Pierre Steenberg

Juxtapositioning

May 24, 2015 • Leave a Comment

"Good bye God, hello Bodie" is what people used to say when they went to this wild western town when the west was still pretty wild, and Bodie was one of the wildest of the wild. There were more drinking parlors per capita than just about anywhere else. Fighting and shooting was the order of the day. Now Bodie is but a ghost town. Back when I went...

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Shooting Snow

May 17, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Snow shots are difficult to get right. Snow is one of the most reflective surfaces on earth. It reflects so much light that your camera's light meter begs for sunglasses. Your camera's light meter will try to persuade you that your shot is too bright and so suggests that you darken the image with fast shutter speeds or small F.Stops. When you oblig...

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Travel ...

May 10, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Travel presents great opportunities to get compelling images. Yes, we can get great landscape shots while travelling, but it is the people, the culture and the lifestyle that grip emotion and tell a story. Try to capture images that make viewers want to talk to you about what you experienced. Show what is different. Capture the essence of a place....

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Fire

May 03, 2015 • Leave a Comment

When things happen that do not usually happen we have an opportunity to get images we cannot usually get. So when there are strange weather (keep your gear and your person safe), dust storms (keep your gear safe from dust), fire (be safe), etc. (did I mention to be safe yet?) we need to get out to shoot. A lot of smoke in the air may give you an in...

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Light Painting

April 26, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Light painting can create awesome images. When your camera is set on a long shutter speed, with a small F.Stop, and low ISO, you can shoot in darkness wearing dark clothing and walk right into the scene being shot without being seen by the camera. This means that you can light paint a car showing the streaks of light on the edges of the car. By the...

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Blending Images

April 19, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Before you crucify me for daring to even talk about blending images together let me just say that I do not add anything to my images that was not there when I shot it. Every element in every image was visible when shot (neither do I move elements around in a shot). Also, blending images are not acceptable when shooting photojournalism. What I am ab...

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Vibration Control

April 12, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Have you ever shot in the field, examined your shot on your camera's LCD (they look just beautiful and sharp), and got home just to find your shots soft (not sharp) on your computer screen? The images look sharp on the camera's LCD because it takes a very large image and shrinks it to fit your LCD. Anytime you shrink images they look sharper. Howev...

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Printer Calibration

April 05, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Last week we spoke about the importance of calibrating your monitor. What happens when your monitor is fully calibrated and your files look gorgeous BUT your prints still come back looking off color? Now we know that the problem is not with our computers but with the lab that printed our work. So we call them up to complain, just to find out that t...

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Monitor Calibration

March 29, 2015 • Leave a Comment

A client just happened to see an image on my screen and fell in love with it. He ordered a print on the spot. The file was sent to the lab and the print came a week later. I was so excited to be able to look at a very large print of this image for the first time. The print was opened and disappointment struck. The color was off. I opened the image...

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Contrast ...

March 22, 2015 • Leave a Comment

When we talk about contrast in photography we are usually talking about contrast of light (and what we adjust in post processing). Today I would like to talk about a different kind of contrast; the kind of contrast where objects or colors are contrasted against each other. Perhaps we are talking about contrasting a mansion juxtaposed against a pove...

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