Music as a Metaphor for Photography

They say you can’t teach an old pony new tricks, but I don’t believe that’s true. Personally, in the last couple years, I’ve learned to dance, some Japanese, and how to develop film. Recently, I also decided to start learning to play the piano. To give you a bit of background, you have to know that I never studied music …

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic

The Lightroom Catalog: Storage Considerations

This is the second article in my series about the Adobe Ligthroom catalog. You can find the previous articles here: The Lightroom Catalog: the Basics Where Should You Store Your Catalogs? One of the questions about the Lightroom catalog I get asked most frequently is certainly: Where do I store my catalog? In order to answer this question, I will …

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic

The Lightroom Catalog: the Basics

Many people who are using Adobe Lightroom are confused about the concept of a catalog and have many questions about it. I keep getting questions myself, so I thought I’d write a series of articles to hopefully provide some answers and demystify some of its most obscure features and confusing aspects. Lightroom vs. Lightroom Classic What follows is relevant to …

Manarola, Cinque Terre, italy

When To Use Manual Mode

I have to tell you a secret: on my cameras I use aperture priority about 90% of the time. I sometimes use manual mode and very rarely shutter priority. If I feel a photo might be over- or under-exposed, I use exposure compensation (I love the fact that my Fuji cameras have a dedicated exposure compensation dial). There’s a piece …

Closing the Gap Masterclass

Great photos need so much more than f-stops and shutter speeds

Did you ever find yourself thinking one of those thoughts? “Photography makes me feel alive. I never get tired of shooting!” “Oh, this sucks. Didn’t turn out at the way I saw it!” “Trying to find my style! Aaarrgghhhhh this is so difficult.” “If I think of my hard drive and all the courses and videos I bought? Embarrassing.” Let’s …

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, MoMA, New York

Jack Of All Trades, Master Of Some

In the past, through articles and emails and speeches, most notably in the recent talk I gave at the Out Of Chicago Photography Conference, whose recording you can find here, I mentioned the Helsinki Bus Station Theory, first introduced by Finnish photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen. The theory is a metaphor of the life of an artist and of a photographer in …

Five tips for teaching your kid photography

Five tips for teaching your kid photography

by Dan Barr While looking at something in front of us, it is difficult to take note of each aspect which is within our vision. A moment will only last for so long. But you tend not to notice everything about it. For example, at a birthday party, when the cake is being cut, it is not possible to observe …