Ezi Pix Blog

By Wayne G Turner

Each one of us wants to become more effective in our photography. That could be winning a competition, selling your images or just taking great photos to put on your wall. So, what is effective for one might not mean effective for another. And, the person who determines how effective is...? You! How do you increase the effectiveness of your photography? Here are a few keys that have helped my students become more effective.

1. Plan

This is just so simple to do. The old adage, "those whole fail to plan, plan to fail" is so true with photography. Happy snappers just don't get the images that are stunning and fit in the context of effective photography. Before you decide to go out and shoot make sure that you sit down, even if for just five minutes, and plan what you are going to do. What type of image are you going to shoot, where do you want to go and for how long. A simple plan will increase your effectiveness quite dramatically.

2. Make a specific time

If you are serious about your photography, whether it be for pleasure or to make a career out of it, set a specific time to go out and shoot. Tagging a shoot at the end of a busy day or rushing off a few shots before going off to work is not an effective use of your photography time. It deserves your full and undivided attention. In addition to this specify how long, an hour, two hours or even just thirty minutes. Then give it your full and undivided attention.

3. Implement something new

Effective photography means learning a new technique or method so why not try to implement something you have just learnt and see how it turns out. Treat it as a project or assignment. Better still enroll in a free online course or buy a book with assignments at the end of each chapter. Use these assignments as the basis of your photo shoot.and put into practise your new knowledge. If you are more experienced then use it to brush up on your rusty techniques.

4. Get some advice

If you have a friend who is more experienced than you or you are part of a photography club, then seek out their advice. Find out where you are lacking in skill or technique and ask them to show you how they do it. I always look to those more experienced than me for help despite being a photography teacher. Never stop learning and always be teachable.

5. Evaluate

This to me is one the most important things you can do as you learn digital photography. Look at what you are doing and then evaluate it. If you aren't too sure then get others to help. Be careful who you ask as some people will say anything so as not to offend or hurt your feelings. Positive criticism is essential to uplift your level of competence. When you are trying out new techniques, print out the image and compare it to your textbooks or course material. Whatever you do keep on learning.

Effective photography begins in the mind as you actively pursue a course of action to increase your ability and skills. Be prepared to plan, set a time and then evaluate your progress. Happy shooting!

Learn digital photography by subscribing to my FREE 10 PART PHOTOGRAPHY E-COURSE, delivered daily via e-mail - just click here:  - To learn how you can take your photography from ordinary to outstanding click here for my ebook 21 STEPS TO PERFECT PHOTOS - 

Wayne Turner studied with the New York Institute of Photography, has been teaching photography for 25 years and has written three books on photography.

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By Leo Pierson

Photography is painting with light! It's been said that photography is the one art where you don't need to go to school, nothing separates the pro from the amateur other skill a keen eye or the right moment. Give a camera to a child and they've cracked it, give the same child a keyboard and they'll get back to you in due time.

Most photographs are created using a camera , which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of what the human eye would see. The process of creating photographs is called photography .

The great thing about photography is its outward focus (puns and semi-puns are so hard to avoid) on the world around us, not the art itself. Moving from hobby photography to professional photography is a big jump. It's a jump not just because your ability to pay your mortgage and feed your family will now depend entirely on your talent with a camera and your skills at marketing those talents.

For me photography is about "collecting" experiences and allowing myself to be more than a fly on the wall in my subjects' lives. I don't think photography is dead, I think photography is an extremely young art form. I also look at the history of photography and see that many of its milestones have been based on the technology of the time.

Photography is going through an exciting transition period as many film photographers are beginning to explore the new capabilities made possible with digital cameras. Traditional aspects such as the fundamental techniques and lens equipment have remained the same, however others are markedly different. Photography is acquired when weather conditions, sun angle, and, when applicable, water levels are optimal to ensure that photographs will be suitable for a variety of purposes using standard photogrammetric techniques.

Natural light in photography is crucial if you want to take great portraits. Many assume this means the time of day in which she can shoot her portraits is limited. Photography is used to preserve memories of favorite times, to capture special moments, to tell stories, to send messages, and as a source of entertainment. Photography is an art of particularity, but this doesn't mean that photography must be from "outside in. If photography has too much natural accident, it will hardly carry visual dynamic. But if it has too much photographer intervention and manipulation of the subject, it will paralyze the expression of the subject's essence.

Once you've gotten your head around this and started shooting a few pictures, you might find that photography is quite fun and interesting. At first glance it would seem that unless you are a full-time adventure athlete, adventure photography is something that you will have little opportunity to apply yourself to? However, nothing could be further from the truth. When learning how to shoot action photos, there are many ways you can begin practicing and honing your skills when you are far from the mountains or wild rivers.

Some are able to select a wonderful location to shoot along with having the "artistic eye" to use the natural backdrop to obtain the best photographs possible. Pinhole photography is great fun and it can be the most serious kind of photography. There is the freedom from vying for the latest and the greatest the industry has to offer, and the freedom from the delusion that technically ever more perfect equipment is required for great photography.

Remote photography is used to learn more about things like bears' use of naturally-occurring bear rubs and how they respond to baited hair traps. Information from this work will be used to improve sampling methods and understand bear behavior. Photography is all about selection, first through the viewfinder and second when you look at the results. As long as there's selection involved, there's room for art - if the artist can pull it off. Good photography is all about seeing.

Input relating 'classical' portraiture to photography is not so easy to find. Though we may not want to take this kind of photograph, it still seems that we could learn a lot from the kind of discussion given here. Photography is also increasingly asserting itself on the auction block as an important investment. And its prices in the galleries and at the major fairs reflect its serious status. Photography is finally escaping any dependence on what is in front of a lens, but it comes at the price of its special claim on a viewer's attention as "evidence" rooted in reality. As gallery material, photographs are now essentially no different from paintings concocted entirely from an artist's imagination, except that they lack painting's manual touch and surface variation.

Underwater photography is becoming an exciting field of unexplored areas. Other photographers specialize in areas such as portrait, commercial and industrial, scientific, news, or fine arts photography. Photography is a customer service business. Whether you need family portraits, pet portraits, events coverage or complete wedding packages.

The most compelling part of digital photography is the idea of showing pictures to people wherever they are, as long as they are in front of a computer connected to the Web.

The overwhelming majority of older photographs are catalogued under the term "albumen prints" - the most common type of 19 th-century photographic print. Additional headings are assigned describing the typical cardboard mounts to which these images are attached - stereographs, cabinet card photographs, and cartes-de-viste.

Finally, If you plan on working with older photos, establish handling procedures and adhere to them whenever photographs are being used. View photographs in a clean, uncluttered area, and handle them with clean hands. Most 1860s-90s paper photographs are albumen. Even non-collectors associate horse-and-buggy and Old West images with the soft, sentimental tones that were produced by the albumen process. If only photographs are stored in a given area, 30-40% RH is best. If photographs are stored with paper, parchment, or leather materials, it may be necessary to maintain 40-50% RH to avoid placing unwanted stress on non-photographic materials.

Leo Pierson lives in Kentucky with his wife, five children and six cats. He helps people use simple technologies to save fuel. See this technology and get free information from his site at: [http://www.NoMoreFuelCosts.info]

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