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February 27, 2020 by PhotoKen

4 Great Reasons for Flower Photography

In this Quick Video I talk about 4 Great Reasons for Flower Photography. If you want to create Beautiful images that your family and friends will love then Flower Photography can help.

If you watch the Video you will see that Flower Photography can lead to a wonderful range of amazing images and is a conduit or doorway to getting Professional Looking Photos. You will get a bunch of concepts in this Video including a nice Overview of my Key Tool for explaining Essential Photography concepts – The Photo Triangle™ – as well as a strategies for getting great Flower photos.

Just like a gift of flowers, sharing a wonderful flower photo with your loved ones is sure to bring a smile to their face and brighten their day.

The 4 Great Reasons I see for diving into Flower Photography are:

Pleasing to the Eye – Plain and simple, flowers are beautiful and give feelings of hope, love, vibrancy, life, the joy of spring and so much more. The range and contrast of colors in flowers lead to wonderful shots.
Very Accessible – Want a beautiful subject without shelling out hundreds hiring a model? Flowers are very easy to obtain, whether it’s stepping outside your door or buying an inexpensive bouquet at your local store. Regardless of the season flowers are not difficult to come by.
Learn and Practice the Essentials – Flower photography allows you to easily learn and practice the essentials to great photos in general. From Exposure basics to Light Quality – to Composition – to Focus and more advanced Depth of Field – all these can be mastered with Flower Photography.
Explore Advanced Techniques – In addition to Key Concepts needed for Pro level photos you can also try out more Advanced Photography Methods such as Macro Photography (including Focus Stacking), HDR (High Dynamic Range) imaging and Advanced Composition styles.

Bottom Line is Flower Photography can take you from Basics, the Essentials, to more Creative and Professional Photos. If you have not tried Flower Photography I highly recommend giving it a go!

If you want to Create Amazing Flower Photography I highly recommend Photzy’s Photographing Fabulous Flowers written by Leanne Cleaveley – Leanne is a fantastic teacher and gives you the A to Z of Flower Photography – click on the Link below to get the Discount I arranged for you…

GET PHOTOGRAPHING FABULOUS FLOWERS >

If you are interested, or just a little Curious, click the Link Above – that page has much more details of what is covered in Photzy’s Premium Guide.

If you do want the Photography Essentials I was talking about in the video including the occasional Flower shoot you may be interested in my DPinsiders Program…

IF you are NOT on the Waiting List for the Next Enrollment in DPinsiders CLICK HERE TO GET ON THE LIST

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March 22, 2019 by PhotoKen

17 Ways to Swing a Cat (Lightroom Presets)

A DEMO of CONTRASTLY Presets

After opening up Adobe Lightroom and loading up The Complete Lightroom & ACR Presets Bundle from CONTRASTLY…

2 Hours Later…

… I’m still paying with all the Presets on ONE Photo of a Cat!… a lot of fun 🙂

I decided to create this DEMO Video to show you the Amazing Range of Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW Presets in the Complete Bundle from CONTRASTLY – https://contrastly.com/affiliates/aff.php?id=157&url=914

These can give you a fantastic Range of LOOKS for your Images with ONE CLICK. I also mention OPAL you can get that Plugin here – http://natephotographic.com/opal-opacity-slider-for-lightroom-presets/

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September 5, 2016 by PhotoKen

Great Series of Photos of Airplane crossing the Full Moon

Airplane captured crossing the Full Moon in Oregon

We had a wonderful Full Moon rising in the East the other night.

Then I remembered there is a flight path in that part of the sky with airplanes heading from LA to Portland Airport to the North and decided to try get a plane flying across the moon!

I rushed out with my Canon 5D Mark III with a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L lens and 1.4X Teleconverter (to get a little extra reach). ** NOTE: the amazing Canon 5D Mark IV is out in 3 DAYS but if you don’t need the extra resolution ( 30.4 MP versus 22.3 with the Mark III), touchscreen, or 4K Video (along with a bunch of other enhancements) then the Mark III is still an awesome camera and will save you US$1000!

Back to the moon…

I had the camera on a tripod and waited for about 20 minutes (as you probably know Patience is a big factor in photography) – one airplane flew by too low to position myself to get it in front of the moon – then another 15 minutes or so passed and a saw an airplane coming out from the south behind some Douglas fir trees that looked like it could intersect with the moon.

I should mention that I had taken a few test shots of the moon first – the counter intuitive part of taking moon photos is that your exposure is more similar to a Daytime shot! (NOT a Night Photo). I had settled on Aperture f/4.5 at ISO 400 and a Shutter Speed of 1/1000 sec. Plenty fast enough to freeze the airplane movement.

Also, White Balance was set to Daylight!

NOTE: You do need to use Manual Exposure as the moon was not large enough in the frame to get a correct exposure (the camera was overexposing the shot in Aperture Priority mode as the moon was surrounded by pitch black! – the photos above are Crops of the original images).

So the airplane was heading towards the moon and I was frantically re-positioning the tripod to get a shot where I thought they would intersect. A few seconds before the airplane actually passed the moon I know I had the right position for the airplane trajectory…

then with High Speed shutter release mode I rattled off about 6 shots…

It was hard to tell how well I had aligned the shoot until I reviewed the images after and zoomed in on the moon…

Of course, I was super happy how the series came out 🙂

I definitely view photography as a fun adventure and this was a very rewarding little test. I guess that was one of the reasons I started my new Digital Photography Insiders program (https://dpinsiders.com) – to take people on a Journey of Photographic Discovery (and experimentation) – where you can learn the basics you need and then develop your skills and style through trying things out. DPinsiders is currently closed for enrollment but you can join the Waiting List by CLICKING HERE and ensure you get notified immediately when I open doors again (and get an exclusive subscriber only deal).

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July 2, 2016 by PhotoKen

Fireworks Photo Video Tutorial and CheatSheet

4Th of July is upon us! With it comes plenty of FIREWORKS and opportunities to get great Colorful Fireworks Photos.

One of the Biggest Challenges with photographing Fireworks is the Best results usually require shooting on Manual Mode…. yes Manual Exposure (*insert ominous music here*).

… however, with simple steps you can totally move your Camera into Manual Mode and start experimenting with your camera settings for more Creative Photos.

Night Photos, and Firework Photos specifically, are a great way to start experimenting with Manual Exposure.

To help you a little I have created this Free Video above and Fireworks Photo Cheat Sheet Below. Go through the Video and Download the Cheat Sheet (Right Click on the Image and choose “Save as…” to download a larger version).

I go a lot more into Transitioning to Manual Exposure in my EasyDSLR Blue Membership Course (CLICK HERE FOR A SPECIAL) – if you don’t already have that Digital Photography training course you may find it super useful – especially if you are wanting to get off AUTO.