It’s funny. For years and years we’ve thrown around terms like “mental energy,” and for the most part, none of us really questions what we’re getting at. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately in my own photography, and it’s looking like some of the new research on creativity is confirming what I originally [...]

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Christmas time is upon us, and I know a lot of you are looking for some fun ways to make your holiday photos more interesting. Well, what better time to introduce you to bokehs than right now? Chances are you’ve got a lot of Christmas lights around the house, and they’re just dying to make [...]

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What would HAL do if he could take a picture? He’d probably look me straight in the face and say, “I’m sorry Dave, but I can’t let you do that.” In all seriousness, your camera is a lot like HAL. It’s got all this technical gobbledygook and sophisticated light metering algorithms built into it, but [...]

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When I was a kid, I gravitated toward the camera. Of course, those were different days. Back then, a kid couldn’t take that many photos for fear of wasting mom and dad’s money on film. Now it’s a totally different era. I feel like I can really teach my own children how to take pictures. [...]

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If you’re keen on advertising your photography a little better on the web, you might want to start watermarking your photos. A watermark is a little logo or badge of text you place in the bottom right corner of a photo, telling your viewers who you are. It’s also a common deterrent to people who [...]

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I’d like to start by saying I don’t want to pass judgment on anyone. By drawing attention to these issues, I’m not saying any one person is “bad” or doomed to be a horrible photographer for the rest of his or her life. In fact, I used to do many of these things myself. They [...]

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Digital SLRs may have the upper hand when it comes to shooting macro, but that doesn’t mean us point-and-shoot owners have to give up. You’d be surprised with what you can do using your point-and-shoot camera’s macro shooting mode. As long as you employ the right techniques, you can create some truly stunning macro photography. [...]

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Do you remember when you were a kid and totally afraid to jump in the water and swim? We’ve all been there. In life, some things just freak us out, and it’s no different in photography. I know it sounds strange, but we all need to be pushed sometimes. We need someone to force us [...]

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Backgrounds are an important part of any image. They set the context, and can make a dull image interesting. Most of us are constantly in search of a background with character, feeling it will add something extra to shot. And it does, but sometimes it does so at the expense of what’s truly important. Here [...]

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Have you ever wanted to make more out of your next vacation? I know. We’ve all been out diving, and maybe some of us have tried taking pictures, but how well did they turn out? If your subjects were a little too blue, and the glow from the flash was a little too bright, you [...]

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There are more than a dozen ways to upgrade your camera setup. If you’ve just started, and you own a point-and-shoot model, you might want to step it up to an entry level SLR. Some of you with entry SLRs might wonder what a pro model can do for you. That’s why I’ve decided to [...]

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Bright lights at night are breathtaking. They bring a certain magic to urban life that’s unlike anything else. The only issue with bright lights is that they’re a lot like the sun. They can bring unwanted contrast into a scene, often forcing you to rethink the way you expose the entire image. If you’ve ever [...]

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When the light outside is less than perfect, the right photographic filter can help you get the colors you want. There are filters for just about any shooting situation you can imagine, from sunsets to mid-afternoon, and everything in between. If you’re just getting started, and you want to learn more about the photographic filters [...]

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Mountains are gorgeous all on their own. They inspire wonder every time we’re near them. There’s nothing like being in the presence of the mountains. It makes you feel almost superhuman. The real challenge for any would-be mountain photographer is to get the mountains to appear as surreal on film as they do in real [...]

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Recently I passed 300 photography articles here on Digital Photo Secrets. When you add them all up, that’s about 200,000 words of photographic goodness! The average non-fiction book is around 50,000 words, so I’ve written the equivalent of 4 whole books! Recently, as more newcomers have arrived, folks have been asking me if I had [...]

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