Love the symmetry of the ceiling light reflections on the De Soto. Planned?

Yes, all true.

Some art "experts" see his use of light as a "gimmicky" sales tool to collect $$$ from the unwashed masses. Not me, however. I used to live near Philadelphia and there was a Kincaid gallery fairly close. I'd go in there and be simply mesmerized for an hour or more. I never knew about his wife's hidden initial.

I downloaded your photo and looked at it closely. The depth of field is great and the wrinkles in the very dark pants on the front girl are clearly visible and the backpack colors and details are spectacular. I'm wondering if you have just made a great case for the Exposure To The Right (ETTR) technique as you did not lose any dark areas and didn't even come close to blowing out any highlights?? I'm very new to this as I just got my first DSLR (Nikon D7100). I'm still trying to figure out all this stuff. I did a fair amount of SLR film photography in my life, but for the last 15 years or so, I've been using digital point and shoots (Leica D-LUX 3 & Canon SX10). I've done quite a bit of basic Photoshop work, but now I'm shooting RAW+JPEG fine and I'm getting ready to make my decision on which RAW processor to use - probably LR Classic or CC. Someone on this forum posted a great decision tree chart as to which LR would be best. I just haven't had time to "just do it".

Your great photo is giving me inspiration and motivation. Thank you for sharing it!

Tom

So then, Kincaid is inside your head. I knew it!

Excellent! I see no gloom and I'm not expecting a banjo around the bend. My first thought was that it reminds me of a very understated Thomas Kincaid painting (I have to qualify that I mean this as praise, not an insult, as I know lots of people do not like his work). Compelling!

My experience has been a bit different than those stated above. I had RK surgery [radial keratotomy (sp)] in 1995 to correct the vision in both eyes after which I had great distance vision and had to use readers to see close. I have since developed cataracts in both eyes and had surgery on the right a few years back. The left cataract isn't too bad yet. Due to my RK, my doctor had to use his "best guess" as to what power lens to use. It turned out that, after the surgery, I am very nearsighted in the right eye and reasonably farsighted in the left. This works great for many people, but in my case, the right eye is very dominant and it really screws up my overall vision at distance if not corrected. So now, my distance correction is +1.00 left eye and -2.50 right eye and I need to wear +1.50 readers for close. I wear contacts and sometimes I leave my right eye uncorrected if I am working on close stuff inside, but outside I have to correct the right eye for distance.

Hey ebbote - Thanks. Also, I see we have the same taste in cars.

A good friend of mine is a retired Air Force photographer. When I was trying to figure out if I should spring for a DSLR, he sent me this photo. He took it with a D5000 (12MP) shot RAW with 70-300 EDIF VR. This shot was down sampled quite a bit from RAW to Jpeg. He took this shot while sitting in a small inflatable boat! He speaks very highly of this lens.

Hi everyone -- I'm not new to SLR photography, but totally new to DSLR's. Bought my first 35mm camera in 1969 - a Russian made Kalimar. Then, in 1974, I drove into NYC and bought my first "real" camera, a Nikkormat EL from Wall Street Camera. I gave the Nikkormat to my sister way back in the late 80's and thereafter I went to point and shoot. I went digital sometime in the early 2000's and most recently I've been switching back and forth between a Leica D-LUX 3 and Canon SX10is. I've been using PhotoShop for over 15 years, but my knowledge is limited to basic stuff like image adjustments and the tools. I haven't even had a need to learn about the layers, but I plan to learn more.

A few weeks back I was hunting the house for something unrelated to photography and came across my old camera bag which included my Nikon Nikon N90S (purchased in 1996) along with three lenses, including a 24-120mm AF-D, a 105mm Micro Nikkor AF-D and a 75-300mm AF. I was going to place all of these on my shelf of "antiquities", but for some reason I decided to check DSLR lens compatibility and, to my surprise, my two AF-D's were fully compatible with many new Nikon bodies and my 75-300 AF is mostly compatible (except for the Matrix metering, I think). I got this compatibility info from the Nikonian site and that site led me here. I've gotten a lot of good info from you guys already.

And, I just received my used D7100 body from B&H. My lenses work great! Looking forward to the daily articles. Thanks!