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Critiqued
Here are a couple of interesting articles on the rules of photography.
http://web.archive.org/web/20000619193049/http://www.bobkrist.com/pages/howto/composition.html
http://www.scenic-route.com/essays/photog.htm
Photography should not be a game with rules. Rules are for tennis and foot ball. Good photography is about who has the imagination, creativity and ability to make a subject their own. And at the same time letting us understand the story the image has to tell. - JL Morris
- Things to ask about your photograph
- Ask why the photo ’says’ what it does?
- Why is the subject there?
- What’s the object, or the point, or the ‘effect’, or the emotions?
- Does anything detract?
- Is it a clean shot?
- Can something be removed by the angle at which you shoot?
- Can something be de-emphasized, later, whether chemically or by software?
- Is the photo just of what you wish it to be?
Have a reason for why everything in that photo is there. If you can’t find a reason, if it was ‘just in the shot’, then get rid of it. If you have some trees that seem ‘boring’ in some sector of a landscape, even that might stand to be burned away, then do so. If you have someone else casting their shadow in your posed ‘deco’ portrait, then you probably need to get rid of the other shadow. And that might be difficult to do, later, without a lot of effort. If there’s a lot of sky, and no clouds in the sky, and that sky isn’t what you wanted people to consider in really any way, then crop away some sky. Don’t shoot it. If there’s no reason for something to be in the photo, it’s probably best it not be there. Think about what the shot is about.
Part of an article on Judging by http://www.scenic-route.com/
Ask yourself what turns you on about your subject and then take everything else out.
Here is a detailed article supplied by our resident technical adviser Bill Debley on exposure. If this doesn’t tell you everything you ever wanted to known about the subject nothing will.
Artical on Exposure
When submitting images to a web site many people seem to get hung up on DPI (dots per inch) as a measure of quality of their digital photos; in fact, DPI has nothing to do with digital image quality. DPI is a measure of how an image is printed to a medium such as paper (or conversely, scanned from paper). This can be very confusing to many photographers when you mention ‘Resizing”, and cause you unnecessary grief with varied file sizes.
Step 1: Preparation
My recommendation for emailing size is a photo with a horizontal dimension of about 800 pixels and a JPEG compression of between 35 to 50%. To change digital photos for emailing one can use Breezebrowser, CS2/CS3, Adobe Photoshop Elements, etc. I’ll outline procedure for Windows XP, Adobe Photoshop: Load a copy of your photo into Adobe Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements). Select the “Image > Image Size” menu option (may be “Image > Resize > Image Size” in Photoshop Elements). In the image size dialog window, make sure that the “Resample Image” and the “Constrain Proportions” checkboxes are selected (checked). In “Pixel Dimensions” section type in 800 in the Width box (assuming that the image you are working with has a width greater than 800 Click the “OK” button - Sharpen the image if required your photo will be resample using its original aspect ratio (which is what Adobe means by the obtuse “Constrain Proportions”).
Step 2: Saving
Use “Save As” to save this photo in JPEG format with a new name - I suggest adding a -email extender (i.e. “345-2365-email.jpg”). Click “OK” The next dialog box are your JPEG options, choose Quality 5 or less. Newer version of Photoshop has a “Save to Web” which can do the above in a single process and make a smaller file to boot. If you have this option use it. It will allow you to change the image size and select your JPEG compression in one step. Note though that “Save to Web” will strip out any IPTC data you have in the image. For example Google’s Picasa lets you resize for e-mail to 1024 X 768, 800 X 600, etc., and I can foresee users using Picasa for quick and easy resizing as it does the e-mail attachment in the process. Since the resolution of most monitors is 75 ppi setting the resolution to 100 ppi would be more that sufficient. So, bottom line, setting to longest dimension if the image to 800 ppi and the res. to 100 ppi would provide consistent images.
Article by Bill Debley / f-Stops Photo Club
If you don’t have the software or feel you can’t prepare your photos as described above just send in what you have and I will make the necessary adjustments. JL Morris / DigaPix
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