This week’s image is another shot from my brother, an expert landscape shooter. As you can see, he’s also able to get some interesting wildlife.

Click each image for a larger view.

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll know that I love reading other resources - blogs, books, newsletters. You name a free resource and I probably consume it. While I read a lot of blogs through my feed reader, I still receive a fair number of newsletters via e-mail.

Of all the newsletters I receive, only 1 photography one currently ranks highly enough for me to save each and every one. Photojojo is one of those e-mails that I really look forward to receiving. They are brief, well written and genuinely interesting and/or useful. Nothing is held back - they’ve sent everything from top father’s day gifts to putting your photos on M&Ms to tips on taking better pictures for eBay.

If you don’t currently subscribe to their twice-a-week newsletter, you should. Go and join today. (Oh, and they also sell some pretty interesting gear on their site - check that out while there).

Happy 4th of July all! (For those outside the U.S. reading this, July 4th is the day we celebrate our independence from British rule).

I’m particularly grateful for the blessings I’ve received as part of living in this country - have a safe and fun weekend!

If you plan on going to see some fireworks, why not also take some pictures? If you’ve never taken any before, check out Scott Kelby’s brief how-to here. The one thing he didn’t mention that I found useful was to set my lens to Manual focus instead of automatic. If you open your shutter before the firework actually explodes, it won’t have anything to focus on. If you switch to manual focus and focus out to infinity, though, you should be good to go.

Click the image below for a gallery of my shots from a fireworks show I went to last night.

All shots are directly from the camera - I didn’t have the time to combine multiple fireworks into one collaged shot. I’ll try and do that in the near future and post it.

This week’s photo is courtesy of my Elinchrom D-Lite strobe set. If you’re interested in learning more about those or studio lighting, check out the studio strobes for beginner series here, here or here.

Click on the image for a larger view. Its specs are: Canon 40D, 24-70 2.8L lens at 70mm, 100 ISO, f14, 1/200 sec.

I’ll be posting more specifics on the photo (diagram, setup shot, etc.) in a series installment.

A few weeks ago I posted on The Fear. Not sure what The Fear is? Check it out here.

Well, last night The Fear struck! My computer stopped working (throwing crazy erros - I’m a PC users). I actually ended up trying to swap in a new hard drive to fix the problem. When that didn’t do the trick, I turned to the web and did some troubleshooting. I eventually found out that it was due to corrupted memory. After pulling one of my memory sticks, I was back up and running.

The downside (and why I can hate my computer sometimes)? Hours of wasted time - as a result, I won’t be posting anything major today.

Just a reminder, though! Always make sure you are backing up your data - don’t let The Fear become a reality.

Taking the day off - going up to see my brother - for some golf, some photography and some relaxing. See you next week for another installment in the studio lighting series.

Have a great weekend!