How to Educate Yourself about Photography

Photography is a very enjoyable and rewarding activity.

You can capture a moment in time and share it with others.
You can use your creative energy to produce something of emotion, beauty and inspiration. You can bring out the detail in subjects and events that you might not otherwise notice in real time.

Many people think that taking photographs is just a simple procedure of point and click. While this is obviously part of the process, it takes a lot more to take a quality photograph that is both moving and memorable.

Below are some guidelines for educating yourself about photography. If you are interested in pursuing a career in photography, find out more information on photography degree programs here.

Guidelines

• Learn Basic Visual Composition – For learning visual composition, this involves such principles as the "rule of thirds," using leading lines and simplicity. These techniques help improve the quality of your photo. It is important to not to just point and click at scenes of interest, but also take the time to look through the viewfinder in the camera and assess the scene. Put in the time and practice taking hundreds of photos using the basic visual techniques and compare the differences in the photos.

• Learn Camera Settings and Functions – As you are learning to take photographs, it is crucial to become familiar with all of the buttons and controls of a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera. A SLR camera is preferable to an automatic camera as it will enable you learn photography more quickly and it gives you much more control in taking a shot. The controls on the camera that are especially important to know pertain to exposure. This includes shutter speed, aperture, and ISO (International Organization of Standardization). These controls affect how much light is let into the camera. Incorrect use of these features lead to overexposed or underexposed shots. Once you become more proficient with these controls, you can be more creative with your photography.

• Look at Professional Photographs – Closely observe the features in these photographs and compare them with your own. There are also many how "how-to" photography books that show examples of photographs and the techniques used to take them.

• Formal Education – While not all professional photographers are formally educated, it would be helpful to enroll in a photography degree program or take classes at an art school.

Sources

PhotoTechniques (2012)
Benjam (2012)

RAW vs JPEG what's the best for you...

A lot of talk has been made about this 2 formats. Since the Digital era started to arise a couple years ago many would say that JPEG was the killer but many defended the RAW as the true pure film equivalent.

What is what and what the advantages and disadvantages of each one?

Well SLR Louge created this great in-depth visual guide so you can decided for yourself what will go and what will not fit on your photographic profile.

Excellent read is all I have to say, take a look at their page link here.

Enjoy

Nero triggers DSLR by Light, Sound and Motion

Ever thought of how they do it to trigger the lightnings that occur in Nature or even how that make those crazy dynamic photos of exploding balloons?

Well, think no more... Nero multi trigger will make that and much more into your photographs.

Such a small device that you can attach to your camera via hot-shoe mount and capture all those great moments.

The device is powered by 2 AAA batteries and will last a couple of ours until it drains out, it also have an intervalometer with time lapse features, built in audio, optical and laser sensors so you could easily use it under any situation.

You can get them for Nikon and Canon at the manufacturer page here.

If you like to shoot this  kind of scenarios you would not want to miss one of these babies.

GalleryPro, Show Your Work Everywhere

Scott Forman and Don Giannatti has joined forces to create a ultimate online gallery manager.

Scott Forman is the guy behind the 2008 project called ShutterVoice (mentioned here at LightingMods and Don Giannatti does not need too much introduction as he's been giving us a lot of photography information at his page.
If you do not know his go check out his page it has awesome information to share and called Lighting Essentials.

About this GalleryPro it is a one-stop solution for online portfolio management which allows for easy integration with a photographer's website, blog, facebook page, etc.

Essentially it allows a person to very easily manage their portfolio and include it on as many of their various web sites and social networking sites as they would like with only a tiny bit of code.  It is cross platform and the same gallery works on desktop as well as mobile and tablets.

Aside from the online control panel to easily manage your portfolio, the intention was to make it very easy for a person to quickly view a photographer's body of work all at once so they could quickly decide if they want to see more rather than having to chase scrolling thumbnails with their mouse or look through pages of thumbnails.

Here is a short presentation video about it



You can Visit the GalleryPro page for more information and how to subscribe it.

TriPad holds your Computer for You

Ingenious is what I can say about this TriPad thing...

It came into my attention this great accessory named TriPad, you may ask what is this all about and let me tell you you won't regret it.

If you are the kind of shooter who continuously use your computer tethered to your camera and using long cables to make it happen then your suffer is over... I know it sounds kind of a commercial add but this accessory comes to your help by attaching your computer close to your camera and helping you out on the field or in the studio.

Just take a look at their webpage for more information.