The Urban Refugee

n.

All you’ll be able to remember from any photo shoot where the cute female subject suffers a wardrobe malfunction.

chromatic aberration
n.

A highly technical way of saying that you get what you pay for.

previsualization
n.

The practice of using Photoshop to rescue poorly exposed and composed photographs, usually an affectation of digital camera owners.

lens cap
n.

A camera component, usually made of plastic, that is favored by many viewfinder camera owners for recording images in lieu of film or their camera’s sensor.

bokeh
n.

The pleasantly blurred or out-of-focus look the world takes on after one has spent the evening enjoying a few beers with the members of his/her photo club (e.g. “He has good bokeh this evening”). The word “bokeh” comes from the Japanese word “boke” (pronounced bo-keh) which literally means fuzziness or dizziness.

exposure latitude
n.

The amount of bare skin — ranging from none at all to an arbitrary maximum — that your photographic models (usually of the opposite sex) are allowed to expose for a photograph before your spouse calls his/her divorce lawyer.

neg·a·tive
n.

The state of one’s bank balance after upgrading one’s digital photography gear to meet the current image quality control submission standards of most stock photography agencies.

ga·per
n.

1. A picture taken by another photographer that is so good it negates a lifetime worth of photography on the part of the artist viewing the image.
2. The facial expression of a photographer who has discovered that the state-of-the-art digital camera he purchased two weeks ago is now selling for $500 less because it has just been obsoleted by a new model.

scrim
n.

The strangled noise a photographer makes when he realizes he has just formatted and then written new data over the wrong memory card.

fil·ter
n.

A twenty-five cent, optically inferior piece of plastic suspended in front of a very expensive, optically superior lens, thereby obviating the photographer’s investment in the latter.