Well, things are ready now to fly out to Peru tomorrow! It has been an intense last few days leaving no time for blogging, but much was accomplished, and I am now prepared to work with a single focus on this next great expedition.

For the most part, while in Peru for the next week, I’ll only be able to consistently post on staddonfamily.com, so please frequent that for a day by day overview complete with lots of pictures.

Travel is a big part of photography. That’s why I went ahead and purchased a new camera bag today: a Calumet BP935 Small Backpack. I’m curious to see how well it works for this trip. Now, instead of lugging around two carry-ons for my camera and laptop, I can now have them combined in a very comfortable backpack. I’ll see about posting a review when I get back!

Well, I gave in and finally bought Photomatix. After experimenting with three different programs, Lightroom, Photoshop CS5, and Photomatix, I figured this was the best way to go.

Lightroom does an excellent job simulating HDR with it’s Fill Light slider, but the quality gets real low real quick. I have a few presets created, and it works nice for some pictures, but it just doesn’t make the cut, especially since it can only work with one, single, 8-bit or 16-bit image.

I was able to use Photoshop CS5 for a few days with a trial version. I worked really hard to get what I wanted, even to the point of reading up on it and following specific directions. There were just too many steps. And the end product always appeared flat. If I ever upgrade to CS5, I’ll have more time to work with it, but that upgrade will probably be in the far future.

It was at least a year ago that I first started looking into Photomatix. With the perpetual, watermarked, trial version, I remember being very surprised and pleased with the colorful, almost surreal product that it produced. And consistent, too. Every time I would take a batch of pictures through, I always came up with something I liked. It’s got a lot of settings and you could tweak things forever, but once you get used to it, it really doesn’t take that much time. Usually, a little contrast had to be added in Lightroom once the merge was completed.

So I went ahead and bought it. It’s normally like $100, but you can get free 15% or 20% coupons online. Here are a few of my first images with the program. They are all fusions of three images, each with a difference of at least one stop of light.

Last Wednesday I taught a ultra-short-course in photography composition. It was the perfect day to teach because we were already at a State Park for a day-trip. I gave each person the assignment to take three pictures with the following criteria:

1. Picture with a Purpose
2. Candid (someone not looking directly at the camera)
3. Posed (someone looking at the camera)

We focused on the elements of emotional impact, focus, and filling the frame. No editing was allowed.

These are my three entrees:

I am quite surprised at how lacking my own photography is! But it was a good exercise. The first picture tells a story of “Transformation”; cropping the reader’s eyes draws the viewer’s eyes to the words on the book. The second picture is candid, in that it was taken on the spur of the moment and the photographer is not looking at the camera; the subjects eyes are what brings the viewer into the picture. The last picture is definitely not posed, but it does have the subjects looking at the camera; I couldn’t zoom in any closer, so I purposely framed it in a way that added to the “daringness” of the subjects.

I’m looking forward to the critiquing session this evening!

For a few more pictures of our trip, click here.

For when you only have a few minutes to talk to someone who asks for tips on how to take good pictures, you might consider the following elements that have been helpful for me:

1. Produce Emotional Impact
1. Purpose (what message do you want people to walk away from the picture with?)
2. Content (what subjects are impactful?)
3. Focus (is the most important part of the picture clear?)
2. Understand Composition
1. Rule of thirds
2. Depth of field
3. Fill the frame
3. Capture Dynamic Lighting
1. Correct exposure
2. Color
3. Contrast

You probably have your own three sets of three that you feel are most important. To tell you the truth, I pretty much made this up on the spur of the moment in a time-crunched setting earlier this year. But it wasn’t hard because it was just summing up what I already knew in my head. Just think about it and you’ll find how beneficial your own experience can be to others.