Phaim (fāme) — Larry Becker’s Blog

If you’re a shooter and you’ve been to any photography related trade show, you’ve seen LensBabys. They’re a very cool way to create artistic zoom blur effects in camera. Photographers love them and with good reason. More about that in a minute…
I have always been at least a bit of a shutter bug. Not crazy-obsessed. [...]

Some professional photographers who have migrated to digital from film, somehow think that Photoshop modifications are “cheating” or make things “too easy.” These are the same people who really don’t have a big problem with shooters who spent a lot of time in the old chemical darkrooms. For the record, Ansel Adams spent quite a [...]

Adobe (and other software companies) have research that suggests a large number of customers usually skip an upgrade option now and then. In fact, just about every time there has been an upgrade available for Photoshop, I’ve personally received emails asking NAPP to please keep teaching stuff that will work on the previous version. Truth [...]

Lately I’ve been studying the work of well-known, contemporary photographers and designers and there’s been a side-effect that I wanted to share.
I have enjoyed NAPP’s Photoshop training since the beginning, and the 1-day Photoshop seminars before that, long before I was NAPP’s Exec Director. And over the years, Scott, Dave, Matt and countless columnists and [...]

There’s no question that Photoshop CS5 is an absolutely huge release and with more than 100 improvements to the software, it will have an enormous impact on the photographic community! Last Monday was Adobe’s official announcement and at the office we spent all week producing 2, 1-hour long, live webcasts each day! Now, these weren’t [...]

As the Exec Director of The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), my biggest gig all year is Photoshop World. This week it’s in Orlando and I’m just wrapping up a few work-related things before I head out. — By the way, if you’re in central Florida, day two and three of the Expo are [...]

I’ve always known that having a model release was necessary if I planned to sell a photo to a magazine, but lots of people just have a verbal agreement with their models for all kinds of things like company pictures (where the company plans to use the images for publicity), stock photography, or even pictures [...]

There are a handful of things I’ve learned, mostly from Scott, about capturing the sharpest possible image. Today I’m talking about the technique. Some other time I’ll get into things like fast glass, strobes, VR or IS lenses, and other tech things that influence sharpness.
A steady surface (like a tripod)
No matter how steady-handed you might [...]

Cameras see things the human eye misses. Sometimes it’s because the (daylight adjusted) flash or even actual daylight, working in combination with the camera’s ability to see light outside the normal human visual spectrum, results in capturing things we never saw in the first place. Frequently these invisible things turn out to be skin irregularities. [...]

Adobe Photoshop turns 20 Thursday and Adobe’s throwing a party. The tickets are all sold but you can watch it online as it happens. Scott covered it pretty completely on his blog here, complete with links to the official webcast page. It’s sure to be a blast, complete with entertainment and Photoshop training from the [...]