Memory Card Tips

I found this article from Digital Photography School about using Memory Cards to be very interesting and thought you would enjoy it too.  Please remember to treat your memory cards with the utmost care.  They are your pictures until you get them on your computer and backed up.  Do this regularly as memory cards have been known to malfunction.  Then remember to choose the method that works best for you and get them off your computer and into your life by printing them. 

Popular Digital Cameras and Gear

I just received this great list of popular digital cameras and gear from the Digital Photoraphy School website.  The list of popular photography gear has a lot of very inexpensive items if you are still looking for the perfect gift for someone who loves to take pictures.  Or you can always pick your favorites and put them on your own list for Santa. 

I also recently saw a really cool idea for a photography buff - coffee mugs designed to look like a camera lens.  You can see several types by googling "camera lens coffee mug" .  There are some on Amazon and other websites that you can still get in time for Christmas.

Remember to capture all the moments - big and small - this holiday season. 

Thanksgiving Photo Ideas

At this time when we all pause to give thanks I want to thank you for the time and effort you put into preserving your photos and telling your stories so they can be enjoyed now and in the future.  You are creating a true legacy of love for your families.

Here are a few things to think about in the next few days. In addition to taking all the usual photos remember to take some photos of the prep work.  Get Mom or Grandma or Dad or whomever working in the kitchen  - making the pies, peeling the potatoes, etc.  If you ever thought about preserving some of your family recipes now is the time to take pictures of both the prep work and the finished dish.  Take some close-ups of the family china or other special mementos of the holiday season. 

Keep a record of things you are thankful for.  You can have each person write something on journaling boxes, keep a large poster board in a prominent place and have everyone write on it when they think of something, go around the table and have someone jot down what people are thankful for.  You get the idea, use whatever works for your family.  Make sure to get pictures of each person to include later on your gratitude album page.

Check back here this weekend for some page layout ideas. 

Enjoy the time with your families and the many blessings in your life.

Share some of your own ideas for photos to take over the holidays in the comments section.  I am sure you will also inspire some other readers. 

Taking Better Halloween Photos

Here are some tips to capture your little goblins this weekend. These tips would work for anytime you need to take photos at night in the dark. 

This post is from Nick Kelsh, How to Photograph Your Baby as posted on his Facebook page, "How to Photograph Your Baby" on 10/26/10

Dear All,

Here are a few Halloween thoughts from someone who has never taken a trick or treat photo I really love. I have tried, however, and I have come to some conclusions that one of you may get something out of.

Accept the fact that it's unlikely you will shoot a wonderful photograph after dark (with a flash, obviously) of the little angels—or devils or fairy princesses. Probably the thing to keep in mind is to get a good shot of that costume you put so much work into. A photo just for the family record.

So, get a shot of the costume before you leave home. Use that time to get you settings straight on your camera. Put your focus on manual. You and your camera will go crazy trying to make the auto-focus work out there on the battlefield. It won’t work. Auto-focus needs light to function and for all practical purposes there isn’t any on a dark street. I would say to focus on about 8 feet. Get a feeling for how far you should be from your subject at home and when you get outside try to shoot your pictures from that distance. Shooting with manual focus will eliminate much of the “shutter lag” problem.

Turn your flash on. If you can put that on manual do that, too.

Turn the ISO up to something like 800. If your test pictures are too noisy turn it down to 400. There’s a lot of variation in camera performance from model to model here so it’s impossible for me to get specific but turn it up.

Put your camera on manual exposure. A shutter speed of 1/15 of a second and an f-stop of f5.6 would be a good place to start. Under good lighting conditions 1/15th of a second would result it lots of motion blur—either from squirmy subjects or squirmy photographers—but shooting in the dark with a flash is going to eliminate a lot of that.

Play with the camera at home in dim light to see that the flash setting is cooperating with the f-stop and shutter speed. In other words, get the camera on all manual and gain some confidence with you focus distance and exposure.

When you’re out on the doorsteps and under the street lights the 1/15th of a second may allow you to actually use some of the existing light, too. If those lights are in the background it will give the picture some depth and not have that taken in outerspace look.But street lights and house lights won’t have much effect on actually lighting your kids. That will all come from the flash. We’re getting experimental here. If you’re in an experimental mood go outside with your camera alone the night before Halloween and get the kinks worked out. And there will be kinks.

I usually don’t spend a lot of time looking through the viewfinder in these situations. That can be very confusing in the dark. I just hold the camera in space and guess at the framing. You will surprise yourself how good you can get at that in a short time. Keep the camera on a fairly wide zoom and leave it there for the evening if you can.

Bring a flashlight for when you mess up your settings. It’s probably a good idea to make a little cheat sheet if you get confused. A piece of white tape or a white label with settings written down can be attached to the bottom of the camera and can be pretty useful.

Finally, Halloween can be a nice time to photograph all those people you live with and never photograph—your neighbors. When your kids are at someone’s doorstep they—the kids—have their backs to you, but your neighbors will be facing you with smiles on their faces. Admittedly, the light from you flash is nasty but I have taken some fun pictures of neighbors and they’re nice things to email.

And I know I already said it, but bring a flashlight.

Environmentally safe prints

You probably know that Creative Memories has taken many steps to be sure all the materials they produce meet or exceed the industry standards for photo safety.  They want to be sure that the time we spend on our most treasured possessions will preserve them for generations.  But did you also know that they spend a lot of time and money making sure the processes they use are also environmentally friendly?  Their standard prints (4x6, 5x7, etc.) use an electro photographic printing instead of the silver halide process used by the majority of other photo printers.  Electro photographic printing provides sharper resolution and significantly better longevity than silver halide prints, especially with the papers CM uses.  The Creative Memories process is green, and generates no hazardous waste.  Many other digital printers use liquid inks, which emit VOCs, and silver halide processes generate huge quantities of hazardous caustic waste.  So you can rest assured that when you purchase from Creative Memories you are not only protecting your photos for future generations but you are also protecting our natural resources for them to enjoy. 

The Rule of Thirds



One of the "golden" rules of photography is called the rule of thirds.  If you practice this rule you will end up with better composed photos.  It is really a very simple rule to implement.  Think of your viewfinder as having a tic-tac-toe board superimposed on top of it.  Actually some digital cameras have this as a built in function. (Now you know what those crosses are for when you look at your viewfinder!)  Try to place your subject, or the horizon if it's a landscape shot, where the lines intersect.  Basically this means don't center your subject in the frame. 



Original image with Maggie dead center



If you forget about this when shooting the picture you can always correct it when cropping a photo.  Cropping makes us all appear to be much better photographers.  Memory Manager actually gives you the grid lines for placement when cropping.  If you are working with a closeup of a person try to have the eyes near one of the intersecting points. 





After cropping and applying the rule of thirds

Like all rules this one can be broken and still produce an amazing shot. Try to use the rule of thirds more often and you will see a big improvement in your photos. 





I'm sorry I haven't posted this past week but I was away.  I hope to get back to posting on a more regular schedule.