By Rudy Lopez, on November 12th, 2009%
Jumping in the car and hitting the road for a day of exploring is a great way to expand your horizons and improve your photography skills. But before you snap a single photo, you will need to cover a few bases. Listed below are several tips designed to help you avoid making mistakes . . . → Read More: Photo tips: Preparing for a day trip
By Rudy Lopez, on September 18th, 2008%
North facing structures are notoriously hard to photograph. A beautiful home can look like a mash of very dark shadows and harsh angles if it faces north. This home in Westminster, Colorado has fantastic curb appeal, but it’s north facing front door and large garage doors make it a challenge to convey the drama . . . → Read More: How to get good exterior photos while shooting towards the sun
By Rudy Lopez, on August 19th, 2008%
Here are a few things you can do to make expressing yourself with photos easier.: Must you stand so close? It doesn’t matter if you are taking a photo of a person or a landscape, it is important that you get as close to the subject as you can. Our brain interprets distance and . . . → Read More: Photography Quick Tips: Five ways to immediately improve your photos
By Rudy Lopez, on August 18th, 2008%
Composition and exposure are the two major elements in creating a pleasing photo. Getting a good exposure is a technical skill. After all, there are only so many combinations of shutter and aperture that you can use on a specific shot. Composition is a different matter entirely. Composition cannot be defined, there are no . . . → Read More: Photography Quick Tips: The rule of thirds
By Rudy Lopez, on August 16th, 2008%
Now that your new images have been cataloged in the Aperture 2 library, it’s time to select, edit, and export the shots. You will need files that are versatile, good for print and web. Excerpt from the video: This tutorial will lead you through the selection, editing, cropping and rename-export process.
- Open Aperture 2 and select the project you want to work on.
- Click the Quick Preview icon to keep RAW images from loading while making selections.
- Make your selections by clicking the green checkmark. This will assign 5 stars to the image. You can isolate your favorite images by filtering the five star rated images.
- You will need to disable Quick Preview in order to edit the images.
- Watch the following video for the rest of the tutorial.
. . . → Read More: Aperture 2 Tutorials #2 – Selecting, Editing, Cropping, and Exporting Photos
By Rudy Lopez, on August 16th, 2008%
Aperture 2 can be a daunting program without any guidance. The following video is the first tutorial in a series designed to make using Aperture 2 easier to use. This video covers workflow from beginning to end, importing photos and getting organized. Excerpt from the video:
- Create a folder called “dump folder” on your desktop. This is a permanent folder, you will use it to temporarily hold all new pictures until they are uploaded into an Aperture 2 Library.
- Create a folder with a name you would like to have for the project. We will call this folder “House Plant Photos.”
- Set Image Capture to import into the “dump folder.” Download Images.
- Drag the images from the “dump folder” into the project folder.
- Watch the video below to learn the rest!
. . . → Read More: Aperture 2 Tutorials #1 – Importing and Organizing Photos
By Rudy Lopez, on August 6th, 2008%
- D300
With image sensors getting cheaper and more powerful, most serious amateur and semi-pro shooters are opting for the versatile Digital SLR, merrily leaving their film cameras behind. This guide is geared toward people that are already familiar with an SLR photography, but are unfamiliar with the digital process. Shooting with a DSLR is just like shooting with a film camera. All of the common mechanical functions are there, right where you would expect them to be. And, while there aren’t any chemicals to deal with, each image still has to be processed before it can be shared with the universe.
THE SENSOR
In film photography, a chemically treated segment of plastic is exposed to light for a predetermined period of time, permanently embedding an image onto the film. The film is then processed to create negatives, which in turn are processed into photographs or slides. The concept is the same for digital photography, except instead of a segment of film being exposed to light, a CCD (charged coupling device) is exposed and the light is converted into electrical signals that are recognized by the camera’s processor, the files are then stored on a solid state memory device such as a CF card. Each pixel on the sensor captures red, blue, and green information. . . . → Read More: DSLR Basics – Understanding the Digital Camera
