Photography Article Summer Round Up|Photography Artist Statement

Welcome to the Summer Round Up! This is a chance to look back at the posts from the last three months and catch up on any posts you might have missed.  You can also check out the previous round ups for Spring 2013, Summer 2013,Fall 2013, Winter 2013-2014, and Spring 2014.

Consider joining in the Boost Your Photography: 52 Weeks Challenge! In September we will continue with out theme of exploring photographic subjects and styles. Join the Google+ Community to share your weekly photographs and receive feedback.

For Beginners

This is a collection of posts geared towards beginners or those who want to learn to do more with their camera. Many of the 'Tips and Tricks' and 'Inspired Ideas' posts will also be applicable. You can find other posts geared toward Beginners here or in the tab up top.

ISO

Basics

Aperture

Scale

Strategic White Balance

Demystifying the

Histogram

Teaching Kids Photography 2

Capturing Motion

For Beginners: Composition

The focus for June was on properties of composition, so it makes sense to list those as a separate sub-category.

Composition:

Rule of Thirds

Composition:

Leading Lines

Composition: Fill the Frame

Composition:

Orientation

Composition:

Framing

Creative Ideas Using Shutter Speed

Tips and Tricks

Advice for getting the most out of your camera and your photography. You can find more Tips and Tricks posts here or in the tab up top.

Top Tips for Photography Portraits and Posing

Must Have

Camera Apps

Must Have Post-

Processing Apps

An Introduction

to Filters

How Do You Do

Black and White?

Better Back to

School Photos

Inspired Ideas

This is a collection of posts containing ideas, both those that you can implement immediately and those that require a little more time, effort, and potential planning. You can find more Inspired Ideas here or in the tab up top.

Quick Tips

for Fireworks

5 Tips for Better Sunrise and Sunset Photographs

Street Photography

Guest Posts

During the winter, I became a regular contributor to Digital Photography School. These are my posts that were published over on their site in the last few months.

Creative Reasons to Use

Intentional Camera Movement

How to Create Amazing

Reflection Photos Using Puddles

Stay Connected

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Photography Article 5 Easy Tips for Better Sunrise and Sunset Photographs|Photography Artist Statement

Sunrises and sunsets are a wildly popular problem for photography. This article will teach you some easy hints as a way to make a dramatic effect to your sunrise and sundown pictures.

(This month for theBoost Your Photography: 52 Weeks Challenge we are working on popular photography subjects and styles. The week of August 3rd will focus on sunrises and sunsets. Join theGoogle+ Community to share your weekly photographs and receive feedback.)

Better Sunrise and Sunset Photographs

Tip 1: Know When to Shoot

Timing is important for dawn and sundown photos. For excellent consequences you need to be in role at the least a 1/2 an hour to an hour beforehand and live at least a 1/2 an hour to an hour afterwards. Sunlight will hold to strike the clouds and remove darkness from the sky for a while earlier than the legitimate sunrise and after the official sundown.

Sunrise and sunset instances are quite smooth to come by, simply make sure that you have become the timing on your specific region and time area. Time and Date.Com is a simple-to-use net website online wherein you could seek with the aid of place and receive sunrise and sunset instances (and moon rise and moon set times) for a particular day or a whole month at a glance. The Photographers' Ephemeris is every other first-rate tool for determining dawn and sundown times, but that leads us to tip #2 ...

Tip 2: Know Where to Shoot

Knowing while is simplest 1/2 the conflict for sunrise and sundown photographs. You additionally need to know wherein exactly within the sky to assume the solar to rise or set. This is when you will need to seek advice from The Photographers' Ephemeris. The ephemeris is free to down load on your pc or computer, or you can pay to down load the app onto your cellphone or pill ($4.99 for Android or $8.99 for iPhones and iPads). (*Update: the downloadable version for computers is being discontinued and replaced with a - nonetheless free - web version. Web model pictured below.)

The ephemeris gives you with sunrise, sunset, moon upward thrust, and moon set instances in addition to the angles at which every might be inside the sky. You plot your region at the map, and then you can see exactly wherein the sun will line up when it rises, for example. If you want to capture the solar or moon relative to a selected location or landmark, you can flow your self around at the map and find out exactly where you would need to stand. (You can see extra examples and specifics within the article Shoot the Moon with the Photographers' Ephemeris.) Try it in your pc, and after you realise you can not stay with out it, make investments within the app.

Tip three: Watch the Clouds

The clouds will make or break your dawn and sundown snap shots. Too many clouds, and you'll lose your capacity to peer the sunrise or sundown. Too few clouds, and you are left watching handiest subtle adjustments throughout a blue sky. Clouds frequently provide much of the drama and excitement in sunrise and sundown pictures. Clouds bounce and reflect the varying mild of the sun, adding a wide variety of colours and tones in your final photo. Clouds create patterns and shapes that upload hobby and textures. If you want to shoot a better dawn or sunset shot, you'll need to cheer on the clouds.

This photo is nothing without those amazing clouds.

Tip 4: Create Foreground Interest

A sunrise or sundown is only a sunrise or sundown except you offer a few additional hobby inside the frame. If you need to make your dawn and sundown pics stand out, then you want to pay attention to your foreground.

The robust, directional light of sunrise and sundown affords a exquisite possibility to play with silhouettes. Consider subjects with strong, identifiable shapes, like a lone tree, a unmarried man or woman, or a seashore umbrella. Get down low to make your foreground items large and have more effect, like a big boulder within the sea or the waving blades of grass. Take some time to walk round your scene and test with exclusive views to add hobby to your image. And in case you actually need to make your dawn or sunset pictures pop ...

Tip 4b: Include Some Water

This is honestly an extension of the concept of foreground hobby, however water is a clear winner whilst capturing dawn and sunset photographs. Ponds, rivers, lakes, or maybe the ocean create a extensive canvas on your sunrise or sunset photographs. Still water creates beautiful reflections which can double the light and drama of the scene. Even moving water will replicate and jump around the light, adding interest and colour in your images.

Larger our bodies of water also provide a wide-open canvas in your image. Water can eliminate lots of the muddle of day by day existence (telephone wires, that tree that blocks your view, and on and on). You often see a miles wider expanse of the sky as nicely, allowing you extra options: from expansive huge-attitude pictures to narrow, zoomed-in perspectives.

Tip 5: Nail the Exposure

Sunrise and sundown shots are tough in your camera to correctly pick out the exposure, and in case you let your camera manage exposure you may discover that the photographs you're taking do no longer fit the imaginative and prescient or grandeur of the dawn or sunset you witnessed.

Option 1: Meter off the Blue Sky

You can use a patch of blue sky to "inform" your digicam where to set the publicity after which recompose and take your photo. With a factor-and-shoot digicam, point your camera at the patch of blue sky after which press and keep the shutter button half-manner down. This will lock each the focal point and the publicity. Move your digital camera back to the composition that you want and then push the button the rest of the way right down to take the photograph. (Read more approximately this method of "recognition and recompose" within the article Teaching Kids Photography: shooting modes, attention, and exposure.)

With a DSLR digital camera, point your camera at the patch of sky and push the AE Lock button. (You can also must enable this button on your digicam. Check your guide.) Then recompose for the composition that you desired and press the shutter. (Read about this strategy more extensive in More on Exposure.)

Option 2: Use Exposure Compensation

If you cannot find a large enough patch of blue sky or you want a more consistent solution, then you should set your exposure compensation. On both point-and-shoot and DSLR cameras, you should have an exposure compensation line graph. (Some phone cameras and apps also have an exposure option.) For sunrises and sunsets, I have found that an exposure compensation of -1 often works well. You can either set your exposure compensation to -1 or use bracketing to shoot a series of shots (like, -1, 0, +1 or better yet, -2, -1, 0) and then choose your favorites later on your computer. An exposure of -1 makes it more likely that darker elements will become black silhouettes and that a bright sky will have more depth and drama. (Read more in the article Explaining Exposure and Exposure Compensation.)

Sunrise and Sunset Photographs

Of course, as with most photography, the key elements in getting the best sunrise and sunset photographs are time and patience. Make a commitment this week and plan time in your schedule for photographing either a sunrise or sunset. Put all or just a few of these tips into practice, and see what kind of an impact they can make for you!

(Looking to grow more in your photography? Consider joining the BYP 52 Weeks Google+ Community to share your weekly photograph and see what others are capturing.)

Photography Article Must Have Photography Processing Apps for Android/Apple|Photography Artist Statement

This is the second one article in our series on Must Have Apps for phone/pill photography. The first article centered on Camera Apps for Android and Apple, whilst this newsletter will recognition on the next step: apps for post-processing your snap shots after you have taken them. (Huge thank you again to Steven, our neighborhood phone-pictures expert, for his steerage and guidelines. See greater of Steven's work here http://imaginethis55.Tumblr.Com/ and http://crated.Com/imaginethis .)

For ease, I've broken this submit-processing publish into sections: general apps for processing snap shots (those with a variety of alternatives) and specialized apps for processing pictures (the ones geared toward doing a selected issue very well). Many of those apps are loose but provide in-app purchasing alternatives. Whenever necessary, I have tried to make clean if a function is simplest to be had as an upload-on.

Apps for Processing Photographs - preferred

Snapseed (available free for Android and free iPhones and iPads) is by Nik software who were recently bought by Google who then offered the app for free across platforms. Snapseed offers a wide range of photo processing options ranging from basic corrections (straighten, rotate, crop, etc) to more advanced processing (brightness, ambiance, contrast, saturation, shadows, and warmth) and fun filters (black and white, vintage, HDR, grunge, tilt-shift, frames, and others). You can open photographs already saved on your phone or tablet or take a new picture to work with. (Snapseed is not a camera app but allows you to choose whether to use the default camera or another camera app to take the pictures.)

Snapshot from the access options in Snapseed

Once you become accustomed to the workflow, Snapseed is a breeze to work with and allows you to fine tune your photographs in any number of ways. Within each processing option you can press on your image and swipe up or down to reveal different options (such as brightness, contrast, and grain within the Black & White option). Once you have selected one, swiping to the left or right decreasing or increases that particular effect. Many conversions also have presets that you can use and compare before choosing a favorite. While working you can always press and hold the "compare" button to see the image without the current effect. Any additional benefit of working with Snapseed is that you are always editing a copy of your original photograph and any changes you make will be saved as a separate image. You can also share images directly from Snapseed to Google+ or other social media apps.

Adobe Photoshop Express (available free for Android and free for iPhones and iPads) is a greatly slimmed down version of the popular post-processing software. Photoshop Express offers both specific processing and editing options as well as packaged "looks" (premium looks can be bought within the app). You can adjust the strength of a given look as well. You can crop, rotate, straighten, and flip your photograph, as well as adjust things like clarity, exposure, contrast, color temperature, and others (noise reduction is an add-on). You can also reduce red eye (options for people and pets), add a variety of frames, and attempt to remove blemishes.

Screen shot of different "looks" in Photoshop Express

The workflow for Photoshop Express is a little more intuitive than Snapseed - each option is adjustable through a slider bar underneath the photograph that can be used to increase or lessen the impact of that particular transformation. Just like with Snapseed, you are always editing a copy of the original photograph, and you can save multiple different edits of the same original image if you wish. You can also save your final images directly from within the app.

PicsArt Photo Studio (available free for Android and free for iPhones and iPads) is a community as well as an app. You can join the community to share work or see amazing examples of photo editing and manipulation accomplished using the PicsArt app, but you can also use the app without signing up for the community. PicsArt does have an ad bar along the bottom.

Screen shot of "Pencil" effect in PicsArt

PicsArt offers basic photo correction options including cropping, selecting, cloning, stretching, resizing, and adjusting curves and color. You can also choose from a wide range of effects in multiple categories (effects, blur, artistic, pop art, paper, distort, colors, and corrections). Once you have applied an effect you can use brushes to adjust how and where that effect is applied. PicsArt also lets you apply a variety of masks, drawings, text, lens flare, stickers, clip art, frames, and borders. The shop offers many more options at various prices. PicsArt also allows you to create collages of up to ten images. You can choose from a pre-arranged grid, frame, or freely size and organize your own images. Spend a little time looking at the Featured Images on PicsArt to get an idea about what the app has to offer.

Photo Studio (available free for Android and free for IPhones and iPads) is a very similarly-named app with some similar options, but Photo Studio has far fewer free options and more in-app purchases than the apps described above. Photo Studio will allow you to crop your image, but the focus is on adding filters, frames, effects, and stickers. You can also add text or sketch on your image. Photo Studio has collage options including picture frames and more free-style collages. This app might be one to skip unless it has a specific effect you simply "must have" (and will most likely pay extra for).

Screen shot in Photo Studio - frames and text added

Apps for Processing Photographs - specialized

Photo Grid Collage Maker (available free for Android and free for iPhone and iPad) is a quick-and-dirty app for making collages. You select the photos that you want, and then you can choose from a range of different layouts, as well as add text, stickers, filters, and background colors. Shaking the app changes the arrangement of the photos within the collage (which can be frustrating if you want a certain picture in a certain place). There are ads within the app as well as in-app purchases. Not a ton of flexibility but great if you need a collage on the go.

Krispy Kreme collage made with Photo Grid on my tablet - yum!

Image Blender (available for $2.99 for iPhone and iPad) or

Image Blender Instafusion (available free for Android phones but not tablets or $1.99 for Pro version) allow you to combine and overlay two images to create interesting effects.

Image Blender allows you to create multiexposure or blended images by combining multiple photographs into one finished image. There are several different colors, textures, and blend modes available, and you can easily adjust the relative proportion of each image when combined. You can also uses masks to selectively show only part of an image, which allows you to create composites as well as blends. You can save your work as well as share it to other social media apps.

Screenshot of Image Blender combining a photograph of a flower with one of a wrinkled  purple paper

Image Blender Instafusion gives you three opening options: blend, effects, and photo booth. With blend, you choose the two photographs that you want to combine, and then you have a wide range of different blend modes to choose from. You can choose images from your phone or take a new photograph. Each blend mode has different options with it as well. In the effects panel you can choose from a variety of different effects and filters to add to your image. The Photo Booth mode lets you apply finishing fixes (filters), add frames, and do basic edits including cropping, rotating, enhancing, and adjusting the brightness and contrast. You can save your work as well as share it to other social media apps. (Fair warning: shown above is the free app for Android, which has an ad bar across the bottom as well as occasional pop-up ads when moving from one option to another.)

InstaSize (available free for Android or $2.99 for ads free (upgrade within the app) and free for iPhone and iPad) is a useful one-trick pony of an app: it allows you to make any photograph into a square suitable for posting to Instagram. After taking or opening a picture, the InstaSize button will add a vertical or horizontal border to center your photograph within a square, or you can create a collage of multiple photographs within the square format. You can then use the Borders button to change the color or add a pattern to the border. You can also use the Layers option to add filters, stickers, overlays, and even text to your image. When finished, you can save or share directly to Instagram and other social media apps. If you are an avid Instagram-er and want to post images without cropping down to a square, it is a useful app to have. (Be sure to follow the links given for Apple, as there are many similarly-named apps.)

Instasize screen shot showing yellow border added to make a square

Summary: Post-Processing Apps

There are many, many post-processing apps available. Start with one of the basic workhorses: Snapseed or Photoshop Express. See what you can do, and see what you might still want to do that these apps might be missing. Then branch out into greater manipulation, collages, texts, etc. with PicsArt or Photo Studio.

If you need a quick collage, use Photo Grid. If you really like the idea of blending images together, then download Image Blender, and if you love your Instagram, then be sure to get InstaSize. You will be amazed at how much you can do with your photographs and your phone! (If you missed it, don't forget to check out the first post in this series Must Have Camera Apps for your Phone/Tablet.)

Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is now available from Amazon. Get the most out of your camera with practical advice about the technical and creative aspects of DSLR photography that will have you taking beautiful pictures right away.

Photography Article Analyze to Improve Your Landscape Photographs|Photography Artist Statement

Landscapes are every other classic pictures problem, and this publish will lay out the fundamentals for quickly enhancing your landscape pics by way of studying how to analyze panorama photographs.

(This month for theBoost Your Photography: 52 Weeks Challenge we are working on popular photography subjects and styles. The week of August 10th will focus on landscapes. Join theGoogle+ Community to share your weekly photographs and receive feedback.)

Landscape Photography Basics: subjects and substances

"Landscape" is a very general photography term, but most often one imagines a vast natural scene with everything in pin-sharp focus. While there are many different ways to photograph a landscape, this post will focus on this most traditional of approaches.

To begin, you need to locate your subject. If you do now not have travel plans coated up for an special locale or National Park this week, do no longer despair. Landscapes and vistas may be located in all types of locations, if you simply recognise a way to appearance. Spend a while considering or, better but, visiting some local parks in your community, town, or county.

The photograph above become shot at a nearby conservancy park, which turned into previously a working farm. The shot has that enormous panorama "sense" although it best includes a single subject in location. You do no longer want miles of visibility to seize a excellent panorama shot.

Once you have a place in thoughts, spend a while planning out your shot. Do you want to shoot at a sure time of day? (The golden hour around dawn and sundown lends gorgeous colorings to panorama shots.) Think approximately in which you need to place your self to get the nice composition. (Read greater about the fundamentals of composition in Perspective in Photography: Don't Just Stand There: Move Your Feet.) Many of the equal hints from final week's post on sunrise and sunset photographs will also apply, specially looking the clouds and growing foreground hobby (Read the information in five Easy Tips for Sunrise and Sunset Photographs.)

As for equipment, you will want to start with a much wider perspective lens (round 18-forty mm) and keep in mind additionally using a tripod and faraway shutter release. Many panorama photographs are shot at narrow apertures to attain a wide intensity of discipline, and these pictures may be more successful with a tripod. (Read greater on How to Maximize Your Tripod and about why to upgrade to an Inexpensive Remote Shutter Release.) Finally, bear in mind the usage of one or more filters in your landscape images. Circular polarizers and neutral density filters are common in panorama pictures. (Get extra details in this Introduction to Filters in Photography.)

Example Landscape Photography Analyses

There are many composition rules (well, more like guidelines) that can help you with your landscape photography, and many of these are the same rules we discussed in June for that month's Boost Your Photography 52 Weeks Challenge. (Click on any term to read more about the Rule of Thirds, Leading Lines, Filling the Frame, Orientation, and Using a Frame.) Rather than reiterate each of them again, let's analyze a few example landscape photographs and see what works. Knowing what to look for in a landscape photograph will help you know what to look for when setting up your own landscape shots.

Let's begin with an extended observe the sunflower photograph from before. I surely wanted to function the cloud pattern above the sunflowers, so I used the rule of thumb of thirds to place the sunflowers inside the backside of the body and the clouds across the pinnacle -thirds. The vertical orientation provides to the feeling of height within the photograph and the sky. The sun had risen about a half of-an-hour in the past, so there's nonetheless a piece of the golden hour in the lights.

The settings for this photo have been ISO 100, f/7.1, and 1/60th, and I used each a tripod and far flung. The mid-range aperture continues the first rows of sunflowers in consciousness however lets in the relaxation of the historical past discipline to blur into vibrant yellow shapes. This offers an in-recognition foreground of sunflowers, a blurred middle ground of the rest of the sphere of sunflowers, and the background border of the trees. Having every of these three factors allows upload intensity to the very last photograph, even the ones the actual distance is only some hundred feet.

Now, this is a landscape photo that does depend on a large view to create hobby. Following the Rule of Thirds we find the location of the tiny, tiny humans within the bottom left intersection factor, contrasting with the largest of the carved structures inside the top proper intersection point. This photograph additionally has a very sincerely described foreground, center floor, and background. The rock outcropping at the bottom gives the foreground, supplying an anchoring factor for us because the viewer. (I was halfway up a very massive staircase on the time.) The principal phase of carvings and systems paperwork the foreground, and the curving road leads the attention thru the photo in the direction of the mountains in the historical past. The mild is directional, giving shadows to the people and the structures, and nonetheless incorporates a hint of the morning's golden glow.

Because I became journeying with out a tripod, this image was captured at ISO a hundred, f/11, and a shutter velocity of one/one hundred twenty five. This gave me a shutter speed quick enough to freeze the motion of the humans and to soundly handhold. The aperture of f/eleven gives an affordable depth of field, and the majority of the photograph seems in focus.

This is associated with a photography idea known as "the hyperfocal distance." While this will sound perplexing, the primary concept is which you do now not always need to apply the narrowest aperture to get the complete of your photo in consciousness. If the hyperfocal distance to your lens, then you definately recognise at what distance you want to set your focal factor to hold the whole lot in awareness. The chart above affords you with a difficult set of tips. So, for the photograph above, shot at 20 mm with a crop camera, I needed to focus 6.2 toes faraway from me at f/11 to have the whole lot from 3 ft to infinity in attention. If you need extra info on the hyperfocal distance, click on the pin to study the whole article.

Looking for extra panorama composition pointers and thoughts? Check out this pinned post from Digital Photography School:

Analyze to Improve Your Landscape Photographs

Spend some time with a favorite landscape photograph and see if you can apply some of these same types of analyses. Think about what really makes that image stand out for you. Then, see if you can take those same ideas and principles and apply them to your own landscape photography. This is not about "imitating" another photograph or another photographer's style, but it is about learning what works and what you like and figuring out how to capture that for yourself.

Not sure in which to start? Here are many of the thoughts we've discussed in this newsletter for reading panorama photos.

• Think about the composition. Was the photographer the use of (or breaking) a particular rule or guidelines of composition? Think approximately the guideline of thirds, main lines, filling the frame, orientation, using a frame, and greater.

• Think approximately the foreground, center ground, and heritage. Do you notice distinctions among all three inside the photograph? How does (or does not) this give the picture a feel of intensity and measurement?

• Think about the depth of field. Is the entire image sharp and in-consciousness? If so, how does that sharpness draw your eye in or across the photo? If now not, what do you be aware approximately what the photographer chose to recognition on and what is out-of-cognizance?

• Think approximately the mild. Can you tell what time of day this photograph was taken? How does the mild impact the shadows or the colors of the photograph?

• Think approximately the sky. How do the clouds or the colours of the sky paintings with the rest of the picture? If the sky is thrilling, emphasize it by using inclusive of more sky inside the final photo. If the sky is much less exciting, emphasize the land by including more of it in the final image - or compose to put off the sky altogether.

(Looking to grow more in your photography? Consider joining the BYP 52 Weeks Google+ Community to share your weekly photograph and see what others are capturing.)

Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is to be had from Amazon. Get the maximum out of your digital camera with practical recommendation approximately the technical and creative components of DSLR photography on the way to have you ever taking lovely images proper away.