Long exposure tutorial with Scott Kelby...

We had the pleasure of spending some time with Scott Kelby last week while he was vacationing here in our lovely state.

Scott was kind enough to shoot a long exposure tutorial for us (and our readers), so here it is.

Should you use this tutorial to shoot your own long exposure shots we would love to see them, so feel free to send us a low res version.

If you receive our posts via email you'll need to return to the blog or head directly to our YouTube channel to watch Scott Kelby in action.

Do you shoot with the Nikon D5100?

We had a new book dropped on our doorstep last night, Peachpit Press was kind enough to send us the just published "Nikon D5100: From Snapshots to Great Shots" by Rob Sylvan.

I could review it myself but I don't shoot the Nikon D5100 and think a better, more thorough review would be done by someone who actually shoots with that camera.

So if you shoot with the D5100 and would be interested in reviewing "Nikon D5100: From Snapshots to Great Shots" on Weekly Photo Tips please drop us an email. I will put all the names of those who email us into a hat and randomly select one person to send the book to.

If you are the "lucky winner" the book will be yours to keep and the only thing we ask is that you follow our review policy.

If the name of the author seems familiar it should, he's a NAPP help desk specialist, an instructor for the Perfect picture School of Photography, and the host of Peachpit’s Lightroom Resource Center.

Rob has also been on Weekly Photo Tips in the past, I had the pleasure of reviewing his book "Taking Stock" (which was excellent) and he was the featured speaker this past May at the Maine Photographers Coalition.

So send us an email if you shoot the Nikon D5100 and good luck to everyone who enters.

One half million people...

A few days ago Weekly Photo Tips pushed past a very significant milestone (at least to me).

We have had over one half a million unique visitors stop by and spend some time at our photography blog (another big number is our 750,000 page views).

What Weekly Photo Tips has become rests on you... is because of you... your loyalty and your support has made us the photography blog we have become.

And though these two little words seem so inadequate in expressing my appreciation, please know they are truly heartfelt, THANK YOU!

It's over... Finally!!

And (probably) only for now.

Like much of the rest of the country we have had some record setting heat here in Maine. Luckily we've had it (only) for days, there are some places (like Dallas Texas) that have had temps of over 100 degrees every single day for over three weeks!

This was downtown Biddeford on Thursday...


And on Friday...


And this was the temp when we got into the car (that was parked in the shade) right after the ceremony we were shooting on Saturday.


Nope, the church did not have air conditioning, thanks goodness the reception did!


It was not long ago that this was our complaint, it looks real attractive now though, doesn't it. Aaaahhhhhh, my kingdom for some snow.

The one, the only, Mr. Dave Hill...

I was made aware of this video via Strobist and was so blown away I wanted to make sure you folks saw it.

From Dave - "All 11 images of the Adventure Series are deconstructed. I had to flatten a lot of the layers, but at least you can get an idea of what goes into each image."

Check this out:

Here is a link to our post on creating the "faux" Dave Hill look.

(subscribers will need to follow this link to see the video on Dave's Vimeo channel)

Bad Photoshop...

There has been another round of badly Photoshopped images in the news the last few days.

This image was released from the North Korean (state run) news agency showing victims walking through a "flood".

Two things wrong with this image, the water does not wick up their pants, they remain absolutely dry right to the water line AND the blending of the people to the water is HORRIBLE.

It is theorized that they (North Korea) released the image as "news" hoping for different flood, one of international aid.

If you follow this link you can read the story (and see the image) that cost an Associated Press freelance photographer his job (and credibility). What did he do? He used Photoshop to (badly) remove his shadow from an image he took of children playing soccer.

It seems that folks get caught because they do such a bad job of using Photoshop, which makes you wonder how many "good" edits never get caught.

Don't get me wrong, I use Photoshop, but I don't pass my images off as news, nor do I claim them to be unaltered.

Making lemonade out of lemons...

Many people would agree, if you want to learn how to take pictures, one of the best books to do it with would be Bryan Peterson's book "Understanding Exposure".

Bryan is an outstanding photographer and equally as good as a photography teacher.

Below is a 3 minute video, in it Bryan uses 5 very simple things combined in one of the unlikeliest of places to make a very good photograph.

If you find this video interesting (and you will), you'll want to check out this video using strawberries, or this one with cooking oil.