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Contents LETTER FROM KEN
HOW TO USE AN ULTRA-WIDE LENS
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SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION STRATEGY FOR IMAGES USING LIGHTROOM
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FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE MONTH Anil Sud
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THE STORY BEHIND THE PICTURE
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LINKS TO PREVIOUS ISSUES OF INSPIRATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY
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PHOTO TOURS AND WORKSHOPS
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PROCESSING TIP OF THE MONTH Using Photoshop’s Smart Objects for 2nd Chance RAW Adjustments
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USING LEADING LINES TO DRAW ATTENTION TO THE SUBJECT
Cover Photo: Woman from Colombia 2
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Letter From Ken Embrace Disappointment
I had a completely different letter written and then the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. For those of you not familiar with the importance of this, the Cubs have not won a championship since 1908. There is only one living person in the U.S. who was alive 108 years ago when they last won the big game. During all these years, Cubs fans have continued to support their baseball team, filling the stadium constantly with the hope that some day it would happen. When the Cubs finally won it this past week, Chicago went crazy. An estimated 5 million people showed up at the victory celebration, which was the largest gathering of people in U.S. history. The fact that people had waited so long is what gave such meaning to the championship. Now, here is the point. Most of the time when you go out shooting in search of a winning sunrise, sunset, night sky, or whatever it may be, you come back disappointed. (Okay, yes, 108 years of that and I would sell off my camera, but stay with me here.) When you finally do get that beautiful lighting situation, it is much more fun and satisfying because it doesn’t happen all the time. In fact, if every single sunset was incredible, landscape photography would become boring, as would looking at beautifully lit landscape images. So, it is best to “embrace disappointment” with outdoor lighting. It is what will make that next epic sunset so much fun to photograph. My friend and I just had 8 days in the Canadian Rockies and did not have a single epic lighting situation. Yes, it was disappointing, but we took it in stride and did our best with what we had. We also enjoyed being in some amazing scenery, even if the lighting wasn’t perfect. It is a numbers game and you just need to keep showing up until the lighting eventually all comes together. Thanks for reading! Ken Koskela http://www.kenkoskela.com To receive this magazine FREE each month click HERE 3
How to Use an Ultra-Wide Lens
I Love Ultra-Wide Lenses
Characteristics of Ultra-Wides
I love wide angle lenses. I love them so much that I need to say it again. I LOVE wide angle lenses.
There are three things that I really like about ultra-wide lenses:
When I say “wide angle lenses”, I am really talking about the widest lenses, also known as ultra-wides. These are the lenses in the 11mm-16mm range for those of you who have full frame sensors. For cropped sensors, I think around 10mm range is about as wide as it gets.
First, these lenses exaggerate the distance between the foreground and background. Objects that are far away look smaller than they really are, while closer objects look larger. Getting close to a foreground subject makes that subject more prominent in the frame.
I recently got Canon’s 11-24mm and have really enjoyed shooting with it. It is a very sharp, heavy, bulbous lens, so you need a special holder and very wide filters. My filters are 186mm... almost big enough to serve dinner on. I have been using the widest range (11-14mm) more than I thought I would. In fact, I’m probably getting a little carried away with it and will need to back off a little on these widest settings.
For the Venice image at the top of the next page, I was shooting somewhat close to the model… probably 12-16 inches away from her left hand. The model’s dress and hand look large, like they have been pulled towards the camera. The building feels farther away, like it has been pushed back. This distortion really works well here.
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This can work both to your advantage and disad-
vantage, especially in landscapes. Foreground elements look great with the widest settings, but often the distant elements (usually the subject of the photograph) become very small in the image. Some photographers overcome this by blending shots, using the wide angle for the foreground and a less wide focal length for the distant objects. I haven’t tried this yet, but it does give you the best of both worlds if you don’t have an issue with processing in this way. Second, ultra-wides make the corners look stretched out. Check out the lower right corner of this next image shot with my 14mm lens (which I sold awhile back) and compare it to the center of the frame and the building in the distance. This stretching of the corners adds a lot of dimension and interest to this image. Although this reflective sign looks large here, it is actually relatively small. One challenge in taking this shot was keeping myself out of the reflection in the sign. Third, although the purpose of a wide-angle is gen5
erally NOT to jam as much as you can into the frame, sometimes wide angles are helpful for jamming everything into the frame. One example is a night picture where you are trying to get a foreground element included along with a big portion of the sky. I used 16mm for the Milky Way image below so that I could capture the entire tree from a close vantage point and also incorporate a big portion of the sky into the frame.
Using an Ultra-Wide Here is some advice on using ultra-wides (and wide angles in general). First, back to my above point. The best advice is to NOT just use these lenses for jamming as much as possible into the picture. This can result in cluttered images. Again, sometimes this is okay and even desirable. However, in 90% of the cases, you want to use your ultra-wide to take advantage of the distortion it offers. Second, do not be shy about getting very close to your subject. Walk up to and around your subject while looking in the viewfinder and you will see how moving forward or back just inches can dramatically change your composition. Third, pay extra careful attention to the background. There is more background to worry about. It is much easier to inadvertently include unwanted elements. It is also more challenging to position yourself just right in order to get corners and lines where you want them. 6
In the above image, also from Venice, I was slightly off in my positioning and so the lines are not quite straight. Fourth, determine your positioning without a tripod. Even if you intend to use a tripod, start by walking around and determining your position first. I generally turn on Live View and watch the screen as I move around, trying different angles on my subject. I’ll spend a few minutes moving side to side, back and forth, and tilting the camera. When I get to what I consider to be the optimal vantage point, I then set up my tripod and put my camera on it. Fifth, pay attention to your aperture. Many wide angle shots are landscape or cityscape images, most of which look best if they are sharp throughout. You’ll often have a close foreground object, as well as elements in the middle and distance. You’ll want to choose an appropriate aperture (or blend different focal points in Photoshop).
Search Engine Optimization Strategy for Images Using Lightroom Good search engine optimization (SEO) habits help search engines, such as Google, find you. You might not care all that much about whether people can find your images on-line. However, the REAL question is whether you might care at some point in the future.
keywording is a matter of checking a few boxes. The first step is to set up high level categories. Here are a few of the categories that I created. The focus here is on categories, not actual keywords for images.
If you think that you may care about how much search engines love you at some point, then you will do yourself a favor to work on SEO from early on, rather than later having to go back and retroactively add keywords, descriptions, and titles to your entire existing portfolio, including re-creating and re-uploading all of the JPGs on your website. Although SEO for websites is a different, but related, topic, here is what I do on improving SEO for the images themselves using Lightroom. This is an important part of my workflow. Overview My strategy has five major components: 1. A hierarchical keyword structure 2. Keywording all RAW files 3. Adding titles, descriptions and location to all processed RAW files 4. Assigning a keyword-friendly filename to my saved Photoshop files 5. Ensuring those keywords are passed from Lightroom to Photoshop to the JPGs on my website.
To set up your high level categories in Lightroom, make sure you are in the Library panel and hit the plus (+) sign next to the tab heading for the Keyword List section.
A dialogue box will open. I’ve added the word LOCATION here. For these high level categories, you
Setting Up a Hierarchical Keyword Structure in Lightroom For me, the key to making keywording much less painful in the long-term is setting up a hierarchical structure that applies keywords up the hierarchy. This requires a bit of work upfront on setting up a structure but will save you a lot of time in the long run. Nowadays, keywording is pretty quick and easy for me. I don’t have to do a lot of typing, as most of my 7
want to uncheck “Include on Export”. Then, under each of these high level categories, start adding keywords which will start to form your actual keyword structure. Under LOCATION, my structure for Chicago would be: North America United States (synonym USA) Midwest Illinois Chicago To do this, do a control-click (Mac) or right-click (Windows) which will open up this dialogue box:
I do the same under North America to add “United States”. Whenever United States is included as a keyword, I also want “USA” to be included. To do that, I just type it in the synonym box before hitting Create. For multiple synonyms, put commas between each synonym. For this example, you would continue to create additional keywords under the higher level keywords. The real magic of the hierarchical structure happens when I apply the keywords to an image. For example, if I have a picture of the lakefront in Chicago, I check the “Chicago” box. By checking that box, the keywords Chicago, Illinois, United States, USA and North America will all be applied to the image. All by checking one box. You can see below what part of my keyword structure for Chicago looks like.
Choose “Create Keyword Tag inside LOCATION”. This will open up the dialogue box below. For this example, I’m now adding “North America” as a keyword inside LOCATION. Notice that I have checked “Include on Export” so that the keywords stay when I create other files (PSD, JPG, etc) from this file.
I think it took me about 1/2 day or so to set up my keyword hierarchy and keyword my initial images. This has saved me a multiple of that initial investment of time. I probably check about 5 or 6 boxes for an average picture. Lightroom: Keywording All Images When I return from a trip or a shoot, I keyword ALL 8
my images as a first step, not just those which I end up processing. This is because it is easy for me to select multiple images and apply the keywords to the group, so there is little advantage in not keywording all of the images. With the hierarchical structure in place, I usually add a bit to the hierarchy after a shoot (especially if it is a new shooting location) and then start checking boxes. It is important to keyword the original RAW files so that the Photoshop and JPG files I create from RAW files also have those keywords attached. Lightroom: Assigning a Title, Caption and Sublocation to Images Being Processed When I determine I will process a particular RAW file for inclusion on my website, I add a title, caption and location to the RAW file. Let’s use this image as an example:
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abandoned africa antique car crumbling desert dilapidated horizontal junked namibia namibian old rusty sand truck
Photoshop File Name After I’ve opened the RAW image into Photoshop, I immediately save the file using a Save-As command. I create a title for the Photoshop file which includes some additional keywords. The filename itself is searchable I’m told. The PSD filename for the rusty car is “Abandoned-Car-Namibia.PSD”. Then, when I created the JPG for my website, the filename by default was “Abandoned-Car-Namibia.JPG”. Metadata Template
For Lightroom’s title field, I’ve kept it simple and called the image “Rust in Peace”, which is not all that great from a keywording standpoint, but does get the word “rust” attached to the image. In Lightroom’s “Caption” field, I typed “Dilapidated classic car at the edge of the Namibian desert”. In the Sublocation field, I entered “Namibian Desert”. By the way, I notice that this Sublocation field doesn’t export to some of the sites I have my images on. In case you are wondering what my keywords are for this image, here they are:
In addition to the SEO work above, I also use a metadata preset which applies my name, the copyright symbol, contact info and my website to the metadata of all my images. Just Part of a Broader SEO Strategy I am definitely not an SEO expert. In fact, I learned everything I know by reading several articles over a period of a few days and have not researched the topic since. The above steps (all focused on the images themselves) are not all that needs to be done for good SEO. This is simply one part of my strategy. My website provider has made SEO fairly straightforward for me, so I make sure to fill descriptive text into all the relevant fields he has created for my galleries and pages. 9
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER:
Anil Sud
I had the opportunity to photograph with Anil in the Pacific Northwest a few years back. Anil immediately stood out from the crowd because he was after different compositions than the others there. While the rest of us were going after the big picture, Anil was shooting the “scene within the scene”. Anil is excellent at identifying interesting and compelling shapes that others (including myself ) walk right by without even noticing. For this and other reasons, I have tremendous respect for Anil and his photography. To find Anil’s work on-line, you have to search for it. One place you will definitely find it is in the winner’s lists of a number of the major photography contests, where his outstanding work is consistently recognized.
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Anil taught himself photography after first picking up a Canon AE-1 as a teenager in the mid 1970’s. His photographic interests are quite varied, although his imagery has a common thread centered around color and design. He draws inspiration from multiple photographic genres including wildlife, landscape, architecture, fashion, photojournalism, and sports photography.
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The Story Behind the Picture Natural Born Model
One of the things I really like about portrait photography is that it helps me to meet people that I would not otherwise meet. The above image of a Colombian girl is from my all-time favorite portrait session. And it almost didn’t happen. I was looking for portrait subjects near my wife’s Uncle’s house, just outside Villa de Leyva, Colombia. He put me in touch with a neighbor of his. We went out and asked her if it was okay to take some pictures of her. To be honest, when we started shooting, I wasn’t getting great results. She did not feel very comfortable in front of the camera. I had my doubts that the session was going to lead to a portfolio quality picture. After awhile, she asked if she could please get a picture with her daughter. I, of course, said yes. I had no idea what I was in for. Her daughter suddenly and enthusiastically appeared on the scene. After getting a snapshot of the two of them together, the girl started posing for the camera with all the confidence of a professional model. I started giving her some basic direction and was getting priceless expressions. So, I told the mom that I thought we had enough shots of her and could I please now get some pictures of her daughter. The next 20 minutes was some of the most fun I’ve had photographing. It was a great experience watching this young girl model with complete confidence during what I think was her first ever photo session and definitely first by a foreigner. Six months later, I was back in Villa de Leyva... this time with my little daughter... and watched the two of them play together. 12
Click HERE to receive Inspirational Photography each month. March 2016 • Pushing blue into the shadows • Smoke composites • Guilin, China • Including motion in your images • Wide-angle portraits • Backing up your pictures • Big impact with small subjects
July 2016 • Exposing flash and ambient light separately • Incorporating opposites into your images • Venice during Carnival • Orton effect • Including reflections in your pictures
April 2016 • Complementary colors • Dealing with foggy lenses • Effective silhouette images • Gradient vignettes • Watch the windows • Shooting into the sun
August 2016 • Shooting the Milky Way, Stars and Northern Lights • Cathedral images • Controlling tonal contrast with a histogram • Focusing strategies for moving subjects
May 2016 • Solid neutral density filters • Web sharpening using TK Actions • Following and breaking the rule of thirds • Packing for an outdoor photography camping trip • Pictures that make people think
September 2016 • Post-processing Milky Way shots • Controlling motion in landscape images • Increasing water texture with Nik • Shooting cities at night
June 2016 • Using a circular polarizer • Intro to luminosity masking • Oil and water pictures • Minimum shutter speeds • Coastline moving water images
October 2016 • Shooting and processing star trails • Eliminating distractions • Dramatic side-lighting • Creating a texture layer in Photoshop • Inconvenience leads to better pictures.
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Save the Dates!!!!! Watch for announcements in December’s Issue of Inspirational Photography November 2 - 10, 2017 (exact dates TBD) PATAGONIA in Springtime with Rick Sammon and Ken Koskela Late September, 2017 (exact dates TBD) CHINA with Rick Sammon and Ken Koskela Contact me to be the first to receive details regarding China and/or Patagonia. (Note: If you are on the May 2017 China waiting list, you’ll be contacted first re: China)
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2017 PHOTOGRAPHY TOURS & WORKSHOPS http://www.kenkoskela.com/product/photo-tours-workshops/
VENICE CARNIVAL w/ RENEE DOYLE February 18-24, 2017
Venice comes alive during Carnival as amazing models in ornate masks and incredible costumes descend upon the city. I am co-leading this tour with Renee Doyle. Renee and I have some great connections with many of the best models which will allow our group to have opportunities for private shoots in some locations away from the crowds and not accessible to the general public. http://www.kenkoskela.com/product/2017-venice-carnival-photography-workshop/ ONLY 1 SPOT LEFT. CLICK HERE FOR INFO
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2017 PHOTOGRAPHY TOURS & WORKSHOPS http://www.kenkoskela.com/product/photo-tours-workshops/
GUILIN, CHINA w/ RICK SAMMON May 17-25, 2017
WAITING LIST ONLY
Join Rick and I to photograph the beautiful karst mountains, Li River, cormorant fisherman at sunrise and sunset, the incredible Longji rice terraces, the XiangGongShan overlook, Cuipinghsan Hill, and many other locations. We will also meet and photograph rural villagers. http://www.kenkoskela.com/product/2017-guilin-china-photo-tour/ SOLD OUT! SEPTEMBER 2017 TOUR TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON!
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2017 PHOTOGRAPHY TOURS & WORKSHOPS NEW ZEALAND w/ RENEE DOYLE April 18-28, 2017 (Optional 3-Night Milford Sound extension available)
Join Renee and I to photograph this amazingly beautiful country during the best time of year... Autumn. In addition to the iconic Church of the Good Shepherd, the lone Wanaka Lake tree and Nugget Point Lighthouse, we will photograph turquoise lakes, rolling hills, hidden waterfalls and New Zealand’s iconic mountainous regions. Also, join us for the optional extension to Milford Sound to round out an amazing visit to the South Island of New Zealand! http://www.kenkoskela.com/product/2017-new-zealand-photo-tour/ CLICK HERE FOR INFO!
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Processing Tip of the Month
Using Photoshop’s Smart Objects for 2nd Chance RAW Adjustments Photoshop’s Smart Objects remain a bit of a mystery for many photographers. Designers love them because Smart Objects allow re-sizing of images within a layout without losing any quality or modifying pixels. This is because there is a source file behind the scenes that remains unchanged. As with most of my articles, I will not go into great depth here. Instead, I will focus on one aspect of Smart Objects that I find valuable as a photographer and talk about some of the trade-offs. I will do this by way of an example. Opening a RAW File as a Smart Object in Photoshop When opening a file from Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Camera RAW, you have the option of opening the file as a Smart Object in Photoshop. In Lightroom, this option is available in Photo > Edit In > Open As Smart Object In Photoshop. With Adobe Camera Raw, hit Shift before the Open button and the Open button will change to “Open Object”. I open a RAW file as Smart Objects for two reasons: 1. If I want the freedom to make adjustments to the RAW settings within Photoshop. For some images, I am not 100% certain on my initial RAW settings. By opening as a Smart Object, I am able to adjust the initial RAW settings inside Photoshop. 2. If I want two versions of the same RAW file in my Photoshop layer stack. For example, if I want the sky processed a bit darker, I can have a lighter and darker version of the same RAW file as separate layers and create a mask to blend the layers... and re-adjust in Photoshop. Reason 1: Modifying RAW Settings in Photoshop Let’s use an example file and make a very obvious (and hideous) adjustment to it so that it can be clearly seen. I’ll use the Temperature and Tint sliders in RAW to turn the sky green. 18
Normally, I will bring the RAW file into Photoshop and make other adjustments to it. If I had opened this file into Photoshop as a normal layer and decided I didn’t like the green sky, I could add a layer adjustment in Photoshop (which is not ideal) or leave Photoshop to adjust the RAW file. This takes more time, especially if I make multiple tweaks to the RAW settings as I work on it in Photoshop. By opening the file as a Smart Object (an “embedded” Smart Object in this case), I can make the changes without exiting Photoshop. Here is how this is done: The Process First, when you open a RAW file as a Smart Object in Photoshop, Photoshop opens a new layer. This looks like a typical layer except that it has a small icon in the lower right corner of the layer thumbnail.
When you click on this icon, it opens up a window that allows you to revise your Camera RAW adjustments using sliders. This is essentially the Adobe Camera RAW menu, with my current settings in there. You can see the Temperature slider has been pushed far right and Tint slider far left, which are the original adjustments I made in Lightroom to get the awful green sky.
ing the “New Layer Via Copy” command (Ctrl-Click on Mac or right-click in Windows on the Smart Object layer to get this option). This creates an unlinked copy of that Smart Object. I can make changes to that second copy that don’t affect the original Smart Object layer and blend the two using a mask.
Now, I can re-adjust the original RAW settings to get a better look.
The RAW adjustments have now been updated within Photoshop. I hit “Okay” to apply. Note that this adjustment does not change the original RAW file... only the embedded version of it in Photoshop.
Reason 2: Using Multiple RAW Copies in Photoshop Sometimes, I like to work with 2 or more layers of the RAW file, each with different settings, and I want the freedom to adjust those settings later. The best example is if I want to preserve some highlights in the sky and also bring out some detail in the shadows using the RAW data. To do so, I bring in one version of the RAW file as a Smart Object, then create a second version by us-
The main reason it is nice to have the freedom to re-adjust later within Photoshop is that it is difficult to see how everything looks together until I have created the layers and masks to blend the layers. If I don’t think the layers look good together, I just adjust the Smart Object(s) within Photoshop. Smart Filters Although I am only mentioning the topic here, when you apply a filter to a Smart Object, the filter gets applied as a “Smart Filter”. Normal filters (such as a Blur filter) will change the pixels in the image layer. With Smart Filters, you can turn them on or off or modify settings after the filter is applied. The pixels themselves are not permanently modified with Smart Filters. This is a nice advantage. Limitations So why not only use Smart Objects? There are some things you cannot do with a Smart Object layer that you can do with a standard image layer. I find that the limitations can disrupt my workflow a bit: 1. Many adjustments cannot be made directly to a Smart Object. You can’t use a healing brush, for example, to change the pixels on the layer. So, you have to rely on additional layers above the Smart Object layer to make these modifications and adjustments. 2. You cannot auto-align layers. If you have 2 or more layers that are not perfectly aligned, you cannot have Photoshop align the layers. You have to manually align them. 3. File size will be increased. Although it will not impact the size of your final JPG image, the Photoshop file will be larger with Smart Objects. There is a lot more to say and learn about Smart Objects. If you are new to them, hopefully this article at least introduced you to a few of their uses for photography and their limitations. 19
Using Leading Lines to Draw Attention to the Subject
What Are Leading Lines and Why Do They Work?
There are a lot of articles out there on the use of leading lines. This is a pretty common compositional technique that the majority of you are already well aware of. Because this is a fairly well-known topic and pretty self-explanatory, I’ll keep this article short and primarily focus on using a few examples. Most well-composed images have a clear subject that commands the viewer’s attention. If the viewer looks around your picture and his or her eyes don’t know where to land, then it is usually compositionally unpleasing (but not always). Although getting your viewer to look directly at the subject is fine, it is better to lead your viewer’s eyes through the image and land on the subject. 20
Elements that form lines that lead from the outer parts of the composition towards the subject can help accomplish this. When I am shooting landscape, I am always checking the foreground for possible leading lines. Right after identifying my subject, I get to work looking for foreground elements and especially those that form leading lines. Examples of Leading Lines Jenne’s Farm (pictured above) is the most photographed farm in the U.S. and for good reason… it’s a very beautiful place to spend a relaxing morning in Autumn. There are a number of good vantage points to shoot from, but one that I like is to use the fence as
a leading line up to the barns. This is about as easy as it gets in terms of finding a good leading line up to the subject. The fact that it is an “imperfect fence” and curves around and over the hills really helps with the visual appeal of the scene. However, there aren’t curving fences in front of everything, so let’s look at other examples. Retreating waves make great leading lines. It is usually fairly easy to position yourself in a spot where the lines lead to your subject. In this case, the waves made lines which move your eye from the lower right corner up through the image and arrive at the sea stack.
Similarly, the path below brings your attention to the hikers in the distance who would otherwise be lost in the image. This leading line also helps move your eye from the front of the image to the back, which is exactly what you want leading lines to accomplish.
In the next image, the pier itself creates several leading lines up to the fishermen at the end of the pier. Without these leading lines, your focus might be driven more to the lighthouse than the fisherman. The lines help focus your attention. 21
Click the link below to sign up to receive this magazine for free each month! http://www.kenkoskela.com/page/inspirational-photography-magazine/ Website: http://www.kenkoskela.com Click here for my Facebook page Click here for my 500px page Instagram: @kenkoskela Questions? You can reach me at: kenkoskela@hotmail.com 22