Control reflection with a POLARIZER

Control reflection with a POLARIZER
A polarizer is a filter that attaches to your lens. Polarizers have two primary uses: to remove light reflections and to enhance or deepen the color saturation. When you use a polarizer to increase the color saturation, you must shoot at a right angle to the sun. As you turn more toward or away from a right angle to the sun, you are able to control less of the effect. Circular polarizers can be rotated, which enables you to control the level of the effect. When you use a polarizer to enhance colors, you need to be careful to not overuse the effect, as it can result in a contrasty and wholly unacceptable photo.

When you want to shoot without the distraction from light reflections, you can use a polarizer to reduce or eliminate them altogether. A polarizer is useful, for example, when you want to shoot through a glass window and show what is on the other side or to shoot toward water and show what is beneath the surface. You can also use a polarizer to control bright reflections from reflective or shiny surfaces such as metal or glass.
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Show movement with a NEUTRAL DENSITY FILTER

Show movement with a NEUTRAL DENSITY FILTER
You can use a slow shutter speed to show movement by recording a moving subject as being partly blurred. However, sometimes you cannot choose a slow enough shutter speed when shooting in bright light because cameras have a limit to the minimum size of aperture opening. That limit may require a shutter speed that is too fast to show mot

A neutral density filter is nothing more than a glass lens filter that reduces the amount of light that gets to the image sensor in your digital camera without having any effect on color. Neutral density filters are usually rated as 2X, 4X, and 8X, and they decrease the light by 1, 2, and 3 stops, respectively. Generally, when you use a neutral density filter and a slow shutter speed to show motion, you will need to use a tripod.

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Shoot color for DRAMATIC PHOTOS

Shoot color for DRAMATIC PHOTOS
Color can be one of the most powerful elements in a photograph. Certain colors evoke emotions and create moods; others are less apt to be noticed. Red, for example, is always a color that is quickly noticed, even when it takes up a small part of a photo. Most scenes or subjects can become spectacular or relatively uninteresting depending on the color of the light that is available. Study colors to learn how they work together and how they can be combined to ruin a photo. Although heavily saturated bold colors can be dramatic, so can soft, subtle colors and even scenes with little color that result in a monochromatic photograph.

When you find a subject or scene that you like, visit and shoot it at different times of the day over a few days to see how different light changes the colors. Your repeated visits will help you learn how to capture color as you want it. Shooting subjects slightly out of focus and underexposing sometimes can further enhance your photos to produce rich, saturated color.

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Creative Photo Tactics FOCUS ATTENTION on your subject

Creative Photo Tactics FOCUS ATTENTION on your subject
There are many ways that you can focus attention on your subject. Color, texture, background, focus, perspective, and a wide range of other visual design elements are just a few of the factors that you can use to draw attention toward your subject.

The next time that you shoot, think carefully about how you can focus more attention on the subject. Can you use a telephoto lens to fill the frame with the subject, or can you use a wide-angle lens to show a huge expanse of open space with a tiny subject that draws a viewer’s attention? Maybe you can use a “new” vantage point where you look up at a subject that you ordinarily would look down at.

When using a long telephoto lens, you have considerable control over the depth of field, which enables you to show a sharply focused subject against a soft, blurred background with contrasting colors. Whatever strategy you use, placing more attention on your subject often results in a better photograph.
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Get better photos with PATIENCE, PRACTICE, AND EFFORT

Get better photos with PATIENCE, PRACTICE, AND EFFORT
Photography is an art. As is true with all art, the creation of good art takes patience, practice, and effort. Some amateur photographers buy expensive digital cameras and expect to immediately get wonderful photographs. After taking a few hundred photographs with minor success, they get discouraged and stop shooting. To prevent this from happening to you, use a good work ethic and patience to shoot lots of photographs, and you will see your efforts pay off.

Although a photographic vision of what you want to shoot and the ability to use your camera to capture that vision are essential to getting great shots, time spent shooting and

Remember that when you shoot digitally, an important part of digital photography is editing with a digital photo editor such as Adobe Photoshop Elements. After you shoot, open your photos in an image editor and work as hard to learn how to edit your photos as you did to take them.

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Learn to shoot better by studyingEXIF DATA

Learn to shoot better by studyingEXIF DATA
When you take a digital picture, the camera writes the image to an image file, along with other useful additional information such as the date and time that the picture was taken. The camera also records settings such as shutter speed, aperture, exposure compensation, program mode, ISO speed, metering mode, white balance setting, and flash information.

All this information is written to the image file in an industry standard format called the EXIF (exchangeable image file) format. To read this information, you need software that enables you to extract the EXIF data. Most digital camera vendors provide image browser software that lets you read EXIF data while browsing thumbnail images. Also, you can read EXIF data from most image-management applications such as Cerious Software’s ThumbsPlus (www.cerious.com) and ACD Systems’s ACDSee (www.acdsystems.com). Adobe Photoshop Elements and Adobe Photoshop CS2 offer a file-browsing feature that you can use to view EXIF data. Additionally, some third-party vendors create free, specialized applications for reading and printing EXIF data, such as Thumber (www.tawbaware. com) and Exifer (www.exifer.friedemann.info).

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Compose for final PRINT PROPORTIONS

Compose for final PRINT PROPORTIONS
One challenge when photographing with a digital camera is to compose an image in the viewfinder that will translate into an image with the width-to-height proportions that you want. This problem arises because the aspect ratio of the image sensor is usually not the same aspect ratio as the paper you print on or the proportions of the image you want to put on a Web page.

Even though your images may be composed perfectly in the viewfinder, the viewfinder does not have the same aspect ratio as many standard-sized prints, such as 4″ x 6″ or 8″ x 10″. This means that you have to crop the printed image. Think about how you will use your photos and shoot accordingly. To avoid having a less-than-perfect photo for any purpose, shoot more than one photo composed for each intended use. The owl photos in this task show how hard it is to get even one standard-sized print that looks good from a tightly framed original photo.
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SHOOT DETAILS to create interest

SHOOT DETAILS to create interest
Although the first and natural inclination is to shoot an entire subject, shooting tightly cropped details can lead to the creation of captivating photos. Detail photos often are more interesting than full-subject shots because you can take a photograph that shows either detail that the viewer had never noticed or detail that may cause the viewer to take a closer look while wondering what the subject is.
Capturing just part of a subject enables you to put emphasis on the detail that is ordinarily overlooked when viewing the entire subject. When composing detail photos, compose to show form, color, texture, or shape.

When shooting details, be aware of the fact that you can shoot an increasing level of detail, too. For example, you can shoot just part of a tree with an interesting shape, such as a specific branch, a few leaves, a single leaf, or even just part of a leaf showing the intricate lines and texture. As you get to increasingly smaller detail, you may want to consider using a macro lens or macro feature.

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Work to DEVELOP YOUR STYLE

Work to DEVELOP YOUR STYLE
If you have seen a photograph and said, “That photograph had to have been taken by . . .” and you can correctly name the photographer, you have found a photographer who has a well-developed style. What makes a style? It can be the way a photographer portrays a subject, uses light, or captures colors. Or it may be a more difficult-to-quantify combination of characteristics that, when combined, make the style noteworthy.

How do you develop a style of your own? Take several photographs to develop your photographic vision and learn more about what it is you see and how you portray it. After you have taken thousands of photos, you will begin to see a pattern. Maybe you have an eye for shooting things that are graphic with bold colors, or you have worked on an impressionistic style by shooting in soft light on windy days with slow shutter speeds. When you notice a style developing, work on it to make it more distinctive, and keep refining it.
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Shoot photos based on a THEME

Shoot photos based on a THEME
For a number of good reasons, you should shoot photos based on a theme. First, if you have chosen a theme that you are interested in, you will enjoy taking the photographs for it, and capturing the theme can be a motivating factor to get you shooting. You will also find that you will become a better photographer as you continue to learn and work toward getting better and better photographs of a similar subject. Having more than one or just a few photos of a subject helps you to compare what is good and not so good in each shot that you take.

You can choose to shoot a theme that can be completed for example, all the country churches in a specific county. Or you can choose a more open-ended theme such as antique automobiles, old barns, or even gargoyles. The photos in this task are good examples of one very specific theme antique automobile hood ornaments. Notice that all but one of them are Mack truck hood ornaments. What theme should you pick?
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