19. Photography quiz 21. Jim’s eBooks 24. What's wrong with this picture? 27. Short and Sweet 29. Ask Jim
30. Photography tours 32. Student Showcase 38. Past issues 46. Subject index
On the cover: Repairing fishing nets, Hoi An, Vietnam. This page: rice terraces from a
drone, Lao Chai, Vietnam.
During my recent photo tour to Vietnam, a client who brought her drone asked me what I look for as I'm taking pictures from above. She felt challenged in choosing good compositions because, after all, the world is basically a compositional mess. When it comes to aerial landscapes, there are trees, hills, rocks, rivers, man-made structures, and expanses of dirt everywhere. It can be hard to make artistic sense of it all.
I told her that the essence of good composition comes down to one thing: Graphic design. And graphic design, fundamentally, is all about attractive lines. It could be repetive contours, S-curves, C-curves, dendritic patterns in a braided river, repetitive circular designs, or any other type of artistically pleasing shapes.
The picture of rice terraces from my drone on the preceding page is a perfect example. This image is all about design, i.e., repetitive lines with nice shapes. That's it. What I do is tease apart a scene and look for lines and shapes. I then choose the lens that fills the frame with the best part of what I'm seeing or, in the case of a drone, it may be necessary to adjust the altitude. This allows you to zoom in on a particularly attractive group of lines as in the rice terraces.
If I could only make a one one-word suggestion for photographers to focus on regarding good compositions, especially from a drone, it would be curves. More than anything else, curved lines make striking pictures. This is true for landscapes and so many other subjects such as the ultra modern church on page 7.
Jim Zuckerman
photos@jimzuckerman.com www.jimzuckerman.com
L i g h t e r
At some point in your life, if you're lucky (meaning you've been priveledged to grow old), it gets harder and harder to travel with heavy camera equipment. Lower back pain, sciatica, loss of muscle mass and strength, balance issues -- these physical problems and more get in the way of traveling with the gear you've used for decades that enabled you to take great images. At some point, we have to, begrudgingly, compromise. We used to think, "What if I need that super wide lens or that super telephoto." Now it's, "What if my backpack is so heavy that the pain starts to shoot down my leg." Photogra-
phy should be fun. It shouldn't be a painful experience. The question then becomes, "What pieces of equipment do I have to leave home when I travel?" If you're traveling domestically and driving a vehicle, carrying your gear isn't an issue. You can simply work from the car or camper. But if air travel is involved, you need to lighen your load. Here are my suggestions.
1. Tripods. The first item that has to be sacrificed is the tripod. They are usually large and heavy. Even the light weight travel tripods take up a lot of room and add pounds
to your gear. There are three alternatives to using a tripod should you be shooting at twilight, night, or in low light environments:
a. Carry a very small, lightweight support like the StandOne model, lower right. It folds up into a very small space, and you could even carry it in your pocket. It's low to the ground, but with an articulating LCD screen on your camera, you won't have to contort your body and neck to look into the viewfinder. If there is a table, railing, or low wall nearby, you can set up the camera easily and, in essence, have all the benefits of a sturdy tripod. This type of travel device won't firmly support a long lens, but for most lenses it works well.
b. Raise the ISO so you can use a fast enough shutter speed for sharp pictures. For example, the carnival in Venice image above was taken
at dawn. It was quite dark, and I was forced to raise the ISO to 8000 in order to use a shutter of 1/50th of a second. Note, as the width of a lens increase, i.e., say from 24mm to 14mm), the speed of the shutter can be reduced because movement isn't magnified as much. I shot this hand held with a 14mm lens.
Because noise is a problem with high ISO settings, you have to use Topaz DeNoise AI or
Topaz Photo AI in post-processing to mitigate the noise. It is extremely effective.
c. Bring only the ballhead from the tripod and use it all by itself. I learned to do this when I photographed the ancient cistern, below, in Istanbul. No tripods were allowed, yet the illumination was very dim. In order to get the depth of field needed for maximum sharpness, I needed a sturdy support. So, as pictured at right, I took the ballhead off the tripod and lay on the stone floor to take the shot. This was an 8-second exposure. The camera was perfectly rigid because I applied a continous downward pressure on it; that stabilized the body and lens. This same technique can work in any situation in which there is something to rest the smooth, flat base of the ballhead on. Even a wall or column can be used.
2. Extreme wide angle lens. Many photogra-
phers love super wide lenses, as do I. Some of them are very heavy, though. The Canon 11 - 24mm lens and the Sigma 14mm f/1.8 lens both weigh 2.6 pounds! I own (and love) the Sigma wide angle, but when it's added to my camera backpack I can definitely feel the difference in weight. When I was younger, I used
to carry everything all the time 'just in case' I might need it. That's why I have lower back issues. Now, I am more judicious in choosing my lenses. As much as I love the Sigma lens, I leave it home unless I know for sure I'll want to use it.
On my recent tour to Switzerland, I came across the remarkable ultra contemporary church below in Mogno, Switzerland. It seemed like this wild architecture begged to be captured with the widest lens possible. When I do bring the Sigma 14mm, I remove one lens from my backpack and leave it in the hotel to prevent too much pressure on my lower back and legs. When I'm not using the 14mm, it stays in the hotel room in my luggage.
The three go-to lenses I carry all the time are the 100-500mm zoom, the 24-105mm, and
the 16-35mm. Anything additional I carry for certain trips and certain subjects means I have to eliminate, even for a few hours, another lens. I am careful not to exacerbate the problems in my back.
3. Flash. I used to carry a flash with me all the time, but now I don't. I rarely use flash because I prefer available light. Sometimes fill flash is needed for outdoor portraits or even wildlife photographed in backlit situations, but now with the ability to lighten shadows in post-processing, flash really isn't necessary. So, I leave it home to save weight.
4. The camera case. Many photographers use cases like the Think Tank Navigator V2 Rolling Camera Case or the Lowe Pro Pro Trekker 450 AW II. Both of these have internal frames, wheels, and a pull handle plus super tough construction materials used for strength and durabil-
ity. These features are great, but they are heavy. The Think Tank unit weighs an incredible 10 pounds while the Lowe Pro model weight 6.25 pounds. This additional weight makes lifting your gear up and into the overhead compartments of airplanes especially daunting. If you're 25 years old, who cares? It's not a problem at all. But if your 75, it's a competely different story.
Also, these heavy-duty cases are not meant for carrying your gear when out in the field. You'd need another, lighter, camera backpack for that.
To save on these extra pounds, I use a Gura Gear backpack, the smaller one. This fits one camera and four lenses plus some accessories. When I have to negotiate airports, I use a lightweight roller bag (you can find these for under
5 pounds) into which I place the camera backpack, lower right. It fits perfectly. I use the outer pockets for a laptop. This allows me to roll my gear through the long corridors of airports without carrying all this weight on my back.
When I take a drone on a trip, I place its case on top of my rolling carry-on, lower left.
5. Extra camera body. Extra bodies offer insurance in case one of your cameras fail, and some people shoot with two bodies. But as you get older, this becomes an issue. The Nikon Z9, for example, adds 2.9 pounds (with the battery) tto your load. If you do want to have an extra body, pack it in your luggage, wrapped in clothes, and make sure you have good homeowners insurance that covers your gear.
6. The absolute bare minimum. A number of my clients have concluded that smart phones are so good now, and they take such great pictures, it only makes sense to leave all the heavy equipment home and travel with just the phones. After all, now they have 3 or 4 lenses ranging from an extreme wide angle to medium telephoto. They have built-in HDR, the exposures are virtually always perfect, you can edit them right on the phone, and you carry it with you at all times anyway even when you're not shooting.
All that is true, but the quality isn't as good as a digital SLR or a mirrorless camera.
Yes, but how often do you need ultimate sharpness? How often do you make large prints? The answer: Most likely almost never.
For a serious photographer, though, trading in Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fuji, or Olympus gear for an iPhone or Android is somewhat painful. So, if weight and volume is a serious consideration for you, and you are not quite ready to surren-
der to the aging process, let me suggest what you can travel with as a bare minimum. Compared to what you are used to, this will seem like carrying feathers.
You need one camera body, one telephoto zoom, and one wide angle zoom. These three things fit into a very small carrying case you can carry on one shoulder. Plus, of course, you'll want one extra battery and an extra memory card or two.
For myself, this would be a 100-500mm zoom and a 24-105mm zoom. 95% of what I shoot is covered by just these two lenses (note: I don't use a 24-70mm because the range is too limiting). In lieu of shooting with a wider angle lens, like a 14mm or 16mm -- I will do a pano. In huge interiors, like cathedrals, a vertical pano is similar to an ultra wide angle lens. For landscapes, like Austrian town of Going am Wilden Kaiser, above, I'll do a horizontal panorama. This includes the entire scene without seemingly pushing the elements in the picture further away as wide angle lenses do. §
OUT OF FOCUS FOREGROUNDS
Ihate out of focus foregrounds. They are visually annoying, distracting, unpleasant to look at, and unappealing. In the shot below, everything works except the blurred tree in the foreground It frames the wrought iron tricycle nicely, but it needs to be sharp. If you like blur so much, walk around wearing glasses with the wrong prescription. You'll be in heaven!
The comparison photo on page 11 illustrates the difference. This is how a picture like this is supposed to look. Sure, in photography there are myriad techniques to 'creatively' blur images, to abstract them, to even make photo-
graphs look like paintings. I've experimented for decades with this. But when you want to capture what you see in sharp detail, blurred elements in your pictures are acceptable for backgrounds but not for foregrounds.
Are there exceptions? The only one I can think of is when the blurred foreground is so soft and undefined that it is a haze of color. The tulip photo on page 13 illustrates how flowers growing between the lens and the subject were rendered so out of focus they are completely undefined. In fact, it's really impossible to make out what those elements actually are. To do this, I purposely used a long lens (400mm) plus the
Iceland Drone Tour
August 24 - September 2, 2026
largest aperture on the lens (f/4.5). In addition, I placed the telephoto lens two or three inches from the foreground flowers while I focused on the subject flower which was about 4 feet away. Doing all of these things guaranteed a total lack of definition in the foreground flowers. The haze of color compliments the sharp tulip.
To render foregrounds with sharpness while focusing on more distant elements, you would typically use a small lens aperture, a wider angle lens, and increase the distance between the camera and the foreground. Sometimes, though, that changes the composition in a way that doesnt work for you. In the shot of the tricycle, I used a medium telephoto lens for the compression effect, but that meant limited depth of field Given how close I was to the foreground tree, even at f/22 the image wouldn't have been tack sharp throughout the frame. Therefore, the only option in this case
was to use focus stacking.
Many modern cameras now have an automated focus stacking option in their menu. When choosing this technique, you select the number of frames the camera will take and then, once you focus on the immediate foreground (and that might be inches from the lens), the camera then takes a sequential series of images in which the focus changes from front to back. In post-processing, these frames are stacked so only the sharpest portions of each frame is used in the final composite. In this way, you can have complete depth of field at any lens aperture. I typicallly use f/8.
Focus stacking only works when the elements in the scene are not moving. For exmple, if wind is rustling the trees in a landscape, the leaves and branches won't be sharp in the final image. If you tried focus stacking on the picture
Bentonite Hills, Utah
April 17 - 22, 2026
Photo Tour
of the leopard, below right, so you could sharply render the grasses in the immediate foreground, it just wouldn't work because the cat was walking. That means there are many situations in which a photographer has no choice but to accept foregrounds that are less than sharp. That's just one of the compromises we have to make in photography.
I try to do everything possible, though, to hold focus on the foreground while focusing on the background. This includes:
1. Using the smallest lens aperture on the lens.
2. Moving back away from the foreground somewhat.
3. Using a wider focal length.
4. Using focus stacking when possible. §
S h o o t i n g t h r o u g h
G L A S S
Taking pictures through glass is not ideal, obviously. Even clean, optically pure glass degrades images to a certain degree, but if the glass is of a commercial grade and is less than clean, image quality suffers. Sometimes, though, there is simply no choice.
A case in point is the shot below. I took this picture from the 140th floor of the Burj Kalifa, the tallest building in the world (at this time). Ideally, when shooting through glass, the lens axis should be perpendicular to the
plane of the window. That produces maximum sharpness because the light travels through the least amount of glass. As soon as the camera is angled downward, the glass material starts distorting the image and sharpness is degraded.
In this situation, I had no choice but to angle the lens down toward the city of Dubai to get the shot. So, the only thing I could do to improve image quality was to use Topaz Sharpen AI in post-processing. In large measure, this brought back the quality that was lost by shooting through the glass window.
Another inherent problem when dealing with glass is reflections. I took the photo above from the observation deck on the 94th floor of the John Hancock Building in Chicago. It was evening, and the lights in the room were reflecting in the windows. If I stood back from the glass even a few inches, the unwanted reflections ruined every shot. The only way to circumvent the problem was to place the lens up against the surface of the glass. However, even this didn't eliminate every reflection because with the downward angle of the camera, there was a little gap between the surface of the window and the rim of the lens. This spacing was enough for the lights to make problematic reflections that showed up in every shot.
Knowing this was going to be an issue, I brought with me a mircrofiber cloth which can also be used for cleaning the front element of a lens.
In addition, I'll use the cloth for wiping the inside of the window so at least one surface of the glass is clean. To completely eliminate all reflections, I wrapped the cloth around the front rim of the lens as it was pressed up against the glass. This completely blocked the lights in the ceiling.
Using a rubber lens hood isn't essential, but if you have one it's a good idea to use it. The soft rubber protects both the window and the lens itself from potential scratches.
If you don't happen to have a microfiber cloth with you, use anything handy -- a scarf, a napkin, a glove, or even a baseball cap. Anything works if it is pliable and opaque. It has to cover the top and both sides of the lens because light can be getting in from any angle. §
Exotic Birds of Colombia
Sept. 23 to Oct. 3, 2026
Pantanal Photo Tour, Brazil
Jaguars in the wild, birds in flight, caiman, otters and more
Dec. 1 - 9, 2025
Hyacinth macaw in flight
Photography Quiz
1. The first decision you have to make regarding the exposure triangle when shooting any subject is:
a. The ISO
b. The lens aperture
c. The white balance
d. The shutter speed
2. AI is going to ruin photography.
a. True
b. False
3. On a histogram, spiking on the right means:
a. The highlights are blown
b. The highlights have lost all texture and detail
c. The highlights have become solid white
d. All of the above
e. None of the above
4. The advantage of medium and large format digital cameras over the 35mm size digital cameras is:
a. The medium and large format cameras are sharper
b. To make a print, the medium and large format cameras are enlarged less times
c. The 35mm size digital cameras show more dust
d. The 35mm size digital cameras are more contrasty
5. Which has greater depth of field: 14mm at f/1.8, or a 300mm at f/22 if both lenses are focused to 10 feet?
a. 14mm at f/1.8
b. 300mm at f/22
6. The complementary colors of RGB -- Red, Green, Blue -- are, respectively:
a. Magenta, Cyan, and Yellow
b. Yellow, magenta, and cyan
c. Cyan, yellow, magenta
d. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow
7. It's possible to take a series of images for a pano without a tripod.
a. True
b. False
8. You can increase depth of field by:
a. Using a smaller lens aperture
b. Moving back from the subject and refocusing on it
c. Use a wider angle lens
d. Move the subject further away from the background
e. All of the above
9. The complementary color of orange is:
a. Red
b. Yellow
c. On the color wheel, halfway between blue and cyan
d. On the color wheel, halfway between cyan and green
10. The sharpest aperture on a lens is typically:
a. One or two f/stops down from wide open
b The largest aperture on the lens
c. The smallest aperture on the lens
d. They are all equally sharp
Answers on page 48
UPCOMING PHOTO WORKSHOPS
FROG & REPTILE WORKSHOP in Kansas City
This is an exciting macro workshop in which you will be able to photograph about 40 species of colorful dart frogs and exotic reptiles. Held in a hotel conference room, Jim sets up natural backgrounds for outstanding photos. The photo at left shows a Jackson chameleon with the background replaced in Photoshop.
June 13 - 14, 2026
CARNIVAL IN VENICE
Photograph amazing costumes in a Medieval environment. We shoot inside a 16th century palace, in an iconic gondola, in a stunning bedroom with traditional Venetian decor, and at other great locations. The photography as well as the experience is phenomenal.
February 7 - 13, 2026
TEXAS BIRDS
Get up close and personal to many species of exotic and colorful birds. We shoot from a blind and get frame-filling shots of cardinals, green jays, crested caracaras, painted buntings, and more. Based in McAllen, Texas.
May 12 -15, 2027
eBooks
Click on any ebook to see inside
India Tiger Safari
May 20 - 30, 2026
What's Wrong with this Picture?
At first glance, there appears to be nothing wrong with this photo of Salzburg, Austria. The composition is fine, the sunset lighting accents the city nicely, and although it's a bit contrasty, the exposure is fine.
The problem, though, has to do with color. This is sunset lighting, but where are the golden tones we love so much about this time of day? They are absent. The reason this happened is because my white balance setting was mistakenly set to auto. Auto white balance works fine in many situations, but the reason I shoot all of my outdoor images on daylight white balance is specifically because of this situation. AWB is programmed to 'correct' the red/yellow coloration of sunrise and sunset in our pictures. Instead of recording the golden tones we see, AWB turns the colors into white light, similar to mid-day lighting. This is not what we want.
Sure, we can change the color palette in post-processing by simply moving the color temperature slider in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom to the right. This adds the warm tones back into the color palette of the image. But I like to see a true reproduction on the LCD screen of how my images are going to look when I open them in Photoshop. The only way to do that is to use daylight white balance (some camera manufacturers call it sunny) especially when photographing at sunrise and sunset.
Most photographers leave their white balance setting on auto all the time, thinking that the color balance will always be correct. As I've shown, that's not the best approach. AWB can also fail in other situations. For example, I photographed a famous theater in Venice, Italy, in which the lighting was more reddish than typical indoor tungsten bulbs. I tried AWB and the results were still too red. When I manually chose 2000K in the menu, I was able to bring the colors in the large theater back to what I saw with my eyes. So, the auto white balance setting didn't work well in this case. §
On Safari: Kenya
March 22 - 31, 2026
SHORT AND SWEET
1. When traveling with a drone, check online to see what the requirements are in each country before you leave home. Some countries are highly restrictive and don't allow drones at all while others don't even require you to have a license to fly. Know what you need to do and follow the rules to the letter.
3. When photographing snow, keep in mind it has to show texture and detail. Even slight overexposure will 'blow the highlights' and cause the histogram to spike on the right -- indicating a loss of detail. Even though snow is uniformly white, it's not solid white. That's why I never expose to the right on histograms.
2. Sometimes with macro photography backgrounds are more defined than you want. In Photoshop, you can select the area that needs to be softened and use Filter > Blur galleries > field blur to create bokeh. This is actually more optically realistic than Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.
4. When there are two subjects in a composition, they both should be in focus. This means you must do everything necessary for complete depth of field. If one of the subjects is even slightly soft, the picture won't work. I took this shot in Venice during carnival with f/16 and a 50mm focal length. §
Ethiopia Photo Tour
Primitive tribes Active volcano Rock-hewn churches Bizarre landscapes
January 5 - 18, 2027
ASK JIM
Every month, Jim answers a question from his online students, from people who participate in his tours and workshops, or from subscribers to this magazine. If you have a question you’d like Jim to answer, please drop him a note at photos@jimzuckerman.com.
Q: Jim . . . Can a photographer still make money in photography today? I see a lot of people offering prints for sale online and I wonder if they are having any success? There used to be many ways people made money with their camera, and I've wondered if it's still a viable way to make a living.
Steve Roberts, Sacramento, California
A: The most viable way to earn a good income with photography today, with very few exceptions, is by leading photo tours and conducting workshops. This includes online instruction. Commercial photography, such as shooting for advertising agencies and corporations, pays very well but the competition is fierce. Breaking into that field is very tough.
Trying to sell prints online is a one way ticket to poverty, although it's possible to make a living if you want to follow the art fair circuit. Art fairs are physically taxing and they require an initial investment in prints, frames, and display setups, but this is probably the easiest way to earn a decent income... but it's not really easy.
Stock agencies still sell a lot of images, but the price per sale has plummeted and the percentage of each sale the photographer gets has gone from 50 - 50 to, in many cases, 80 - 20 with the agency taking the lion's share. There's always weddings, and quite a few wedding photographers do well. But really, who wants to do that?
I'm sorry for the disappointing answer.
Art fair setup
Partial List of Photography Tours
2025 - 2027
CARNIVAL IN VENICE
PANTANAL, BRAZIL
Dec 2025
SCOTLAND'S PAST
May 2026
EXOTIC COLOMBIA BIRDS
Sept/Oct 2026
WINTER WILDLIFE WORKSHOP
Dec. 2026
Feb. 2026
May 2026
Oct. 2026
ETHIOPIA Jan. 2027
BENTONITE HILLS, UTAH
Apr 2026
ICELAND DRONE TOUR
Aug/Sept 2026
DUBAI & ABU
Nov. 2026
Feb. 2027
DHABI
GREAT GREY OWLS
INDIA TIGER SAFARI
INDONESIA WILDLIFE
WINTER WILDLIFE WORKSHOP
December 16 - 20
STUDENT SHOWCASE
Each month, Jim features one student who took beautiful and inspiring images on one or more of his photography tours or workshops. It’s really fascinating how photographers see and compose such different images even though we may go to the same places. Everyone takes great photographs on Jim’s trips.
Robert Carr, San Antonio, Texas.t Holland/Belgium photo tour, Balkins photo tour, Turkey photo tour
1. d 2. b 3. d 4. b 5. a 6. d 7. a 8. e 9. c 10. a Your score 90% - 100%: You could have been a pro 80% - 89%: Your glasses probably need a new prescription 70% - 79%: Just don’t quit your day job < 70%: You should really be using an iPhone
