FUN PHOTOGRAPHY

Photographing water can be quite entertaining. If you think it’s boring, think again! Water is one of the most versatile subjects. What you’ll find here are suggestions and tips for creating wonderful water photos.

1. Get to the ocean. For oceans in particular, sunrises and sunsets are wonderful backgrounds for ocean photographs. Check out the colors that reflect on the water. Also, you can get a full moon’s reflection.

2. If you want to photograph moving water, such as waterfalls or rivers, you can either use a fast or slow shutter speed depending on the effect you want. The faster the shutter speed, the less time light is exposed to the film. A slow shutter speed means that the film is being exposed to light for a longer amount of time. For a smooth, blurred effect, use a slow shutter speed, and a fast shutter speed to freeze the water in motion.

3. Search for reflections. Look at the world around you in a puddle. You can use reflections to create abstract images. To include the most detail (that is in focus) use F11 or higher.

4. Have you ever photographed underwater? Of course most people don’t own an underwater camera, but you can just buy a disposable one. Next time you are snorkeling or hanging around the beach, bring one along to photograph the fish.

5. Clouds, rainbows, snow, and mist are water too! When photographing snow, you will want to overexpose the image by one stop. Say you are at F8, you will want to shoot at F5.6.

6. Experiment with a polarizing filter. When photographing water, they actually eliminate the reflection, making it more transparent. Shooting from above (i.e. on a bridge) will eliminate the most reflection.

The options never end when photographing water. There are a number of amazing images online, so get inspired and then go out and experiment.

What is your favorite past time? Hobby enthusiasts know that spare time is not to be “spent” but savored. If you have a past time you enjoy, you will never look at your spare time in the same way again. If you’re not sure what past time hobby you would enjoy, here are some suggestions.

Many people listen to music as a favorite past time. There is much you can learn about any style of music. You can learn composers, famous melodies, and all about performers past and present. You can develop sophisticated tastes in jazz or classical music or collect a large assortment of CD’s. Music makes a great past time hobby.

Many people love animals. Pets of all kinds may become hobbies. Maybe you enjoy watching birds. If you have trouble finding the trees to watch, perhaps you want to get a pair of canaries, a parakeet or a cockatiel. People who live in the country, sometimes look at the breeding of ornamental chickens, pigeons, and pheasants. It is very interesting to watch a mother bird take care of a nest of young chickens. Maybe you can even ask a few winners!

Dogs make a big hobby, too. Walking and enjoying a pet dog is one thing, but the breeding and raising show is another thing. Show dogs may require a bit of an investment, but many pups are free. There is also the aspect of training of a dog in obedience. Dogs love to give back to their owners, too, so that if you start a hobby of time spent caring for a dog, you will never be lonely. However, dogs require a bit of work and care, especially when it is forming, so keeping dogs is not for everyone.

Bicycles can be your hobby. Hobby cyclists are becoming increasingly common to see less traveled by bicycle along the highways up close and personal the campaign. Cycling requires a helmet and appropriate clothing, and a small tool kit for repairs side of the road. Or perhaps you do enjoy cycling on a smaller scale, simply taking pleasure walks with your family. The choice is yours.

The world is full of interesting things to learn and do. Don’t merely sit back and watch TV. Get interested in a past time hobby. It’s good for your mind. In fact, it might even keep you from going senile in your old age, if you stay active in a past time hobby. And it’s a good example to our kids and grandkids if we spend our time doing something meaningful.

When taking photos of flowers, you want them to look their best. And since you like sunny days it is easy to get the idea that those sunny days also provide the best conditions for making pictures of your flowers and garden.

However, people who think that they need that sunlight to take a good picture are sadly mistaken. When it comes to taking photos of flowers in a garden, an overcast day may actually work better.

And there is more to it, too - here are six tips you can use to make pictures like the professionals:

Get rid of a distracting background by shading it - take a piece of cardboard or some similar stuff and hold it so it casts a shadow on that background you prefer to see less of.

Maybe you need more light on your favorite flower? Then borrow the bathroom mirror and use that to reflect the light to where you want it. Favorite trick of the professionals.

Another thing you can do if you do not want to wait for the clouds is to make your own. Use a sheet of semi-opaque plastic, or a piece of white cloth. Secure this to a coat hanger made of wire. (The hanger should be formed into the shape of a square to make it serve better as support.) Then take this object and place it above the flower so that it provides some shade from the sunlight.

If the sun is out, then experiment with backlit photos. This means you shoot the picture into the sun, making your flowers lit from the back. In some cases they will come out looking almost transparent!

Avoid taking photos of flowers in the middle of the day. That is when the sunlight is the most unforgiving. Instead, try to take photos early in the morning or right before the sun goes down.

Nowadays every camera has a zoom lens. Use that zoom function to make your flowers stand out better, by “zooming in”. This tends to give you less problems with distracting stuff in the background, since it enlarges your subject relative to what is further away.

All these methods are stuff the pro’s use all the time, and some of the reasons their results look so fantastic. You too can make photos like that if you learn their secrets.

I purchased the Canon SD770IS to substitute a PowerShot A95. Few years ago, I purchased a Digital Elph for my daughter and found myself using that small and light camera instead of my A95. Given the advancements in technology, it was time to upgrade.

The most essential feature in searching for a replacement was the small size and the use of a rechargeable battery. The resolution was less of a factor as the A95, with just five Mpixels, created clear shots. The most notable advance, even over the recent Elph, was the increased speed of all functions including boot up and picture recording.

Picture quality is amazing, with the color proportion and metering being brilliant. If you now own a Canon digital camera and you are thinking of buying a new one, the standard navigation of characteristics remains mainly the same, so that will be well known to you. The access to the camera’s shooting modes is available from the menus, rather than using a physical dial as on the A95.

The screen is fairly big, well enlightened and easy to see, even in shining light. Finally, the most important consideration with digital picture taking should be image quality and ease of use. I have lots of practice with manual SLR picture cameras and similar point and shoots, and this model fits absolutely for true “turn it on and shoot” picture taking. Pictures are crisp and clear with good detail and deep color.

The luminosity meter does a great job of assessing the settings and selecting the best possible combination of the shutter speed and aperture.

A high capacity (SDHC) memory card will give a large number of photographs even at the highest resolution. Uploading photos to a PC or Mac is easy with either the supplied software or Apple’s iPhoto software, which works seamlessly with the camera. I would recommend both a high capacity SD card and the optional leather case to protect the camera, especially if dropped.

This camera just blows me away. It makes astonishing pictures in full-auto mode. In situations where full-auto doesn’t quite do the job as good as possible, this camera lets you change of ISO settings, light balance, focus method, and tons of other factors.

I extremely recommend this camera for someone looking for an easy-to-use, lightweight, little and good digital camera. It’s simply a marvellous camera at a great price.

Photoshop software is ideal if you want to retouch digital images, apply special effects to your images and will also help you prepare photographs for the web. If you need to resize images, add filters and styles, Adobe Photoshop is the software for you.

Adobe has created many different forms of Photoshop, but the for the amateur photographer or the professional who is new to digital photography Elements 2 is very easy to understand and comes with a low price tag and a host of creative tools that help with image manipulation.

The brushes available in Photoshop give a massive choice for retouching images. Images are adjusted by painting with the brushes over the area you want to change. Red eye in a image can be removed in less that two minutes. Items can be removed from an image. For poor quality images there is a sharp tool to sharpen certain areas of an image.

There are 15 types of file format that you can save your images to, giving you the possibility of creating images for a large amount of different projects. This includes images for the web, for slideshows, and for many different forms of printing.

Elements can also create images specifically for the web. Preparing your images for your website is simple and easy with Photoshop Elements. It also helps you to resize and compress images that are being attached to an e-mail.

Creating a web gallery can be a lot of work but Photoshop can open a group of images, resize them, create a thumbnail gallery and create all the navigation HTML buttons for your site. It will create a folder for your web files and save it on your computer.

Photoshop Elements also contains a slide show, which is a very easy way of showcasing your images. Slideshow presentations are saved in PDF format making them easy to e-mail or download. To view a slideshow you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer.

Also included in Photoshop is a video frame capture tool. This allows you to capture any frame from a video and save it as a stand-alone image. Images created for frame capture can be edited the same as any standard image.

Where the need to edit colour is great, Photoshop has a wide range of tools that will help. Colour images can be turned into black and white shots in less than five minutes. You can also add filters to images to warm them up or create different tones.

The most important feature of Photoshop is the Toolbox. The Toolbox contains all the editing tools that you need in order to burn, dodge, clone, blur, sharpen or smudge an image. This box also contains handy tools to crop and zoom in on an image.

There are many artists world wide who make a living by retouching images with advanced image software. Learning how to use Photoshop correctly will be a massive boast to your digital photography, and if you are a keen photographer it should become part of your digital darkroom.

With the host of choices available, choosing a new camera can be an overwhelming experience. It is a much easier task if you break the big decision down into smaller, more manageable ones. Your first camera-related decision should be whether you are going to buy a standard analog camera, or a sleek new digital one.

Digital cameras are certainly leading the camera market, but are they really the best choice? It really depends on what you are using your camera for and what level of control you want to have over taking, developing and editing your pictures.

In the old days, even up to a few years ago, digital cameras were non-existent, or offered such poor resolution that there was really no point to them. Unless you really needed instant digital pics, you would always be better off buying a normal camera, and all you would have to look at was camera lens information to make sure that your lens had the right diameter and focus to meet your needs. Sure you could look at camera information on polaroids, on different kinds of film, on different brands, etc., but this was all still pretty basic.

How things have changed over the last few years. Digital cameras have taken over, and many photo stores are even cutting down on their availability of analog cameras and film processing. Digital camera come as small as a keychain, and can cost under $20. Depending on the resolution of the camera you can blow up pictures as large as you like and they will still be crystal clear. You can also buy additional lenses, switch between panoramic and regular modes, as well as custom program your own settings.

What you ultimately choose is up to your own personal preferences. Digital definitely seems to be becoming more popular since they are easy to use, cheap to develop and can fit any budget. However, some people just like the satisfaction that comes from taking a good analog picture with your own hands and no technological interference. Regardless of your choice, make sure you research all your options first and know exactly what type of camera you are looking for before you walk into a camera or electronics store. Then get the salesperson to show you all the models that have the features you want but are within your budget. Make sure you account for any extras you may need, like battery packs, camera cases or extra lenses. Then take your new camera out and start snapping!

Seldom does photography not shape the way people perceive the world around them. As a medium, it has become, in the span of more than one hundred years, one of the most appreciated creative fields. It opens your heart and soul through the mind’s eye as you view images from nearby to places far away. You can travel without ever leaving your home by viewing the works of many groundbreaking photographers. John Gutmann is one such photographer.

John Gutmann was born in Breslau, Germany in 1905. He originally studied art under the Master Expressionist Otto Mueller. He loved what he could produce through his paintings and by 1927, he was exhibiting his work at Schlesischer Kunsterbund and the Museum der Bildenden Kuntse in Breslau. John Gutmann traveled Europe after receiving is MA degree in 1928. He had a very promising career as an artists and professor until, in 1933, Hitler invaded Germany. Being the son of a well-off Jewish family, John Guttman’s world began crashing around him. He decided to migrate to the United States and a friend of his suggested heading to San Francisco. Prior to his departure, Gutmann purchased a camera, self-taught the medium by reading the owner’s manual and began work as a photojournalist. He signed on with Presse-Foto in Berlin with the idea of shooting images in America to be sent back home to Germany.

Upon arriving in San Francisco, Gutmann was dumbstruck by the raw photographic material available to him. Hailing from war-torn Europe, he was amazed by the people from different backgrounds living side by side with each other. He brought the experience of his keen foreign eye into play and photographed life as it happened. Images from the 30s through the 50s brought us the every man as Americans enjoyed life as best they could through the depression and World War. Cars, signs, clothing and street life told the story of time. Gutmann captured the essence of any given moment, cropping the images for maximum effect. He didn’t really give up his art, either, he was on display staring in 1934, and by the following year, he began teaching part time art at San Francisco State College.

From the late 30s into the 60s, John Gutmann’s work was published in major magazines such as “Saturday Evening Post”, “Life” and “Time”. All applauded his works. In the 40s, he was a staff photographer for “The Dispatch” at Camp Roberts, California as he served with the U.S. Army Signal Corps using still and motion pictures. He went on to serve in Asia on the Psychological Warfare Team. By 1946 he was back home in San Francisco and began teaching photography at the University. His audience was captured by the sheer simplistic power of his images. He was “seeing American through an outsider’s eyes - the automobiles, the speed, the freedom, the graffiti,” John explained the 80s, “[recorded] the almost bizarre, exotic qualities of the country.” This is how he was given his groundbreaking reputation.

John Gutmann continued to be a world traveler and professor for the rest of his life. He caught the laughs, the cries, the downtrodden, and the elite. His mind’s eye found beauty in garages, concerts, festivals, and the common passers-by. John Gutmann’s photographs were published many times over as we became entangled in his web of images and life. He passed away in 1998 with his estate being handled by the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Born in Philadelphia, in 1890, Man Ray (aka Emmanuel Radnitzky) came to be known as one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century. Although perhaps best known for his avant-garde black and white photography, he was active in many visual arts, including sculpture, performance art, and especially painting. Like many avant-garde artists, he received little recognition or appreciation for his work at the time, but they have been slowly growing in popularity since.

Although his earliest paintings are done in the traditional 19th-century style of the Old European Masters, Man Ray was always interested in experimental artwork. He finally began to break with traditionalism in his artwork by experimenting with cubism. After moving to New York in 1912 and becoming involved with its art community, Man Ray’s work began to focus on showing movement despite the inherently static nature of a painting. For example, his 1916 painting “The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Shadows”, great care was paid to the repetitive positions of the dancer’s skirts. As Man Ray continued to explore experimental art, he gradually moved away from painting. At first he merely experimented with different materials-for example, his 1919 painting “Aerograph” was done with airbrush on glass-he eventually left the canvas altogether and moved into experimental art in the sculpture and photography mediums.

Man Ray’s first sculpture, titled “Self-Portrait” was exhibited in 1916. He worked for a while with “found” or “readymade” sculpture-objects chosen by the artist and displayed, with very little modification, as a sculpture. Other sculptures stressed form over subject, such as his sculpture “Enigma of Isidore Ducasse”, in which cloth is draped around an unknown object and tied with rope. In 1920, he assisted fellow avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp designing and building one of the first pieces of kinetic art in which glass plates were rotated by a motor. In the same year, Man Ray, Duchamp, and Katherine Dreier opened the Socit Anonyme, effectively the first museum of modern art in the United States.

It was not until 1918 that Man Ray began working with photography. Although he was to become a renowned fashion and portrait photographer, it was the potential of the camera for experimental artistic images that he proceeded to develop. It represented a further step away from static, two-dimensional painting, and he experimented with mechanical and photographic ways of creating images. After moving to the artistic community of Montparnasse in Paris, France, Man Ray spent the next twenty years redefining the art of photography. He juxtaposed objects, subjects, backgrounds, and lighting in his photographs to alter the meaning and message it would at first glance appear to be sending to society. The Surrealist artist Mret Oppenheim posed for Man Ray in 1934 for a famous series of photographs, in which she stood nude next to a printing press. Later, Ray revisited and reinvented the photographic technique of “solarization.” He developed new techniques of using photograms, which he named after himself, calling them “rayographs.” Moreover, he also directed several short avant-garde experimental films.

As per his wish, Man Ray died in Paris in 1976, and was buried in the Montparnasse cemetery. His tombstone bears the inscription “Unconcerned, but not indifferent”. In 1999, ARTnews magazine rated him among the 25 most influential artists during the 20th century due to his exploration, expansion, and blending of the artistic disciplines of painting, sculpture, and black and white photography.

When someone mentions “canvas prints”, mounted artworks first come to mind. The blend of radiant and lively colours of popular art and abstract paintings brings burst of life and style even to the most boring space. Not into art works? Try photos. Imagine your favourite photo - of your child, your best friend, your weeding day - mounted on a canvas for everyone to see. You can practically put anything you want into canvas - your child’s doodle, a caricature of yourself, an image of your favourite basketball team, your first artwork - it’s your choice.

Canvas prints are the newest fashion in home decoration today. Cheaper than a commissioned painting, but still with elegant look, canvas prints becomes even popular in the interior design world. Options include using digitally-printed canvas prints or traditional offset-based canvas prints. Printing companies provides various mediums for canvases, including water-resistant, cotton, matte and glossy canvases.

A canvas print refers to the reproduction of an artwork or a photograph on a canvas. The pictures are printed via wide-format inkjet printers or dry sublimation. When the ink dries, specialists apply protective coating to prevent pictures from fading and scratches. The print out is then stretched by hand to fit a specially-made frame. While this is a complicated process, many printing companies offer canvas printing services at an affordable price. Just send your picture or artwork, and they’ll do the rest, from fixing red-eyes and blurs to the actual framing. Digital editing and photo enhancements provides special options like colour posterization, sepia tint, and can even turn your photo in a pop art style. You’ll have a personalized canvas print in an instant.

Amateur photographers and budding artists especially benefits from canvas prints, as canvas is the perfect material in which to mount their works. Canvas-printed photographs are durable, capable of producing high-quality images with vivid colours, and come in different artistic designs. These can even last longer than regularly printed photographs.

If you’re into marketing and tired of using posters and brochures as advertising materials, you might want to consider using canvas prints. Research your target audience, come up with a exceptional and interesting campaign and put it on canvas. Eye-catching and refreshingly unique, it will sure attract audiences’ attention.

Photo canvas prints are also perfect as presents. Custom-made presents are much appreciated so why not give out an impressive portrait of your friends on their next birthday?

You can keep your canvas prints looking shiny and brand new for a long time by following these simple maintenance tips: avoid getting water on them; don’t place your prints in direct sunlight; avoid using acidic materials; and use brush or soft cloth to remove dust and lint in your canvas.

From home decorations, gallery-worthy art or photo displays, marketing tools, a perfect all-occasion present, the benefits of canvas prints are truly limitless.

Digital cameras are growing in demand and use. The capturing of images without the need for film is the greatest advantage of the digital camera. A digital camera although with many functions does not need the complicated mechanical components of a standard film camera.

With the upsurge of home computers it means that almost anyone can store and then play with the images on their own pc. A series of ones and zeros is how all digital information is stored and a digital camera images are no different. Digital cameras still use lenses in much the same way that conventional cameras do. All the budding digital camera enthusiast needs to know is that despite the difference in how the image is captured, the ultimate effect is the same.

A feature of the better quality digital cameras is that they have a sensor that converts light into electrical charges using a different system to their less expensive cousins. Some people believe the device used to capture an image in cheaper digital cameras the CMOS will eventually be the replacement for the better CCD but this is highly doubtful.

The CMOS device is this reason that many cameras have come down in price so much as they are easier and cheaper to produce than their CCD cousins. The digital camera converts the light it receives like millions of minute solar cells and both the CCD and CMOS end up storing an image but just using a different method to do it.

If you find yourself in the market for a digital camera then some useful information is listed below.

From the point of view on having good quality photos, look for a high megapixel camera as it will be worth it and you may find a model that is being superseded at a discount as well.

Unless your budget just won’t stretch that far, don’t buy a digital camera with a digital zoom only or you will find pictures that aren’t very clear when you use the zoom function.

Don’t waste your money on standard disposable batteries as rechargeable ones nowadays are very affordable and long lasting which could save you hundreds of dollars on standard ones.

If you’re a photo freak, be sure that you have enough memory in your camera to take all the wacky, freaky, funny and just about any photo you can. If you are a keen photographer then you will need a larger size storage card if you don’t want to run out of space after a hundred shots so look for cards over 512MB.

Digital cameras are now very tiny compared to a few years ago so you can actually carry around a high spec camera in your pocket and still be able to take fantastic pictures. So by doing this you won’t feel as if you are a journalist or nature photographer wherever you go.

These are just the basic things you have to look for in a digital camera when you buy one. With their range of features and ease of use, digital cameras are the future of photography.