Online Photography Courses – Learn The Art Of Photography

Posted by Gregor on May 15, 2011 in Digital Photography | 0 comments

Online Photography Courses – Learn The Art Of Photography

There are online photography courses dealing with various aspects of photography, ranging from lessons in the use of cameras and lenses, using light, dealing with exposure, working in the landscape or in the studio and many more. If you’re looking to get started in photography or are wanting to learn more about a particular area of photography there are many online photography courses that will satisfy your learning needs.

Online Photography Courses For The Beginner

There are plenty online photography courses for the beginner that cover the basics of photography including camera choice, use of optics, flash, the use of shutter speed and aperture. Basics of photography may at first seem too basic but you need a solid foundation and if you have never studied photography before online photography courses ar a fine way to learn the art at your own pace.

Online Photography Courses And Using Your Computer

There are many online photography courses that cover the use of a computer in photography. Once you know the basics of photography you will want to be able to download your images onto your PC so you can work on them and maybe print them. To get the most out of your images you need to know about file types and how to arrange your images on you PC for easy access, what software, from the many available, you should use to edit your photos. if you decide to shoot raw you need to know how to deal with this once the file is on your PC. Getting the colours right and monitor and printer calibration are essential if you want perfect prints so you need to know how this is done. There are online photography courses that deal with using your computer to get the most out of your photography.

Online Photography Courses That Teach You How To See

Once you have used online photography courses to gain a knowledge of the basics of photography and using your camera you will want to take great shots. Many photographers like to shoot landscapes and there are online photography courses that teach you how to compose your shot and read the light, look for details and shoot for colour and black and white. You may want to photograph people or animals and there are online photography courses that guide you through the elements of not only photographing people but dealing with them to get the best, most natural shots. You may want to shoot weddings and learning how to deal with people you are photographing is an essential technique to help shoot quickly and efficiently.

Online photography courses don’t have to be expensive and indeed there are many free courses to be found, whether tutorials teaching an aspect of Photoshop or courses that delve into exposure and light or landscape or studio work. Paid courses do tend to deliver a bit more though and there are many in the form of ebooks that you can download and learn at your leisure. it is well worth looking around at the online photography courses to find one that suits your needs and your budget.

Wedding Photography Tips – Ensuring The day Runs Smoothly

Posted by Gregor on May 15, 2011 in Digital Photography | 0 comments

Wedding Photography Tips – Ensuring The Day Runs Smoothly

Photographing a wedding can be a nervy occasion, not only for the bride and groom, but for the photographer, especially the photographer shooting his/her first wedding. Here are some wedding photography tips that will hopefully take some of the nerves away and help make the shoot run like clockwork.

Wedding photography tips and checking out the location

One of the first wedding photography tips that to my mind is absolutely essential is to check out the locations where you will be shooting. It’s a good idea to do this as close to the wedding date as possible and around the same time of day so you get an idea of where the sun will be. Have a look at the church and suss out good areas for shots, taking into account the time of day and position of the sun. Do the same with the hotel and any other locations that have been requested.

Wedding photography tips and preparing a list

One of the best wedding photography tips is to have a list of requested shots written down and carry it with you. Talk to the bride and groom and ask if the have any special requests. Get them to let you know what family shots are essential and get names of important people in the wedding party. By the way it’s a good idea to ask the couple if they would nominate someone to help you prepare for the shot. These are great wedding photography tips.

Wedding photography tips an preparing the couple for there own shots

Make sure you talk to the couple to establish what they want from you and let them know your style (they should already know this). Tell them what you expect from them to give them the best shots possible. They need to be aware that you are working to strict time constraints so it is important that they adhere to your requests too. Make sure they are aware of any extra charges.

Wedding photography tips and your shooting mode

I would suggest shooting in RAW mode as there is more flexibility at the production stage. You can be presented with some awkward lighting during a wedding, necessitating the need to alter exposure and white balance at the computer stage. Shooting RAW will give a big advantage here.

Wedding photography tips and getting the right background

One of the best wedding photography tips is to watch your backgrounds. You will have an idea of where you will shoot having looked at the area beforehand but on the day people will be milling around and objects will be left lying and propped against walls etc. Cars and buses will parked at roadsides. Be aware of what’s going on around you and take care not to have unwanted people and objects in your shots.

Wedding photography tips and flash

I’m not a big fan of blasting away with a flash during a wedding but they do come in handy. Outdoors it’s worth keeping the flash on camera and using a bit of fill, especially in backlit shots and shots with lots of shadow. Fill flash is an essential tool but one of the best wedding photography tips is not to overdo the flash.

There are plenty more wedding photography tips, far to many to consider here but there are plenty tutorials and guides online. But here is one of the greatest wedding photography tips: have fun and ensure the couple have fun too.

Digital Photography Basics – Controlling Exposure

Posted by Gregor on May 15, 2011 in Digital Photography | 0 comments

Digital Photography Basics – Controlling Exposure

There are quite a few areas to digital photography basics that are important to learn to enable you to enjoy your photography and get consistent results. You will want to know the different types of cameras available so you so you make the correct choice, how to use light and exposure correctly, how to compose your pictures effectively, how to use flash. There are many aspects to digital photography basics that, by learning, will ensure you enjoy taking and showing your pictures. I will touch on controlling exposure here.

Digital Photography Basics And Exposure

There are three main aspects to controlling exposure:

• Aperture controls the amount of light allowed into your camera.
• Shutter speed controls the duration of the exposure
• ISO is the measure of sensitivity of light of your camera sensor

You can use a combination of all three to achieve the same result but each has an effect on other areas when taking a shot. For example a long shutter speed will show any movement in a scene, your aperture will determine whether there is large or shallow depth of field and ISO will affect image noise. The skill is in using all three in combination to achieve the result you desire. I will touch on these digital photography basics briefly but it is worth going into this more in depth to gain a better understanding.

Digital Photography Basics And Shutter Speed

Shutter speed refers to the amount of time your shutter is permitted to stay open, allowing light to hit your camera sensor. You will want to change the shutter speed depending on what you are photographing and what effect you want to achieve. You will use long shutter speeds in low light situations when you need a tripod. If you want to show the motion of water you may use a 1 second or 2 second exposure. 1/2 second to 1/30 second will give motion blur and fast shutter speeds will freeze action. It’s necessary to know shutter speeds inside out to get a good knowledge of digital photography basics.

Digital Photography Basics And Aperture Control

Your camera aperture, or f-stop as it is also known, controls the amount of light allowed into your camera through the lens. The larger the f-stop number the smaller the lens aperture and the less light allowed into the camera. the smaller the number and the more light allowed in. Confusing but once you get your head round it it is quite intuitive. Aperture also controls controls depth of field. The larger the aperture (the smaller the f-stop), the shallower the depth of field and vice versa. Again this can confuse but with a bit of practice it will become second nature and a part of your digital photography basics knowledge.

Digital Photography Basics And ISO

The ISO speed is the measure of sensitivity of the camera sensor to light. You are almost always going to want as low an ISO as possible as higher ISO speeds contribute to higher image noise. This means that you will only increase the ISO setting if you can’t get the desired aperture and shutter speed combination for your image. The common speeds tend to be 100, 200, 400 and 800 though many cameras allow lower and higher speeds.

This has been a very brief lesson to help you understand the various elements allowing you to control exposure and I would suggest delving deeper online or through books to gain a better understanding of this area of digital photography basics.

Photography Courses Online – How Studying Remotely Can Benefit Your Photography

Posted by Gregor on May 1, 2011 in Digital Photography | 0 comments

Photography Courses Online – How Studying Remotely Can Benefit Your Photography

There are many photography courses online dealing with various aspects of photography. There are courses dealing with landscape photography, portraiture, industrial photography, digital imaging, wedding photography and many more. There are courses for beginners, intermediate and advanced photographers. So whether you are starting out or wanting to add to the knowledge you already have there are plenty of photography courses online to choose from.

Photography courses online for beginners

If you are starting out on your photographic journey or are self taught and have never studied photography there are photography courses online that will guide you with examples from established photographers from varying fields of photography. These courses are designed to guide you through the necessary information needed to give you confidence with your digital camera and lenses and hone the necessary creative techniques to enable you to take fantastic, creative pictures. You will learn about modern digital cameras and how to use them, digital sensors and how they work, exposure and using shutter speed techniques for effect, using the aperture and understanding depth of field, exposure meters and how to use them effectively, aspects of flash, fill flash and mixing flash with daylight, and of course composition and how to compose your images so they are pleasing to look at. For the beginner there are many photography courses online, allowing you to learn at your leisure.

Photography courses online and digital image manipulation

Once you have your basic images stored on your computer you really want to get stuck in and turn them into fantastic pieces of art and there are photography courses online that teach you the basics throught to the advanced techniques of using image editing software. It’s great fun creating stunning images on your computer and a good course will take you through subjects like processing your digital image, helping you understand file formats like Raw, and JPEG, using layers and filters in the software, what all the tools are for (there are many and it can be quite confusing), renovating old pictures, colour management and why you need to calibrate your monitor and printing your photographs. Again there are plenty photography courses online to guide you through the editing process.

Photography courses online for the landscape photographer

Landscape photography is probably the most popular of photo pastimes, especially among amateur photographers and there are photography courses online to satisfy the need to learn and take great landscape images. Courses like this will likely assume you have some photographic knowledge and how to use your camera and read light. This type of course will cover composition, what equipment you need to be using, camera filters and how to use them, using depth of field for maximum focus, using shutter speeds when photographing water and much more. Photography courses like this are very specialised so it is worth making sure you really want go get involved in a particular subject before spending hard cash.

There are many photography courses online covering many subjects from the business of photography to wedding and glamour, landscape and digital imaging.

Wedding Photography Courses – Photographing A Wedding With Confidence

Posted by Gregor on May 1, 2011 in Digital Photography | 0 comments

Wedding Photography Courses – Photographing A Wedding With Confidence

If you’re looking to get involved in wedding photography it is worth looking into wedding photography courses to help give you the knowledge so you know exactly what you are doing and giving you the confidence to do it quickly. There is no second chance with a wedding and it is important that you do it right first time. And fast. There are many time constraint at a wedding, for instance you have to be there at the bride’s home at a certain time and you have to be at the church on time. You also have to consider the other services such as bridal transport, church and hotel time constraints. So knowing exactly what you are doing and doing it quickly is essential and there are wedding photography courses that will teach you the elements you need to know.

Wedding Photography Courses And The Business Of Wedding Photography

Good wedding photography courses will teach you about the business basics, like advertising your services, getting involved with other wedding services. Setting your prices is very important and you will find out how to go about doing this, enabling you to get the best profit from your efforts. It is important that you know what you are doing at the enquiry stage so it is you who is chosen to shoot the wedding and you will find out how to sell yourself. There is plenty of work involved in running a wedding photography business and good wedding photography provide this knowledge.

Wedding Photography Courses – Posing And Lighting

Wedding photography courses teach the essentials of posing and lighting. Knowing how to pose people, whether groups, couples or singles is a basic and important aspect of photographing a wedding. And doing it fast and getting a variety of shots from a few poses are techniques you need to learn. Wedding photography courses will spend a good deal of time on these aspects. You will learn hoe to use the light to get fantastic atmospheric shots, whether indoors or outside. Using available light can sometimes be difficult at a wedding but knowing how to see the light and use it will give you great photographs. Learning about subtractive lighting alongside using flash, fill flash, balancing flash and daylight and implementing the techniques like a professional will provide you with excellent images for your services. Wedding photography courses will go through the use of filters an when and when not to use them.

Wedding Photography Courses, Image Manipulation And Presentation

Once the wedding shot is over the job doesn’t stop there. You now have to spent time working on the images and wedding photography courses will guide you through the ins and outs of image manipulation using the appropriate software to get the best from your photographs. Knowing how to crop your images, whether to use black and white or colour, and what effects to put on your images is just as important as the shoot itself. And again you want to do this as efficiently and as quickly as possible. Presentation of the proof images and the final album is very important to your business. There are many presentation possibilities, from digital albums to framed images and DVD production and good wedding photography courses guide you through the implementation of this in your business.

There is plenty to learn in wedding photography, too much to mention here but having a look at the wedding photography courses is a great idea and if you’re serious about wedding photography as a career I would strongly suggest enlolling onto or buying an online course for the sake of your business.

Digital Photo Developing And Achieving The Perfect Print

Posted by Gregor on Apr 24, 2011 in Digital Photography | 0 comments

Digital Photo Developing And Achieving The Perfect Print

Digital photo developing requires a solid workflow to achieve perfect and consistent results. Getting the perfect print isn’t merely a case of taking the shot, editing and printing but once your system is set up properly it is fairly straight forward. The first thing to concentrate on before carrying on with your digital photo developing is to ensure your monitor and printer agree with each other. In other words they need to be calibrated to get consistent colour rendition. you need to make sure that the way your printer sees the image is the way you see it on your computer. This is essential in digital photo developing.

Digital Photo Developing And Monitor Calibration

So how do you deal with the confusing issue of calibration in your digital photo developing. First of all you need to calibrate your monitor and then you need to calibrate your printer. There is some pretty expensive software for doing this and if you’re serious about your photography it is worth the investment. You can do it, though, by getting an image of someone with a normal skin tone printed by a first class lab so that it is rendered accurately. Hold it up to your image on the computer screen for comparison and adjust the colours, contrast and brightness of your monitor till they match. That’s your first step to spot on digital photo developing.

Digital Photo Developing And Printer Calibration

The next step in setting up your digital photo developing workflow is to make sure your printer is calibrated. You need to access your printer driver software to do this. Your printer manual will show you how. Your printer driver will likely contain some pre-set options, referred to as printer profiles. These relate to the combination of printer, ink and paper that work together to give an accurate result. You can alter these profiles manually by tweaking the cyan, magenta, yellow and black sliders to give your desired result so that the print matches what is on your monitor. Once familiar with how your digital photo developing system works you can set up different profiles for different printers or different labs if you outsource your work. You can also get profiles from paper manufacturers so you have a profile for each paper type you use.

Digital photo developing can be quite complex and it is worth getting to know how it works to achieve the prints your images deserve.