Archive for 'Instructional'
Spring Black Bears - A video report
Posted on 28. May, 2009 by Paul Burwell.
I just returned from a very successful workshop focussed on spring Black Bears. The workshop was held at the Riding Mountain Guest Ranch just outside Riding Mountain National Park in south west Manitoba, Canada. If you’ve never been to this area of the world you really owe yourself a visit. It is truly a remarkable area of the continent with a huge variety…
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3 occasions when it’s acceptable to use digital zoom
Posted on 15. May, 2009 by Paul Burwell.
…I encourage my photography and workshops students to never, EVER, under penalty of death, use the digital zoom on their cameras. At a glance, I can usually guess when an image was taken with digital zoom and it really creates inferior images. But of course, like all “rules” there are exceptions. I’ve thought of three occasions when using the digital zoom on a camera would be acceptable…
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Khumbu Xtrahand Vest - Video Review
Posted on 12. May, 2009 by Paul Burwell.
I’ve had a Khumbu photography vest from the Vested Interest folks for about 4 years now. They have different vests for different types of photographer. The models include the Still, Magnum, Pro Video and the one I use, the Khumbu. For the wildlife photographer the Khumbu vest is a very useful accessory for trecking gear around. Every once in a while I see folks in the various Internet photography forums enquiring about them and thought it would be a useful…
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Top Ten Wildlife Photography Tips
Posted on 30. Apr, 2009 by Paul Burwell.
Creating a tremendous wildlife photograph is an extremely rewarding pursuit. However, developing the skills and techniques necessary to create captivating wildlife images is more difficult than it might appear on the surface. Composition, lighting, equipment, natural history, and patience are just some of the areas…
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Slideshows that don’t suck
Posted on 16. Apr, 2009 by Paul Burwell.
Although I fondly remember watching my dad’s dusty slides as a kid, I’ve never enjoyed watching slideshows of digital images on the computer. Why? Because they generally suck and bore me to tears. In fact, I had a selection of URL’s saved just so that I could lull myself to sleep if I couldn’t sleep. So, when I heard about a service called Animoto that promises to…
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Learning wildlife photography - The power of simplicity
Posted on 01. Apr, 2009 by Paul Burwell.
I’m extremely fortunate in that my passion for wildlife and photography has evolved into my full-time occupation. As part of my work, I get to review and critique quite a number of wildlife photographs. When I think back over the images that stand out from the others I am reminded of…
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Learning wildlife photography - When to use manual focus
Posted on 11. Mar, 2009 by Paul Burwell.
If you’re a regular reader of my blog you know that I’m a big advocate of using your camera’s autofocus system whenever possible. While there are better and worse autofocus systems and the debate as to whether Canon/Nikon/Sony/Olympus/Pentax have the best autofocus performance will go on forever, in reality they all have very useful autofocus systems that will usually achieve very acceptable results. There are however, a few circustances where trying to use autofocus will cause more problems then it solves. Read on to learn how to solve this issue…
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Photoshop Tutorial - Sharpener Pro 3.0 by Nik Software
Posted on 04. Mar, 2009 by Paul Burwell.
In this Photoshop tutorial, I take a look at the Sharpener Pro 3.0 plugin from Nik Software. During the video presentation, I work on sharpening the same image for the web/email, printing an 8″ x 12″ print on an Epson 3800 printer and preparing the print for printing on an offset press on coated paper. Like everything we do here at WildShots, this tutorial…
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Learning wildlife photography - Seeing with both eyes
Posted on 02. Mar, 2009 by Paul Burwell.
Learning wildlife photography - Seeing with both eyes - One of the great disappointments in wildlife photography comes about when we miss, or fail to anticipate some behaviour or action. And instead of ending up with a great behaviour image, we’re left with an image of half an animal or, worse yet, an empty frame. What can you do to help ready yourself for the action?
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Photoshop tutorial - Adding a Rule of thirds grid overlay
Posted on 12. Feb, 2009 by Paul Burwell.
Photoshop tutorial - Adding a Rule of thirds grid overlay - Today’s WildShots Photoshop tutorial provides you with a quick and easy way to setup Photoshop to display the classic “Rule of thirds” grid over top of your images. The grid isn’t actually saved…
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