I’m pleased to have been invited back to teach pocket camera photography classes again in 2012 at the Burke Museum, North Cascades Institute, and The Siskiyou Field Institute. I’ve also just added a new class at Whatcom Community College in Bellingham, too. Continue reading
As a photographer you want to control where the folks viewing your images look. A strong focal point, or center of attention, in your photos will almost always make them more powerful and more interesting. We’ve all made pictures, shown them to a friend, and gotten the “what the heck were you taking a picture of?” response. Most of those should go in the trash can. They should have been tossed before you even showed them to anyone.
Where you put your main subject in the frame is most important. If you’ve been around photography or art for any period of time you’ve likely heard of the “rule of thirds” or the “golden mean.” That’s a technique for positioning the main subject at one of the power points within the frame. I’ll write about that in more detail another month.
This month I’d like you to think about using differences in brightness, color, or sharpness to direct attention within the frame. Continue reading
Sometimes the boring stuff we face as digital photographers is really important. Backing up all of our master photo files is one of those “must do” tasks. Backups take time. Backups aren’t fun. Backups can save our a**.
I touched on backups over a year ago in my Digital Condoms post. It’s time to return to the subject. Like the previous post, this one is motivated by a friend’s hard drive crash catastrophe. Continue reading
What’s fun, fast, better than expected, and more socially acceptable than a nooner? That would be making photographs with your smartphone’s camera.
It seems that everyone has a smartphone these days, whether it’s an iPhone or Android. The advantage of a smartphone camera is that you usually have it with you. Plus, it’s small and easy to use. The disadvantage is that the technical quality isn’t as good as a “real” camera and you pretty much have to accept whatever the automatic controls give you. Continue reading
