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Before investing in a camera, consider choosing one that offers manual features in which you can control the outcome of your pictures. The two basic features are aperture and shutter speed. Just by understanding how they work you can turn your photographs into a piece of art.

First let me explain depth of field (DOF). DOF is the distance from the foreground to the background of the picture that is in sharp focus. An increase DOF makes wonderful landscape pictures such as a view of a valley where everything is in sharp focus including the flowers nearby, the mountains in the distance and all of nature’s beauty in between. A decreased DOF works well when you want to blur the clutter in the background so the subject will stand out clearly.

One way to choose your DOF is by adjusting the aperture. Aperture is the diameter of an opening in the camera which exposes the lens and allows light to enter. The smaller the aperture (for example, f/22), the greater DOF you will have leaving you with a sharp picture. Your DOF is less when the opening is larger (for example, f/2) thus giving you a blurred background.

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Lens focal length and the distance of your subject you will focus on are a couple of other ways to control DOF. Using a wide lens will increase your DOF and using a telephoto lens will decrease your DOF. Focusing on your subject in a far distance will have a greater DOF than focusing on your subject in a close distance.

Shutter speed is another way you can make a difference with your pictures. You can capture action by either creating a blurred motion by using a slow shutter speed (for example, 1/15) which makes wonderful waterfall pictures or you can use a fast shutter speed (for example, 1/1000) and freeze the movement which can make a great shot of a gymnast in mid air as she flips over the bar.

A fun way to use a slow shutter speed is to pan your shot. Say you are taking a picture of a bicyclist passing by. Focus in on the bike and follow it with your camera as the shutter stays open.
This way, the cyclist will be fairly sharp and the background will give the impression of him/her moving really fast.

Aperture and shutter speed work together when it comes to the amount of light that enters. A small aperture (opening) allows very little light to enter so you will need a slow shutter speed. With a large opening, less light is needed so you will use a faster shutter speed. When using a slow shutter speed be sure to stabilize your camera to prevent shaking which will give you a blurred background and a blurred subject. A tripod works nicely.

It may sound a little confusing at first but it really is easy once you get the hang of it. You will be amazed by how much better your photos will look by taking control of these features instead of depending on a point and shoot camera. Best of luck!

It’s tough being a photographer during a recession. Granted, everyone has a hard time in a recession. Consumers generally spend less and less because they themselves have to try to make it through the hard times too. In the process of skimming the fat off of their spending, people often see using a professional photographer as a non-essential. This is why making money becomes much harder, although not impossible, for a photographer during a recession.

When recession hits you as a photographer, weigh your options, tighten your belt and most importantly, do not give up. Many photographers do not realize that there are pro-active things they can do to generate new income during a recession. If you want to continue working as a photographer even during a recession, the first thing to do is educate yourself on your options because your business choices will be the success or failure of your business.

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If you haven’t learned how to sell your photography services during the good times, recession will definitely force you to learn. Recession is one of those times in a photographer’s career when they must learn how to sniff out a stable source of income. In the article, Photography Business Choices in a Recession, we explore the business decisions and the sales techniques a photographer can take, not just to help them survive during a recession but to actually excel!

The key principles photographers must know to survive recession:

- Sources of photography income that never dry up

- Business decisions that bring success even in a recession

- How to make money as a Photographer during recession

- Engaging regular clients during recession

- Marketing your photography services during recession

- And more

Unfortunately, the vast majority of photographers feel that finding an alternative income is their only choice in recession. In reality, this is the last thing that you should do. Closing your business down temporarily means you have to start things up again almost from scratch later on. It also means losing the clients that are still willing to work with you. Worst of all, there is a big chance that through discouragement you will never actually return to your business even after the recession.

Take the time to inform yourself of all of your options within the field of photography so that you can make informed business choices. Be flexible enough to make adjustments if they prove to be the best move and of course trim down your own expenses as much as you can. The passion that you have for photography, along side solid business decisions is enough to give you the success needed to ride out any recession so that you are ready for real business growth afterwards.

It’s true that old-fashioned film photography is an art form. In fact, in this day and age, that’s about all it is, which is somewhat ironic. After all, film photography started off in 1837 as something very few could enjoy or do. As it is turning out, people who enjoy film photography are becoming an exclusive club.

The artistic expression available through film is astounding. If you’ve never taken a film photography class, you should. It will ultimately make you a better photographer as you will have a full understanding of the art form in general.

However, unless you plan on investing in a darkroom (water, light, equipment), or if you plan on spending quite a bit of money at photo processing labs, you might concentrate most of your efforts on digital photography. In the long term, it’s generally less expensive than film, since you print only the photos you want. Also, it provides quite a bit of artistic expression of its own.

Digital photography has often been looked at by film buffs as not being artistic. That simply isn’t the case any longer. With the advancement in software programs such as Adobe Photoshop, the digital photographer can take their art as far as their knowledge of the software will take them.

The creativity involved with digitally manipulating an image isn’t reserved to expensive programs like Photoshop (though the price of software will be far less than the cost of setting up a darkroom).

In fact, many digital cameras designed for kids and young adults now come with features that allow changes to be made to the digital photo while it’s still stored in the camera. The picture can then be uploaded to a computer, in some cases wirelessly.

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There are easy photo sharing websites that allow the photographer to manipulate the photo after it’s been uploaded to the site. These usually allow for straightforward changes, such as adjusting contrast, taking out the dreaded red eye, cropping, rotating, etc.

Also, digital photographers have the whole world wide web at their fingertips. This isn’t to say film buffs can’t scan one of their photos in and get it out on the Internet. But let’s face it, showing your work to the world is a whole lot easier if the image is already digital.

Once the image is on the Internet and has been enhanced, it’s easy to share it with whoever you want. This is another advantage digital creativity has. In the blink of a camera’s shutter, you can send your artwork around the world to friends, relatives, potential buyers.

Of course, such ease has its pitfalls as well. Unscrupulous types can copy your image, unless you take precautionary steps such as digital or visual watermarking.

Creativity is a very personal thing, and each person must express his or her self in their own particular way. However, given our busy world, and given the relaxation and contentment that creative expression provides, it’s not a bad idea to pick an art form such as digital photography, one that allows you to express yourself quickly and easily.

Do you want to be an excellent photographer? These 7 digital photography tips you can get started on your way to become an excellent photographer if you’d like.

#1. Learn your cameras settings

Chances are you shoot most of your pictures utilizing your camera’s “automatic” mode. This will get you average results. If you are striving for great shots, you’ll need to learn about other modes too. Take the time to read your camera’s manual to understand when to use each shooting mode.

#2. Take more photos

Before going crazy buying the most expensive equipment right away, you had better take more photos because the more photos you take, the more you’ll know about what kind of camera to get when it’s time to upgrade. In other words, you can always delete the bad ones later.

#3. Busting the dust

Digital camera with removable lenses are prone to dust landing on the sensor. Static electricity around the sensor can possibly contribute to attracting dust particles, or other elements to this sensitive area of your camera. You can get rid of the dust is a camera blower brush, and tilt the camera down while blowing. Take care not to get any of the hairs snagged inside.

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#4. Use a tripod

A tripod will keep your camera steady which will make your photos clearer.

#5. Shot your subject at different focal length, angles, and formats

Shoot your subject at different focal lengths – using the zoom on your photos will not only change how close your subject appears but it will also change the depth of field (ie the blurring of the background). It also allows you to shoot from different distances which can really impact how relaxed your subject is (there’s nothing better than a photographer in your face to make you tense up)

Shoot your subject from different angles – it’s amazing how much you can change a shot by getting on your knees or taking a few steps to the side.

Shoot using different formats – there are different ways to grip a digital camera. The two main ones are horizontally or vertically but you can also get into all kinds of diagonal ways to do it. Mix it up.

#6. Experiment with different ‘modes’

Even the most basic point and shoot cameras have different ’shooting modes’. These are usually things like ‘portrait’, ‘landscape’, ’sports’, ‘night’ etc. Sometimes it’s worth flicking through these to take shots at different settings. What these modes do is simply change the basic settings (like aperture, shutter speed, ISO) – all things that can change the look and feel of your shot considerably

#7. Play with your Flash

Try turning your flash off or forcing it to fire in shots. Sometimes adding flash to a scene where there’s lots of light behind your subject is essential (even though your camera might not think it needs it). This stops those silhouette shots where it looks like you’re trying to hide the identity on your subject.

What is most outstanding in the ongoing progress in digital photographic technology is that it enables everybody capture special moments of his or her lives with extra detail and precision more so now than ever.

Enhancements in picture resolution and shutter velocity makes it uncomplicated for proficient photographers and novices to equally capture splendid pictures.

And though a picture may not be perfect at the time it was shot, highly sophisticated photo-editing application packages (i.e. software) is capable of transforming the picture into a masterpiece of art in no time flat! Guess What?

One of the enormous rewards of digital photography is that it allows you to rapidly and without difficulty distribute your pictures and snapshots with acquaintances and relatives wherever they may be on earth via electronic mail (e-mail). Do you care to remember the hassle that you would have gone through if you tried using your old your film camera to do that?

Veteran digital or film photographers affirm that timing is, for the most part, a major important issue for shooting a first-class picture.

There is only a small, fraction of time available to capture a grand shot. Be it a shot of a splendid sunset or a snapshot of athletes as they cross the finish line, your timing must be razor-sharp…this is the intuition that lets you know precisely when to depress that shutter knob. This is the reason why digital photography is an art form.

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To a large extent, majority of photographers never really actualize their dream of shooting that “perfect” shot. For instance, their picture may be framed well, but the lighting is not exactly right. Or maybe they’ve got the lighting accurately, but they forget to use the flash or red-eye decreasing option.

Instances like these give digital photography an obvious edge because it offers a brilliant method to getting the precise look you intended to capture in a picture. Guess what? A second tremendous advantage of digital photography is its capability to print out your snapshots almost instantly. Whereas with film cameras you would have had to take the film to be processed before going back to pick them up, digital photography gives you an instant alternative!

All shots taken via a digital camera can be altered digitally via photo-enhancing software to attain its full potential – color improvement, zoomed or cropped to their finest size, red-eye reduction etc., etc.

All of these editing options occur within minutes, giving you the opportunity and advantage of having the most outstanding photos ever shot.

The tag-team of a high-quality digital camera and a good photo-editing software package can achieve great things.

Your camera has built-in capabilities that represent only the start of the editing potential expected of the digital photographic era. Guess what? Another gigantic advantage of digital photography is the ability for you to tweak and change your pictures and images in any way that you please. Due to the fact that your photos are in digital files, they can be worked on in photo-editing software packages that enables you adjust the images in a variety of ways thereby enhancing its final output.

Editing software can be utilized to tweak images in any way you wish. Retailers locally and online can furnish you with the gear, photo-enhancing software, and information you require to capture splendid digital photographs. Before settling on a choice of digital camera, you ought to verify that it has all the features and options that you require for your work. Go for models having not only the capability to deliver those great pictures you so require but that also boasts simple docking methods for transferring these pictures from the camera to your printer or PC.

High-quality photo-enhancing software that enables you modify your digital images include: Adobe Photoshop, Corel Photo Album and Kodak Picture. So, now you know all about the advantages that digital photography has over your basic film camera technology. Bottom line? Your choice of camera/technology, should ultimately be informed by what you intend to achieve at the end of the day! Have fun.

Digital cameras are not only a substitute of film cameras, but a much better technology. People are now replacing their film camera to Digital cameras. You can easily click photograph, print them and save your sweet memories in digital photo album. People are now becoming very hi-tech and they are ready to adapt various new ways to make use of their digital photographs. Some of them are listed here.

With digital photos you can do a lot. The important feature is print your digital photo, on a printing paper, save it in your personal computers hard disk and then take a view of your digital photographs on computer whenever you want to. You can get more pleasure of using digital photos in many other ways.

LCD based Digital photo frames, one of the latest gizmo in this digital era. Customary photo frames contains a single printed paper inside that either can be hanged on bedroom wall, office wall, or you can place it on your writing desk or on a shelf.

On the contrary digital photo frames is now implanted with an LCD screen, with the help of the LCD screen you can see variety of digital photos at different time. There are different types of digital frames available loaded with lot of features like reading directly from a memory card or from your camera, wirelessly. Their display features can be programmed to perform a ‘slide show’ that can be time based or random.

There are many software companies that make you load your favorite photo which will be seen by the others when you communicate with them, these are called personal profiles. When you chat with your buddy you can put your photo so that your companion sitting on the other side can know more about you. Uploading photo shows what you are and how do you look like. You can go to matrimonial or dating site and put your photos to help in your life partner search. Finding your soul mate is as simple as that. You can load your photographs and share your personal memories, your unforgettable trip, your marriage photographs, your first baby’s photograph with anyone you want to.

Nowadays social network websites are gaining much popularity. For example, blogs, forums and online discussion groups. Most of the people have own page on the network. It is an easy task to upload your photo to your personal profile page. You can easily replace the old photos with the new one. If something interesting happen in your life or a nice picture of your kids you can put them on your personal page and share with your close friends.

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Some people are just pro’s at taking great pictures. But most people just take average pictures. If you are one of them, you can edit photos in very easy ways and improve them dramatically.

Sure, you can have a good or great digital camera, adjust the settings as you are supposed to, and even produce a good picture. But sometimes it just doesn’t look quite as good as it could.

And even if it does look pretty good…pretty darn good…I would venture to say that with some simple photo editing, your picture can be great.

Here are the main types ways to edit photos which can greatly improve your images:

1. Saturation
2. Lightness and Darkness
3. Sharpening

Do you have to do all of them? Maybe. And maybe not. You can try each one to see if it enhances your image or not.

Saturation

This adjustment will make colors more vivid. How about making the sky in your landscape just a bit bluer and the grass a bit greener?

Most photo editing programs will adjust, or saturate, all elements in the photo. However, some of the more sophisticated ones will let you select areas to manipulate while leaving the rest of the picture alone. It all depends on which software you are using.

Be careful not to over do it, as your goal is to enhance it while still keeping it real looking. Saturate just a little bit at a time, and increase it if you feel it could use some more. You can always reverse your editing.

Brightness and Contrast

Sometimes a picture might come out too dark. By using this adjustment, you can lighten it up and make it brighter. Likewise, there are some images that need to darkened, or toned down. These manipulations can make a big difference in the quality of the photo. By adjusting the contrast, you can make a photo softer or more vivid.

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Sharpening

This is something I try to be careful with. If you over sharpen, things can start to look jagged. In addition, sometimes a softer look can be very nice. You can sharpen slightly to see if this improves the image or not.

When editing, I like to use software that let you see the before and after images side by side. This helps in judging whether the picture is improved with each subsequent edit.

There are many free photo editing software programs that will work and be simple to use. If you want to really get involved in photo editing, you might also try one of the more sophisticated programs. They offer many more types of photo manipulations.

Some have a steep learning curve if you want to learn the more intricate manipulations. However, most of them let you start out in a simple way. If you find one that you feel you might like, see if they have a trial period so that you can try it out. Once again, many photo editing programs are free.

If you want to consider additional types of photo editing, here are a few you will find in most programs:

1. Cropping
2. Red-eye Removal
3. Resizing
4. Sepia
5. Highlights and Shadows – more sophisticated software
6. Exposure – more sophisticated software

Your photography and the way you arrange your photos create a story: a story that is the narrative of your life. This is why your pictures are the most valuable material possessions you can have. Losing these precious treasures could be absolutely devastating. And yet, hundreds of thousands of people lose their photos every single year due to house fires, floods, unfavorable climate conditions and even theft and vandalism. Before the introduction of free online photo storage, these regrettable stories could not efficiently be prevented and these great and tragic losses were unfortunate risks that had to be endured.

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Fortunately people today have a choice. Free online photo storage stories create a type of insurance for your most important memories. When you store your photographs on the internet, you are ensuring that they will always be there when you need them. No matter what happens to the pictures and photo albums in your home, you can rest assured that all of your photos are safe and secure online and can be retrieved, viewed and even reprinted at any time you need them. This can be quite comforting, especially when you are passionate about photography and preserving family memories.

Life is full of ups and downs. There are good times and bad times. Our photographs preserve the best moments of our lives and allow us to call on these happy moments when we are down and need a boost. Keeping these valuable treasures safe with online photo storage means your stories will always be there when you need to remember what is good in life. The memories we store in our minds can sometimes be clouded when our emotions become confused, but the free online photo storage allows you to see your stories as clearly as when they happened. Keeping focused on the happy times allows you to have a more positive outlook which leads to more happy times.

Even if nothing devastating ever happens to your photos you can count yourself lucky and the free online photo storage stories you have will still come in handy. Sometimes even with the greatest of care, one photo falls out of or becomes torn in your photo album. With free online photo storage stories, you can quickly locate the picture and have it reprinted and sent to you. Another occasion might be when an extended family member comes for a visit and sees a great picture in your album that they would like a copy of. No need to worry over whether you have a double print buried in a box somewhere in the house; you can just order a copy and have it sent straight to their home.

Your photography is an expression of who you are, where you’ve been and where you are going. It is a part of you. The loss you would experience if anything happened to these photos is incalculable. Free online photo storage stories are the best free insurance policy you could have to ensure that your photos last for the rest of your life and beyond.

The continuing advances in digital photography make it possible for everyone to capture moments of their lives with more detail and accuracy than ever. Improvements in photo resolution and shutter speed make it easy for both professional photographers and beginners to take great pictures. And even if a photo is not perfect when it is taken, sophisticated editing software can transform it into a work of art.

Experienced photographers say that timing is the most important factor for getting a good picture. There is only a small, limited opportunity to capture a great shot. Whether you are trying to get the perfect sunset photo or get a picture of the winners as they cross the finish line, you must have a good sense of timing and the intuition that lets you know exactly when to press that shutter button. It is this factor that makes photography an art form.

Most people never quite realize the dream of getting a perfect shot. Maybe your picture is framed well, but the lighting is not quite right. Maybe you’ve got the lighting just right, but you forget to use the flash or red-eye reduction option. In cases like these, digital photography offers an excellent way to get just the look you want in a photo.

Any picture you take with a digital camera can be edited to reach its full potential. Digital photos can be automatically enhanced to improve their color; they can be zoomed or cropped to their optimal size. And, of course, the red-eye reduction capability can improve any portrait. These editing options can all be completed within minutes, giving you the chance to have the most wonderful photos you’ve ever taken.

With a good digital camera and photo editing software, you can accomplish great things. The capabilities built into your camera represent only the beginning of the editing potential. Software programs really help you make the most of the photos you have. You can use editing software to change the images in any way you desire.

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Local or online retailers can provide you with the equipment, software, and information you need to take great digital photos. When selecting a digital camera, you should be sure you buy one that has the features you need and want. You should look for a model that gives great pictures and that also has simple docking methods for downloading the photos from the camera to the printer or computer. Good photo editing software that will let you alter your digital pictures includes products like Kodak Picture, and Corel Photo Album.