Welcome to Austin-Lehman’s New Photo Corner - Photography Tips and Advice

Photo Corner

Welcome to Austin-Lehman Adventure’s new Photo Corner – an on-line gathering place for all of us who love that happy intersection of fun photography and great travel. Here you’ll be able to pick up tips on how to take better trip photos, share some of your own tips with the rest of us, and learn which cameras and lenses will allow you to take close-ups of Costa Rica’s wildly colored red-eyed tree frogs:

or wide shots of a fellow ALA hiker enjoying Peru’s Machu Picchu:

or how to fill the frame with an elephant on the South Africa trip, without running the risk of having a ‘close encounter’ of the pachyderm kind:

Is this a place only for photo aficionados with expensive gear? No – perish the thought. When invited to write a piece for the newsletter and create a photo spot on the ALA website I thought immediately of the fact that the vast majority of you have the good sense to pack only a lightweight point-and-shoot camera on tours. Much attention in these pages will be directed accordingly.

However, every now and then during the dozen years that I’ve been shooting trips for Dan and Paul I do run into a guest as burdened as myself with multiple lenses and camera bodies, lagging behind the group waiting for some blasted butterfly to light on a flower or an elk to turn its head. You poor souls too must be included in the conversation:

[It's mean of me to add this picture, especially since I didn't even take it while on tour. But I couldn't help it!]

Besides, many topics – like rules of composition (and when to enjoy breaking them!), avoiding camera shake, light metering, choosing your subject, protecting your gear, on-screen enhancements, and many more – are relevant to everyone who uses a camera. Other topics, like dealing with dreaded digital dust, or how Adobe Lightroom compares to Photoshop, or selective focus and putting to use the wonderful compression effect of telescopic lenses while on an adventure tour, run the risk of boring point-and-shoot photographers to tears. We’ll keep those topics to a minimum, unless through your responses I hear that you’d like to see more along these lines.
Most of all, I’d like Photo Corner to be fifty percent informational, and a hundred percent fun. Even my math-challenged brain knows that adds up to 150%, a seeming impossibility. But over-the-brim enjoyment is exactly what I’ve found time and again – and what you’ll see pictures of right here in the future – when shooting a chilly Rockies dawn on the Montana trip (while the rest of the country is sweltering!), or the warm smiles on a family tour anytime.

Happy snapping,
Dennis