I love the 4th of July. In our corner of Los Angeles, fireworks are legal so it’s madness and chaos into the wee hours of the night.
If I was a sound effects editor, I would record the sounds of fireworks here as the sounds of war.
BANG! BOOM! CRASH! CRACKLE! SHRIEK!
It’s [...]

The 4th of July is just a few days away so it’s time to think about the best ways to shoot pictures of fireworks.
The trick to shooting fireworks lies in a long exposure and a steady camera. If your camera is set to a short shutter speed or wiggles at all during the shot, [...]

Photo mosaics are a fun way to show off your pictures and creating one couldn’t be easier. Go to FD’s Flickr Toys and follow the instructions to create your mosaic. You can choose your background color, the shape and number of tiles in your mosaic, and either choose your pictures from [...]

Ok, I’m back on the 30 Day Photo program. After a week’s hiatus, I’m back in the groove. I took this shadow shot yesterday. The shadows were just perfect on the wall of the house, so I ran inside as fast as I could, grabbed the camera and got back just [...]

I’ve been wanting to do a dramatic silhouette shot for a couple of months, and tonight gave me the perfect opportunity.
The sun was setting and I exposed for the sky, not for Chloe. This gave her a slightly silhouetted look. I took the shot a step further by playing with the Levels [...]

A standard tool in movie making is a fog machine. Fog adds atmosphere to a shot, reduces contrast, softens the image and can create shafts of light.
Fog machines are great for shooting night exteriors because a few small light units can illuminate a large area when fog is present. The light hits [...]

I found an AWESOME webpage that gives step-by-step instructions on how to turn a beautiful shot of a Victorian house into a creeeepy haunted mansion using Photoshop.  I definitely want to try it and it would be a great exercise in boosting my Photoshop skills.  Check it out!

I was hanging on the livingroom floor with Chloe the other day and Eureka! I made a discovery. Stacking rings make a great camera snoot! You know, the pyramid of rings that babies play with the world over. I had them, you probably had them, and now they’ve made their way [...]