Photography

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Photography Terms And Definitions
how to be a better photographer?

i love to take pictures.
i really like candid pictures, and doing macro close ups of plants and stuff.
how can i take better pictures?
like, i have a Nikon Coolpix L11.
it really isn’t that great, but it’s something to work with.
do you have any ideas of what to take pictures of & do you have an tips for photography?

If you are interested in close-up and scientific photography, go to the library and get some books that have chapters on these types of work. Study techniques and realize that these pictures are difficult even with the best equipment. Try other types of photography to boost your confidence and compare your work with professionals. Find a local photographer to mentor and offer you advice.

Rule of thirds is imaginary dividing the picture field into third equal parts horizontally and three equal parts vertically and locating the main subject at one of the four intersection points.
Aperture is the lens opening…f8 lets in twice as much light as f11.
Depth of field is a measure of sharpness from the foreground to the background and is controlled by the lens opening.
Any other terms can be found in those books at the library.

Photography Terms And Definitions

A question for Photo shop users, I am new to photoshop and digital photography I downloaded a few lynda

.Com videos on photoshop and I am amazed at what the program can do. However some of the terms they use I don’t really understand for example hue and saturation to me seems to be the same thing, I am probably wrong. Camera raw is another term I don’t really get, I checked the photoshop help and the definations they give is confusing to me, I guess because I am new. I checked on line and the one site defines the terms one way another site another way. Is there a site or resource where I find the definitions of the most commonly used terms in I guess you would call it photography or digital artistry? What I am asking is where can I find the definitions of these terms so I can fully understand what the instructors and other tutorials are trying to explain? Thanks

Hue is essentially color or color variation. Saturation you can think of as the richness of a color or the color density. You will see people refer to “highly saturated colors” meaning the colors are bright and strong and rich, sometimes almost unreal looking. Think of a newly opened red rose in bright noontime sunlight on a summer day. The red is very rich, very intense. That same red rose in the afternoon with shadows over it is still the same red, but not nearly as rich looking, so not nearly as saturated. In fact, you will run into the term “desaturate”: it means to pull color from an image. A completely desaturated image has no color, just shades of gray.

Many good quality digital SLR cameras (DSLR, SLR meaning Single Lens Reflex) can shoot in RAW. Unfortunately each camera company has a different RAW standard, which can make things confusing, and Adobe’s RAW in Photoshop is another standard. Luckily what Adobe has been doing is making its RAW interpreter, if you will, able to understand the RAW settings of many different camera companies. RAW is the raw information that the sensor on the camera records, with no compression. JPEG or .jpg files, the most common format and what all cameras can pretty much shoot in (from your very low end cell phone camera on up) are compressed files and automatically lose some information. This depends on the camera too. RAW files are everything, every bit of data that the camera’s sensor or sensors can pick up and record, it’s why they are HUGE files. You might see information that states your camera can shoot 10 RAW files on a 1 GB memory card, but can record 50 high quality large .jpg files.

Photoshop includes the ability to open edit with RAW; you can also then convert after editing to .jpg if you wish, and of course for printing, publishing, sending images via e-mail or uploading to a website, generally you will need to save your images as .jpgs. Do be aware that you don’t want to EDIT in the .jpg format. If you are editing an image in Photoshop, save the image as a Photoshop or .psd file format (.psd is the “native” Photoshop file type). The main reason, aside from being able to use all the tools, filters, etc in Photoshop is that the .jpg format is what is called “lossy.” Every time you open, edit, and resave a .jpg file, the compression algorithm it uses throws away data. So over time you will find a .jpg will lose quality. There’s nothing you can do about that: it’s built into the .jpg file type and it does this automatically.

You may want to invest in a couple of books. I think you probably don’t need the Photoshop for Dummies book (I am assuming you are using Photoshop CS3?), but you might want to look at the Photoshop CS3 Visual Quickstart Guide and the Photoshop CS3 Bible.

Hope that helps you!

IDIOT’s Dictionary: Photographer Edition (Part 3)

I get paid to take photos of people, horses, homes, etc. Am I considered professional because I get paid?

I’ve had no formal training but with the encouragement from my co-workers I started a small photography business on the side. The definition of the word, “professional” has changed over the years and seems to mean different things to different people. What determines a professional?? Wikipedia basically states that you can receive payment and still be an amateur. When would I be considered a pro’? After I’ve completed some courses? If so, how many would I need to take or is it just skill that counts? I remember this term caused some problem with Olympic skaters several years ago….
My other job is not connected with photography, so I’m not a free lance photographer. Thanks for bringing that up though.
Dr. Sam – love your answer even tho’ technically it may not be the best one!

By definition you are a pro. If you just sell a couple of pictures here or there you can still be an amateur but if as you say you are doing it as a business that more than qualifies you. Doing a course is irrelevent to whether you are a professional or not.

Maybe you are just naturally a good photographer who just knows his stuff and his equipment. There are plenty of photographers out there who have done the college courses etc and have the technical knowhow but still can’t take a good photo. They still like to call themselves pro.

IDIOT’s Dictionary: Photographer Edition (Part 4)