June 5, 2026 Motivation Recently, LearnDesk went down for maintenance unannounced on May 31st, and as of 6/5/2026, it remains down. This behavior is totally unacceptable, so we are acting on our contingency plan. On Monday, I deferred some of the website rebranding changes to implement a ticketing mechanism within the website. As a result, I’m turning off the LearnDesk events page and enabling the new event registration capabilities on the website. While you will see some vis

Photography is a skill that grows best when practiced and explored in a supportive environment. While tutorials and books offer valuable knowledge, nothing compares to hands-on learning and real-time feedback. Our site hosts a variety of events designed to help photographers at every level improve their craft, connect with others, and find inspiration. These events provide practical experience, expert guidance, and a chance to explore new techniques in a friendly setting. Wor

Recently I updated my X1 software only to find out that it no longer supports the i1 Display by x-rite. This device and others in this family are no longer supported. As you might imagine a few unkind words were said! Fortunately, I noticed a link that said we don't support this anymore, but Calibrate Profiler offers a solution. I didn't want to throw away a functioning device. So, I downloaded the software, reviewed the UI, and decided it was worth the $39 for their software

“Break the Rules”? Nope – in almost every case, a compelling photograph or image contains compositional elements that draw our eye into the image, hold our attention, and create an emotional response or connection. A simple take on the rules of composition: “yup – they are there because they work”. Yet, something about us makes us rebel against “rules”, so let’s just call them “elements” – and there are a lot of them! Here, I’ll break down this photograph into 4 elements that

We are adding a new category to our CIPPA Image Competitions - Lifestyle! What is considered lifestyle photography? According to Wikipedia, the definition of lifestyle photography is “a style of portrait/people photography which aims to capture and document real-life events, situations, or milestones in an artistic manner and the art of the everyday”. Lifestyle is not as controlled as portrait photography or as unscripted as photojournalism. It gives us the chance to create

Our digital world gives us so much ability to create, adjust, finish, and go wild with our photographs. For most of my landscape and nature photos I work mainly with color and contrast, a bit of "digital gardening", highlighting and drawing attention to the compositional elements that made me want to press that shutter. The camera will create a nice version of what it thinks you will like, but that will be just a nice average exposure and combination of color across the entir

What made me pull up the camera and zoom into this mountain? Mainly, it was because when looking through the viewfinder, “it felt right”. Now, define “right” – why did it feel “right”? It doesn’t have dramatic powerful lighting, it was taken at noon – not the magic hour, it doesn’t have that big grizzly bear in the red bikini… I didn’t really think about it when I took the photo, but it contains several compositional elements that made me come back to this image, rank it

Here is a link to a PictureCorrect.com article that I found interesting. The author, Adam Williams, makes some great points about looking for Balance in Landscape photographs. It is not necessarily something we see when we compose, but it is something we feel. https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/compositional-balance-vs-the-rule-of-thirds/ This photo is from Mike Mercadante, and is a great example of balance in a landscape image.

Presentation and impact have a big influence on how an image is judged in competition. Borders and Strokes add a finishing touch and are always appreciated by the judges. Here is a step by step of how I create my Borders and Strokes, there are other methods - which may be easier - but this works for me, maintains the Layers in my Tiff images, and lets me continue to adjust the stroke & border color/size. When finished, I flatten and convert to the required size jpeg for submi