Photography

Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera (Updated Edition)

For serious amateur photographers who already shoot perfectly focused, accurately exposed images but want to be more creative with a camera, hereÂ’s the book to consult. More than seventy techniques, both popular and less-familiar approaches, are covered in detail, including advanced exposure, bounced flash and candlelight, infrared, multiple images, soft-focus effects, unusual vantage points, zooming, and other carefully chosen ways to enhance photographs. The A-Z format make sit easy for readers to find a specific technique, and each one is explained in jargon-free language. Top Tips for each technique help readers achieve superb results, even on the first attempt.

The Digital Photography Book

In this book, author Scott Kelby tackles the most important side of of digital photography--how to take pro-quality shots using the same tricks today s top digital pros use (and it s easier than you d think). This isn t a book of theory - full of confusing jargon and detailed concepts. This is a book of which button to push, which setting to use, when to use them, and nearly two hundred of the most closely guarded photographic tricks of the trade to get you shooting dramatically better-looking, sharper, more colorful, more professional-looking photos with your digital camera every time you press the shutter button. Another thing that makes this book different is that each page covers just one trick, just one single concept that makes your photography better. Every time you turn the page, you ll learn another pro setting, another pro tool, another pro trick to transform your work from snapshots into gallery prints. So if you re tired of taking shots that look OK, and if youre tired of looking in photography magazines and thinking, Why don t my shots look like that? then this is the book for you.

The Photographer's Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos

Design is the single most important factor in creating a successful photograph. The ability to see the potential for a strong picture and then organize the graphic elements into an effective, compelling composition has always been one of the key skills in making photographs.
Digital photography has brought a new, exciting aspect to design - first because the instant feedback from a digital camera allows immediate appraisal and improvement; and second because image-editing tools make it possible to alter and enhance the design after the shutter has been pressed. This has had a profound effect on the way digital photographers take pictures.
The Photographer's Eye shows how anyone can develop the ability to see and shoot great digital photographs. The book explores all the traditional approaches to composition and design, but crucially, it also addresses the new digital technique of shooting in the knowledge that a picture will later be edited, manipulated, or montaged to result in a final image that may be very different from the one seen in the viewfinder.

Features
*Covers both traditional in-camera composition and the new opportunities for picture-making made possible by digital imaging editing
*Shows how to explore situations and locations in order to find the best possible photographic possibilities
*Uses clear examples from real photographic assignments, with schematic illustrations of how and why the pictures work

Scott Kelby's Digital Photography Boxed Set, Volumes 1, 2, and 3

Scott Kelby, the man who changed the "digital darkroom" forever with his groundbreaking, #1 bestselling, award-winning book The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers, shows which button to push, which setting to use, when to use them and hundreds of the most closely guarded photographic "tricks of the trade" to get budding photographers shooting dramatically better-looking, sharper, more colorful, more professional-looking photos with their digital camera every time they press the shutter button.Scott tackles the most important side of digital photography--how to take pro-quality shots using the same tricks today's top digital pros use (and it's easier than you'd think). Each chapter is packed with plain English tips on using flash, shooting close up photography, travel photography, shooting people and even how to build a studio from scratch, where he demystifies the process so anyone can start taking pro-quality portraits today! Plus, he's got full chapters on his most requested topics, including loads of tips for landscape photographers, wedding photographers and there's an entire chapter devoted to sharing some of the pro's secrets for making your photos look more professional, no matter what you're shooting.

Captured by the Light: The Essential Guide to Creating Extraordinary Wedding Photography

This book is about how to take the best wedding photographs possible for clients. In this book, David Ziser will outline chapter-by-chapter and step-by-step exactly how to get great photographs while under pressure at a fast-pace wedding. He covers lighting and posing, on-camera flash (and how to make it dance), off-camera flash, using natural light, determining the best exposure, gear and more. He tells readers where to place the bride and groom, how to light them, where to place the light, what lens to use and what f-stop, shutter speed and ISO to use.David Ziser has shared his knowledge with tens of thousands of photographers in five languages and in 14 countries worldwide. Studio Photography magazine says, "Award-winning photographer, David Ziser, is showing the world how to take wedding pictures."

Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows: The Missing Manual

Photoshop Elements lets you do practically anything you want to your digital images. You can colorize black-and-white photos, remove red-eye, or distort shapes. With easy, step-by-step instructions, Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows: The Missing Manual gets you ready to make the most out of all the features available.

Photoshop Elements 8 Tips and Tricks

1. Highlight an object with color. It’s super easy to turn a color photo to a black and white image with only one colored object in it. In the photo on the left below, the waterlily looks fine but the dying leaves are distracting, so it might look better with only the flower in color. It’ll take you only a few seconds to get that effect. Just pick one of the Black & White settings for the Smart Brush and then drag over the lily. Elements does a pretty good job of finding the edges of the flower and makes it black and white, leaving the rest of the image in color. But if you turn on the Inverse checkbox before you drag, the lily stays colored and the rest of your image becomes black and white, saving you a lot of work.

2. Get rid of empty space. The new Recompose tool is great for fixing photos where squabbling siblings or cranky coworkers refused to stand close together. It’s also handy if you ever have to do how-to illustrations—you can easily get rid of extra space in a screenshot of a dialog box, for instance. You can also use Recompose to squish out unwanted elements in the middle of your photos, like in this seascape. In the pictures below, it brought the boats closer together and got rid of some of the condo sprawl in the background. Doing this left a little debris behind—a couple of stick-like lines from the largest condo—but one quick drag with the Healing brush, and there’s a lot more undeveloped beach left in the world.

3. One photo, two ways. The new Exposure Merge feature is great for blending together multiple (bracketed) exposures of the same scene, but if you only managed to get one good shot, you can process it twice in Elements’ Raw Converter—once for good shadowy areas, once for good highlights—and then merge the two into one image with good exposure throughout. You don’t even have to have a Raw format photo—it works with JPEG images, too. This is a JPEG photo where the interior was so underexposed that the lawn outside disappeared into a white glare when the interior was properly adjusted. So I made two versions, one for the indoor areas and one for the outside, then did the simplest exposure merge in Elements: an automatic merge. If I’d wanted to get fancy I could have had more control over the end result, but even the automatic merge is a big improvement over the first photo.

Ideal for scrapbookers, serious and casual photographers, and budding graphic artists alike, Photoshop Elements 8 is more powerful and easier to use than previous versions. But figuring out how and when to use the program's tools is still tricky. With this book, you'll learn not only what each tool does, but also when it makes the most sense to use it and why. You get easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions for everything from importing photos to organizing, editing, sharing, and storing your images. And if a feature isn't all that it's cracked up to be, we'll tell you.How do you use the Photomerge Exposure? How do Quick Fix previews work? With a gentle introduction to get you started quickly, and advanced tips to help you produce really creative work, this Missing Manual provides the answers you need.Get crystal-clear and jargon-free explanations of every featureLearn to import, organize, back up, and fix photos quickly and easilyRepair and restore old and damaged photos, and retouch any imageJazz up your pictures with dozens of filters, frames, and special effectsRemove unwanted objects from images with the new Recompose toolLearn advanced techniques like working with layers and applying blend modesDownload practice images and try new tricks right away

Portrait Painting Atelier: Old Master Techniques and Contemporary Applications

The art of portraiture approached its apex during the sixteenth century in Europe with the discovery of oil painting when the old masters developed and refined techniques that remain unsurpassed to this day. The ascendance of nonrepresentational art in the middle of the twentieth century displaced these venerable skills, especially in academic art circles. Fortunately for aspiring artists today who wish to learn the methods that allowed the Old Masters to achieve the luminous color and subtle tonalities so characteristic of their work, this knowledge has been preserved in hundreds of small traditional painting ateliers that persevered in the old ways in this country and throughout the world.

Coming out of this dedicated movement, Portrait Painting Atelier is an essential resource for an art community still recovering from a time when solid instruction in art technique was unavailable in our schools. Of particular value here is a demonstration of the Old Masters’ technique of layering paint over a toned-ground surface, a process that builds from the transparent dark areas to the more densely painted lights. This method unifies the entire painting, creating a beautiful glow that illuminates skin tones and softly blends all the color tones. Readers will also find valuable instruction in paint mediums from classic oil-based to alkyd-based, the interactive principles of composition and photograph-based composition, and the anatomy of the human face and the key relationships among its features.

Richly illustrated with the work of preeminent masters such as Millet, Géricault, and van Gogh, as well as some of today’s leading portrait artists—and featuring seven detailed step-by-step portrait demonstrations—Portrait Painting Atelier is the first book in many years to so comprehensively cover the concepts and techniques of traditional portraiture.

The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Book for Digital Photographers

Scott Kelby, the best-selling Photoshop author in the world today, once again takes this book to a whole new level as he uncovers the latest, most important, and most exciting new Adobe Photoshop CS4 techniques for digital photographers. This major update to his award-winning, record-breaking book does something for digital photographers that's never been done before it cuts through the bull and shows you exactly "how to do it." It's not a bunch of theory; it doesn't challenge you to come up with your own settings or figure it out on your own. Instead, Scott shows you step-bystep the exact techniques used by today's cutting-edge digital photographers, and best of all, he shows you flat-out exactly which settings to use, when to use them, and why. That's why the previous editions of this book are widely used as the official study guide in photography courses at colleges and universities around the world.

Exposure Digital Field Guide

Exposure is the number one topic that digital photographers want to know about. This full-color book fits in your camera bag and provides all the information you need on this very important aspect of digital photography.

Exposure involves combining ISO, aperture, and shutter speed in different variations to accomplish your vision of the perfect image. Exposure Digital Field Guide takes you through the complex techniques of good exposure, taking you from hobbyist to serious amateur photographer.

• Explains how to adjust shutter speed and aperture to control the amount of light hitting the camera's light sensor
• Teaches you how to "see the light" for the perfect exposure
• Helps you gain confidence as you move from automatic controls into manipulating the elements of exposure for specific results
• Packed with stunning full-color photographs to illustrate what you can achieve
• Provides suggested settings for various shooting situations and subjects
• Includes a tear-out color checker card to help you maintain true color
• Fits in your camera bag for ready reference in the field

Exposure Digital Field Guide helps you master one of the most complex and intricate elements of digital photography.

Aperture and Shutter Speed Techniques

Shutter Speed: This fighter jet was frozen in mid flight using a shutter speed of 1/2000 of a second. Even with plenty of light, I needed to boost the ISO to 640 to get the shutter speed necessary. At times you want to make sure that that you capture the action, now, granted, this is an extreme example, but the concept is the same. To catch a fast moving subject you need to use a high shutter speed and to get the correct exposure that means using the widest aperture possible and increasing the ISO if needed. Since I didn’t want a photo of a blurry fighter jet flying overhead, I used a shutter speed high enough to capture the action. (Click on image to enlarge)

Blur the Background: This was shot during the morning in a playground at a local park. I wanted to make the little girl stand out from the surroundings so I used an aperture that would effectively blur the background and keep the subject in sharp focus. Since the photograph was taken in the morning there was plenty of bright light. To get the shallow depth of field I used an aperture of f/5, which lets in a lot of light, so I needed to use a low ISO of 200 and a very fast shutter speed, 1/1000 of a second to make sure I got the correct exposure. Since I knew that I wanted to blur the background, I set the camera on Aperture Priority mode and set the aperture, letting the camera set the shutter speed. (Click on image to enlarge)

Blur the Foreground: This is one of my favorite tricks when shooting in zoos or through any type of barrier. Instead of using the aperture to blur the background, I use it to blur the items in the extreme foreground. This leopard was safely behind a chain link fence at the local zoo, but because the leopard was towards the back of the enclosure I was able to use a shallow depth of field to make the fence disappear. I shot this at 1/320 of a second using f/2.8 and ISO 200. Because I used a wide aperture, I also needed to use a high shutter speed to get the correct exposure. This worked out really well because the 1/320 of a second shutter speed kept the big cat frozen while the wide f/2.8 aperture blurred the fence. (Click on image to enlarge)

Top Ten Exposure Tips

1. Pick the right shutter speed for the situation. One of the most common exposure problems that beginner photographers experience is blurry photographs. The cause of a blurry photo is very simple; the shutter is left open too long and either the camera moves or the subject moves. Experiment to discover the merits of different shutter speeds.

2. Pick the right aperture for the situation. The aperture is the opening in the lens that lets light through to the sensor in the camera. The aperture also controls the depth of field in the image and controls what will be in focus and what will be blurred. The larger the aperture the shallower the depth of field.

3. Pick the right exposure mode for the situation. Two key components of exposure are shutter speed and aperture. By using the correct exposure mode, you choose to determine either one or both of these settings yourself, or to let your camera adjust them for you. If you use shutter speed priority mode your camera will allow you to pick the shutter speed and it will use the built in light meter to determine the proper exposure. If you use the aperture priority mode, you pick the aperture and the camera sets the shutter speed. Aperture priority mode is the correct choice when depth of field is the most important factor in your image. Of course you can always use the automatic mode, which lets the camera choose shutter speed and aperture or you can use the manual mode that lets you pick both yourself.

4. Pick the right metering mode for the situation. Your camera has a built in light meter that it uses to determine what the correct exposure for the scene should be. The light meter has a variety of settings that can help you find the best exposure. Use the full metering in situations where the whole scene is important, and use the spot metering or center weighted metering when you want to only take a small part of the scene in to consideration.

5. When in doubt, bracket your exposures. Many cameras have an automatic bracketing setting which allows you to purposely take a series of photos that purposely underexpose then correctly expose then overexpose the scene. This gives you a much better chance of getting a good exposure and is also the method used for HDR photography.

6. Use a tripod. One of the best accessories you can have is a good tripod. This will allow you to use a longer shutter speed and still be able to keep the camera steady.

7. Use the ISO. Your camera has the ability to mimic the film speeds of the old film cameras. Changing the ISO will increase the signal from the sensor, which allows the sensor to gather more information and work in lower light. When you need to use a higher shutter speed or a smaller aperture, you can increase the ISO so that you still get a proper exposure. The down side to this is that digital noise can be introduced into your image.

8. Experiment. Go out there and experiment. With digital photography you can get instant feedback by looking at the screen on the back of the camera. If you think it would be fun to use a very slow shutter speed, go ahead and give it a shot. Remember, that these are your images and you can do it the way you want to.

9. Understand the histogram. The histogram display on your camera can give you a lot of information if you read it right. A histogram simply shows you where the tones in your image fall. The higher the peak on the right side of the histogram, the more light tones appear in your image. And the more info on the left side of the histogram, the more dark tones appear in your image. Match the histogram to what you see to make sure the camera is recording the scene to your preferences.

10. Check the highlight warning. Most cameras have a highlight warning display that will blink the areas that are overexposed and have no detail. These are really important to look for since they show which parts of your image will be pure white. There is very little that should be pure white in an image except for an actual light source that is so bright there is no detail, other than that, you want to avoid those blinkies by using a smaller aperture or higher shutter speed.

Secrets of exposure revealed, with a bonus color checker card included

Exposure is the number one topic that digital photographers want to know about. This full-color book fits in your camera bag and provides all the information you need on this very important aspect of digital photography.

Exposure involves combining ISO, aperture, and shutter speed in different variations to accomplish your vision of the perfect image. Exposure Digital Field Guide takes you through the complex techniques of good exposure, taking you from hobbyist to serious amateur photographer.

• Explains how to adjust shutter speed and aperture to control the amount of light hitting the camera's light sensor
• Teaches you how to "see the light" for the perfect exposure
• Helps you gain confidence as you move from automatic controls into manipulating the elements of exposure for specific results
• Packed with stunning full-color photographs to illustrate what you can achieve
• Provides suggested settings for various shooting situations and subjects
• Includes a tear-out color checker card to help you maintain true color
• Fits in your camera bag for ready reference in the field

Exposure Digital Field Guide helps you master one of the most complex and intricate elements of digital photography.

Creative Nature & Outdoor Photography, Revised Edition

A classic guide to creative nature photography, now updated for the digital world.

Amateur and experienced photographers interested in taking more compelling, personal images will love this new edition of Creative Nature & Outdoor Photography, now updated to address the exciting possibilities (and challenges) of digital image-making. Author Brenda Tharp’s inspiring approach has garnered fans all over the world, as she teaches that magical skill no camera can do for you: learn how to “see.” Readers expand their photographic vision and discover deep wellsprings of creativity as they learn to use light, balance, color, design, pattern, texture, composition, and many simple techniques to take a photo from ordinary to high-impact.

Featuring more than 150 stunning, all-new images, Creative Nature & Outdoor  Photography, Revised Edition is for anyone who understands the basic technical side to photography but wants to wake up their creative vision.