Happy Friday!

I hope your summer is going well. We’ve (all three of us!) been pretty busy here at Photo One central, but I wanted to let you know that we’ve posted Corey Barker’s latest video, Creating a Composite Image With Layers, which is a nice exercise for working on your layers and clipping group chops.

Here are a few fun links for the weekend:

• One of my favorite digital photo sites is Digital Photography School. They have great tutorials, tips and photo galleries, and it’s been a regular inspiration to me. In the last couple of weeks, they’ve published two photo essays that are well worth checking out: “17 Beautiful Images With Shallow Depth of Field,” and “10 Landscape Composition Tips.”

  (Speaking of depth of field, that shot above was taken this week on a walk with my friend Barry. This year seems to be my “flower” year; every time I look through the lens, that’s what I see.)

• Scott Kelby’s blog, Photoshop Insider, is always a lot of fun, and I love that he regularly opens up the blog to people you might never have heard of otherwise. This week, the guest spot went to Aaron Johnson, publisher of the What the Duck comic series, who pokes fun at the often over-seriousness of photographers like me (see #5 in that list).

• I follow plenty of blogs that have nothing to do with photography, but which still drive my thinking about shooting. One of these is Urban Sketchers, which posts paintings, drawings and sketched from more than 100 artists worldwide. The range of pieces done is amazing, and it’s always fun to read the artists’ take on what they’ve been doing. This past week, for example, I loved Tommy Kane’s Tasty Cake.

Have a great weekend!

Rick