I don’t get to photograph golf very often, but when I do, I’m usually struggling to find action opportunities.  This particular photograph is rather stereotypical of the sport, and it’s similar to many I have seen before… better than some and not as good as others.

Approaching the game of golf with a camera is quite a bit different than most other sports for several reasons.  First of all, it’s not a sport with high levels of action in general like basketball, football, or baseball.  It’s closer to baseball than the others in the fact that you can anticipate action to happen at specific places and times.  Just being there and being ready is the key.

As I browse through my photo archives, I see hundreds of almost images that suffer from the being ready and being there syndrome.  Being in an unfamiliar situation makes it even more difficult.  A photographer must be able to adapt to the situation at hand without flinching.  This applies to all types of photography, not just sports.  A landscape always exists and it’s not going anywhere, but being there and being ready for the perfect light, weather, time of day, and composition is the photographer’s responsibility.  In some situations, being there and being ready isn’t enough.  In these situations, it’s patience and persistence that pay off.  In a previous discussion, we talked about working the subject.  The idea of working the subject goes a bit deeper, in many cases, that shooting a bunch of photos from different angles and perspectives.  It may often involve returning to a subject over the course of days, weeks, months, or years to harvest the perfect image.

I have been reading some other photo blogs lately where discussions of approaching the subject have been discussed. Paul Lester started the thought process with his Avoiding First Impressions post. The idea behind the post is the common idea of working a subject until you come up with the shot you really want.  It’s easy enough to fumble around a subject, snapping from different angles, perspectives, and lighting situations. In many cases, a photographer can visit a location many times until the weather and light lend themselves to a worthy photo. Some of his reader feedback led to a second post where the question of is there one approach better than another? question comes to the table.

These questions are always fun to ponder.  It’s like we are trying to formulate an equation to guarantee results. I consider myself to be a decent photographer, even though my interests are not very concise. How can I explain a situation where I spend an entire day out with the camera and come home with a few hundred photos, none of which are worth saving? Is it because I didn’t work the subject? Definitely not…

I like to recall a few words of wisdom occasionally that I have heard many times from another photographer… The muse is fickle… The ability to effectively work any subject is going to be directly related to your personal interest in that subject. Some subjects speak with a stronger voice than others, making it easy to find your shots. Others are a little more quiet and subdued. When I find an interesting subject that doesn’t jump out at me and automatically guide my camera to proper angles and perspectives, I tend to just stop what I’m doing and spend some time looking rather than shooting. When something attracts my photographic interest, it’s always quite beneficial to determine exactly what attracts me before I start shooting. Getting back to the fundamental elements of image design, it’s easy to remember that shapes and textures tend to attract our eye as much as color and contrast. When I approach a specific subject, I tend to look in those directions more often that trying to create a photo that simply documents what I saw. The photo at the top of this post doesn’t very nicely describe the context of a Christmas Cactus, but it perfectly demonstrates the elements of it that catch my attention when I look at them. In this case, I didn’t work the subject. I loaded up my 50mm lens and a 36mm extension tube and shot two images after spending about 5 minutes looking around the flower and gathering a piece of black foam core to use as a backdrop. I did get a photo I like though…

What are the advantages of working the subject?

One advantage is that you might stumble across an idea that you would never have encountered otherwise. You might also catch a few worthy images of those ideas during the process.

What are the disadvantages of working the subject?

There probably aren’t many other than the possibility that you might never see what you are photographing…

Digital SLR cameras continue to improve in quality and capabilities. I’m quite confident that theses cameras have surpassed the 35mm film market in many ways, and are approaching the medium format market rather quickly. As digital cameras develop, one of the areas of ‘improvement’ in each of them seem to be lowering the noise on high ISO images with each new revision of the image sensor technology. There will come a day when you simply can’t get a grainy image when you want one. You will have to find a way to add it with post processing techniques.

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Is Photography Dead?

Article by: Peter Plagens

Newsweek Magazine – December 10, 2007 – pages 94-96

I was browsing the current issue of the current Newsweek magazine when I stumbled across an interesting article titled “Is Photography Dead?” As a photographer, headlines like this one always catch my attention. I have seen and participated in so many debates on issues of photography that my mind immediately starts to roll with ideas of what might be found in articles like this one. The first two sentences in this article grabbed my attention…

“How is that even remotely possible? The medium certainly looks alive, well and, if anything, overpopulated.”

How could photography be dead? Is it remotely possible? It seems like everyone has a digital camera or a cell phone camera. In fact, overpopulation is an issue. The author of the article brings William Henry Fox Talbot to the table early in the article by including an 1844 Talbot photograph right under the main headline. For anyone who has studied the history of photography, we know that Talbot is really considered to be one of the fathers of modern photography. Using a Talbot photograph to launch this story creates an anchor or starting point to help describe how photography has evolved since its beginning. Modern photography, as we know it, began in 1839.

“In the 1920s, small, inexpensive fast-shutter cameras like the Kodak Brownie appeared. By 1950, according to Kodak, nearly three quarters of American families owned cameras and took 2 billion photographs with them. By the 1970s, they were taking 9 billion pictures a year, and most of them quick, informal snapshots.”

I would hate to see what these numbers look like today. The advent of digital photography makes it extremely difficult to estimate how many photos are taken annually. I’m sure a large majority of them never get printed and are only displayed on computer screens. Once the initial expenditure of a digital camera is made, it doesn’t really cost anything in terms of film and processing to make photos. Any way you try to imagine this, the numbers of photographs being made are increasing exponentially, and will continue to do so.

After reading through this Newsweek article several times, I have I keep coming back to one simple conclusion about the author. Peter Plagens, like many other viewers of photography, has his own expectations about what he’s supposed to be seeing. His pre-conceived notions about what photography is supposed to be clouds his view on what photography can be. The following quotes from the article support this evidence:

“Yet wandering the galleries of these two shows, you can’t help but wonder if the entire medium hasn’t fractured itself beyond all recognition.”

“But it’s also a major reason that, 25 years after the technology exploded what photography could do and be, the medium seems to have lost its soul. Film photography’s artistic cachet was always that no matter how much darkroom fiddling someone added to a photograph, the picture was, at its core, a record of something real that occurred in front of the camera.”

“By now, we’ve witnessed all the clever tricks that have turned so many photographers – formerly bearers of truth – into conjurers of fiction.”

“Photography is finally escaping any dependence on what is in front of the lens, but it comes at the price of its special claim on a viewer’s attention as “evidence” rooted in reality.”

“The next great photographers – if there are any – will have to find a way to reclaim photography’s special link to reality. And they’ll have to do it in a brand new way.”

The repeating pattern in all of this shows Mr. Plagens’ notion of what photography should be. He believes that photography should remain a simple documentation of reality in some way or another. In fact, photography is probably one of the first artistic mediums that has been held to such standards. I’m burned out on listening to this type of commentary.

Maybe the term photography itself is subjective. That, in a way, differentiates it from other art forms as well. It’s not often that people view a painting and find themselves questioning whether or not it really is a painting. Most sculpture is fairly obvious as well. Photography isn’t so cut and dried. Maybe we don’t really know how to define photography, but we seem to know it when we see it. The line gets hard to distinguish when we start looking at photographic art. Sometimes the art may be pure and simple photography. Other times the medium may be obscured. We may be looking at some form of art that contains photography, or is loosely based in photography. How much straight-from-the-camera material must an artwork contain for it to be called photography? 51%? More? Less?

There are a couple different schools of photography that must be considered when talking about the validity of photography. Photojournalism seems to be the preferred method of the author. The purpose of photojournalism is to describe reality. Manipulations and editing of photojournalistic images doesn’t include the introduction elements that did not exist in the original image. Legal manipulations of photojournalistic images should not include modifications that change what the viewer would think of the photograph. It’s also generally unacceptable to remove any element of the image in photojournalism. You can crop an image as long as it doesn’t change the original theme or idea of the image by doing so. There are also numerous accounts in recent history of photojournalists getting caught and fired for falsifying reality through the process of image manipulation. Some of the more interesting cases of this include instances of photographers staging a scene to create a story rather than capturing life as it happens. This can be just as deceptive as digital alteration of a photograph.

Another school of photography is photographic art. Photographic art encompasses a lot of different ideas, and it is also difficult to define. When I view my own portfolio of work, I have some images that are photojournalistic in nature others that are photographic art. I have staged scenes that either mimic life or create an altered reality. I have also manipulated images in such a way that they would not be photojournalistic in nature. In my opinion, to be considered an artist, I have to inject some of myself into the final product. That injection may or may not allow the final image to remain within the realm of photojournalistic imagery. In this article, the author cited works of quite a few photographers to make his points more clear. Some of the classic great photographers such as Dorthea Lange, Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, and Robert Frank were used to illustrate the author’s idea of photo realism. On the flip side of the coin, photographers such as Andreas Gefeller, Didier Massard, Thomas Struth, and Cindy Sherman were used to illustrate the broken aspects of photography. If you should decide to Google a few of these photographer’s works, you will see the chosen line between what the author believes photography is or isn’t.

Maybe at some point in the future, viewers will learn how to look at photography. Critics shouldn’t really concern themselves with how an image came to be. Ultimately, one of two things will happen when we look at any image. We will either like it or we won’t. There is always the possibility of indifference, but if we are thinking about like or dislike of images, it’s fairly easy to classify them. If we spend too much time trying to classify images by type, we won’t really see what the artist is showing us.

I was glad to see a couple comments from some friends on the first half of this monologue.  Both friends who left feedback on the original post are accomplished photographers, and I admire their work.  Both of them, however, posted ideas that aren’t what I had in mind.  I stopped the first half of this post without answering my own question intentionally.  I was sorta hoping to get some feedback with ideas about what the ‘next step’ in this game is or should be.  Joe and Nathan both agree that the next step should be pushing and expanding boundaries.  Both of them also agree that teaching is a worthwhile endeavor.  I agree with both ideas, and I’ll also discuss them here.

Pushing the Boundaries:

Exploring new artistic concepts and venturing outside the box is definitely something everyone should do.  This idea, however, is still an mid-game concept in this game of chess.  After securing the center of the board, our objective becomes one of breaking down the defensive barrier of our opponent and ultimately producing a checkmate.  The checkmate is our goal.  Getting outside our box with the camera may help expedite this process if we don’t already know what our final goal will be.  Exploring new ideas may help us realize the unknown goal.  We may stumble across something that sucks us in like the smell that triggers our senses when we walk past the Godiva chocolate shop in the mall.  We know there is something good there, but we just have to walk inside to see what it is.  This idea does examine ways to the ‘next step.’

Teaching:

I would love to teach, and suprisingly enough, I have been working on that idea for a few months.  It’s not visible on this website yet, but I’m working on an online classroom, but it’s quite time consuming to write the text and prepare lessons for a class.  I think that teaching photography would be quite rewarding in many ways, but I just don’t have a great venue for that… yet…

So what is the next step?

As I mentioned in the first part of this discussion, lots of photographers spend many hours producing images in an effort to receive external validation from their circle of friends.  This is a valid part of the game, but I think we need to look inward instead.  What is the subject (or subjects) that we love to photograph on a personal level?  Should we remain random and just pay attention to whatever we see or should we focus to produce a body of work that encompasses our personal passions? 

I guess the answer to this would be based on overall goals.  If photography is providing the bread and butter, we may be limited in what we can do towards our personal goals beyond putting food on the table.  In some rare instances, it is entirely possible to let your passions provide for you, but there are only a few who can make that happen.  Most of the professional photographers I know are booked up with weddings and commercial work to the point that their personal passions in photography take a constant back seat.  There is one in particular who is in such demand in my town that he takes his vacations and leaves his camera gear at home just to get away from photography for a while.  Maybe his commercial work has become his passion, but it wasn’t like that for him when he started out in photography. 

There is nothing wrong with commercial work being the passion.  By the same token, there is nothing wrong with flowers, pets, children, wagon wheels, and sunsets.  I simply believe that the key is finding out what or where the passion is and following it…

Canon EOS 30D / Canon 50mm f/1.4 @ f/2.0 / 36mm Extension Tube / 1/100″ / ISO 200 / Incandescent Light

We’re finally getting some more rain around here, so playing outside today is out of the question.  I wandered around the yard for a few minutes, camera in hand, before the rain started coming hard enough to push me back inside.  I was just in the mood to photograph something, and I didn’t really care what it was.  I haven’t been spending a lot of time lately on my personal endeavors in photography, and I’m in a little withdrawal at the moment. 

Daisies, and flowers in general, seem to be the brunt of many snide remarks within my personal community of photographers.  My associations with other photographers seem to be at a beginner and amateur level, and those people love to spew words such as cliche and overdone and stereotypical.  “How many times am I going to have to look at photos of flowers?  If I’ve seen one, I’ve seen them all…”  I don’t know the answer to these questions.  If I had to venture a guess, I would probably say that those who make these comments are in a stage of trying to produce their first masterpiece or something.  They know it won’t come from a flower, a pet, or a child… or at least they think it won’t.  Their objectives are fairly narrow though.  They try to impress those within their community.  When you find yourself in a group of photographers that is learning various processes and techniques, you quickly realize that what’s important in any given photograph whatever topic, process, or technique is on today’s table.  The choices of subject don’t seem to be as significant as a technique or a compositional aspect.

I know when I was starting out in photography, I fell into this mode of operation also.  Technique was more important to me than anything else.  Through this process, I learned technical skills with the camera, and today I’m quite comfortable with technical ideas.  I can make my camera perform whatever task is before me.  I can make technically great photographs of the most mundane subject with absolutely no problem.  When a photographer reaches this point, what’s next?

The next step is the tough one.  Everyone can learn how to use a camera.  Some may take longer than others, but anyone with the desire to achieve can learn the process.  Moving beyond that level is where the real challenge in photography comes.  There are no books on this subject, and there is no formula for success. 

The Hickory High School Varsity Cheerleaders ride an antique fire truck during the 2006 Hickory Christmas Parade…

As a photographer, I have unique requirements for backing up my digital photographs.  I make a lot of photos every week, and the sheer amount of storage space required for that is tremendous.  I don’t delete anything.  I even keep my bad photos just in case there may be some oddball use for them in the future. 

The Microsoft Windows operating system creates a special “My Documents” folder when it’s installed on any personal computer.  This is simply a logical place to store documents that you create, including photographs.  Within the My Documents folder, there is another special folder called “My Pictures” for photographs.  This folder is my starting point for saving photographs that I shoot on a regular basis.  In my “My Pictures” folder, I have created several folders, but the primary photography folder is simply called “Photos.”  Each time I shoot a batch of photos, I create a new folder within the “Photos” folder that is named with the date and subject in this format:

2007-11-12 - Purple Garden Flowers

When I name folders like this, they stay in alphabetical order with the newest folders at the bottom of the list and I have a sequential view of all my current photo shoots. 

My PC has two internal 160gb hard disk drives and one external 120gb USB hard drive.  Every morning at 3am, my PC runs an automated scheduled backup of the “My Documents” folder to my secondary internal hard disk drive.  This process creates my first backup of my photography and any other documents that exist in my “My Documents” folder.  The purpose of this backup is to have a recovery option if my primary hard disk drive fails.  I can simply replace the drive, reinstall the operating system, and then restore my personal data, including all my current photography.  The problem with this procedure is that my hard disk drives are not large enough to keep ALL my photography online all the time.  My primary hard disk drive would fill up rather quickly.  This is where my external USB hard disk drive comes into play.

My PC runs an automated script every night that just copies the contents of my “Photos” folder over to the external USB disk drive.  At this point, I have two backup copies of my photographs.  The first backup exists on my secondary internal hard drive and the second backup exists on my external USB hard disk drive. 

Periodically, my primary internal hard drive starts to get full, so I have a need to free up some space.  At this point, I start copying my older photo shoots in the “Photos” folder to DVD for storage.  After I copy them to the DVD, I delete them from my primary hard disk drive, but leave them on my external USB hard drive until that drive starts to get too full.  The external USB drive allows me to have up to 110gb or so of current photography readily accessible without having to go back to DVD to get images that I may need.  As the external USB drive starts to get full, I delete a few of the older photo folders from that drive to free up additional space.  The external USB drive currently lets me keep 4-6 months of my most recent photographs online.  I hope to replace the 120gb drive with a 500gb drive soon, which should let me keep a lot more photos active, but I just haven’t done that yet. 

This backup method is a very inexpensive and fairly comprehensive way of backing up large amounts of data.  The only problem I see with this method is the fact that I’ll have a LOT of work to do whenever DVD is replaced with some other type of storage media in the future.  With backups of digital data, I can’t rely on DVD for a lifetime of usability.  I have already run into this issue once when I decided that I needed to make my hard backups on DVD instead of CD.  I had to load all of my CD data back onto hard drives and burn all that to DVD, which took quite a long time to do.  That day will come again when DVD is replaced by something else that is higher capacity and more reliable.

In reality, I could build a RAID-5 disk drive array with a lot of storage space and keep all of my photography online all the time.  The fault tolerance of a RAID-5 array is rather good, and the likelihood of losing all my photography would be slim, but not an impossibility. 

It’s sort of ironic when you think about how much more complicated it is to back up digital photo files as compared to filing away strips of film :)

I guess if you are reading this, you are a blog follower and possibly a blogger as well.  I follow quite a few blogs myself, and I have been searching for the best way to keep up with what’s going on in the blogs I follow.  In the beginning, I was using Live Bookmarks in the Firefox web browser, which works rather well, but in my case, I also use My Yahoo as a home page in my web browser.  I just happened to notice the other day that My Yahoo has a new beta format running that you can try.  I decided to switch over and take a look at it, and I am fairly happy with the new format.  Just before I discovered the new My Yahoo beta, I had started setting up my blog feeds on the Google Reader.  Since I’m already using My Yahoo as a home page for news and other stuff, I figured I would give it a try for managing my blog preferences as well. 

After I switched to the new My Yahoo Beta page, I clicked on the ADD PAGE option at the top and created a blank page for my favorite photo blogs.  On the “Personalize this Page” button, there is an option to add RSS feeds, which will pop the blog feed right onto the page.  If you are using the Firefox browser, there is an RSS feed button on the right edge of the URL box that will also allow you to add the feed to your My Yahoo page.  This option adds the feed to your MAIN My Yahoo page, but the feed display can be dragged and dropped onto the secondary page and then moved around by dragging and dropping as well. 

Lens Buying for Dummies
A Practical Guide

By: John M. Setzler, Jr.
July 5, 2006
Photographers tend to ask two basic questions over and over again. The first question is: Which camera should I buy? When this question is posted to a public forum, the same answers begin to roll in. It’s like a broken record. The same situation arises when it comes time to buy lenses.

Camera lenses come in the following categories:
1. Wide-Angle Zoom (28-80mm Type)
2. Telephoto Zoom (70-300mm Type)
3. Super Wide-Angle Zoom (10-20mm / 17-40mm Types)
4. Super Telephoto Zoom (100-400 Type)
5. Wide Angle / Telephoto Zoom (28-200mm Type)
6. Prime Macro (100mm Type)
7. Prime Wide-Angle – Telephoto (fixed focal length non macro)
8. Fisheye and other Novelty Lenses

The average SLR camera user will own a collection of these lenses. Most own at least one wide angle and one telephoto zoom. Those two lenses cover a majority of situations you will encounter. Each of these lens types is available in various quality levels and price ranges. This is what makes it difficult to choose the right lens in many cases. In the wide-angle zoom category, you can generally find lens options between $99 and $1200, so there is a huge difference in what you are getting. You have to know what those differences are and why you are buying a particular lens before you shop.

If you are a new SLR owner (or soon to be) and aren’t sure which lenses to buy, your first lens should be a wide-angle zoom. In terms of point and shoot digital camera zooms, this lens will offer 3x or 4x zoom factor. It’s not a lot of zoom but it’s the perfect lens for general-purpose photography. Your second lens should be a telephoto zoom. These lenses offer approximately 10x zoom. The combination of these two lenses will cover most opportunities that you would want to photograph.

Now that we have our general purpose lens options covered, there are a few specialty lenses that you may wish to consider. The first thing you need to consider when making lens purchases is the specific types of subjects you like to photograph. Here are a few of those scenarios:

Landscape Photography

If landscape photography is your main interest, you may want to consider a super wide-angle lens. You can find these in zoom and fixed focal length options. There are several 10-20mm and 12-24mm options in zoom lenses. You will also find some 16mm and 17mm fixed focal length (prime) lenses for this type of work. Most landscape photographers wish to show a huge expanse of landscape in their photos. The super wide-angle lenses are perfect for this.

Nature Photography

As a nature photographer, you are probably interested in capturing wildlife (plant and animal) in your journeys. For animal life, you will probably want to use a zoom telephoto lens (300mm or greater) to bring you closer to your subject. That same telephoto zoom lens may be adequate for filling your frame with a flower as well. If not, a macro lens would do the trick. Both of these lenses are a must for an avid wildlife photographer.

Portrait Photography

Doing studio quality portrait work usually has some specific lens requirements, as well as studio lighting. Most portrait photographers prefer fixed focal length lenses in the 85mm to 135mm range. These lenses should also be capable of larger aperture sizes. The 85mm f/1.8 lens seems to be a favorite choice. Using a fixed focal length lens also assumes that you will be able to position your camera properly for the photo and not have to rely on cropping. I believe that longer focal length lenses are good choices for portrait work. Lots of people will recommend the 50mm f/1.8 or f/1.4 lens for this, but I believe that a longer lens is better. A longer lens allows you to increase the working distance between you and your subject. Some of the professional portrait photographers I know choose a 135mm lens for head and shoulders portrait work.

Candid/Street Photography

This type of photography is almost a general-purpose type of work. You can use about any lens you like. If you are going to be a part of the action, a wide-angle lens is a good choice. If you are planning to be a spectator from a distance, a telephoto lens works best. This type of photography would also cover situations such as birthday parties, family vacations, et cetera.

Wedding Photography

Wedding photography is much like street and candid work with one exception. Unless it’s an outdoor daytime wedding, you will generally be working in poor light. You would generally want higher quality versions of the same lenses listed in the Candid/Street photography section.

Sports Photography

Outside daytime sports photography can be done with a standard telephoto zoom lens (300mm range). These lenses give you a good zoom so you can position yourself at a shooting location and cover a lot of the action without having to move around too much. If you are working night sports or poorly lit indoor sports, you need one of the higher quality telephoto lenses with a wider aperture to get adequate shutter speeds. You may also need weather resistant gear.

Still Life Photography

Still life photography is just like studio photography in most cases. The photographer has complete control over the scene and the lighting (most of the time). In most cases, the wide-angle zoom lenses or wide angle primes are best for this type of work.
Choosing the Correct Lens Model

Now that we have covered most of the scenarios you will find yourself in, we need to determine which quality level of lens you need for the job.

The first thing you have to do is determine what will be done with the photos you make after you press the shutter button on the camera. In my opinion, there are two groups of photographers when we get to this point in the game: 1) Internet use and small prints (up to 8×10) and 2) professional grade printers (larger than 8×10 prints).

If you fall into the first category and won’t often make prints larger than 8×10, you can purchase the less expensive lenses. You will not be able to determine a very noticeable difference in print quality between a $100 lens and a $1000 lens. If your prints aren’t being sold to customers and are just being used for family albums and keepsakes, don’t waste your money on more expensive lenses (unless you simply have the money to burn).

If you are planning to sell prints or make larger prints of your work, the more expensive lenses will benefit you quite a bit. Let’s take a look at why some lenses of similar specs are more expensive than others…

Lens Quality Variations

There are several major differences between a $100 lens and a $1000 lens with similar focal lengths. Whether or not you need the more expensive lens is up to you.

Build Quality:

More expensive lenses are generally built with durability in mind. The lens barrel material is stronger, the lens mounting mechanism is stronger, and the internal mechanics are stronger as well. These lenses are built to professional standards and can withstand the repeated installation and removal on the camera.

Auto Focus:

More expensive lenses have faster and quieter auto focus motors. Your lens won’t spend as much time hunting for focus on your subject.

Glass Quality:

More expensive lenses tend to have higher quality glass elements inside. Some cheaper lenses have plastic elements inside. The higher quality glass is beneficial when you plan to make larger prints (larger than 8×10 or so). The higher quality glass also produces slightly better color reproduction and sharpness than the glass found in cheaper lenses.

What should I buy?

Now that you know what lenses are good for your applications, how will you decide what to buy? You can ask for advice from friends if you like, but you will get the same answers almost anywhere you go. Your friends will suggest that you buy what they already have in most cases. Your friends may or may not have experience with anything other than what is in their bag. Ultimately, when you ask a group of people, you will get recommendations of the most expensive lenses in whatever category you are shopping.

Don’t rely on photos you see online to tell you how good or bad any particular lens is. You don’t know what has been done to the photo in post processing. If color saturation, sharpness, contrast, and brightness of a photo have been adjusted, you can’t draw a conclusion about the actual quality of the lens. You also can’t tell a lot about the quality of a lens by looking at a small photo online. You really need to see a professional quality print to compare lens performances.

This guide to lens buying may not be any more useful than anything else you read, but it sums up everything you will read most of the time.

Traditions are hard to break.  Glossy photo prints are one of those traditions that just bug me.  I’ll never understand the advantages of printing photography on glossy paper.  Is glossy paper just expected by the masses as a traditional medium for a photo print?  If you are a professional photographer, do your customers expect and request glossy prints?  Do you provide glossy prints by default?  If so, why?  Is it simple tradition?  I really don’t understand this phenomenon.  Someone should educate me on why anyone would ever want a glossy print.

Glossy prints may look nice when you hand one to somebody, but the beauty of it stops right there.  What’s going to happen to this print next?  The recipient certainly isn’t going to just hold it in their hand and look at it forever.  It’s going to be filed away in a box or a garbage can, a photo album, or its going to be framed.  With the box or garbage can solution, it doesn’t really matter what type of paper the print is on.  If it’s going into an album or a frame, the problems of a glossy finish surface rapidly.  Glossy photo papers have two inherently ugly properties about them.  First of all, they like to stick to things, including photo album sleeves and glass.  The second problem is that the glossy paper surface is highly reflective.  Glare becomes a problem when trying to view the image.  When you put a photograph that has a reflective surface in a photo album or behind glass, the reflective properties increase with the frame glass or the clear album sleeve presence.  As we all know, it’s annoying to have to move around to find a viewing perspective that has minimal glare.  It’s also quite ugly when a glossy print sticks to an album sleeve or frame glass.  It makes the print appear to have wet spots on it.  From my experience working in a framing shop, it can be impossible to remove one of these photos from an album or frame without destroying the print.  Another minor annoying factor of glossy paper is that it shows finger prints.  We all know that one should not touch the surface of photos whenever possible, but inevitably, it happens.  So, beyond the pretty sheen and initial viewer impact of a glossy print, why else would anyone want one?

What are the alternatives?

One word: Matte.

A true matte paper is hard to get unless you are making your own inkjet photographic prints.  Most digital printing services offer a matte paper, but it’s not a true matte.  It’s more of a textured gloss that is often referred to as a luster paper or even a semi-gloss.  These papers are better that glossy papers, but they are still reflective to some degree.  They don’t stick to glass and album sleeve surfaces as much, but they can still stick.  A true standard matte paper has the look and feel of something like index card stock.  It has very little texture and no reflective properties.  With the right printing system, the color saturation and clarity are both excellent on matte paper, and blacks are much deeper than on glossy and luster papers. 

There are various forms of matte papers also that can enrich your prints.  Some of the textured matte papers such as watercolor and heavyweight fine art rag bond papers make beautiful prints.  If you haven’t tried these, you should.  You should also educate your customers on the benefits of using them.  Most matte papers (when printing on photo quality inkjet systems) have a longer archival life rating than glossy papers do.