Current Equipment and Software
[Updated Sept. 13, 2014] I usually travel with about five cameras, but I mainly use a Canon 70D (with Canon 18-135mm lens, starting Sept. 2014) and an iPhone. Before that, I used a series of Canon Cameras, from the Canon Rebel, T1 to the 60D. I usually upgrade my camera every 1-2 years.A good photographer can take great photos with any camera, and bad photographer is going to take lousy photos with even the most expensive one, but a good camera stacks the odds in your favor. With a fancy dSLR and the skill to use it, you can catch more of the marginal shots that would slip by otherwise. The main advantages of a dSLR are speed, low-light capability and focus control, and a more expensive camera generally does all three better. (The raw number of pixels is less important to me than capturing the shot.) After owning both Canon and Nikon dSLR cameras, I am back to Canon permanently. I think of Nikon as a bad relationship. I tried to make it work, but Nikon was just too dysfunctional. (Bad placement of controls and fewer features than Canon for the price.)
For years, I got by with the "low end of the high end" in digital cameras. The Canon Rebel series has stood by me well, and that is what I recommend to newcomers who want to move up from a point-and-shoot. As of late 2012, however, I am now shooting with the semi-professional Canon 60D. I am embarrassed by its huge and intrusive size, but it gives me so much better control that it is worth it. (However, I wouldn't know what to do with all the features of the 60D if I hadn't already practiced with the Rebel for years.)
For a lens, I only use the 18-200mm lens that came with the camera. (It is affordable only when you buy the lens and camera as a package.) This is the best lens you can possibly get for shooting in a wide range of circumstances. I never remove the lens from the body because this lets dust get onto the camera sensor. (I learned that from my previous dSLRs. Dust on the sensor is a much bigger problem that scratches on the lens.) I keep a lens hood permanently attached to the lens, not to prevent glare but to protect the lens from scratches. That way, I don't have to use a lens cap (which I would lose anyway).
After the photos are taken, I download them to my generic laptop and usually crop and brighten them with a photo editor. I use both Corel Paintshop Pro and Photoshop. I use Corel for some quick and simple tasks like cropping and adding title and use Photoshop for more complicated manipulations. (I recommend Corel to non-professionals for the low price and relative ease of use.)
For most of my iPhone photos, I use the standard camera app. Sometimes I upload iPhone photos directly to Facebook without editing, and sometimes I crop and brighten them first with the photo editing software. A few of my iPhone photos are taken using the proHDR app, which takes two photos at different exposures and combines them into one (for richer colors). Beginning Aug. 2011, I also use PhotoSynth to take wide-angle photos and 360-degree panoramas with my iPhone.
I have a small waterproof Fuji Finepix camera for underwater shots, wet circumstances and a few panoramas (but I rarely use it).
Post-Production Manipulation
With Photoshop, I am capable of completely altering reality, but in general I stick with "real" reality simply because it is easier. About 80% of my photos uploaded to Facebook are tweaked in some way. For most photos, I will crop the image and adjust the brightness and contrast. In about half of my photos, I adjust or enhance the color.I occasionally use an HDR application, Dynamic Photo HDR, but mainly to pump up the contrast and heightens the color of single images ("tone mapping"). I rarely use it to combine multiple images into one. As an alternative, I may take 2 images of a scene at different exposures then splice them together at logical junction points. For example, I may combine two bracketed images of the same landscape, one where the sky is perfectly exposed and the other where the ground is perfectly exposed. The two pictures are joined at the horizon, so you can't tell that they are two photos.
One key to brilliant photos is that I work with various regions of the photo separately. In particular, I usually adjust the sky separately from the ground in outdoor shots, and I pay particular attention to faces. The most complex and time-consuming part is hiding the transition lines between the separate regions.
Only occasionally do I "photoshop" an image to change the physical details of it. My most common manipulation is to remove some minor detail that I feel distracts from the central focus of them picture. For example, in a portrait photo of one person, I may "edit out" another person's hand that might appear at the edge of the frame. You rarely notice these manipulations because they are irrelevant to the main topic of the image.
Although Photoshop gives me the power of God to change reality, this takes a lot of time. I do it mainly when I want to deliberately create Alien Worlds.
Permission Notes
You may feel free to link to any of my photos and albums, or share
them via the Facebook "share" feature, but please don't copy them to another website without permission. For permission,
contact me.
(I am usually liberal about giving permission, especially for not-for-profit sites.)
If you want to use my photos in a small off-line presentation that only a few people will see, go ahead and do so. I can't complain about something I can't possibly know about.
In the early days, I tried to label each photo with a visible caption with my website, photo location and a copyright mark, but this became too much of a burden. (My photos may still be invisibly watermarked, and I am not relinquishing ownership of them.)
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