Thanks, Morgan. I don't have any issue with registering drones because now the hobbyists have to register theirs. My objection was and still is, that the FAA singled out people who use their drones commercially. I was a REALTOR and real estate photographer and the drone completely changed the way I did aerial photography.

I'm sorry, but this is my considered opinion about drones. I have owned 3 over the years, from before the FAA to after. The first year the FAA tried to figure out what to do about drones, they treated them like actual aircraft, and to be able to fly a drone, you had to apply for a Section 333 Waiver. In those days, drone owners hired lawyers to write the application, so they would have an attorney on board to a file a lawsuit if the FAA disapproved their app. That first 6 months was tough. The FAA had no idea how to handle so many applications. The actual waiver requests were available for public review on their website. Approval took 4 or 5 months, but you could see the waiver request and the approval process online. By the time June rolled around, I had read so many waiver requests that I knew I didn't need an attorney to write mine, so I put together all the elements of the request I thought I needed and sent mine it. In late September that year, they sent me a notice they had approved mine. It didn't matter a whit to me because I had been using mine for a several months to photograph real estate properties for my fellow agents. Radio controlled model airplanes had been used for many years. Now, because the FAA did not know how to handle drones, they felt they needed to regulate it to death. They decided all drone operators take a test to prove they can do what? operate a model aircraft with a camera? Well I'm sorry, but I will go through that make-pretend "I'm a real pilot" nonsense just as soon as they level the playing field and require the hobbyist standing next to me, doing the same things I'm doing, and get a pseudo-pilot license. End of rant...

This should help, Vicky. Crazy settings, but it always works.

Attached file:
(Download)

Attached file:
(Download)

A wedding photographer needs to carry 2 cameras, one with a 50mm or 85mm f-1.8 and the other with a 70-200mm f-2.8 to get past the crowd.

Phil Steele has an excellent courses that are reasonably priced that will cover layers, portrait retouching, changing backgrounds etc. https://steeletraining.com/index.htm?gclid=Cj0KCQjwh6XmBRDRARIsAKNInDGNIjK7_Hg6G0O5GHQpFuKjDQvHubZKN_jQA-eu7yik7dUNsbyIh-0aAlnwEALw_wcB

Hi Paul,
The suggestions to use a tripod are sound, for most any photography.
Below is an illustration of the "Sunny 16 Rule," that I have been using for a long time.
"Photographing the Moon
Posted: 15 Mar 2016 11:48 PM PDT
Darn, I missed the last eclipse of a full moon. Oh well, now I have to wait for the next one. To be sure I don’t miss it the next time, I am arming myself with this catalog of lunar eclipses from NASA.
I’ve photographed the moon many times—and one eclipse in 2008. I prepared this article to give you an idea of how to photograph an eclipse, but now it’s not necessary.
I have photographed the moon both on a regular night with a full moon and during an eclipse. Both of them are easy if you know how. In case you want to photograph an eclipse, the following is a list of the things that you’re going to need.
1. 35mm camera film or digital
2. 300mm lens or longer
3. Cloudless night during the event
That’s it! Many people try to photograph the moon using a tripod but they don’t realize that it’s not necessary. Why, you ask? Because of the “sunny 16” rule in photography. Wait! In the middle of the night there is no sun! Well, maybe not illuminating you, but it is illuminating the moon.
The sunny f/16 rule states that you can photograph anything that is illuminated by the sun using a shutter speed one number higher than the film or ISO that you’re using in your camera. For example: if you’re using ISO in your camera, the shutter speed/aperture combination should be 1/125 at f/16. Very simple, right?
If you’re using an older mechanical film camera and the battery is dead and you cannot read the light meter, using the sunny f/16 rule will allow you to photograph anything that is illuminated by the sun.
What about digital cameras? Digital cameras or film cameras are no different in this situation. For shots of the moon, either camera will capture the moon the same way or anything else illuminated by the sun. Don’t forget that you have a light meter to help you obtain the correct exposure and viewing the images on the screen gives you immediate feedback so you can make changes in the event you need to. Okay, enough of that. Let me tell you what you can do to photograph the moon and why a tripod is not necessary.
If you’re using a digital camera, do the following:
1. Set your aperture to f/16.
2. Set the ISO to 100.
3. Set the white balance to daylight.
4. Set the color mode to landscape.
5. Set your shutter speed to 1/125 of a second.
For a film camera, forget steps 3 and 4.
As you can see, everything is very easy to do and chances are that if you follow this information you’ll get great shots of the moon. But, wait I’m not done yet!
Since the moon is so far away, why use the lens almost fully closed? Since the moon is thousands of miles away from us, we should not worry about depth of field. So, why not use the lens fully open and take advantage of using a very fast shutter speed? This is what I do every time that I photograph the moon.
• f/16 at 1/125 of a second, right? So that means that you can use reciprocal exposures:
• f/11 at 1/250
• f/8 at 1/500
• f/5.6 at 1/1000
• f/4 at 1/2000
• f/2.8 at f/4000
What? Photograph the moon using a 1/4000 of a second? YES! All these are reciprocal exposures and what that means is that each of these settings will give you the same amount of light in your sensor. Of course, some people do not have their cameras set correctly. A couple of my students keep accidentally setting their exposure compensation settings to -4.0 stops on their Nikon cameras, and it’s all because the compensation dial and the aperture dial are one and the same in some Nikon cameras. Why Nikon placed these setting together, I don’t know. So if you have a Nikon camera and, like ALL of my students, you use your camera in manual mode, make sure that you’re in the correct setting when changing the aperture of the lens so you don’t accidentally set a (-) minus exposure on the aperture of the lens.
Back to the very fast shutter speed at night. Is it possible to use that in the middle of the night and get the picture? Of course it is. Anything that is illuminated by the sun during the day or at night (the moon) can be photographed using this photography rule. Of course, if you’re going to photograph an eclipse of the moon, the setting will be very different—at least the shutter speed. During an eclipse you will be forced to use slower and slower shutter speeds to compensate for the loss of light. But you’ll get the image!"
About the Author:
Ignacio Alvarez is a photography instructor at City Colleges of Chicago.

Thanks so much, Max! I have been wanting Viewer back since the Fall Creator Studio took over my computer and replaced Viewer with Photos, a dreadful photo viewer program. With Photos, you have to mouse all over the screen to go forward or backward, delete or zoom. Viewer has all these operations in one spot at the bottom of the screen and the zoom is a scroll of the mouse wheel. Making the Registry changes was simple with the app noted in the article. My deep appreciation. I'll return the favor with another hack. Two nights ago, Windows decided it was time to format my hard drive in a laptop less than one year old. No stopping this operation. I was in the middle of processing real estate photos for a client. Sure was a problem getting that task done. Before I can upload the photos, I resize them for easier handling. Easy, right? Highlight all the images and right click to resize, right? No resize command available after the format. Searching the internet, I found the resize command was eliminated in one of the Win 10 iterations, however, there was a third party software that replaces the resize command. Installed it and it was business as usual. https://www.tekrevue.com/tip/batch-resize-multiple-images-windows-10/

JDG3, I think you might be selling your work a little cheap. I've been doing this for 5 years and my average price is over $200. I had a shoot in 2017 that was $1,000. I charge by the photo and check my prices with other photographers a couple of times a year to be sure I'm at or below their prices. I photographed over 160 properties last year and referred work when I was too busy. Although I am also a REALTOR, I use real estate photos as a primary income.

The suggestions for recovery software above are all good. Be patient. Recovering the images is painfully slow.

I do a great deal of real estate photography and I have used this technique with limited success. Someone above asked if you had the layers in the correct order and that may be the problem. If I have really overexposed the window frame, as Rich describes in the video, I select the glass area using the polygonal tool and hit Delete, and the window view appears. For my own work, I prefer to use 5 bracketed images for HDR and process with Photomatix because it is much faster than using the flambient technique. Good luck

Hi Megan. I was having the opposite issue. I could Open in Layers in Photoshop from Lightroom, and PS would open as it should, but many commands in Photoshop were grayed out preventing a lot of actions. A little research revealed a known bug in the latest version of PS 2019. The recommendation was to roll back to a previous version. I did this and it worked. I do not know if Adobe has fixed this bug by now.

I have been using Google Photos for a number of years now for my real estate photography. It is free. I upload the resized (Low Res) images from my computer to my account and send the link to my agent/clients to download. In addition to being able to download the images, there is also a slideshow feature.
https://www.google.com/photos/about/ With Google photos, you can access your account from any device.

CJC2,
I used to use Lightroom for HDR processing years ago, but after seeing what Photomatix can do, I never looked back. They featured some of my work on their facebook page a while back. I think you can get a free trial if you go to their website. I created my own pre-set, based on their "Architectural" pre-set and use it all the time. Best wishes

The Lightroom/Photoshop subscription for $9.99 per month is absolutely essential, even for the non-professional. Photomatix, although it is taking some hard hits on this thread, is a terrific software for HDR if you are careful with their presets. I use it for 95% of my real estate photography. Visit their website for some excellent examples: https://www.hdrsoft.com/ Lightroom does have an HDR feature, but it doesn't begin to measure up to Photomatix.

I use a Tamron 15-30mm f/2.8 on a Canon 5DIII for most sunrise and sunset work. This is a great lens for general purpose landscape as well. It is sturdy, but heavy as a boat anchor. Almost always used on a tripod.