Summertime brings dreams of vacation on a beach, kids splashing in the water, and some great photos for the family album. You may have noticed that the humidity along a shore or coast line is very high, especially in the morning. The way I keep my camera lenses from fogging when I take them from the air conditioned indoors to the scenic outdoors is to keep them outdoors. This may seem a bit dangerous but I lock my gear in my car in most cases. An alternate method is to put the camera outside on a guarded porch or a balcony first thing in the morning and waiting a hour or so for the lens to warm to the ambient temperature. You'll need some good lens wipes because once the lens has warmed you may find some residue left by the evaporating water. You can also just shoot through the condensation and use your developing software to defeat the haze. That's what I did for this video.

Cutting to the punch line, Repairing a photo means, to me, fixing the scrapes and scratches so the photo looks like the only thing affecting it is time. Restoration, to me, means returning the photo to the original appearance, as if time has had no effect on it. This may be a distinction without a difference to many. In this sequence I'm showing off a repair that took about 22 hrs. to complete mainly because the areas that were scratched included lots of detail on the CH-47. I used a wide selection of the Photoshop tools that would patch, replace and/or smooth parts of the image. Most frequently used were the clone stamp and spot healing brush. I even cut and pasted pieces of photos of other CH-47s and used blend modes to add to their authenticity. The chopper pictured is "Easy Money" one of three "Guns A-Go-Go" CH-47s that were gunned up and used as troop support gunships for a short time in Vietnam. I happened to be at the pad while the crew was reloading the weapons.

Sometimes we're stuck with a shadow where we don't want one. It's possible to "remove" some of them using a combination of Photoshop features. For this shot of network newscasting legend, Linda Ellerby, I used a selection of the shadow, a curves adjustment layer, dodging and burning, blend modes and the spot healing brush. It can take a while and some experimentation. I started by making a "virtual copy" in Lightroom.

Step one in making a photo look like it was taken a long time ago is to shoot something that can look old. I have the good fortune to live in driving distance to the French Quarter of New Orleans. Everything in it is really old so, though many details have been modernized, the scenes can be made to appear old to a casual observer. Very little was done to the original photo in this mp4 except to remove the modern stickers from the nearest door window. Adobe's Camera RAW was used to brighten and darken some of the colors after switching to the black & white mode. I also used a handy Lightroom preset to at a little sepia tone. Some texture was also added. A key component of the grayscale look, I think, is high contrast. one block of the French Quarter, in New Orleans, where everything looks old because it is

The question always asked about photo manipulation is whether the alteration changes the impression made by the photo. In journalism the fear is that photo alterations give the impression of something happening which really didn't. In the case I show below I've altered the contents of my photo to display the #blueangels during their flyover of my neighborhood. I do so with a clear conscience because the scene in the photo is different from reality only because I didn't get a focus lock until I was looking up through the utility lines. If this was journalism I'd be prevented from removing the wires but it isn't and I'm not. Operationally speaking, it took about 5 min. to remove the lines using Photoshop's clone tool and spot healing brush. Then I replaced nose section of the #1 plane using the clone tool. The details were brought out in normal developing.

Some images look very good in gray scale but don't think your conversion is done just because you clicked on "black & white". I use Adobe software, Lightroom mainly, and when I convert an image to gray scale I go immediately to the color sliders to refine the effect. You can increase or decrease the intensity of the colors in your image by moving the corresponding color slider. It can really change the "look" of your finished product.

Want this "starburst effect" in your shots? The key is making your aperture small. To do that you must select a relatively high f-stop number. In this photo, taken early on the beach at Destin, FL, the aperture is set at f/22. Try using the "aperture priority" setting in which you set the aperture and the camera changes the shutter speed accordingly. The problem with that is you may not want the exposure selected by the firmware in the camera, which is programmed by someone in Tokyo you've never met. A little "trial and error" shooting will get you the shot you want. You'll probably get the best result by developing your shot to decrease the highlights a bit and pull up some detail from the shadows.

I recommend a background check for speakers at any meeting in which the stage is decorated. I'm talking about the background your stage creates for the people watching and listening whom you hope will be focused on said speaker. look at the stages in this composite image. Both meetings happen to have been at the Roosevelt, in New Orleans, but they are not unique in that their viewers, especially from the rear, must pick out the speakers from bright and busy backgrounds. My suggestion, after shooting meetings for 10 years, is to create a background, or the function of changing to a background, that is subdued and not distracting while your speaker or panel is on stage. I know that may require some tactful suggestions to the folks at your venue I know you want your attendees to look at the stage rather than at their phones during presentations. A simplified background will make that easier.

You'll get better looking photographs from a camera held the "best" way while shooting. The ubiquitousness of personal devices sold as phones or tablets but used mainly as cameras has caused many people to adopt the habit of framing a shot through a live LCD screen. That's the least stable way to hold a camera though it doesn't seem to bother most who post on social media. For "serious" photography you'll want to make your camera as stable as possible and holding it against your face with one hand under the lens and body and your elbow against your body, when possible, stabilizes the camera much more than holding the camera away from your body so you can see the LCD screen. Those among us who've been shooting since the old days are very accustomed to looking through a viewfinder. Those newer to the vocation will find the technique I've described easy to learn and much easier to use. I find that I can frame a shot more quickly by aiming through the viewfinder than by lining up with the LCD screen. That just may be because I've been doing it for 50 years.

Watching several of the web sites devoted to photography has convinced me that the camera manufacturers are working to mix popular conception with actual useful features. I've seen posts lately that tout extremely "fast" lenses, those with a maximum aperture the width of the lens. I wonder, however how many situations would make that aperture really useful. You may argue that when shooting landscapes at long distances that aperture can give you an infinite DOF. I would answer that, using the Simple DOF calculator, f/4.8 also gives you an infinite DOF at 30 ft. Using the same app I get a DOF of 33' using f/2.8 @24mm @20 ft. To me that's plenty of useful focus area when shooting people & places. When shooting head shots I need about 1' of DOF and, at 10 feet, @ 70mm, that's f/5. Think of a beautiful, really expensive, sports car...exciting but, for any practical purpose, useless. Feel free to enlighten me if I'm missing an important point about this. I love to learn.

I get great results from my "head shot kit" and I'm happy to report that I spent much less than some might think necessary. Below is a sample from my most recent job with the results of my separation after developing. My point here is that I use inexpensive equipment that is just enough to get the results I want. If I shot portraits and studio jobs often I might invest in more expensive equipment to get more durability. As it is I shoot 4-6 such jobs a year, usually as part of a convention shoot, and here is the equipment I love for portability, dependability, and cost. My lights are Impact VSD 160. They're bright enough, adjustable, and easily fired by remote triggers or on "slave" mode. My backdrop is the Westcott X-drop kit with white, black, and chroma green backdrops. The backdrops are easily interchangeable during the shoot and the kit packs up small and light. If I'm shooting groups against a backdrop I'll bring my much more cumbersome paper rolls with the 3-piece stand. It's heavy and much harder to set up and take down but I have it when needed. The backdrop is lit by a Canon Speedlite to eliminate any variations.

The resolution of your digital image will have much less effect on its appearance than the dimensions. I still wrestle with the difference even though my images have now been projected on darn near every modern kind of screen. While the resolution, pixel per inch, will make a subtle difference as your display device tries to grab enough pixels to reproduce your original, the dimensions, the number of pixels along each side, will have a more obvious effect on what is viewed. In the movie below you'll see a dramatic difference between screen grabs of one of my images created with the same dimensions as my computer screen and one with a far smaller dimension. Both have 72 pixels per inch. You'll also note that the same image shown on the huge screens at the convention for which I shot it looks pretty good. I'm told by A/V people that this is because the projection system "translates" the image data to fit the screen. Though it seems arbitrary, I use 72ppi for my web images because it works. If you're unsure about which resolution will work best in the expected display, it's best to go large. The resolution of the screen will also make a difference so give it plenty with which to work. Look at the difference between images with the same resolution but different dimensions.