Photography

I receive a lot of questions from readers who are curious about the type of photography tools I use. To avoid answering the same inquiries over and over again, I decided to create a page dedicated to my camera gear, software, and other photography related questions.

Camera Gear.

I have two cameras, a Nikon D5000 and my iPhone 4s camera. I bought my Nikon D5000 about four years ago and love it. My lens of choice is a 50mm because it picks up so much light. For instance, I’ve been able to shoot beautiful portraits of people and my cats indoors without having to use a flash.

In addition, my iPhone has a lovely little camera. The iPhone offers a wonderful point and shoot that’s lightweight and always at hand. Also applications, like Instagram, make it easy to share photos.

Recently, I bought a new lens kit that clips onto my iPhone. The lens is called an Olloclip and it has three lens types in one unit. The lens types are, macro, wide-angle, and fish-eye. Read more about the lens on amazon.com.

Software.

I’m a big fan of Adobe Lightroom. But I recently decided to try a new program, called Snapseed. So far it’s easy to use and fast. Currently, I’m using Lightroom and iPhoto for my digital photo library.

I also LOVE DipTic and Adobe Fireworks. I use DipTic on my iPhone and laptop to create photo collages. If I create an inspiration board for the blog or my courses, I use Fireworks to incorporate photos and quotes.

Start snapping!

When I started taking pictures, I was disappointed by my shots because they were horrible; 99% of the images were blurry and the composition sucked. As I snapped photos, I kept a quote by Henri Cartier-Bresson in mind. He said, “Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”

In my experience, I’ve found Cartier-Bresson’s to be true. If you want to get better at photography, keep taking pictures. Take photos of scenes that capture your interest and don’t over-think the process. For example, I’m really into macrophotography and I love to take close-up shots of flowers and water droplets. I never know how a macro shot will come out until I try it because the subject matter is so small.