Photography gear, tips and web development

Just married couple at sunset with an island in the background - North Myrtle Beach

Quick review of the Nikon Z6 II with my family and engagement portraits in Myrtle Beach

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I’ve been using Nikon DSLR cameras for about 13 years professionally, and even longer when it was just my hobby. I’m very set in my ways when it comes to the controls and feel of a classic Nikon camera. I was very hesitant to make any change. My main camera bodies have been the D850 and a couple of D750’s for a while now. I had some of my photography friends tell me how much they loved their mirrorless cameras, however I had a lot of concerns about switching. I will go over some of those below, and why I’ve …

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Real estate photography and 360 walkthrough for a classic house in Florence, SC

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I’m still pursuing my expansion into doing some real estate photography. I find it fun and relaxing, it’s similar to doing the detail shots and venue pictures at a wedding, which I always enjoy. My main problem is that I’m very particular and take too many pictures. It ends up taking me too much time for the typical prices people are willing to pay for real estate photography. I’m going to have to learn to be faster and more efficient at taking and post processing the pictures. This is the same thing I had to learn for weddings and family …

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Host an incredibly fast WordPress website using WordOps on AWS Lightsail CDN

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This is a really different post from my usual blogging about my photography. I actually did some web development long before I started my photography business, and it really helped me out when I started my business back in 2008. When I built my first site, I just used static html pages and had a separate blog running on WordPress. A number of years later, I switched my entire site to WordPress. With some page caching techniques, WordPress can be just as fast as static web pages. While you can find very cheap web hosting, for example around $5 a …

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Wedding review of the new Tamron SP 35mm F/1.4 Di USD Nikon Lens

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First of all, this isn’t a detailed technical review of the new Tamron SP 35mm f/1.4 lens. There are plenty of those out there already. This is my real-world experience with the lens, shooting a couple of weddings, bridal portraits and some family pictures. Since I’m stuck inside with the COVID-19 stay at home orders, I decided it was a good time to post my thoughts on this new lens. I will update this post if anything changes in my option after “hopefully” shooting many more weddings later this year. Some background on my use of prime lenses for weddings …

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Photographer’s review of the 2018 Mac mini 6 Core i7 – Do you need an eGPU?

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I occasionally like to write a blog post that is helpful to photographers in general. I recently decided to sell my 5k 27” iMac and upgrade to a 2018 Mac mini 6 Core i7. Until 2018 the Mac mini was really slow and not something a professional photographer with large Lightroom and Photoshop images would really want to use. However, things have changed significantly, with the latest 2018 models. The Mac mini is now a very powerful desktop class computer with some exceptions I will discuss below. What’s great about the new Mac mini 2018 for photographers The new 2018 Mac …

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Taking family pictures to the next level with all prime lenses like the Nikon 85mm f1.4G

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For several years now I’ve used my Nikon 85mm f1.4 prime lens primarily for weddings and engagement pictures. My other workhorse lens was the Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 lens. This is considered an excellent lens and it should be as much as it costs. It focuses very quickly, and it gives a fantastic range for family pictures. I could shoot the whole group and still get nice close up portraits of individuals and the kids. The longer I do photography the pickier I get about wanting a certain look to the pictures. I want that really soft Bokeh or out of focus background …

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Backup strategies for a professional photographer ver. 2

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A while back a wrote a post about my backup strategy, but I’ve changed my workflow significantly since then so I thought I needed to make an updated post.  This should be helpful to anyone trying to figure out how to keep the precious images, we as professional photographers take, safe from accidental loss or deletion.  Backup is one of the most important things a photographer needs to do. First of all, I forget who said it, but if you don’t have a digital image in at least 3 places you don’t really have it.  You should have 3 copies …

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