No, I’m not meaning that you need to blow a big chunk of money on some high-priced African expedition to get amazing photos of the rare South African 3-tusked hairy elephant. So put away your pith helmet, and super telephoto lenses.
What I’m actually talking about is one way in which you can either boost up your creative juices, or keep yourself sharp and innovative in how you see things. Because, let’s face it. Photography is primarily concerned with how a person sees things, and what angles and elements he uses to tell a story. But if you’re always going around taking the “walk up shot”, which is the perspective you see when you first walk up to something (the term is taken from Scott Kelby, The Digital Photography Book), then your photos are going to start falling more and more into the creative realm of snapshots and mere recording of an event. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’ve ever had a huge birthday party, or a baby shower or some other big once-in-a-lifetime event, you’ve probably got tons and tons of photos from them. Once the festivities are over you go in and dump all the photos from the camera into your computer, only to realize you must have been on burst mode because there are about 224 pictures on your memory card.
For this hobby, there are SO many things you need to think of; lighting, lens choice, camera settings, subject matter. The list goes on and on. But one of the most important things to think of is how you’re going to get all of your camera gear where you want to go, safely and conveniently.
So perhaps you’ve been taking photos for quite awhile now. You’re pretty comfortable with your gear, and have been working up a portfolio of some of your best shots. Your friends and family are always complementing your work, and you’re starting to feel confident about your ability.
If you’re into digital photography, half of the fun of shooting digital is being able to manipulate your photos after you take them. For some this is simply an arduous task of fixing and cropping. For others it’s when they really get a chance to have fun and spend hours staring at their computer screens. Personally I’m somewhere in the middle of these two extremes; catch me on the right day and I hate my computer, and on others it’s my favorite “girlfriend” (terminology supplied by my wife, not me).
Tineye, you’ve probably never heard of it. And, technically, the public in general won’t hear of it for a little while longer. Tineye is a search engine that is currently in beta testing with over 500 users who are hacking away at it to see how this fascinating little search engine will hold up to real-world tests.
This blog actually dovetails nicely with the series I had recently on color management. So instead of covering all that territory, be sure to go back and check out Part 1 and 2 of “Displaying your photos: screen or print?”