This is a year of years in so many ways. It's changed the way we live. Changed the way we see the world. And it's changed photography in the process.

2020 is a remarkable year for the number of things that went away; from the corner news stand to a crowd-packed Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Most of it was caused by the pandemic, but not all. It was easy to overlook those things that just died a natural death.

For most of my career in photography and commercial printing, the game has always been to come close to the magic of the human eye.

Taking group selfies (groupies?) is a challenge in the best of times, but social distancing adds a whole other dimension. Space. These days, when we'd love to celebrate our get-togethers, we want to be both creative and safely distanced at the same time.

Back in the day, when I was learning to shoot film, hardly a day went by that I didn't wish for more light. Film just wasn't that sensitive and, inevitably, the shot I wanted was blurred, grainy, or just plain weird once I'd applied all my lightening tricks in developing and printing the image

The thing about deleting pictures from your Photos Library is that they’re gone. I know. That seems stupidly obvious and not worthy of a 5 minute read.

If you're a photographer in training who likes to travel light, how about a nice deck of playing cards that doubles as a cheat sheet for your picture taking. That's exactly what showed up on a Kickstarter funding appeal a couple days ago and made its target of $1122 in 30 minutes.

One of the coolest features of Apple Photos is the People tab that uses face recognition to create personalized collections of our lives and the people we know. Family, friends, colleagues, that old boyfriend, a favorite teacher. Now, more than ever, we want to celebrate our community and remember those who have shared our journey for an hour or for decades.

Let Apple Photos do the de-cluttering for you. It turns out that if you hop over one tab from All Photos to Days, that clutter disappears! Same with Months and Years. Photos is smart enough to hide anything that doesn't seem "on brand" for your usual photo browsing.

As a lover of photos in general, and the caretaker of my own family picture library, it tears me apart whenever I hear someone caught in that terrible place. That one where their iPhone is crushedsoakedloststolendeadgone and it's the only place their honeymoonnewbornlatefatheroldfriend's photos exist.

With a few standard settings, iPhone photography is now the gold standard for point-and-shoot picture taking. But it's also fun to put your own spin on your creative work, and the iPhone Camera app makes that possible too.

In 2002 amateur photographers were thrilled by how they could make photo books and order prints without ever leaving iPhoto. True to the Apple brand, the books were easy to create and the quality was as good or better than comparable books from other printers. You didn’t have to export pictures to another bookmaking app or create an account with another company. People made Apple photo books for all kinds of events and occasions.

If you have kids or if you are a big kid yourself, you know this Halloween is different. The parties, group games, parades, and trick-or-treating; all gone or scaled back as to be almost unrecognizable. It's enough to make you keep your camera (iPhone) in your pocket.

Please don't.

When you see a portrait that looks “professional,” chances are you’re reacting to the depth of field effect commonly seen with high-quality lenses on pro cameras.

The iPhone can’t offer that same depth of field effect naturally, but by using some digital magic, Apple has created a way to simulate the effect and give you the same tools as a portrait photographer.

Every now and then I have to remind myself that photography is nothing more than painting with light. The scene we face is a rich palette of colors from brilliant to drab that we use to excite photo-sensitive camera pixels in one way or another and come up with some interpretation of the scene itself.

One of the great things about Apple products is that Key Commands are consistent across the macOS and apps. With practice, key commands are much faster than using a mouse and have been a professional trick for decades.

Photos are, at their best, an expression of how we see things. What we choose to show and what we don't. Like a picture frame, the cropping of a photo can make all the difference in what draws attention and how an image peaks our interest.

With the release of the iPhone 11 Pro last September, the 3 lens setup now offers some of the perspectives that zoom lenses do and it’s a lot of fun to use.

Nothing will teach you more about the photos you create than a daily “take-out-the-trash” routine. Not only will it help you stay ahead of clutter overwhelm, but you’ll start to see the photos that work and the ones that don’t so much.

I'm not a fan of over-filtered photos that bring out gaudy colors or make otherwise nice images look like a neo Van Gogh. But I'm happy to have a little fun with them. One of the best is the Comic Book filter that's only available through the Messages app on the iPhone.