Insight
The purpose of this insight section is to show you how I have made photos show on this site, as well as provide you with some tutorials to help you improve your photography. I have several articles in mind, drawing on "how-to's" that I have contributed to on forums and explanations on techniques I have provided to individuals by e-mail.
To make this section worthwhile, I need your input. Please provide feedback on my tutorials so I can improve these and, most importantly, make suggestions on what you would like to see here.
Essays in the pipeline are:
Shooting whippets at speed
No not with a gun, but with a Canon. Whippets are extremely difficult to photograph when in motion due to their high speed and agility. It's already a challenge when they are at full speed, running in a straight line, but their agility resulting in unpredictable fast movements make this even more of a challenge. Based on my contributions to a thread on the whippet forum with the same title, I will produce a series of tutorials on how to get the results you desire, ranging from camera/lens choice through camera settings to tracking techniques.
How to make a "Virtual Reality"
An explanation of how I make Virtual Reality panoramas that include the zenith (point of the heavens immediately above your head) and nadir (opposite point, immediately under your feet) in four seperate essays, covering how to take photos on location, show to stitch the photos into a spherical panorama, how to remove the tripod head from the nadir and how to enable viewing.
In the Lightroom
Some examples of lightroom techniques that I use to process my images in Adobe Lightroom to produce the final output which are, in fact, the equivalent of traditional darkroom techniques.
Photoshop Magic
I use Photoshop very sparingly, and only when I have to to get the final results I desire. These pages provide some examples of how a little bit of Photoshop magic gets you the shot you want if (and only if!) you cannot get it right in-camera.
Graduate filters or post processing to correct exposure
A tutorial on how to use a graduated filter in the field and the graduated filter tool in Photoshop Lightroom to correct the exposure to correct an under-exposed foreground and an over-exposed sky. Examples will show that, although the Lightroom method works at times, the best results are undoubtably achieved using a graduated filter in the filed.
How to use the histogram in the field
An overview of how I use the histogram in the field to get the right result in-camera to achieve the best finished article.