Full Disclosure

One must be willing to declare the process of making their images; it is an act of essential self-awareness. I firmly believe that not revealing the process leads to darkness whether or not the truth is eventually exposed.

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Why a Tilt-Shift Lens may be in Your Future.

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Canon TS-E 24/3.5L (1st generation)

For many years, 35mm camera users have often been able to safely ignore the subject of camera movements. Not so for the large format folks, the relatively large film plane of a 4×5 view camera requires photographers to go to lengths even in the simplest images to get a deep depth-of-field, lengths that often include both camera movements and enormously tiny apertures (e.g., f/64). Our smaller film (or digital sensor) areas come along with a comparatively deeper depth of field. For better or worse, we may not wish to maintain our ignorance much longer.

If, like many photographers, you keep a close eye on gear announcements, you’ll have noticed the trend. While Canon had been selling three tilt-shift lenses for years, more recently they updated the 24mm tilt-shift with the ::amazon(“B001TDL2O0”,”Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II “):: (greatly improving it’s optical quality) and added a ::amazon(“Canon TS-E 17mm f/4L”,”17mm”):: to the lineup. In the same time frame, Nikon announced and began to ship ::amazon(“B0013BEEUW”,”24mm”)::, ::amazon(“B001BTG3NW”,”45mm”):: and ::amazon(“B001BTAZHM”,”85mm”)::. What’s behind this new excitement? (more…)

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Hey, photography is legal, how about that!

Anyone who’s ever tried to do some serious photography in public places has had to deal with curious, and on occasion, concerned people interested in what you’re doing. At times some of those interested parties have badges, whether official government badges, or private security badges. Sometimes those badges come with demands that you stop shooting, explain yourself, move on, hand over images, get on the ground, etc. (more…)

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Begin Rant

I’ve been sitting here for the last 10 minutes trying to think of the best way to write this post. I don’t want to hurt any one’s feelings and I don’t want to come off like some sort of a prima donna. Whether or not I’m qualified to pass judgment on my fellow shooters is not for me to decide. However, I’m going to do just that: pass judgment. If that makes me a bad guy, well, I guess I’ll just have to live with it. (more…)

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