Pale Blue Dot is 1 Today!

Pale Blue Dot is 1 today. One year ago, I launched this little website and have been bringing you (almost) weekly blog entries and photos. I hope you've enjoyed them! It's a great feeling to have reached this milestone. If you have anything you'd like to see from this website, please comment section on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest.

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How To Choose A Cloud Back-Up Service

When it comes to cloud back-up options, there are an endless supply of options to choose from. How do we choose one from the many services offered? Are there differences? What are the costs (if any)? Are there storage limits? There are many other factors to consider too.

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Street Photography: Law, Ethics, Morals and Best Practices

When I got back from Morocco a few months back, another Instagram user posted photos of mine on Instagram. To be fair, this user did give me full credit but didn't seek permission ahead of time for using my photograph. So, I reached out to them to ask that they take the photo down (or compensate me for its use). The conversation took an interesting direction...

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The Trouble with Animal Selfies

The more you travel, the more you’ll  run into situations where, as a tourist, you are being offered services (or goods) that involve the exploitation of another. If you’re trying to travel responsibly and ethically (and you should be) - it’s a troubling, sad, and often frustrating part of travel

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Happy Holidays and a Very Happy New Year from Pale Blue Dot Photography

This week's blog post will be the final one for 2017. It's a time of year to unplug from email, websites and social media to decompress for a while. Happy Holidays and a Very Happy New Year from Pale Blue Dot Photography!

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Portrait Mode Falls Short

The best camera you can buy is the one you have with you. So often, that translates into a light-weight/multi-functional device - i.e. a smartphone camera. And smartphone cameras are improving every year - especially on the software end of the equation. With dual-lense cameras, you're able to get DSLR-like results from a 200g phone. However, we're not quite...

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Just Smash Your Camera To Bits

This week's news items take place a little closer to home (if you live in Canada). Artists, including photographers, own the images that they make. However, there is a limit to what a photographer is able to capture and protect. Here are two examples that occurred in Canada this past week...

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You Could Be Sued For Posting Your Own Image, But You're Probably Not Famous Enough

If you’re into sharing images online - read this to help you avoid trouble. When it comes to re-posting images that you didn’t make yourself, there are many subtleties and complexities. But they boil down to this...Click on the link to visit the website.

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Intellectual Property, Copyright Law & Monkey Selfies

A couple of years ago, a photographer was in the Indonesian rain-forest taking pictures of macaques. He setup his camera to enable the macaques to make their own pictures and then he was sued by the monkey for ownership of the photos.

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Winter's Coming

So how’s the first week of daylight saving time treating you? I have to admit, it’s kicking my ass this time around. I’m not getting accustom to the time change at all. But it brings to mind something salient to photography. With less available light, and more hours of darkness throughout the season...

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Road Grids + Astronomy = Photographic Opportunity

Having just come back from Morocco, I have a renewed appreciation for the way older cities are laid out. The narrow, winding, organic layout of the streets lend older cities a lot of character, charm and idiosyncrasies. Many North American cities are laid out in a grid. While this can make a city easier to navigate and for traffic to flow, it can also be a little bland...sometimes.

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A Day Late and A Dollar Short...

One of the biggest celestial events of the year occurred in North America a couple of days ago, and not a word on my blog about it...until now.

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PSA: Know the Signs of GAS

Gear Acquisition Syndrome (or GAS for short) has been afflicting the photography community since its inception, and today, with the dominance of digital photography, it’s only getting worse.

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You Need to Get Up, Get Out and Make Pictures

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the importance of photographing in the moment. You can never know when something that you once considered an institution will suddenly close it’s doors, never to return. This sort of thing has been happening in our city (and around the world) for a lot longer...

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Feeling Thirsty? Let’s Talk About Exposure...

Let’s say a full cup of water is an ‘ideally’ exposed photograph (that is to say not ‘too dark’ or not ‘too bright’) and you, as the photographer need to choose how you want to fill that cup. An exposure, technically speaking, will be influenced by 4 powerful factors...

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The Single Most Important Component of a Camera

Last week, I was asked to photograph an object in the spur-of-the-moment. Well… to be honest, I had forgotten that I had committed to making this photograph and when the day arrived, I had nothing but my smartphone with me...

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