Friday, June 29, 2007

Online Photo Sharing

You've probably heard or have taken part in the raging trend of digital photos and online photo printing. But, did you know how photo sharing services can impact the way you exhibit priceless memories? Photo sharing services give budding photographers fun and flexible options for their images among other special features.

Many photo sharing services allow users to upload their digital photographs straight into their online galleries. Users can also add tags, headers, and even arrange prints in funky slideshows. Like MySpace, several photo sharing sites let you invite friends and loved ones to "join" your group and view new photos whenever you update your gallery.

6StarReviews.com notes that one photo sharing service, DropShots gives their customers a desktop application that makes drag-and-drop photo features a cinch. Many photo sharing services make the transfer-stage simple for those who aren't experts in the technology department.

Another great photo sharing site is Fotki, which allows members' friends and family to leave comments on their digital photo galleries. There is a world of opportunity in sharing digital memories and some of the best photo sharing services are recognizing the practical needs and entertainment-wants of avid photo fans.

Not only are digital images a fantastic way to preserve memories, while enhancing color and contrast, they cannot be ripped, fade, or lost if they are properly stored and copied. The Internet has revolutionized the ways in which we share our lives with loved phones, photo sharing services adding to our convenience.

Copyright (c) 2007

Kelly Liyakasa

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Photography - Taking Photographs for Pleasure and Profit

Have you ever wondered why photography has such an international appeal for all ages? Is it simply because we want to remember exactly what something was like? Were the summers really this good? Were the winters really this bad? What did my prospective partner look like when they were growing up or more so before the plastic surgery. The recollections of the past are often clouded and despite the fact that colors of photos tend to fade over the years the image itself is enough to bring the day or time vividly to memory.

Today with all the improvements in technology there are anti-shake devices to make sure that photography can still be enjoyed despite advancing years. Also digital cameras mean you do not have to complete a film of 24 or 36 exposures before you see the results. Historians are concerned that many photographs that could be of historical importance are not being printed and so in a hundred years time or so they will not be able to read the CD's they are on. Another issue may be that photos of an enemy's countryside are not available for the security services as they were at the start of World War II

Do not follow the crowd. I hate watching a crowd of Japanese tourists all taking the same photograph from the same angle. Stand ten or twenty yards away to the right or the left and get a different angle and light on the subject. It seems so obvious but to many it is not.

You may be reading this article and saying I cannot afford to buy a digital camera. Keep your eyes open. You will find many bargains around online and once you have a camera you will be able to make money from it. Remember that almost any mistake with a digital camera can be put right, often with the free software that came with the camera.

Enjoy your photography as a hobby, but while you do, consider making some money out of it. Sell your photos online. If you only have prints then do not worry as you can purchase a scanner (either as a printer/scanner/copier combination or on its own) to scan in photos. You can even purchase a scanner that will scan in slides or negatives. Old photographs have a market in the internet as well as those from today.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Basic Digital Photography

The power of the computer revolution is simple: once you convert real-world objects into bits and bytes, anything is possible. Nowhere is this more apparent than in photography. Digital photography represents the latest step in a technological revolution that began almost two centuries ago with Louis Daguerre's silver chloride prints. Daguerre amazed the world by fixing the light from a pinhole camera onto a piece of glass, thereby preserving a moment in time for an eternity.

Today an inexpensive digital camera can transform that light into electrical impulses with accuracy and brilliance that even film can't match. It can store hundreds of images on a sliver of silicon no bigger than your thumbnail. Those images can easily be sent across the country in seconds, be shared with hundreds of people at once, and even be modified to create an utterly new reality. The tools and skills necessary to do all this are within the reach of nearly anyone. You hold in your hands the book that will unlock those skills for you.

It's fitting that the author himself has traveled a similar path. Mikkel Aaland has worked as an itinerant photographer, making pictures much as his 19th-century counterparts must have, in a makeshift studio-on-wheels, capturing images of anyone with a few dollars to spare. After nine years on the road, the result was his 1981 book, County Fair Portraits. Shortly thereafter, another legend, Ansel Adams, told Mikkel that if he were beginning all over again he'd be shooting digital. Mikkel took the great man at his word and became one of the first to use, and write about, digital photography.

When Photoshop was first released in 1990, a Michel reviewed it. In 1992, he wrote Digital Photography, one of the earliest books published on the subject, and he has written many more since. He has worked as a professional photographer, using top-of-the-line digital equipment, and as a proud husband and father he has captured his own life with the same consumer-grade cameras the rest of us use. He's also been teaching digital techniques for the past several years on my TV, radio, and online shows. There is no better guide to the magical transformation of light and dark into bits and bytes.