Travel Through Pictures . com

Author: The Intrepid Amateur

  • Terns in Love

    Ah…. Spring is in the air.  Single men are polishing their sports cars, buying new tires for their “I got one too” BMW 3 series, and laying down some cash for a few new spring shirts, all in the hope of attracting a nice girl.  Yeah, right… wrong bait for that.  Want a sure fire…

  • Solitary Pipers, Cropping, and Megapixels

    You do need Megapixels:   Some bloggers will say more megapixels don’t matter and are more about marketing and sales gimmicks; for the most part, they are absolutely correct.  If you are shooting JPGs and not doing much tweaking, you are wasting your money thinking you need a new camera with more megapixels.  However, if you…

  • Flowers, Backlighting, & Exposure Compensation

    Wanna make art?  I gave a sure-fire tip for doing this in my blog about depth of field (DOF) here, but there are more little tricks to turning a typical photo into something special.  Besides shallow DOF, another trick is backlighting.  Backlighting is where your light source, say the sun, is actually in front of…

  • Harlequin Ducks & Sitting in Bird Poop

    These guys are the big attraction every winter at the Barnegat Light NJ, jetty.  These daredevils bob up and down in the crashing water along the jetty.  Why they are not pressed duck on the rocks from the angry surf is beyond me.  I guess Darwin was on to something here. Click here to read…

  • Canon 500mm Lens Review & Buying Used

    My intent here is not to provide a detailed lens review, there are plenty of good ones out there, but describe what it meant to me, an amateur, how I purchased this used, and provide you with some real life information.  Not all was smooth buying this lens used.   Click Here to read about…

  • Get Off Automatic! – Beginner’s Instructions – My Secret Magic Settings

    This is it.  The Rosetta Stone.  These are the instructions to get yourself off of Automatic mode.  The purpose of this article is to give you a starting point for taking your camera off of Automatic, and getting you on your way to taking purposeful, artful pictures.  You can’t do this on Automatic; you must…

  • Ewww! Bugs – Closeup Bug Tips

    Here is collection of stupid bugs.  I shot them with a variety of lenses and settings, but here are a few tips for getting good shots of buggage. Click here for Bug Land

  • Barred Owl, Bloody Beak, Dead Vole

    Can you believe this?!  I came across this Barred Owl tearing into a vole!!!  Whoa! Maximum cool. Click here to see the gory details… er entrails.

  • Bird Olympics: Diving Terns

    So there I am, sitting on an embankment along a New Jersey salt marsh, watching a group of Forster’s Terns diving non-stop for worms. So what’s wrong with my equipment?  Read here for more of the story and diving Terns.

  • Beer, Making Art, and Courage

    Every day, I get asked, “How do you do it?  How do you get such inspirational results with just that blunt instrument called a camera?”  Well!!!!  Ahemm…First I… Then I…  well awright……., nobody ever asked me that.  But if they did, I would tell them……. it’s all in the beer!!! Click here to learn the…

  • Ratty Looking Loons

    Boy, I spent all this money on equipment, risked life and limb out on the Jetty at Barnegat Light New Jersey, and the Loons showed up looking pretty ratty.  These Loons looked simply like hell.  Kinda like they broke into my beer fridge the night before and partied like there was no tomorrow. Click here…

  • Making Art and not Taking Pictures – Try Depth of Field

    Well for a screaming amateur like me, talking about art is a bit of a stretch.  Heck talking about photography is a stretch for me too but after a few beers, I’ll talk about anything.  Ok, now that I have a few Pilsner Urquells in me, let’s talk about taking pictures and making art.  The…

  • Risking it all on a Moth! – Macro Close Ups

    Now this was just stupid.  I risked over 6 grand in equipment to take a dopey macro picture of a moth. You don’t need to buy an expensive macro lens to do macro photography, you just need an extension tube. Click here to read about being dopey and using extension tubes.

  • Turnstones! Purple Pipers! Barnegat Jetty!! Basic Shooting Tips!!

    I braved poopy rocks, salt spray on my mega-buck equipment, and the possibility of a broken leg to get these snaps of a buncha dumb birds.  Actually they were kinda cute and just maybe a little dumb. Click here to see the birds, decorated rocks, and pick up a few basic shooting tips.

  • Sunsets, Composition, and The Rule of Thirds

    OK, sunsets.  Big deal.  We all take them; your mother loves them; so I put a few up here. But using “The Rule of Thirds”, you can really make them better. Click here to make a jaw-dropping sunset.  We’ll maybe not, but you will learn something about composition.

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