Archive for the ‘photography’ Category
July 23rd, 2010
Freelance photography is an exciting career and it is all about taking good photographs and selling them. If you want to be successful at selling stock photography then you must take time to carefully study which photos are more marketable and selling over and over again.
What is Stock Photography?
Stock photography is a term used to describe a stock of existing photographs that may be licensed for specific uses. Clients who purchase stock photography include publishers, magazines, advertising agencies, filmmakers, web designers, and graphic artists.
This is great if you are in the freelance photography business. When you take some photographs those photos become a part of your “stock”, and as the copyright holder you can license your images over and over again.
Which Stock Photos Sell The Most?
If you want to sell your stock photos through stock agencies and microstock sites, or by approaching publishers and other users directly, then you need to know which photos are in demand and selling more.
Start by studying the portfolios of the top photographers at each of the major stock photography sites. Most microstock sites make it very easy to browse the most popular photos or the top portfolios.
Next, study the images in magazines, newspapers, and websites to find out what is currently being purchased by publishers.
There is always a good demand for stock photography in the following categories:
- Business related, e.g. businessmen, businesswomen, businesspeople, sales performance charts.
- People enjoying life: a family at the beach or on vacation.
- Gadgets: computers, keyboards, Mp3 players, cameras.
- Children.
- Unique locations and destinations.
Stock photos that sell well often show how things would be in an ideal world. Shots of happy, attractive people sell better. Images full of color that portray some beautiful aspect of world will outperform others.
Now go out and take some high-quality photographs that match those buying patterns. While you don’t want to copy another photographer’s images, you can of course be inspired by them!
Working as a Freelance Photographer
If you love photography and have not yet started working as a freelance photographer, this is a great time to get started.
One week you might be shooting some new images to build up your collection of stock photography. The next you might be working on assignment for a large corporation. And on another time you might be shooting photos for a magazine article or travel publication.
The freelance photography industry is booming. Not only is there good money in photography, but working as a freelancer offers you incredible flexibility and a great lifestyle.
July 16th, 2010
Digital photography represents nothing less than a revolution in the way we take and manipulate images. Even so, the basic fundamentals of film photography apply with digital. Both require a lens to focus light and a shutter to let that light pass into the camera. The principal difference between digital and film photography is how the image is captured.
Traditionally, you needed to have your film developed in a darkroom using various chemicals (none of which were very environmentally friendly). The process of developing the film produces “negatives” that needed to be further processed and printed before any usable image was produced. Needless to say, the moment that the shutter was originally snapped is long gone by the time you actually see the product of your image making. With digital, the image is captured using an electronic sensor. This sensor is made up of millions of individual “pixels”, or picture elements, that convert light into a zero or one (binary code). Thus, instead of waiting days or weeks (at best, hours) to see your image, with a digital camera, you see it almost instantaneously.
The quality of the image with a digital camera depends in large part to the number of pixels it has. This is commonly referred to as the “resolution” of the digital camera, and can be expressed as a dimension (800 x 600), or the number of pixels per inch. 800 x 600 is a common resolution for computer screens. A screen with this resolution will display 800 pixels from side to side, and 600 from top to bottom, totaling 480,000 pixels. Modern digital photography normally uses a much higher resolution than your average computer screen, going up into the millions of pixels, or megapixels. Thus, a camera with a resolution of 2048 x 1536 represents 3.1 megapixels.
We know that each pixel is represented by a number. The color scale of that pixel is determined by the size of the number. Black and white images can be produced by pixels a mere 8 bits in length. A quick refresher in binary arithmetic tells us that an 8 bit number represents a decimal number between 0 and 256. Therefore, and black and white image can have 255 shades of gray, plus black, 0, and white, 256.
For color, we need more bits. At 16 bits per pixel, we can have a color scale with 65,536 different shades. 24 bits brings that into the millions. Most digital cameras nowadays use 24 bits, with some professional equipment utilizing all of 48 bits for a whopping 280 billion shades. That’s a lot of color!
Several factors affect the quality of a digital camera. Pixel resolution is normally considered the most important one. To choose and adequate pixel resolution, you should take into consideration the size of images you wish to print – or if you are going to print your images at all. The number of pixels in an image doesn’t change, so larger images will have fewer pixels per inch, resulting in a loss of detail that will continually degrade the larger the picture gets.
Most photo labs print images at 300 pixels per inch. Use this as a base to calculate the megapixel resolution for your digital camera. A two megapixel camera at 300 pixels per inch will produce a maximum print size of 5.8″ x 3.8″, less than the standard 4″x8″. Considering a four megapixel camera will produce a print, at 300 pixels per inch, of 8.2′ x 5.4″.
There is nothing stopping you from printing larger pictures, of course. These are just guidelines. A 200-pixel-per-inch image isn’t as sharp as the standard 300 pixels per inch, but for many purposes can still be quite acceptable. At this resolution, you can bet images up to 8.7″ x 5.8″ with a two megapixel camera, all the way up to a 12.2″ x 8.2″ image from a four megapixel camera.
Now that we have pixels and megapixels swimming in your head, it’s time to step back and just enjoy all the advantages offered by modern digital photography.
July 16th, 2010
Macro photography is one of the most attractive and popular forms of photography. According to some experts it is very easy to master the art and techniques of macro photography – and that is, perhaps, the secret behind its fame.
Definition of Macro Photography:
Strength of the lens or the range of the lens determines whether the style can be called macro photography or not. A camera with a lens that has a 1:1 range should be used in macro photography so that the image size on the negative or slide is equal to the actual size of the subject.
Hence, if you are using 35 mm photographic film, you should use a camera that can focus on 24×36 mm small area. Then only you can take picture of a subject where the image size on photographic film is equal to the real size of the subject.
What’s interesting in Macro Photography:
Macro photography opens up the doors of a new world. It captures minute details of the subjects – such details are not at all visible in the naked eye. Hence, the viewer can reveal a lot of new things in most familiar subjects while watching the photographs. And unfamiliar subjects become more attractive in macro photography. According to photo critics – macro photography is not only attractive, but seductive!
For example, when someone takes a picture of a rusted chain in 1:1 range, you get to see the exact texture of rust. How rusts look like, what is the exact color of rust and many other minute factors come into notice. That’s what makes macro photography attractive.
Ideas & Subjects of Macro Photography:
People with a knack for photography find the subjects their own. They are artists and they have the eye for the right thing. However, those who are new in this field and about to start their career might need help finding the subject.
Snowflakes, water drops, minerals, butterflies, plants, leaves, flowers and flower petals, baby feet and fingers, eyes, spiders and spider web, insects etc. are the common subjects. Get out in your backyard garden and you will find plenty of subjects worth taking a picture. Macro photography ideas are available online to help you develop the ability to find the right subject.
Nature has always been the main subject of photography and art. However, macro photography experts often take photographs of items such as stamps, coins, automobile parts, wrist watch, pen parts, and other small things and collectibles.
Macro Photography Tutorials:
Working in this field is a new experience even for those who have been involved with photography for long. Opportunities are unlimited here – new equipments and techniques are invented everyday. With the advent of digital photography, entire world has been revolutionized.
Digital photography tutorials for macro photography help photographers make full use of digital cameras and other equipments in the process. However, it is not mandatory to use digital cameras. Traditional film based cameras are still popular and will be in the market for next few decades if not centuries.
Experts prefer SLR digital cameras for macro shooting. However, compact point and shoot cameras can yield good result too. To know more about photography, take some lessons or tutorials online. Know about photography techniques and equipments; become an expert photographer.