Serge Ramelli http://photoserge.com/ He has free podcasts and video turotials mostly dealing with HDR.
Digital Photography School http://digital-photography-school.com/ Tips, techniques, and reviews. Free stuff and inexpensive ebooks.
British Journal of Photography http://www.bjp-online.com/
Luminous Landscape http://www.luminous-landscape.com/index.shtml Lots of technical and useful info. and reviews.
Martin Bailey http://www.martinbaileyphotography.com/ Nature and wildlife. Also has a podcast and is on Stitcher Radio.
Cambridge in Colour http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/ A learning community with daily/weekly/monthly contests (all for fun).Birds as art
Birds as Art Art Morris http://www.birdsasart.com/ Everything you wanted to know about bird photography (with Canon gear). I also have a couple of his books.
Vincent Versace http://oz2kansas.com/downloads/downloads.html Lots of B&W. I also have his book of the From Oz to Kansas.
Book The Art of Photography by Barnbaum.
Many Photoshop and Lightroom books and videos. Mostly from Scott Kelby and Martin Evening.
The Photographers Eye by Michael Freeman.
The Practice of Contemplative Photography by Andy Karr and Michael Wood.
Photographically Speaking by David Duchemin.
I also have recently purchased some actions from Tony Kuyper at http://goodlight.us/writing/luminositymasks/luminositymasks-1.html I am still in the learning stage with these but I like the results.
That is the short list, maybe a third of the whole. I am sure I left out a few that I visit regularly. If you have any favorites feel free to share!
Dana Middleton
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While observing the whale requires some degree of good fortune, this will not necessarily result in a good photograph. Again luck was on my side. The sun was not on the opposite of the whale, leaving me with a fluke in shadow, but somewhat from the side. Could the angle of the sun have been better? Probably, but I was happy with the lighting on this shot. Then there is the issue of your location on the boat. After a flash back to the movie, Titantic, I had positioned myself in the bow of the boat so I was able to shoot to either side of the boat with very little movement. Not so much luck there, but a bit of pre-planning.
Pre-planning also means having your camera settings set for the shot. Here are my settings: 1/320 @ f/8 and ISO was 800. I was shooting with a Nikon D300 and a 70-200 f/2.8 with a 1.7x teleconverter.
I had taken some test shots and then patiently waited for whales. The whales did not disappoint. It was difficult to judge distance on the flat water but I am guessing this whale was about 75 yards away. (I could be way off on that estimation though).
The whales would surface about three times and their backs produce graceful shallow arcs above the surface of the water. A tighter arc meant the whale was diving and that is when the tail would come completely out of the water, flatten out and go straight down. That is the shot I wanted and this is what I got.
On this trip, it seemed like the captain was putting me right onto the whales. There were about 50 people on the boat and I didn't see another DSLR camera. Maybe the captain thought I was serious and put me in the right spot or maybe I was just lucky. I planned ahead, prepared, and tried to control the things I could. The rest was luck.
The image was edited in Lightroom 3.
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