Luminar Neo is billed as a creative photo editor. I'm on board with this definition because all the heavy lifting I still do in Photoshop. And primarily, I use Luminar Neo as a plugin with Photoshop. But for black and white images, I feel that Luminar Neo can handle the vast majority of my black and white work and I wouldn't miss Photoshop at all. That's because apart from the artificial intelligence technology built-in to Luminar Neo, which makes it a joy to work in creative ways quickly and effectively, there's also a Raw file developer module that can handle many of the basic and advanced edits.

Mumbai-based visual artist Craig Boehman will be releasing a limited edition run of fine art photography prints from his Aksa Collection, on March 18, 2023. There will be two versions of each image, a limited edition run of 21 for the small prints and a limited edition run of three for the large print versions. All prints will be made with Hahnemühle archival paper, signed, and shipped by the artist, available exclusively on his website: www.CraigBoehman.com.

I see a lot of crazy shit in Mumbai and if I’m packing one of my cameras, the chances are that I’m going to capture the moment even if the image isn’t technically immaculate. My definition of crazy shit may differ from yours, but for the sake of argument, let’s just say that crazy shit is a good thing and not necessarily a bad thing and hence desirable to capture. It could crossover into Bresson’s decisive moment territory, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t ever not be the case. Crazy shit is memorable. Crazy shit tends to stir up conversation. And Crazy shit can be epic. I’m always on the lookout for crazy shit in my street photography.

I’ve been using SKylum’s Luminar AI, and its successor, Luminar Neo, since before the public launch dates for each of these apps. As someone who has had to come to terms with the fact that he’s always late to the game in regard to most technical innovations, I made it a point to jump aboard the artificial intelligence ship before the official passenger list was tallied.

Had I rekindled my passion for photography straight out of school I might have been a fashion photographer in another lifetime. Not one of those guys who's stuck on set all the time in a lifeless studio, but someone who does fashion outside in the "real" world. As it is, I'm always looking out for fashionable people on the streets even though my preferred locales in Mumbai are almost always void of such individuals.

I’ve only taken the Sony ZV-1 out for a few short sessions so far, using it mainly from Point A to Point B runs in an auto-rickshaw and on a couple of short daylight walks. I only have a handful of images edited so far. And a full review of this camera won’t be possible for few months. But what I’ll do for those who are interested in a point-and-shoot that appears to be well-suited for street photography, is list a few observations and comments.

Midjourney AI is capable of producing fantastic artwork, but sometimes there's room for improvements to really make the image shine. In this tutorial, we'll show you how to use Luminar Neo to enhance your Midjourney artwork to set it apart from the rest.

A frame within a frame is always on my brain - when I'm shooting wide on my 24mm prime lens. That's because I'm always considering foreground layers when it comes to composition. Shooting subjects straight on can be unflattering compared to other focal lengths that come with nice bokeh when opened wide up. The 24mm needs help, in my opinion.

Over the years I've seen a lot of photographers who claim to be storytellers. This is, of course, a great thing. People love stories and we need them. Here comes the but...but many storytellers I've seen don't actually take the time to tell stories with their images - they just tell stories in their captions. This is a critical line to be drawn, I think. In my view, you can't tell a story visually with one image. You can caption the hell out of it but it doesn't mean that a story is being told visually. In this medium, you need multiple images if you're going to visually tell a story otherwise you're merely providing part of the narrative. After all, a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, right? Unless you're Quentin Tarantino.

Sometimes it's best to put your walk on hold and photograph in just one area for just a bit. Maybe there's an interesting person. It could be a painter painting a wall or climbing up and down a ladder. Whatever it may be, there's usually a pattern unfolding or a person or thing of interest that anchors the scene, and the photographer wants to capture as many of these moments of interest as possible.

When asked what my favorite place is in Kolkata, it's an easy answer for me as a photographer: the Dhakuria Railway Colony. This settlement has been here for what I presume to be decades, having existed long before my discovery of it around 2011 or so. It took me a few years to get the courage up to go down and wander around the place and take pictures, but after doing so for the first time, I've made it a point to do so at every opportunity whenever I visit.

If you've ever visited Howrah Station and taken the bridge across to reach there, you may have noticed the intermittent but neverending stream of porters sluffing bags to and from the station. When you get up close and personal with them, you get to see how hard and tiring that kind of work is.

Was artificial intelligence and art a mistake? The question is posed to you in the past tense because to be asking this question like nothing has happened yet would be missing the point entirely: artists and non-artists alike have been experimenting with AI art generated from text prompts for several months now on platforms like Dall-E 2 and Midjourney. The question itself seems rather meaningless to those of us who’ve already indulged. And my message to my audience is that the question has already been answered by tens of thousands of people — likely to be by the millions soon enough — before the rest of the world can wrap their collective heads around it.

I’ve been experimenting with several of the AI platforms, attempting to learn all that I can about how the systems work and how to produce the best images from the prompts that I provide. My favorite platform is Midjourney, which is what I used to create the images for this poem.

Reflections are generally my friends when it comes to photography. I’m always inspecting them to see if there’s something that can be done.

Giving "Man" first billing is being gracious of me simply because if I'd provided full context, you'd easily notice that the machine part of the story is much larger than that of the human. The original image is of this gentleman sitting inside a large earth-mover at a construction site. As it is now, it looks to me as though he could be playing a video game. Even this could be an analogy for modern life.

This past weekend I went out to get some shots and to test out a faster shutter speed for using ICM. I’d been using a default of 1/4 of a second for most of my shots, sometimes slowing it down even more up to a second or more. But never any faster. I’d read on someone’s website that she had been using 1/10 and other speeds that I thought weren’t really compatible with intentional camera movement. Why not give it a go?

I’ve set the goal of incorporating painting into my fine art photography for the purpose of compositing texture and color.

So I picked up a set of acrylics, brushes, and paper to mess around with it a bit. I come from a background of zero artistic talent when it comes to drawing. And definitely don’t have any natural talent for painting. But I look forward to learning as much as I can to see how I can incorporate different elements into my work.

Once in a while, I'll bother with a name for a piece to initiate a conversation about a concept, or at least, that's my intention, however lofty. But it's funny how a word can drastically change the interpretation of a piece and even serve to destroy it. This is why I typically stay away from naming pieces unless the name truly serves my purpose.

As a few of you know, I usually don't create work without people. Though I find myself highly interested in the abstract of late, I hope to work more along these lines soon. But the odd object may attract me from time to time, like this grounded clunker of a ship. I can't call it a ghost ship because even ghosts would want something a little more seaworthy.