Tag: Photography

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My 2024 Black Friday Sale Picks

Hey everyone, especially those in the US. Happy Thanksgiving and, of course, Happy Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There are some really good deals this year, and I thought I would take a moment to share a few of my favorites. As usual, these are gear deals that I use and would recommend. Some links may be affiliate links that help the page but don’t cost you any extra. So, let’s get to the savings:

Adobe Create Cloud

Save 50% on Creative Cloud for Black Friday. Check out Adobe’s Black Friday deals here.

Apple AirPods Pro 2

I use these wireless earbuds every single day. They are great for calls, listening to music and active noise cancellation when on flights.

Amazon has them on sale for 38% off at $153.99

Anker

Anker makes amazing power accessories. All of my chargers, battery packs and USB cables are by Anker. Here are a few of my favorites:

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How to Store and Backup Your Photos Like a Pro

Now that my network upgrade is complete (see my Networking gear guide here to see every item I put into my new server racks), it’s time to focus on something I’ve been putting off for way too long. It was time to replace my 2012 Mac mini Server and Drobo 5D. During the COVID-19 pandemic Drobo went M.I.A. They had no products in stock, and it was reported that calls were largely unanswered.

While my Drobo and Mac mini running Mac OS X Server Sierra 10.12 was working fine, I knew I was living on borrowed time. I feared that getting a replacement would be difficult or impossible if my Drobo had some mechanical failure.

Time to upgrade to a NAS (Network Attached Storage)

I had been researching solutions from Synology and QNAP. As much as I pride myself on being tech-savvy, it wasn’t easy trying to distinguish which one was better and which product in their respective product lines would be best for me.

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Join me at the Kelbyone Travel Photography Conference

I’m really hoping that we can get back to some form of travel this year. I really miss traveling and shooting. With that in mind, there’s a great way to start off 2021 by learning some new skills from the best instructors at the Kelbyone Travel Photography Conference. This two-day online conference is a must for anyone interested in boosting their travel photography skills. I hope to see you there. You can register here.

Also be sure to check out my Travel Gear Guide for this Conference here.

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3 Last-Minute Gifts for the Photographer on your List

It’s that time of year and as many of us are still scrambling to figure out what to buy for the special people on our lists, I put together this shortlist for the Photographer on your list.

This USB-C Hub is AWESOME

If the photographer on your list uses a newer MacBook Pro, iPad Pro or PC then chances are this hub will be a welcome addition to their bag. Apple has gone all-in on USB-C and that’s actually a good thing because if everything uses one USB standard then there will be more choices for peripherals for everyone. The transition is slow though. Not all peripherals are USB-C yet. That’s why this USB-C hub is AWESOME. The ALLEASA USB-C hub features an HDMI port, 3 standard USB 3 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, a MicroSD reader, SD Reader and a USB-C port for power. Plug this baby in and you’ll have all the ports you need even on your iPad Pro!

You can get it here.

Music in your studio while you shoot

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How to Backup and Edit Your Photos in the Field WITHOUT a Computer

I’ve been carrying a laptop Mac pretty much since the category was created. Although they have become thinner, lighter and much more powerful than the early days, mobile devices are just easier to bring along. I always have my iPhone with me and in most cases I have my iPad Pro 10.5” with me. The iPad is becoming more and more useful as a potential MacBook Pro replacement. As a matter of fact I’m on a plane as I write this post on my iPad Pro.

When I do a photo shoot on location I either shoot with my Nikon D850 DSLR or my iPhone X. When shooting with the D850 I’m usually anxious to see what I got and share a couple on social media. I rarely share an image right out of the camera. This means that I usually apply a few edits in Lightroom CC on mobile first. While there is a mobile app for Nikon that allows me to wirelessly transfer images to my iOS devices right from the camera, as it stands today it can only transfer JPEGs. This means that I would either need to shoot RAW+JPG or convert individual images into JPG and then transfer them.

There’s a better, safer way

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I Did the World’s First Nikon D850 Review in 360° 4K

Nikon D850

I got the opportunity to review the 2017 DSLR of the Year. It’s the Nikon D850. This camera is so hot that it’s still in short supply several months after it’s release. When Nikon offered to send me one for review (full disclosure, it was a loaner and has been returned. This was NOT a paid review. P.S. I don’t do paid reviews), I jumped at the chance. I wanted to do something beyond just listing specs and showing sample photos. I wanted to do a LIVE shoot, but let YOU the user experience the entire video in 360°. Here’s how it came out:

If you watch the above video you should be able to pan around in a 360° space and watch anything you want when you want. As far as I can tell, this is the first review of the D850 of this kind. If I’m not the first to do it, it’s still a first for me 😀

A few things that are not in the video

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The DJI Mavic Air is my New Favorite Drone

I’ve really enjoyed flying my drones over the past few years and adding them as a tool to my photography/videography story telling. My trip to Iceland last year was the first time I shot more footage with my DJI Mavic Pro drone than any other camera that I brought with me on the trip (see my Iceland video here). The more I flew it the more confident I got that I wasn’t going to lost it. This allowed me to capture footage that I probably otherwise wouldn’t have gotten because I wouldn’t have stepped out of my comfort zone.

This year it’s all about the DJI Mavic Air

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Adobe Lightroom CC vs. Lightroom Classic CC: Which one is for you?

Last week during Adobe MAX, Adobe took the wraps off its new photography system: Lightroom CC. Wait, wasn’t there already a Lightroom CC? Yes. Let me try to clear up some confusion I’ve seen out there. First off if you were already using Lightroom CC the good news is that Lightroom Classic CC is the same product that you’ve invested time in to learn and have been using for years. There is one change though besides the name. It’s much faster in most areas than it was before. The team has spent the last several months boosting the performance of Lightroom Classic CC, which is what we all wanted.

Lightroom CC
Lightroom CC doing a search for “tree” and finding images that were never keyworded.
OK then what is Lightroom CC? The existing version of Lightroom has been branded Lightroom Classic CC and there is a brand new built from the ground up application called Lightroom CC. This new desktop application now fits in the Lightroom CC family as a seamless way for photographers to have their images everywhere.

Lightroom Classic CC
Lightroom Classic CC
Didn’t Lightroom (Classic) CC have the ability to sync my photos and have them everywhere? Not completely. If you import images into Lightroom Classic CC, you still have the ability to sync images, but what gets sync’d are smart previews and not the original full resolution JPEG and Raw files. Now with the NEW Lightroom CC you get full resolution files sync’d and backed up to the cloud no matter where you import them from. If I import my DSLR raw images they get sync’d to the cloud. If I shoot into the Lightroom CC app on my iPhone or iPad (yes Android too) the full resolution JPEGs or Raw files get sync’d to the cloud and appear everywhere.

Should I use Lightroom CC or Lightroom Classic CC?

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How to Photograph The Solar Eclipse 2017

Solar Eclipse

Yesterday I did a live stream on the Adobe Creative Cloud Facebook page outlining what you’d need to successfully photograph or simply enjoy the Solar Eclipse happening Monday, August 21, 2017. Here’s the replay in case you missed it:

There were a lot of good comments and questions during the stream and I thought I’d recap some of the things I talked about here.

What you need to capture the solar eclipse

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