Digital Shutters

Are black and white photos becoming the new in?? Long before there was color there was black and white. Black and White Photography never left, many of today’s top photographers still shoot in black and white; and people are once again realizing that the black and white images can be striking, can hide blemishes, they have a look of elegance. Look at the ads of today, many advertisers are also going back to the black and white images.

A picture speaks a thousands words, and sometimes color can actually be distracting from the composition of the image. What many new photographers don’t realize is that if they start out with black and white, it helps teach exposure and composition. The teachers of today according to the New York Institute of Photography are still teaching their students about black and white photography. And whether you use film or digital the basic concepts of photography still apply.

Look for shapes, placement, and shadows to help you with your composition instead of color. Many new digital cameras give you the option to shoot either in color or black and white. One benefit of shooting in black and white is you can still shoot outdoors on overcast days and have a beautiful picture.
If your camera doesn’t have this option many photo editing software will convert the photo to black and white for you. Use the tips of shapes, placement, and shadows and don’t worry about the color when you shoot an image if you are going to convert, and you will be surprised at the results!

PHOTO OF THE DAY
Lake Corpus Christi, TX, A storm was rolling in.
Olympus E-500 UV Filter
Night Landscape settings, Set to Black and White

Resources
New York Institute of Photography
Digital Photography School

digital photography, black and white, photo of the day, tips, olympus, digital camera

When editing your photos it doesn’t matter what program you use. You can go from a great shot to an extraordinary shot in minutes if you learn the simple basics of the program you are working with. Have your preview checked, so that you can see the changes as you make them. It is helpful to toggle between the changes you are making and the orginal and compare the differences before you commit to the change.
Some of these basic funtions are…
• Brightness and Contrast, this is the shadows and highlights, you want to increase the contrast to make the image pop and control the brightness if your photo is over or under exposed.
• Hue and Saturation, simply hue is the color and its shade, saturation is how much of that color you apply.
• Adjust Levels this plots the number of pixels in the image and helps to adjust the brightness of your photo, this is good if the photo is under or over exposed.
• Add and Remove Noise, this is the graininess of the photo
• Sharpen and blur, while you cannot do much about removing camera motion blur you can add blur to soften the photo or sharpen the photo to make features stand out more.
• Clone Brush, this is a tool where you can fix a particular spot on the photo by coping one part of the image to another.
• Cropping
Learning how to use these features will greatly improve how you look at digital photography and how much you enjoy your photos. Applying more than one feature to help you achieve the effect you want. The help feature of the programs is a good place to learn about the different features your program offers; the manufactures websites usually has tutorials.

Compare the two photos, the left photo was direct from the camera, the right is after I did some basic photo editing.
Hue and Saturation to +30 this brought out the greens and deepened the blue of the sky.
Using the cropped the photo to remove the elbow from the left side and to center the catus more.
I also did a brightness of 0 and contrast of +33 to remove a slight haze that I thought the photo had.

Resources

Photonhead.com
Wikipedia.com

landscape, digital photography, photo editing, tips

I often go to Digital Photography Review to find out some of the latest news on new releases. With over 7 million views each month it appears to be the place to go for both professional and amateur photographers. But on June 19, 2007 C/NET.com announced that Amazon bought them! This news has gotten a lot of buzz around the net with speculations as to why. Although Amazon hasn’t said anything about what it’s going to do with DPReview.com, DP says it will still continue to operate independently. And has no intention of compromising the integrity of the reviews and its reputation for being unbiased. Although a lot of readers are worried that this might happen. This prompted a follow up by CNET quoting many reader responses from DP’s message boards.
Although this may be old news to some of you I thought I’d give it a day or two to see where the discussions would go and to see if Amazon would respond to any of this.
Only time will tell if Amazon will leave DPreview the way it is or do any major changes.

Other Resources
mashable.com
thealarmclock.com

PHOTO OF THE DAY
Cabin in the woods.
HP315 UV filter, edited in Windows Paint by inverting the colors.

A lot of times you want to take those awesome shots but you think you can’t with that point and shoot camera. There are a few tips you can try that will help with the quality of the shot.

Use your sunglasses as your polarizer filter. A lot of people don’t invest in the filters that are available for their cameras. It’s always a good idea to invest in the filters as they not only help with the quality of the shot they also help protect the lens from dirt and scratches. Polarizer filters work best if the sun is more at a 90 angle; position yourself with the sun over your right or left shoulder. If you use your sunglasses look through the view finder and take a couple shots to make sure the frame isn’t in the picture.

When taking landscape shots try keeping the horizon level. Most people want to use the LCD to look at the picture while they are taking the shot. Practice looking through the view finder. Most view finders have guides that help center and level the shot. Take a few shots and adjust the position of the camera if necessary to get a level shot and then discard the ones you don’t like.

Another tip is set your camera for a cloudy day. This helps warm up the tones of your image, making the blues bluer and the reds redder.

There are many tips and tricks that you can use to help make your shot awesome, and the first place to start is with the manufacture to find out the capabilities and features of your camera. Sometimes it can be boring but then again you might surprise yourself and find out your camera is capable of doing a lot more than what you thought!

Resources
O’reilly Network MacDevCenter
Digital Photography Tips

PHOTO OF THE DAY
Fall Colors
HP315 Point and shoot
UV and Polarizer Filer
auto settings

tips, photography, digital camera, resources, landscape

One of my favorite Photographers is Ansel Adams. He was a commercial Photographer for over 30 years; although he was not a digital photographer he was one of the greatest of our time.

Born in 1902 his landscape photography was inspired by a boyhood trip to Yosemite before it became a National Park. He received 3 grants to photograph the National Parks between 1944 and 1958. Ansel Adams commitment and dedication to the preservation of wilderness and the environment made him a folk hero and a symbol of the American West.

As a member of the Sierra Club, he was on the board of directors for 37 years during which time the club grew and became a powerful national organization that lobbied for the National Parks and to protect the environment.

Sources
anseladams.com
Google Search
Sierra Club
Photography West Gallery
Zpub.com

[tags]Ansel Adams,Photography,Digital Photography

Recently I compared the different popular programs and used similar settings to try and achieve the same effect. I did this again with a different filter and photo this time. Using a picture of a rose with a black background I applied the colored pencil effect to the photo and had some interesting effects. The filters enhanced the leaves and rose buds bringing more attention to them.

Jasc Paint Shop Pro
Effect > Artistic > Colored Pencil
Detail 100% Opacity 20
The background is the darkest in this example the actual outcome looks like a grainy version of a photo

Photoshop CS3
Filter >Artistic > Colored Pencil
Pencil Width 24 (the max) Stroke Pressure 15 (the max) Paper Brightness 20

Photoshop Elements
I applied the same settings as Photoshop CS3
Filter >Artistic > Colored Pencil
Pencil Width 24 (the max) Stroke Pressure 15 (the max) Paper Brightness 20

As you can see here in these two examples there really is no difference in the outcome. I used the max settings for the pencil with and stroke pressure to compensate for the 100% detail of the Paint shop program. Both photos look like pencil drawings and are sharp and clear. In an earlier example of the comparisons Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop Elements were slightly different in their examples. So your outcome depends on your photo and the filter you use.

Adobe.com
Paint Shop Pro

digital camera, Olympus, Kodak, Nikon, Canon, Photography, Photo, Picture, Edit, Photoshop, Paintshop, HP, Fuji

Once you start taking your photos and saving them to your computer, it can easily become disorganized. Decide early on or even now how you want to save your pictures.
Its best to get organized to keep the flow of your photos smooth, there’s nothing more frustrating than knowing that you took a certain photo but you can’t find it anywhere.

One way is to save them by event in separate folders. Another is to save by subject; cars, beach, flowers, animals, etc. If you use different cameras set up folders for each camera and sub folders by subject, event, etc.

But how ever you save your photos on your computer you will want to back them up on some sort of storage disk that is protected. It is always best to back up your photos using the same system that you save them to your computer. That way when you upgrade your computer it will be an ease to download your photos to your new equipment.

Reference articles
C/Net.com
About.com

PHOTO OF THE DAY
Corpus Christi, TX Sea Wall
Camera HP 315
UV filter
Auto settings

photos, storage, disks, digital camera, saving

A lot of photo albums consist of people smiling looking at the camera and posing for the shot. That’s great everyone loves those, they can see the faces everyone is happy. But sometimes that can get boring. A great alternative, when taking your photos for the family album is to consider doing a separate photo album or scrapbook of your outing using only the candid shots.

I sure we all remember the phrase “Smile your on Candid Camera”, this show had hidden cameras to catch people totally off guard. It involved setting up a tick or an unusual situation to ordinary people to see their reaction.

But on that family outing we don’t want to play tricks on them to get them to do silly things that will come naturally once they let their guard down. That’s where all those candid shots will come in.
The candid shots are the ones of the kids playing, someone acting goofy and not knowing the camera is on them. You don’t have to worry about doing any thing special any extra settings on your camera, or lighting. If you are inside just set your camera to auto inside and the same if your outside, set it to auto outdoors. Let the camera worry about finding the best exposure. This leaves you to enjoy yourself and gives you a chance to catch those unexpected shots. So when taking those smiling shots mix in those candid ones and create that special photo album.

About.com
Wikipedia.com

PHOTO OF THE DAY
A candid shot of My beautiful Niece examining the contents of a ladel.
Camera HP315
auto settings

Candid Camera, digital camera, Olympus, Kodak, Nikon, Canon, Photography, Photo, Picture, Edit, Photoshop, Paintshop, HP, Fuji, contests, tips

Living by the Gulf of Mexico for over 20 years I have many pictures of the beach.
From your standard family portrait to the sunset, Beach scenes are popular and leave limitless photographic opportunities. When going to the beach and taking photos find the unique pictures, the foot prints in the sand, the sand castle, seashells as they are washed up on the beach, old drift wood bleached by the sun. These will add interest to your photo album or scrap book. These shots also make great background scenes for your family photos.
One thing to remember is use your filters. A UV and Polarizer will help keep the glare from your photo and deepen the blues of the sky. They will also help to protect your camera lens from the dirt and sand that is blowing around.

Other related articles
About.com
Digital Photography School

PHOTO OF THE DAY
Gulf of Mexico, North Padre Island
HP315
UV and PL filter

beaches, sand, sun, fun, digital camera, Olympus, Kodak, Nikon, Canon, Photography, Photo, Picture, Edit, Photoshop, Paintshop, HP, Fuji, contests, tips

Sometimes when you want a great looking background for your photos you can use your editing software to create it. In these examples I used 3 programs
Here is an example of how to create a stained glass look background using different programs. I chose a picture of flowers that came out blurry.

Photoshop Elements 3.0 I decided to go for a mosaic tiled look that would keep the colors and give it a unique look.
I choose filter>texture>stained glass.
The settings cell size 10, border 4, and light intensity 3

In Photoshop CS3 I choose the same settings.
I choose filter>texture>stained glass.
The settings cell size 10, border 4, and light intensity 3
As you can see there is not much difference in the result. The image comes out lighter than in Elements giving it a softer effect.The Only difference in the programs is in PhotoShop CS3 you can apply smart filters and apply more than one filter at a time to come up with a more unique look

JASC Paintshop Pro I went for the same mosaic look, although it does not have the same stained glass settings as PHotshop has.
I choose Effects>Texture>and Tiles
The setting Tile Angular 75> Tile size> 25 > Border 4
Smoothness 25 > Depth 1 > Ambience 0 > Shininess 60
Angle 315 > Intensity 50 > Elevation 25
As you can see to get you get a totally different look with this program. The colors came out darker and not a stained glass look at all. but more a ceramic tile look.

background, edit, software, digital camera, Olympus, Kodak, Nikon, Canon, Photography, Photo, Picture, Edit, Photoshop, Paintshop, HP, Fuji, contests, tips