Gadling

Last week, I received an e-mail from Gadling reader Nick:

Can you spend some time discussing what happens after you get home from vacation - photographic workflows, etc? That's one thing that seems to be missing.

As it happens, I'm currently on vacation: last week, we had friends staying with us in Houston, and this week my family and I are in New York City, so this topic is pretty timely. That said, I'm not entirely sure I'm the right person to be giving advice on this since:

1) I'm a photoblogger. I update my blog, Chookooloonks, often, and readers tend to expect almost daily photographs from me.

2) I take an obscene number of photographs. Really. Like hundreds, sometimes almost one thousand shots a day. Especially on vacation.

3) I'm generally not an expert on archiving photographs. Okay, honestly? I'm really pretty bad at it. But when I get back home, it's at the top of my to-do list to sort out. So look for a post on that later.

So, anyway, unless your a pro photographer, you likely won't feel the pressure to take as many photographs as I do each day, or feel the need to publish your images daily; still, my method of managing my shots when I travel for pleasure might be helpful to you, and provide you some tips and tricks to managing your own vacation shots. In addition, I'd love for you to share your own methods and workflows in the comments below (especially if you're a professional photographer). And again, what I'm discussing here is not about photograph archival, just managing my current workflow. We'll deal with archiving in a later post.

And so, on with the show:

By the time you're reading this, my family and I will have just landed in New York City for a quick little holiday. In preparation for our trip, I was surfing the Gadling Flickr pool, and came across this really stunning view of Manhattan, with New Jersey off in the distance. I'm really looking forward to this trip, and this moody image, shared by nabil.s, just perfectly sets the tone. Lovely capture.

If you've got some great travel shots you'd love to share, be sure to upload them to the Gadling pool on Flickr. We might just pick one as our Photo of the Day.

This week, I received an email from Gadling reader, Brenda:

I read your post on choosing lenses and I was curious as to how big exactly a macro lens is because all the other lenses were identified by their length in mm and I couldn't find a precise range for the size of a macro lens by searching on google so im not sure what it is. I would appreciate it if you could clear this up for me.

This is an excellent question, and because I love to do it, I thought this week we'd spend some time on macro photography -- what it is, why you need a special lens, and how it might enhance your travel shots.

And so, without further ado:

Today I've been keeping a close eye on the happenings in the Honduras -- it appears that even though military troops have sent President Jose Manuel Zelaya into exile, and there have been a few skirmishes between demonstrators and the Honduran police, the country remains relatively calm. Here's hoping they remain that way.

And in the meantime, take a look at this wonderfully cozy kitchen in a small Mayan village in the Honduras, shared by Adal-Honduras. It certainly speaks to peaceful times, doesn't it? Lovely shot.

If you've got some great travel shots you'd love to share, be sure to upload them to the Gadling pool on Flickr. We might just pick one as our Photo of the Day.

Recently, I received a note from a friend of mine who'd just returned from a vacation:

I just returned from a vacation in which much of our activity was at night. I didn't carry a tripod, and I was dissatisfied with using either the auto setting on the camera (the flash burst overexposed my subjects' faces) or the in-camera "night setting" (the subjects' skin seemed blurry and everything in the background had a nuclear orange glow). Do you have any tips for making night shots easier or better?

Night shots are definitely tricky, and sometimes downright impossible without a tripod. That said, this week, I'll share some of my tips and tricks to taking photographs at night.

Last week, I finally joined the 21st century, and bought myself an iPhone. This is the first phone I've ever owned with a camera in it; since I have a few regular cameras that I avidly use, what, I reasoned, would I need a camera phone for?

I have to say, I'm becoming a convert, especially when I see amazing shots like the one shared by Arachide, above, taken in Prague with his iPhone, and applying a toy camera application. It's like a vintage photograph -- so beautiful.

Looks like I'm going to have to take my iPhone out for a spin.

If you've got some great travel shots you'd love to share, be sure to upload them to the Gadling pool on Flickr. We might just pick one as our Photo of the Day.

About a month ago, I shared some ideas for some last-minute gifts for Mother's Day. Well, Father's Day fast approaches (this Sunday, for those of you taking notes), and so this week, I thought I'd share some of the best gifts you can get Dad this special day. Now, I admit: the Mother's Day gifts were easy for me to come up with, because, well -- I'm a mom. So this week, I enlisted the assistance of some dads and other friends out there in cyberspace, and the following are some of the best ideas that they had.

I have to say: they've got pretty good taste.

I don't know what the weather is like where you are, but here in Texas, it is H-O-T. Miserably, upper 90's kind of hot. So miserable, it can sometimes be tough to remember that summer is suppose to be a good, happy season.

Which is why love images like this one, shot in Portugal and shared by (flicts) in the Gadling Flickr pool, to remind me. The perspective and colour in this shot are magnificent. Well done.

If you've got some great travel shots you'd love to share, be sure to upload them to the Gadling pool on Flickr. We might just pick one as our Photo of the Day.

When you're first starting out in photography, you're likely to read, or hear, or have told to you:

"See the light. When you can see the light, you'll be a great photographer. You just have to see the light."

Many times, I've had new photographers retort with exasperation: "God, I hate that. 'See the light.' What light? There's just light! I see it! What are they talking about? How do you 'see the light'?"

In many ways, the exhortation to see the light is one of those things that, annoyingly, you'll understand it when you finally see it. But basically, what you're trying to do is not just acknowledge that the light exists, but really notice the quality of the light -- is it golden? blue? white light? Is it coming in at an angle? Is it merely ambient light, or tightly focused? Are there shadows, or reflections? Once you've assessed the light, you can adjust your camera ISO, white balance, aperture and shutter speed accordingly, to capture the light and image as authentically as possible.

For tips and a refresher on how to adjust your camera's settings, click here. However, for an illustration of the various types of light, and how to maximize what it does to your images, read on.

I've always love a good village-by-the-sea, but there's something about the villages on the Greek isles that are just magical. This beautiful image shared by Cazimiro in the Gadling Flickr pool takes me back to an amazing holiday I once had in Santorini. I've been dying to go back every since. Really stunning shot.

If you've got some great travel shots you'd love to share, be sure to upload them to the Gadling pool on Flickr. We might just pick one as our Photo of the Day.