Zambriskie Point is of my favorite areas to visit in Death Valley. I am awed by its magnificent landscape created by millions of years of erosion. When climb the steep path from the visitor entrance, you’re immediately greeted by the heavily textured, sandy colored alluvial fans.

This day as I walked up the path I could barely see two people standing on one of the flat areas in the distance. They looked like ants on the rocks. The juxtaposition of the tiny figures against the huge backdrop of these badlands was an interesting view.

My equipment was a Sony NEX-7 camera with a medium 18-200mm zoom lens. This is the image that I captured of the couple. The EXIF data tells me that the lens was zoomed to 44mm.
The above photo was the only one that I took of the couple. When I viewed the image in my “computer darkroom”, I wanted to see how the scene would look if I had used the zoom feature of the lens. I magically zoomed by cropping the original image. The result is that the couple and the rocky landscape show up in much more detail. Which one do you preferr?

While I like both images, I prefer the zoomed in version. This is an example of composing your image after the fact.

I’ve taken an awful lot of photos over the years – some were for professional purposes, some as obligatory family responsibilities (wedding, birthdays, etc.) and some (many, many, many) for my own pleasure.   In this last category are a group that I consider fun photos. I’ve put a large number of them into my snapshot gallery.   I’m happy to share them with you so please click here and I’ll take you to see them.

 
We’ve published books since 1978. However in 2012 we ceased our publishing activities to concentrate on picture-taking. Still, you may be interested in any of our previously published books about photography including these seven “Stay Focused Guides” for popular DSLR cameras.

Now we’re giving them away free to anyone who would like a copy. They are older but many of the techniques apply to most all DSLR or even the newer mirrorless cameras.

Although each title pertains to a specific model camera, most of the techniques apply to any advanced camera regardless of the make. So if you have a different model, download a PDF copy and follow along. I’m confident that you’ll pick up a few tips along the way.

And while you’re at it, why not Subscribe to our Newsletter! – to your right? We need only your name and email address.

Without further ado, here are the links for your free PDF copy of our Stay Focused Guides. Click on one of the links below to view a PDF version of a book. Then save the PDF to your desktop.

SFG for Canon XS in PDF format

SFG for Canon XSi in PDF format

SFG for Canon T2i in PDF format

SFG for Nikon D40 in PDF format

SFG for Nikon D60 in PDF format

SFG for Nikon D3000 in PDF format

SFG for Nikon D5000 in PDF format

We also have several other books that you may be interested in also available FREE:

28 Tips for Better Photographs in PDF format

National Parks – a tour in PDF format

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