According to UXOEOD, “Correct Composition IS important”.

What the HELL is “Correct Composition”? There is better composition; there is worse composition; but there is no correct composition. The Rule of Thirds, having the subject coming into the frame rather than exiting, using leading lines, not having the horizon in the vertical center of the frame; all ideas we should become aware of and try to utilize, but I have sat through entirely too many camera club competitions where the “judge” so slavishly worked their way through their checklist of “Composition Rules”, that they were not seeing the photographs they were so busily passing judgement on!

We need to view the visions others are sharing with us with an appreciation that it is their vision, and not with the thought that “I would have done it this way!”

I once brought a well exposed, nicely composed transparency of a beautiful blue mountain lake fringed by tall Douglas Firs and the peak of a mountain, to a club competition, only to have the reviewer remark how he would have liked a red canoe in a corner of the lake. I took revenge by imagining this jerk toting his red canoe the twenty miles from the trailhead and the vertical mile up the mountain to put it in that lake. The lesson is that we do the photographer and ourselves a disservice if we put too many of our own expectations on someone else’s work.

That being said, a good photograph will tell a story, and good composition will help it tell that story.

Photography is an art form. When it comes to paintings, I do not care for Picasso or Dali, but I love Monet. They were all great artists! Whether you like what HDR can do for a picture or not, it is a legitimate artistic/photographic technique!

Ansel Adams was a great manipulator in the dark room, that is where his true genius lay. And he used every technique he could find, dodging, burning, push/pull processing, and invented the Zone System in an effort to get a little more out of his image. I feel confident Ansel Adams would have embraced HDR!

Two decades ago, as I dabbled in Cibachrome printing, I tried desperately to bring more to my prints by using black and white negative masks to reduce unwanted contrast. Today, I am trying to add HDR to my repertoire so that I too may become a better artist/photographer!

Interesting photos. I assume the people are tourists.

Strange to note that this gift to the Fuhrer from the Nazi Party was little used because Hitler was afraid of heights!

The 18-35 mm is a specialty lens. Mine dates back to my film days, but when I recently bought a new body I opted for full frame, in part to be able to once again make use of my 18-35 mm lens. I've used mine most often taking pictures of social functions. Among other things, it allows me to take photos of young people dancing by getting in close where I'm not blocked out by other dancers. I have used it for landscapes to good effect as well. I'm excited to be able to once again make full use of it.

These are excellent, high quality images, justifying a professional price. First ask your self, "what would I charge to create these images on assignment?" You know the time and effort it requires to create them; now think in terms of professional compensation - something in that $65.00 to $100.00 per hour price.

Now find a professional house to make the prints - someone you can trust to follow your instructions. And determine what they will cost to do the printing (there may need to be remakes -discuss that with the chosen printer) and add it all up! Now, assuming you know your client, this may be more than they are willing or able to pay, that's OK, but now you have a feel for the real value. But you must retain control of the actual printing process. If you are at a loss to find a quality print house. ask them who they would use and go talk to them! You could agree to utilize their printer and pass the cost through to them, BUT YOU MUST RETAIN CONTROL OF THE PRINTING PROCESS!

Beautiful work. Wish I had done it! Good luck.

There is good information above, though I am not in complete agreement with all of it. First, my experience with quilters (I share my bed with one) is that they want it shown in its full glory, the whole thing flat and all at once. That means hanging it. (Laying it on the floor of that garage would make it very hard to photograph straight on, and just suggesting that you might lay them on a garage floor could get you seriously hurt.

You want your camera on a tripod set exactly at the quilt mid height, centered with no offset or skew! This will minimize the post processing adjustments to make it appear square. Lighting is crucial - it must be even over the entire quilt; if you can find an outdoor north facing wall on a windless day, that might be your best bet. (I used that method to photograph some artwork for a client. The other way was in the studio with four strobes with shoot through umbrellas or soft boxes set at 45 degrees from the quilt surface - we used cross polarization for critical artwork. Of course that was back in the film days, so now you could use other light sources if you corrected white balance carefully, and made sure to have even soft lighting over the entire quilt surface.)

You will need the means of hanging the quilts (a quilting club might have that covered, otherwise a background system would work), a good ladder system to get to everything, a tall enough tripod, and some willing labor to help get everything in position.

Indoors you might end up with a moderate wide angle lens, but pushing back and using a short telephoto, if practical, would minimize distortion.

I would certainly take the advice of Bozsik and get pictures of the labels, and the reverse sides whenever appropriate.

The courses where I photograph provide the photographer with a cart so he can follow around and get pictures on all the holes. The photographer is able to get around much faster than the golfers. I shoot each foursome, posed, and EVERY golfer taking a shot or two. These shots are more important than loading/unloading cars and having breakfast, etc., so I only get a shots of a few golfers doing those activities. Don't forget awards ceremonies!

It's an easy, fun gig.

Just returned from a wedding in California (Yosemite). I took D800, 17-35mm, 24-85mm, 70-300mm (compromise for space - it's much more compact than my 70-200 f/2.8), SB 800, Dolica CF tripod in case, plus accessories toiletries, sweater, etc. in standard backpack and stored it under seat. No problems on United. Protected spare lenses & flash in lens cases, everything with sweater. Backpack had padding designed for laptop. Biggest drawback was weight and fact that there was little room for my size 11 1/2s along side backpack under seat. Had a blast! You do the same.

YES!!

No, that will not help the color problem at all.

And turning off the lights as per DavidRB leaves everyone in the dark.

Shooting RAW and correcting the color cast in post processing is OK as long as your light is uniform in color. I suspect it is not - I know it is not near those windows.

If your flash puts out enough light, you can overwhelm the florescent lights. (You may need to block the window light to prevent that from overwhelming the flash.) I would determine the exposure needed to photograph your subject(s) by the ambient light in the room and choose an aperture and shutter speed combination to underexpose the scene by two stops and then illuminate the scene by flash to make your exposure.

If you don't have sufficient flash power, then an FLD filter on your lens will get you much closer to what your eye sees. But if you want to use your flash with an FLD filter on the lens, you need gel it as suggested earlier. Again you have to do something about the light from the windows (they can also be "gelled", or simply block the light somehow, or only photograph after dark) or some scenes will be lit in different areas by different color lights, and that is almost impossible to correct! Your object is to get the light as uniform as possible, both in color and intensity.

You might need to order your gels and filters from a source like B&H. They used to be pretty easy to get in any moderate size city, but it could be much tougher today.

Once you have a scene with uniform color lighting, you can correct the color with your White Balance, either in camera, or in post processing.

I've gone backpacking with a "substantial" tripod supported by a strap attached to the tripod top & bottom, plus a monopod. My knees suffered, but I had both a monopod plus a tripod for my photography. Your tripod is easily carried by a single strap or on your backpack, et al. Bottom line, take your tripod and use it!

What was the reasoning behind the FAA restricting the airspace all around the BP Horizon Oil spill?

If shooting for yourself or for publication and not for inclusion in an advertisement, as long as your subject is in a public space, it is a 1st Amendment issue - Freedom of the Press. And that does not mean that you have to be a credentialed news photographer, you can be free lance, and never have been published. This is why the paparazzi get away with so much. It is possible that someone will sue anyway, they can sue for almost any reason, but it does mean they are very very unlikely to win.

I would be very careful about photographing young children without discussing it with their parents, however, as everyone is now paranoid.

Also, photographing the police in action can get you into difficulty, particularly at a demonstration. A lot of people attempting to use their camera at Occupy events found this out the hard way. Again, the photographer is in the right photographing these events, but that doesn't do you much good if you are in jail and your camera has been confiscated. The police make up their own rules and it is very difficult to get them reversed in court. It's still a 1st Amendment issue, but you may have to take it all the way to the Supreme Court!

If you smile, stop photographing if asked, and don't get pushy, you will probably never be hassled.

Reversing Citizens United – getting big money out of politics – is the most important issue facing our country. To reclaim our representative government from the Oligarchy we must neutralize their ability to kidnap the discourse and drown out all dissenting opinions!

Ansel Adams, David Muench, and Galen Rowell, because of their amazing landscapes, because they had the patience and single mindedness to do what I can not. Henri Cartier-Bresson for his immaculate timing. A friend of mine, Ray Yaros, from New Jersey, because he keeps trying to do it as well as, or maybe a tiny bit better than all the above. And everyone who ever produces an image that makes me go "Oooooh"!