Behind the Scenes

Close Encounters

Alan Goldberg

Close Encounters

This is one of the amazing frog species that made an appearance at Jim's frog and reptile workshop in St. Louis. It is a crowned tree frog from Honduras. To take this frame-filling shot, Jim used a 50mm macro lens with one extension tube between the lens and the camera body. This increased magnification, but at the same time, there was a negative correlation between magnification and depth of field. As one increases, the other decreases. Therefore, he had to use the smallest aperture available -- f/32 -- to gain as much DOF as possible. There is too much intriguing detail in...


Red Eye Tree Frog on a Red Boat

Alan Goldberg

Red Eye Tree Frog on a Red Boat

This is everyone's favorite frog -- the red eye tree frog. Jim photographed it originally with a vertical composition, and then in Photoshop he rotated the image 90 degrees clockwise (Image > rotate > 90CW). Jim then applied the plug-in Flood (made by flamingpear.com) to add a realistic reflection. All of the macro images done at his recent workshop were taken with a ring flash because of the way the light wraps around the small subjects. The lens is set to f/32 for maximum depth of field, the camera is set to manual exposure mode, and the flash is set to ETTL which adjusts...


Rearing Horse Fantansy with Storm and Water

John Harrison

Tags Canvas Art, France, Horses, Photoshop

Rearing Horse Fantansy with Storm and Water

We did we choose this blog post to be our first?  Since we are featuring horses this month we thought it would prove interesting. Jim Zuckerman loves getting a perfect shot of an animal (or anything else) in-camera, but after that his mind quickly goes to the artistic possibilities involving Photoshop. Jim has been that way since the beginning of his career. For so many years, photographers were limited to techniques in the darkroom to add artistry to their photographs, but now the sky's the limit. Pretty much anything you can imagine can be done digitally and this is a very exciting time to...


Long Exposures with Water

Alan Goldberg

Tags Belgium, Brugge, Long Exposure, Water

Long Exposures with Water

Long exposures with water are intriguing. This is a picture Jim took in Brugge, Belgium with a 15 second exposure. Look how smooth and glass-like the canal is. Jim now carries with him an 8-f/stop neutral density filter, so if it's not dark enough to use a long exposure, the ND filter allows him to extend the exposure time. He also had to lower the ISO to 100, and his aperture was f/22. Click Here to Purchase This Print