Taking Photographs With A Theme In Mind
Photographic Portfolio Development
One important aspect that I teach my students is the concept of photography portfolio development. The advantages of organizing your subject matter into categories is essential in the overall development in a photographers portfolio. Instead of freewheeling shooting, you’ll be more focused (no pun intended) with your work with your digital camera.
The Canon T2i – Hands On First Impressions
How We Are Getting Value For Our Digital Camera Dollars
Taking a little trip yesterday to the local camera store (unfortunately a dying breed) I had the surprise to see the new Canon T2i on the shelves. Canon is just starting to ship their initial orders. The owner of the store told me he already sold out of his first shipment of 20, but kept one on display, and thats when I went to play.
The Color of Pete Turner
Photographer Spotlight
Pete Turner is one of the worlds masters of photography. His color images have graced the pages of magazines, books, and are included in the permanent collections of many museums. If you’re interested in learning while viewing images of other photographers, Pete Turner’s photographs would be a place for you to start.
Remembering Eliot Porter
Photographer Spotlight
Eliot Porter is a source of inspiration for my personal work. Porter was born in 1901 in Chicago, and is the brother of realist artist Fairfield Porter. Originally a biochemical researcher at Harvard and earning a medical degree, Porter soon took to photography.
The Canon EOS 7D – The Best APS-C Digital Camera?
One thing that competition has brought us in the DSLR market in the past 7 or 8 years are great digital cameras. Price points have settled for now, where entry level digital cameras can be had for about $500, like the Nikon 3000d. Basic they are, some minus features we suggest, like autobracketing. Others are fully packed with as many features as we’ll ever be able to use as a price under $900 U.S. like the new Canon T2i. Others still qualify as professional level tools like the Canon EOS 7D.
A Day in the City
Exercising Photographic Muscles
Photography is like any other skill, it needs to be exercised in order to stay in shape. Personally, I spend a lot of time writing, and sometimes I forget that I’m a photographer first, and force myself out in the field to practice my art. Its called exercising your photographic muscles.
The Clouds 365 Project
Multimedia Artist Kelly DeLay One-Up’s Us on Creativity… and Class
Photographers take note, there are some pretty creative people out there, and Kelly DeLay has just taught us all a lesson. As a photographer, you need to go to his site, http://clouds365.com, and you’ll know where I’m coming from.
Ready To Move Up To A Graphics Tablet?
The Wacom Intuos4 Medium Pen Tablet
If you’re a Photoshop user, you’re more familiar with the problems of editing than others. For graphic artists, the mouse as a pointing device just doesn’t suffice. Its just too crude of a pointing, tracing or drawing tool. If you’re using the touch pad on a laptop, its even more of crude process.
Photoshop Lightroom 3 BETA Available for Free Download
You know, while we’re at celebrating the 20th anniversary of Photoshop with Adobe, we should mention that they do have a trial download of Lightroom 3 Beta. This is a nice opportunity to test out the next coming version of Lightroom, or getting your feet wet before you decide to move up to Lightroom as part of your overall digital darkroom solution.
Happy 20th Anniversary Photoshop
Adobe is celebrating Photoshop’s 20th anniversary with a cool web page on their site. A nice visit to the past to see how far they’ve gone in helping revolutionize the industry, and you and I as artists. Visit http://www.photoshop20anniversary.com. And by the way, thank you Adobe!
Epson Rebates on R2880 and R1900 Printers
Epson R2880 and R1900 Large Format Photo Printer Rebates
Epson is offering nice rebates on its R2880 ($200 rebate) and the R1900 ($150 rebate) until March 31, 2010. If you were planning on upgrading to one of these models, now might be a good time.
Discover High Dynamic Range (HDR) Imaging
An Excerpt from Improve Your Photography: 50 Essential Digital Photography Tips & Techniques
HDR represents a major development in the past few years for new techniques for digital photographers. I rate this pretty high, up there with the advent of RAW image file formats, full frame digital SLRs, Lightroom and Aperture.
Canon Announces the EOS Rebel T2i
Canon has just introduced its latest in the Digital Rebel Line, the Canon EOS Rebel T2i 18 MP CMOS APS-C Digital SLR Camera with 3.0-Inch LCD and EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens. The T2i (550D) replaces the current popular T1i (500D) as its top consumer-range model, and is offered at the same price.
Get Photoshop CS4 for $200
Did you ever want to use a licensed version of Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended but didn’t want to shell out the $899 for it? We can understand that. You could pick up a Canon Digital Rebel T1I for about that price, or put a down payment on a car.
Deer in the Yard
Be Prepared for the Unexpected
I’ve always been a proponent of the theory of carrying a digital camera everywhere you go, because you’ll never know what you’ll find. I wrote a short chapter about that in Essential Digital Photography Tips and Techniques.
Join the Flip Generation
Whats a Video Cam Doing in a Digital Photographers Camera Bag (or pocket)?
Hey! I thought this was a digital photography site! Well, digital photographers are also media geeks. We tend to be more on the cutting edge. Why should we let all the kids have the fun? Seriously, we need to take notice.
Abstracts With The Photoshop Liquify Tool
In the article Blur as an Element of Composition, I showed you how to use the Motion Blur tool in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to take simple uninteresting (or interesting, you choose!) images and transform them into abstract art.
The Thin Black Line
This is a quick lesson that I picked up through the Epson Print Academy about 5 years ago. Real simple. If you want to add elegance to your images that you display on the web, in print, or even on a digital projector, add a thin border, either white or black, depends on the background.
Rebate on Photoshop Elements 8
Adobe is offering a $20 rebate on Photoshop Elements and Premier Elements until 10/31/2010. With the rebate, we’ve seen the price of Elements down below $60 U.S., which is an absolute steal for this software. As a price watcher, we’ve never seen Photoshop Elements go for such a low price.
Ten Things To Love About Photoshop
The tool of choice for serious digital photographers has always been Adobe Photoshop. We’re now into version 11, now called CS4, and the versions keep coming every few years. Upgrading every two years may not be necessary for the casual user, for the professional, its often desired.
