Shutter speed goes hand in hand with the aperture setting on your camera. They both influence how much light enters the camera & therefore the lighting of your photography. If you don’t know what shutter speed is, visit “What is Shutter Speed?” and “Shutter Speed Settings” to learn more.  In this photography tutorial we are going to focus on the how and not the why – how to adjust the shutter speed.

First off, as a beginner, your camera is most likely set to that oh so comfortable “auto” mode. We want to get out of our comfort zone and start understanding how our camera works- how to adjust the shutter speed.  Switch to manual mode: twist your mode dial to the “M”.  Once in manual mode you will be able to choose and control your shutter speed & Aperture.

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Photographic backgrounds don’t have to be expensive to be great. As most things in photography, the simpler the better as you always want to keep the attention on your subject.

I have two favorite and often used backgrounds.

The First are a pair of black bed sheets that I soaked in vinegar to set the color. You want to look for basic cotton sheets without any shimmer or shine. I found four queen sized sheets at my local ‘Mart for under $10 each.

The Second is white muslin. I purchased 5 yards of 108” wide muslin on at an online fabric store for under $20.

If you want a colored background, purchase some muslin and some Ritz dye. Using one of several techniques such as those described here, you can create some very useful and fun backgrounds. Read the rest of this entry »

Selective Color, White Vignettes, and Oval Frames- OH MY!

The good news is that there are a lot of great programs out there that make digital art accessible to everyone, from the free programs like Picnik to the affordable programs such as Photoshop Elements. The bad news is that I’ve been tempted lately to post on Facebook, “STOP with the 80′s digital art! You are hurting my eyes!.” Since I can’t do that, I’ll share with you the dos and dont’s of digital art so you can avoid the mistakes that let everyone know you are an amateur from another century.

DON’T-

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“It’s not the camera, it’s the photographer”

That quote is heard in photography circles about as often as the big hand goes around the face of a clock. Every photographer that has any confidence in their skill will tell you that they can capture a great images with any decent camera. Now it is time to find out.

Since almost anyone that has a cell phone now has a camera, let’s put that camera to use.

I recently attended an event with only the cell phone in my pocket. My original intent was to just attend and enjoy. I quickly found out that my obsession with photographing would not let me just sit and enjoy, so I pulled out my cell phone and went to work. My cell phone is a Droid Charge by Samsung.

I began “snapping” pictures. It was ok, however, when I began to look at the controls on the camera, I found I could make adjustments to improve the images.

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The Adobe suite offers Photoshop and Fireworks for batch processing photographs. To Batch Process is just to change multiple photographs all in one sweep. You may want to quickly re-size photographs to be easily put on the web, or just doing a quick crop so that all your photographs have the same proportions. Chances are that the action you want to apply to a batch of photos will determine which program you’ll be using.

Batch Processing in Fireworks

Fireworks is a great choice for simple changes such as changing the format (.jpg or.gif), scaling, finding and replacing text (great for removing spaces) or renaming all the files using a rule like mynewgalleryXXXX.jpg Other actions you can do in Fireworks are:

• Rotate the image
• Set Alternate Text for web use
• Convert Photo to Grayscale
• Convert Photo to Sepia Tone

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