Photogenic Photography Blog

I admit it - I’ve been slow to embrace the digital photography phenomenon. As a hobbyist, I have two film cameras, an old manual focus Nikon and a newer autofocus Canon Rebel, and I resisted the temptation to indulge in a digital camera up until recently, even though each of my children had them for years now. But recently my father gave me his mid-priced Olympus (he didn’t like the menus), and I’ve been giving it a try. And, to my surprise, I even like it.

My favorite thing about the camera is pretty obvious - no film. My father gave me two (bless him) substantial memory cards, and I just don’t run out of film. I don’t pay to develop photos that I don’t really want now that I’ve seen them (I don’t pay to develop photos period), and since I can actually see how they look on the spot, I can delete bad shots to save the space for more. Taking lots of shots helps me improve, and improves the chances of a better than average photograph as well, and now it’s free. My camera has settings on it that allow me to pretend I have film - I can set film speed and worry about aperture/shutter speed combinations just like with my other cameras, so I can still use what I already know about photography, which I really like. And I love not having to wait to see how the pictures came out.

The other really cool thing about digital photography is photo editing. I haven’t invested in Photoshop yet, but I have my eye on the Elements program for next year. I just use Google’s free Picasa and sometimes my PhotoDeluxe editor (came free with my scanner), and even then I can do an incredible amount of really exciting things with my pictures. The best is being able to correct poor exposures (I admit, I often don’t notice backlighting). With a couple of adjustments, what would have been a throwaway photo can become a keeper! I remove red-eye easily, sharpen focus, adjust contrast, warm up colors, and remove excessive unwanted tint (such as from lamplight). Cropping is my favorite - those lucky few who have their own darkroom crop their photos routinely, but us regular folks used to have to take what we got - no longer! We can pick and choose, and glory in removing unwanted background, excess sky - we can even remove most of the shot and make it a close-up. Resizing is a snap - want some wallets? No sweat. 8×10, 5×7, some oddball size - just a simple selection will do it. And don’t forget special effects. Depending on the editor, you can turn your photo into a painting, add glow, filters, neon - your imagination can go wild!

When you have your masterpiece ready to go, you can print it on photo paper at home, or you can send it out for processing. Through Picasa, you can click and send it to a processor via the internet, and get your professionally printed photos in the mail - but only the ones you have decided you want. You can upload your photos to a web page, email them, use them in a blog or on MySpace - they are easy to share.

So, as you can see, I am a digital photography convert. There is so much fun in having this kind of control over your work that it has actually rejuvenated my love of photography. If you haven’t already converted too, think about it. It really is a blast.



By: Carol Miller

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The growth of digital photography had made it feasible for everyone to capture the perfect moments of their lives better than ever. The big improvement in shutter speed and photo resolution, make it convenient and easy for both beginners and professional photographers to take good pictures. In addition, photo editing can now be done to create a more creative and artistic photos.

Digital photography has also been a huge plus for many online and offline businesses. A stock or image is used by a photographer to purchase images. These stocks are then purchased on different prices, depending on the license. But since they are digital, and they can be acquired outright from different companies, they can be modified, manipulated and edited using sophisticated editing software.

Today, digital photography is known to boost the fashion industry. Digital fashion photography far off different from doing television footages and taking photos on films. For digital photographers, it is a more challenging field to work on.

The ultimate purpose of digital fashion photography is to capture every detail in the ramp. It will focus on the figures of the stunning ladies, in their most fancy, magnificent and extreme fashion outfits. Digital fashion photography will capture the various outlooks essential to gratify the acceptance in world wide fashion trends.

While digital fashion photography is a meticulous field, a photographer should be creative enough to know the hottest craze each year.

Like fashion designers, digital fashion photographers should also work in high end ease, filed with beauty and glamour. The latter should really come up with the fashions great photos.

A few points to consider on digital fashion photography are to keep focused, ensure that your camera is always with you, know and set your objective, do not let go of the opportune moment, envision on how could come up with a creative and interesting pictures and make use of various distance and angles for each shot. Further show contrast by giving blurry parts and sharp emphasis over your photos, organize your subject, put weight on the shapes and lines of interest as well as create good impact that you are giving information on your audience.

A digital photographer should also be conscious that whatever output he delivers will uncover the care, readiness and awareness of the many vital points to remember in taking pictures.

The photographer should use curtains and reflectors. Use a tripod and set light to either left or right side of the object at an angle of 45 degree. As much as possible, avoid bright lights, or else use polarizing filters. And lastly, never underexpose parts or expose the whole photo. Never expose the entire photograph, try underexposing other parts.

Photographers can make use of backdrop materials to give emphasis on tint and color. Use reflectors, filters, see-thru transparency, and diffusers to neutralize colors. It is recommended to use gray and white backgrounds.

As a professional photographer your audience may not see what you see in the picture. People pay value to the subject and not on the background. It should connect each other.



By: Terry Parker

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Beginners in digital photography all start with the same ambitions, and most run into the same big obstacle. After buying the best camera within their budget (possibly their first SLR), they promise themselves they will really learn how to use it, and rise above daggy snapshots. After all, practice is free and you can delete your mistakes. So how can you go wrong?

Then they try to read the manual.

After a brave effort of trying to wade through pages of poorly written jargon, most people find the task too demanding. They switch the camera to automatic, and that is where it stays.

Does this sound like you? Don’t worry, you are not alone. But it is worth perservering, because taking great photos is immensely satisfying, and allows you to get the most out of your digital camera investment. Maybe you just need to approach it a different way.

Why do I feel it is so important to use the manual settings on your digital camera? Because your camera does not always know how you want your photo to look. Let’s take a look at three examples.

Example #1. Often you can make your subject really stand out by shooting it in the sun, with the background in the shade. This is a great technique for flowers, people, wildlife…all types of subjects. However, with two different levels of light in the one picture, it can be tricky to get the exposure just right. If you leave the camera on automatic, it might set the exposure for the background, leaving the sunlit subject badly overexposed. So you get a perfectly exposed background (which you don’t care about) and a burnt-out subject.

Example #2. Some subjects can only be taken in very low levels of light. Sunsets and rainforests are two simple examples that come to mind. In these situations, the light is only a fraction of normal daylight brightness. With your camera on automatic, it could set a shutter speed so slow, your photos will be a complete blur. Of course you can counter this by using a tripod, but in my experience people who rely on automatic settings usually don’t keep track of what their camera is doing.

Example #3. Action photos, or any photo with a moving subject, can easily be ruined by using the wrong shutter speed. Whether you want to freeze a moving subject (kids at a school sports carnival) or slow the speed to create a motion effect (waterfalls), your camera does not know how you want your picture to look. When you know how to set your own shutter speeds, and balance them with the correct aperture and ISO settings, you will get the result you want almost every time.

Learning the essential skills of photography is not as difficult as it seems. The mistake people make is to rely on their camera manual to tell them everything, which is not really what it is designed to do. Your manual is there to tell you how to adjust the settings for your camera, but it is not so good at explaining what the settings are for. So it will tell you how to operate your camera, but not how to be a better photographer.

A much better approach is to find a good, basic beginner’s guide that explains the fundamentals of good photography. There are plenty of books, ebooks and workshops available. Don’t get too involved at first. It may seem that there are a million things to learn, but you don’t need to go that far. If you can understand aperture, shutter speed, depth of field and ISO, you will know almost everything you need.

After that, it all comes down to patience and practice. With the right approach, and less reliance on a poorly-written manual, your skills will improve in no time. Like I said at the beginning, it doesn’t cost anything to practice and you can delete your mistakes, so how can you fail?



By: Andrew Goodall

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