A Guest Post by Robin Ryan
I’d like to talk today about the potential offered by Neutral Density filters, and how they can make your photos more unique.

Ruined Harbour II by Duncan_Smith (used with permission)

The smooth watercolour feel in the above photo is due to a Neutral Density 64 Filter. This filter has interested me lately and this photo demonstrates one of its primary uses: …

It was the first time she had done anything like this.

After all, fear of the unknown took her outside her comfort zone. Treading on new territory, pushing the boundaries of her photography, and allowing herself to be stretched would take all the courage she could muster. In her mind, there were a good many others more qualified. In the end, none of that mattered, …

Image by CarbonNYC

One of the more popular threads in our forum over the last few weeks has been a question from one of our members – TheKingInYellow – who asked fellow members for suggestions on ’stocking stuffers’ for Christmas. He and his wife give each other stocking stuffer gifts and he’d like his to be photographic in nature.  
I thought it a fun question to open up here on the blog – what photography stocking stuffers would you like to receive this Holiday season?
The definition of a stocking stuffer for the …

I wanted to talk a little about a different kind of exposure for your photography… the kind that results in more people seeing your work. I have had a lot of people ask how to get their photos seen and many believe that simply posting photos to a site like Flickr is all they need to do.
If you are taking the time to create something, I think it is important that you also make the effort to have it seen. It will help you grow as an artist and may …

Adobe’s favourite son is often considered to be a powerful but daunting program yet many consider it to be an essential tool for photographers who take their efforts seriously.
Photoshop in a Weekend, based on CS3, attempts to open the application and to be seen as a companion to the original Adobe manual.
It begins with the lowdown on the companion programs — Photoshop Elements and Lightroom — and places them in the appropriate hierarchy. Successive pages deal with the key components, like Bridge, the role of Camera RAW and Image Ready.
A …

Photo by wvs – 10mm
Many digital photographers get a little obsessed by the ability that their zoom lenses give them to get in nice and close to their subjects.
While there’s a lot to be said for the power of zoom lenses (in fact many manufacturers are developing cameras with bigger and bigger lenses like the 20x optical zoom on the Olympus SP-570 that was announced this week) photographers who exclusively shoot at the longer focal lengths that their camera and lens offer could be missing out on some wonderful …

For this month’s DPS Writer’s Critique, I thought I’d turn things around.  It has been suggested before that there should be the opportunity for blog readers to not only voice their critique of the monthly photos, but that they should also show the rest of us what they were thinking.  And that’s what we’re going to try this month!
With that concept in mind, here is one of my photos I am releasing under a Creative Commons license.  You are free to take it, play with it, adjust it and, generally …

Butterfly Lighting is one of the most flattering and artistic ways of lighting the face. As it’s name would denote, Butterfly Lighting is created by the way in which you angle the light to fall on the face of your subject. Often used by celebrity photographers, this style of lighting can be achieved by a single off camera light and a reflector.

Image by Kathleen Thomas Photography

Here’s a step by step guide of how to achieve perfect butterfly lighting:
1. Face your subject at 7.8 view: Start by facing your subject directly …

Weekly Assignment
The Economy is on everyone’s mind at the moment, and our forums are no exception. This week we wanted you to show us photos that represented the troubled economy. Our winner this week was bmjesus’s dropping coins. The depth of field in this shot was very effective with a strong focus on the coins, and the movement of the coins was nicely captured. …

I’ve been asked a few times why I’ve decided to use flickr as my image hosting site instead of some of the many other options available to me.  If I’m going to be completely honest, it’s that it was the only one I’d heard of when I got my account back in 2005.
But let’s forget about that for a second, and instead concentrate one …