May 2009 Archive

In an effort to maximize your efforts, and investment, in your digital photography experience, I encourage you to focus your energy on simplicity as you begin.

So many folks snap shots of their kids or pets or items to post on Ebay without much thought to what else is happening around the subject. In many cases, you don’t have complete control over the zone in your LCD window, yet you can take care of quite a bit.

In the case of an object, be purposeful in arranging your setting. Make the bed, move the pile of laundry, lay a solid color sheet down and arrange some focused lighting nearby.

With people, the task becomes more challenging. You can wait for that other person to move their body out of the shot, or lay your baby on a clear spot on the carpet. Pay attention to detail, and clean up the clutter in your shot. This helps your audience to focus their attention where you want it to be.

Once you have cleaned up the general shot area, be sure to zoom in to capture the part or subject that you want to emphasize. Obviously, this helps in minimizing irrelevant objects in your shot.

In addition, distracting areas can be taken away or soften in the shot. Zooming is one of the simplest tools to use with your digital SLR camera, or point and shoot for that matter.

By Heather Trimmer

These days, the biggest sellers in the camera market are the digital single-lens reflex (dSLR) cameras. In fact, the Canon Digital Rebel XSi is listed in the top 25 of Amazon’s best selling electronic list this week. Not too shabby if you ask me.

According to Wikipedia, a digital SLR camera “. . . uses a mechanical mirror system and pentaprism to direct light from the lens to an optical viewfinder on the back of the camera.” Thereby giving you a much better picture than if you had used a point and shoot model.

The dSLR’s are the modern gadgets that can trigger our creativity and inspire our emotions. Affordability and technology have brought these amazing tools to the masses like me. All we have to do is harness the creative power that we have at our fingertips.

Most people choose digital SLRs because they are so versatile. You can move from telephoto to extra wide angle lenses with relative ease. However, having these cameras does not guarantee that the every captured image will turn out perfect.

Far from it, in fact. You can set the camera to various auto modes, but you catapult yourself into a whole new realm of control with manual control. Keep in mind, photo editing is also key as you progress up the armature photographer ladder. For now, let’s keep it simple, and take you step by step through this process.