With the 18-55mm lens attached, the T3i is very much lighter. On its front one can find the usual fare: an aggressively shutter button, a self-timer lamp and an IR remote port on the front, all in close proximity. On its right is a flash release button, a lens release button and a depth-of-field preview button. Features The Canon EOS  [ Read More ]

By Amy Renfrey Lightroom is a wonderful software program. I’ve been using it for the past few years. In this lesson I am going to provide you with some basic Lightroom tips so you can begin navigating your way around the program. So what’s so wonderful about this program? It is a really simple program to use. It’s designed for  [ Read More ]

Ever get jealous? I really do, especially when thinking about my camera equipment. I’m sure drooling over a new Canon 100-400mm zoom lens at the moment. Next week, no one knows. Yet one particular matter is for certain, it will likely be something. Although I truly need to admit the fact that the Canon 100-400mm lens has been on my  [ Read More ]

So what exactly are gels?  Lighting gels or just gels are thin sheets of colored, translucent plastic, usually polycarbonate, that add color for theatrical, photographic, video graphic, or other lighting situations. Gels are fantastic to add some punch or visual sizzle to what might otherwise be a fairly mundane environment.  Typically gels are placed in front of lights in a gel holder. A gel can be used on any kind of light source.  Many people use Do It Yourself (DIY) methods to attach gels to speedlights which is a very cost effective way to add gels to your photography.  I personally use monolights with special adapters to hold the gels. Adding a little bit of color either to your subject and/or background can really make a glamour picture pop.  This is true whether you are using a studio set or location set. The trick is to use complimentary colors to your environment, subject, wardrobe, and lighting.  A color wheel really helps to decide what colors are complimentary and which are not.  I recommend having one available as a reference to make sure your choices make sense. I use gels primarily for adding color to the environment and seldom actually use them directly on my subject. This accomplishes a few things for me.  First it allows subject isolation.  Having a distinct color as a background effectively draws your eye to the subject.  This is obvious in all the examples.  When using this technique placement of the gelled light can either give  [ Read More ]

By Rick Trottier Whether you own, rent, trade time for a studio or only shoot in the most commando-like settings, effectively managing your resources during a “studio shoot” is one of the most important elements when it comes to making the evolution from a hobbyist to a professional photographer. Understanding that a successful shoot of any type needs careful management of time, energy, materials, concepts/content and personalities is what makes the difference between a rank amateur and a seasoned expert. Proper handling of all the aspects of a shoot will set you apart from your colleagues as your reputation for professionalism precedes you. Like the Rock of Gibraltar, the professional photographer should be as steady and responsible in the control of his universe as is humanly possible.   Achieving a consistent grasp of resource management starts with finding a proper balance between the need for structure and maintaining a degree of spontaneity in your methodology.  Planning and structure are absolutely essential to professionalism. The hobbyist “wings it” in most or all of what he does. The professional prepares wisely, puts thought into what comes before, during and afterwards and reflects on what went right and what didn’t and then makes the appropriate course corrections. Nonetheless, adhering to the talisman of structure can lead to a stultifying approach in how you conduct your shoots. This may sound oxymoronic, but “planning in” some opportunities for spontaneous lighting schemes, background options and even posing strategy will keep any studio experience from becoming stale.  [ Read More ]

By Mikel Belly Facebook is the hottest social networking site. It allows people from all walks of life to connect with each other in a great way. Facebook offers a wide array of features that help you express yourself and show off your life. Cover photos are meant for this purpose. You can use these photos to express your personality  [ Read More ]

A camcorder is an electronic device that combines a video camera and a video recorder into one unit. Equipment manufacturers do not seem to have strict guidelines for the term usage. Marketing materials may present a video recording device as a camcorder, but the delivery package would identify content as video camera recorder. In order to differentiate a camcorder from  [ Read More ]

By Ajay Kumar N INTRODUCTION Working with Shapes Photoshop provides several tools that help add stylistic elements, such as shapes, to your work. You can add either a shape or a rasterized shape to an image. A shape is simply a vector object that keeps its crisp appearance when it is resized, edited, moved, reshaped, or copied. A rasterized shape  [ Read More ]

It’s an amazing feeling to be opening a brand new Canon Rebel T3i digital SLR camera. You really have to experience it in real life to understand it. The beauty of a digital SLR is that it has separate lenses, and these must be purchased separately. Without a Canon Rebel lens, your new camera is pretty useless. And getting two  [ Read More ]

By Michael L Leigh   A lens cap keeper can save you a lot of hassle and ensure the protection of your camera lens. Learn what its design is and how it works. You will certainly be amazed how functional this creative solution is. You need the cap to keep the lens protected from scratching and from different kinds of  [ Read More ]

Canon is one of several popular companies that put up cameras and camera accessories. Just a few of its competitors include Nikon, Kodak, Casio, Leica, and various others. Between camera aficionados, however, the majority agree that Canon’s cameras are easily among the world’s best. This is because they are expertly engineered and made and takes amazingly sharp pictures. Not only  [ Read More ]

By Ajay Kumar N I. INTRODUCTION IN ADDITION to using Curves and Levels to correct the tonality of your photographs, you can also play with the Shadows/Highlights feature to help recover details in the shadow and highlight areas of a backlit image. This feature works a little bit like the Recovery and Fill Light sliders in Adobe Camera Raw, plus  [ Read More ]

Defeating the Lighting Trap Maintaining Innovation and Creativity in The Studio Written By Rick Trottier – RJT Images Consistency provides us with a sense of stability and comfort. When people go out to eat, it is often seen that they will go to the same restaurant and order the same meal rather than try something new. That which is known  [ Read More ]

As I mentioned in my prior post, retouching is a vast area and encompasses the smallest edit such as an image crop or resize to dramatic changes such as Photoshop art.  In this discussion I want to give you additional examples of how more extreme manipulation of the images can create drama or interest. The before and after pictures in Part 1 demonstrated a fairly basic approach to portrait retouching.  The goal of the retouch in that instance was to simply make the subject look better.  For portrait work that is really the majority of what is needed. With editorial work we want to convey a message or feeling through the photography.  We want to say something. Great pictures throughout history have done just that with very little to no retouching whatsoever.  There are many iconic photojournalistic editorial pictures I could use as examples, some disturbing such as the Eddie Adams picture of the Viet Cong Guerilla being executed in 1968 (not pictured) to more joyful subjects as Alfred Eisenstaedt’s Times Square Kiss picture on V-J Day in 1945 (right).  The list can go on and on. Neither of these have significant retouches.  They may have been cropped or adjusted for exposure in the film processing but otherwise most likely nothing else at all. Today with digital capabilities we’re able to add more visual impact to what we are trying to say in a picture by applying more retouching techniques. I’m going to start with an example of a picture I captured that  [ Read More ]

In my articles Lighting 101 – Part 1 and Lighting 101 – Part 2, I discussed lighting techniques ranging from single light source Rembrandt type lighting to multi-light studio and indoor location lighting. In Part 3 I’m going to talk about outdoor portrait lighting. On Craigslist and other places photographers advertise “all natural light” or “outdoor natural light photography” but when you translate that for most of them it means “I don’t have lighting equipment” or “I don’t know how to use lighting equipment” or maybe even both.  For most of them when you look at their work it becomes crystal clear. Now that said, I know professional photographers who use available light and get fantastic results but they know what they are doing.  Dave Alan in Las Vegas is a terrific example with his glamour/fitness work. Remember in my article Lighting 101 – Part 1 I told you not to think of the sun any differently as you would a studio light or vice versa. You still have to know what you’re doing and what you’re trying to achieve when you position your subject to the light! Outdoor portrait photography is much more difficult in my opinion than studio portrait work.  Why?  Simple. In the studio the photographer controls everything about the light.  Outdoors the photographer controls just a portion of the light. You can’t control the sun.  You can and should position your subject relative to the sun’s position but short of waiting for the sun to rise or set, you can’t  [ Read More ]

From our childhood, everyone must know about what photography is and what the main role of photography in our daily life. But very few people know about that each photograph contain an artistic work itself, which could be shaped with any photographer. Photography contains many concepts including landscape photography, human or animal’s photography. So, one of the most artistic work  [ Read More ]

This is part two of the three part series on Lighting 101.  Part one can be reviewed here Lighting 101 – Part 1 When you look at Rembrandt’s work imagine traveling back in time to see what they had as a light source.  To do that it’s really quite simple.  Step outside and look up; it’s the sun.  The sun was probably the primary light source for all conceptual lighting in history.  Even when other light sources were used indoors, the concept was still based upon how the sunlight would hit the subject.  This concept should be how you look at lighting even today! The Chiaroscuro and the subsequent Chiaroscuro Triangle were created by a single source of light.  Now depending on where that single light source hits the subject will determine the Chiaroscuro.  Directly at the face will eliminate shadows and flatten the face.  Angling to get the Chiaroscuro Triangle creates shadows and the resultant depth and dimension. Ah but travel back from Rembrandt’s day to now.  Do we have single light sources?  Of course we do just like Rembrandt.  I love using the sun as the key or primary light.  We often times use additional lights to “fill” in some of the darkest shadows but essentially we are still looking for Chiaroscuro when we use the sun as the key light. But let’s think a minute.  What if we don’t want any shadows or Chiaroscuro?  We know that if we simply light the subject and fill in shadows  [ Read More ]

Postcards are probably one of the best souvenir items ever made. Not only do they serve as souvenirs from places one has visited, but they are also a means for people around the world to be able to send their love to their relatives and friends. Do you want to know the different secret weapons to create postcard pictures? Here  [ Read More ]

By Mark Q Soto If you are a photographer – or if you are an aspiring photographer – one of the most important things you will be able to do is determine a way to gain more exposure for your work; after all, the more people who know about your work, the more work you will be able to get  [ Read More ]

It’s all about the light. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines photography as: the art or process of producing images by the action of radiant energy and especially light on a sensitive surface. So if light is needed to create the art, then how exactly do we use the light to produce the art?  I’m not going to go into the techno-jargon of how digital sensors or film capture light, what I am going to do is show you how professionals use light to create art. Lighting is arguably the single biggest difference between professional photographers and amateurs! Lighting isn’t rocket science, but it is something you must know.  You can easily identify good lighting techniques vs. bad ones immediately. The foundation for good lighting techniques begins with an artist, not a photographer. Let’s take a look at Rembrandt. Take a look at the self portrait by Rembrandt.  He was a master of Chiaroscuro.  Chiaroscuro is the light and dark elements of a representation.  I like to think of it as the interplay of shadow to light. The point of Chiaroscuro is to create the illusion of 3-D on a 2-D medium.  Why is that important?  It’s important  because 3-D is how we see the world.  We don’t see flat images, we see shape and form so that’s what the representation, be it a painting or photograph, should also demonstrate. There is a tell-tale way you can identify Chiaroscuro.  Some people refer to it as the Chiaroscuro Triangle. Look under Rembrandt’s left eye (the shadow side for  [ Read More ]

I love photography.  My love for photography includes studio, on location, and outdoor environments.  They all have their unique challenges but there’s something about being outdoors that really get’s me going.  Of course the obvious fact that you’re not encased in four walls with conditioned air; but the photographic challenges of shooting outdoor portraits really engages me.  The down side is that you are at the mercy of the environment.  Climate, light, location and distractions can all be very challenging. I’m going to focus specifically on lighting in this article. Photography is all about light.  The most daunting challenge of shooting outdoors is exactly that…the light.  When you are outside the most obvious light source is the sun.  That poses a lot of challenges.  The time of day changes how we approach the shot.  We can’t always control what time of day we get to shoot so it’s critical you know how to deal with the issues that come with shooting with the sun in all positions.  It may be counterintuitive, but when the sun is at the highest point in the sky is when I use the most artificial light for fill. The following are 3 different examples of dramatically different lighting situations during the span of a day.     All 3 of these examples were taken in the same day.  The day saw partly cloudy skies that really created a nightmare for camera settings.  The sun moving in and out of the clouds created a huge challenge  [ Read More ]

We like to talk about a photographer’s “style”.  Well typically when we think of a photographer’s style we concentrate on how they take a picture.  Outdoor vs. indoor.  Natural light vs. artificial light.  Photojournalistic vs. formal portrait.  Sometimes what gets overlooked in that discussion is how the photographer retouches. To me, retouching has as much to do with a digital photographer’s style as does any of the things listed above. Retouching determines how the final product looks.  I guarantee that every portrait that a photographer shows you, with a few exceptions, has some form of retouching work applied. Retouching is another element that separates professional photographers from amateurs! Because of that, I think it’s necessary to discuss what is retouching. But in order to ask the right questions, we had better have a brief discussion on what retouching actually is. “Retouch” as defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary: To rework in order to improve To alter (as in a photographic negative) to produce a more desirable appearance To color (new growth of hair) to blend with previously dyed, tinted or bleached hair Based on those definitions, anything we do as photographers to change the appearance of the photograph we captured = retouching.  Examples can be as extreme as completely smoothing out the skin (some call it airbrushing)  to very subtle such as cropping or rotating of the photograph. Now you understand why I say that almost every photograph you see has some form a retouching applied to it.  I can tell you with  [ Read More ]

By Lucy Penn If you’re looking to run a large advertising campaign then you’ll no doubt be thinking about the type of ad, poster, or scrapbook you will be printing. Firstly, in order to be able to carry out any form of large printing you’ll need access to a large format printer. Once you have access to a printer that’s  [ Read More ]

HDR photography (High Dynamic Range) is possibly one of the more exciting photography techniques in the world of digital photography. HDR is essentially the merging of a number of different exposures of the same composition, merged in specialist software to one single, high dynamic range image. In simple terms, the camera will see what you or I can see, rather  [ Read More ]

Digital cameras of today are getting more advanced and smarter. If you still haven’t heard, a new kind of camera will be released into the market this month. It’s no ordinary photographic device because it is dubbed as the world’s first intelligent and wearable camera. Known as the Autographer, this device captures images in an automated manner once it detects  [ Read More ]

Photo books are great gifts to anyone as a visual display of memories and becoming popular today. These photo gifts can range from do-it-yourself projects to photo book publishing through online photo service businesses, which the latter is the preferred method to produce such visual presents to loved ones. Since personalized photo books require mental and emotional input, there should  [ Read More ]

By Jeremy Bayston With Canon and Nikon both fighting for the entry-level market, they have both launched movie friendly DSLRs to tempt enthusiast and professional videographers. Despite the two cameras coming from different manufacturers, they have a lot in common. They are both useful upgrades to current cameras (the D5100 and the Canon T3i), and are designed to consolidate their  [ Read More ]

There is a surprising trend happening in the world of photography that involves women taking sexy portraits. These two don’t go together at all with traditional wedding photography or family photography. So, what could possibly allow a woman to express her self confidence and share intimate and personal photos with their special someone. This would have to be boudoir photography  [ Read More ]

Nowadays, most of us wish to gift something unique to our loved ones and one such option available to us is photo gifts. This type of gift can be custom-made to meet the particular requirements of each of us. They can touch the heart of the person to whom it is presented, even though it is not a common presentation.  [ Read More ]

A Nikon Backpack is a very convenient way of carrying your camera. It can also fit lenses and various accessories. It has various pockets and compartments which can be used to store additional accessories. A good backpack therefore provides easy and quick access to the user. Backpacks also provide protection to your photography gear. If in a backpack while travelling,  [ Read More ]