I often think of this quote from Alan Schaller when I'm out hunting for street photos: "If you can get the magic trio of a good subject, good environment, and good light all together in one frame, you’re winning." If I can find a spot where I've got two of the three, or am close [...]
There's a range of subjects to photograph at a county fair, but the lights and motion of the carnival rides at night are hard to beat for some striking images. I did not have a a tripod, so I handheld the camera for shutter speeds as low as one-quarter second—too long for the 50mm lens [...]
Like many photographers in my age cohort, I shot film for decades before digital came along. Also like many others, I did some darkroom work back in the day, developing and printing black and white film. But I hadn't shot film in probably 20 years … before buying a film camera a few months ago. [...]
I recently did a portrait session with Kiki in the Mission District in San Francisco. We arrived early, when the streets were uncrowded and we had a clear sky with angled light. I'd scouted some locations ahead of time, and chose mural backgrounds—ideally, without discernible letters, which could be distracting. There's no shortage of murals [...]
AI in photography is just too useful to ignore. I mostly use it to remove objects that even Photoshop's Content Aware Fill can't handle. I almost never use it to add objects to photos. But … here's an exception. This is a gas station at the entrance to Niles, California, that the owner has redone [...]
I never tire of photographing San Francisco City Hall. It's a beautifully balanced, Beaux-Arts building that sits at the end of a long, tree-lined promenade. It's dramatic and impressive when photographed at sunrise, when it's front-lit, and just as impressive at night when it's lit by LED lights in a variety of color schemes, [...]
I visited Pacific Grove in early December, when, by coincidence, there was an atmospheric river bringing stormy weather to the Pacific Northwest. That same weather affected the ocean at Pacific Grove, resulting in bigger waves than I'd ever seen there—and I've been there many times. I went out early in the morning to Lovers Point, [...]
In October, I took a trip to Nevada City, California. Even though shooting fall color wasn't the reason for the trip, I thought I might find and photograph some there. So I got up before sunrise and went scouting. I didn't find much good fall color, but I did find, or rather, was found by, [...]
A make-up artist named Skip was at my granddaughters' combined birthday party in early October. The party had an "animal" theme, and the kids came dressed as their favorite animals. Skip is a talented face-painter, and the girls' outfits and painted faces were great subjects. Here's Skip painting Eva as a rabbit. And the finished [...]
It was overcast, and the sun hadn't yet risen. Those were just the conditions I was hoping for as I headed to the seashore to do some long-exposure seascapes along Ocean View Blvd. in Pacific Grove. I had my black and white camera on a tripod, and was shooting with a 35mm or 50mm lens, [...]