Holiday Warning about Amazon Gift Cards
Anyone considering giving Amazon.com gift cards this Holiday Season needs to be aware that not everything listed on Amazon.com can be purchased with an Amazon gift card. If the item doesn’t say “Ships from and sold by Amazon.com” then the merchant actually selling the item may or may not accept gift cards as payment. The problem with this is if you have a gift card balance, and attempt to purchase an item from one of these merchants, it’s not obvious that the gift card isn’t being applied. If you have a credit card on file with Amazon, you could end up with a surprise charge on your next bill. My recommendation, if you’re going to give a gift card, is to go with a Visa/AMEX branded card instead of one from Amazon.
Great Photographers on Twitter
This is my contribution to the great photographers on Twitter discussions that have been going on lately. This list is mostly nature/landscape/adventure photographers who inspire me to get out and shoot. These recommendations are also based on the quality of their photography, not necessarily the quality of their tweets.
- @bernabephoto—www.richardbernabe.com
- @brucepercy —www.brucepercy.com
- @CornforthImages—www.cornforthimages.com
- @ianplantphoto—www.ipphotography.com
- @enlightphoto—www.enlightphoto.com
- @MartyKnapp—www.martyknapp.com
- @chriscorradino—www.christography.com
- @spoolimages—www.spoolphotography.com
- @jimgoldstein—jmg-galleries.com
- @gdanmitchell—www.gdanmitchell.com
- @scottflaherty—store.clanoflaherty.com
- @Niebrugge—www.my-photo-blog.com
- @ScottDickerson—scottdickerson.com
- @MoosePeterson—www.moosenewsblog.com
- @pixelatedimage—www.pixelatedimage.com/blog
- @artwolfe—www.artwolfe.com
- @akornylak—www.akornphoto.com
This list is not in any particular order, and is clearly not meant to be comprehensive, merely the ones I am familiar with. If you have suggestions, please share them, I can always use more inspiration.
Swing Batter Batter
Ansel Adams once said, “There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs. ” I whole heartedly support this statement, and it’s one of the reasons that I tend to avoid posting my photos to public websites for critique. The people who are most active in the critiques sections of these websites tend to be the people who have learned the “rules” of photography and then go into the forums checking off the rules. If you followed the rules then it’s a good shot, and if you didn’t then it gets torn apart.
The thing about the rules of photography, especially composition rules, is that they can be helpful to someone who doesn’t understand the fundamentals of what makes a good image. They’re good guides in helping illustrate abstract concepts, like visual tension, that are difficult to explain without something of a concrete example. Unfortunately, the rules can become counter-productive if they underlying concepts they illustrate are never fully grasped.
To illustrate this, I tend to use the example of hitting in baseball. In little league, children are taught the rules for hitting a baseball. Stand with your feet shoulder width apart, arms back, elbow up, step into the pitch, swing level, etc. The thing about these rules is that they’re great for someone with absolutely no clue how to hit a baseball, but look at baseball players from every age group, from the traveling teams through to the pros. How many of the players still have a textbook swing? As players get experience, they learn what works for them and they adapt their hitting style accordingly. By the time most players become pros, their hitting technique is so unique, that they can be identified by their stance at the plate. These guys are by definition among the best baseball players in the world. Every one of them have abandoned the rules, after learning the fundamentals of hitting and adapting those techniques to their strengths.
So it is with photography. Photographers learn the rules as a guide for understanding the concept, and then move past those rules, adapting their technique to their strengths.
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