Shadow of a Tennis Ball
Here's a photograph I randomly snapped on a tennis court a few days ago: …
Dust, Bird, and Scooter
Here's a photograph I took of my brother skateboarding (or attempting to) back in 2005: …
Post-processing of a Graduation Photo
A few weeks ago, I was taking photographs of my friend Tommy at his Berkeley graduation using a Canon 40D and the 24mm f/2.8. I had originally purchased the 24mm as part of a package and was planning on selling it off, but decided to keep it after being shocked by its quality and versatility. Anyhow, here's an unprocessed photograph of my friends Tommy and Jacob I took right after the graduation: …
Underexposing vs. Overexposing
One of the things I became very aware of during a recent road trip to Oregon is how much easier it is to salvage an underexposed photograph versus an overexposed one. When you overexpose a photograph and "blow out" the highlights in the image, those areas that were blown out to white are unsalvageable, whereas much more detail could have been preserved in areas of the photograph that appear to be pure black but are not (though noise results from salvaging these areas). An implication of this is …
Editing for Portraits
This entry will describe my thought process when editing a portrait, though it could apply to general photos too.
Dandelion in the Wind
Here's a photograph I took today while hiking with friends on the Bailey Cove Trailhead in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest: …
Sharpening Your Photos like Flickr
When browsing around on Flickr, I used to be amazed by how sharp many of the photographs I came across were, and thought that the reason my web-res images weren't as sharp was because I had poor technique or an inferior lens. However, even after I upgraded my camera equipment I still wasn't achieving the same type of sharpness I saw on Flickr.
Why to Shoot in RAW Format
You've probably heard many of the common arguments people give for whether to shoot in JPEG or RAW. When people discover the power of RAW, they usually never go back to shooting purely in JPEG. Sure, RAW files are enormous compared to JPEGs, the whole process will take you longer, and you'll definitely need much more storage in terms of external hard drives and memory cards, but I definitely feel like the benefits of shooting in RAW outweigh the costs.