Well, I have to leave you folks for a few weeks. I am going for a vacation back to Russia where my wife and I are planning to visit her family in Siberia by the great lake Baikal. It's a wonderful and beautiful place, so I am taking my camera with me and will be taking a lot of pictures, which will be posted on my website.
It's not clear whether I will have an Internet connection and time to post anything here. And there will be some other things to do Come back in a few weeks, don't loose the touch!

One of the simplest and convenient ways to present your work to a potential client is a slideshow that you can run on your computer. And guys at Adobe has included such feature into the Lightroom. You can learn more about it in the video "Working with Slideshows & Print: Lightroom 1.1"

You know about Rule of Thirds? But there is more to how place subjects in the photograph frame, a way more. People have observed and created various ways that create a harmonic balance within a photograph, and many of those ways have their roots in other fields. Read the article "Composition for Photographers" to learn more about composition and improve your photographs.

It's needless to say that a photographer creates his work on a two dimensional surface - the photograph. And the final result is the 2D composition. But in the reality we live in a three dimensional world where objects have more than two dimensions. So when you start considering what and how place into the frame you actually compose a 3D world.

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Here is another look at skills and techniques of a wedding photographer that are expressed as 21 tips for Amateur Wedding Photographers. Some of them overlap with what I've covered in my article "Wedding Photography - Lessons Learned", but still provide a good start for those of us who just stepped onto the path of Wedding Photographer.

You probably have noticed already that when you try to make drastic changes to the brightness or contrast of the image (especially with Curves) the colors change as well, and not always in a good way. The problem here is that the colors are linked to the luminosity of the image in the RGB mode. And there are a few solutions to overcome the obstacle. First one you can simply work in the LAB mode, which has a special channel for Luminosity and change the contrast and brightness only for that channel. This technique is described at AfterCapture.com in a PDF document called "Handling difficult colors - RGB vs. LAB".
On the other hand you can still perform necessary changes in the RGB mode by limiting the changes to the Lightness via blending mode or Fade. Instead of applying the Curves directly to the image - create an adjustment layer and set the Blending mode to Lightness. Or if you did apply the changes to the image, go to menu Edit, Fade [Effect Name] and change the blending mode in the dialog.

There is no doubt iPhone is a great thing even if some people find a few flaws in it. It could be a great business tool for a photographer. Just consider its marketing capabilities especially with all this hype and excitement around it. Just the simple possession of it makes you attractive and interesting, isn't it?
And then with all regular office applications (i.e. email, calendar, maps, Google documents, etc.) it's already quite useful and friendly. I agree the keyboard is something to get used to, I failed at my first try . But then think about the video and photos, does it remind you of something in photographers marketing? For me it looks like a mobile portfolio, which is always with you.

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I know it's not Photography, but still imagery, and a beautiful one. Very much like a photograph. Just wanted to share with you the link to gorgeous work of Daniel Kvasznicza (I love castles and fantasy!)

Only after reading the article "Wedding Trashers: Why Brides Are Destroying Their Dresses" I've learned about this new emerging trend of trashing the wedding dress and capturing these moments on camera. There is a whole website that is dedicated to such event and is called respectively: TrashTheDress.Com. That's how the article describes this phenomenon:

The past year has seen the rise of a gleefully destructive post-wedding ritual: the "trash the dress" photo shoot, in which the bride models her gown while romping in the ocean, climbing up a fire escape, rolling in the mud, or, in at least one occasion, riding a horse. These sessions take place after the wedding. Sometimes the groom is around; sometimes he's not. The resulting photos often exude a gentle gothiness, like album covers from bands playing the second stage of the Lilith Fair circa 1997.

Note: The photograph shown here is made by photographer Mark Eric

Just a reminder that Digital Journalist in its July issue posts another series of Tech Tips where Chuck Westfall answers various questions related to Canon camera and lens gear, such better use of Image Stabilization in tricky situations, or flash metering on Canon 10D and AI Servo focusing mode on Canon 1D Mark III.

With all these news and new products created by Apple (like MacBooks, IPod, iPhone, Apple TV and such) there are a lot of talks about how great those products are. I am not an exception to those who were listening to all this stuff. And about a month ago when the new MacBook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo emerged on the market I made the decision and switched to Mac. It wasn't a complete switch, my home desktop is Windows and before that I was playing with old PowerBook G4 about a year. As you may assume there are a few thoughts about Apple laptops that I can share, and that's exactly what I want to do here.

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Sometimes it's hard to describe the beauty of somebody's photographs and to convey those unique feelings that photographs stir in your soul. Well, I'd better shut up and let you to judge the photographs and the photographer

Well, this wall is not just a photographer and the world, but between almost any of human being and the world. We inherit this wall from our parents and enforce it by living in this society. This wall prevents us from being complete with the world around us. What am I talking about? I am talking about the internal dialog that almost never ceases in our minds.

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