Lenses | Alan Ross Photography

The Polarizing Filter – You Can’t Mimic It In Photoshop!

Nov 16, 2017Alan1 CommentLenses, Tech

A polarizing filter is one of the few filters that are equally effective with color imaging and with black-and-white. It can: • Minimize or eliminate reflections in glass, water or most any surface except metal. • Darken skies in color photos as well as in black-and-white • Cut through haze • Increase the saturation of…

How To Choose The Best Spot For Camera And Lens

Apr 9, 2013AlanLenses, Techcamera and lens, lenses, vantage point

I often write about visualization–the difference between what the camera sees (the literal) and what the photographer sees in his or her mind’s eye as the final print (the expressive.) The two may be quite similar or quite different, but being able to interpret what you see and picture the final image on paper is…

Filters – How to Choose and Use

Apr 6, 2012Alan2 CommentsLenses, Tech

Filters – How to Choose and Use Part 1 I think the thing I like most about working in black-and-white is the fact that it’s much more an expression of how I feel about a subject than a representation of “reality.” The world doesn’t exist in Black-and-White (my mother told me that…) so a…

Understanding Lenses – Depth of Field

Mar 16, 2012Alan1 CommentLenses, Tech

Where do you focus, and how does the aperture affect an image? In a certain way, the opening question should be the other way around! There is a law of physics that governs the relationship between shutter speed and aperture (f-stop). Shutter speeds are pretty easy to understand: 1/60 second is one half as much…

Choosing a Lens – How Does Focal Length Affect Your Image?

Jan 12, 2012Alan1 CommentLensesAlan Ross, Ansel Adams, Choosing a Lens, Focal Length, Photography

It comes as quite a surprise to a lot of the photographers I work with that the only thing that changes when you use a different focal-length lens is the cropping of your image! Optical aberrations aside, short focal-length, or “wide-angle,” lenses do not distort close subjects, and long focal-length, or telephoto, lenses do not…