I tend to get a bit addicted to reading tutorials, or other guides on how to do things. This, of course, relates to my photography as well – and the internet is just so full of people who are great at what they do, and willing to share information on how to do things. So I figure I’ll put together a small list of ten guides that I’ve found really good, and which has helped me quite a lot with my photography.

#1 Strobist: Lightning 101
Perhaps this would better be described as a small book, rather than an article. An amazing work was put into this tutorial which teaches you everything you would need to know about lighting and how your camera flash works. It also explains how to get the most out of your flash.

#2 Photo.net – Portrait Photo guide and tips
Mostly a practical guide, but also a guide that covers a basic concept of what makes you a great portrait photographer. It also uses quite a bit of photos to make the points clearer. Generally a good read if you want to improve in your portrait skills.

#3 Digital Camera World – 44 Essential digital camera tips and tricks
This isn’t really an article that only guides you to shoot better pictures, but it is an article that helps your whole photography… It lists a lot of practical and great advice on how to manage different things around your photography, as well as some tips that actually can improve your picture-taking skills. If you’re new to photography, this list is great. It might even have some tips for experienced photographers.

#4 Cnet – 50 essential photography tips
I have a thing for easy-to-read toplist articles it seems. This is another one listing a bunch of good advice and tips for photographers. It also covers basic camera, and photography knowledge that might really help improve – or just teach you – a bunch of things. A good read for people who are newer to photography, but also contains at least a couple of tips and tricks that can help people who are old in the game.

#5 ePHOTOzine – Ten macro photography tips
Yet another toplist article. They really seem to catch my attention… I think it’s the short format, compact information kind of thing that gets me hooked. Anyway, it’s a bunch of good advice in this article if you like to shoot macro pictures, or if you’re thinking of giving it a go.

Edit: The first edit to this post, which is not really an article, but a YouTube-clip. Good advice all the same though…

I just wanted to take the moment to explain that the numbering of these articles are not really related to which are the best ones or not, it’s just to make it more structured. Also, this list is in no way exhaustive and there are most likely a massive amount of great photography articles out there that I have missed. If you have any good articles that should really be on this list, please leave them in a comment and I’ll include them… there’s nothing that says that this list can’t turn into a top 10, or 20, or something list.

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In relation to my most recent photo I decided to try to write this post, about a question that’s been on my mind for quite some time.

Ever since I started posting photos on a blog, I’ve been wrestling with the concept of photo manipulation. More specifically, to do, or not to do it. My dear wife have been forced to listen to my moral dilemmas every time I’ve been considering posting a more, or less, manipulated photo. If you search for photo manipulation on Google’s images search, you’ll get a selection of photos ranging from people manipulated into zombies, to photos of a very surreal and undefinable nature, or people just getting rainbow colored smoke from their cigarettes. So, the level of manipulation varies quite a bit.

The first impression of these images might be that they are really stunning work, which a lot of them are – images you might wish you had taken… wait a second. That’s the problem isn’t it. At least for me. This is where I always get stuck with the question “Is this really considered photography still?“. Hence, my big moral dilemma lies in, when does a photo stop being just a photo, and when does it go over to being a form of digital creation.

I think it’s fair to assume that most photographers today tamper with their photos in some way, the modern equivalent of the analog darkroom, adding contrast or brightness. But, even take my photo mentioned above (Forgotten), or any other photo of the same concept. Is this to be considered photo tampering, or photo manipulation?

What are your thoughts on this subject, do you manipulate your own photos, or do you just adjust the colors, the contrast, and the brightness. Or, do you aim to make stunning pictures with a bit of extra manipulation. And, do you think it’s right that manipulated photos ares still considered photography?

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I intend to start this blog off by talking a bit about the past year. Partly because I want to, and partly because it explains to people who might have followed me previously why I didn’t take so much pictures last year.

The year 2012
Last year started on a high note with a wedding, namely my own. However, things went from great to really darn crappy. In April my mother found out she had a brain tumor, of the bad kind – the really bad kind (gliablastoma multiforme). As with this type of cancer, the outlook was grim. Normally people diagnosed with it lives from around 6 months on the low end, to 2 years on the high end.
My mother had surgery in the middle of May, and everything went fine. She recovered very fast and things looked pretty good for about a month, when the x-ray showed that the tumor grown back. She started on chemotherapy. She handled the chemo really well with very little effect on her health, and it showed that it worked on the tumor too – it had began to shrink.
As my mother suffered from pretty severe scoliosis as well, her balance was not the best. So she fell a couple of times, one time so bad that she fractured her pelvic bone. Not a great thing for someone already weak from fighting a brain tumor, so her health overall got quite a bit worse. Still fighting though, she recovered quite well from this too and she had enough mobility to move around at home, sometimes needing help from her loving husband.
That was in August. In mid-November she went for MR, to check the tumors state. Early December she finally go the answer, that the tumor was again growing and the chemo no longer had any effect. The doctors decided to stop all treatment. This, of course, shattered my mothers spirit and also, I believe, partly her will to live. She was already very broken mentally and physically from both treatment and the disease itself. My mother died the day before new years, 2012, at the age of 63 – many years too early.
So, what started off as a wonderful year, ended with the loss of one of my best friends. Someone who will have a place in my heart forever, and who will be missed eternally.

The new beginning
Having someone so close to you getting so very ill means that it takes precedence over almost everything else in life. And, so it did with my dear mother. Which meant that apart from being with her as much as possible, and doing the necessary things in life, everything else was put aside. Including photography.
I’ve been thinking, for quite a long time, to get a new photoblog set up on a domain of it’s own. Seeing as the old blog was on a subdomain on an old site. For me this blog is more than just a practical move from the old domain, it’s also a new start. A new start of the interest in photography, a new start of the year, but also a way to carry on photography, something that my mother often praised me for (of course, I know that mothers do praise generously, but still). Also, it opens a new venue for me, one I’ve never dabble in before – blogging. I guess I will blog about a bit of everything, life, photography, and a combination of both. Hopefully I can provide some insight into either with experiences I might write about. So, for better or worse, it’s going to be a lot of new things.

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