Archive for Tips – Page 2

Droidography – Shooting Tips with Droid phones

By Craig Johnson
Thursday, June 16th, 2011

So far if you have been reading my columns, I have reviewed several apps that are out there. Trust me there are tons more and most of them are free or cheap unlike the iphone. This week I thought I would take a break from that and give a few pointers on getting good cell phone pictures, particularly focusing (no pun intended) on Droid phones. I think the best way to approach this subject is to offer a few suggestions in each of my next few columns. Hopefully these tips can improve you photos and help realize what the limitations (currently) they have.

1. Don’t Zoom! – If you have been spending anytime at all looking at the settings on your Droid’s phone, you have probably noticed it has a Zoom feature. I am asking something very difficult of you, don’t use it. Here is why…its a digital zoom. Most cameras these days even the point and shoot variety have digital zoom of course, but they also have optical zoom as well. Let me explain the difference and show you example images of a zoomed in shot and an unzoomed shot. Optical zoom uses actual lenses to magnify an image whereas digital zoom gives the appearance of zooming by cropping a photo, adding pixels, and so forth to compensate for lack of a motor-driven lens. Lets look at a couple of examples.

Silktree Zoomed in 4X

Silktree unzoomed

Read More→

Categories : Make Better Photographs, Phoneography
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HDR Series – Getting Started, Part 2: Image Management in Aperture 3

By Scott Frederick
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011

So you’ve just walked in the door and put your bag down, now what? How do you get your files ready for HDR? I will describe how I import my brackets into (the best file management program ever) Aperture 3. 🙂

Step #1: Import

– Fire up Aperture 3. Under the “Adjustments” tab you’ll find “RAW Fine Tuning”. You’ll want to move all 7 sliders to “0” zero and create an hdr preset. (clicking on the gear icon will show the save preset option. More on why this is necessary later)

– Under the “Library” tab create a new “Folder” with the Year and another inside that folder with the Month.

– The “Import” tab should pop up and it will look something like this. Read More→

Categories : HDR Photography, Make Better Photographs
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Photography 101: How to Break a Photographic Rut

By Chris Nitz
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011

Hitting a photographic slump can happen to even the best photographer. You shoot the same subject matter, process with the same techniques, fill client requests, and work day in and day out doing the same thing. This maybe great for the bank account, but sometimes that can destroy your creativity. Hitting the creative wall can be detrimental to your mood. However, there are some solutions to help break free from this black hole.

One of the easiest things you can do is try something new. This can be anything from shooting different subject matter, processing a photo with a new technique, or even just changing up your normal shooting times. Simply altering one aspect of your photography can not only inspire you, but it may also open your eyes to a completely new photographic world you may not have considered before. Change can be a very good thing!

While we are on the subject of change, why not change up your style for a week. In fact, why not combine several styles into one photo. There are no rules that say you cannot shoot a black and white HDR macro image of a bottle cap. Maybe you want to shoot some long exposure street photography. Again, you are dabbling in something new and foreign, yet that can lead to new tools and personal styles you draw upon at a later time.

Another thing you can do is start some sort of photography project for yourself. Maybe you want to shoot a self-portrait every day for a year, or maybe you roam around your state taking photos of churches. The key to these projects is to make them something that interests you on some deep personal level. When you start to tire of the everyday normalcy and find you just don’t have it in you to press that shutter button, look at your project list and work on some of your personal projects. Read More→

Categories : Make Better Photographs, Photography 101 - The Basics
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Tying The Knot: The Wax On, Wax Off of Wedding Photography

By Milton Gan
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

If you want to shoot weddings the best way to start is to become a second shooter, right? But is that really all it takes? You bring your camera to a wedding, stay out of the way of the pro, take  a few nice candid shots of the guests and voila, you’re a wedding photographer! Nah, that’s not the best way.

Ok, I’m not saying it can’t happen like that, but those few shots you take would have to be pretty special for someone to entrust you with their most special day and lots of their hard earned cash. Second shooting is definitely invaluable for building experience; all I’m saying is don’t rely solely on being a dictionary-definition second shooter. Instead you should first aim to be as good as the pro and then second shoot like a pro to make your images much more marketable. So how do you do this with no wedding experience?

Let’s travel back to 1984 and take a look at one of my favourite movies: The Karate Kid. Apart from having one of the best soundtracks of the 80s, it also teaches a simple but important lesson: hard work and preparation pays off.

When Daniel-san spends hour after hour, day after day waxing cars, painting fences and sanding floors he doesn’t see how it’s supposed to prepare him for the impending All Valley Karate Championship. Instead he wants to learn the glamorous rapid punches and spin kicks he sees in the dojo and thinks that copying the routines in his karate text books will turn him into a black belt.

We know, of course, that all those seemingly unrelated tasks actually disciplined Daniel-san in exactly the skills he needed; he just didn’t realise it at the time. Read More→

Categories : Make Better Photographs, Wedding Photography
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Marketing Campaigns for Photographers

By Michael Shilling
Friday, January 7th, 2011

Firstly I’d like to take this chance to wish everyone a very happy new year……now it’s time to get back to business!

The biggest question I’m asked by other photographers is How do I get more leads?

Luckily you’re in the right place here at Current Photographer and the first thing you should do is subscribe to the weekly tips to grow and enhance your business. There is already a wonderful archive with tons of great information so take a little time out, turn that TV off, brew a cup of tea and sit back and consume!

We’ve already shared lots of great ideas but what I’m going to be concentrating on in the next few weeks is specific marketing campaigns aimed directly at photographers.

What is important with any marketing campaigns or strategy is that it requires you to put the work in to make it successful. The key to being an overnight success is often based on years of hard work. It’s not just about having a Facebook page, tweeting once and a while or just printing off a few flyers.

Here’s a few things to consider:

  • Plan everything well in advance – November isn’t the time to be thinking about your Christmas promotions….now is!
  • Don’t be afraid to experiment or modify the ideas we suggest – there is no real winning formula, just a few good ideas!
  • Make a plan for the year and know when you intend to launch different campaigns.
  • Create a campaign timetable – this will help you push your campaign forward and not end up as an idea on a post-it note!
  • Use database software to organise, track and record the information you collect along the way.

Read More→

Categories : Grow Your Business, Marketing Campaigns
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Starting a Photography Business: Part 11 – What are Keywords?

By Ruth Bayley
Monday, December 6th, 2010

Google made the news today about how it lists searches and it helped me decide to write this article now. Worth bearing in mind is that although Google has more users than other search engines we shouldn’t neglect the other search engines and their criteria, 20% of all users are working with Google’s competition.

One of the best ways to get the search engines to work for us is to have a site that is keyword ready. Keywords are easiest described as a word that a customer will type into a search engine to find a product. And luckily Google offers a free Keyword Tool which allows you to type in a list of your keywords individually so you can see how many times in the last month people have used the word in a search.  You might be surprised by what it throws up and which words you consider to be a keyword to your product that just doesn’t feature on the radar of a consumer.

Taking one of my photos for an example, I have a photo of Italy in my collection; it’s of the Faraglioni rocks off the island of Capri on the Amalfi Coast, which are two limestone rocks that rise up out of the sea. Because I know the name of the rocks it was going to be one of the keywords for not only the photo name but the write up in the homepage and the page section however the google tool showed me that no one has searched for them by name then or now as I’ve just had another look as I’m writing this piece. So I no longer have it featured as a keyword, however Capri, Sorrento and Amalfi Coast have millions of searches so I now know what to concentrate on. Read More→

Categories : Grow Your Business, Starting a Business
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