A Fanless Thunderbolt 5-Compatible SSD: My Time With the ORICO X50 Enclosure
Thunderbolt 5 is finally reaching real-world machines, and the enclosure market is catching up. The ORICO X50 is a new fanless option supporting TB5 compatibility, and after testing it out, I think it’s worth checking out.
The 7 Sharpest 85mm Lenses Tested: One Winner, Zero Easy Answers
Picking the sharpest 85mm lens on the market is harder than it sounds, because the gap between the top options is razor thin. Seven lenses made Christopher Frost's final cut, spanning a wide range of prices and maximum apertures, and the differences between them required serious pixel peeping to untangle.
Is the Free Adobe Alternative Ecosystem Finally Complete?
Adobe's subscription model has pushed a lot of creators to look for alternatives, and for years the honest answer was that nothing quite covered everything. That gap is now closing fast.
The Habit That's Making You Miss Shots While Traveling
Traveling forces hard decisions about what to photograph and when, and that pressure reveals habits you might not notice at home. Courtney Victoria's experiment in New Zealand puts one of the most common creative blocks in landscape photography under a microscope: the tendency to hesitate until the moment is gone.
Five Editing Mistakes That Make Your Bird Photos Look Fake
Bird photos that look fake, plastic, or AI-generated usually aren't a shooting problem. They're an editing problem, and the fix starts with recognizing exactly where things go wrong.
Master Swan Photography With These 4 Top Tips
Pack your telephoto zoom when you're heading out as you'll be able to get close to the swans without having to get your feet wet. It's also handy for photographing them as they fly off or for capturing the splash as they come into land.
For particularly bright days you'll find a polariser filter useful as it will reduce the glare and reflections you get from the water.
If you're going out with the family when photography is not necessarily your main focus, use your smartphone to capture photos of kids feeding the ducks and shots of the swans closer to the bank.
If you're in a particularly rural place where not many people venture and a swan sees you it probably means you won't be seeing it for much longer! But if you're at your local park where people often feed them you'll find it much easier to snap a swan's portrait. Nature reserves do have public hides you can sit and wait in but as we've said, if you're in a place where the swans are used to seeing people you can leave your camouflage gear at home. Early mornings and later afternoon until the sun goes down are the best times for catching swans which is good news if you're hoping to catch them in flight as there will be less contrast between the swans and sky which will give you a more balanced exposure.
3. Can I Capture A Shot Of Them In-Flight?
Swans are big enough to focus on and slow enough to keep up with as they pass you by so they're perfect subjects for photographers who haven't photographed birds in flight before. A good point to remember is swans turn into the wind when they're about to take off so keep an eye out for that. If the sun's shining in the same direction as the wind's blowing position yourself with the sun behind you for a front-lit shot of a swan taking off. If you're parallel to the swan make sure you press the shutter when the wings are fully up or down so you can see the head.
If you spot a flock or single swan in the sky don't frame up with them in the centre as you'll probably miss the shot or if you do manage to capture them, they'll look a little squashed. Instead, move so they're to the edge of the frame giving them space to, essentially, fly into. By doing this you'll also be able to use the centre focusing point. Make sure you're on continuous focus and get the focus locked on the bird straight away, even if this does mean missing some of the action.
If you want to freeze motion try a shutter speed of around 1/500sec but if you prefer to blur the motion of the wings try 1/30sec. Keep an eye on your exposure as a bright sky and a white bird may mean your camera underexposes the shot. Check regularly to see if you need to overexpose by one or two stops.
If capturing a swan in-flight seems a little daunting there are plenty of other shots to try closer to the ground. Try shooting the reflections of the swans on the pond or focus on just the head, blurring the background so you can really pick out the detail and colours of the beak and face. Get the family involved and shoot some portraits of them feeding or watching the swans or how about a shot of the swans out of the water on the bank? If you do this, be aware of your surroundings as you don't want parked cars and other objects spoiling your shot.
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Take The 'Old Vs New' Photography Challenge
The idea of shooting old and new can be applied to various subject matter but one of the easiest ways to find subjects which can be used to interpret the theme is in the city. In most cities, new buildings are going up around older structures all of the time so it won't take you long to find a vantage point that gives you the chance to capture something new and something old in one frame.
Out in your town/city, it's probably easier to look at buildings as a whole first, searching for old structures that stand next to or across from new structures made of metal and glass. How about looking for new shops in old buildings such as the stalls in Camden's stable market? Or looking for building sites where new buildings are getting created in front of structures that have stood for a long time?
After photographing whole buildings look a little closer for reflections of old brick-work in glass or new signs sat next to or even on older structures. You could try having a look through archives or even your relatives' photo albums to see if you can find shots of buildings you can go and re-create now and sit them alongside each other to show how much/little it's changed.
Keep It Simple
Try to eliminate as much of what's surrounding your old and new items as possible. This means cropping in with your lens or using your editing software to remove some of the distracting objects once you're back at your computer.
What Else Is There To Photograph?
- People - Look for young and old people, a grandparent sat with their grandchildren for example.
- Vehicles - Look for an older car sat in a line of more modern models or how about shooting a scrap yard with the piles of old, rusted cars and the employee's newer cars out the front? Don't enter the scrap yard though, just shoot from the road.
- Technology - Try shooting someone sat talking on a smartphone with an old fashioned telephone in the background. If you have an old games console in your loft, get it out and try a few still life shots of it next to a Playstation.
You've read the technique now share your related photos for the chance to win prizes: Daily Forum Competition
What 'Stops of Light' Means (And Why Photographers Won't Shut Up About It)
If you have spent any time reading about photography, you have encountered the word "stop" used in a way that makes no apparent sense. A lens is "two stops faster." A photo is "one stop underexposed." Image stabilization gives you "five stops of compensation." Somebody on a forum says they "opened up a stop and a half" and everyone nods like that means something.