If you haven’t visited the Red Rock Canyon area about 20 miles outside of Las Vegas, you’re missing a wonderful photo opportunity. It offers rugged mountains as a background, huge red rock formations and a smattering of Joshua trees to make your photo foregrounds interesting.
By Stokley Wilson
Fill-flash photography has always been a tricky thing. Do you remember that old saying, "Place your back to the sun when taking photographs"? This saying refers to the direction of the light falling on your subject. What this accomplished was to light your subject from the front, or front lit. This type of lighting offers the least amount of shadow, and/or contrast. This also makes your subject face into the sun.
By Stokley Wilson
This month we’ll talk about composition. Composition is the technique used to arrange or compose the subject in the frame or viewfinder. Most of us start out taking photographs with the classic TV composition, subject placed directly in the center of the frame, just like we see on TV. But as we soon learn, this is not the most pleasing to our eye. One of the reasons for this is the 35mm frame has a much wider aspect ratio (height vs. width), than a TV. With more of a rectangle, we need to compose our subjects to suit this particular format. Place the rectangle how your subject is arranged. When photographing a tall skyscraper, hold your camera vertically. When photographing a ranch style house, shoot a horizontal.
I've had an opportunity to exchange ideas about digital photography, the size of pictures and the cost of making them, etc., with other photography enthusiasts. I've thought about it, and then spent some time putting down my conclusions. Perhaps the information would be of interest to other members of LPA, because I think the discussion is relevant to who we are, what we are doing, and where we are going with the club.
By Stokley Wilson
The last column was about single colored filters. This month's tip is about special effect filters. Special effect filters range from a very subtle effect to a "wild" very strong effect. While I can't possibly describe every filter available, I will cover the most popular styles. If you have a question about using filters not covered in this column, please e-mail your question to this column.
Since the Fall Color Field Trip is upon us I'll attempt to pass on some information to help you get the most benefit from the experience, whether you get to make the trip or not.
The end of the year is a time for reflections, and looking back at 2005 gives me a feeling of having accomplished a lot this year. Anne and I have done so many interesting things it has become a blur, and it's hard to remember just when we did what.
On looking over some of the “kid” photos taken recently in our family, I see lots of red eye. Red eye is caused by light reflected back from the retina (where there are blood vessels) because the iris is open for the ambient light and does not have time to adjust for the high intensity of the flash.
With patience and the proper software, red eye can be eliminated, but it is better to prevent it. Telling children to “look at the camera” and taking a flash picture, just about guaranties severe red eye.
