nx300

6 Best Cameras For Budding Photographers

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6 Best Cameras For Budding Photographers

The holiday season is upon us, and chances are, somewhere in your family there’s a budding photographer. You’ve been watching as they hone their eye through an iPad lens or the pictures that mysteriously populate your smartphone’s camera roll when your phone goes missing for a few hours (or days). And now, you’re realizing this is a skill and talent they might want to hone further. It’s time to step up their game and begin their gradual and comfortable transition into some more serious hardware. Here are 6 of the best cameras for budding photographers in your family.

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The Spirit Of The Mountain Calls Again - Here're This Year's Entries!

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The Spirit Of The Mountain Calls Again - Here're This Year's Entries!

I can’t believe it’s been a full year since the last one. That photo contest that I was honored to place 2nd and 3rd in last year, the National Park Service sponsored “Spirit Of The Mountain” photo contest? Well, it’s back. I just submitted my two entries, the two you see above, "Family Time" and "Pole Position,” two images taken within the past 12 months in the Santa Monica Mountain Range.

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Hoorah! The Samsung Imageloggers (Including Moi) Took Over Rangefinder Magazine.

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Hoorah! The Samsung Imageloggers (Including Moi) Took Over Rangefinder Magazine.

So this Samsung Imagelogger journey has been an extremely unexpected ray of light that just keeps shining brighter as the months go on. In addition to the cameras and gear (as if that wasn't enough), another huge benefit of this thing is the ridiculous exposure and opportunities we get. Some of us got to go to Photokina on Samsung’s behalf, some of us gave away free NX30s in Times Square a few months ago, some of us had our images used in promotional material and ads, some of us ended up on a safari. Well, this week, some of us had the humble pleasure of taking over a full special issue of Rangefinder Magazine, a pretty influential magazine in the photography industry.

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A Collection Of iPhone 6 And iPhone 6 Plus Background Wallpapers

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A Collection Of iPhone 6 And iPhone 6 Plus Background Wallpapers

For the lucky ones who managed to snag an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, I figured I’d throw together a collection of my images sized and optimized to serve as background wallpapers to grace the face of your new device. There are several scenes covering various locations from Yosemite to Venice to a gorgeous Grist Mill in Washington. Hopefully there’s something in there that’ll tickle your fancy.

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How Instagram’s Cheesy Photo Filters Have Made Us More Creative

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How Instagram’s Cheesy Photo Filters Have Made Us More Creative

With the advent of mobile optimized tools like Instagram and Flickr and Hipstamatic and the such, a common grumble amongst professional communities is how they’re nothing but cheesy toys that are 'cheating' and 'not professional' and 'have taken the art out of photography’ and 'blah blah’.

I know.

I was one of those people.

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The Proof Sheet - Photography News In Review For The Week of July 7

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The Proof Sheet - Photography News In Review For The Week of July 7

Welcome to the inaugural edition of The Proof Sheet, where each week I'll post some of the more notable photography news in sweet, chewy, bite-sized, easily-digestible morsels. Click the Read More for this week's stories.

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How To Photograph Sunsets, Silhouettes And Starbursts For Your Summer Snaps!

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How To Photograph Sunsets, Silhouettes And Starbursts For Your Summer Snaps!

Being in Southern California, we get a lot of wonderful light during the final hours of most days, so naturally, a lot of my photography happens during that time. Consequently, I find myself in position to photograph sunsets a lot, many of which can prove to be quite spectacular, and one of my favorite effects is to catch sun stars (also called starbursts) and silhouettes during this time. I’ve been asked more than a few times what my methods for sunset photography are, so figured I’d share a few tips to help you catch those perfect sun shots during your summer adventures. Click past the break here to see the tips.

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Photofocus Does It Again - Notch Up Another Point For The Samsung NX300

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Photofocus Does It Again - Notch Up Another Point For The Samsung NX300

I'm absolutely humbled to have my second Featured Image on the Photofocus homepage. This is crazy. Thanks to Melissa Niu, Scott Bourne, Richard Harrington and the entire Photofocus team for this ridiculous honor.

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The Samsung NX30 - The One Time Less Zeros Puts A Smile On My Face.

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A lot of you already know that I’ve been playing with the mirrorless cameras lately as one of Samsung’s Official Imageloggers. They started out by sending me the gorgeous brown leather skinned NX300 and a myriad of lenses to play with and I’ve had a lot of fun with those buggers for sure. Well, in this next stage of the program, they’ve sent out the brand new NX30, and I couldn’t be more excited! As much as I love the NX300, the one thing that my old-fashioned mind couldn’t quite get past was not having a viewfinder, so, well, that alone sold me. This one might actually get me to finally Ditch The DSLR after all! Can’t wait to share some images from this fine feller...

Bluegrass And Treetops On The Topanga Trails

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Bluegrass And Treetops On The Topanga Trails

T'was a perfect day in Topanga Canyon, and to stay inside would have been a crime, so I grabbed one of my cameras, the Samsung NX300, threw on the 'summer' outfit, and headed out into the hills. As I was hiking through this, live bluegrass echoing through the canyon in the distant background served as my soundtrack. Don't know where it was coming from or what it was, but it was perfect.

Perfect.

Click past the break for a few images from that Topanga Canyon hike.

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Bad Days Are The New Good Days! Thanks For The Reminder Photofocus!

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Bad Days Are The New Good Days! Thanks For The Reminder Photofocus!

So I know you've probably already seen enough of this set of images, but, well, too bad! Ha! An image from this series keeps getting around one way or another - this time absolutely humbling me by showing up on the homepage for Photofocus.com as this week's 'Featured Image.' This is Scott Bourne, Richard Harrington, Melissa Niu and company! It's madness!

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We Saved Rabbits And Got Away With Kidnapping...All In A Day's Work!

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Shooting The Gorgeous Cindy Taylor For WhoHasItApp.com

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Cindy Taylor Hope everyone has had a wonderful 2014 so far. So I sort of disappeared for a bit, but hot damn, the new year began and everything took off!!! Hasn’t been much sleep but certainly has been quite a bit of action. There are some cool things in the works that will be revealed in due time, but for now, just wanted to drop a quick few lines. Last week I got to do another shoot for WhoHasItApp, the same client I shot Kyle Williams, Rod Streater, Stacey Dash, Gretchen Rossi, and the others for late last year. This time we got to shoot the beautiful model and TV host Cindy Taylor. Hit the 'Continue Reading' to see some of the images from that shoot (all shot with that Samsung NX300 and a 60mm/f2.8 macro lens). Just wanted to share. Hope you enjoy. 

Ok Mirrorless, Here I Come! I’m Officially A Samsung Imagelogger!

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So I’ve been curious about them for at least a year, and have been hearing more and more about them especially in the last several months, and now I finally get to experiment with the new mirrorless camera systems myself…in a very unexpected way. Samsung reached out to me to see if I was interested in joining their Samsung Imagelogger program. Basically I’d get to be one of 50 lucky buggers who are getting cameras and gear from Samsung over the next half year or so to experiment and play with and report back on and post images from. Uhhh…YEAH!!

Needless to say, I’m pretty hyped on the opportunity to get intimate with the latest mirrorless systems and see what these things can do.

So as of Wednesday afternoon, I’ve got the first camera they’ve sent out to us in my hands, the NX300, and we just had our training session, so I preemptively apologize if my posts hit a slight overdrive. Since this is the first new camera system I’ll be using in about 2 years, as well as my first foray away from Nikon DSLRs, and, of course, my first adventure into the mirrorless space, it should be interesting to see where and what brain circuits this experience might fry or invigorate.

Anyhow, the header image above is one of the first images taken with this mini-beast, and the camera itself? Well, I must say, the brown leather color scheme is pretty shnazzy! It took me a few minutes to get acquainted with this thing (the biggest adjustment being not using a viewfinder), but once I got the hang of it, I had a blast. Anyway, only got to use it for a few hours between gigs today, but there will be much more to come soon.

If you want to follow along to all the images taken by myself and the other Imageloggers (trust me, you’ll want to follow along…The Candid Frames' Ibarionex Perello, The Giving Lens' Colby Brown, renown pro photographer Valerie Jardin, and the most unique father blogger you might ever run across, 8BitDad's Zach Rosenberg, are amongst the shutterbugs that’ll be contributing), check out www.DitchTheDSLR.com, where they’ve set up a crazy interactive map of the country as a home for the photos taken by the Imageloggers. It’s fresh now, but it’s gonna start filling up with eye-candy in a hurry!

Below are a selection from the first batch of images that came out of the NX300 in my hands.

Ok…let’s do this thing!