Digital Shutters

Taking pictures is great; People flip thought the photo albums admiring pictures of the family photos. But you want to create something that you can hang on your wall, something that will stop people in their tracks and get them to admire what you created.
This is where you want to think about your composition. Think of what you would like to see on your wall, figure out where you can take that picture, and go get the shot.

Composition as put by Wikipedia is simply a “plan, placement, or arraignment of the elements of art in a work.�

Taking the Photo
“A picture is worth a thousands words�; and good composition allows you to draw the viewer in and tells the viewer your message; without you having to explain your image.
• The first thing you want to do when planning a composition is use the rule of thirds. Basically you will want to divide your image into third horizontally and vertically. Center you subject at one of these intersections.
• Use unique angles instead of the typical centered straight forward subject.
• Use contrast to convey an idea. Picking out the shadows and highlights
• Perspective is also important, show the different heights, and distances
• Balance your image to draw the viewer in. use visual cropping before snapping the shot. This helps you in the digital darkroom so you do not have to crop out to much of the image.

Editing the Photo
There are almost endless possibilities you can create with your editing program. First and foremost know how to use the program, and what it is capable of. You have an idea in your head on how you want it to look. Always save the original photo under a different file name so you can return to re-edit it when you want. I have a file just for all my original photos and then a file for all my completed works. I use the file name the camera gave then put a letter behind it so I know how many time I edited it. With that said a few things you can do to help your image along are
• Use your highlights and contrast to make parts of your image pop.
• Hue saturation to help bring out the colors or change the colors
• Use your editing filters to create different effects.

PHOTO OF THE DAY
Terlingua, TX
As you can see in this photo I went extreme and inverted the colors after I did all my Photo editing. This actually brought out the contours and perspective of the landscape.

References
www.digital-photography-school.com
www.microsoft.com

digital photography, composition, tips, photo editing