One of the most popular things we all use our cameras for, is taking pictures of your kids, grandkids, neighbors kids, and on and on. Let’s face it, you pull up a camera to your eye and every child within 100 yards puts that ‘typical’ silly grin on their face. You snap the picture, and then it stays on your memory card, goes onto the hard disk in your computer, or SOMETIMES lands up as your screen saver. You may even print one 4×6” out!

But why is it that we don’t get an image that we’re proud to make 16×20 and hang on the living room wall? Well, the problem is usually one of the following: the image looks too posed, the picture is blurry, they have ‘red’ eyes, the flash came on and just blew their face out, the image just doesn’t look right, or the dreaded ‘same silly grin on every kids face’ look.

So, what can you do to get better pictures of children? Well, here are some tips:

•    Get down to their level (and I don’t mean intellectually) – stoop down, get on your knees, crawl on your belly if you have to. As adults, we’ve forgotten what the world looks like from their height, and you’ll get a much more interesting photograph if you use that view again.
•    Take them somewhere they can have fun. A lot of times, we just shoot the picture wherever they are – in the house, the car and other ‘routine’ locations. Based on their personality and what they like, it could be a park with a jungle gym, swings and other things, it could be the zoo, a soccer field, whatever interests them. Let them be who they are, not who you want them to be.
•    Tell them you won’t take their picture if they make that goofy face UNLESS that’s the look you want. We have trained kids (and I might say adults) to put that face on every time they see a camera. I don’t know about you, but I am tired of seeing the same grin on every child. Doesn’t yours have more personality than that?
•    Get them comfortable and in the mood.  Whatever the location, get them involved in what they like doing best. What you’re trying to do is take the attention off of you and get them immersed in activity. This is when you can start getting those ‘natural’ images.
•    Have several different things you want to do with them. Plan the session out ahead of time in your head. Don’t just take them to the park and say ‘go play’, but have some ideas of what pictures you want to take in that park. It could be that they don’t like the swings, but love coming down the slide. Or, they might want to crawl through the tunnels or kick a soccer ball around. Whatever it is, have some idea of what you’re going to have them do.
•    Props – don’t forget the props! Bring toys and other things that they’ll use on location.
•    Make it fun for them! Tell them, that if they come down the slide 10 times, they get a prize. Whatever it takes to get their mind off the fact that this is a photo session.
•    Think about what they should wear ahead of time. Stay away from crazy designs, striped shirts with slogans and other wild outfits and go with solid colors.
•    Pick the time of day – mornings and late afternoons are the best time for lighting. You get great shadows, and a softer warmer color of light.
•    Make sure you bring refreshments and snacks!

There are two final elements that are important – lighting and composition. Ideas for both of these can fill volumes, but there are a few simple things that you can do for each.

When it comes to lighting, those early morning or late afternoon sessions already eliminate the harsh noontime shadows and squinting that we naturally do.

If you are going to have the sun behind your child, then you are going to have to have some way to put light on the child’s face. This is either through the use of a flash, or a large white piece of cardboard or fabric that bounces light into their faces.

Cameras want to adjust for the bright sky, so unless you have some skills with using flash (and an assistant if you’re bouncing light as fill), try not to have the sun behind your child. Have it so that the child is not looking into the sun, but that it is coming in at an angle and softly lighting their face.

When you compose the shot, move in close! If the background is not important to the picture you are trying to take, and then get in as close as you can. Most of today’s cameras have some kind of telephoto lens, so use it! Crop out that distracting background.

Also, make sure that you pay attention to what is behind and around your child. One of the biggest mistakes is to have a tree ‘growing out of the head’ of your child because you failed to see it in the background.

Finally, don’t be afraid to try different angles. I’ve even brought a ladder on location to either stay level with the action as they climb that jungle gym, OR to take a picture from a vantage point that most people never think of. Either way, think out of the box when it comes to standing on your feet and just pushing the button while you say ‘smile’.

Beyond that, today’s cameras do a pretty good job of taking care of the exposure, focus, use of flash and other little technical steps for you. In the end, it’s all about getting your child relaxed, getting a great angle to shoot and a natural looking pose – all at the same time.

But how can you get those fantastic ‘professional’ images? Do you have to have a ‘pro’ camera in order to get them? Just what can someone with a little point and shoot camera do? Well, I’m going to give you a few tips that should dramatically improve those images, no matter what kind of camera you have.

First thing that comes to mind is WHEN should I be taking those images? Well, for flowers, the absolute BEST time of the day is early morning. There are several reasons for this. First, there is likely to be little wind early in the morning, and when you are very close to the flowers you want to shoot, then any movement becomes a problem. Odds are, most mornings, the wind will be calm.

Second reason the morning is such a good time is because of the dew that is on the flowers. It just adds a touch of ‘realism’ that makes your images stand out that much more. It’s also the perfect time of day for warm soft lighting and wonderful long shadows – all things that enhance your floral images.

Another good thing about the morning is that the flowers are FRESH! The sun has not been beating down on them all day and the insects have not had their way with them. They also may be opening for the first time and that makes many more of them just perfect specimens.

All of these reasons shouldn’t stop you from taking images during other times of the day; it’s just that this is the best time. If it was a large field of flowers and you wanted to show the vastness of it, later in the morning or late afternoon would work just fine. If you wanted to silhouette some flowers against the setting sun, that would work fine as well. Just always be careful when shooting towards the sun! You can damage your eyes when looking through the viewfinder no matter what type of camera you have.

So, now we have the when and we’re out in the front yard looking at those wonderful daffodils. What position should you get in to get the best view? Well, shooting down from the angle that you always see them is NOT interesting. Look for the unusual! Get on the ground, crawl around and look at them from all sides. Watch the lighting, background, how the sun reflects off the dew and all those other key elements to a good shot.

Once you’ve seen the angle that just grabs you, you’re ready to set up and take a picture! Now you’re into the ‘mandatory’ equipment phase. This means a tripod or some other way to stop your camera from moving when you take the image! Large tripods typically can’t handle lying on the ground, so there are very short ones that you can purchase OR you can use a simple bean bag or small pillow. Something that has some weight to it and that can mold itself to the shape of your camera, while allowing you to get in close and angle the camera just the way you want it will work.

Now we start to get a bit technical and things depend on the type of camera that you have. The fact is, EVERY camera has a minimum focusing distance – another words – a number that shows JUST how close you can get to those flowers before they are out of focus. Check your camera’s documentation to find that out if you cannot see ‘through the lens’ and know if you are in focus. You want to make sure that your images are sharp and clear.

Most camera manufacturers have attachments that you can use to get closer, or macro lenses that reduce that minimal focusing distance. These things are not REALLY needed unless you want to enter that world that most people never see.

At this point, another thing you want to thing about is HOW much of what you are going to be photographing is going to BE in focus. This is called your aperture or depth of field. It simply means that when you focus on an object, some small area in front and behind of that exact point is going to be in focus or sharp and clear.

If you have a camera that allows you to change your aperture or depth of field, it is simple – the smallest F-stop NUMBER will have the smallest area in focus, while the larger F-stop number will have a much wider area in focus. So, F4.5 might only have an area one to two inches wide in focus, while F11 might have from 4-6 inches in focus.

Another key tip is to use a cable release or your timer mechanism. Almost ALL cameras today have some way to say ‘after I push the button, wait XX seconds before you take the picture’. Why is this important for flower photography? Well, just as flower movement is not your friend, neither is CAMERA movement. When you push that button down with your finger, you are bound to move the camera slightly and that is going to blur your image. So, use that delay feature and step back and let the time count it down. You’ll have much less ‘shake’ to the shot.

So let’s recap – we have the time of day, spot, angle, a way to steady the camera and we’ve focused on the flower or flowers that we want to photograph. Now, what about the lighting? You should have checked the angle of the light when you found your perfect spot, but what about that pesky flash? What if it goes off, do I NEED a flash? Do I want to intentionally USE a flash?

All good questions and the answer depends on the equipment you have and what you are trying to achieve. If you have a small point and shoot camera and the flash is just going to fire no matter what you do, then take some white paper or cloth and try and soften the flash. Otherwise, you could end up with some ‘blown out’ areas on your image. Even if you intentionally want it to light up the inside of your flowers, you will still need to make it as soft as possible.

If you have a more professional flash that attaches to your camera, you can always angle it away and then bounce the light off a white piece of paper or cardboard back towards your flowers. That will really soften the effect.

To be honest, some of the best close-ups of flowers that I’ve taken have been with a macro lens and a ‘ring flash’. Sometimes these attachments are not as expensive as you might think. If you have a single lens reflex (SLR) type camera and you’ve purchased a flash to sit on top of it, odds are a RayFlash ($199.00 retail) is just the thing for you. It attaches to the front of your flash unit and then loops around the front of your camera’s lens. When you take the picture, the flash fires and provides a ‘ring of soft light’ to illuminate the inside of that single tulip.

Is there anything else I carry with me when shooting flowers? Well, other than a white piece of cardboard, the NEXT handiest couple of things are knee pads, something to lay down on when the ground is wet AND a spray bottle filled with clean tap water (no chlorine or other chemicals in it). Well, what if there ISN’T any dew that morning on the flowers? With that small water bottle, you can create your own and I can’t tell you how many times it has saved the day for me.

The last thought about flower photography? Well, it’s about taking those pictures on cloudy, rainy days. You know what? Some of the most saturated color images of flowers I’ve ever taken have been after a light rain on a bright overcast day. No harsh lighting, but just a soft diffused look. The rain that just cleaned the air looks spectacular on those flowers and most people never go out and shoot when the weather is bad. They always envision those flowers in bright sunshine!

But not you – you know better now!

March 10, 2009–Rome– A 16th century master used modern darkroom techniques to create his masterpieces, more than 200 years before the invention of the camera, according to researchers.

Italian researchers claim the technique explained why many of his subjects were left-handed — the image projected onto the canvas had been reversed.

Art historian Roberta Lapucci said Caravaggio’s dramatic ‘chiaroscuro’ style of light and shadow was based on “a whole set of techniques that are the basis of photography.”

Art history scholars have long known that Caravaggio worked in a sort of darkroom, illuminating his subjects through a hole in the ceiling and projecting the image onto a canvas using a lens and a mirror. But Mrs. Lapucci is the first researcher to suggest that he treated the canvas with light-sensitive substances, including a luminescent powder made from crushed fireflies, in order to “fix” the image as 19th century photographers later would.

He then used white lead mixed with chemicals such as mercury, to outline the image in greater clarity, she believes.

Mrs. Lapucci, who teaches at an arts institute in Florence, the Studio Art Centers International, based her hypothesis on research by British artist David Hockney, who wrote in his 2001 book “Secret Knowledge” that many old masters used optical instruments to compose their paintings.

“There is lots of proof, notably the fact that Caravaggio never made preliminary sketches,” said Mrs. Lapucci.

An “abnormal number” of Caravaggio’s subjects are left-handed. “That could be explained by the fact that the image projected on the canvas was backwards,” she said.

Caravaggio’s use of mercury might explain his violent temper – prolonged exposure to the chemical can affect the central nervous system.

Caravaggio was notorious during his lifetime for becoming involved in brawls, one of which ended in the death in 1606 of a young adversary, which forced the artist to flee from Rome to Malta.

Dr. John Spike, a Caravaggio expert based in Florence, said that to prove the thesis that the Baroque master used chemicals to “fix” projected images, the paint in the pictures would have to be subjected to laboratory testing.

“If evidence was found, that would be amazing. But it would involve taking samples from some of the world’s greatest masterpieces, which is not ideal.

“We know that he worked in a dark room and that he was fascinated by mirrors, and he was living in Rome at a time when it was a hotbed of scientific inquiry. “Might he have used this technique? It’s possible – his protector, Cardinal Del Monte, was also the protector of Galileo, and they were all fascinated by optics and the new physics.”

Leonardo da Vinci, who lived in the century before Caravaggio, was familiar with the principles of the “camera obscura” but Mrs. Lapucci believes Caravaggio was the first to use it in paintings.

source: The Telegraph (UK)

1  Focus/Sharpness – Focus just has to be TACK sharp for an image to work.  What is the main focal point of the image, and is it in perfect focus?  If not, it’s gotta go because sharpening in software just isn’t going to make up for a lack of focus. On wildlife/birds, the eyes have to be so sharp and in focus that you don’t NEED any software to ‘fix’ it.  You would be surprised how many images I get rid of because of this.

2.  Lighting – on the wildlife, if the face is in shadow, and there is light around – not so good.  You want the face lit up and the eyes to be tack sharp.

3.  Light edges – watch the lighting around the EDGE of your photo. The idea is to draw the person in.  Let’s say you have a bird, eyes tack sharp, a little bit of sun on the face, and a catch-light in the eye.  Perfect, right?  Except that there are light areas around the edge of the photo – guess where your eye is drawn?  Well, it is confused.  You look at the bird, but then are drawn to the edges – the light areas.  Humans go dark to light, so if you darken the edges and draw them in to an ever-increasing light area in the center, it works a lot better.

4.  Horizon line – make sure it is ALWAYS straight.  Off just a bit, and the person looking at it will not know what is wrong, but will know something is.

5.  Background – when you take a picture, ALWAYS check to see what is behind – especially the head area.  If you have boards, twigs, etc., growing out of a bird’s head, it looks weird.  Also make sure that there are not elements like that that are on the edges of your image.  Another words – some stray branch coming in from the side not connected to a tree, and not part of the central image.

Add these thoughts into your shooting and post processing, and you can take your work to another level!  If you have an ‘eye’ for things, it then becomes a question of tips, tricks, technique, when to do something or not, to enhance your images.

Always try to take the most perfect shot with the camera, instead of thinking to just take the shot and ‘fix it later’ in Photoshop.  But, you CAN go through taking the best picture with the camera, and then believe that you can do something special/different in software afterwards.  That’s how I think about images.  I see something out there, try and get the best shot I can, but MANY times have something better in mind because I know what I can do with the software when I get back.  That’s just as much fun to me, and that’s kind of what I’m known for.

So, what does this have to do with Dave’s Diamonds?  Well, it’s not every day that your grandson gets his picture up in Times Square on the large electronic display.  My son Jason took the picture of Ethan playing in the park.

Evidently, this is a promotion by Sony for one of their new cameras – the Cyber-shot with Smile Shutter Technology.  This thing actually detects when you smile and takes the shot!  No more saying cheese, which is actually one of my pet gripes anyway.  A whole generation of people who wait for that moment to force some weird expression on their faces!  What will they think of next? 

Anyway,  anyone from around the world was allowed to send their image in, then they selected a few to show on the big screen every few hours.  Kind of neat!  If you’d like to see more about the camera, click here.

And for those of you with small cameras?  Don’t worry – this class is for you as well.  You don’t always have to have a professional camera to end up with a fantastic image that you can put on canvas and hang on your wall.  I was out driving once with my wife and didn’t have my camera with me.  She however, had her little 3.2 megapixel point and shoot camera.  Well, the rule is – GET THE PHOTO!  Try and compose, expose, and make sure it is in focus, and then worry about the other issues when you get it into the digital darkroom.

Well, that image is a 24″x36″ photograph that is part of my black and white collection.  You can look at it all you want, but you’ll never know that it was taken with a ‘dinky’ camera, and not film or a higher end digital.  This is the point I want to make to all of you – you can use what you have and take great pictures!

Stay tuned for class dates and times.

While just about every Texas for decades has been shooting millions of these pictures, how many do you actually see displayed anywhere?  To be honest, I’ve only seen two.  One, is a painting that Lee Herring did in Bremond House Gallery of two little girls who find one Indian Paint amongst thousands of bluebonnets. They’re sitting there in their beautiful little dresses with ribbons in their hair.  Just  a wonderful painting for ‘only’ $5,000.  Lee is the 2007 Texas 2D artist of the year and he did a fantastic job.

The other one (or two) are two that I shot of my daughter Kimberly back in the late 70′s or early 80′s, and they were both framed and up on the wall for years and years.  I still have the color slides of them, and one is still in the frame, but stored because it has faded a lot.  I have one very small one of my other daughter Brianna, in a frame on a table at the house. So, nope, nothing on the walls with my children in bluebonnets.

So why do we take so many pictures of the flowers and our kids in them; yet can’t remember seeing any of them displayed?  Could it be that they just didn’t turn out that well?  That they didn’t have the ‘wow’ factor?  Well, seems like this is the time to give a few tips on how to get better pictures of both.

Wildflower Photo Tips

1.  Best time to shoot is the morning!  Why?  Well, there are several reasons, but two goods ones are that the wind will most likely not be a factor in movement, and flowers LOOK better in the morning!  They have dew on them, them have not been beaten down all day by a hot sun, they’re not dried out, etc.

2.  Brace your camera!  Handheld closeups of flowers just don’t cut it.  You have to have a tripod (good EVEN if you are shooting a field of them), or something that you lay the camera on while you compose.  Then, use your shutter release timer!  If you have a camera that has a built-in timer, use it!  For steadying your camera, I’ve found some small bean bags that are great.  You can lay them on the ground, stack them, and put your camera nestled into the top one.  It provides a very steady base for shooting.  Or, you can try one of the very small tripods, they work, but are pretty flimsy.

3.  A close-up or macro lens.  Most lens/camera combinations these days can focus pretty close, but not to the close in level that I want!  I want to be so close in that you sometimes don’t even know what you are looking at.

4.  But there are clouds in the sky and it’s overcast!  Well, guess what folks; get that camera out and get to shooting!  A bright sunny day is NOT really the best day to shoot flowers.  A high overcast bright day is fantastic.  Colors are richer, areas of your picture are not blown out or overexposed, etc.  A lot of the best close-up flower shots are taken on days that are cloudy.

5.  Darken the background so that the flower and the colors really stand out!  If it is sunny, you can take a square board and block the sun behind the flower, creating a much darker background.  Move it around until you have black in the back and beautiful color in front.  On the reverse side, if it is sunny, you can soften the light hitting the flower by using a clear piece of cloth between your light source and the flower.  Soften things up a bit and remove the harsh shadows and make the light more even.

6.  Try back-lighting your flowers.  The sun coming through the petals, while you are laying on the ground shooting them can be very dramatic!  Remember though – don’t look through the lens directly at the sun, and remember that this is going to through your camera’s automatic exposure WAY off, so meter for the flowers unless you’re trying to silhouette them.

7.  Patience – to be honest, you are going to get wet from laying on the ground, maybe cold (depending on the early morning temperature), have the old fire ants crawling on you, and spend more time getting just ONE good image of a flower than you ever expected.  But in the end, it will be worth it and you’ll want to hang it on your wall!

8.  Keep a small bottle of water with you so that you can ‘spray’ some dew onto flowers.  Sometimes nature doesn’t help you out here, so you have to have your own supply.  Make sure there are no chemicals in the water.

Kids Portraits in the Flowers

1.  Reality is, most of the above rules apply to kids as well!  Well, they won’t have dew on them unless you leave them out overnight.  Anyway, the lighting, time of day, and other tips do apply.  Even shooting in the morning instead of the evening, is a valid issue because the flowers will still look better in the morning.  However, since they are not the center of attention, then the late evening will work as well.

2.  One thing that is always a problem – how do you get the kids out there and not ruin the flowers?  Well, I guess there is no perfect answer to that, other than to be careful. They are a state treasure and we need to treat them like that.  Try not to step all over them.  The ones you kill will not produce any seeds, which will produce fewer flowers the next year!

 1.  When you are taking a picture, check to make sure you are holding the camera level (unless of course you are INTENTIONALLY making that horizon look like you are on a sinking ship!).  One of the sure-fire ways to make a landscape image look ‘wrong’ is to have the horizon line not straight.

2.  The concept that you don’t have to worry about exposure, focus and things like that because it can be ‘fixed in the computer later’, is just not totally true.  Yes, you can make up for some exposure problems, but there is no substitute for getting it correct the first time!  And yes, you can ‘sharpen’ an image in some image-editing programs, but you CANNOT make sharp, something that is not sharp to begin with!  So, make sure that the object you want to focus on is sharp and clear.  Remember that 1/3 of the area you are focusing on in front of the object will be in focus (based on your F Stop, which is your depth-of-field) and 2/3 of the area behind will be in focus.

3.  Watch the background!  One of the best ways to ruin a picture is for  you to have a tree growing out of someone’s head.  When you compose your image, crop it in the camera (another words, move as close as you can and compose your picture on your screen/viewfinder), focus, check your settings and then make one final check of the background.

4.  When you take the picture (push your shutter release button), don’t ‘pull’ the camera when you push the button, but gently push it in.  This will stop the camera from jerking at the last second, and causing the image to be crooked, blurred, etc.

5.  When photographing children….get dirty!  The best way to get a good picture of children, is to get down at their level and look at the world through their eyes.  I just hate it when I see a parent or grandparent standing tall and pointing the camera at a 45 degree down angle to get the top of their head.  If you’re not as dirty at the end of the session as they are, your pictures are probably not going to be that great!

6.  Cheese… Please!  Do not say Cheese and get those fake smiles!  Once again, if you are down in the dirt with the kids, taking pictures of them naturally having fun, you will catch plenty of smiles and laughter!  With today’s proliferation of digital cameras, we are shooting more and more pictures.  Right from the beginning, we are teaching the kids to give us those ‘fake’ smiles every time you bring a camera up to your eye.  Who knows, pretty soon we’ll never see their true personality!

7.  Outside lighting – best time to take photos?  Early morning and late evening.  The light is warmer in color, the shadows are more dramatic, etc.  However, DON’T stay inside if it is cloudy out!  High overcast bright days are great for softening up the light and allowing you to take some great shots.  And…if you’re REALLY adventuresome… get off the couch and go out when there is bad weather around.  You’d be surprised how dramatic your pictures can be.  However, remember to protect yourself and your equipment from the elements.

8.  Inside lighting – turn the flash off and pose your subject by a window.  Light coming through a soft white curtain can make for some fantastic portraits.  You don’t always have to have that flash popping!  If you do, then see if you can ‘bounce’ it.  Flash units that attach to your camera and are not built in can typically swivel. Try that.  Or, if you have a popup flash that is built into the camera, there are little attachments that you can put over it that soften the light, bounce it, and spread it out for a more evenly exposed picture.

I’ll post more of these little tips as I think of them.

JPEG - (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is a standard for compressing still images. The JPEG format is very popular due to its variable compression range. JPEGs are saved on a sliding resolution scale based on the quality desired. For example, an image can be saved in high quality for photo printing, in medium quality for the Web and in low quality for attaching to e-mails, the latter providing the smallest file size for fastest transmission over dial-up connections.

Not Great for Text

JPEGs are not suitable for graphs, charts and explanatory illustrations because the text appears fuzzy, especially at low resolutions. Compressing images in the GIF format is much better for such material.

JPEGs Are Lossy

Using discrete cosine transform, JPEG is a lossy compression method, wherein some data from the original image is lost. It depends on the image, but ratios of 10:1 to 20:1 may provide little noticeable loss. The more the loss can be tolerated, the more the image can be compressed.

Compression is achieved by dividing the picture into tiny pixel blocks, which are halved over and over until the desired amount of compression is achieved. JPEGs can be created in software or hardware, the latter providing sufficient speed for real time, on-the-fly compression.

RAW format images, on the other hand, do not typically compress the data and none of it is lost.  So, here’s where my opinion comes in.  Many will tell you that it’s fine to shoot in JPEG all the time because who’s going to blow something up large enough for you to notice if you are using the JPEG versus RAW?  My response to that is: Why let your camera, some obscure algorithm or anyone else randomly decide which data stays and which is thrown out?  Why decide what your maximum print image size is going to be before you even take the file off your camera and put it on the computer?

If space is not an issue on your memory card, I recommend that you ALWAYS shoot in RAW if your camera has that setting.  If it doesn’t have a RAW setting, then make sure you are shooting with the largest JPEG (least compression possible) setting.  Don’t start your photo session by taking an image that is not at the maximum capability of your camera if you can afford to.  Those of us who do the ‘post processing’ of your image will thank you for that extra data when it comes time to make those wall sized ‘art’ prints on canvas.

Well, let’s hold on a minute and talk about that. First, there is no substitution for good composition, correct exposure and FOCUS! Probably the one thing that really can’t be fixed (so far) is focus. If the entire image is in focus, then yes, you can change the appearance of depth of field with software. But, the main point of interest stills needs to be in focus. 

Don’t confuse focus with sharpness. This is great software out there today that can increase the sharpness of an image, but it cannot make something that is out of focus, look like it is in focus.

When it comes to exposure, there is more latitude in the software and what it can do. However, I have an opinion on this as well. First, if you expose your image incorrectly, then there is less ‘data’ to work with. That means that any software you use, has less to work with. Personally, I want as much information to manipulate as possible when it comes to improving and finalizing an image. And with today’s digital darkroom, the less time spent correcting images, means more time taking pictures. So, try to expose things properly, and if your camera has a histogram, learn about what it is showing you!

Finally, composition. This is an area that you can literally write about for weeks and weeks, so it will be a subject that will evolve on its own. I’m not sure that you can give someone the ability to see phenomenal images when they look at a scene. Some people just ‘have the eye’. However, you CAN teach someone techniques that will improve every image, and that is one of the things that we can do here.

The first tip on composition is to watch TV.  What?  The reason I mention that, is the cinematographers have FANTASTIC composition skills.  Look at some of the commercials – the fog drifting through the trees, the sunlight coming through just right and the person walking through the woods.  Makes me feel like I’m there and ready to buy whatever they are selling!  But, if you look at it through a photographers eyes, you realize just how skilled these folks are.  Next thing to watch, is CSI Miami.  Every time I watch that show, I am amazed at the skill of the folks shooting it.  The colors are phenomenal (extensive use of filters in my mind) and everything else is vivid and alive.  Recently they’ve resorted to some trick videography, but you’ll get the picture if you look at it from a photographers perspective. These guys have their act together.

Well, let’s hope the myth is dead and that you spent more time trying to compose, focus, and expose your images. Any comments or questions?