44 essential digital camera tips and tricks Our collection of top digital camera tips and essential photography advice will have you improving your photos in no time. Culled from experts and photographers who have been taking pictures for quite some time, they all agree that these 44 camera tips are essential knowledge for honing your craft. So feast your eyes below, check out some of our best photography tips on everything from setting up your digital camera to honing your photo composition, and by the end you will learn the secrets and shortcuts to getting high-quality pictures every time. Digital Camera Tips: 01 Always reset camera settings There are few things worse than taking what you think is a stunning picture, only to find your camera’s ISO and saturation were cranked right up from a previous shoot and you’ve missed the moment. Digital Camera Tips: 02 Format, not erase Formatting your memory card wipes it clean and rewrites any pertinent camera information. Digital Camera Tips: 03 Update your firmware
Textile futures: the living shoe and the strawberry plant that grows lace | Art and design "We tend to work in the year 2050," says Carole Collet, who founded the Textile Futures course at Central Saint Martins 10 years ago. "But for some students, that's not enough – they prefer to speculate up to 2080 and beyond." Sitting in the cafe at the college's new King's Cross campus, it seems that all Collet and her colleague, course leader Caroline Till, are missing is a crystal ball. Last year one student, Shamees Aden, investigated the emerging science of protocells, experimental chemical blobs that behave like living cell tissue. One of Collet's own projects speculates on the future of "biofacture", where biological processes are harnessed to produce goods in a sustainable, organic way. "The future control of cell development implies that we could design plants to perform specific functions for us," says Collet. She founded the course out of a frustration with the way textiles was conventionally taught, and after her own exasperating experiences of working as a textile designer.
Look At The World's Greatest Skylines Without Any Lights On When we envision the world’s greatest cities--from San Francisco to Sao Paulo to Paris to Tokyo--we usually picture bridges and towers and cathedrals: the built environments that have left lasting impressions on our mind’s eyes. The irony being that those skylines have been in place for at most a century or two; the sky above has looked the same for millions of years. Our greatest cities are often the sources of the most light pollution. In those places, we rarely see the stars. But, with a clever method of composite imaging, the French photographer Thierry Cohen has turned the lights out in the city to reveal the stunning stars that have always been overhead. In his series "Darkened Cities," Cohen creates a visual reminder of what the world would look like if it were free of light pollution, and asks us to ponder how an increasingly urban society can disconnect us from the natural world.
Home | Ubuntu Studio untitled The Pastel 100 | See Who Won This Year's Competition I feel so lucky--on my desk is the newest issue of Pastel Journal, which announces the winners of the Pastel 100 art competition. As of this writing, we haven't even gotten our office copies yet, so it'll be hot off the press as you're reading this today. I read through the entire issue in the "binder" stage; this is when we print off each page of the magazine and route it through the team to proofread and edit the entire issue one last time. In this issue, Editor-in-Chief Anne Hevener writes: "Bold. "The jurors noted an impressive range of styles and quality in every category and lamented the difficulty in narrowing down the field to only a handful of pastels. Elaine Lierly Jones won the grand prize award for her landscape, Miles to Go (above; pastel, 24x36). Until next time,
Ansel Adams Photographs In 1941 the National Park Service commissioned noted photographer Ansel Adams to create a photo mural for the Department of the Interior Building in Washington, DC. The theme was to be nature as exemplified and protected in the U.S. National Parks. The project was halted because of World War II and never resumed. The holdings of the National Archives Still Picture Branch include 226 photographs taken for this project, most of them signed and captioned by Adams. They were taken at the Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Kings Canyon, Mesa Verde, Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Carlsbad Caverns, Glacier, and Zion National Parks; Death Valley, Saguaro, and Canyon de Chelly National Monuments. The Kings Canyon photographs were taken in 1936 when the establishment of the park was being proposed. In addition, there are eight photographs taken by Adams of Yosemite in the General Photographic Files of the National Park Service. To Order: All prints are labelled: "Carlsbad Caverns National Park."
Heatwave Photographic Studios | 10 Tips to better outdoor portraits 1. Capture candid moments: Candid photography is about capturing spontaneous moments, it’s not posed, not forced, and it’s un-obtrusive. The aim here is to show life as it’s happening. The ideal is to get people to either ignore the camera and continue with their activities, or to accept you as a fly on the wall. Photos taken this way tend to look more “real”. 2. If you shoot all your subjects from your level, they might appear disproportionate depending on their height. 3. When shooting close ups in portrait (holding your camera on it’s side), fill two thirds of the frame with your subject, leaving just enough space above their head. 4. This is worth exploring if you’re photographing people on their own. 5. When composing a picture, always keep in mind that the background is just as important as the person you’re shooting. 6. The light is softer early morning and late afternoon, much more pleasing than harsh direct sunlight. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Cloud Shield, Twine's Gateway To The Full-Blown Internet Of Things If you’re not afraid of hacking together a bit of code and plugging tiny wires into a credit-card-sized circuit board, you probably already know what an Arduino is. If not, here’s the short version: An Arduino is a little electronic brain you can program to do interesting interactive stuff, like dim the lights in your living room when you turn on your TV. It lets you turn dumb objects (or environments) into smart ones. Meanwhile, you may have also heard of Twine, a little green box full of sensors that lets you connect physical objects to the Internet without having to know any code at all. If you’ve ever wanted your basement to send you a text message if it floods, Twine is for you. Now, if you’ve ever wanted your Arduino to connect easily to your Twine--because you’re some kind of mad maker genius--the guys behind Twine have got you covered. The problem that Cloud Shield solves is one of communication. [Cloud Shield is available on Supermechanical’s website for $35.]
The Creative Process of Ansel Adams Revealed in 1958 Documentary Today marks what would be the 111th birthday of Ansel Adams, the American photographer who captured the sublime power of the wilderness, taking iconic images of the American West, most notably in Yosemite Valley. (See photo gallery here.) Original footage documenting the creative life of Ansel Adams is surprisingly hard to come by online. Ansel Adams, Photographer (1958) is available at YouTube and Archive.org. Follow Open Culture on Facebook and Twitter and share intelligent media with your friends. Related Content: Discover Ansel Adams’ 226 Photos of U.S. Alfred Stieglitz: The Eloquent Eye, a Revealing Look at “The Father of Modern Photography” 1972 Diane Arbus Documentary Interviews Those Who Knew the American Photographer Best Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Decisive Moment
How to Get the Perfect Exposure Using Your SLR Digital Photography Camera's Histogram Edit Article Edited by Robert Benson, Teresa, Flickety, Maluniu and 4 others The most important tool in digital photography besides the camera - the histogram! Ad Steps 1Understand what a histogram is. 4Read the next section for the explanation of how to use the histogram to gauge a proper exposure. Tips So, you stack all the black tiles (tone 0) in one pile all the tiles that are one tone lighter than black (tone 1) and so on all the way to white and there are all stacked in order in a straight line, that is a histogram.A Histogram ExampleReading a histogram. Things You'll Need SLR Digital Photography CameraYour Camera's Owner's Manual 5 Audition Mistakes You Can't Afford to Make - Audition Mistakes to Avoid - Audition Tips - How to Audition - Audition Advice - Auditioning for Shows So there you are – onstage, alone, heart beating wildly. And for the next two to five minutes, all eyes will be on you. It’s time to show them what you’ve got. Yep, it's that moment that so many performers love and loathe, where there's nothing between you and stardom but that possibly-brilliant, possibly-idiotic person sitting third-row center, who will be judging whether you're right or wrong for the part that you know you were born to play. It's time to step up and audition. But what many performers may not be aware of is that, while you may feel like you're auditioning for an enemy (or just a friendly neighborhood firing squad), the fact is, the people you're auditioning for desperately want you to succeed. That’s right -- they're on your side. To help you do this, following are my five audition mistakes no performer can afford to make. 1. Not if you don't want the part. 2. 3. A monologue is not a monologue is not a monologue. 4. Again, it’s about nuance. 5. Just kidding: Don't.
Journeys - Yosemite National Park - What Adams Saw Through His Lens - Travel And then you’re there. Pale, curvaceous granite rocks dance in the skyline. Dozens of people stand along the edge of the pull-off, called Tunnel View, trying to capture the scene. Some snap two quick shots with disposable yellow cameras, and others set up their tripods for hours, watching the light strike Yosemite’s monoliths. On the left, El Capitan, a rock climbers’ mecca, appears the tallest. Many people know these sights by name, but more know them by sight alone, as captured through the lens of the legendary American photographer . Adams first visited Yosemite in 1916 when he was 14 years old. The park itself also remained a favorite. The first step on an Ansel Adams-inspired trip to Yosemite is to visit the gallery run by his family. I ordered three books written by Adams from the gallery’s Web site before my trip: Adams’s autobiography, his collected photos of Yosemite and a step-by-step explanation of some of his works called “Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs.”