How To Improve Your Digital Photos The Easy Way:

Learning how to get the most from your digital photography can be frustrating. Every digital photographer knows that there is more to making awesome photos that just clicking the shutter of your camera. Trust me, your camera can only do so much.

Experienced digital photographers know that post processing and image enhancement is the key to transforming flat and colorless images into beautiful, dynamic works of art. Every digital photograph that you record with your camera can be improved upon with post processing (enhanced, after downloading to your computer). With post processing you can turn dull, lifeless images into vibrant colorful images by increasing the saturation and density of the colors. You can add contrast, lighten and darken specific areas of your images, or even add special effects with filters and actions.

 Example, Original Image.

 Example, After Post Processing.

 Post processing is your digital darkroom. The beauty of your digital darkroom is, you don’t need to mess around with any wet chemicals and you can process your images in the comfort of room light and a comfortable chair. You have far more creative control than you ever had in conventional film photography without the material expense.

The negative aspect of digital post processing is the learning curve. Photoshop and some of the other professional quality image editing programs have fairly steep learning curves. Another consideration is the initial investment. Professional quality post processing software is expensive and takes a strong commitment to master.

 If you are just learning digital photography and would like to learn to enhance your images I have some good news. There is a very affordable image editing software available for anyone who does not require all the bells and whistles that Adobe Photoshop provides. This software is very user friendly, affordable, and handles just about anything the average amateur photographer needs to transform their work into images that they can be proud to display and share with others. Image Image Enhancer has a free trial offer. This is an incredibly fast and simple piece of software that does exactly what it says it will. It is unpretentious and effective. Most importantly, you can down load your free trial so you can decide for yourself!

 Examples From Imagic:

 Before:

 After:

Before:

After:  

Imagic Image Enhancer has easy to uses control sliders to improve your photos.

 Lighting: Adjust your image for softer or sharper lighting

 Intensity: Adjusts the amount of lighting effect and color filters.

 Exposure: Use this to darken or lighten the highlight values.

 Brightness: Increase or decrease the overall lightness of the image.

 Saturation: Removes or adds the overall amount of color.

 Tonal Balance: Use to fine tune the tone of the image.

 If you are ready to improve your digital photographs the easy way without dealing with the expense and learning curve of Photoshop IMagic Image Enhancer could be just what the doctor ordered. Get your free trial download and give it a shot here.

Getting to Know Your Digital Camera; What Model Is Best For You?

Eye To Eye

How To Take Better Pictures With Your Digital Camera

Photography is both about knowing how to use a camera and also knowing how to make decisions. Today’s media projects images that can be difficult to understand, and learning photography can help you to understand what you’re being showed every day on television, on the internet, and in movies. Photography is a good way to occupy your time, especially if you are a teenager, as it is fun and harmless. Besides that, it’s a great way to bring a community together for a project, such as photographing activities and gatherings.

Understanding how your camera focuses will help you get better pictures. Just about all digital cameras these days have autofocus with two-step shutter release. In dark lighting, you will notice that when you press the button halfway down, a red light appears for a moment, but not in areas that are lighter. Then, when you press the button down fully, there is a flash. When you hold down the button halfway, that focuses the image, and when you depress it fully, the camera takes the focused image. If you want the subject of your photograph not to be in the center but still focused, first center them in the middle of the picture and focus the frame by pressing down halfway. Without removing your finger, reframe the picture with your subject in the right position, and take the picture. Your subject will still be focused.

Love Is In The Air

Days End

One aspect of taking a pleasing photograph is depth of field. When you look at a picture, you will notice that all the area surrounding the focused subject is also focused. This area is called depth of field. In order to change the way the depth of field in a picture is seen, focused, and lit, you must change the size of your lens aperture. The larger the lens aperture opening is, the smaller the depth of field will be. To decrease the depth of field you can also move closer to your subject. To increase it, you can use a smaller lens opening or move further away from your subject.

Not Again Chicken Little

A great technique that helps photographers create eye-catching pictures is the rule of thirds. This is a composition technique, create a pleasing balance between the different objects in a photograph. In order to use the rule, divide your screen into six different parts: three horizontal sections, and three vertical. The focal points, where the eye is attracted when it first looks at a picture, are where the lines intersect. Placing the subjects of your pictures at or near the focal points can help create a balanced and attractive picture.

She Sells Sea Shells

Landscape photos are very popular and can be very nice-looking. The whole photograph will need to be in focus, unlike some pictures where only a certain part is in focus. In order to have the picture completely focused, you’ll need to have a short focal length. This will create a larger depth of field, and everything will be focused. In order to creating a pleasing balance between land and sky, or water and sky, you can use the rule of thirds. Furthermore, if you want a sense of three dimensions, you can have a subject in the foreground.

Zion-Narrows

Death Valley

A tripod is a good investment in photography, especially if you want to take panoramic pictures. You’ll have to set your tripod in a place where you can swivel the camera smoothly from left to right, and not up and down. You will have to figure out where you want your pictures to overlap, so that you don’t have huge gaps in your resulting picture. Once you figure that out, you can swivel your camera in one direction, clockwise or counterclockwise, to take the pictures you want. Once you’re done, all you have to do is put them together with a simple graphics program or photo-editing software.Recommended for More Help:

Need to improve your digital photography techniques? “Mastering Digital Photography Made Easy” can have you shooting like a Pro almost instantly.

Article courtesy of: Dan Fieldman

Photoshop vs Photoshop Elements: Which One Is Right for You?

Retro Cars-1

How to Share Your Digital Photos With “Flickr And Yahoo”

Sharing your digital photographs on the internet using Flickr is becoming more and more popular with both amature and Professional Photographers. If you are interested in sharing your photographs and getting some interesting feedback from viewers, Flickr is a great place to start. All you need is a free Yahoo account and you are ready to go. Here is a link to a quick tutorial on how to get started. You can be posting your digital photos for millions to see, on Flicker, in a matter of a few minutes. Here’s the link to the Flickr Tutorial.

Till next time, enjoy, Terry

PS: I thought you might enjoy this HDR image of an abandoned business, on highway 50, near Eureka Nevada

Hard-Times

High Dynamic Range Digital Photos: Eureka Nevada

Eureka Nevada provided some great oportunities to shoot some High Dynamic Range Photos.

The ride to Eureka was brutal. What’s the deal with 40 to 50 MPH head and cross winds? Riding in wind usually isn’t that bad but, when the wind is blowing dust clouds that cut your vision to less than 100 yards it can be brutal. In fact when we finally made it to Eureka a guy told us that he saw a Honda Goldwing get blown over and the rider almost got ran over by a motor home.

So much for the ride, let’s get back to photography. The small towns along highway 50 are very unique and interesting. This area was settled primarily by miners and is sparsley populated. Eureka however has done some nice restoration and reminds me of Virginia City, only without the crowds. The Texture and tones of the store fronts are interesting and colorful. Having the opportunity to photograph this little town made the ride worth while. Before dinner we rode the streets looking for interesting lighting and composition. After finding what I was looking for,I took a few digital photographs to process and create some High Dynamic Range Images. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did creating them.

Jackson-Hotel

Eureka-Main-Street

Eureka-Main-Street-2

Eureka-Main-Street-3

More to digital images and digital photography tips coming soon, so be sure to sign up for instant notification of future posts here, at Feedburner.

PS: For more information on Digital Photography Lessons click the image below.

High Dynamic Range Digital Photographs: Natural Bridge National Park, Utah

It’s time to leave Blanding and head west through Southern Utah. Our first stop will be “Natural Bridge National Park“. Natural Bridge is a very unique landscape. It is rugged and unforgiving. It consists of 3 different natural bridges carved from sandstone. If you want a close up view you’ll need to do some hiking. Experiencing 100 degee weather, we chose not to view the first two bridges close up. The third bridge, “Kachina” is only about a half mile hike and we dicided it was worth the effort.

I decided to take a different approach to photographing this environment and took a more abstract view of this unusual landscape. This is a shot of the first bridge, “Owachomo”. I took this photograph from the upper view point. I decided to focus on the unusual lines and texture of the sandstone as apposed to taking a documentary style shot of the bridge itself.

Owachomo Natural Bridge

This second photograph is of the third bridge “Kachina”. Again I opted to do something a little unusual and made a somewhat abstract High Dynamic Range Image. I actually processed this photograph using Photomatix and the tone mapping detail enhancer. I then ran it a second time, through the same process, which multiplied the effect, giving it it’s abstract appearance. Like it or love it, it is different and has somewhat of a painterly feel to it.

Kachina Natural Bridge

From here we headed through what I like to call “NO MANS LAND” on our way to our next nights stop in Hanksville Utah. On the way we stopped to take a few more shots of this incredible landscape. Seeing this country from a motor cycle is an awesome experience. I would recommend traveling this country to anyone who is interested in digital photography. It is diverse and breathtaking. I found myself wanting to stop and take photographs constantly, but couldn’t because of the lack of safe turnouts and parking.

I recently had a discussion about shooting for High Dynamic Range photographs and was asked, “Do you need to take HDR in the early morning and late afternoon light?” These HDR images were taken at mid day in 100 degree weather. I’ll let the photographs speak for themselves and you can be the judge.

The first image, in this series of High Dynamic Range Images, is a great example of this rugged landscape. I originally shot this photograph as a panoramic but decided to crop to this format to put more emphasis on the depth and texture of the canyon.

No Mans Land

This image was taken after taking just a couple of steps to my right. After 30 years as a Professional Photographer I’m still amazed by the different composition, that can be created, by slightly changing your camera angle.

No-Man's Land-2

Here is another example of the variety of photographs that can be taken by simply changing the focal length of your lens or camera angle.

No-Man's Land-3No Man's Land-4

No Man's Land-4

That’s it for this post. Tomorrow we head back to Nevada to explore some photography opportunities in Eureka. I invite you to comment on my posts and share your thoughts.

PS: If you would like instant notification of future posts please sign up for my RSS feed here.

“Learn Elements Now” Video Course Review

Learn Photoshop Elements

“Learn Elements Now” Video Course Review Summary:

“Learn Elements Now” is a set of 30 tutorial videos on how to use Photoshop Elements. It covers the most basic tasks in Photoshop Elements to the more advanced. Here is a sample Video for your viewing pleasure.

Product Details:

The product consists of these 30 tutorials:

- Interface

- Opening an Image

- Guided Edit

- Quick Edit

- Full Edit

- Create Overview

- Share Overview

- Zoom and Pan

- Layers

- Blend Modes

- Undo History

- Brush Tool

- Selecting Colors

- Gradient Tool

- Creating Text

- Selection Tools

- Quick Selection Tools

- Refine Edges

- Effects

- Adjustment Layers

- Resizing Images

- Aligning Images

- Saving Your Photo

- Saving for the Web

- Remove Red Eye

- Remove Blemishes

- Remove Objects

- Convert to Black & White

- Color Curves

- Create a Panorama

The course also includes the following bonuses:

- Video tutorial images: All the images used in the video tutorials are provided in JPG format so the user can follow along with the very same images.

- “Absolute Beginners Guide to Photoshop Elements”: a 65-page easy-to-use guide to Photoshop Elements

- 30-day free trial of the latest version of Adobe Elements

Format:

The video tutorials are in Flash and Shockwave format, which can be either viewed online or downloaded into the user’s hard drive for local viewing. Downloading is not necessary, as the videos will always be available to those who purchase the course.

The tutorial images are in digital graphic JPG format.

The bonus, ?Absolute Beginners Guide to Photoshop Elements? is in PDF format.

 Thoughts on the Product:

“Learn Elements Now” is a good example of how to use video to teach skills. In this case, the video tutorials give step-by-step demonstrations of how to use Adobe Photoshop Elements. The instructions are clear and are easy to understand through both the voice-over and onscreen demos. The videos progress logically from the most basic to the more advanced operations that can be done in Elements.

Each video is only a few minutes long and clearly labeled, so the users can easily and quickly choose the video they need. I’m not sure the user will learn Photoshop Elements in 2 hours, as David Peters promises – especially if one follows along each step using the images provided – which is the best way to internalize the lessons in the videos. But it definitely will not take more than 2 hours to view all the tutorials.

With “Learn Elements Now,” even complete newbies to image editing will soon be able to create impressive digital photos using Photoshop Elements.

 Learn More Here:

HDR Photographs, Page Arizona And Monument Valley

Lake Powell-Page Arizona

Lake Powell-2Lake Powell-3

Lake Powell

As you can see, the lighting in the late afternoon light was quite contrasty. Either the highlites or the shadows would have suffered a loss of detail when shooting a single exposure. Thi s is a good example of the benefit of shooting High Dynamic Range Exposures.  Shooting HDR gives you the ability to capture images that you would otherwise miss and enables you to take a good quality photograph under less than perfect lighting situations.

The next morning we decided to back track and ride through Monument Valley on our way to Mexican Hat, and then onto Blanding Utah, to spend the night.

Monument Valley-1

Monument Vally-Close Up

Mexican Hat-Canyon

We decided to take a little traveled route from Mexican Hat to Blanding Utah and the trip provided some interesting challenges. To climb to the top of a plateau we encountered about 8 miles, of single lane, gravel road, loaded with hair pin turns. On the way we stopped and shot a couple of images just for memories sake.

Mexican Hat-Hair Pin Turns

As you can see, I wouln’t recommend this route for an inexperienced rider because the road is actually quite challenging and in places very dangerous. I shot the majority of these photographs to give examples of creating composition and depth of field by using a lens aperture of f/11 to f/16 and a wider focal length lens. By including an interesting forground and some leading lines in your pictorials your viewer has the sense of actually standing where you were when the photograph was taken. I personally feel this is more effective than using a telephoto lens, when taking pictorial photographs.

As we approached our final destination for the night I took a few shots of Roger as we rode into Blanding. I used my Canon EOS 5D and a 17mm lense to take these while riding side by side at about 50 mph.

Roger "On The Road"

A Digital Photographers Paradise, The Great Southwest..More HDR Images To Come.

We hear the weather is hot in the Southwestern United States and we are on our way. Wyoming is BIG, beautiful and a great place to ride but, for the first time in many years we’ve had some pretty bad weather. We haven’t had many good phototography oportunities so we are headed for the Southwest and some sunshine.

Heading south from Riverton Wyoming to Colorado is a fantastic ride. For almost the entire ride you are traveling on a high plateau which is 6,500 to 8,000 feet in elevation. The air is crisp and clean and the roads are great. The traffic is very light and you can really cover some ground. We rode pretty steady but, before leaving Wyoming we stopped long enough to take a quick photograph of this beautiful landscape. This jpeg image is a shot looking back to the Northeast in the morning light. I took a single image and we were on the road again. The photo is of a large government managed, wildlife, and big game area. This is the home to a very large elk population.

The jpeg image was taken with my Canon EOS 5D. Shot with a 24mm lens at f/16 for a good depth of field, you can really get a feeling for how big and breath taking this beautiful country is.

Leaving Wyoming

From here we busted right through Colorado and made it to Cortez in Southwestern Colorado and spent the night. We didn’t stop for photographs because we were just happy to have some good riding weather. We made the most of the warm weather and really covered some ground. Tomorrow we will ride into Northern Arizona. It should be a busy day and provide some great opportunities to capture some High Dynamic Range Photographs. This country has a great landscape and the lighting should be great for shooting HDR. Trust me your eyes are in for a treat. See you in a few days,  Terry

PS: Roger just called and we are heading back on the road tomorrow to ride through Eastern Oregon and Hells Canyon on the Snake River. So I guess I’ll be off line for about 5 or 6 days.

Here is quick look at shot taken near Kayenta Arizona… Shot about one o’clock and it was already over 100 degrees.

Kayenta-Az.