This weeks highlights include:

• Making Buildings stand up straight

• Stock Photographs /micro stock

• Filters and the Digital Camera

• The Law and Wild Plants

• Quick Shorts - Flash

• Tamron Lens Price Comparison and Tamron Codes defined

• Places you can go and Photograph Wild Plants within the UK

• More, more,  more ........

This weeks photography technique is looking at perspective with particular emphasis on buildings. You will have noticed that when we photograph buildings from up close they have a tendency to look as if they are sloping backwards and perspectives can get corrupted. We explore here, illustrated with photos, how to make buildings stand up straight. Read more ..........

Once you have your perfect building photograph standing to attention maybe you might like to consider putting it with a Stock Picture Library. We all know photography is not cheap, we need new lenses, the next camera and if we want to travel around the world taking photos it would be nice if someone else was contributing. Stock photographs are used widely in advertisements, travel catalogues and for a wide variety of other uses and the quality images sitting idle on your computer disk could be earning their keep. We take a look at Stock Photography, explain what it is and why Micro Stock is different, some of the players, how it works, the different licensing types, and how you might go about finding one to market your photographs. Read more .......

Stock Photography is the licensing of rights to the reproduction of your photos for specific uses for a fee. There are many different agencies in the marketplace some specialising in specific topics, such as nature, farming, marine life and there are even more of a general nature taking a little bit of everything. There are different types of licences from Rights Managed through to Royalty Free (not FREE from payment) and each one commands a different range of fees. In this article we are specifically looking at the Rights Managed Licence in detail, giving details of what it is, what the image might be used for, who uses them, what fees are likely to be earned, and more. For a more in depth look click here ........

Taking pictures of buildings invariably involves sky, to get the right exposure between building and sky can be a challenge. You could take the picture blow the highlights and put one in later in the editing process or you could try and correct it at point of capture by using a filter. Filters on digital cameras - no surely not - well you may have thought that using filters was a thing of the past, as we can do so much in camera and in editing, however they still have both a part to play when we are taking photos and after in editing. 

Filters and the Digital Camera takes a look at both filters that you can put on your lens, such as a polariser and grads, together with filters for Black and White and other uses. We also look at filters available to you within the inbuilt editing facilities of some of the Nikon cameras like the D80 and D300 and what can be done using Capture NX.

Last week we introduced you to a new group of courses called 'Quick Shorts' looking at how you can have a 3 hour guide to your Nikon Camera. We continue this week looking at a similar Quick Short on Flash. As is common with all Quick Shorts we look in particular at the camera and flash unit you have and the particular need you have to use flash at that time without going into all the possibilities that would be covered on our normal Day course. Within the Quick Short there is no time for using models, if you want to use models then you will need to come on one of our day courses for this. To see more details on this course read here.

Over the last couple of weeks we have been reporting on what the abbreviated codes mean on lenses together with price comparisons across suppliers. So far we have looked at Nikon Lenses and Prices and Sigma Nikon Fit lenses with price comparisons. To continue this theme this week it is the turn of the third popular brand of lenses for photographers, Tamron. Again our report concentrates on those lenses which fit the Nikon DSLR's and again our price comparison report covers all available lenses we are aware or and also identifies those lenses which include motors and therefore will work with the D40, D40x and D60.

In the next part of our legal series, this week we cover The Law and Wild Plants.  Read more .........

Amongst our locations this week we have done another in our series of Where to Photograph......., and this time it's the turn of UK Wild Plants.  We have added an extra page to the Wildlife Reference section which covers not only our new County List and Alpha List we have created but also other web links where you can find details on places to photograph Wild Plants in the UK. Most of the places within this list are Nature Reserves or similar places where on a visit you are likely to see them and mainly in England but over the coming weeks we will try to add more including places in Wales and Scotland. As with the previous lists we have tried to keep the same common layout so within the first column some of the places are linked to pages, within our Locations section, that have more fuller descriptions of what you can see. See here for UK Wild Plants ......

Remember we are currently in the middle of the Snowdrop season with many places around the country opening especially for this event. Some of the sites which only open for this picturesque winter extravaganza will be closing their gates to visitors at the beginning of March, so if you haven't already done so then it might be worth getting out with your camera and taking some snowdrop carpets. As well as our Location guide on Snowdrop Valley, this week we have compiled a small list of places to help you identify where you might want to go. Click here to find out Where to Photograph Snowdrops.

If you fancy using a train or do then how would you like to find out how to regularly save up to a third of the price without having to book months ahead, join special schemes but just identify your route and book it on the internet. We saw an article elsewhere and decided to research it and share this with you. Cutting the Cost of  Rail Travel reports on what we found. Read more........

In the News This Week

New Firmware for D300. Nikon has announced that it has issued a Firmware Update for it's D300 DSLR. Version 1.02 updates firmware 'A' in order to get over a problem of vertical banding which appears in images captured when the shutter speed is slower than eight seconds. To get this go to www.nikon.co.uk and see the customer support section.

New Lenses from Sigma. Sigma have launched new versions of two of their 70-300mm lens with a built in motor so that it can be used with the Nikon D40, D40x and D60 cameras. The lenses are the 70-300mm f4-5.6 APO DG Macro lens and the 70-300mm f4-5.6 DG Macro. See our Price Comparison for details on where you might be able to get it and at what price. We actually picked these up in our study last week ahead of the press release.

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day 2008 was announced this week and will be taking place on April 27th this year. Pinhole photographers from around the world are invited to take a picture with a pinhole camera during the 24 hours on that day. 2,943 photographers took part last year from 68 countries. You don't need a dedicated pinhole camera, see their website for details on how you can take part. We will also be running an article soon on how to take pinhole pictures on many of the DSLR cameras.

Adobe CS3 - Update. Adobe have announced they are to discontinue its stock photo service through its CS3 software on April 1st, after it wasn't used as much as they anticipated. After March 3rd users will no longer be able to search for images using Adobe Bridge. They have an uninstaller to remove the Adobe Stock software from Bridge available from their website. For more details see here........

Apple have just released Aperture 2 which features improved interface, faster browsing, enhanced image processing over 100 new features that make it faster, easier to use and more powerful. It introduces new imaging tools for highlight recovery, colour vibrancy, local contrast definition, soft-edged retouching, vignetting and RAW fine-tuning. Its also at a new price of £129.

DxO Optics Pro v5 has been updated to support the Nikon D3 and a selection of Nikon Lenses. See here for more details ......

NEW Photography Show announced for 2009. Today saw the announcement of a New Photography show to come to London in June 2009. It will be called Exposure 09 and is aimed at photography enthusiasts and they will be targeting all levels of users. Their press release states that they want to cover digital photography technology from cameras on mobile phones through compacts to DSLR. They hope that visitors will be able to see everything from cameras, that capture images, through to software and printers from exhibitors as well as having action arenas providing entertainment and photo opportunities, product test-drive areas, celebrity photographers giving talks and demonstrations as well as theatres presenting the latest innovations and tutorial sessions and of course lots of buying opportunities. At the moment they are recruiting exhibitors. This is unlikely to be of as much interest to serious photographers as Focus on Imaging, and as you know this years show is on from 24th February- 27th February. Next week we hope to have a preview of items you could see.

Photo Sells for $3.4million. Photography Prints are still selling at auction for large values. The latest to break the records was a photograph by Richard Prince which sold at Sotheby's in New York for $3.4million (£1.73million) in January this year. He photographed sections of Marlboro cigarette adverts and enlarged them to really large sizes. This particular photo measured 100 x 66 inches and was one of an edition to two, plus one artists proof. The previous record was for a photograph by Andreas Gursky (a German photographer) which sold at Sotheby's London last year (Feb 2007) for £1.7million ($3.3million). So how much is your best photography worth!