide enough to burn out the highlights over the same exposure interval. Stop down the lens adequately to prevent burning out the highlights, and you consign the shadows to murky oblivion.

High dynamic range imaging attempts to address this problem with a radical new paradigm that begins by defining an extremely wide-gamut working space. The idea is to accomodate details far beyond what cameras can record, and beyond the limits of what any monitor can display and printer can print. You then combine information from individual camera frames captured at varying exposures into this space while preserving detail from each. Once merged, HDR software allows you to "tone map" the composite to fit better into something that can be displayed and printed. You can't directly see that HDR working space, but it's there behind the scenes, providing a unifying framework to allow you to combine source images with fidelity in each.

In theory, this sounds great. HDR uses software to create a mathematical model for visual images that isn't limited by the mechanical and technical capabilities of photographic equipment. But it isn't easy to get the source images to add, nor is it easy map the resulting data for output. Both input and output can be problematic when attempting to do HDR.

On the input side of the equation, it's crucial to capture usable data across the entire frame and the range of exposures present. If you fail to collect all the needed data, you'll have a hard time once you get everything onto your computer. All HDR programs can do is to use the best frame possible, even if it may be horribly under or over-exposed. As a starter, shoot a frame that records details in the shadows. Then fire off a shot every full stop from there on up until you're past where the highlights fall. Don't try to cut corners with the highlights. If you misjudge where the brightest portion is in a scene, you're better off overshooting your mark for the final shot than risk finding an even brighter spot later. If you end up finding darker areas than you noticed in the field, they'll be shadows in the result. If you find highlights you missed, you'll be left with burned-out highlights that no HDR can save.

Time permitting, I also try to shoot extra frames, targeting exposure for important areas. That way, I minimize the chances of flaws from object due to movement between frames. On particularly problematic images, I have resorted to manually blending from control shots, replacing the HDR result entirely in certain areas. It never hurts to have a single-shot version of the foreground for this purpose, just in case.

And as a reminder, you don't want to cause such movement yourself. Use a sturdy tripod and a reliable shutter remote. If you don't find it too awkward to tether to a computer or tablet in the field, do so. Depending you're your favorite operating system and camera maker, you should find several software choices to simplify the whole process of shooting for HDR, including adjusting the shutter speed between frames.

On the output side, my main advice would be to use restraint. HDR applications have to use a sleight of hand not dissimilar from sharpening to pull the pieces together. In sharpening, the software selectively lightens or darkens pixels surrounding a perceived edge to make it stand out more clearly. In HDR "tone mapping," pixels across a wider area are selectively adjusted to bring them more in line with the exposure of the next frame in the series. An area that is notably brighter on one end than it's surroundings may get subtly darkened as it nears the other to blend in. It's all quite magical when you start to examine it in detail. Both sharpening and HRD blending are software optical illusions in action.

But there's a fine line between a tasteful magic act and an obvious hoax. Push either sharpening or HDR tone mapping far enough, and you will end up with a garish cartoon of an image. Early consumer HDR software was so crude that it was challenging to get believable output. As a result, more than one online forum sprung up precisely to show off the new "HDR look." Users competed to create the most highly saturated, psychedelic renditions possible. Thankfully, as the tools have improved, most users have shifted back using HDR to creating photographs rather than pop art. Yet it's still easy to overdo it without realizing you've crossed an upspoken line before it's too late. Just as with sharpening, the temptation to overdo HDR is hard to resist. If a little bit looks good, cranking it up a bit more might look better. If you keep at it, you can convince yourself that each ratcheting up of controls is an improvement. Even if you later realize you've been led astray and can moderate things a bit, you'll have wasted a lot of time.

If you're shooting for architecture, you might want to ensure you can see detail throughout the frame. But if you're shooting landscape, you'd be well-served to retain at least some blackness. Shadows are to be expected in the outdoors, both twilight and mid-day. Remove them all through extreme tone mapping, and you'll end up with a flat, lifeless image.

I should also point out that no program can do a good job on every image. As frustrating as it is, it's best to play around with several until you find one you like, but to keep the others in reserve for when your chosen program can seem to work its usual magic with a given image. Sometimes, it can take a bit of tinkering and experimentation to get the best results.

And if all this sounds too complicated, you may be right. As I mentioned at the outset, modern digital cameras continue to improve the ability to cover extreme dynamic range scenes without loss. I've surprised myself more than once by shooting a series of shots for HDR, only to find that a single frame in the middle can work out just fine, all on its own. With a bit of dodging and burning, it's remarkable what new cameras can pull off. With selective editing, detail can be pulled from shadows. Highlight recovery during raw conversion can save otherwise burned-out areas so long as at least one channel retains detail. There are limits, though. When in doubt, shoot for HDR. If you don't need all the extra frames, so be it. But if you shot only one frame, you're stuck with it.

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It's Going to be a Hot One Out There

The temperature here is expected to hit the mid-nineties today. That may sound hot to you, and it may not. It depends on what you're used to, I guess. But the heat is nothing to take lightly, so keep your cool, relax, and have a read.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, it doesn't generally get this hot. My biggest concern from the heat this time of year is probably sunburn rather than heat exhaustion. When out shooting before sunrise, I'm happy doing my thing. But as the morning progresses, it's easy to forget to put on sunscreen. By midmorning, the light becomes harsh enough, and I grow tired enough from having woken up so early, that, that I pause to catch my breath. It's only then that I realize I've started to get a sunburn. I know that if I put on suntan lotion with a strong SPF when I first get up, I'll be fine all morning long, but it just doesn't come naturally to do so at that ungodly hour when it's still pitch black outside. I'm trying, and I get it right more often than not, but there are lapses, and I pay the price. Ouch.

But there are worse problems the sun and the heat can bring than sunburn. Heat exhaustion can cause problems even if you have an all-over tan. Heatstroke or sunstroke can be worse still.

Heat exhaustion occurs when your body can't regulate temperature any longer. To keep cool, our bodies sweat, allowing that sweat to evaporate. But there are limits. Especially on humid days, sweat evaporation has a diminished effect, and things start to get complicated. Even though you may feel hot, your skin will seem cool and clammy. Your pulse rate may increase, and you will feel tired and weak even when sitting still. You may already be experiencing cramping, especially if you do exert yourself. You may begin to feel dizzy and could even pass out or faint.

As with my sunburn difficulties, you may not realize this is happening at the outset, but eventually, it can become all too obvious. If you find this describes your situation, take heed. Drink more fluids, and perhaps even wet your clothes with cool water. Move to an area out of the sun and take it easy. If you don't, things could get worse and develop into heatstroke.

In heatstroke, your body temperature can reach 103 degrees Fahrenheit and above. Your skin will feel as if you have a fever, which, in fact, you do. Your skin can become reddened and damp. As the condition becomes worse, it could feel dry as sweating shuts down. You will probably have a bad headache and nausea. Your heart will be racing as it tries in vain to get rid of the heat in your bloodstream. As conditions worsen, you will become confused and unable to think clearly. Once temperature regulation fails, you're well into dangerous territory. Medical attention is called for.

The climate you're used to, together with your overall physical condition and age dictate how well you can cope with the heat. Physical exertion plays a factor, too. And some medications can have an impact on how well you handle the heat. The best thing to do is to take steps beforehand to avoid problems to the extent you can. As with putting on sunscreen before the sun comes up, you want to be prepared. Please don't wait until it's too late. Drink plenty of fluids. Wear light-colored clothes that reflect the heat rather than absorb it. Limit your activity during the hottest portion of the day. Wear a hat with a brim to keep the sun off your head and face. But most importantly, understand the risks and danger signs before they happen to you.

Temperatures everywhere seem to be creeping up over the years. Whether you believe in "global warming" and "climate change" or not, it's happening anyway. Denial won't make it go away. Even if you've never had a problem with heat, we're all getting older. And the climate is indeed changing.

As I write this, it's pushing ninety degrees already. It's going to be a hot one out there.

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Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Some photography questions are simply unanswerable as asked, but that doesn't mean people stop asking them. Allow me to try clarifying a few.

If you spend much time on any photography discussion forum, Facebook group, or Reddit subchannel, you'll see a lot of questions raised. New readers join the discussion who weren't around the last time, so over time, some issues get repeated. Some new territory does get covered, too, but many perennial questions change only in context, not so much in content. For example, digital didn't always exist, but before that were questions about mixing chemicals and what the real meaning of "unsharp mask" is. Rather than optical glass, the filters we use today tend to be digital as well, but we're still endlessly debating subjects related to filters.

One thing I've noticed that some questions don't really have answers. Or at least not any the questioner was expecting or would accept readily. Sometimes, people are looking for easy answers when none exist. Here are some of the biggies.

There is no such thing as the "best" lens. There are wide-angle lenses and telephotos, macro lenses, and fish-eyes. There are fast lenses with wide maximum apertures that weigh a lot, and there are lighter-weight versions that may not work as well in dim light. There are different qualities of glass that vary in price. And of course, there are fixed focal length lenses and zooms. No one type works best for all subjects under all conditions. Because there are different types of photographs and photographers, there are different types of lenses.

Neither is there such thing as a cheap but stable tripod. If it isn't well made, it will end up being wobbly. And it costs money to make the best products. The plus side is that a quality tripod will last a long time. Start with a good one, and it should last you through several camera upgrades.

Wide-angle lenses don't distort. Perspective is solely a function of relative distance. As you get closer to something, the ratio of how far away it is to that of what's behind it increases. Assume you are ten feet away from some object in front of a background object twenty feet away. If both objects are the same size, the background object that is twice as far away will appear half as big. Things that are farther away appear smaller as they recede into the distance. Think of the ties on a railroad track. Now get closer, so you are only five feet away. When you arrive at your new location, that background will then be fifteen feet away, or proportionately three times as far away as your subject. So instead of the foreground object appearing twice the size of what's behind it, it will now appear to be three times the size. Wide-angle lenses fit into all this because you'll need one if you want to focus extremely close to something. If a telephoto could match that shooting distance, it would see the same perspective, albeit a narrower slice of it.

Don't try to calibrate your printer to match your monitor. Even if you achieve this elusive goal, all bets are off if you someday upgrade either. And this quest won't do anything to help ensure your images looks as they should on anyone else's system. Instead, create a color profile both printer and monitor that describe how it reproduces color and let the color management system in your operating system do its job. With a profile, your computer can compensate for the quirks in each device to coax colors into displaying as they should. You can generally download printer profiles for common paper and ink combinations from the manufacturer's website. You're on your own for monitor profiles as there are too many variables involved. But you can and should invest in a gadget called a colorimeter or spyder that can handle the job quickly and affordably. With everything else we spend money on in pursuit of this hobby of profession, there's simply no excuse not to.

Images online are not in the public domain unless explicitly indicated as such. Every image is copyrighted the moment it is taken. Registering that copyright helps you receive legal compensation should someone violate your copyright, but failure do so doesn't mean they aren't copyrighted. If you're concerned about possible infringement, register.

No camera or lens can make you a better photographer, although it might sometimes become a limiting factor. It's up to you to improve through hard work and determination. But at some point, you may come to realize your gear is just not up to the task. Don't justify an upgrade to avoid hard work. But expect to upgrade periodically anyway as camera technology continues to advance if you want to benefit from the improvements made possible. Before you upgrade, be sure you understand why.

No doubt, some of you have your own favorite questions that lack easy answers no how often they may get asked. Let me know, and I may address them in a future article.

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Relationship, Range, and Reflectivity

Welcome to photography school. Today, I present the "three R's" of landscape photography: relationship, range, and reflectivity. Perhaps I should explain.

Our first "R" is for "relationship." Composition depends on the relationship between elements within the frame, as well as their relationship to the frame itself. It matters less what you are photographing, and more how you present them. Traditional rules of composition often deal with such relationships. The "rule of thirds" says to position your subject a third of the way into the frame. Repetition of similar objects tends to work better when in relationships between three and five members. Leading lines guide the viewer into the frame. These rules and more describe how things relate to provide meaning and context to an image.

When out with your camera, first find something to photograph. That seems straightforward enough. Try to compose the best image possible by relating that subject to other elements. Sometimes, those elements may differ in hue, tone, or texture. They may connect through symmetry of placement. While varying in appearance, they may relate simply by commonly occurring together in nature in pleasing combinations. Regardless, look for the best image you can before dealing with the technical details you'll need to surmount to capture your vision. At this stage, it's the relationships that matter.

The second "R" I want to talk about this week is "range." Landscape photography benefits from showing a given subject, both its details and its environment. What with the range of focal distances needed to achieve this, it's not uncommon to struggle with getting everything in focus. Depth of field is defined as the range of distance in front of and behind the actual focus point. You can only focus a lens at a single point at a time, but based on aperture and other factors, objects somewhat in front of and behind that point can be made to appear sufficiently sharp.

It isn't easy to shoot those vast landscapes. Stopping the lens down to a small enough aperture forces slower shutter speeds. And the longer you have to leave the shutter open, the higher your risk of something moving in the frame. Sometimes, it's the tiny wildflowers in the foreground. Sometimes, it's the family further down the trail that happens to wander into the frame at just the wrong time. As an alternative, you can shoot multiple images varying only by focus distance and then stack them digitally later. But while you may get away with faster shutter speeds for each frame this way, anything that moves can still create problems. Compositing an image from multiple exposures can be tricky when things don't line up. Yet this I part of the challenge. With an ideal image pre-visualized, the work of realizing that vision commences.

Our third "R" today is "reflectivity." Some things like the sun do emit light, but most of what we see is made possible by the fact that objects reflect light. The percentage of light reflected by an object determines how bright it appears to us. Precisely which wavelengths something reflects determines what color we see it. White balance and exposure are both matters of reflectivity.

Sometimes, it can be difficult to notice just how varied brightness is outdoors. Ordinary squinting can serve as a simple trick to improve your ability to see differences in exposure. Squint down until an area of interest is barely distinguishable. Then, without re-adjusting your eyes, glance around at other possible areas. Anything of a similar brightness will be obscured similarly. Areas brighter or darker than your reference will stand out now that you've set a benchmark through squinting.

Our eyes automatically adjust as we scan our surroundings, but camera sensors are more limited, and we have to pick a single exposure for everything. Light outdoors can vary from dark shadows to bright sunlight, yet even the best of modern cameras can only record a small slice of that in a single capture. Typically, this leads either to burned out, overexposed skies, or foregrounds lost in the shadows. There are many ways to even out the exposure ranging from old-school graduated neutral density filters to new-school HDR techniques.

So, some readers may be feeling that I took a few liberties with my choice of R's. But Relationship, Range, and Reflectivity translate into composition, depth of field, and exposure, three basic skills necessary to master landscape photography. All are important. And it's not like "Reading, Writing and ‘Rithmatetic" didn't take a few liberties with the alphabet either. So there.

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Software, Hardware, Firmware

With the fast pace of technology these days, it pays to keep reasonably up to date. Just how often you upgrade, though, is up to you.

We're all used to updating software. In the old days, we bought the new version and installed it by inserting a CD or stack of floppy disks into our computers. Over the years, things have progressed, and we can now download upgrades directly from the manufacturer over the internet. Increasingly, our software updates itself, or prompts us to begin the process.

Adobe makes the most popular photo editing software for professionals and serious amateurs. Even with the recent competition from upstarts such as Skylum, DxO, and others, Adobe still rules the roost. Like many photographers I know, I continue to dabble with many of these, but at least so far, I keep coming back to Lightroom and Photoshop. When Adobe moved to the Creative Cloud licensing model, they fully embraced the world of software that updates itself over the internet. At the same time, they embraced the revenue stream that subscription software provides. It's a double-edged sword. By simplifying the update process, they locked their users paying on an ongoing basis for the right to use software that isn't truly ours anymore. I suspect that someday I'll be updating to something other than Adobe.

We're also used to updating hardware, although most of us refer to our hardware as "cameras" and "lenses." We update our hardware whenever we become convinced that it's our gear that is holding us back, preventing us from reaching our full potential. Depending on how old your camera is, and on how much you've improved since you acquired it, this may be a reasonable assessment. But more often, buying a new camera serves only to rule out equipment as the limiting factor. Most of us would be well served by reviewing how we use our gear before concluding it needs to be updated.

Thankfully, standardized lens mounts allow us to upgrade individual components as we see fit rather than having to replace everything all at once. I like that. Sometimes, I'll read of people switching systems entirely, either from Nikon to Canon, the reverse, or occasionally something else altogether. When I first started, Canon had just pissed off their customer base by redesigning their lens mount from FD to EF at the beginning of the EOS era. One of the primary reasons I went with Nikon was that they hadn't done anything so heinous. Of course, now we're into the mirrorless era, so I suspect I will eventually upgrade from my beloved F-mount to the larger diameter Z-mount.

As its name suggests, "firmware" falls somewhere between hardware and software. You can think of firmware as being the low-level instruction set that drives your camera or other hardware. Your laptop has firmware known as BIOS. Even some lenses with built-in microprocessors feature upgradeable firmware. I own two Sigma ART lenses that can be updated but required the purchase of the Sigma USB Dock to do so. It looks like a rear lens cap that's considerably thicker than usual and has a USB port on the side. It didn't cost that much extra, I guess, relative to the cost of the lenses themselves. Even with free, downloaded upgrades, there's sometimes a cost.

The process of upgrading camera firmware works similarly across brands. You copy the necessary files to a memory card, put it in your camera, and access the appropriate menu options to instruct it to replace the current firmware. Users sometimes ask if they can update their camera firmware without a card reader, but you need one to get the files onto the card. If you're still plugging your camera directly into your computer to read images, it's time to buy a card reader.

You may be wondering if you need to upgrade your firmware. After all, the process is a bit of a pain, at least if you've never done it before. After all, no firmware upgrade is going to give your camera sensor more megapixels. Nor will your Sigma lens magically double in focal length. But these things do bring with them at least some tweaks and fixes that the manufacturer thought important. They may correct bugs you haven't run into or noticed yourself. But they may add a new feature like direct wi-fi or improve focus near the edge of the frame. Most firmware changes won't be dramatic, but they could be just what you've been needing.

To make sure you find out when an update is available, make sure to register your product with the manufacturer. Or at least keep an eye out on their website or those of media sources that cover your brand. There's nothing worse than not knowing you have a free firmware update available. Or that a new version has been released for some piece of hardware you rely on. Exactly how frequently you should check is an interesting question, and something you'll have to prioritize based on your own needs. But then again, not all of us upgrade our software or hardware with the same regularity either.

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Sourced by Time Trap Photography sharing the best photography tips, news and tricks throughout the industry. Time Trap Photography is dedicated to freezing those special moments in life that can be revisited and admired for generations to come. - Shannon Bourque
Please visit our main site for booking availability and rates.

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