The Starburst look can be achieved, or avoided, by adjusting your aperture. In a scene like this shot of the New Orleans riverfront my aperture was at f/25, an extreme setting for most circumstances, but perfect for what I intended for this shot. I shot this on a tripod with the shutter set at 6 seconds. I wanted to smooth over the river and crank up those f-stops. In other shots from this evening, set at f/3.2 with the shutter at 1/80, the street lights just looked like street lights. With instant playback on your camera's LED screen you can try different combinations of exposure settings until you get what you want. Woldenberg Park, on the New Orleans riverfront

The color temperature of a light source is something seen much better by a digital sensor than our eyes. Our eyes work with our brains to make things look normal. The digital sensor will more accurately register the intensities of red, green, or blue in every light source. That's why I often must develop photos before delivering them to a client. In this image I first adjusted the shade of the light on the speaker so she looked human and then separated the background layer and adjusted that color to look as intended. This was the opening speaker at the APRA convention in 2015.

Most of my jobs include shooting in what appears to the camera as low light. For this reason I am nearly always experimenting with different exposure settings trying to keep the ISO as low as I can while still getting enough detail to reveal in developing. That's a key element of much photography; knowing what you can capture in the digital depths of your sensor, unseen in the JPEG preview, that can be successfully revealed by your developing software. The modern DSLR captures a ton of detail. This image was shot at ISO 1000 in very soft hotel lobby lighting.

I now use 2 Canon 5Ds bodies which create a maximum file size of 50mp. It's not because I need that many megapixels for displays like the one below. Those are 12mp images shot with my cameras "dialed back" to produce smaller images. That's because on this particular job I was required to transfer all my files to the client's hard drive before leaving each day. I reduced my file size so I wouldn't spend an extra hour at the end of the day waiting for 800 files of 50mp to transfer. As you can see, those 12mp files looked just fine on those great big screens. The modern LED screen will translate the image to reproduce it with remarkable accuracy as long as it has a reasonable resolution and is the correct aspect ratio (length to width). My work on display at a general session during a recent conference in New Orleans.

It's a matter of trust. That sounds a little heavy but I really want you to trust me to get the shots you want and need. That's why we'll talk about your ideas and I'll ask a bunch of questions. You must be able to trust me to give you photos that will fit your plan just as you wanted. I find this approach applies to everything from shooting head shots to shooting a conference. Sometimes I feel like my client believes that I know what he or she means without much explanation. I can always benefit from plenty of detailed explanation. I may have heard most of it a hundred times but it's much better that I know just what you expect than to just draw conclusions from my experience.

Among the questions that still surprise me are, "Do you shoot digital?" and, Do you have your own dark room?" I say surprise because just try to find a film still camera for sale. I have one. It's the same one I used in Viet Nam over 50 years ago. To shoot professionally today, making pictures for paying clients, not making art you hope to sell, you must have a digital camera and developing software. It's in memory of the dark rooms in which we once worked that #Adobe named its developing software #Lightroom. I've used it for nearly 10 years and, after trying a few newcomers to the market, I still believe it's the best. The developing possibilities of large RAW files in Lightroom are demonstrated below.

I am often asked by people at a conference or event how they can get a copy of a photo. They see me shooting and pose for my camera and then want a copy of the picture. I could make some extra dough by selling such copies to individuals. That, however, in my opinion, would be double dipping. My client is paying me to make and develop and deliver the images to that specific person and business. Therefore, I tell people asking about copies to just get in touch with the person in charge of the conference or event. In some cases a person might want "all copies" of an image but I'm afraid that, once an image is made, it never really goes away. More on that in a subsequent post.

Restating some information about resolution. I tell my clients that they can specify the resolutioj of their photos. I shoot digital negatives that have dimensions and size. They don't have a resolution until I develop them as JPEG or .PNG or anything else the client may want. The composite below shows meta data of a finished JPEG, left, and the original digital negative, DNG, right. Note the absence of a resolution, or ppi(pixels per inch), in the DNG meta data. danmilhamphotography.com #commercialphotographer #conventionphotographer #eventphotographer #neworleansphotographer

Most of my clients are event planners of some kind. They tend to worry a lot that some little thing is going to bring all their tireless efforts to naught. When a celebrity is included, they'll often tell me to be very careful around the special person, because he or she is very touchy about photographs. In fact, I've never found the celebrity to be hard to shoot or work with. Jay Cutler is a good example. The young lady directing me had so many details to control that I wouldn't be surprised if she took a week to relax after the Dos Equis promotion she organized. Jay Cutler, however, never even looked at me askance as I shot him, including as he failed at Jenga. The same can be said for Peyton Manning, Drew Breeze, and others accustomed to flashes in their faces. I find that people at the top of their profession tend to have the personality to match. They're professional enough that, when being well paid to be nice, they tend to be nice. I showed this shot to Jay Cutler right after taking it and all he said was, "Oh. That's a good one."

So you understand more of what happens when a photographer develops your photographs, or "processes" them, I offer this brief video. Think of developing and processing as pretty much synonymous except that some photogs may use "processing" when they mean changing the photo in Adobe Photoshop or a similar application. I always refer to the process through which I put all your photos before delivery as "developing". That's what I've called it since it meant dipping film in chemicals to cause the picture to appear. So developing is how I correct the colors after shooting in varied lighting, how I improve the exposure after shooting a parade at night, in general making sure the scene I shot looks as good as possible. Photoshop is used sometimes to do the same but more often to change the composition of the photograph, like removing an unwanted object.

I'm using branding here as a verb, sort of like my client did. Intersport is a returning client so I was extra glad to hear from them. Their description of the job included, "...several branding elements..." and, "...just a few snapshots of the lobby." Well, 999 shots later I was pretty sure I'd captured every sign, double X statue, poster, pillow, mirror, window decal, logo football, and Dos Equis bottle they had put throughout the first floor of Le Meridian hotel. They took branding to an extent I had not seen. The accessories on the bar were all Dos Equis branded and the shelves at the bar and everywhere else throughout the first floor were full of Dos Equis beer bottles, properly placed with the brand in front. This was a masterful job of showing off the brand.

In 1968, using the Canon FT QL, on the left, I had to learn to focus using only my eyes and to learn the meaning of Depth Of Field, the portion of the area in front of me that would be in focus in the photograph. These days, using the Canon EOS 5Ds, on the right, I can let the wonderful technology of Auto-Focus do the focusing for me. Yes, I will almost always be in the manual mode but for focusing, especially on the fly, I love the Auto-Focus feature. Canon's version has a variety of settings but I typically stay on the "all purpose" setting. I can also predict my DOF using one of the many applications that will calculate it if I enter the distance, focal length, and f-stop. If you're in the learning phase you should try to get a feel for your settings before letting the technology take over. If you're in a situation, as I usually am, in which getting the shot before it disappears is critical, technology will be a big help.