Lightroom 3
Aperture 3

If you are an Apple Mac user, Apple and Adobe offer two powerful all-in-one tools for editing and managing your photographs. Apple Aperture (hereafter “Aperture”) and Adobe Photoshop® Lightroom® (hereafter “Lightroom”) have a great deal of functionality in common. All of the basic and most of the most advanced editing features both programs offer are surprisingly comparable. That makes choosing one to use for your post processing and photo management difficult. There are some unique features in each application that differentiate them.

Adobe and Cross

The American Southwest is a very popular travel photography destination, typically for photos of red rocks and canyons. The most popular destinations include the Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon and Arches National Parks, as well as Monument Valley. I’ve been to all of these places (except Monument Valley) and definitely want to go back for more. But there is much more to the Southwest than red rocks and canyons. There is history; there is culture; there is people – all wonderful subjects for travel photographers. For the best of these non-red rock aspects of the Southwest, there is perhaps no better destination than Santa Fe, New Mexico, and its surrounding regions. They are uniquely Southwestern but minus the red rocks.

Three Little Girls

Why now is probably the best time to visit Egypt.

Recently I accepted an invitation to speak at the 4th Annual E-Tourism & E-Marketing Conference in Cairo, Egypt. The conference took place on December 18th and 19th, 2011, and included four additional days of touring the sites in and around Cairo and Alexandria.

The presentation I gave was titled "Better Photography for Increasing Your Online Presence," and in it I discussed the importance of using quality photography to brand and market in a number of industries that the attendees, mostly from across the Middle East, represent. The audience was made up of tourist offices, hoteliers, airlines, public relations professionals, travel bloggers and other travel industry insiders, and I wanted to stress how great photography should be considered their most important asset when it comes to selling their destination, property or experience online.