Historians may beg to differ but President Lincoln would have been a wonderful photographer—I love calling him President Lincoln—he’s been MY president since I was in the fifth grade. It’s unlikely that any man or woman will ever embody the role of leadership this world demands like our sixteenth. I’d love to believe he’s really mine, but I must share him with the world. Had you been lucky enough to see him in person, he was geekiness personified—six-foot-four and one-hundred and sixty-five pounds when he died. A great public speaker whose opening line always met with a wave of….

When you’re shooting a photograph of someone looking into the camera, there’s almost always a little bit of direction required from the photographer. I have my own little bag of stock comments that I say to people when I try to get them to look the way I want them to look and exude whatever it is that I think they should be exuding in my photograph. Even though you’re shooting still photographs there’s a little bit of movie-director-thinking required here. Some of my direction is practical and necessary like “fix your collar” and some of my comments are an….

Beautiful, soft portrait lighting is all around us if you know how to look for it. Scout your house and neighborhood for a place that has this gorgeous light you’ll be ready to shoot spontaneous headshots that have a classic, professional look.   By that I mean a place that has beautiful, flattering light and a simple, neutral background. Then, when you spontaneously want to shoot a simple headshot or small group you don’t have to flounder around wondering where in your house you can go–you’ve figured that out long in advance. It’s often next to a large window or….

So today is Valentine’s Day and I know that many of you will probably give or receive chocolate, so I thought this might be a perfect time to dabble in a little food photography. Plus, if you get something you like—in your camera, that is—you can save the picture and make a Valentine’s card out it next year. There are two kinds of chocolate photography. There’s the serious professional kind where you buy thirty boxes of chocolate so you have enough perfect looking pieces to make one good box. (And then you spray them all with Pam to make them….

You need to find the information about that picture in you editing program and see the numbers. You can have two pictures that both look 5×7 inches on your computer monitor and one of them can be nine times bigger than the other one—the small one will start to fall apart (pixelate) the more you magnify it; it has lower resolution—that’s a lower PPI number; pixels per inch. The only accurate way to determine the size of a digital photograph is get under the hood and look at its numbers. Some place in your editing program there’s a place that….