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The Red River Paper Blog

Red River Paper Blog

How-To-Do-It


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Create Other -World Little Planet Images

When the weather outside is frightful and you want an inside photo project to do, you can create out-of-this-world images that will shock and awe your viewers. Best of all, it takes less than 10 minutes to do it!...read more

Nina Katchadourian: Photo Artistry at 36,000 Feet

By Arthur H. Bleich— It’s 2011. On a jumbo jet 36,000 feet over the Pacific headed for New Zealand, night has fallen, the cabin lights are  dimmed and most of the passengers have dozed off.  Nina Katchadourian  slips quietly out of her aisle seat, cellphone in hand, and makes her way down the aisle to...read more

Here comes the sun…and Solarcan’s ready to grab it!

By Albert Chi— Many strange-looking cameras have been produced but Solarcan may be the weirdest, yet. And, certainly, what it’s made to do gives it a leg up on all the others. Basically, it’s a pinhole camera with a twist (curved to be more exact), made to record the transit of the Sun, for a...read more

Texture, Deckle and Float Your Flower Images!

By Christine Pentecost— Living in Montana, where the winters are  long, I decided to give myself a photographic challenge, so I could enjoy my flowers year round. I wanted to photograph fresh bouquets of flowers, but in a way that I could have unique backgrounds, which could easily be changed.  I also wanted a new...read more

Keeping The Faith: Empty Sky Project

By Steve Simon— Faith is an element of my photography that continues to surface in my work, not only in the stories I choose to pursue, but also in my philosophy and approach to shooting. What happened to me with my project Empty Sky: The Pilgrimage to Ground Zero was an exercise in faith and...read more

Miyako Koumura: Capturing Japan’s Flowers For Posterity

By Arthur H. Bleich— It’s midnight in a small town west of Tokyo and almost everyone’s asleep except for Miyako Koumura who’s loading her photo equipment into an old, silver-gray Honda Fit (her economical and reliable companion, she calls it), preparing to set out for Chuzenji Lake in Nikko National Park, about a three-hour drive...read more
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Back to Basics: Using Focus Creatively

By Suzanne D. Williams— You can exert a great deal of creative focus control over your images once you learn how to use some of the basic functions your digital camera offers. First, though, let’s define a few terms that are essential to the process. Photographers who use the term “point of focus” refer to...read more

Seeing Differently

By Michael Freeman— One of the first tenets of professional photography is that you have to try harder, always and all the time. There’s almost too much said about this, so I’ll restrict myself to one only, from American photographer William Albert Allard: “You’ve got to push yourself harder. You’ve got to start looking for...read more

Think Inside the Box For Dramatic Flower Photos

By Christine Pentecost– I’ve always been intrigued by photos of flowers on pure black backgrounds, so last summer, I decided to do some  black box photography, using an abundance of mountain wildflowers blooming around our Montana homestead as subjects. I began by making a box that had four sides: right, left, top and back (no...read more

Favorite Photo Places: An Amazing Wildlife Refuge

By Ron Wolfe and Will Keener– You get to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, south of Socorro, NM, at least a half an hour before sunrise. You position yourself with back to the wind, so the birds will fly over you; your back to the rising sun, even better. In the near dawn,...read more

Take Great Holiday Party Photos!

By Maggie Kornahrens– There will be a plethora of cameras and smartphones at every party and soiree in the coming weeks and if you want to capture the spirit of the holidays in fresh and exciting ways, be willing to branch out of the ordinary. Cameras these days are advanced enough so that anybody can...read more

Expressive Nature Photography

by Brenda Tharp– Photography is pure joy. The ability to see something special and capture it in the camera is nothing short of amazing for me, even after all the years I’ve been a photographer. From the tiniest detail of a flower to the grand expanse of the Milky Way stretching overhead at night, our...read more
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Choose The Right Paper For Printing Old Photos

By Christine Pentecost– Digitally restoring old and damaged photos and bringing them back to life has been a very rewarding and challenging hobby for me over the past 15 years. I have restored photos from the late 1800s that were mounted on cardboard, to Polaroids from the 70s, and to photos ravaged by Hurricane Katrina’s...read more

New York In The Snow

by Vivienne Gucwa– I wish I could say that there was one photo that started it all. It would be the one photo that somehow ignited my passion for snow photography in New York City. The one that people could look at to understand why I might walk up to eight miles through snowstorms at...read more

Kaitlin Walsh– Merging Art With Anatomy

by Arthur H. Bleich– Kaitlin Walsh is a biomedical artist– a rarity in the art world. Her beautifully crafted, abstract anatomy watercolor paintings celebrate the wonders of the human body in ways so imaginative it’s sometimes hard not to fall in love with her deadly cancer cells or even mundane parts of the human body,...read more

Spark Up Your Holiday Photos!

By Suzanne D. Williams– We’ve all done it, taken that endless stream of holiday photographs with the same people doing something, only we can’t exactly tell what. Then there’s the familiar, “Oh look at the tree!” only it’s slightly blurry and the top is missing. Sound familiar? Who doesn’t have similar Christmas and other holiday pictures...read more

Our National Parks Odyssey: Ups and Downs

This is the second part of an ongoing series about Red River Pro Andrew Slaton and his wife Ellen who, along with their two dogs and a cat, have hit the road full time in a travel trailer to seek adventure and photograph all the National Parks. There have also been some side trips, some...read more

Fine Art Inkjet Printing

By Jim Nickelson– I’m often asked from friends, family, and even other photographers about why I bother printing my work when the whole world seems to be moving digital. For me, the reason is simple: creating a fine art print is my primary purpose in making photographs. As is likely becoming obvious, I am a...read more

For Love Of Lions

By Kenn Jacobs– My first published photo in a book was a pub sign–The Old Red Lion–shot in a now-forgotten English village. It wasn’t until many years later, though, that I had an epiphany when I came face to face with the sculpture of the Lion of Lucerne in Switzerland. Carved in 1820 as a...read more

Make Big Images With Small Desktop Printers

By Christine Pentecost– I have a beautiful, scenic image in my collection that begged to be displayed larger than could be output by my desktop printer– which only can use letter-sized paper. Surely, I thought, there must be some way to solve this problem and, as it turns out, there is. Image Splitter is a...read more

Exhibit Your Photos for Prestige and Profit

       By Peter E. Randall– For most photographers, the chance to have a one-person exhibit is an exciting opportunity. Then reality sets in and it’s apparent that having an exhibit is more stressful and difficult than making the photographs in the first place. The most ideal opportunity is to be invited to show...read more

Our National Parks Odyssey

By Andrew Slaton– Steam from the early morning chill rises off the Green River in the Wind River Range of Wyoming.  Squaretop, an aptly named handsome granite mountain in the distance catches the first rays of the sun, rising somewhere I cannot yet see. I sip my scalding, black coffee in our trailer and wait. This...read more

Shooting The Stars, Part 3: Post Production

By Ron Risman– Finishing Your Image As good as your image may look straight out of the camera, it’s really not finished yet. Since I shoot using RAW, the image is captured with a very flat profile. It lacks contrast and sharpness and can easily be brought up to wow status using Adobe Camera Raw...read more

Shooting The Stars, Part 1: The Night Sky

 by Ron Risman– Ever since I can remember I have had a fascination with the night sky. As a young child I would stare up at the stars while on summer vacation and when my daughter was old enough I would take her out during meteor showers to see how many shooting stars we could...read more

Add Value and Security to Your Images

By Arthur H. Bleich– If you currently sell (or would like to sell) prints of your best work here’s a technique I’ve used successfully to assure buyers that if they resell my photographs some day it can be proven that they are genuinely mine and not unauthorized copies. I began doing this a few years ago...read more

Get Maximum Shadow Detail in Your Prints

By Tim Grey– In many cases a print will not reflect the full level of shadow detail as actually exists in the image file. Instead, that shadow gets “blocked up,” similar to the way shadow detail gets clipped in an exposure that is too dark. You can compensate for this issue by essentially brightening the...read more

Fuse Your Photos to Stone and Tile for Unique Gifts and Stunning Displays

By Christine Pentecost– Finding a unique niche in today’s world of photography is not the easiest thing to do. Fortunately, something as simple as making your own coasters, trivets or hanging wall decorations using inexpensive tile, Mod Podge and Red River photo papers is an easy yet wonderfully creative way to share your photography. I begin...read more

How To Shoot Prize-Winning Photos, Part 2

by Arthur H. Bleich– We continue with Part 2 of How To Shoot Prize-Winning Photos. In case you missed it, Part 1 was posted on 8/1/16. Stash the Flash. Nothing kills a picture quicker than lighting it with on-camera flash. Pasty, washed out faces and big black shadows guarantee it will never achieve prize-winning status. Unless you’ve...read more

How To Shoot Prize-Winning Photos, Part 1

by Arthur H. Bleich– Over the years, I’ve analyzed what separates prize-winning images from the rest and I’d like to share with you what I’ve discovered in this two-part series. Even if prizes are not your goal, you can take a creative leap forward if you keep these suggestions in mind. Every pro has them burned...read more

Exploring Light

By Bryan Peterson– You can do one of the best exercises I know near your home whether you live in the country or the city, in a house or an apartment. Select any subject, for example, the houses and trees that line your street or the nearby city skyline. If you live in the country,...read more
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